I watched Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” to compare it with “The Green Book,” my favorite for best picture at the Academy Awards. To my surprise I concluded “BlacKkKlansman” was truer to the subject.

“BlacKkKlansman” deserved the Academy Award. It dramatized the mindless, insane-like hate and disrespect some white people had for black people — hate that continues today. Most devious are the subtle roadblocks white people continue to erect against the rights of black people.

“BlacKkKlansman” graphically displayed the racism that still exists, using facts from current video news stories we have all seen to support the truth of our racial bigotry. One most repulsive example being video recordings of David Duke, current leader of the white supremacy movement affirming that “all black people are stupid.” And another showing President Donald Trump insisting there are “good people on both sides” (of white supremacy). There is no good nor truth in white supremacy. Its belief is a lie.

More to the point, the film disclosed how Academy Award members managed to block “BlacKkKlansman” from best picture by awarding a very good but less profound film in order to avoid being accused of racism.

I hope you have the time to watch the film and see for yourself the evil of white supremacy here in a country that holds the rights of all people equal in the eyes of God.

John Dombek, Santa Clara

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The Feb. 24 commentary by Utah state Rep. Cheryl Acton misrepresents facts about abortion and childbirth.

Legal abortion causes few, minor complications and has a death rate of less than one in 100,000. The death rate from childbirth exceeds 18 per 100,000, according to the National Institutes of Health. Common causes of maternal death are hemorrhage, infection and pulmonary embolism. About 40 percent die from problems like cardiovascular disease or diabetes.

If my patient, a diabetic mother of three, develops potentially life-threatening hypertension in the 22nd week of her pregnancy, should her management be up to Cheryl Acton, or this patient and her doctor?

Acton mentioned research associating abortion with mental illness. Many studies indicate that the rate of mental illness in post-abortive women is similar to that of all women, and that women denied abortions show higher levels of psychological distress than those who have abortions.

Psychological research regarding unwanted children in protective custody and foster care, if not in garbage cans, demonstrates poor outcomes. Where will unwanted children find the “love” that Acton claims is “always the answer”?

The answer to abortion is comprehensive sex education and easy access to effective birth control, not the criminalization of women, burdened by unintended or complicated pregnancies, and their doctors.

Beverly Hurwitz, Park City

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The majority of state legislators don’t care about the health and safety of people. They vote for things that make them look good in the eyes of those that give big dollars and their church.

Here are a few things they have voted on this year:

• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2019/03/01/house-rejects-plan/" target=_blank>No to seat belts required in school buses</a>.
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2019/02/26/house-kills-bill-ban/" target=_blank>No to ban on cellphone use while driving</a>. Even though 1 in 4 accidents are directly related to this.
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2019/02/11/utahs-senate-gives-final/" target=_blank>Changing Prop 3</a> because it protected too many people.
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2019/02/26/house-kills-bill-ban/" target=_blank>OK to go through red lights after 90 seconds</a>. Like a person is going to wait for 90 seconds.

How many more injuries and deaths will we have to face until we are willing to vote these people from office?

Rod Stone, Salt Lake City

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In the Tribune’s editorial regarding SB54, you claim “the Utah Republican Party’s quixotic war against democracy is over.”

I disagree. Democracy won the battle against SB54, but the Utah Republican party continues its war on democracy. For evidence, all we need to do is look at how the Republican-dominated Legislature had Republican-sponsored bills overturning the will of the people in Propositions 2 and 3. We shall see how they act regarding Proposition 4.

Furthermore, they continue their onslaught against democracy by making citizen-based initiatives even more difficult to achieve with virtually each 45-day legislative session. We the people won one battle against our enemies of democracy — the Utah Republican party. The war is far from over.

David Taylor, Salt Lake City

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Our Utah legislators are telling us that tax reform is necessary to address a large shift in our tax base from goods to services. A substantial change has occurred during the technological revolution of the past 20-30 years, but the current ratio of services to goods is unlikely to increase a substantial amount in the future — a majority of the shift to services has already occurred.

Utah’s legislators and governor say that a new law taxing services is needed to “keep Utah afloat.” However, our current tax structure, in an economy where services play a major role, produced a substantial tax surplus last year. Our legislators’ “keeping afloat” rhetoric implies a further substantial increase in the service/goods ratio is likely to occur. A degree in economics leads me to believe this assumption is a false one.

The taxation of a wide range of services will increase the cost of goods, housing for instance, that incorporate many service costs. Service taxation will also impose onerous tax-reporting burdens on the service providers of Utah.

There is a reason that the only recent attempt by a state (Florida) to tax services failed after only six months of implementation — it was a bad idea! Please urge your state representatives to reconsider their efforts to ram through an ill-considered tax reform bill in only 10 days.

Larry Seeborg, Sandy

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What do Sens. Mike Lee and Bernie Sanders have in common? They both want the U.S. to end its involvement in the civil war in Yemen.

For the last four years, Yemen has been caught in a bloody civil war between the Yemeni government and an Islamic armed group called the Houthis, along with their allies like ISIS and Al Qaeda. More than 60,000 people have died — some 120 civilians each week. Many more are suffering in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis of today, with 14 million people now at risk of starvation.

Saudi Arabia has jumped into the fight, leading a coalition of nations to prop up the current government through military actions, including airstrikes and bombing. There are allegations by the U.N. Human Rights High Commissioner that Saudis are also engaged in committing war crimes against the people of Yemen.

The United States has supported those efforts during both the Obama and Trump administrations but without a Congressional declaration of war.

Since the brutal October murder of Jamal Khashoggi, presumably ordered by Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, U.S. public sentiment towards Saudi Arabia has cooled considerably, although the current administration remains undeterred in its support.

House Joint Resolution 37, introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., passed on Feb. 13 on a largely partisan vote, 248-177. Only one Utah Congressman voted to end U.S. support for the war: Congressman Ben McAdams. If enacted, this resolution would prevent the U.S. from “fighting in or assisting” in the war, beginning 30 days after passage.

A companion version was introduced in the Senate as Senate Joint Resolution 7 by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont. Sen. Mike Lee is a co-sponsor. A December 2018 vote on a similar bill during the last Congress passed 56-41 but the House refused to hold a vote in 2018.

Those in favor of this set of bills argue that U.S. involvement in the war is unconstitutional, as it lacks explicit congressional authorization and supports a nation that does not share U.S. values. It has also resulted in starvation, torture and death for many tens of thousands of Yemeni citizens.

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, said in a press release that “Congress needs to reclaim its Article I war-making authority. The military should not be used to engage in unauthorized wars or conduct operations, for which a clear mission has not been articulated and approved by Congress."

Opponents to these bills believe that continued military involvement in Yemen serves our national interests and in a move that scuttled its ability to be heard in the Senate, Rep. David Kustoff, R-Tennessee, attached an unrelated amendment at the last minute, allowing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, to hold the bill. Without that amendment, the Senate could have held a vote without his approval.

Some in Congress are proposing defunding the Saudi-backed coalition. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, introduced an amendment to the 2019 Defense Appropriations bill that would have cut off funding for the coalition at least until the Pentagon could certify that no war crimes were being committed. The amendment never came to a vote.

During the Vietnam war era, Congress effectively withdrew from the fight by defunding the war efforts. The time has come to do the same in Yemen.

Holly Richardson is a regular contributor to The Salt Lake Tribune.

Ogden • At the end of a long week — when beer often dominated the headlines — more than two dozen women came together Friday to make a one-of-a-kind brew and to celebrate the growing female presence in Utah’s craft brew ranks.

“After the drama in the craft beer industry this week," said Jacquie Wright King, a brewer at Roosters Brewing Co. in Ogden, “this is our happy place."

In addition to being the head brewer at Roosters, King is co-founder of the Utah chapter of the Pink Boots Society, which promotes women in the beer industry.

On Friday — as part of International Women’s Day — members of each chapter gather at a single site, don pink rubber work boots and beanie hats and brew a beer using a recipe they have created.

The Utah chapter has about 24 members. They include brewers, brewery managers and sales staff. They hail from about a dozen breweries, including Roosters, Wasatch, Squatters, Epic, Uinta, Kiitos, Red Rock, Strap Tank and Proper. To belong to the society, a person must get at least 25 percent of her pay from a brewery.

