Rantings and Ravings

By Sun Advocate

Our legislative session is drawing to an end. I want to thank those who e-mailed me asking how to get involved in the process. I hope you followed through.
For me the thought process of those who propose and vote on items doesn’t always track.
The state is poised again to get involved in costly litigation about abortion when we haven’t fully funded programs to take care of the children who are already born.
I am pleased to see that the cost of murdering a child will finally be in parity with the cost of murdering an adult. Our penalties for child abuse, physical, mental and sexual have been woefully in adequate.
Our community should have been vocal in the voucher fight because eventually it will hurt our local education system if tax dollars are reappropriated to fund the program. Do we even have a private school in our area that qualifies for use of the vouchers? Rural areas will not see any benefit from this legislation at all.
How about that soccer stadium? I am a big sports fan and believe that a professional soccer team would add to the flavor of our state wide community, but not at the taxpayer’s expense. Sports is huge business. If you don’t believe it, how do they afford to pay players the multi-million dollar salaries? Some one is reaping in huge profits and I am not sure that we need to pay twice for the privilege of watching athlete play. That goes for all sports in my opinion. We are held hostage and blackmailed by owners who tell us they won’t play in our sandbox if we don’t built it for them.
The proposal for cutting the budget of the state department that oversees air quality doesn’t make a whit of sense either. This year saw record inversions in the Salt Lake area and dire warnings about the global warming crisis would make you think that maybe an increase in funding is warranted. And if you think we are breathing good stuff when the temperatures drop, look again, we are just not as bad as the Wasatch front yet. But if we don’t hear about the problem, then it must not exist.
The final days loom ahead for this session. There is still time to express your views. Some of the items mentioned have been decided already, but many others have not.