I’m running for mayor of Salt Lake City because we need leadership to address our air quality problems.

Every year, my wife and I dread the arrival of our winter inversion season. We know that living here during those episodes of high pollution is terrible for our kids’ health (and ours).

Just this week, I met with a doctor from the University of Utah Hospital whose research recently found that for a pregnant woman, spending a week in a Utah inversion increases the risk of miscarriage more than using cocaine.

I know I’m not alone in these concerns. I have been to every neighborhood in this city. I have yet to find a place where residents didn’t care about the quality of the air. Worse, I have yet to find a neighborhood where people did not have personal stories of suffering and poor health because of our terrible air.

Unfortunately, I find that many people in our community have thrown in the towel. They no longer believe that we can do anything about this problem or that a mayor cannot make a difference.

I disagree.

Just because our state leadership has never given this problem the attention it deserves does not mean we can’t try.

It is true that Salt Lake City is likely too small to solve this problem on its own. We are a fraction of the population in our airshed. To fix this issue, we need to lead a broader coalition.

This is the first place for the next mayor to start: developing an actual plan to get to clean air in our Valley by 2026. I will have that coalition and plan by the end of my first year.

We need a plan because the state does not have one. Right now, our state’s “plan” for addressing our wintertime pollution problem involves ignoring or giving lip service to cars, furnaces and water heaters — which, in combination, cause most of the problem. Believe it or not, the one area the state does claim oversight authority — large polluting industries — is one where it actually allows pollution levels to grow!

We cannot wait for someone else to solve this problem—neither the feds nor the governor will rescue us.

Because we need to control our own destiny and reject the incrementalism of past state efforts, I am proposing a bold vision for addressing air quality issues.

This is why my plan includes working to move the refinery and power plant on the northern end of our city. This is why my plan includes forming a new wing of the City Attorney’s Office focused on litigating polluters.

And this is why my plan includes switching our electricity supply to 100 percent renewable energy in four years. Not only will that reduce our collective carbon footprint by half it will also save residents money. Rocky Mountain Power projects that such a switch could save up to $250 million over the next 20 years.

I’ve spent most of my career working on issues like this. I was an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance for 10 years. There, we used air quality arguments to help protect Desolation Canyon and the White River and to help overturn the infamous 77 leases.

Because I am new to politics, however, I have not spent years having my sights lowered sitting through mundane meetings or participating in the state’s broken system. I have a fresh perspective and a foundational belief that we can solve this problem.

I’m asking for your vote so together we can finally do something about air quality.

David Garbett worked as an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, was the executive director of the Pioneer Park Coalition and helped found an educational nonprofit.

After all the broken promises, lies, distortions, sexual misconduct, gaslighting, racism, narcissism, lack of empathy etc., I marvel how his raucous followers disregard all that negative behavior while simultaneously and enthusiastically continuing their unconditional support for President Trump.

My analysis, for what it’s worth, comes down to a few possibilities.

First, without any attempt at fact-checking, they accept as gospel everything Trump proclaims, backed up by Fox News, other right wing radio and TV celebrities and spineless Republican legislators fearful of incurring Trump’s wrath in upcoming Republican primaries. Counter progressive viewpoints found on stations like MSNBC are automatically considered fake news and avoided like the plague.

Next, racism, both up front and closeted, garners surprisingly substantial voter support for Trump, who throws out just enough racial dog whistles, not surprisingly garnering the enthusiastic endorsement of the national white supremacist movement.

Finally, followers find themselves suffering from the unsettling condition labeled by psychologists as cognitive dissonance. This disturbing mental state is described as having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs or attitudes requiring discounting inconsistencies leaving a single mental-soothing opinion. In this case, that is the mentally unencumbered support of their presidential hero while ignoring all other conflicting input.

Raymond A. Hult, Bountiful

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Perhaps it goes back to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech. But I have come to realize that I had no choice in who my parents were. There was no choice in my skin color or sex.

I had no choice in the community where I grew up. I had no choice in the public school I attended. All of these things contributed to who I am, what my values are and perhaps helped shape my personality.

As a teenager, I made the choice to become a Christian. As a result, I have a basis for my belief system, the Bible. Among so many other things, it teaches me to try to live by the Golden Rule. That is, to treat others as I wish to be treated.

Oh, how I wish the elected and appointed leaders of our country could follow this simple, basic rule of life.

Ralph Paisley, Millcreek

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Loss comes in waves and is difficult to describe. At first the loss is the only thing you can see, snapped tight as a ripcord around your heart. Each absent thing is delineated against the background of what is there until what is missing is the only thing visible. But in time, the loss loses its sharpness, diffuses. The vanished footprints you used to see so clearly trail off into many paths never taken.

There is the old ache of looking alone at something over which your eyes used to meet other eyes, but there is the new ache of looking at something new a first time and knowing you will never know what they would have thought about it, that it is guesswork from here on out. And then there is the ache of watching the hole in the world close, like a wound, when there ceases to be room made for what is absent.

Imagine being careless enough and cruel enough to allow someone to punch such holes in the world deliberately, repeatedly, in the name of a lie. The lie is that we have no choice in this matter. The lie is that any effort, however common-sense, to restrict firearms or lower the capacity of magazines, is part of a vicious scheme to strip you of your freedoms. The lie is that this imaginary, vast conspiracy is more to be feared than these deaths that occur so frequently that we are almost out of synonyms for "horror." How do you tell someone he is a sacrifice worth making to preserve this lie? How do you tell a child?