“Women still only account for 2 percent of head brewers nationwide," King said. "We obviously are a very, very small portion of this industry, so events like this help women and girls everywhere realize that it is attainable to work in beer.”

On Friday, the group produced 30 barrels — 930 gallons — of a cold IPA dubbed “On Wednesdays We Wear Pink Boots” — a nod to the 2004 chick flick “Mean Girls.” The beer comes from a special blend of hops, made specifically for the Pink Boots beers across the country.

“It will be a hop bomb,” King said, “but in a good way. It won’t be bitter.”

The beer also will be steeped with a bit of hibiscus, she added, “just long enough to give it a light pink color."

Some of it will be canned, so it can be shipped out of state and to April’s Craft Beer Conference in Denver. The rest will be kegged and available on tap at restaurants and participating breweries, said King, who noted that the beer will be 3.2 percent alcohol — a Utah staple — and take a couple of weeks to ferment.

Proceeds from the beer sales will be used to provide educational scholarships and programs for members of the Pink Boots Society.

“I love that a group of women can come together and do something great,” said Ashlin Trolin, a sales representative at Kiitos Brewing in Salt Lake City.

While the collaborative beers were made across the U.S. and in several countries, the Utah edition served as a welcome respite from the divisiveness that has occurred in recent weeks over SB132.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton, would have raised the alcohol cap on beer sold in grocery and convenience store from the current 3.2 percent by weight to 4.8 percent.

On Wednesday, however, the Senate-passed bill was hijacked by the House Health and Human Services Committee, which gutted the proposal and replaced it with language that would create a task force to study the issue over the next nine months and possibly address it again during the 2020 Legislature. Committee members, led by Rep. Brad Daw, R-Orem, questioned the need for such an alcohol increase and its potential effects on underage drinking, drunken driving and suicide.

Stevenson — a powerful figure on Capitol Hill and the Senate’s budget boss — strongly objected to the changes and said after that vote that he was not willing to negotiate. He believes the bill is focused on commerce and related to changes in the beer industry. As other states have abandoned their 3.2 percent standards, major brewers have opted to discontinue their low-alcohol lines, which is expected to result in declining availability of some beer products, including six-packs.

Lawmakers aren’t the only ones split on the issue. So are Utah brewers.

Small brewers would like to see the alcohol cap boosted to 4.8 percent by weight, which they see as a moderate and responsible way to adjust Utah’s century-old cap on beer in grocery and convenience stores.

Large brewers, on the other hand, say the small bump gives an advantage to the mega-makers who will flood the shelves with out-of-state beer, leaving no room for craft brews.

While men dominate the beer-brewing industry, women have been leading each side of the state’s retail beer debate.

Kate Bradshaw is the director of the Responsible Beer Choice Coalition, formed several months ago by small-business owners, Utah grocery stores, convenience outlets, beer distributors and brewers to push a change to the 3.2 beer law

Nicole Dicou is the executive director of the Utah Brewers Guild. The group opposes the proposed alcohol increase, saying the state’s brewers can step up and fill the void.

No matter what happens at the Legislature, Dicou said Utah’s beer industry continues to grow. With nearly 30 breweries, it provides 4,000 jobs and pours nearly $500 million a year into the economy.

That’s why bringing more women into the industry is important.

Pink Boots Day helps make that happen, said Krin Riedel a manager at Epic Brewing. “It creates a sense of community and encourages us to make the best kick-a-- beer we can.”

Washington • The federal budget deficit is ballooning on President Donald Trump’s watch and few in Washington seem to care.

And even if they did, the political dynamics that enabled bipartisan deficit-cutting deals decades ago has disappeared, replaced by bitter partisanship and chronic dysfunction.

That's the reality that will greet Trump's latest budget , which will promptly be shelved after landing with a thud on Monday. Like previous spending blueprints, Trump's plan for the 2020 budget year will propose cuts to many domestic programs favored by lawmakers in both parties but leave alone politically popular retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

Washington probably with devote months wrestling over erasing the last remnants of a failed 2011 budget deal that would otherwise cut core Pentagon operations by $71 billion and domestic agencies and foreign aid by $55 billion. Top lawmakers are pushing for a reprise of three prior deals to use spending cuts or new revenues and prop up additional spending rather than defray deficits that are again approaching $1 trillion.

It all has deficit hawks in a gloomy mood.

"The president doesn't care. The leadership of the Democratic Party doesn't care," said former Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. "And social media is in stampede mode."

Trump's budget arrives as the latest Treasury Department figures show a 77 percent spike in the deficit over the first four months of the budget year, driving by falling revenues and steady growth in spending.

Trump's 2017 tax cut bears much of the blame, along with sharp increases in spending for both the Pentagon and domestic agencies and the growing federal retirement costs of the baby boom generation. Promises that the tax cut would stir so much economic growth that it would mostly pay for itself have been proved woefully wrong.

Trump's upcoming budget, however, won't address any of the main factors behind the growing, intractable deficits that have driven the U.S. debt above $22 trillion. Its most striking proposed cuts — to domestic agency operations — were rejected when tea party Republicans controlled the House, and they face equally grim prospects now that Democrats are in the majority.

Trump has given no indication he's much interested in the deficit and he's rejected any idea of curbing Medicare or Social Security, the massive federal retirement programs whose imbalances are the chief deficit drivers.

An administration official said Friday that the president's plan promises to balance the budget in 15 years. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss specifics about the budget before the document's official release and spoke on condition of anonymity

Democrats have witnessed the retirement of a generation of lawmakers who came up in the 1980s and 1990s and negotiated deficit-cutting deals in 1990 and 1993. But those agreements came at significant political cost to both President George H.W. Bush, who lost re-election, and President Bill Clinton, whose party lost control of Congress in 1995.

But the moderate wing of the Democratic Party has withered with the electoral wipeout of "Blue Dog" Democrats at the hands of tea party forces over recent election cycles.

"Concern about the deficit is so woefully out of fashion that it's hard to even imagine it coming back into fashion," said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., one of his party's few remaining deficit hawks. "This is as out of fashion as bell bottoms."

While in control of the House, Republicans used to generate nonbinding budget blueprints that promised to balance the federal ledger by relying on a controversial plan to eventually transform Medicare into a voucher-like program. But they never pursued follow-up legislation that would actually do it.

Republicans, who seized Congress more than two decades ago promising and ultimately achieving balanced budgets during the Clinton administration, have instead focused on two major rounds of tax cuts during the Trump era and the administration of President George W. Bush in 2001

Nor are Republicans willing to consider tough deficit-cutting steps such as higher taxes or Pentagon budget cuts. Leading Democratic presidential contenders talk of "Medicare for All" and increasing Social Security benefits instead of curbing them.

"You have to get pretty damn serious about revenue as well as defense spending, and those are two things the Republicans don't want to bring into the conversation," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. "My Democratic friends who talk about expansion of benefits. I've told them to 'get real.'"

Trump has never gone to the mat for his plan to slash domestic spending such as renewable energy programs.

"If Trump can be criticized I think the perception has been that he has not fought for the spending cuts that he's proposed," said former Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. "There's no upside to trying to cut anything. There's no political reward. But if you cut something there's a lot of political downside."

Neither is there any reservoir of the political will and bipartisan trust required to take the political heat for the tough steps it would take to rein in deficits. And it's not like voters are clamoring for action.

"There's been very little dialogue in the last several years about debt and deficit and how to really be able to address it," said Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. "It just never came up" in the 2016 election. "It still doesn't come up."

The deficit registered $714 billion during Trump's first year in office but is projected to hit about $900 billion this year according to the Congressional Budget Office, which says Trump's tax cut will add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years.

"One of the short-term goals should be — I know it's not a lofty goal — stopping things from getting a lot worse. It's something the Republicans obviously were unable to do. That's a low bar, but they couldn't meet a low bar," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

Utah lawmakers are considering a $10 million appropriation to develop a nuclear research lab that local leaders say could put the state at the forefront of a clean energy revolution and generate hundreds of new jobs in rural communities in desperate need of them.

The money would equip an empty warehouse Emery County has acquired near Orangeville in hopes of establishing a thorium-based energy industry.

