Some immigration bills in the Utah legislature this year have been incredibly divisive. Others, however, are earning broad, bipartisan support. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is backing a plan to create a migrant worker program that would be a direct collaboration with Mexico. It just passed the house of Representatives. We asked the AG how this is different from all the other immigration bills out there.
Flavored e-cigarettes and other nicotine products aimed at ex-smokers are the target of State Representative Paul Ray, who’s trying to ban them to protect children from getting their hands on them. But two local ex-smokers say the products have changed their lives – and the lives of their children — for the better.
Utah Senator Orrin Hatch helped Utah State University’s student newspaper get a lot of attention this week. The senator was recently quoted in the Utah Statesman calling the federal health reform law a “dumb-ass program” and “an awful piece of crap” when speaking to students. Every Friday, we speak with Thomas Burr, Washington Correspondent for the Salt Lake Tribune and author of Political Cornflakes, a daily, online round-up of Utah politics.
Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher has been found guilty of disrupting a federal oil and gas lease auction in December, 2008. DeChristopher bid on $1.8 million in parcels but didn’t intend to pay for them as a way of protesting the auction.
State leaders celebrated last year when Forbes ranked Utah number one in the country for business. But they won’t be celebrating a new ranking from that magazine.
An on-call bus driver for Salt Lake City School District has lost his job after driving fifth-grade students to the federal courthouse, where Tim DeChristopher is on trial. Ryan Pleune says he wanted the students to see democracy in action yesterday by observing the protesters outside.
A proposal to increase the tax incentives and rebates given to film and TV producers that shoot in Utah won broad support in the House of Representatives. But a new study by a local conservative think tank says when the state gives out such incentives, it’s pretty much throwing taxpayer money down the drain.
While Utah lawmakers aren’t eager to raise most taxes, a Senate committee approved a bill this morning to increase the gas tax by five cents, making it nearly 30 cents per gallon. Republican Senator Kevin Van Tassell said the state doesn’t have the funds it needs to adequately maintain its highways.
The discussion on cap and trade began long before Congress considered measures to reduce greenhouse gases. In fact, Fred Krupp, President of Environmental Defense Fund, helped get an emissions trading mechanism put into the Clean Air Act of 1990. Tomorrow night, Krupp will deliver the keynote lecture of the 2011 Nature of Things Lecture Series, presented by the Utah Museum of Natural History.
It’s been more than two years since his act of civil disobedience, but environmental activist Tim DeChristopher’s federal trial finally begins today. DeChristopher has become known as “Bidder 70” for taking part in a December 2008 auction in order to prevent land parcels near national parks from being auctioned off to oil and gas companies.
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