Incongruities

Did you know that total U.S. credit card debt is about $850 billion? That amounts to about $5,000 of debt for every credit card in the country.

It’s obviously a huge number. And yet it is a much smaller number than the amount the U.S. government doled out in three quantitative easing programs to prop up the economy. What if, instead of giving stimulus money to banks and big businesses, Congress and the president had instead just paid off everyone’s credit card debt?

Obviously such a plan would have been unfair to all those thrifty people who have little or no credit card debt. But it also wasn’t fair that the government bailed out banks that made stupid loans and that the executives making the decisions about those loans sometimes got nauseatingly large bonuses. It isn’t fair that middle class Americans often pay far more in taxes than wealthy folks who can take advantage of legal loopholes.

In terms of simply jump starting the economy, imagine the impact to ordinary people who would no longer have enormous revolving debts at 29% interest. Paying off credit card debts would free up hundreds of billions of dollars that people could be spending on an ongoing basis.

Did you know that consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of U.S. GDP? Yet when it came time to try to boost the economy, the government focused on the other third–three separate times.

Earlier this week Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke held a news conference and told everyone that the economy is well on its way to full recovery. He said that inflation remains under control and that rising gas prices really won’t have a significant impact.

I’ve got corrals in my back yard and I can recognize crap in virtually any form. I’m tired of government leaders who try to feed it to us while telling us how much we enjoy it and how good it is for us.

Realistically, I know the government is not going to wipe out existing credit card debt. But wouldn’t it be great if the next stimulus program benefited ordinary people instead of those who are already cashing big bonus checks?

Imagine the clout a politician would have at election time if he could claim responsibility  for erasing the bulk of consumer debt.

Now that the legislative session is over, Utah lawmakers have been converted to the religion of government openness. Less than a month after passing HB 477, a government secrecy bill that might have originally been crafted by Moammar Gadhafi, several legislators who voted for the bill are now professing that they have always been in favor of open government.

The truth is, most local and state officials like open meetings about as much as Congress cares about balanced budgets.

After working as a journalist in the Midwest and in Utah, my personal opinion is that if there is any possible way for elected officials to conduct public business in secret, they will eagerly do so. For a time, one ingenious city council used to include all its action items on an agenda only available to council members. During meetings there were no discussions. Instead, the mayor would ask council member to vote on agenda item number three, or agenda item number five, etc. It took the threat of legal action to get them to comply with open meetings laws.

In Utah public bodies are allowed to go into closed sessions to discuss the sale or purchase of property or the hiring and firing of public employees. Any actual votes on these matters must then be made in open session. One school board I used to cover adjourned to lengthy executive sessions at almost every meeting for one of the reasons specified, but no land was ever bought or sold and no employees were ever hired or fired.

HB477 allows officials to keep secret electronic communications like emails and text messages. It also makes it much more expensive for anyone who requests copies of certain official documents. In an age when so much business is conducted electronically this bill takes the spirit of open meetings back to the Stone Age.

Open meetings subject the actions of elected official to public scrutiny and the criticism that can result. It’s like throwing Holy Water on vampires. They would prefer to avoid it at all costs.

Just as disturbing as the content of HB477 is the way that it was passed. It was brought before the legislature in the waning hours of the session and passed with little discussion.

State lawmakers might bristle at the comparison, but their action is reminiscent of a long history of fascists, communists, kings, emperors, dictators, and other evil leaders who sought to govern in darkness and secrecy. It is completely at odds with the principles of a democratic society.

It isn’t surprising that the response by the media and the public has been loud and angry. Hearing the outcry, elected officials are backpedaling and taking about the possibility of repealing this law. It is the very least they can do.

As a member of the voting public, the biggest question on my mind is how any democratic leader in the United States could ever create or vote for a bill like this to begin with.

In the waning hours of the 2011 Utah Legislature, lawmakers avoided tackling some major issues and focused instead on a law that is virtually meaningless. Thursday the Senate approved a bill making gold and silver coins minted by the U.S. government as legal tender in Utah.

What a relief!

Like many others across America, my family has been hurt by the economic downturn. What a comfort it is to know that if things get really desperate, I can dip into my hoard of gold and use it as legal tender. Except that the bill doesn’t force anyone to accept gold or silver coins and as far as I know, the government is not issuing gold and silver coins.

The bill’s sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Scott Jenkins, R-Plain City, reportedly said, “It will put some pressure on the federal government. That’s the goal here because right now we have a dollar that’s just running away with inflation and our hope is that this is a little bit of a shock that’ll say we want to deal with inflation.”

It’s hard to imagine this move will even be noticed by Washington, let alone cause lawmakers there any pressure.

I can envision President Obama and other important officials gathered together on Friday morning talking about relief efforts and the possible economic impact of the Japan earthquake. In the middle of that discussion, an aide bursts into the room and says, “Mr. President, I’m afraid we have another issue to deal with. Utah just approved the use of gold as legal tender. Let’s forget about all this other stuff and tackle inflation, NOW.”