For several months, the Legislature has been fielding pitches from Brigham Young University chemical engineer Matthew Memmott about the virtues of thorium, which has been proved to yield energy much more safely than solid uranium and without the dangerous waste.

Additionally, valuable medical isotopes, used for diagnosing and treating cancer, can be extracted from the reaction process as needed, according to research Memmott pursues at BYU.

A single 7-gram pellet of thorium packs as much energy as nearly a ton of coal but would release it free of emissions using “molten salt” technology, Memmott has told lawmakers on multiple trips to the Capitol.

A silvery heavy metal sitting two doors up on the periodic table from uranium, thorium can fire reactors that use liquid salts, rather than water, to convey heat.

Big unknowns surround licensing such a reactor and the technology’s commercial viability. A research lab could help establish a regulatory framework and determine just how 50-year-old thorium technology can be done economically in today’s marketplace, according to Memmott.

“We don’t know enough about this coolant to get past current licensing processes. We have to know everything about this salt, how it behaves, how this reactor will operate,” he told a legislative subcommittee last month. “Having a lab will help facilitate both the development of medical isotopes and this technology concurrently, creating jobs as well as new opportunities for making Utah the source for isotopes not currently produced in the United States.”

Memmott’s remarks came in support of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition’s request for $10 million to establish the “Thorium Center of Excellence.”

Other scientists wonder what Utah could accomplish with this investment since four national energy labs are equipped to explore thorium energy and corporate money supports plenty of university research into molten salts.

“Should we be supporting this research? Yes, but I’m not sure this is the way to do it,” said Michael Simpson, who heads the University of Utah’s metallurgical engineering department and consults for companies hoping to develop thorium-based power.

“Utah does not need to spend $10 million on a research center in Orangeville in order to ensure this research occurs in the state. The University of Utah has previously secured funding from Flibe Energy, Kairos Power, and Elysium Industries — three of the most notable companies working on MSRs [molten salt reactors],” he added. “Significant research capabilities already exist.”

Memmott and others told Utah lawmakers that Idaho National Laboratory and other federal labs require molten-salt researchers to wait in line and must retool sites in between studies. A lab exclusively set up for molten salt reactions would streamline the research pipeline.

“If we want to be a leader, we need to be in the forefront,” said Mike McKee, the former Uintah County commissioner who now heads the consortium of energy-centric eastern Utah counties. About a dozen U.S. firms are looking to commercialize thorium energy; four have expressed interest in participating in the Utah project, according to McKee.

“Utah is poised to be at the very front of world opportunities,” he told lawmakers to justify the $10 million request. “That is a lot of money. The upside is so tremendous, it is worthy of some strong consideration.”

The lab itself would employ six to 12 people, according to McKee. His hope is that such a project would position eastern Utah to become a hotbed for a new thorium-energy industry, creating 4,000 to 8,000 jobs to offset anticipated job losses in the coal sector. Emery is home to the state’s most productive coal mines and two major coal-fired power plants expected to retire in the next 15 years.

McKee’s coalition has explored developing a 30-megawatt molten-salt reactor in partnership with Memmott’s firm, Alpha Tech Research Corp., but officials stress that a reactor is not part of the proposed research center. The appropriation would equip a lab that would be housed in a former Rocky Mountain Power warehouse outside Orangeville, according to Emery County Commissioner Lynn Sitterud. He noted, however, that the county is eager to host a power-generating thorium reactor.

“With the state’s help, we hope this can come to fruition. We’ve yet to meet with anyone that didn’t say they would do what they can to help us,” Sitterud told lawmakers during an interim session. “We have water and property that have been offered [not far] from the Hunter Power Plant. … When the power is being generated, they would be able to go just across the road to connect with the grid. Water, power, gas, land — everything they need has been promised right there in that area.”

Memmott’s many legislative presentations helped make believers of key lawmakers, including Rep. Carl Albrecht, R-Richfield, and Sen. David Hinkins, the Orangeville Republican sponsoring the appropriation.

“It would be a great project for rural Utah, particularly in Emery County, so I support it 100 percent,” said Albrecht, a retired utility executive. The Natural Resources appropriations subcommittee pegged Hinkins’ request in the fifth position on its priority list, indicating it has a good chance of approval.

The medical isotopes associated with thorium are currently available from only the Netherlands, and Congress has mandated that a domestic source be developed in the coming years. Memmott, whose research interest focuses on extracting molybdenum-99 and other isotopes, will help decide how to renovate the building and equip the thorium lab, according to Sitterud.

But his firm will not run it or get preferential access.

“We aren’t sure who would manage it. We don’t want Alpha Tech to be in control of it solely, because it will be offered equally to any company or university that wants to use it,” Sitterud said. “We are making sure no one has a priority or a first claim.”

Cheyenne, Wyo. • If you ever wished to gaze at a stomping, snorting, neighing panorama of Western heritage from your living-room window, now could be your chance.

A classic image of the American West — wild horses stampeding across the landscape — not only has endured through the years but has multiplied past the point of range damage. Through May 3, the U.S. government is seeking more private pastures for an overpopulation of wild horses.

Many consider rounding up wild horses to live out their lives on private pastures a reasonable approach to a tricky problem. Wild horses, after all, not only have romantic value, they are protected by federal law.

Just keep in mind a few of the dozens of requirements for getting paid by the government to provide wild horses a home.

"It's not like you can do this in your backyard, or even a 5 acre (2 hectare) plot," said Debbie Collins, outreach specialist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Wild Horse and Burro Program in Norman, Oklahoma.

You need a lot of fenced-in land, enough to sustain anywhere from 200 to 5,000 healthy horses. Exactly how much land depends on pasture quality as determined by the government, but you can safely assume several hundred if not thousands of acres (hectares).

The pastured horses typically are left on their own with little human intervention. Still, they require continuous water and basic shelter from the elements, such as trees or a canyon; supplemental forage; and corrals for loading and unloading from trailers.

Participants in the private-pasture system must live in 14 Western and Midwestern states, from eastern Washington to the Texas Panhandle. Over two-thirds of the 37 existing off-range pastures are in Oklahoma and Kansas.

And: These horses aren't pets. They've had little exposure to people. Many are over 5 years old and therefore not ideal for training and individual adoption or sale, other options available through the BLM.

Still, there's no shortage of interest in the off-range pasture program. People call all the time asking for details, Collins said.

"My only advice would be to go into it with your eyes wide open," said Dwayne Oldham, a former Wyoming state veterinarian who has taken in wild horses on his family's Double D cattle ranch outside Lander, Wyoming, since 2015.

Working with the government can be demanding, but providing for the over 130 horses on the Wind River Wild Horse Sanctuary on the ranch isn't too difficult, Oldham said.

The sanctuary is a little different from most private wild-horse pastures: It's open to the public. Tourists headed to Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks increasingly stop there.

About 50 miles (80 kilometers) to the south, cattle ranchers, wild horse advocates and the BLM have been embroiled in decades of lawsuits over wild horses in an area of mostly unfenced, interspersed public and private lands called the Checkerboard. The booming wild horse population there competes with cattle for forage and water in the high desert, the ranchers claim.

The BLM abides by the 1971 Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, which protects wild horses and burros on BLM land in 10 Western states, attorneys for the government say.

"We want to be part of the solution and not just the adversary," Oldham said.

A group often involved in wild-horse litigation, the American Wild Horse Campaign, says darting mares with contraceptives is the best answer to overpopulation but is underused. Roundups only encourage compensatory breeding and overpopulation, said Grace Kuhn with the group.

However, the group doesn't oppose off-range pastures as an alternative to keeping wild horses in corrals for long periods.

"We do advocate that if the government is going to be removing wild horses from the range, long-term is more cost-effective than short-term holding," Kuhn said.

Over 55,000 more horses and burros live wild in the West than the roughly 27,000 the BLM says can thrive in harmony with the landscape.

Adoptions and sales through the Wild Horse and Burro Program have recovered to over 3,400 a year after hitting a low of about 1,800 in 2014.

But while the number of off-range pastures has boomed from just a couple in the 1990s, the number of horses on them hovers very close to their current carrying capacity of about 36,500.

