The annual session of the state Legislature is well underway now. You can feel the stupidity in the air. It’s too early in the game to start seeing the real horse-trading and corruption going on. They save that for the last minutes when nobody is paying attention and pretty much anything can slip through. But they are off to a good start when it comes to making sure that state policy aligns with the values and desires of Utah residents. Or not so much.
The governor has come right out and said the official policy of his administration is “build, baby, build.” He wants to focus on starter homes, where the market is at its tightest, but is not adverse building more of anything. The Legislature, which is dominated by development and real estate interests, is way ahead of him on that.
The trick, of course, is to try to use less water while increasing the population by about half. The Great Salt Lake is withering despite some wet years. The way to avoid the dry lake bed turning into a choking dust bowl is to get more water flowing into it. And we are going to do that by adding a million people. Maybe we could build houses all over the dry lake bed.
In household use, water in pretty much equals water out. When the shower water goes down the drain, nothing is really lost. Where we lose it is irrigating thousands of acres of new lawn.
The state wants to track water usage carefully, everywhere except for golf courses. They have not tracked golf course water use. There’s a bill this year that would require tracking and reporting of golf course water use on public golf courses. Private golf courses are exempt, because, you know. Rich people didn’t join exclusive country clubs to do drought. There’s no possible explanation why the water use on a private golf course isn’t relevant data. But they will be exempt. Because they are special. And generous with campaign contributions.
Guns are always a popular topic at the legislature. This year it appears that it will become legal for 18 year olds to open carry firearms anywhere. This change in law is necessary because — I can’t even make something up.
And they want to have gun safety taught in the schools as part of K-12 education. So your first grader’s teacher will be giving a lesson that goes something like: “A is for apple, B is for ball, and C is for cartridge in the chamber, …” and so on. Then they will all sit on the story-time rug and take turns turning the safety on and off on a Glock.
There is a proposal to rename the Mormon cricket. The infamous Mormon cricket was said to have invaded the state in summer of 1848, devouring the crops the pioneers would rely on for the coming winter. After Utahns prayed about it, it’s said that a swarm of seagulls came and ate the crickets. When the gulls were gorged, they would toss them up and go eat more, and the harvest was saved.
The “Miracle of the Gulls” became part of the canon and is commemorated by a statue on Temple Square. There is very little evidence that it ever actually happened, and the first reports of the event were some 40 years later. But facts aside, the seagull is revered in Utah, and the Mormon cricket reviled.
The name “Mormon” is the issue here. The official name of the church formerly known as Mormon is, of course, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” which is something of a mouthful.
A church leader announced that when people use the short-hand term “Mormon,” instead of the formal name, it is a “major victory for Satan.” And from there, it is only one trip down the rabbit hole to demand that the Mormon cricket be renamed.
The bill’s sponsor was too lazy to recommend an alternative name. Maybe there could be an auction of naming rights to the cricket formerly known as Mormon. And it turns out that it technically isn’t even a cricket. It’s some kind of katydid. But it’s unique to the Great Basin. You won’t find it around the Gulf of America, for example.
Our state Sen. Ronald Winterton, from Roosevelt, whose district includes part of Summit County, has introduced legislation to prohibit “chem-trails.” You know what those are — the streams of chemicals sprayed out of jets for nefarious purposes.
Depending on the thickness of your tinfoil hat, they are either Chinese mind control drugs or climate changing, weather-manipulating chemicals. But they are absolutely not water vapor condensing from the heated air in the jet engine. “On days that you have blue skies, especially away from the cities, it’s very evident what is going on,” Winterton was quoted as saying in several news stories.
Under the bill, it would be a felony to “disperse chemicals for solar radiation management.”
But I suspect he’s all in favor of dispersing chemicals that fill the atmosphere from coal-fired power plants or leaking natural gas wells all over Duchesne County. That’s completely different.
Absurd as the Utah performance is, this past week in Washington makes it look pretty darn good by comparison.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.
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