Instead, if the Utah bill gets any mention, my guess is it will be more along the lines of: “Hey everyone, listen to what those ignorant yahoos in Utah have done this time!”

If Utah Senators are concerned about inflation and want to get the attention of folks in Washington, there are surely better ways to go about it than to pass a meaningless law like this. Perhaps they could instead draft a letter that says something clever like: “We are really concerned about inflation and the economy and we want you guys to do something about it.” Then they could send it to every representative in D.C.

Fortunately Utah lawmakers were also smart enough to approve HB477—a government secrecy bill that makes it much difficult for people to find out what state leaders are doing. That means in the future when Utah lawmakers consider misguided and meaningless legislation like the gold law we might not even learn about it.

Much of the focus on this year’s BYU men’s basketball team has shifted from its high ranking to the dismissal of Brandon Davies for an honor code violation.

When it comes to BYU, I’m not an unbiased observer. I have two degrees from BYU and I love the school and its mission. But when cases get high-profile media attention like this, I am always concerned about the impact on the individual and the school.

Many BYU students run afoul of the honor code. Unless the offense is a serious crime, these breaches are confidential and the public never learns about them. Unfortunately that isn’t true for star athletes like Davies.

If a redshirt freshman playing on the football scout team committed the same offense as Davies the punishment might be the same, but the story would probably never be picked up by any media.

It is unfortunate that youthful indiscretions can’t remain private. But when someone puts his talents on display in a highly public setting, his entire life often comes under intense scrutiny. Such is the price of fame and glory.

Some critics of the honor code have wrongly argued that such attention just because someone is a highly visible athlete is unfair. What would be unfair would be to cover up violations to protect a star athlete and that is what occurs at many other universities.

Other critics point out that there are students who commit infractions of the code and never suffer any consequences. Perhaps the vast majority of honor code breaches are never revealed. The same is true of the world outside the BYU campus. People commit crimes for which they never have to pay or even admit. But those who break the law do so knowing that if they get caught, punishment of some sort will follow.

Brandon Davies is not the first highly publicized BYU athlete to be kicked off a team for an honor code violation. He knew the code and the possible consequence. The fact that others might have committed similar offenses and never been caught is irrelevant.

It isn’t unfair, but it is unfortunate.

No one is perfect. Committing to abide by the honor code is not a promise to be perfect. But there is an implicit acknowledgement that infractions of the code are could carry consequences.

Last night the BYU men’s basketball team lost badly. They played sloppy and without confidence. It likely wasn’t a coincidence that such an uninspired performance came a day after the Davies situation became public. Whether they are strict adherents to the honor code or not, every other player on the team was undoubtedly aware that under the right circumstances they could be in the same position as their teammate.

It is kind of like cruising down the highway a few miles an hour over the speed limit, coming around a corner and seeing the flashing light of a police car with someone else pulled over on the side of the road. You take your foot off the gas and breathe a sigh of relief knowing that it might just as easily have been you.

Normally this space is used to comment on Utah issues. But the recent uprisings in Egypt and the Middle East have the potential to reshape the political map much like the collapse of communism in the 1990s. Because of past experience, I believe I can offer some unique insight into the current unrest that began in Tunisia, spread to Egypt and is now echoing in Libya, Yemen, Iran and Bahrain.

In 1990 I was working for a company that had a contract with the USSR Education Ministry. We were hired to teach local government leaders about the free market system. Over the next six years I made dozens of visits and spent many months in Russia, Ukraine, Romania and Moldova. I had a front row seat as Eastern Europe switched from communism to a free market and democracy.

When the Berlin wall came down in November 1989, no one imagined that the iron curtain would also shortly be removed from most of the rest of the communist nations. For the most part, the impetus for change was economic, not political. As an economic structure, communism ceased to work. People could accept political oppression as long as they had jobs, money, and a few luxuries. Jobs and money allowed people to feel like they had some control over their own lives. As the jobs and money disappeared, people at first felt powerless and hopeless. Then they got angry.

The unrest spread across the Eastern Bloc. In December 1989, Poland switched from communism to a free market economy and in January 1990, the Communist Party in Poland dissolved. At the same time, the communist grip was coming undone in countries like Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia and more. The collapse of the Soviet Union came in 1991.

Perhaps most surprising was the speed of the change and its general lack of violence. No wars were required to overthrow the political regimes. It happened by the will of the populace for change.

The situation currently unfolding in the Middle East has similar elements. Huge numbers of people are unhappy because they are tired of a constant struggle to obtain and hold onto basic necessities of civilized life. Their resentment is fueled by seeing others who live in comparative luxury because of their birthright or their political connections. When the oppressed masses finally act out it is not because they want freedom and democratic rule. They want better food, better health care, decent plumbing and the hope of better lives for their children.

As we saw in Egypt, whether or not an oppressive government can remain in power when the people want it out depends largely on the military. If the military is willing to fire on its own citizenry then the government can maintain control. In Moscow in 1991 tanks were ordered into the city center by Communist leaders who hoped to retain power. Moscow leader Boris Yeltsin climbed on one of the tanks and gave an impassioned speech to the throngs of protestors. When the soldiers and tanks refused to fire on their own people, the Communists were finished. In contrast, during the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 in China, tanks fired on civilian protestors and demonstrators were rounded up and arrested.