On Sunday, at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, a 19-year-old opened fire on the crowd, wounding 12 and killing three. One of the dead was a 6-year-old boy.

Wayne LaPierre of the NRA said in 2018, after the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, "For them, it is not a safety issue. It is a political issue. They care more about control and more of it. Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearms freedoms, so they can eradicate all individual freedoms. What they want are more restrictions on the law abiding. Think about that, their solution is to make you, all of you, less free."

How does a gun become freedom? The answer is another lie, a nameless, faceless, lawless threat. Laws bind you. They are unbound by them. “Their laws,” LaPierre went on, “don’t stop illegal criminals from crossing our borders every single day. Their laws don’t stop the scourge of gang violence and drug crime that savages Baltimore, Chicago and every major American community. ... No wonder law-abiding Americans, all over this country, revere their Second Amendment freedom to protect themselves more than ever.” The gun is only necessary in the face of this manufactured, constant terror.

It is no coincidence that the same threat of the Other lurks in the shadows of all Donald Trump’s words. This is the same racist, xenophobic horror that has whistled through his whole campaign and presidency, the threat of faceless rapists and murderers from elsewhere — the horror that shadows even Baltimore into an ominous place where “no human being would want to live.” It is to fight these ghosts that we must arm ourselves! Never mind those, here, who kill in the name of this same fear. We must protect this fear at all costs.

And those who die from guns are not the only people we sacrifice on that altar. Those who die in custody at the border, in conditions in which "no human being would want to live" — they, too, are the casualties of fear. Fear tells us these losses are acceptable. Fear tells us that what is to be feared are the people fleeing to us for safety, and not the way we treat them.

In the blind worship of fear, we are losing real children. The world is being steadily shaped and hollowed out by these absences. And for what?

The lie is that this is how things must be. The lie is that to permit these deaths will not damage our world beyond repair, that these losses are acceptable and that change is not.

Follow Alexandra Petri on Twitter, @petridishes.

Anybody else out there have questions about Larry Krystkowiak and what’s going on with Utah’s basketball program?

You do. I do. Most everybody does. The empty seats at the Huntsman Center want to know.

Players are jumping out of the school’s practice facility as though the place were burning to the ground, as though there were an outbreak of some awful communicable disease, and there’s been no real comprehensive explanation thus far from Krystkowiak for the exodus. I reached out for a response from the coach, but was told he is out of pocket until the middle of August. Hopefully, he can answer some questions upon his return. Understandably, it’s not his favorite subject.

At the end of this past season, he said he hoped not to have to comment on every transfer, as it happens. But maybe he could comment on the totality of them.

Here’s the deal: The Utes this next season will have seven freshmen, three sophomores and one junior on the roster. Most of the veterans are gone now, including guys like Donnie Tillman and Jayce Johnson, players who would have been featured had they stayed the course at Utah. Instead, they redirected their paths to other schools, such as UNLV, in the case of Tillman, and Marquette, in the case of Johnson.

It is said that Tillman wanted to be closer to his ill mother in Las Vegas, but that doesn’t align with Tillman checking out potential landing spots across the country.

Something’s not right here. The Utes have lost six scholarship players since November — including redshirt freshman guard Naseem Gaskin who entered the transfer portal just this week — and at least 16 in the past four years. Transfers in college basketball are not an uncommon thing. They happen, and they are happening more and more. But they are happening at a greater clip at Utah under Krystkowiak’s watch.

The proportion of transfers for men’s D-I basketball in 2018 sat at 29 percent. But that included all transfers, including those from two-year schools to four-year programs, a progression that isn’t notable because it’s expected and encouraged. The transfer rate from a four-year school to a four-year school was 14 percent.

Krystkowiak’s percentage is considerably higher.

I do not know all the reasons. Players tend to go quietly when they transfer, in part because they don’t want to cause ripple effects that somehow could splash back to harm them and their reputations down the road. They do not want to be seen as malcontents. Sometimes they concoct stories to cover for their departures. Sometimes they have solid motivations. Sometimes they are invited to leave. Sometimes they just want to get out of Dodge and rebuild what’s left of their eligibility.

Whatever the reasons for players bailing out of Utah, whether they are selfish or unselfish, or both or neither, it’s not a favorable look for Krystkowiak to lose so many of his flock. Ute sheep are wandering all over the place.

He’s the one who recruits these guys. He’s the one who lures them into his fold. He’s the one who judges players’ abilities and attitudes, measures their individual fits, conjures his sales pitch, delivers it and closes the deal.

If they’re not good enough to play for him, that’s his error. If they won’t willfully follow his lead and his instruction, if they are bums, at least in some cases, he should have seen that coming. If he’s too old school for many of the modern players, too aggressive, too unbending, too harsh, that’s on him, too. He either has to draw in those kinds of athletes or he has to evolve with the times.

That’s the world in which he operates now. It’s not 1980. The ways of Bob Knight and Rick Majerus are done. A majority of players in this day and age have to be approached in a different manner. Call them soft, if you must, call them entitled, but players now can be motivated and developed with the right touch, with the right voice. If a coach is going to churn through the masses, leaving debris along the road, it’s on him.

It’s on Krystkowiak.

That may not seem fair, but it just is.

It’s up to him to recruit the guys with whom he can build a successful program, not rebuild it every year with a new wave of replacements. That should be within Krystkowiak’s reach, given that he’s a smart man and given that he’s one of the highest-paid basketball coaches in the college game, making in excess of $3 million per year.

