Just a warning: this isn’t pretty, and it’s late, so let me just rant for a minute.
Well the nightmarish general session has finally come to an end here in Utah. Legislators are now free to call their illegally employed, undocumented worker nannies to watch their children as they head to Miami, Florida and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico to wait for spring to come to Utah. While they’re down there sipping on their full-strength, un-metered Cuba Libres and Pina Coladas, they’ll be able to look back and reflect on all of the damage they have done to the already dwindling freedoms that citizens of Utah try not to think about.
As I sit here sipping on my bedtime tea pondering questions like, If the government is supposed to represent the people, then who voted for a bill that would eliminate government transparency? If legislators continue to change boundary lines in order to split up non-Republican voters and weight districts in their favor, how are the minority party members supposed to have a voice? Did Gary Herbert ever have a backbone, or did he just slither out of his old skin and show his true self to the entire state of Utah.
In summation, after this recent general legislative session, we can look forward to full priced alcoholic beverages every day of the week – which doesn’t really hurt alcoholics as much as the already severely underpaid employees of restaurants and bars who are struggling to attract business in a highly oppressive atmosphere. Thankfully, all of those drunken hillbillies who are staying home to drink their watered-down Budweiser will still be prohibited from pulling out the shotgun and shooting at the neighbor’s cat. Well…they might actually still do that, but at least they won’t be able to use, “Hey, I thought that dern thing was one a them feral cats!” as a legitimate legal defense.
We already know about HB477, the bill that drastically limits the public’s ability to access PUBLIC records. At least Gary Herbert, Utah’s new “education czar” was able to oversee a whopping 2 percent hike in public education funding. We’ll see next year if Utah is able to climb out of the hole as the lowest spending state for public education, per student, in the nation. Utah spends just over $5,000 per student, per year (50th in the nation). At least Bronco Mendenhall is rich, along with every Utah legislator.
I don’t want to be all doom and gloom. At least we still have all of the beautiful, pristine backcountry that makes Utah such a popular vacation destination – well, at least for now. With land parcels being sold as low as $2 an acre in some places, we might just have to wave goodbye to all of that beautiful scenery and say hello to big corporate oil drillers and nuclear power plants. Edward Abbey, the snobby hypocrite that he was, had it right. Unfortunately when people get the idea to follow his ecosaboteurist musings like Tim Dechristopher did, they head straight to court for a guilty verdict. The only thing people like Tim Dechristopher are guilty of is having the balls to stand up for what they believe in, in a place where the institutions that are supposed to protect the people do nothing but hammer them down.
Listen everybody! The government does not care about you or I. Legislators are out for themselves and the few people they can bring with them. I’m sure Gary Herbert would throw anybody under a bus if it meant he would be governor again after next election. But this problem I speak of isn’t only in Utah, it’s all over the nation. What is it going to take for us to win back our country? Bipartisan dissolution? An uprising or social movement of epic proportions that involves educating people of just how effed over we’re getting? Pick up a newspaper or book, or better yet, write your Governor, Senator or Representative and chew them out! Thank you for reading. Good night. I promise my next post will be happy and frilly.
Whitney Afterdark 