Situational Analysis | June 29, 2021

Hello to a warm-but-not-scorching Tuesday. It's National Camera Day so get out there and take some great pics.

Be in the Know

1. 5 homes, apartments under construction burn in a massive Ogden fire as more than 80 firefighters respond. All residents are accounted for. A potential suspect is in custody. 

2. Here's a look at 2021 Fourth of July events happening in Utah, and some patriotic fun in southern Utah

3. A federal judge dismissed antitrust lawsuits against Facebook, ruling that the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general (including Utah's) didn’t make valid claims that Facebook engaged in unlawful monopolization. The market responded and Facebook is now a trillion dollar company.

Utah Headlines

General

• Doug Emhoff to visit Bryce Canyon National Park this week (ABC4)
• In-depth: Comparing Utah police pay in context (Fox13)
• Navajo students capture oral histories in new book about life in Monument Valley (KUER)
• Utah’s gay rights/religious liberties solution still stands tall. Can it be duplicated? (Deseret News)
• Faith leaders say religious liberty is not synonymous with discrimination (Deseret News)

Politics

• Donovan Mitchell says he wants to address critical race theory with Utah lawmakers (Deseret News)
• Utah County Attorney’s Office says no plans for phone policy following records appeal (Daily Herald)
• Why Mitt Romney says Donald Trump pushing the ‘big lie’ is like pro wrestling (Deseret News)
• On Message with Marty Carpenter: Fire and water (UTPOL Underground)
• Utah Rep. Burgess Owens fined by FEC for undisclosed contributions (Roll Call)

COVID Corner

• 254 new cases, 2 deaths
• COVID-19 cases surge 14% in Utah (The Spectrum)
• Unprecedented third wave forces South Africa back into lockdown. Surging outbreaks driven by the delta variant have led to the country’s strictest lockdown in over a year (Deseret News)
• Fearing COVID, struggling Malawian women forgo prenatal care (AP)
• Virus outbreak in Fiji batters economy, tests health system (AP)
• More than 10 million Australians go under lockdown in fight against Delta variant (CNN)

Drought/Wildfires

• Gov. Cox calls on Utah businesses to conserve water (Salt Lake Tribune)
• How changing the landscaping of a single lawn can save 100,000 gallons of water a year (KUTV)
• Megadroughts Pt. 1: Ancient societal collapse (RadioWest)

Education

• Weber State easing COVID-19 rules; most classes this fall will be in-person (Standard-Examiner)
• These BYU students created an underground newspaper to report on issues they say are censored on campus (Salt Lake Tribune)

Family

• What my biracial granddaughter taught her white grandmother about race (Next Avenue)

Legal

• Utah seeks to block animal rights activists from justifying factory farm break-in (Fox13)

Local Communities

• New Dowdle artwork of city delights Pleasant Grove residents (Daily Herald)
• 6 things in Logan to look forward to this summer (Deseret News)

National Headlines

General

• ‘Excruciating:’ Florida collapse search stretches to Day 6 (AP)
• As Surfside community members wait for news, they are inundated by hundreds of acts of kindness (Washington Post)
• ‘I did what needed to be done!’: Feds arrest Capitol rioter accused of live-streaming attack on journalist (Washington Post)
• The war on history is a war on democracy. A scholar of totalitarianism argues that new laws restricting the discussion of race in American schools have dire precedents in Europe. (New York Times)
• Pacific Northwest heat wave temperatures reach all-time high (The Hill)

Politics

• Some Proud Boys are moving to local politics as scrutiny of far-right group ramps up (NPR)
• US House Appropriations panel releases trial balloon on raising member pay (Roll Call)
• House GOP bristles as a Jan. 6 investigation lands in its lap (Politico)
• President Biden's op-ed: Americans can be proud of the infrastructure deal (Yahoo News)

Courts

• Supreme Court declines to consider transgender bathroom case, leaving lower-court victories in place for Gavin Grimm, who was denied access to the boys’ bathroom by his Virginia high school (Wall Street Journal)