If the methodology that’s being utilized is ineffective, if it’s a turn-off for the players, then … it has to change. If it can’t change, thn Utah basketball is not getting its money’s worth.

Blaming the kids, telling them to get off Utah’s lawn, after they’ve been invited onto it by the one doing the barking, is not the answer. The sheer numbers might not tell the whole story, but, altogether, they tell a portion of it, a big enough portion to fire off a warning signal.

Maybe in Utah’s case, there are extenuating circumstances.

Maybe that’s something Larry Krystkowiak can explain, if he will.

GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Jake Scott weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.

I have an open offer to Rep. John Curtis.

I have a perfect voting record. I have never voted for a Republican. Mr. Curtis, you have the power to change that. All you have to do is publicly demand the impeachment of Donald Trump. This declaration must be direct and unqualified. Do this and I will vote for you in the next election.

You need to hurry because this is a limited time offer.

Scott Jackson, Sandy

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Seattle • The U.S. has recorded nearly 20 mass killings so far this year, the majority of them domestic violence attacks that receive scant national attention compared to high-profile public shootings in recent years at schools, churches and concerts.

A database compiled by The Associated Press, Northeastern University and USA Today shows that the number of mass killings has held steady in 2019 compared with past years. But if the trend continues, the year could end with a lower death count because there have been fewer mass-casualty attacks such as those in Las Vegas, Parkland, Florida, and the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando.

Four mass shootings happened in public places so far this year, compared with 10 in 2018 and seven in 2017. But 2019 saw a big increase in the number of mass killings in domestic disputes, helping to keep this year's overall numbers similar to past years.

There have been 10 family mass killings this year; there were 10 during all of 2017.

In July alone, 13 people were slain in three killings involving domestic violence or drugs in Missouri, Wisconsin and Washington state, but those stories drew little attention. Meanwhile, a gunman killed three people and wounded 12 at a garlic festival in California, with smartphones and social media quickly spreading the word.

"There were more people killed in Wisconsin than in California," said Northeastern University professor James Alan Fox, referring to five family members killed Sunday in Wisconsin. "Three of the four were family members, so it doesn't get the same attention because people don't feel at risk."

The database examines every mass killing dating back to 2006 and tracks a number of variables for each. It counts killings involving four or more fatalities, not including the killer, the same standard used by the FBI.

Part of the problem with determining whether there are trends in mass shootings is "everyone has a different way of counting the data," said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

While the FBI defines a mass shooting as four or more dead, others use a standard of three dead, and some count injuries, he said.

"It's hard to imagine that you can shoot 12 people but it's not considered a mass shooting," Winkler said, referring to the attack Sunday at the Gilroy Garlic Festival that left three dead, not including the shooter, and 12 people wounded. That shooting is not included in the AP database.

Seven months into 2019, there have been 19 mass killings in the U.S., and all but three of them were carried out with guns.

The deadliest attack occurred May 31 at a government office in Virginia Beach, where a 40-year-old city employee walked through his office building with two .45-caliber pistols, killing 12 people before being fatally shot by police.

Many other shootings occurred under the radar.

A 26-year-old man went on a shooting spree in Southern California last week, killing his father, brother, a former girlfriend and a man at a gas station.

A man in Port Angeles, Washington, was charged with murder and arson after killing his wife and three children ages 9, 6 and 5 on July 6. He then set fire to their home.

And federal prosecutors say four suspects are responsible for the shooting deaths of five people near Yakima, Washington.

Seventy-seven people have died this year in mass shootings that include family violence and other events, while 26 people were killed in mass shootings in public places, the data show.

That compares to previous years that were marked by killings with large victim counts but similar numbers of overall shootings. Forty-nine people were killed in the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in 2016 in Orlando. Fifty-nine people were killed at a country music concert in 2017 in Las Vegas.

Those shootings shocked the nation — especially in an era of social media and cellphone video that instantly captured the panic and mayhem.

"The ready availability of video does make mass shootings more poignant and powerful," said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We are much more attuned to these mass shootings. They seem more prevalent."

Fox said the public mass shootings do not happen "all that often, but they certainly do shock us."

“The sound of gunfire replayed over and over has an impact,” Fox said. “There hasn’t been an increase except in fear.”

The state has turned down appeals from six companies that applied to grow medical cannabis in Utah but failed to make the cut in the scramble over a handful of cultivation licenses.

The businesses that protested the state’s selection process were among the 81 that vied for a license to produce marijuana for Utah’s emerging medical cannabis program. The state was authorized by law to name up to 10 cultivators, but earlier this month announced that it would initially only award eight licenses to prevent an oversupply of cannabis.

Six of the losing applicants — Pure UT, North Star Holdings, Total Health Sciences, Wild West Holding, JLPR and Tintic United Bioscience — lodged complaints about the state’s decision, claiming scoring inconsistencies and bias, among other things.

The state’s director of purchasing and general services, Christopher Hughes, on Wednesday announced his decision to dismiss the protests. The six companies can appeal his decision to the Utah Procurement Policy Board, he said.

The Salt Lake Tribune will update this story.

Stories of members walking away from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are legion. And plenty of books have been written in recent years documenting and addressing the concerns of these disaffected members.

But what can loved ones and leaders still in the faith do to help, to serve, to embrace these onetime believers?

That’s what David Ostler explores in his new book, “Bridges: Ministering to Those Who Question.” A retired business executive, Ostler, who has lived on several continents and has served as a bishop, stake president and mission president, discusses his findings in this week’s “Mormon Land” podcast.