The number of pastured wild horses is determined mainly through roundups and adoptions. Stallions are gelded and kept at different off-range pastures than mares, preventing reproduction aside from the occasional pregnant mare rounded up from the wild.

How many new off-range pastures are established through the latest bid solicitation, the first of its kind since 2016, will depend on costs and how many existing ones get renewed, Collins said.

“It’s just a happier, healthier environment for a horse to be able to be out in a pasture,” she said.

A man accused of kidnapping 13-year-old Jayme Closs from her rural Wisconsin home in the fall after her parents were killed has purportedly written a letter from jail saying he regretted the crimes and committed them "mostly on impulse."

The letter supposedly from Jake Patterson, who was arrested in January after Closs escaped from his home, was sent to KARE 11 News reporter Lou Raguse in response to questions Raguse had mailed the inmate.

Wisconsin authorities have told the news station they believe the letter, postmarked Feb. 28, is authentic. The Washington Post has not confirmed the authenticity of the letter; Patterson's attorney, Charles Glynn, did not respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon.

Police say Patterson confessed to stalking Jayme in October and to fatally shooting her parents, James and Denise Closs, at their home in Barron, Wisconsin, on Oct. 15. According to a police complaint, he then kidnapped Jayme and kept her captive at his cabin, about 65 miles to the north, for nearly three months — until she escaped on Jan. 10.

The letter seems to express remorse and confusion over the crimes, which set off a massive search for the missing teen and shook the state's residents for months as they went unsolved.

"I knew when I was caught (which I thought would happen a lot sooner) I wouldn't fight anything," the letter says. "I tried to give [police] everything . . . so they didn't have to interview Jayme. They did anyways and hurt her more for no reason."

The letter claims that the writer planned to plead guilty later this month so her relatives wouldn't have to "worry about a trial." In response to various questions about his motives for carrying out such crimes, the letter writer told Raguse it was "not black and white."

"I can't believe I did this," the letter says. ". . . It was really stupid though looking back. . . . At the time I was really pissed. I didn't 'want' to. . . . The reason I did this is complicated."

On the back of the letter, according to an image posted by KARE 11 News, are large bubble letters: "I'm Sorry Jayme! For everything. I know it doesn't mean much."

A full transcript and images of the letter are on the news station's website.

Patterson has been charged with two counts of intentional homicide and one count each of kidnapping and armed burglary. He is being held at the Polk County Jail on $5 million bail.

The kidnapping and killings were publicized across the nation as a desperate search for Jayme unfolded over nearly three months. Only after her rescue would police detail the lengths Patterson had allegedly gone to keep the 13-year-old captive, as The Washington Post reported in January:

"The girl told police that Patterson would have her hide under his twin bed, stacking the area around it with tote bags, laundry bins and weights so that he would be able to hear or see if she moved," The Post report said. "Police said she told them that 'Patterson made it clear that nobody was to know she was there or bad things would happen to her.' Guests had apparently come and gone to his house while she was under the bed, the complaint said.

"And he made her stay under the bed when he left the house, sometimes as long as 12 hours with no food, water or bathroom break, the complaint said," the report said. "He struck her with a hard household object one time when she upset him, threatening that the punishment would be worse if it happened again.

"On Jan. 10, Patterson told her he was going to leave the house for five or six hours, the complaint said, making her crawl under the bed beforehand," according to The Post report. "But after he left, Jayme moved the bins and weights away, put on a pair of his shoes, and walked out toward the road until she found a woman walking her dog. Jeanne Nutter told police that Jayme told her her name during the encounter. 'I don't know where I am,' the disheveled girl told her. 'He killed my parents.' And, 'Please help - I want to go home.' "

In the letter, the writer says he tried to control what Jayme saw on the news about her kidnapping while she was trapped in his cabin.

"I followed it . . . through my phone," the letter says. "If something popped up on TV about it, I would change the channel. . . . Would tell Jayme 'I'm sorry, I can't watch this.' [I don't know] what she knew."

The letter notes that the writer was able to keep his family members from learning Jayme was at the cabin because he kept her hidden on Saturdays, the days his father visited.

"My family respects privacy so no one even went in my room," the letter says.

The letter also accused the police of misrepresentation.

“The cops say I planned this thoroughly, and that I said that,” the letter says. “They’re really good at twisting your words around, put them in different spots, straight up lie. Little mad about that. Trying to cover up their mistakes I guess. This was mostly on impulse. I don’t think like a serial killer.”

There have been several articles recently published containing quotes and narratives from legislators, city officials, and others proposing to divide Salt Lake County. The talk of splitting our county just brings animosity and frustration for the vast majority of elected officials and citizens. In the words of President Abraham Lincoln, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Leaders of this county must reach out to one another by communicating, collaborating, and compromising for the greatest good of all of our residents, not just a select few. In my opinion the proposition to bifurcate our county is foolish and not fully thought out. Should California be allowed to secede from our union as some have proposed? NO! If Salt Lake County were divided would the new county then want to split again if an area within wasn’t happy? If a geographic area of a city isn’t happy with funding should they dissolve their city or attempt to detach and create their own city, where would it end? The costs of creating a new county would be astronomical with tax rates that are unthinkable.

The few elected leaders of the “split the county discussion” have focused their concerns on housing, transportation, and too much being given to the Eastside of the County, simply put, this is false.

First, the issue of housing and density is one that is contentious in all areas of the state. This issue was recently before the County Council last June as the Olympia Hills development was approved. I was the lone dissenting vote on this initiative. When this item first appeared on an agenda I immediately reached out to city officials to get their input.

During debate, I argued that there was no adequate transportation infrastructure in the area, specifically east and west. I questioned what the impact would be on public services and safety. I asked if this was the smart location for a project of this density. I was concerned that we had not contacted the city officials in the areas impacted by this initiative. It was ironic, and I was aghast, that not one elected official or representative contacted me or showed up to speak in this council meeting to express their concerns before the vote was taken. I tried to be the voice of reason for residents in my District, in the end the vote was 8-1.

It seems disingenuous to now say, as stated in recent news articles, that the Council doesn’t listen to the community, when no city official initially spoke against the project!

Second, we do have a transportation crisis in the Southwest part of the County. But, it is important to recognize that the bulk of transportation money is dictated by the Legislature. Perhaps the legislators calling for a county division can exert that energy on coming up with proposals for ensuring we have the appropriate funding needed for our County. Additionally, city leaders might need to look at housing and commercial projects they are approving in their respective cities that add congestion.

I am the only Councilmember who lives South of 7800 S and West of I-15. My entire family and I sit in that congestion moving east and west from the freeway every day.

I have been working tirelessly to represent and advocate for you, working with my colleagues and the Mayor’s office to rectify this dilemma. I proposed, and the Council unanimously supported, ensuring the County Transportation Advisory Committee has geographic representation. Meaning, that every Council District in our County is represented, this had never been done before. This Committee prioritizes your tax dollars for funding certain transportation projects. Recently the County established a working group for the new “4th Quarter” funding enacted by our cities. This committee works to ensure monies were divided amongst the areas of the County based upon established prioritized criteria of need.

To say southwest Salt Lake County is neglected and not adequately represented is an absolute falsehood. Let me give you a few examples: The JL Sorensen Rec Center in Herriman is one of the largest facilities in the valley and serves the most citizens. I am working closely with South Jordan City to find a solution for rec center needs when the Marv Jensen Recreation Center closes next year. Bingham Creek Park is going to be the crown jewel of any park in the state of Utah and more than doubles the size of Sugarhouse Park; having park and open space for generations to come. Wardle Fields Park in Bluffdale is the most used and popular park in the County. There are new county libraries planned in South Jordan and Herriman. The County Council approved funding to help put in a dog park in Riverton, at their request. We have placed a District Attorney office, Viridian Library Event Center, and a County Health Dept. building in West Jordan. We will continue to provide that which is needed in this part of our county which is growing so rapidly.

It has been my desire to work collectively and collaboratively with all stakeholders on transportation and housing issues. We need to come together to find solutions with an agreement for the greatest good of the whole. It is cliché, but true, T.E.A.M.: Together Everyone Accomplishes More! Let’s roll up our sleeves and work together as friends and neighbors to ensure the highest quality of life in our County; we deserve nothing less!