Economy

• Americans’ hunger for the world’s goods drives global recovery (Wall Street Journal)
• America’s workers are exhausted and burned out — and some employers are taking notice (Washington Post)

Elections

• ‘It definitely feels early’: GOP’s long race to 2024 begins (AP)
• Arizona’s Maricopa County will replace voting equipment, fearful that GOP-backed election review has compromised security (Washington Post)
• Arizona ballot audit shows signs of backfiring on GOP. Independent voters oppose the controversial recounting of ballots by a wide margin. (Politico)

Energy

• China turns on world’s second-biggest hydropower dam (AP)

International

• Tigrayan forces retake their capital as Ethiopia’s military withdraws. (New York Times)
• Ethiopia declares immediate, unilateral cease-fire in Tigray (AP)
• Three Doctors Without Borders employees killed in Ethiopia's Tigray region (Reuters)

Business Headlines

• Global stocks mixed ahead of US jobs report (AP)
• United Airlines is buying 270 new planes in massive bet on future of travel (NPR)
• Dow futures inch up as banks gain ahead of consumer confidence data (Reuters)
• Facebook hits $1 trillion value after judge rejects antitrust complaints (Reuters)
• Commodity traders harvest billions while prices rise for everyone else (Bloomberg)

Policy News

Gov. Spencer Cox and SL Chamber ask businesses to show commitment to water conservation in Utah

Governor Spencer J. Cox, the Salt Lake Chamber, along with government, business and community leaders, announced the launch of the “Water Champion H2Oath,” a pledge for businesses to publicly commit to water conservation and water-wise practices.

“Utah is facing the most severe drought conditions in recent memory,” Gov. Cox said. “That’s why I’m so grateful for the Salt Lake Chamber and business owners who are doing their part to beat this drought by signing the H2Oath Pledge. Limiting turf on business campuses, fixing leaks and cutting back on watering will make a tremendous difference for us all.” Read More

New Unified Economic Opportunity Commission announced

The Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity (Go Utah) announced today the inaugural meeting of the Unified Economic Opportunity Commission (EC).

This unique commission will convene stakeholders to develop solutions to the most critical topics facing our state’s economy. It will also review and create new economic strategies and programs to deal with timely topics. Other purposes of the commission include aligning economic efforts and incentive programs, helping support and align education and industry partnerships to strengthen the state’s workforce, and establishing subcommittees that serve as conveners to facilitate policy development. Read More

Wasatch Front Regional Council announces public comment period and open houses for draft 2022-2027 transportation improvement program

The Wasatch Front Regional Council (WFRC), in conjunction with the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) and the Utah Transit Authority (UTA), has identified hundreds of priority transportation projects to enhance mobility, strengthen the economy, connect communities, increase access to opportunities, and improve health along the Wasatch Front. The public is invited to provide input on the selected projects.  

The public comment period on the Draft 2022-2027 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) is now open and runs through July 31, 2021. Read More

Number of the Day

Commentary: Is federalism to blame for hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 deaths?