Listen here:

Socialism is a zombie that won’t stay in the grave – no matter how many times capitalism defeats it. Every time socialism is seriously put into practice, hunger, poverty, tyranny and death follow.

Conversely, capitalism works: AEI scholar and economics professor Mark J. Perry writes that nearly 1 billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in the last 20 years, thanks to free market capitalism.

Regardless of the evidence, self-proclaimed social democrats such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren are creating a new monster out of old, tired ideas. Socialism is dominating debate on the Hill, and it will define the 2020 election.

The revival of these ideas is a sign that too many Americans are unaware of the bleak realities of socialism. Part of the reason is poor debate strategy. Critics often build socialism up into something it’s not – a “straw man,” or a caricature – that is easy to tear down but doesn’t address reality.

The straw-man approach lumps moderate advocates for socialist policies with Bolshevik revolutionaries, although they are distinct. Arguing this way creates confusion and makes it easy for democratic socialists to distance themselves from the caricature.

Pinning down what socialism means is challenging, though, because socialism does not come in a one-size-fits-all box. First, we need to understand market organization – to think of it as a spectrum where total free enterprise sits at one end and a planned market economy, also known as communism, sits at the other.

A true free enterprise system of market organization is one without any state intervention in the marketplace. This type of system ultimately leads to monopoly – an unacceptable standard of inequality.

Communism is a system of market organization where the marketplace is planned by a central committee and the state has total ownership over the means of production. The objective of such a system is the equal distribution of wealth and resources, but history shows that equality is achieved only in the sense that everyone is equal in his or her misery.

Social democrats are more moderate than communists – most are not advocating for a central planned economy or total state ownership over the means of production. The relative moderation of social democrats is part of the reason young generations seem beguiled by their arguments.

By contrast, capitalists argue that some intervention in the marketplace is necessary for maximum economic efficiency, but any intervention beyond what is necessary slows economic activity.

Capitalism isn’t perfect. There will always be winners and losers in a competitive system. Socialism is seductive because it pretends to create nothing but winners. The reality of socialism is something different. Socialism requires concentration of power. Concentration of power always leads to abuse of power.

Where in the world – today or throughout history – is a shining example of socialism that works? Where is the benevolent leader that did not resort to oppression to stifle a population grown tired of the minimum of everything?

When advocates point to the inherent fairness of socialism, they point to Norway. But Norway is a mixed economy – meaning that the enlightenment of the socialists is still funded by the success of the capitalists. And according to the Scandinavian-Polish Chamber of Commerce, Norway is moving toward privatization over government ownership.

David Harsanyi writes that the list of Scandinavian countries held up as socialist successes is short indeed compared with the list of oppressive and failed socialist regimes.

Why would we trade a system that has lifted a billion people out of poverty for one that is – as Harsanyi writes – “an attack on human dignity, and a destroyer of individual rights”?

He adds, “Socialists like to blame every inequity, the actions of every greedy criminal, every downturn, and every social ill on the injustice of capitalism. But none of them admit that capitalism has been the most effective way to eliminate poverty in history.”

Rep. Chris Stewart represents Utah’s 2nd Congressional District. This topic was discussed July 30 when Stewart spoke as part of Sutherland’s 2019 Congressional Series.

Rick B. Larsen is president of Sutherland Institute, a conservative think tank that advocates for a free market economy, civil society and community-driven solutions.

This Pat Bagley cartoon appears in The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday, Aug. 1, 2019. You can check out the past 10 Bagley editorial cartoons below:

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Provo • New BYU basketball coach Mark Pope has apparently found a replacement for TJ Haws when the all-conference point guard concludes his career next spring.

Former Arizona basketball player Alex Barcello is transferring to BYU, according to the Locked On Cougars podcast on the Zone Sports Network.

Barcello, who announced on social media in June that he was leaving the Wildcats’ program, will have to sit out a year due to NCAA transfer rules and will be eligible for the 2020-21 season. He will have two years of eligibility remaining.

Barcello’s high school coach, Neil McDonald of Tempe’s Corona del Sol, could not confirm Barcello’s commitment to BYU and said the rising junior is a private person who does not seek publicity or grant many media interviews.

As of midday Wednesday, Barcello had not announced the move on social media.

The 6-foot-2 point guard played in 30 of 32 games for Arizona last season and averaged 3.5 points and 9.7 minutes per game. He is likely taking the scholarship vacated when Nick Emery decided to retire from basketball last week.

The website AZcentral.com reported that Barcello’s playing time figured to decrease next season because the Wildcats are bringing in point guard Nico Mannion, son of former Utah Utes star Pace Mannion, and Josh Green. Both are five-star recruits and McDonald’s All-Americans.

Barcello was a three-time all-state selection in high school and was part of two state championship teams. He was The Arizona Republic’s Player of the Year after his senior year. He received a scholarship offer from Arizona coach Sean Miller after he scored 51 points as a sophomore against Gilbert’s Perry High School.

I want to say Thank You to the University of Arizona and the fans for these past two amazing years but I have decided it’s in my best interest to move in a direction that’s best for myself and my family.

— Alex Barcello (@AlexBarcello23) June 24, 2019

Barcello was a four-star prospect in the class of 2017 according to Scout.com, Rivals.com and ESPN.com and also had offers from Virginia, Butler, Indiana and Stanford out of high school.

