I am:

• White
• Male
• Middle Class
• College Educated
• In debt because of this
• Actively seeking a job that is not in a call center or service industry
• Not qualified to receive unemployment
• An otherwise contributing member of society

Truman said it best: “A recession is when your neighbor looses his job, a depression is when you loose your job.” Well, let there be no doubt, I am in a “depression” as we speak.

I want a job, I want to contribute, and I want the society I have been a part of (and paid into I might add) to help me at this moment. No, I am not a welfare queen or a trust fund kid who does not care – no, I am young, I want to work, and I can’t.

This recession is not about bloated government spending, it is not about socialism penetrating our hospitals, it is not about how our rights have been taken away. No, this recession is about good, honest, hard working people struggling to keep their head above water, and I am thankful that this administration is trying to make changes that allow me to do that.

The role of the government should never be to tell me how to live my life, it should be to give me the tools I need to ensure I make this nation a better place. Frankly, I feel a lot of talking heads and politicians have lost sight of this.

This bill, if it were to pass, would eliminate the population requirement for liquor licenses issued to restaurants and open the liquor license process to the free market – allowing any restaurant to receive a license if they are willing to pay the fee.

For those of you who may not know, there is a limited number of restaurant liquor licenses (and bar licenses for that matter) that the liquor commission can give out to restaurants across the state, and this number is tied to the state population.  In fact, only one license can be distributed per 5,200 people if the restaurant wishes to sell liquor (these laws apply to, say, the Olive Garden). The bill goes further, if a restaurant wishes to sell wine, heavy beer, or beer (but not spirits), it too lifts the population requirement of one license per 9,300 people (these laws apply to that local wing joint you may love).

This bill, just by its introduction, shows that a shift is taking place in our state that reflects the reality of alcohol consumption in our state. For years now we have been flirting with the fact that liquor licenses may dry up – and indeed they did in November of last year. This bill recognizes that supply is below demand – and I would wager it has been for the longest time as many business owners have not even tried to get a license, feeling that none were available.

This bill will not encourage more people to drink, but it will encourage the growth of more businesses, both large and small – businesses that will add much need revenue to our coffers and drive entrepreneurial spirit.  Remember, we are not talking about bars here, we are talking about small family owned restaurants and large chains that still have to ensure that 70% of their revenue comes from food sales and who want to set up shop in Utah, but won’t because they can’t get a license.

This is a good bill, though I am uncertain of its passage.  This is one of those bills where you need to tell your legislators how you feel about this issue – and I just hope you have the same feelings I do towards the bill.

Click here to contact Representative Froerer.

As the state is staring down a $1 Billion deficit, some difficult decisions have to be made regarding how we are going to balance our budget while still providing for the needs of the citizens of the state of Utah.

To be sure, cuts are going to have to be made to make sure that the state is fiscally sound, however it is politically unwise for both Republicans and Democrats alike to chop off such a large amount of money from the states spending – we will have to find new sources of revenue to ensure that the state is able to pay its bills.

This is where state liquor laws come in.

State liquor licenses have officially, if you will pardon the pun, dried up in the state. You see, the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control is only allowed to offer a liquor license per 7,850 people according to state law. Now, when the state was smaller and more Mormon, this was a somewhat reasonable number – balancing the beliefs of the predominate religion with those who choose to drink. Today, however, the states population has changed, and the demand for drinks has officially topped out; supply has outstripped demand.

The state of Utah currently has an estimated 2,736,424 people, equating to 348 liquor licenses. If state law were changed, even slightly to, say, one license per 7,250 people, 377 total (or 29) new licenses would become available over night – or to put it another way, one new liquor license per county. Now, it was touted that the famous Port O’ Call brought in $1.2 million yearly in tax dollars to the state, county, and city. But not every bar is a Port O’ Call – let us suppose that each bar will bring in, on average $50,000 in liquor taxes including licensing fees. Suddenly we have an additional $1,450,000 in our coffers.

Now it is fair to point out that this would only cover some 2 percent of our state deficit, but it is a start. Furthermore, it is one of the better types of taxes to impose – a usage tax – if you don’t drink, you don’t pay the tax, and if you do…well thanks for the extra buck. Mind you, we have not even talked about “raising taxes,” just releasing more licenses so that more alcohol can be sold in the first place to a public that is clearly demanding more access. A penny per gallon increase in beer and hard liquor could further increase funds to the state.

I would also be remiss if I did not point out that this policy would, logically, increase the number of alcohol related legal and medical related incidents in our state. I would argue, however, that there is not a one-to-one relationship to alcohol access and abuse. People prone to alcoholism are probably not going to start drinking simply because a new bar opened up down the street – these people will, most likely, already be abusing alcohol regardless of state rules and mandates. Furthermore the person just starting to drink is not likely to over-indulge at a bar – either they are underage and at a friends house, or they are legal and more aware of the consequences of their actions.

