The Sound of Silence. It could be the theme song of the Utah Democratic Party.
When Republicans, such as U.S. Reps. Chris Stewart or Burgess Owens, paint the Dems as socialists, or smack them with other derogatory labels, there often is no response or pushback just a very disturbing quiet.
There is no one like Jim Dabakis (the now-retired state senator from Salt Lake City) or Randy Horiuchi (the late Salt Lake County Councilman) to blast back at the GOP as cheap-shot artists whose talent for name-calling often seems to dwarf their other skills. And so, the effective Republican bumper-sticker sloganeering continues to eat its way through the Utah body politic.
| Updated: 2:01 a.m.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee on Thursday lauded the state’s recent decision to stop paying higher jobless benefits, arguing that federal coronavirus relief dollars are now damaging the economy rather than helping it.
“With this latest round of government spending coming in right now, it’s kind of like throwing not just water on an oil fire but it’s a little bit like throwing gasoline on a fire,” the Republican senator said during an event hosted by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
Dumping government money into the economy has sent inflation soaring and driven the cost of gasoline and food upwards, he contends. And the $300-a-week unemployment bonus, supported by federal funding, also has backfired by making it more profitable for people to stay home than re-enter the workforce, Lee continued.
KUER
K-12 schools in Utah will not be required to have a mask mandate in place during the last week of the academic year. This story and more in Thursday evening s news brief.
Thursday evening, May 13, 2021
State
Red Rock Wilderness Battle Continues With Trolling Legislation
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-UT, and Rep. John Curtis, R-UT, introduced legislation Thursday to designate 289,000 acres of land in Illinois as federally protected wilderness. It’s an attempt to troll Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL, who introduced America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act Monday that would designate 8.4 million acres in Utah as federally-protected wilderness areas. Out-of-state politicians shouldn’t make decisions about Utah’s public lands, Romney and Curtis said. An aide for Durbin told KUER the senator supports conserving lands in Illinois.
Cities across Utah will try a new method of voting
and last updated 2021-05-10 20:18:38-04
SALT LAKE CITY â Nearly two dozen cities across Utah are trying a new method of voting.
They have opted into a pilot project to try ranked choice voting for municipal elections. This is a big deal. I think we have more cities doing ranked choice voting in Utah than the rest of the country combined, said Justin Lee, the state elections director for the Utah Lt. Governor s Office.
Monday was the deadline for communities to opt into the ranked choice voting pilot project. The communities participating are:
SALT LAKE CITY First lady Jill Biden will celebrate Cinco de Mayo in Salt Lake City on Wednesday by thanking front-line workers at a west side middle school and encouraging Utahns, especially the Hispanic community, to get the COVID-19 vaccination. This is a tour for appreciation and gratitude, said Scott Howell, a former Democratic Utah Senate leader and surrogate for President Joe Biden.
Jill Biden plans to visit Glendale Middle School where she will thank health care workers, teachers, custodians, lunch workers, information technology workers and others for their diligence and hard work during the pandemic, Howell said.
Wednesday is an online learning day for students at Glendale, so she won t see them in their regular classrooms. But there will be some students on hand.