He appeared in 21 games his freshman year at Arizona and averaged 2.4 points and 9.6 minutes per game.

Print and social media widely reported Robert Mueller’s testimony, but they barely mentioned a hearing that may be of much greater significance.

On July 25, three Republicans testified before the Senate Democratic Special Committee on the Climate Crisis in a hearing called “The Right Thing To Do: Republicans for Climate Action.”

Nick Huey, a recent Brigham Young University graduate, testified along with Republican pollster Frank Luntz and Harvard student and vice president of Students for Carbon Dividends, Kiera O’Brien, all making pleas for bipartisan leadership on climate.

Huey called on lawmakers to jettison the far left and far right and embrace “The Far Middle.” He said, “We may be from different parties, but we’re from the same planet.”

Utahns must be part of the solution, as effective action will need to occur at multiple levels of society. Right now the federal government can take the biggest step. Congress has the ability to create policy that will trickle down to every American and trickle out to every country.

Utah can lead from the Far Middle on climate. I call on Democratic Rep. Ben McAdams and his Republican colleagues, Reps. Rob Bishop, Chris Stewart and John Curtis to work together in a model of climate collaboration.

David Folland, M.D, Sandy

Steering Committee Member, Citizens Climate Lobby SLC Chapter

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Logan • The Utah State Aggies surprised many in the Mountain West Conference — and even the country — with their stellar play last season. An 11-2 conference record. A resounding victory in the New Mexico Bowl. A finish at No. 22 in the Associated Press poll.

But in 2019, all eyes are on the Aggies. Jordan Love returned to play quarterback for USU, which is already campaigning for him to win the Heisman Trophy. The Aggies are also projected to finished second in their division behind Boise State.

So as fall camp officially opens Thursday, the Aggies have their eyes set on meeting and even exceeding those expectations.

“Ultimately, win a Mountain West championship,” senior defensive end Tipa Galeai said when asked what the team’s goals were for the upcoming season. “That’s the main goal. … I’m excited with this group of guys that we have. I have no shadow of a doubt that we’ll do it this year.”

That USU group, however, consists of only nine returning starters and a new coach in Gary Andersen, who made his return to Utah State after six years of coaching elsewhere. With him comes an almost entirely new coaching staff, a smorgasbord of recruits and a mission to make the Aggies into a perennial winner.

Galeai and Love are among those returning starters. Joining them are senior running back Gerold Bright and junior linebacker David Woodard. All of them will play important parts in the success of USU this season, but it’s no secret that the bottom line for the Aggies hinges on how much better Love can be.

Love, who is the preseason pick for MWC’s offensive player of the year, had a breakout 2018. He amassed more than 3,500 passing yards and threw for 32 touchdowns. He’s already considered a top prospect for the 2020 NFL draft, and Andersen said agents are contacting him every day.

Love said he enjoys all the attention being paid toward him, but his course of action is to leave it in the background.

“At the end of the day, the way I look at it is it’s all fun stuff and it’s all on the side,” Love said. “It’s good to look at and good to see, but at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter unless you do what you need to do with the team.”

Andersen said the majority of his players are healthy entering fall camp. And with so many new faces and so few returning starters, this preseason will be competitive, Andersen said.

“There’s a lot of kids on this football team that want to strap that starter tag next to their name and are excited to compete,” Andersen said. “So that’ll be fun to watch.”

Andersen has already slated some starters on his depth chart — Love, Bright, Woodward, Galeai and defensive end Justus Te’i are some of those names. Generally speaking, however, it appears that the majority of the spots on both sides of the ball are wide open. Wide receiver, many of the linebacker positions, and practically the entire defensive backfield are areas Andersen mentioned that needed ironing out.

There will be at least some continuity for the Aggies compared to last season. Several players said the team’s offensive system will be largely similar to the one it employed in 2018. That’s good news considering how many categories in the MWC that USU led with its high-octane offense. Utah State led the nation in scoring drives under one minute (29), was second in the nation in scoring (47.5 points per game) and third in average margin of victory (25.3 points).

Woodward said about half of the defensive scheme will change this season. He added he has experienced new coaches and defenses “pretty much every year,” so he’s familiar with changes in philosophy. But 2019 will be different in that regard.

“This year is going to be one where we kind of get to keep some of the stuff that we did last year,” Woodward said.

The fall camp is the final opportunity for the Aggies to solve some of the mysteries facing them before the games start to matter. By all indications, they’re ready to go.

“This is a team that’s expected to come in and play well,” Andersen said. “They expect that. They understand their deficiencies and they expect that they’ve made strides on those deficiencies. We’ve gone through summer and we’ve gone through winter and we’ve gone through spring ball. So we’ll see how we’ve done in those areas when we go through camp.”

Washington • Watching Democratic presidential aspirants is like watching, a century ago, the 1919 World Series, when discerning spectators thought: Some of the White Sox are trying to lose. Michael Boskin, chairman of President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and currently at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, pays the Democrats the injurious compliment of taking seriously their aspirations, which are characterized by a disqualifying flippancy. For example:

Medicare for All is popular (when depriving 217 million people of their private insurance goes unmentioned) because, Boskin notes, under Medicare today "most of its costs are paid by taxpayers, not the beneficiaries themselves. But if it covers everybody, there will be no one outside the system to subsidize the recipients." This will mean "much larger, politically determined taxes and cross-subsidies," and rationing of health care as in Canada and Europe "where long waits are the rule."