By LaVarr Webb

Is American-style federalism hazardous to our health? Is federalism responsible for thousands of COVID-19 deaths? That was the assertion in a recent column at Governing.com, which usually does a pretty good job of covering state and local government issues.
I’ve written a lot about federalism over the years, and I remain a committed advocate for balanced federalism. I reject the column’s blanket indictment of federalism as a direct cause of sickness and deaths in the coronavirus pandemic. The blame is badly misplaced.
The column headline is: “How American-Style Federalism is Hazardous to Our Health.” Provocative, but unfair. If we had a 100% top-down, command-and-control federal government that dictated our every pandemic action, would we be healthier? Perhaps. But at what cost?
The column subhead was just as bad: “The U.S. could have done much better in battling COVID-19, preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths. But its decentralized system of governance failed to rise to the challenge.” The author noted that, “A British medical journal claimed that 40 percent of U.S. deaths were preventable, had the country followed the same course as other major industrialized nations.”
I concede that had the national government strictly mandated testing, masking and social distancing (lockdowns), with the U.S. military deployed on every street across America to enforce the decrees, with no local or state flexibility, then, yes, less sickness and death would have occurred.
But it would have also caused total economic collapse, even more jobs lost, more mental health problems and suicides, and mass insurrection and rioting. Both Pres. Trump and Pres. Biden were wise to provide national coordination, recommendations and resources, but leave policy and execution to state and local governments.
We could solve a lot of other societal ills with a totalitarian federal government. We could force people to stop smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol. They’d be a lot healthier, saving thousands of lives. We could have a national speed limit of 25 mph with cars built like tanks. That would eliminate all traffic fatalities. We could have a massive, federally-enforced crackdown on crime. That would reduce murders and shoplifting.
But this is America. We believe in maximum freedom and flexibility, even at the risk of society being a bit messier. Americans aren’t sheep. Wyoming is not Massachusetts. Rural Utah is not Manhattan. The United States isn’t Switzerland or the Netherlands, or even Australia or Canada.
And I believe that state and local governments, in their realms of responsibility, perform better and enjoy much more trust than the federal government.
Certainly, all governments — national, state and local — could have done better in the pandemic. It’s easy to criticize in hindsight. And, yes, balanced federalism is a bit more chaotic than a top-down, command-and-control federal government. But, remember, the pandemic was unprecedented, at least in modern history. Government leaders were making it up as they went along. Plenty of early federal guidance was dead wrong.
The author does acknowledge that some “experimentation” at state and local levels produced good results. Seattle, for example, did very well after a rough start. But states and cities that were the most restrictive with onerous mandates didn’t necessarily perform better than states and cities that were more open. The states with the highest death rates per 100,000 people were New York (273), Massachusetts (258) and Rhode Island (255). The states with the lowest death rates were Hawaii (35), Vermont (41), and Alaska (50). Utah had the 6th lowest death rate, 71 people per 100,000 population.
The column blames Trump for “national government inaction” and for choosing to “deflect action to the states.” But I’m confident a top-down, command-and-control approach would have been much worse for America.

Upcoming

• Preparing for a New Future: Legislative updates and trends with Rep. Brian King and Senator Todd Weiler – July 8 @ 10 am Register here
• Securing the American Dream: A conversation with Tim Scott presented by the Hatch Foundation – Aug 11 @ noon. Register here
• Utah Foundation Annual Luncheon with Shaylyn Romney Garrett – Sept 23 @ 12 pm. Register here

On This Day In History

From History.com

• 1858 - Julia Lathrop is born. She became a social reformer in the area of education, social policy, and children’s welfare and the first woman ever to head a United States federal bureau when she served as director of the United States Children’s Bureau (1912-1922).
• 1897 - Kazue Togasaki is born. She became a physician who pioneered a place in medicine for women of Japanese ancestry and was one of the few physicians allowed to practice medicine in the Japanese Internment Camps during World War II
• 1956 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 creating the United States Interstate Highway System.
• 1964 - Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed after 83-day filibuster in the US Senate
• 1972 - US Supreme Court strikes down death penalty as unconstitutional in a 5-4 vote.
• 1986 - Richard Branson completes the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean aboard his powerboat, the Virgin Atlantic Challenger II. It took three days, eight hours and 31 minutes.
• 1995 - US space shuttle docks with Russian space station
• 2003 - Katharine Hepburn dies at age 96
• 2007 - The first iPhone is released in the US
• 2017 - Ana Brnabic becomes the first female prime minister of Serbia.

Wise Words

"Work for infant welfare is coming to be regarded as more than a philanthropy or an expression of good will. It is a profoundly important public concern which tests the public spirit and the democracy of a community."

-Julia Lathrop

Lighter Side

"Why do fathers take an extra pair of socks when they go golfing?"

"In case they get a hole in one!"

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