Finally, I would like mention the fact that the free market capitalism is attacked under the current system. The state monopoly on licenses not only prevent free enterprise, but they also stifle economic growth in a very real way…Of course I am sure the Republicans on the hill will consider that if and when they discuss this topic.

Take, for example, S.B. 187 as proposed by Senator John Valentine (R – Orem, District 14). This is the infamous “Zion Curtain” bill that Senate President Waddoups thinks is so vital to the protection of the children at those filthy little dives known as Chili’s and Applebees.

A zion curtain is a proposed ten foot high partition between alcohol storage behind a bar and the eating area of a restraunt. Patrions are not allowed to see the booze through the partition and, somehow, all this will prevent the children from getting a vodka tonic to wash down their chicken nuggets.

Yeah, I know…

What the bill also changes is the rules regarding the term intoxication – as it stands, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that it is not illegal to be intoxicated so long as you are not acting in a way that threatens yourself or others. Senator Valentine, in proposing this, is spitting in the eye of the Supreme Court by saying that it is illegal to be intoxicated if you “exhibit plain and easily observed outward mainifestations of behavior or physical signs produced by the over consumption of an alcoholic beverage.”

How vauge is that? If you pretend to be drunk in a play…BAM! Brekaing the law. If you have a mental disability…BAM! Breaking the law. If you are a kid on the playground immitating dad…BAM! Breaking the law. Now these are extreeme cases, of course, but the point stands – we can’t have this kind of vaugeness in the law.

We will see how this goes – there is less than two weeks left in the session, and so far this bill has only made it out of the Senate Business and Labor Committee – it has a long way to go and has pesky little things like budgetary bills that take higher priority.

The problem is that this is not the first time our food stores and consumer goods have been compromised on a massive scale. It seems that once every three or four months we hear about a new massive recall, either on spinach, pet food, hamburger and caned meet, even our children’s toys.

Am I the only one that sees how massive of a terrorist threat this is? Items are accidentally entering our homes laced with very deadly products and we are left scrambling to check lot numbers. Imagine how fatal and wide spread an epidemic would be if a person specifically set out to put a biological or chemical agent into the products that we use on a day to day basis.

Despite what some ideologues tell you, we need a government that has the resources to protect us from threats such as this. We can not trust that business will self regulate because, in this case it has proven that it has failed – numerous times mind you. As it stands businesses could not prevent an accidental release of toxic products into our homes, and I doubt they would be able to stop a group of people intent on harming us.

We need to honestly reevaluate our spending habits. We deserve a government who is more concerned about protecting the citizens, not protecting profits. We deserve a government who actually prevents actual harm rather than constructing false threats. We deserve a government who actually allows us to live calm and happy life’s, not one that forces us to throw out all our food and acts as if it is not somehow their fault.

As it stands the social contract we have signed as citizens of the United Sates has been violated by the executive branch and it is about time things changed.

I suppose we could always take them to court…

Now let me make things clear. I respect the need for our economy to grow and I understand that this means that resources have to be used or converted to support new growth, but that being said it is disgusting to see what is happening.

You see I am currently temping at a company that processes inspection reports from all over the nation. My job (amongst other things) is to gussy up or downplay reports depending on what the inspectors said in the field. One particular section deals with growth and development within the area being inspected. The inspiration of this post came from what one inspector wrote in their report:

The area is former farm land that’s been developed in the past 10 years. The newer properties are all in very good or excellent condition, and consist of many of the nationally known retail chain stores.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a major problem for our nation.

Suburban sprawl and unchecked growth in the name of “progress” can be attributed to so many problems our modern society faces: pollution spewing out of large vehicles necessary to transport goods from the mini-mall that was a former wetland area; manicured lawns depleting artificial reservoirs and putting unnatural fertilizers into a depleting watershed; people considering Wal-Mart a town square, bazaar, and job; neighbors who are more likely to talk to each other by chance in a chat room than by actually walking over and speaking to each other; a nation that cares about being unique-just like everyone else; a loss of what it means to be alive.

Perhaps people need to be more aware of the world around them and less about the world within them. Know what your impact is and give a damn, think about what you can do and call up a law-maker…demand change. And if you like the way things are going, well then sit back and watch your nation fall apart.

I am not saying that we should stop all development, all I am saying is that perhaps we should think about the costs being something more than just what comes out of our pocket; frankly it is a tragedy when we don’t think of things this way.

And yes, I see the hypocrisy of typing this in a cube located in a nondescript building somewhere in Anytown, U.S.A.

