New West Feature

Utah Pawn Shop Law Requiring Fingerprinting Threatens Other Secondhand Shops

Owners of secondhand bookshops, used CD stores and antique shops in Utah say a board of pawn shop owners and law enforcement officials has been trying to use the state legislature to drive them out of business, and they’re sick of it.

“They want to make it so that any dealer of secondhand goods would have to obey the same draconian laws as pawn shops,” says Ken Sanders, owner of Ken Sander’s Rare Books, a prominent used bookstore in downtown Salt Lake City. “That would put me and a lot of other people out of business.”

County in Utah wins title to R.S. 2477 roads

A significant victory on road ownership for a southern Utah county could establish a precedent that could alter the way wilderness is designated in the West.

The recognition of Kane County’s title to the historic “Skutumpah Road” in a district court case by Judge Clark Waddoups, and subsequent recognition of its title to four more routes, has given representatives of Kane County hope they may finally get a fair hearing on the issue of road ownership, even from employees of the federal government which is fighting them on the issue.

New West Feature

The Mean Straights of Utah?

Relations between the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) community and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not at an impasse following inflammatory remarks by LDS President of the Council of the Twelve Boyd K. Packer, the church’s second-highest leader, during the LDS General Conference on Oct. 3. At least that’s the way leaders on both sides of the issue are playing the controversy.

“While we disagree with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) on many fundamentals, we also share some common ground,” read a statement the church issued in response to a petition submitted by the national LGBT association calling for Packer to take back his hurtful words, and a protest at Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City. “We join our voice with others in unreserved condemnation of acts of cruelty or attemp

New West Feature

Two ‘New’ Dinosaurs Discovered in Grand Staircase-Escalante Won’t Be the Last

Spending time exploring the gray shale badlands in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, where two new horned ceratopsids were unearthed, can leave a more-than-casual observer a bit unimpressed. I first visited “The Blues,” as the locals call the area, with Doctor Alan Titus, a paleontologist who was involved in the discovery of the new species.

But maybe I’m too hard on the fossiliferous Blues. It’s true there’s a unique paleontological character of the dusty, gray slopes. With every rainstorm, massive fossils break from the eroded surface like splinters working their way out of skin.

Titus showed me where a turtle shell, vacated about 75 million years ago, had rolled down onto the trail after a hard storm. He showed me a hadrosaur femur sticking out of a boulder. It was perfect. Titus seemed to be only half-interested in it, as if it were commonplace.

I was impressed. The hadrosaur was a big, duck-billed, flat-faced herbivore which galumphed around Utah during the Cretaceous Period. It weighed about 5 tons and could run about as fast as a motor scooter. Fossilized samples recovered from the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM) show its skin was cracked into small polygons like dry earth. 

New West Feature

Mining Near Bryce Canyon: Who Benefits?

A decision by the Utah Board of Oil, Gas and Mining to confirm a 2009 mining permit for Alton Coal Development is the best thing to have happened to the communities of southern Utah in some time—and the worst. It was a vindication of the thoroughness of Alton Coal’s proposal and a confirmation that the state is completely out of touch with modern values.

The board stood up to badgering from extremist environmental groups and caved in to pressure from their wealthy friends in the mining industry.

“The (Sierra) club is disappointed in the board for upholding the decision, but we plan to pursue every other avenue possible to stop the mine,” said Clair Jones, the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign spokesperson, in a response to the Aug. 3 decision.

“The board’s decision to uphold the mine permit is a clear victory and will allow development to proceed in an environmentally responsible manner,” said Alton Project Manager Chris McCourt in a press release on the day of the decision.

The environmental groups involved in the dispute are trying to stop any new mining in southern Utah, as usual. The mining company is trying to push the project forward while avoiding public scrutiny, as usual. The locals in favor of the mine have been cast as ignoramuses incapable of deciding where their best interests lie. What else is new?

Utahns’ memories not that short

Rural Utahns are awaiting the results from a second request for records from the Obama Administration regarding an inventory of 13 million acres of public and private lands in 11 Western states. The inventory’s purpose was to determine the studied lands’ qualifications as future national monuments. 

Making sense of Senator Bob Bennett’s defeat

Conversing by e-mail with political commentator Stephen Richer in Washington, D.C., I was reminded once more of the primacy of political narrative over all other elements of discourse in this grape nation of ours. I’ve had talks with socialist friends wherein we couldn’t agree on the basic meanings of such common terms as “shoe,” “sky,” “butter” and “radical right wing conservative.” I feel the same way when I try to hold a conversation with anyone who has lived in D.C. for more than six months.

Send not to know for whom the political bell tolls. It tolls for Senator Bob Bennett (Probably)

Unless he starts toeing the pro-free market Club for Growth line and renounces his demonstrated heretical socialist inclinations, Utah Senator Bob Bennett may be looking for a new job after the upcoming election cycle.

Bennett, who had promised to serve only two terms when he got the job, has outspent his opponents 20 to one, and still doesn’t have a lock on his own seat. A Rasmussen Report election survey says about 37 percent of voters would support him, compared to 14 percent for challengers Tim Bridgewater and attorney Mike Lee. Candidate Merrill Cook, who lost his House seat to Jason Chaffetz in another “I’m more conservative than you”-upset a few years back, polled at six percent. 

Environmentalists, Opponents Going for End-Zones in Utah

It would be difficult to avoid football analogies at this point in the game. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) has been moving the ball down the field one running play at a time. Their next play may put them in the end-zone. Their opponents in state government, meanwhile, are tossing Hail-Mary passes, with the inevitable possibility of interception.