Steve DeBry represents District 5 on the Salt Lake County Council.

If food waste were a country, it would be the world's third-largest emitter of CO2, after China and the United States. In our nation alone, we throw away some 63 million tons of food a year, even as 40 million Americans are considered food insecure.

Advocates of the "ugly produce" movement say they have a way to radically reduce this waste: cutting the price of fruits and vegetables that normally go uneaten because they look too weird.

"We're not talking about rotten stuff, we're not talking about stuff that's beyond the pale. We're talking about good, fresh food that is being wasted on a colossal scale," says Tristram Stuart, author of "Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal," recounting how, as a teen, he discovered a local farmer throwing away edible potatoes too misshapen for supermarkets. Food & Wine magazine launched #LoveUglyFood, with then-editor in chief Dana Cowin urging readers to "embrace all that is edible, not just what is beautiful." Activist Jordan Figueiredo has championed the "Ugly" Fruit & Veg Campaign by sharing cute photos of knobby eggplants on social media and petitioning Walmart, Whole Foods and other retailers to stock imperfect produce.

Over the past several years, start-ups that bring ugly produce to consumers have proliferated. “Shark Tank” alumnus Hungry Harvest, which delivers boxes of “rescued” fruits and veggies to subscribers’ doorsteps, claims that “demand for aesthetic perfection & homogeneity” drives us to squander food: “100 years ago, farmers could sell their entire harvest regardless of the size, shape or superficial beauty of their produce. People understood that a small apple was as delicious as a large one, a misshapen carrot as nutrient-rich as any other.” The website for rival service, Imperfect Produce, recently valued at $180 million, says: “Approximately 20 percent of organic and conventional produce in the U.S. never leaves the farm just because it looks a little different. . . . We think that’s crazy.”

Yet while the trend may have upsides for some farms and consumers, it’s nowhere near fixing food waste. That’s because advocates are getting the problem exactly backward. Less than 20 percent of total food waste happens at farms and packinghouses, where the ugly-produce movement works its magic, according to ReFED, a nonprofit dedicated to researching food waste policies. The vast majority, more than 80 percent, is generated by homes and consumer-facing businesses like grocery stores and restaurants. “Rescuing” ugly produce is just one of the few, small slices of the food waste problem that are easily monetized by private entrepreneurs. The hype surrounding this movement is inflated by the public’s ignorance of the food supply chain.

Farms run on tight margins; they don't casually waste their crops. When produce doesn't make it off the farm, there's a reason. Despite the dramatic anecdotes about truckloads of landfilled crops, little of farm waste is due to merely "cosmetic" blemishes. Much of it is bruised or weeping goods that can quickly break down and rot the entire crate. With many crops, misshapen produce knocks against its neighbors during transit, poking holes and jeopardizing entire bins. "Drops" (produce that's fallen on the ground) are left behind because otherwise they tend to cause food-poisoning outbreaks. Farms till excessively damaged produce back into the soil along with the crop's stems and leaves, recycling their nutrients. This approach keeps produce from being landfilled and doesn't waste fossil fuels zooming product around in search of a buyer while it continues to deteriorate.

As for packinghouses — the other major culprit, according to ugly-produce proponents — they’re actually the smallest source of food waste in the entire supply chain. North America’s packinghouses discard about 1 percent of the produce that enters their doors, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization — usually because it’s straight-up rotten.

That number is consistent with my experiences working with packinghouses across the United States. The industry sorts produce into grades. Top-quality product goes to high-end grocery stores and pays the bills for the entire crop. Second-grade produce goes to food service, lower-end groceries, food banks — and, now, ugly-produce vendors. Severely misshapen and discolored product goes to processing to become juice, jam, baked goods, salsa, soups, guacamole or other foods. Packinghouses send culls (rotten goods that cannot be recovered by any means) to be tilled into nearby fields as fertilizer or, as a last resort, landfill them (though they avoid that whenever possible, because it costs money). In most packinghouses, the cull bins are small and few.

For the most part, ugly-produce initiatives are simply gentrifying second-grade produce that was already being eaten - just not, perhaps, by upscale shoppers. It's the food equivalent of Lyft "inventing" a bus.

In truth, four times as much food is wasted at the fork - that is, at homes and consumer-facing businesses — than at the farm or packinghouse. The most effective ways to tackle that waste aren’t as marketable as a shiny new start-up, and they don’t get nearly as much publicity. They boil down to the old mantra to reduce, reuse and recycle.

The single biggest source of U.S. food waste, accounting for 43 percent of the problem, is our own homes. Reducing consumption will look different in every household; personally, I find that once produce goes in my crisper drawer, it might as well be in a black hole. For me, replacing some fresh veggies with frozen, and leaving fresh produce on the table as an easy snack, cut down my family’s food budget and trash volume. Others find meal prepping, and odds-and-ends recipes like stews and smoothies, to be helpful.

Most of all, we should sync our shopping habits with our eating habits. Affluent shoppers waste the most produce because of how much of it they buy and then trash, according to a 2018 U.S. Agriculture Department analysis. We throw out so much food at home that "saving" ugly produce from food service or processing could actually cause more waste. The most important behavioral change consumers can make to address food waste isn't to buy certain kinds of produce. It's to actually eat what we bring home.

Grocery stores, meanwhile, can get a lot of mileage out of reuse: donating food that’s past its “sell by” date but still has a few good days left to food banks. Many retailers already do this for the tax write-offs. But the infrastructure — donation matching software, cold storage and refrigerated trucks — to handle large donations of eggs, dairy, meat, bread and produce is still being built. Funding more food bank infrastructure, educating potential donors about liability laws, creating more donation tax incentives and standardizing food safety regulations would recover up to 996,000 tons of food, or 1.7 billion meals, per year, according to ReFED. Ugly produce maxes out around 266,000 tons of potential recovery per year — much of it just diverted away from processing, food service and food banks.

Homes, food service and grocery stores generate 7.8 million tons of food waste per year that can’t be salvaged, accounting for 12 percentof the problem. This waste needs to be recycled. The Environmental Protection Agency says that the United Statescomposts only 5 percent of its food waste. (Compare that with 15 percent in the European Union.) That’s a lot of room for growth. Biochar - made by heating inedible food and other organic waste until it becomes inert, odorless, nutrient-rich charcoal — could be a very effective way to recycle food waste, but it’s underutilized, because the equipment to do it at municipal scale is so new. Like composting, biochar can be used as a fertilizer, returning food waste’s nutrients back to the soil. Unlike composting, it can handle food waste that’s mixed with general nonhazardous trash — no need for costly separate collection and handling. Biochar also sequesters carbon for centuries.

Some farms do profit from the ugly-produce movement: For now, at least, it helps them fetch higher prices for their seconds than they'd get from the processing market. But there are lots of other, better ways to attain higher returns on crops. Farms can form co-ops to increase volume and market power, as California's citrus and avocado industries have, or process their own seconds. For certain crops like berries, tomatoes, leafy greens and cucumbers, farms can take advantage of state and federal funds that would help them switch from open-field to hoophouse or greenhouse methods. Already common in East Asia and Europe, these methods boost yields and dramatically reduce how much of the crop is too damaged to leave the farm. These active improvements are challenging and capital-intensive, but they'd do more to strengthen farms' financial position than passively riding the ugly-food trend. Even if the movement grows, eventually the market will saturate or investors' money could run out. Then, ugly-produce companies will be just more buyers racing to the bottom on price.

To be clear, ugly produce isn't bad. If it works for your budget and routine, use it: Our distribution systems should make food affordable and accessible. But the movement's narrative, built around tales of dented squash rotting in fields, distracts us from the data about the real sources of waste and how to address them. As long as we eat fresh food instead of shelf-stable nutrient bars, perishability is part of the bargain. The only way to completely eliminate food waste is to abolish fresh food. Beyond that, all we can do is manage the waste.

Consumers are forever being bombarded with claims that our individual buying choices can put a meaningful dent in some big problem. Food waste is one of the few areas where that’s true. But we won’t make much of a difference by acquiring a taste for hideous, gnarly cucumbers. We should just be sure that our shopping carts and grocery budgets aren’t bigger than our stomachs.

