H.B. 27: Fouling the nest

I’ve never understood why humans want to destroy the biosphere that sustains them, but I guess if there’s a lot of money to be made, it’s easy to convince oneself that there’s no harm done.
I just got an email alert about H.B. 27:
Vote against HB 27 Protections for Agricultural Practices.  This bill is a ‘get-out-of-jail [...]

Legislature Humor

If you don’t laugh, you might cry: Thank goodness for color TV
My favorite:
Start a lottery, and make playing the stock market illegal. (Your constituents would lose less playing Powerball.)

Watch Utah Senate Live

The Policy Pitch Blog has posted a two part series on the Utah Senate Media:
The Utah Senate is using technology to make their inner-workings transparent and open to all.   The Utah Senate now has written, audio, and video blogs by Senators, links to past senate floor debates, and the ability to [...]

Common Ground Initiative’s Nemesis: The Sacred Ground Initiative

This legislative session, there is a series of 5 bills, as has been written about on this blog, called “Common Ground Initiative”, which advocate for the provisions of Expanding Health Care, Fair Housing & Employment, Wrongful Deaths, The Domestic Partner Rights and Responsibilities Act and Clarifying Amendment 3 (repealing the portion of Amendment 3 which [...]

Town Meeting Scheduled for Utah House District 43

Today I  received an inviation from my represenative, Wayne Harper (R-West Jordan) to attend a town meeting on February 7 from 4-6 pm at the West Jordan City Library, 1970 E 7800 South.  He also included a questionnaire,
covering a few of the issues and topics that may be consider this session.
Here are the items on [...]

S.B. 13 Administering Substances to Wildlife – some explanation needed

This is a genuine inquiry – I don’t know what this bill is about. Senate Bill 13, sponsored by ultra-conservative Margaret Dayton, made it out of committee and will be voted on by the full Senate. The bill is very short, and seems on the surface fairly innocuous.
The bill, sponsored by [...]

Tips on contacting your legislator

Curtis Haring over at Blue in Red Zion wrote a post a little while back giving tips on contacting  your legislator that might be helpful, especially if you’ve never done it before.

Power to the People – Citizen Lobbying Opportunities (updated)

The corporations  have made sure that their voices are heard with their high-priced professional lobbyists. Citizen lobbying is the way we make sure that our voice is heard, too. Here are some opportunities for citizen lobbying up at the Utah Legislature coming up:

The ACLU is sponsoring a citizen lobbying training on Thursday, February 5th from [...]

A thought . . .

I vaguely  remember a year in my tax-payer past when there was a surplus in the Utah Budget and the Utah tax payers received a small rebate back.  I think the amount was $10 each. I remember thinking what a waste of a surplus to send us each such a small check and the cost [...]

Utah Voter ID Bill

Kathy Dopp, founder of Utah Counts Votes and national leading authority on election integrity, has issued the announcement below along with her reaction to the Utah Voter ID Bill:
Gov Ops Meeting Today am & Utah Voter ID Bill
Members of the House Government Operations Standing Committee
Rep. Craig A. Frank, Chair
Rep. Keith Grover, Vice Chair
Committee Meeting
DATE:    [...]