Situational Analysis | December 6, 2021

Hello there, Monday morning. Today is St. Nicholas Day and the day that the 13th Amendment was ratified. 

Finally, snow is on the way! â„️

Be in the Know

1. It's Mia Love's birthday and to celebrate*, she is cohosting "The View" today and tomorrow, prompting more than one Twitter user to comment that they hoped her second stint as co-host means she'll become the new permanent replacement for Meghan McCain.  Today, Jordan Fisher will join them to talk about his lead role in the reopening of Dear Evan Hansen. Tuesday, The View talks to Sarah Ransome, author of Silenced No More and survivor of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's grooming and abuse. (*I don't actually know if cohosting The View was related to her birthday. but sounds like a good reason to celebrate!)

2. Senator Bob Dole passed away yesterday morning at age 98. After overcame disabling war wounds, he spent 36 years on Capitol Hill and ran for president 3 times. In 1945, he was hit by a shell fragment that crushed two vertebrae and paralyzed his arms and legs. He never regained the use of his right hand. His later years were devoted to the cause of wounded veterans. 

3. Utah is going to the Rose Bowl for the first time in their program's history after their beat-down of the Oregon Ducks on Saturday. They will face The Ohio State on New Year's Day. Utah State will play Oregon State in the Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl on Dec. 18. Meanwhile, BYU, 10-2 on the season, gets demoted to #13 and heads to the Independence Bowl against unranked UAB. But don't feel too bad - College Football Playoff ranking committee chair Gary Barta says "the committee thinks very highly of the season BYU had." Um, thanks? 

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Utah Headlines

General

• Mitt Romney, Utah officials mourn the death of former presidential candidate Bob Dole (Salt Lake Tribune)
• Doctors find autism rates among Utah children higher than previously thought (KSL)
• He escaped Afghanistan and became an American citizen. Now he fears every day for his wife who is trapped there (Deseret News)
• Susan R. Madsen: Utah women shine in volunteerism. Utah leads the way in the percentage of residents who regularly volunteer. And women do the most. (Salt Lake Tribune)
• Better.com CEO fires 900 employees over Zoom (KSL/CNN)
• Long-lost monument brings up a painful legacy for Utah Japanese internment camp descendants (KUER)

Politics

• Salt Lake County mayor accuses GOP-controlled council of ‘unfair,’ ‘political’ attack over budget, demoralizing her staff (Deseret News)
• Report: Utah disbursed 39% of federal rental assistance by fall deadline (Salt Lake Tribune)
• Leonard Pitts: Our system turns public servants into panhandlers. How embarrassing for those running for office to have to constantly ask for money. (Salt Lake Tribune)
• Mike Lee threatens shutdown, Stewart's FAUCI Act, abortion at Supreme Court (Political as Heck)
• What’s next for ranked-choice voting in Utah (ABC4)
• The Inside Utah Politics Panel on the 2022 Senate race and polling on the nation’s governors (ABC4)
• Duplicate ballots? Here’s how we stop them, election officials say (Standard-Examiner)

COVID Corner

• Friday: 1873 new cases, 19 deaths
• Young Utah mother passes away after fight with COVID-19 (Fox13)
• Scientists call omicron ‘most mutated virus we’d ever seen.’ Why does that matter? (ABC4)
• Strict travel restriction for travelers to U.S. take effect Monday (Fox13)
• Omicron confirmed in Utah; doctor says state still reeling from delta (Daily Herald)
• Variants, boosters turn rich-poor vaccine gap into chasm (AP)

Environment

• Northeastern Utah’s Uinta Basin among the ‘leakiest’ in the nation for methane (Deseret News)
• Is air quality in the West getting better or worse? The data may surprise you. The average number of total unhealthy days across Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming in 2020 was less than it was in 2010. (Deseret News)
• Could a regional Western transmission system help lower your electricity rates? (Deseret News)

Education

• ‘She feels like everyone hates her’: cyberbullying getting worse in local school district, parent speaks out (ABC4)

National Headlines

General

• Taylor Swift sent Don McLean flowers after breaking a record he held for nearly 50 years (NPR)
• AP's top photos from 2021 (AP)
• Myanmar's Suu Kyi jailed for four years, drawing global outrage (Reuters)
• Omicron casts pall over Texas oil-and-gas meeting. World Petroleum Congress was set to celebrate higher prices and growing demand, but a new Covid-19 variant is changing the mood (Wall Street Journal)
• High Inflation, Falling Unemployment Prompted Powell’s Fed Pivot (Wall Street Journal)
• A Black couple says an appraiser lowballed them. So, they ‘whitewashed’ their home and say the value shot up. (Washington Post)
• Chris Cuomo, newly fired from CNN, faces an allegation of sexual misconduct (NPR)
• Scientists say they might have discovered the cause of Alzheimer's (The Hill)

Politics

• Pressure grows to remove Boebert from committees (The Hill)
• Islamophobia and anti-Semitism controversies dominate Congress. Diplomacy, not so much. (Politico)
• Lawmakers remember Bob Dole: 'Bona fide American hero' (The Hill)
• This week: Congress poised to go into December overtime (The Hill)
• Dems plot escape from Biden’s poll woes (Politico)
• Trump came in contact with 500 people between first positive test and hospitalization: report (The Hill)

News Releases

Utah Foundation: Growth in Utah

The Utah Foundation released the last two parts of four Significant Statistics on Utah’s growth.

