Utah is, geographically, gorgeous. You have four seasons, all relatively mild, great mountains for recreation in any season, and you're only five hours from Vegas. But, there is a couple of problems politically: The first, which most of this has been hitting pretty hard, is that these people not only know exactly what God wants them to do (which can be annoying enough) but, they know exactly what God expects of you, too, and are going to do their damnedest to make sure that you do it, even small things; like driving: I have time and again seen some little mini-van pull into the fast line of an interstate directly in front of someone going an ungodly 75 miles an hour, just to hold them to the posted 65 (or below), and refuse to move. Ask truckers who pass through here, they have a term for it: The "Mormon blockade".
The second issue is, these people want to believe that in spite of their size, they are "Big Fish" and make an impact; they think that they are more important if they have the same concerns as a major metropolis, and so they make them up. A few years ago they had stats all over the place showing that we had a worse gang problem than LA(!) and implemented a bunch of rediculous control laws; I have never had such a low impact on my life from gang activity as here. Then, they have built a "light-rail" system here (which, in defiance of conventional wisdom, runs at surface level and competes with traffic for right-of-way); in the first year they had seven fatalities (two before it was even operational) in crossing collisions. Now, light rail, subways, elevateds: these are designed to conquer the problem of a lot of people in a small amount of area: but here, they have the opposite problem: hardly anybody sprawled out over hundreds of square miles. The bus system has had to resort to non-collection of fees to ride the light rail and actually routing passengers through the light rail system, even if it adds hours to their trip, in order to increase ridership. Oh, as a further gotcha: When an increase in taxes to pay for the light rail was put to the ballot at a general election, the proposal was soundly defeated: but, officials figured that their flock was just confused, and sold lands bought through taxes to fund it.
Now, the reason why you have naive numbskulls running the government here is because, regardless of what the majority may or may not want, they are forced to elect as officials people who are supported by the local religion; you are usually reduced to voting between "Brother" So-and-so, or "Sister" So-and-so.
As you can tell, I've been stuck in Salt Lake for the past six years or so, and have just had the thousands of countless inconvieniences about this place stack up past my usual high-tolerance level. It is really to bad that the society here detracts from the natural beauty; they could have so much going for them!
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Utah is, geographically, gorgeous. You have four seasons, all relatively mild, great mountains for recreation in any season, and you're only five hours from Vegas. But, there is a couple of problems politically: The first, which most of this has been hitting pretty hard, is that these people not only know exactly what God wants them to do (which can be annoying enough) but, they know exactly what God expects of you, too, and are going to do their damnedest to make sure that you do it, even small things; like driving: I have time and again seen some little mini-van pull into the fast line of an interstate directly in front of someone going an ungodly 75 miles an hour, just to hold them to the posted 65 (or below), and refuse to move. Ask truckers who pass through here, they have a term for it: The "Mormon blockade". The second issue is, these people want to believe that in spite of their size, they are "Big Fish" and make an impact; they think that they are more important if they have the same concerns as a major metropolis, and so they make them up. A few years ago they had stats all over the place showing that we had a worse gang problem than LA(!) and implemented a bunch of rediculous control laws; I have never had such a low impact on my life from gang activity as here. Then, they have built a "light-rail" system here (which, in defiance of conventional wisdom, runs at surface level and competes with traffic for right-of-way); in the first year they had seven fatalities (two before it was even operational) in crossing collisions. Now, light rail, subways, elevateds: these are designed to conquer the problem of a lot of people in a small amount of area: but here, they have the opposite problem: hardly anybody sprawled out over hundreds of square miles. The bus system has had to resort to non-collection of fees to ride the light rail and actually routing passengers through the light rail system, even if it adds hours to their trip, in order to increase ridership. Oh, as a further gotcha: When an increase in taxes to pay for the light rail was put to the ballot at a general election, the proposal was soundly defeated: but, officials figured that their flock was just confused, and sold lands bought through taxes to fund it. Now, the reason why you have naive numbskulls running the government here is because, regardless of what the majority may or may not want, they are forced to elect as officials people who are supported by the local religion; you are usually reduced to voting between "Brother" So-and-so, or "Sister" So-and-so. As you can tell, I've been stuck in Salt Lake for the past six years or so, and have just had the thousands of countless inconvieniences about this place stack up past my usual high-tolerance level. It is really to bad that the society here detracts from the natural beauty; they could have so much going for them!