Sarah Taber, a crop scientist and former farmworker, runs a farm operations and food safety consulting business from Fayetteville, N.C.

When the founders of our great nation designed the American political system, they saw a separation of governing powers as a fundamental cog in the machine of democracy. A president, serving as commander in chief, would be essential in administering and executing the law. However, in Federalist 51, Madison magnificently argued that the legislative branch must be the strongest because of its proximity to the American people. The Constitution was ratified shortly thereafter, and Congress’s legislative authority was enshrined in Article I.

It was no accident that the legislative branch was empowered in the very first article, even before the executive or judicial branches. The founders of our nation had just won the fight for their independence from a tyrant across the sea; they were eager to establish a structure that would preserve freedom and liberty, with leaders closest to the people in the driver’s seat of democracy.

In subsequent years, the role of the presidency has expanded far beyond what the founders intended and what we, the legislative branch, should be willing to accept. Expressing frustration with the inconvenience of Congress, Presidents have used executive power to circumvent the legislative process. President Obama averaged 34.6 executive orders per year and President Trump has averaged 45.5 per year thus far. While this is minimal compared to Presidents like FDR, who averaged 307.8 executive orders per year and Herbert Hoover who averaged 242, this is not what the founders envisioned.

Last month, President Trump declared a national emergency on our southern border. Not surprisingly, this elicited an outcry from many in Congress. A vote was taken up in the House to declare the end of the emergency order, but I voted against it because it was a largely partisan bill that dealt only with this one-time instance rather than a serious attempt to permanently rein in executive authority. I have serious concerns about the precedent this declaration establishes but even more serious concerns about our continued reliance on executive authority to legislate when the legislative branch falls short.

Congress must find more opportunities to work together to address critical problems, but to do that effectively, we must reassume the authority the Constitution granted us.

I joined with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to introduce the Guarding Congressional Authority Act, a critical step in reestablishing Congress’s Article I authority. Under current law, national emergency declarations require veto-proof majorities to disapprove and overturn. This legislation will subject future emergency declarations to the same 60-day approval process as declarations of war under the War Powers Act. If a declaration is not approved by Congress within 60 days, they are overturned. While I would prefer to see Congress take the lead—diffusing the need for executive action in the first place — if Congress can agree that a situation is, in fact, an emergency, we should either come together to approve within 60 days or provide a legislative solution of our own.

I’ve expressed similar concerns with executive authority as it relates to trade. While foreign policy has traditionally been the purview of the President, the Commerce Clause expressly empowers Congress with the authority “to regulate commerce with foreign nations.” However, under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, Congress delegated some authority to the Executive to regulate trade through unilateral tariffs if they can provide a national security justification, no matter how tenuous that justification may be. I helped introduce the Bicameral Trade Authority Act to return authority to Congress by requiring congressional approval within 60 days for any proposed tariff to remain in place.

I’m honored to serve the people of Utah’s third district. They did not send me to Washington to be a rubber stamp, nor to simply be a thorn in any President’s side. Although I don’t always agree with our President, I have tried to work with him when possible for the good of my constituents and I commit to continue doing so in the future. I’m honored to join a wide range of Republicans and Democrats in these efforts to restore congressional authority, and I hope it will lead to a new chapter of good governance that our founders can be proud of.

Rep. John Curtis represents Utah’s Third District in Congress.

Logan • Football season was long over, and a whiteout slammed the streets of Logan. On a frigid winter evening over four years ago, the kind of storm that forced folks to just stay in for the night, the unforgettable impression made by Gary Andersen during his time there resurfaced. Hamid Salehi, then the owner of Logan’s Heroes, a sandwich shop on Main Street in Logan, said of all the years he’s been in Cache Valley, nothing ever compared to those four-plus years Andersen was in charge of Utah State football.

The town, Salehi said, was alive. There was hype and anticipation like Salehi hadn’t ever seen, starting around summer and into the fall. USU football had just finished 6-7 a couple months prior, there was considerably less foot traffic in recent years, less gargantuan, tasty sandwiches to make for customers, and Salehi wondered what it would be like if Andersen would ever return.

This story was relayed to Andersen a few weeks ago inside his new office that isn’t new, because it was his old office when he first arrived on campus in 2009 to change just about everything about the Aggie football program.

The story was a set-up for a question for Andersen, but before it got that far, leaning back in his giant leather swivel chair, he said, “Do you know he’s gone now?” Andersen knew Salehi retired in November after 30 years of being a staple in the Cache Valley. He knew how many years Salehi owned the place. He shook his head in amazement. And it was there that you begin to understand what Gary Andersen has been missing ever since he left.

“That’s what I want it to be,” said the 55-year-old coach.

By it, he means everything that happens from here on out.

His return to the place that never forgot him and forgave him for ever leaving in the first place, is no cliché, he vows. He wants it to be more than football. It takes less than five minutes to get from the house he never sold in Logan to get to his office desk. That’s just if you’re cruising. If he’s in a rush? “Three-and-a-half.”

“If you ask me what I want,” Andersen said, “I want that.”

It’s his again. He’s back in Logan. Back in the same old office. Back where he said he belongs. And on this day, there’s a fresh coat of snow on the field.

Yearning for home

Gary Andersen does his best to explain why Logan. Why Logan over Salt Lake City or Madison, Wisc., or Corvallis, Ore., or wherever? There were wherevers, too, before he took the job at Wisconsin in December 2012, Andersen said. There were big-name schools that came calling, but he decided otherwise. To him, the job represents more than turning around a program or winning a recruiting battle or qualifying for a bowl game.

“It’s hard to explain,” he said.

For a few minutes, he explains the city, the school, the program, the valley, “it’s in my guts.” It’s where his three sons graduated from. It’s where, after bouncing around the country, they kept their home instead of putting it on the market or later upgrading. He and wife, Stacey, thought about it hard. But they couldn’t sell. They’re grandparents now. Even when he was working elsewhere the last seven years, “Logan was always home.”

“I never really wanted to leave, if that makes sense,” he said. “That may seem strange. We said no to a couple opportunities that people thought, on the outside, we were crazy. At the end of the day, I do not regret any of those moves.

"To have the opportunity to come back here is something that I wake up every day and I’m just blessed.”

Nine years after he was first hired to take over a program that had 11 consecutive losing seasons and just two winning seasons in the last 28 years, Andersen was re-introduced as USU’s head coach in December. When Matt Wells, who replaced Andersen, left for Texas Tech, Andersen made it clear that not only was he interested in returning, he really, really wanted the job. After a year back on the Utah staff with old friend Kyle Whittingham, Andersen went after what he said was the only gig that could’ve taken him out of Salt Lake.

“My dad is one of the most unpredictable people,” said oldest son, Keegan. “Obviously he raised me, and I still can’t predict what he’s going to do. When we moved back to Utah, I knew if the right situation came about, he would have a hard time saying no, because that’s how he is.”

The right situation was Utah State. All along. And the dominoes fell. One by one.

‘He talks the talk and he walks the walk’

It has caught the college football world by surprise — even in shock — but when Gary Andersen makes a move, he doesn’t waffle. He makes a choice, even if it isn’t popular. Even if it’s puzzling to those on the outside.

He left Wisconsin, a perennial Top 25 contender, because he was frustrated with the admission standards at the school. He wanted to be able to get more players in there. At Oregon State, he walked away from $12.6 million guaranteed dollars after going 7-23 in just two and a half seasons. There was some internal strife between him and some of his assistant coaches at OSU. Still, he reiterates that he wouldn’t trade the experiences or life lessons for anything.

They’ve helped him come full circle, back to Logan.

So what has Andersen learned about himself, this complicated profession and his outlook on college football in the last decade since becoming a head coach?

“I never been, what I would say, is a great delegator, to say the least,” he said. “And as I got a little bit better at delegating, that probably wasn’t the best thing for me. I will micromanage, not to the point where I will make life miserable, but I want to know what’s going on within the structure [of the program] so I can understand what’s best for those kids. I’ve learned that. I would say this: I’ve always stood for what my core was. If I was coaching, it’s the kids in my program first, it’s the school secondly, coaches third. Some people think that’s wrong.”

Andersen went on:

“I will never let people in this building forget they’re working for the kids. I will know what I’m walking into.”