No one can predict how the situation in the Middle East will play out in coming weeks, months and years. We would like to think that despotic tyrants will be replaced by benevolent leaders committed to democratic principles. But it doesn’t usually work out that way. Even many democratically elected leaders are more concerned about their personal welfare and legacy than they are about improving the lives of the people they represent.

Like the ending of the Cold War, these current events are unlikely to have a direct major impact on the U.S. economy.  Probably the biggest immediate threat to the U.S. could be a continued rise in oil prices as oil traders worry about a potential disruption in supplies from the Middle East.

For people in the Middle East who are directly caught in the turmoil the current events could have a dramatic impact on their lives for years and perhaps generations to come. For those of us living in the United States the situation is not likely to make much difference in our day-to-day lives other than taking up time on newscasts.

If two recent incidents are any indication, people in American Fork might want to be careful about upsetting their neighbors.

In one case, a man was unhappy because his neighbor’s dog pooped on his lawn. While driving down the road, he spotted the dog on the other side of the road. Taking advantage of the opportunity, he swerved his car into the opposite lane and ran over the offensive pooch. Then for good measure, he put the car in reverses and backed over the animal again. The dog died.

In the second incident, a man killed several of his neighbor’s chickens. No reason for the killings was given, but a witness said he saw the man grab one of the birds by the neck and swing it around until it died. I currently have a rooster that can be pretty noisy at times. It’s highly possible that one or more of my neighbors has wanted to wring its neck. But I hope that instead they would just tell me and allow me to resolve the problem.

I grew up in an area where a neighbor’s horses or cows would sometimes escape and end up in our yard. Not only would they poop on the grass, sometimes they would trample or eat the plants in our garden. We usually just picked up the phone, called the neighbor and asked him to come get his cow. Or sometimes we would catch the escaped horses and walk them back down the road. The thought of killing the transgressing animals never seemed like a viable option.

It was a pain to clean up the cow pies and to repair the damage to the garden, but it was just something we accepted as the cost of maintaining good relations with our neighbors. I’m sure some of the things we did caused an inconvenience for them as well—like the time my brother accidentally burned the neighbor’s bean field.

I hate to think about a world where people believe that minor offenses by a neighbor warrant a death sentence. I no longer have any children living at home, but my neighbors do, and sometimes those kids keep me awake at night with loud music or just by running around the streets after dark. I don’t like it, but I don’t plan to kill them. That seems fair, because they allowed all of my children to survive to adulthood and I’m sure there were times when it was my children that were creating the ruckus.

The University of Utah is under fire for suspending two police officers who released internal protocols for handling people seen openly carrying guns on campus. The problem is that the two didn’t do anything wrong and it was university officials who should be punished for attempting to thwart the law.

Utah law generally allows the open carry of firearms. In other words if someone wants to strap an unloaded pistol on each hip and walk around downtown Salt Lake City like Wyatt Earp, it is perfectly legal. A person openly carrying a weapon does not need to possess a concealed weapons permit.

Apparently there are officials at the university (including President Michael Young) who do not like the law as established by the Utah Legislature. So they set a policy that university police were to arrest anyone openly carrying a weapon on campus if the individual did not have a concealed weapons permit. If the person possessed a permit, police were told to instruct him or her to conceal the weapon.

As state employees, U of U officials do not have the right to supersede or circumvent state laws with which they might not agree. When it comes to gun rights, however, they seem to have a difficult time grasping this concept. They claim that they have the right to regulate weapons on campus, just as they do anything else that could threaten campus security.

And they are so certain about the strength and ultimate correctness of their position that they elected to keep it secret and to punish the policemen who made it public.

If this battle sounds familiar it could be because in years past the university tried to prohibit concealed weapons permit holders from legally carrying guns on campus. That ultimately led to the state legislature passing a law that prohibits universities from establishing policies that “in any way inhibits or restricts the possession or use of firearms.”

That language seems straightforward and unambiguous–enough that even a university official should be able to understand it. And apparently they did, which is why they tried to conceal their latest effort at an end run around the legislature.

Once the matter became public, school officials reversed their secret, illegal retribution. The two officers were reinstated and no disciplinary action is being pursued, according to the university. Instead of punishment, the two officers should receive commendations for their efforts at protecting basic freedoms.

If the legal carrying of weapons on campus truly represents a safety threat, university officials who object to the state law should be able to make a compelling case to the legislature. All they need to do is cite the rapes, robberies, assaults, etc., committed on campus by law-abiding gun owners. The problem is they can’t make that case because such incidents don’t exist.

Guns on campus are only a problem in the small mindedness of select university officials who can’t accept the fact that there are limits to their authoritarian ideals.

Given the repeated attempts to circumvent the law on this matter, it’s time that the legislature sends an even stronger message to U of U officials. Perhaps they could pass a secret law that requires university administrators to become members of the National Rifle Association and to spend several hours volunteering at a community gun range.