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ plan promises no co-pays, no deductibles and no premiums, so pricing medical care at zero will produce a surge in demand for services from a Medicare system that already “faces unfunded liabilities more than twice the national debt” ($22 trillion). And the Part A Hospital Insurance Fund “won’t be able to pay all its bills in a few years.” And: “Current Medicare, with its low reimbursement rates, would be unsustainable without the large role played by the higher-paying private (primarily employer-based) plans in keeping doctors and hospitals in business.”

Democratic promises include a $1,000 per month universal basic income, $1,000 "baby bonds" for every newborn, plus up to $2,000 per year until non-weathly babies are 18, free universal preschool and community college (perhaps four-year colleges, too), expanded child-care subsidies, rent subsidies (which will increase demand for, thereby increasing the cost of, rental units), complete forgiveness of $1.6 trillion of student debt, and on and on.

Boskin notes that the Social Security 2100 Act, which has 210 Democratic co-sponsors, would pay for the largest benefits expansion since 1972 by raising the payroll tax almost 20% to 14.8%, and uncapping the maximum earnings subject to the tax. Then add the promised 70% top income tax rate, a 3% wealth tax, a financial transactions tax, a one-third increase in the corporate rate and increased taxation of capital gains. Boskin says the 70% rate, "an average 7% top state personal tax rate," and the 14.8% payroll tax by themselves would mean "a 91.8% marginal tax rate." And even this would not come close to paying for the Democrats' promised spending explosion.

Being scientifically as well as numerically illiterate, some Democratic candidates have embraced the Green New Deal's promise to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from American agriculture, which is essential to feeding the world's 7.5 billion people. Boskin says this:

Fossil fuels are essential to tillage, transportation, grain drying, manufacturing fertilizer, pesticides, farm equipment and farm electricity. Fertilizers increase U.S. wheat and corn yields 70% and more than 100%, respectively. President George W. Bush's greatly increased ethanol mandates for vehicle fuels caused a decline in food crop acreage, which caused a 20% to 40% increase in corn prices, which increased hunger in corn-importing countries (e.g., Mexico, Egypt and in sub-Saharan Africa).

Various candidates have embraced the Green New Deal’s “aspirational” objective of making America’s approximately 100 million buildings fully energy efficient in 10 years. Boskin: “That would require retrofitting well over 4,000 buildings an hour for 12 years (almost 2,000 per hour for 15 years for Joe Biden’s ‘retrofit 50 percent’ plan).” However, “just installing solar in a typical home takes two to three months on average.”

The "party of science," as Democrats advertise themselves, is not the party of arithmetic. Many Democrats, however, think budgetary arithmetic has been rendered irrelevant by "modern monetary theory," which says:

A government that controls its money supply need never run short of it, and spending can substantially surpass government revenues as long as interest rates remain low. So, government, especially if it can strongly influence interest rates, is largely liberated from the essence of the human condition: scarcity. Hence everything is affordable. Republicans ridicule this while practicing it. The recent bipartisan budget deal increases spending $320 billion over two years, which USA Today notes is, on an annualized basis, much bigger than Barack Obama's 10-year stimulus package of about $800 billion.

Perhaps 2019 is 1919 with both parties being the White Sox, some of whom tried to lose that year's World Series, and did. Unfortunately, in 2020 both parties cannot succeed at failing.

George Will’s email address is georgewill@washpost.com.

Los Angeles • A U.S. Navy fighter jet crashed Wednesday in Death Valley National Park, injuring seven people who were at a scenic overlook where aviation enthusiasts routinely watch military pilots speeding low through a chasm dubbed Star Wars Canyon, officials said.

The crash sent dark smoke billowing in the air, said Aaron Cassell, who was working at his family's Panamint Springs Resort about 10 miles (16 kilometers) away and was the first to report the crash to park dispatch.

"I just saw a black mushroom cloud go up," Cassell told The Associated Press. "Typically you don't see a mushroom cloud in the desert."

A search was underway for the pilot of the single-seat F/A-18 Super Hornet that was on a routine training mission, said Lt. Cmdr. Lydia Bock, spokeswoman for Naval Air Station Lemoore in California's Central Valley.

"The status of the pilot is unknown at this time," Bock said about four hours after the crash.

A military helicopter searched for the pilot.

Ambulances were sent to the crash site near Father Crowley Overlook, but it wasn't clear if anyone was transported for further medical treatment, said park spokesman Patrick Taylor. He said initial reports were that seven park visitors had minor injuries.

The lookout point about 160 miles (257 kilometers) north of Los Angeles is popular with photographers and aviation buffs who gawk at jets flying in the steep, narrow canyon.

U.S. and foreign militaries train pilots and test jets in the gorge officially called Rainbow Canyon near the park's western entrance. Military flights there date back to World War II.

The chasm got its nickname because mineral-rich soil and red, gray and pink walls bring to mind the home planet of "Star Wars" character Luke Skywalker.

Training flights are almost a daily feature with jets thundering below the rim of the canyon and passing so close viewers can see the pilots' facial expressions.

Cassell said he heard jets roaring through the area and then saw the cloud of smoke.

"It looked like a bomb," Cassell said. "To me that speaks of a very violent impact."

A jet that was following the downed craft pulled up and began circling, Cassell said. He didn't see any parachute.

His father drove up to the area after the crash and saw a large black scorch mark and shattered parts of the jet scattered throughout the area between the parking lot and lookout, Cassell said. A nose cone from the jet was the size of a bowling ball and the rest of the debris was no larger than a ball cap.