“If you’re not all on the same page, even if you’re at least pushing toward the same goals, you’ll fail. Guarantee it.”

“I love this place, I love the valley, but all that doesn’t matter if you’re not working for the same people. It’s the kids.”

He does not negotiate these core tenets anymore. It’s what helped him build his new USU staff in a couple month’s time. Andersen and his new assistants had to piece together a recruiting class in a little over a month. Justin Ena, who Andersen hired as defensive coordinator after working alongside him at Utah, said the Aggies will continue to recruit the way they have been since Andersen first arrived.

“He does things very calculated, and one thing I found out, he’s always putting the players first,” Ena said. “He talks the talk and he walks the walk.”

Back to a place where the food won’t go cold

On Gary Andersen’s desk inside his office is one of the individual goal sheets he has for each player. They’re broken up into social, academic and athletic portions and every six to eight weeks they’re reviewed, and often changed by the position coaches. Every player has one and every player must meet each goal in order to move onto the next.

This is how they plan on making another jump. Meticulously.

The Aggies are coming off an 11-2 season and another bowl win in what was Wells’ — the guy who replaced Andersen initially — final season. They finished the year ranked in the AP Top 25 and return star quarterback Jordan Love and linebacker David Woodward and a host of other talented players. The foundational bricks of the program were laid a decade ago, laid by Andersen, his former staff and players who showed future Aggies that it could be done, that you could win in Logan and sustain it. Andersen is seeking a way to ensure USU is an annual Top 25 team and contender for the Mountain West crown, because he believes with the types of players he and his staff want, it’s totally feasible.

Gone, he hopes, are the 11-2 years followed by sub-.500 seasons.

“Find a way,” he said.

New offensive coordinator Mike Sanford Jr., whose father coached with Andersen at Utah and later at Utah State, said he wanted to come to Logan to work with someone whose primary spot is exactly where he is. No longer is Andersen wondering what life might be like at other schools. That, Sanford said, is a selling point to coaches and players.

“I wanted to work with a coach that’s done it with different teams and in different places, but also to be at a place where it’s a destination for him,” he said. “I wanted to be at a place where I wanted to be.”

Andersen hopes the talk of his return dies down and fast. He wants the narrative to be about the Aggies themselves, their own paths to Logan and how they’ve carved out their own roles with the football program. He wants it to be about them, not about him coming back to Logan, where he can get to the office in three-and-a-half minutes or go to Herm’s Inn for a Friday night meal and be left alone.

At other stops, son Keegan said, fans would talk his ear off to the point where the food just got cold.

“In Logan, people know who he is,” Keegan Andersen said, “but they let him be him.”

Because they know and believe that this is his last stop. They know and believe that he is back in Logan for the foreseeable future with nothing but Cache Valley, Utah State and his Aggies on his mind.

“You get to the spot where you do it because it’s where you want to be and you know what you like,” he said, “I don’t see that in any way, shape or form ever having a chance to change.”

Chicago • R&B singer R. Kelly was scheduled to be released on Saturday from the Chicago jail where he’s been held since Wednesday after someone paid the $161,000 he owed in back child support, a law enforcement spokeswoman said.

Sophia Ansari, a spokeswoman for the Cook County Sheriff's Department, which operates the jail, said that she expected Kelly's release would come early Saturday afternoon. She said the money was posted sometime Saturday morning. She did not immediately know who posted the money.

Kelly was ordered taken into custody on Wednesday by a judge after he said that he did not have the entire $161,000 he owed in child support.

That trip to jail was Kelly’s second in a matter of weeks. Last month, after he was charged with 10 counts of aggravated sexual abuse pertaining to four women, including three who were minors when the alleged abuse occurred, he was taken to the same jail. Kelly, whose attorney said at the time that the singer’s finances were in disarray, then spent a weekend in jail before a 47-year-old suburban Chicago business owner posted his $100,000 bail.

His attorney and publicist told a similar story this week before and after the hearing in which the judge ordered Kelly into custody, with the publicist telling reporters that Kelly was prepared to pay $50,000 to $60,000 on Wednesday but was not able to pay the entire amount.

Kelly has denied any wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He has also very publicly proclaimed his innocence, telling Gayle King in an interview that aired this past week on “CBS This Morning” that all his accusers were lying about him. He also talked about his finances, saying that people had stolen money from his bank accounts, though he offered no details.

In case you’re somehow unaware of the complete failure that has been the Lakers’ season, here’s the update: despite signing LeBron James, the Lakers have a 30-35 record and essentially a zero percent chance of making the playoffs. Current ESPN modeling predicts that the Lakers will win 37 games this year. If that holds true, they will have signed one of the greatest players the world has ever seen and gotten... two wins more than last year. What a trainwreck.

LeBron was hurt for part of the season, sure. They’re still 24-23 in games with him, which also wouldn’t be enough to make the playoffs if you stretch it out into the full season. He’s been great offensively: 27 points, nine rebounds, eight assists per game? Not too shabby.

But his defense has been appalling, frankly. LeBron frequently just stands around on the defensive end, leaving wide-open shooters as he “assesses the situation.”

LeBron is back to playing his same ol’ defense. pic.twitter.com/iuoGmC4YQC

— Drew Wise (@VOODOOdatDREWdo) March 2, 2019

It’s gotten so bad that it even stands out in a group of other bad defenders. Former Ute Kyle Kuzma is a sieve, but even he was offended when LeBron didn’t close out on a shooter in a must-win game against the Clippers last week: He physically shoved LeBron toward the open man.

But while LeBron’s effort is a problem, maybe it’s because he took a look at the roster around him. It’s just a mess. You can split it up into two groups: Young players who have proved themselves to be heavily flawed, and veteran signings that were transparently dumb from the moment they were conceived.

We’ll tackle the first group first: Kuzma and Brandon Ingram can score, but both are very excited to do so in me-first, isolation, ball-stopping, offense-ruining sort of way. Neither can defend. Lonzo Ball has the opposite problem: he can’t score, and so his vision and defense isn’t quite enough to add up to an above-average starting point guard. Josh Hart has disappointed in his second year.

But oh boy, it’s that second group that reveals the true incompetence of the Laker franchise. The Lakers basketball brain trust — led by Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka — made decisions on veteran signings like they were trying to acquire memes, not wins. Javale McGee is a laughingstock of the league and wildly exploitable on defense, Lance Stephenson plays like the guy in your local pickup game who lacks talent so he overcompensates with uncontrolled effort, and Rajon Rondo famously doesn’t try until the playoffs.

The inevitable defense used — “this was the best talent we could acquire on one-year deals, thus saving cap space for the summer of 2019!” — looks awfully inadequate when one considers that the Lakers could have signed Brook Lopez, starting center with a remarkable 3-point stroke on the best team in basketball, to the same salary slot used to sign Michael Beasley, who now has found himself once again playing in China.

That these signings weren’t good enough was very, very, very obvious to everyone when they happened. Johnson and Pelinka somehow thought they were the best option. "We had spent months and months studying film, doing analytics, doing background on guys,” Pelinka told SpectrumSN.

If your analytics department tells you that Beasley, Rondo, McGee and Stephenson are your preferable signings, you found your analytics department drunk at a bar. That’s appropriate for the Lakers, who, for a majority of this decade, gainfully employed a scout nicknamed “Chaz The Bartender,” due to his having much more experience drinking at the bar than in the basketball world.

"Evaluating basketball talent is not too difficult,” the Lakers’ Jim Buss, former vice president of basketball operations, told Sports Illustrated. “If you grabbed 10 fans out of a bar and asked them to rate prospects, their opinions would be pretty much identical to those of the pro scouts.”

Remarkably, the Lakers may have made better personnel decisions in the Chaz era.

Luke Walton will be the first fall guy here, and while that’s a little unfair, his X’s and O’s and rotations are legitimately uninspiring. But the rumored replacements are Jason Kidd and Mark Jackson, two coaches who were last found somehow holding back the Bucks — this year’s best team in the NBA — and the Warriors — perhaps the greatest team of all time. You couldn’t name two more awful candidates.