“When a democratic state turns to absolute monarchy, the activity that was before directed to public and to private affairs is all at once centered on the latter. The immediate consequence is, for some time, great physical prosperity, but this impulse soon slackens and the amount of productive industry is checked. I do not know if a single trading or manufacturing people can be cited, from the Tyrians down to the Florentines and the English, who were not free people also. There is therefor a close bond and necessary relation between these two elements, freedom and productive industry.

This proposition is generally true of all nations, but especially of democratic nations. I have already shown that men who live in ages of equality have a continual need of forming association in order to procure the things they desire; and, on the other hand, I have shown how great political freedom improves and diffuses the art of association. Freedom in these ages is therefore especially favorable to th production of wealth; nor is it difficult to perceive that despotism is especially adverse to the same result.

The nature of despotic power in democratic ages is not to be fierce or cruel, but minute and meddling. Despotism of this kind, through it does not trample on humanity, is directly opposed to the genius of commerce and the pursuits of industry.

Thus the men of democratic times require to be free in order to procure more readily those physical enjoyments for which they are always longing. It sometimes happens, however, that the excessive taste they conceive for these same enjoyments makes them surrender to the first master who appears. The passion for worldly welfare then defeats itself and, without their perceiving it, throws the object of their desires to a greater distance.

There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of a democratic people. When the taste for physical gratification among them has grown more rapidly than their education and their experience of free institutions, the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint at the sight of the new possessions they are about to obtain. In their intense and exclusive anxiety to make a fortune they lose sight of the close connections that exists between the private fortune of each and the prosperity of all. It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their old. The discharge of political duties appears to them to be a troublesome impediment which diverts them from their occupations and business. If they are required to elect representatives, to support the government by personal service, to meet on public business, they think they have no time, they cannot waste their precious hours in useless engagements; such idle amusements are unsuited to serious men who are engaged with the more important interests of life. these people think they are following the principle of self-interest, but the idea they entertain of that principle is very crude one; and the better to look after what they call their own business, they neglect their chief business, which is to remain their own masters.

As the citizens who labor do not care to attend to public affairs, and as the class which might devote its leisure to these duties has ceased to exist, the place of the government is, as it were, unfilled. If at that critical moment some able and ambitious man grasps the supreme power, he will find the road to every kind of usurpation open before open before him. If he attends for some time only to the material prosperity of the country, no more will be demanded of him. Above all, he must ensure public tranquility: men who are possessed by the passion for physical gratification generally find out that the turmoil of freedom disturbs their welfare before they discover how freedom itself serves to promote it. If the slightest rumor of public commotion intrudes into the petty pleasures of private life, they are aroused and alarmed by it. If the slightest rumor of public commotion intrudes into the petty pleasures of private life, they are aroused and alarmed by it. The fear of anarchy perpetually haunts them, and they are always ready to fling away their freedom at the first disturbance.

I readily admit that public tranquility is a great good, but at the same time I cannot forget that all nations have been enslaved by being kept in good order. Certainly it is not to be inferred that nations ought to despise public tranquility, but that state ought not to content them. A nation that asks nothing of its government but the maintenance of order is already a slave at heart, the slave of its own well-being, awaiting only the hand that will bind it.

By such a nation the despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism of an individual. When the bulk of the community are engrossed by private concerns, the smallest parties need not despair of getting the upper hand in public affairs. At such times it is not rare to see on the great state of the world, as we see in our theaters, a multitude represented by a few players, who alone speak in the name of an absent or inattentive crowd: they alone are in action, while all others are stationary; they regulate everything by their own caprice; they change the laws and tyrannize at will over the manners of the country; and then men wonder to see into how small a number of weak and worthless hands a great people may fall.

Hitherto the Americans have fortunately escaped all the perils that I have just pointed out, and in this respect they are really deserving of admiration. Perhaps there is no country in the world where fewer idle men are to be met with than in America, or where all who work are more eager to promote their own welfare. But if the passion of the Americans for physical gratifications is vehement, at least it is not indiscriminate; and reason, though unable to restrain it, still directs its course.

An American attends to his private concerns as if he were alone in the world, and the next minute he gives himself up to the common welfare as if he had forgotten them. At one time he seems animated by the most selfish cupidity; at another, by the most lively patriotism. The human heart cannot be thus divided. The inhabitants of the United States alternately display so strong and so similar a passion for their own welfare and for their freedom that it may be supposed that these passions are united and mingled in some part of their character. And indeed the Americans believe their freedom to be the best instrument and surest safeguard of their welfare; they are attached to the one by the other. They by no means think that they are not called upon to take part in public affairs; they believe, on the contrary, that their chief business is to secure for themselves a government which will allow them to acquire the things they covet and which will not debar them from the peaceful enjoyment of those possessions which they have already acquired.“

Just thought it was kind of interesting to see how accurate I feel this is today.