The jet was from strike fighter squadron VFA-151 stationed at Lemoore. The squadron is part of an air group attached to the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis.

The Super Hornet is a twin-engine warplane designed to fly from either aircraft carriers or ground bases on both air-superiority and ground-attack missions.

___

Associated Press reporter John Antczak also contributed to this story.

___

A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Panamint Springs Resort as Panamint Springs Ranch.

Qualifying medalist Kerstin Fotu remained hot Wednesday in the Women's State Amateur, winning two matches without having to play beyond the 12th hole at Logan Country Club.

Fotu, an incoming BYU freshman from Highland, will meet Kyla Smith, a Southern Utah University golfer from St. George, in Thursday morning’s semifinals. The other match is between Laura Gerner, a University of Idaho golfer from Kaysville, and 15-year-old Grace Summerhays, who spends the summers in Davis County. The 18-hole final match will follow in the afternoon. The Utah Golf Association will honor a first-time champion; no former winners were in the starting field in Logan.

Fotu made quick work of each match Wednesday, playing as the No. 1 seed after shooting 71-70 in the stroke-play portion of the tournament. She took wins of 7 and 6 over Cora Mickelsen in the first round and 8 and 7 over Launa Wilson in the quarterfinals.

“Everything in my game, I’m pretty confident with,” Fotu said, describing her strategy as “don’t hold back.”

Summerhays took the same approach in her two matches; she didn’t have to go beyond the 13th hole. In the quarterfinals, she was a 7-and-6 winner over former State Am runner-up Anna Kennedy of BYU.

Kennedy had staged a remarkable rally against Weber State golfer Taitum Beck in the round of 16, winning Nos. 16, 17 and 18 with two birdies and a par to force extra holes. Kennedy then won the match with a par on the 20th hole.

BYU’s Naomi Soifua, who triple-bogeyed her last hole Tuesday and barely made the cut for match play, staged Wednesday’s biggest upset. She took a 3-and-1 win over SUU’s Poy Prasurtwong, the No. 2 seed, in the round of 16. But her momentum didn’t last, as Gerner beat her 1 up in the quarterfinals. The match was tied until Gerner birdied the par-4 No. 16.

Donald Trump’s ad hominem diatribes against perceived enemies has reached a new low in his castigating Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight.

Over the weekend, the president issued no less than 15 highly negative tweets about Cummings, who has been in the House of Representative for 14 years.

The president does not do well with those whom he deems are attacking him. His language is rough, tough and basically off-kilter, certainly not befitting our chief executive. It is likely that Trump’s criticism will get more vehement as we near the 2020 election.

Hopefully the potential Democratic candidates will be able to raise the level of discussion. They may have to ignore Trump’s negativity.

Louis Borgenicht, Salt Lake City

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Provo • On the first play of the first team session of BYU’s first preseason training camp practice, sophomore quarterback Zach Wilson cocked his surgically repaired right shoulder back and threw an 80-yard touchdown strike to Aleva Hifo.

Any questions?

“He threw it about 60 yards in the air,” said quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator Aaron Roderick. “I thought he looked sharp the rest of the day. We had him on a pitch count — about 62 throws — and he looked great. We will keep him right there for awhile and build on it.”

For his part, Wilson humbly said that Hifo — also coming off offseason surgery — made the play work with a juke on the safety and that the ball only traveled 40-50 yards in the air.

More importantly, Wilson said that if the rivalry game against Utah was tomorrow instead of Aug. 29, he would be ready to play after having had shoulder surgery last January and throwing for the first time June 1.

“The problem is just endurance, of course,” he said. “I haven’t been throwing long routes as as much as I have wanted, but you have to be smart, you have to be on a pitch count, all that kinda stuff. But the game fortunately is not tomorrow, so I don’t have to worry about that.”

Baylor Romney, who is battling with Joe Critchlow to be the third-string quarterback behind Wilson and fellow redshirt freshman Jaren Hall, said Wilson made all the throws and was as sharp as he was when he went 18 for 18 in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.

Wilson threw only a couple short routes in the 20-minute media viewing portion of the practice, which was held inside the Indoor Practice Facility became it rained intermittently all afternoon in Provo.

“Zach is going to be fine,” head coach Kalani Sitake said. “I have no worries about Zach.”

BYU coach Kalani Sitake on the first day of BYU preseason training camp. pic.twitter.com/0uZpOkPN3K

— Jay Drew (@drewjay) August 1, 2019

Sitake was pleased with what he saw on the first day.

“I can tell these guys worked really hard in the offseason,” he said. “A lot of coaches will say that, but it was pretty evident in the way they executed.”

Sitake addressed several other offseason issues, absences, and position changes:

• Wide receiver Neil Pau’u, who pleaded guilty to driving while impaired last week, is on the roster and will enroll in school in the fall, but will not play this season. The junior, who was on the sidelines Wednesday, will redshirt and still participate in team activities.

“He’s considered on the team and he will still be around the guys,” Sitake said.

Sitake addresses the status of Neil Pau’u at the 30 second mark. pic.twitter.com/Gh8qq6nHiG

— Jay Drew (@drewjay) August 1, 2019

• Oft-injured senior Kavika Fonua has moved from running back to linebacker and will compete with Max Tooley and Jackson Kaufusi for the starting middle linebacker spot, assistant head coach Ed Lamb said.

“We feel like we have a lot of guys at the running back position and he will be able to help us out there at linebacker,” Sitake added.