It’s early yet in the basketball operations careers of Johnson and Pelinka. So far, they’ve acted like they the smartest guys in the room while all they’ve done is have the good fortune of working for the closest franchise to LeBron’s Hollywood production company. Lakers Exceptionalism has turned to Lakers Amateurism.

That’s the thing: Johnson has been a very successful businessman after his playing career finished, James has made himself one even while he still plays and is fascinating to talk to. Pelinka was one of the NBA’s top agents for a long time. These people are smart.

So why do they keep making dumb decisions?

No one from the group of Jae Crowder, Kyle Korver, or Royce O’Neale is going to win NBA Sixth Man of the Year honors after this season. And the Jazz’s second unit doesn’t have some cutesy nickname like “Bench Mob” that makes it known to national pundits.

It’s just full of players being quietly effective in going out and doing their jobs.

Since the All-Star break, the Jazz’s bench players are collectively first in the NBA in both assist percentage and pace, fifth in both net rating and effective field-goal percentage, and 10th in both assist-to-turnover ratio and turnover percentage.

Presented with the numbers before Friday’s game against the Grizzlies, several Jazz players interjected, “Wait — is that us or them?” Korver let out an appreciative “Woooooo!” No one, however, could point to a singular reason for the group’s success.

“We’ve been defending as a bench, and that’s allowed us to get out and score better in transition,” said coach Quin Snyder.

“Just us coming in with a lot of energy,” O’Neale chimed in. “It starts with Jae and Kyle, or sometimes Jae and myself; we all gotta come out and be ready to play, come out and pick up where that first group leaves off.”

“Ummmmmmmm … I don’t know! I really don’t know, to be honest,” conceded Joe Ingles, obviously a starter, but a man who gets a fair number of minutes running with the reserves.

But then, the Jazz’s two most veteran players in terms of total experience say there’s a good explanation for the lack of explanations: the strength of the team, as the cliché goes, is the team.

“Everybody buys into what we try to do. Sometimes it works better with the first unit, sometimes for a little stretch it might work better with the second unit,” said 13th-year forward Thabo Sefolosha. “It’s great to see. It’s nice to have recognition for those guys who come off the bench and try to provide with the minutes that they have.”

Korver, meanwhile, added that everyone who comes off the bench for Utah is capable of finding ways to contribute.

“A lot of times when bench units in the NBA score a lot, it’s just because they’ve got one great player and he comes in and you run everything through them, and they score a lot of points and make a lot of plays,” he said. “Really, for us, it’s been a balanced effort — certain guys on different nights, depending on matchups and who’s open, and what we’re running.”

One particular component of the group’s post-break prowess has been its success from beyond the arc.

In addition to all those other achievements, the Jazz reserves also rank third since the break in 3-pointers made (with that group accounting for 6.6 per game), and fifth in 3-point percentage (37.1).

Korver, who knows a little something about shooting, said the impact of having some extra juice from deep can’t be overstated, and praised Crowder in particular for contributing in that area.

“When Jae’s hitting shots, it just opens up things for all of us. Nothing gets a shooter open more than more shooters,” Korver said. “Sometimes it’s a good passer — that helps; but when you’ve got multiple guys shooting the ball, it just opens everything up for everybody.”

As for Crowder, he said it was less about X’s and O’s and more about recognizing situations and responding appropriately.

The Marquette product, in somewhat existential fashion, said the best thing a Jazz reserve player can do is be cognizant of what he needs to do the moment he checks in.

“You gotta feel the game; if we come out and have a slow start, you wanna make a big difference. When we check into the game, we wanna take what the starting lineup got going and keep it going,” Crowder said. “The flow of the game is telling you what you should be doing when you check in. I feel like that’s just not overthinking it and just playing basketball, playing at a free and flowing pace.”

Considering none of them could agree on what they were doing to make it happen in the first place, overthinking it shouldn’t prove to be a problem.

That said, they’re going to simply keep doing their thing, and hope the results continue as well.

“It feels like things are just kind of clicking with that group,” said Korver.

Apparently.

Utah claimed the school's second NCAA skiing championship in three years and third of this century, after taking a commanding lead into Saturday's final events at Stowe, Vt.

Roni Remme’s second-place finish in the women’s slalom helped the Utes secure the combined men’s and women’s title, the program’s 12th NCAA championship and 13th overall, counting an AIAW title.

Utah finished with 530.5 points, followed by Vermont (476), Colorado (455), Dartmouth (447) and defending champion Denver (409). With a partial roster competing in the NCAA meet, Westminster College placed 14th among 24 teams.

The victory capped what Utah director of skiing Fredrik Landstedt described as an “incredible four days of racing.”

Landstedt continued, "The team really came together and everyone fought all out for every point. I was very impressed with the Alpine skiing [Saturday] and how they all dealt with the pressure. It is very hard to come into the championship as the favorite and then deliver.”

The Utes had led second-place Colorado by 65.5 points going into Saturday’s Nordic and Alpine races. Utah was first after the opening day and second after the second day, then the Nordic team put together an outstanding performance Friday. "It does not happen very often that everyone has an awesome race on the same day so [Friday] was just incredible,” Landstedt said.

Utah's title came in Landstedt's first season on the job. He had won the 2004 title as New Mexico's head coach and was Colorado's Nordic coach in 1995 when the Buffaloes won the championship. Nordic coach Myles Havlick and Alpine coach JJ Johnson also completed their first seasons on the Utah staff.

“I am so proud of the athletes and coaches and super happy to get my coaching career at Utah started with a national championship," Landstedt said.

The Utes' Nordic team led the way, posting 316 points to finish first in that category. Julia Richter, a freshman from Germany, won one race and finished second in another. Utah's Alpine skiers added 214.5 points, ranking fourth. Yet as Landstedt said, that group certainly did its part, and Johnson summarized it as “a perfect day.”

Johnson added, "Obviously, we had a big lead going into the day and we made a plan to ski very aggressive, but in a smart way in conservative lines. Everyone executed that to a T.”

Utah's national title is the 517th for the Pac-12 and comes during a school year when the conference has claimed championships in cross country (Colorado), volleyball (Stanford) and water polo (USC).

The Utes’ other NCAA skiing championships came in 1981, ’83, ’84, ’86, ’87, ’88, ’93, ’96, ’97, 2003 and 2017.

It was an absurd ask from the beginning: A tax overhaul that touches every pocketbook in the state, and a two-week window for Utahns to digest it.

The death of House Bill 441 last week was preordained. The challenge now is to prevent more of the same.

Gov. Gary Herbert tried to imply at a Thursday press conference that this has somehow been a heroic effort that only Utah’s leaders could pull off.

"It would have been easy to kick it down the road as we see too often on tough issues around the country. ... That’s not how we do it in Utah.”

Actually, that’s exactly how we’ve done it in Utah, and Herbert admitted as much when he pointed out that the issue has been kicked down the road at least since Olene Walker was governor in 2004.

And the reason that Utah’s politicians have never gotten to the breach is that they won’t embrace a truly public process. Instead, they work the backrooms and get surprised when it backfires.

In the aftermath of HB441’s death, the governor and legislators are vowing to work with "stakeholders" to get a better bill. That's essentially what they've been doing all session. And it's not public.

Here's a likely scenario:

After a couple of months of meeting privately with “stakeholders” (meaning lobbyists and industry reps), legislative leaders unveil a new and improved bill ... two weeks before an interim session. We’ll get a couple of jam-packed hearings at interim, and then a quick vote, followed by pronunciations that the public was heard.

No.

This will be a bill that touches everyone in significant ways … in their jobs, their homes and their schools. Take this plan to the people with a robust process. Hold hearings around the state. Dream up an Envision Utah-type online portal where citizens can study options. Find every way to maximize public involvement. This is that big.

And if state officials have the courage for such a process, they should get ready for the public to push back. For starters, they’ll question why income tax — the key revenue source for Utah’s underfunded schools — is the tax getting slashed when it’s sales taxes that are flagging.

Utah leaders have often referred to the “three-legged stool” of taxation: sales tax, property tax and income tax. By drawing from all three, we can smooth out the variability in any one of those revenue sources. This reform is supposed to be about shoring up tax revenue, not further denying schoolchildren.

Instead of trying to limit the rancor, state leaders should bathe in it. They need to look into their constituents’ eyes before they change their lives.