Part III examined population growth as it is related to transportation infrastructure, water infrastructure, air pollution, education and housing. The details are here.

Part IV looked back to the Utah Foundation’s Priorities Project survey that asked whether Utah should take actions to limit population growth in urban areas. About 41% of Utahns agreed while 29% disagreed. Read more here.

Friends of the Earth: Biden’s lump of coal for Christmas

Over the long holiday weekend out of the spotlight and without much fanfare, President Biden’s Interior Department released a much-anticipated report on the federal oil and gas leasing program. The report was in response to a Presidential Executive Order on ‘Tackling the Climate Crisis as Home and Broad’ that was issued at the end of January. Many close observers anticipated the report to quickly follow the order, set a new, brighter path for the broken federal oil and gas leasing program, and adhere to Biden’s campaign promise to ban all new oil and gas leasing. The reality is much different. (Read More)

Numbers of the Day

Opinion: Sen. Lee relents to avoid a government shutdown

By LaVarr Webb

U.S. Senate avoids shutting down the government. Not much illustrates congressional dysfunction like the inability to pass budgets. Overseeing federal spending and passing funding bills are among Congress’ most fundamental duties. The various federal agencies require funding to perform their missions.

Unfortunately, Congress routinely fails at this most basic of its obligations, and thus faces periodic crises of its own making as funding nearly runs out and the finger-pointing starts.

With the Senate approving another short-term continuing resolution late Thursday night, the Congress once again averted a shutdown and now continues to operate on funding approved back during the Trump administration.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee was part of the drama. He and other conservatives wanted to link the funding bill to defunding Pres. Biden’s vaccine mandate and they threatened to let the government shut down. But they agreed, instead, to a vote on the defunding amendment (which lost), and then a vote on the short-term funding bill, which passed. 

That was a far better outcome than shutting down the government and causing an unnecessary crisis. But this is no way to run a country. It’s almost criminal that Congress can’t pass funding bills in regular order. It’s another reason we ought to do much less at the federal level and much more at the state level.

Upcoming

• 2022 Congressional Policy Forecast Webinar - Hatch Center – Dec 8, 10:30 am - 11:30 am Register here
• Utah Economic Outlook & Public Policy Summit 2022 - SLC Chamber – Jan 13, 2022, 8:30 am - 1:30 pm. Register here
• Utah legislative session begins – Jan 18, 2022, 10:00 am
• Utah legislative session ends – Mar 4, 2022, midnight

On This Day In History

From History.com

• 343 - The traditional date for the death of Saint Nicholas
• 1865 - The 13th Amendment is ratified. 
• 1877 - Founded by Stilson Hutchins, The Washington Post published its first issue.
• 1884 - The Washington Monument is completed
• 1889 - Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America (1861-65), dies at 81
• 1917 - The Great Halifax explosion, the most devastating manmade explosion in the pre-atomic age occurs at 9:05 am, killing more than 1800, wounding 9000.
• 1923 - First US Presidential address broadcast on radio by President Calvin Coolidge
• 1927 - Patsy Mink is born. She became the first Japanese-American Congresswoman (D-HI), she wrote the Women’s Educational Equity Act and played a key role in the enactment of Title IX, which was renamed posthumously as the “Patsy Takemoto Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act”
• 1941 - FDR, convinced on the basis of intelligence reports that the Japanese fleet is headed for Thailand, not the United States—telegrams Emperor Hirohito with the request that the emperor intervene “to prevent further death and destruction in the world.”
• 1964 - "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" first airs on TV
• 2017 - Time Magazine names their Person of the Year "The Silence Breakers", people who came forward to report sexual misconduct #MeToo
• 2017 - US President Donald Trump officially recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital, announcing plans to move US embassy there

Wise Words

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

-13th Amendment to the US Constitution

Lighter Side

"We learned the first Omicron case on U.S. soil was found in California, which led the state’s secretary of health and human services to claim Californians were proud to have identified the first Omicron case. Good for you, Golden State. You put that kind of positive spin on all your disasters: ‘Greetings from California, home of extra-crispy trees.’” 

— STEPHEN COLBERT

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