Utah

Utah, a beautiful state, crazy politics, and fringe wacko’s. I have lived in Utah my entire life. I love the State. I love the beautiful mountains of northern Utah and the beautiful red rock scenery of southern Utah. I love the west desert, the wonderful ski resorts, great golf courses, Lake Powell, Arches Park, Zions and Bryce. By and large, the people of Utah are very nice people and helpful to those in need. The State is more diverse than it is given credit for. I am at the Jewish law firm in Salt Lake. We have Jewish lawyers, Mormon lawyers, Presbyterian lawyers, Greek lawyers, anti-religious lawyers and more. We have staff members who are straight, gay, married, single, old and young. It’s a very diverse place to work.

In Utah we have the polygamists. We have an active gay community. We have right wing nuts. We had the Elizabeth smart kidnapping. Ted Bundy was in my class at law school. We have the biggest Catholic facility west of the Mississippi. We had the Olympics. We are the capital of multi-level marketing that some would call ponzie schemes. The last five or six mayors of Salt Lake City have included a Catholic, a non Mormon woman, anti Mormon and others of diverse background. There are 12 Democrats in Utah. When the Lovely Sharon and I are not in Utah there are only 10 Democrats.

Despite the wonderful things about Utah, many of our local and state politicians have obviously come from galaxies far, far away. We have a legislator who wants to save State money by eliminating the 12th grade in public schools. Can you imagine the affect that would have in 11th grade graduates getting into colleges? I imagine it might very well have an adverse affect on new business moving in who are concerned about education for the families of the employees.

We have a legislator who wants to save money by eliminating school busses for high school students. Maybe if we eliminate high school all together, not just the 12th grade, we would have no bussing or school expenses at all for this age group.

In Utah we had a legislative bru ha ha (I love that phrase a “Bru Ha Ha”), a few years back over whether we ought to be able to marry our cousins. If you did this for a few generations, you would undoubtedly hear some of the following at weddings and family reunions:

" Nice tooth” or “ I would like you to meet my brother-in-law who is also my uncle”

In today’s Salt Lake paper there was an article about a legislator who has introduced a bill to allow Utahns to own monkeys. I kid you not. It makes you wonder which citizen is pushing his local state senator to sponsor a bill to allow us to have a monkey in the house. The kids are home (if we abolish high school and busing to high school), we are married to our cousin and now we will have monkey’s scampering around the house. Undoubted next year there will be proposed legislation to allow one or more of the following: (i) monkeys marrying their cousins, (ii) polygamist rights for monkeys; or (iii) people marrying monkeys even if the monkey is the person’s cousin. Only in Utah