• Tight end Joe Tukuafu is back on the roster after missing the entire 2018 season for personal reasons.

• Former quarterback Beau Hoge has decided to retire from football and pursue a master’s degree at BYU. Hoge was part of Bronco Mendenhall’s 2015 signing class, but was hampered by injuries his entire career.

• Defensive back Austin McChesney announced Monday that he is retiring from football due to the lingering effects of multiple knee injuries. The former Lone Peak star hurt his knee against Cincinnati in 2016 and his other knee during the first week of camp in 2017 and made the announcement on Twitter a few days ago.

McChesney’s brother, Jackson, recently returned from a church mission and will compete for playing time at running back this fall.

• Another defensive back, junior college transfer Eric Ellison, is not on the roster and will reportedly enroll at BYU in January after he wraps up some academic work at Mt. San Jacinto College in California. Ellison was a three-star recruit who prepped at Banning High School and was coached by former BYU star Casey Mazzotta in junior college.

• Linebackers Zayne Anderson and Isaiah Kaufusi practiced Wednesday after having had offseason surgeries and are ticketed to get the starts at outside linebacker in Sitake’s 4-3 system, Lamb said.

South Salt Lake • The new homeless resource center scheduled to open this fall in South Salt Lake is facing additional delays — this time as a result of a $13 million past-due bill on construction and a failure to pay subcontractors.

Shelter the Homeless, the nonprofit that owns the center, requested a short-term bridge loan from Salt Lake County in May to complete construction on time, but it has several “outstanding items” to finish before that funding can be approved.

“The reality now is that we can no longer stand by saying that construction delays are a result of weather or permitting issues,” Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, a member of the 15-person Shelter the Homeless board, wrote to the other members Wednesday. “Moving forward, construction delays will be a result of payment issues, which puts the responsibility solely on Shelter the Homeless."

The center was scheduled to open by June 30, the deadline for the emergency downtown shelter’s closure. The date to close The Road Home in Salt Lake City has been pushed back twice, now to sometime in October — due in part to complications getting the necessary approvals for construction in South Salt Lake and also as a result of a rainy spring.

Now, with some subcontractors not coming to work because they haven’t been paid, the completion date of the 300-bed men’s resource center in South Salt Lake has been pushed from Aug. 31 to Sept. 17, Cox said. The timeline for moving clients into the Geraldine E. King Women’s Resource Center in Salt Lake City, meant to happen early August, may need to be moved to Aug. 13, he said.

“At this point, it is critical we meet the established timelines,” he wrote in his letter. “Every time we delay, we lose credibility with key partners. As of right now, we are at a point of relying on Shelter the Homeless staff to produce the necessary items for Salt Lake County in order to secure the funds for the construction completion.”

Cox said the board needs to:

• commit to a date that it will provide the required documentation to Salt Lake County
• work with County Mayor Jenny Wilson to determine the timeline on securing funds
• establish a definite completion date
• instruct the executive director to identify any items causing delays

The state has appropriated $16 million to help fund construction of the shelters, with fundraising expected to make up the rest of the costs. Executive Director Preston Cochrane said in a message Wednesday night that Shelter the Homeless has raised about 70% of the total capital for construction of the three new homeless resource centers, with state funding representing 27% and private funding 43%. Securing the bridge funding will help prevent further delays, he said.

Nate McDonald, assistant deputy director for the state’s Department of Workforce Services, which signed on to Cox’s email and is helping to oversee the transition in homeless services, said Wednesday night that his office had received confirmation after Cox’s email went out that the few last-minute construction items to be completed at the Geraldine E. King center would be done on schedule. That means the date to move clients there would likely not be affected, he said.

In addition to delays, the South Salt Lake homeless shelter at 3380 S. 1000 West also faces the threat of a state takeover.

The Shelter the Homeless board voted last week in favor of proceeding with a process to convey the shelter property to the state amid a standoff over a permit needed to open a new homeless resource center within the city’s boundaries.

Among the sticking points are several requirements South Salt Lake calls “non-negotiables” — including that the shelter turn away walk-ins unless they have a referral; that a person’s average length of stay not exceed 90 days unless the mayor declares an emergency; and that resource center staff check each client for outstanding arrest warrants.

“South Salt Lake’s conditions do not require the shelter to turn people into the cold,” Mayor Cherie Wood told the City Council during a facility update at its meeting Wednesday. “Rather, they require the shelter to make certain that people who come in the door are evaluated.”

The city also wants compensation for all police and fire service to the resource center and is asking Shelter the Homeless to pick up the tab for whatever public safety costs the state doesn’t cover — a burden the nonprofit says it can’t carry.

The board is expected to ratify its decision to turn the process over to the state at its Sept. 4 meeting. Utah officials would then get regulatory authority over the site and would likely impose terms and conditions similar to the other two shelters.

At the same time, Wood said the city is moving forward with its own processes and is on track to submit the conditional use permit to the Planning Commission for approval in mid-August. The city is also submitting a revised draft of that proposal to Shelter the Homeless on Thursday, she said, with the hope that Cox’s letter represents a turning point for conversations about a state takeover.

“I think that Lt. Gov. Cox speaks in a manner that the state has no plan to take over this facility,” she told council members, refusing to speculate about what might happen otherwise.

But McDonald, with the Department of Workforce Services, dismissed those sentiments Wednesday night.

“There was nothing here that changed anything about the resolution,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune. “If the resolution did pass and is ratified by Shelter the Homeless, the state is prepared to move forward with it.”