Commission to table the tax increase

I made it to the Public Meeting last night. I was able to arrange for the Scouting activity that night to be the meeting. I spoke, and so did about fifteen others. Most were Seniors and most opposed the tax increase because it would place a burden on them.

The Commission tabled the vote on the budget. They said they wanted to think about it.

That may be half of a victory. The fact still remains that they seemed to be very much in favor of the tax, and they may just vote it in in the next commission meeting when they don't have an audience.

Thanks to the citizens who came! This would have breezed by without the dissent.

More about the meeting can be found in the Deseret News and Standard Examiner.

Update: One more article in the Salt Lake Tribune with more comments of the public.

The Special interests Modality

A call to a more vigilant citizenry.

"Special interest, as the history of tariffs reminds us, can think of the most ingenious reasons why they should be the objects of special solicitude. Their spokesmen present a plan in their favor; and it seems at first so absurd that disinterested writers do not trouble to expose it. But the special interests keep on insisting on the scheme. Its enactment would make so much difference to their own immediate welfare that they can afford to hire trained economists and "public relations experts" to propagate it in their behalf. The public hears the argument so often repeated, and accompanied by such a wealth of imposing statistics, charts, curves, and pie-slices, that it is soon taken in. When at last disinterested writers recognize that the danger of the scheme's enactment is real, they are usually too late. They cannot in a few weeks acquaint themselves with the subject as thoroughly as the hired brains who have been devoting their full time to it for years; they are accused of being uninformed, and they have the air of men who presume to dispute axioms."

--Henry Hazlitt, 1946

Utah Policy: Not all things to all "political junkies"

Anyone that is considered a "political junkie", and that lives in Davis County, should realize that not all local issues figure into the calculus of those that publish Utah Policy.com. Just like any subjective media, they get their pet issues, and run with them.

For example, I almost never get a mention on Utah Policy--Blog Watch. I'm not hurt by it, but I have paid attention to the fact that Davis County has been all over the two largest papers in the State, with two School District controversies going on simultaneously, and yet we haven't heard a peep from Utah Policy.

I should give some background, as much as I know. The Exoro group actually runs Utah Policy.com. They are a group of political consultants whose main objective is to market themselves as "communicators". In fact, they tout their ability to "...help anyone become an effective communicator."

So, if you're a blogger, and want a mention on Utah Policy, then your objective will be to pickup one of those pet issues that Utah Policy is currently running, and blog it to death.

Blog the issue until it's dead in the ground and then blog about it some more. Utah Policy will love you!

I should mention that writing about dead issues is something for which bloggers always get high marks.