MangledCat

Trim the federal fat in UT? How about make money?

At least 50% of UT (95% of NV) is owned by the federal gov. Here's an idea--sell the land back to private citizens, companies or whoever would like to own it. NOTE: The government has no rights; the government can own nothing--and more importantly, can produce nothing without first stealing the capital or land from those who do and have.

You truly want to cut gov spending, establish a separation clause in the Constitution:

The federal government shall make no laws abridging, subsidizing or regulating any form of economic activity or any commercial institution therein whose products or services do not represent criminal activity, said activity defined by any act, or the threat of any act, of coercion.

Period.

If this could only make the major news outlets. It will never see the light of day on CNN, CBs et al

I just have to ask...

What would "Mormon cricket control" accomplish. Better yet, what is it?

Other than causing them to cease their melodic evening chirping, I have no idea.

Try googling mormon crickets and looking for images. They are huge, ugly crickets that periodically explode in population, then come out of the desert areas and damage crops.

Mormon crickets are a problem in some years, but if you are going to throw pork at them it would seem that it should come through the agriculture appropriations.

Yeah, trying to reduce our dependency on oil is fat!! Our government should do nothing other than facilitate record profiteering for oil companies! Mass transit spending in a transportation, whoops, I mean highway bill? Perish the thought! There's one place filled with fat in the federal government, and it happens to be the place that "lights the fires" of wingnuts all over this great land; the Pentagon. 600,000 for a EMS system vs. 6,000,000,000 for a redundant stealth bomber; hmmmm....

I can provide the answer as to why the Mormon Cricket control comes in under the highway bill.

Mormon crickets, as explained by Jason, are large (about 2" long) flightless insects that every few years explode into massive, Biblical-size swarms (i.e., thousands of insects per square yard).

They mostly are confined to the desert/semiarid regions of the western and southern portions of the state, which also contain several major federal highways (US 6, US 50, US 40, I-15, I-70).

The problem is these swarms will cross the road en masse and of course, get pulverized into goo. With one or two insects, that's not a problem, but since during a swarm you can have millions on a stretch of highway, their squished guts make the road as slippery as if it had just snowed.

Since that's quite hazardous, and needs to be cleaned up, it's not surprising that funds for cleanup and control efforts to keep them off the highways would be included in a highway bill.

For those readers out East, who may be lacking in size perspective, US 50 east of Delta to the Nevada border runs for about 100 miles, or about the length of Connecticutt. Think about how much it would cost to keep a highway that size clean.

Agreed on almost all counts. I am in favor of the light/commuter rail project and am glad to see that the right of way clearing has started. Anything Utah can do to take some commuters off I-15 is a good idea. TRAX is proving to be more successful in SLC than even its proponents thought possible, so maybe Utah's commuters can learn to get out of their cars.

As for me, I'm going to keep riding my scooter until the snow flies.

Are Mormon crickets different from Babtist crickets?
Enquiring minds want to know...

Another possibility would be for Utah to pay more of its own way. With increasing state surpluses, why shouldn't Utah pay for some of these pork projects itself? Including light rail?
I say this as a Utah resident who wants to see government spending cut in proportion to the amount of aid sent to for the Katrina relief efforts. Utah could extend one heck of an olive branch there by taking on some federal projects.

Of course, eliminating some of these projects would be equally acceptable. But if the state were to pick up the tab for the light rail extention so that this money could be used for relief efforts, well that's one big step for Huntsman if he has presidential/senatorial asperations.

In regards to the issue of government owning something, the federal government owns some military bases in Utah, and in my opinion, that's a good thing.