Utah Legislative Math – 2+2=duck
Posted By JM Bell on March 20, 2009
See if you can follow this with me. I hope it’s an error on the KUTV website, but I don’t think it is.
HERE is the headline …
Huntsman Signs $6,000 Housing Grants Into Law
That’s pretty cool, isn’t it? Here is the first paragraph …
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – In an effort to jump start Utah’s sluggish housing market and put thousands in the construction industry back to work, Gov. Jon Huntsman signed a bill into law Thursday that will award $6,000 grants to people purchasing a newly built home.
Hey … that’s a bill that that just might help a little bill. Kudos, bill! Next – this is where I run into trouble …
The 1,600 grants are intended to eliminate a glut of roughly 3,000 newly built homes on the market that have never been lived in.
Umm … is 3,000 “roughly” twice as many as 1,600? If, for some unexplainable reason, you were never able to figure out why the state was short a few hundred thousand on teacher bonuses – this might help explain it.
Oh there’s an easy explanation for this. It’s that Utah Republican magic, like “back-filling” a budget and calling it lowering taxes, putting a flat tax in place and then bitching about the stimulus check as you run to cash it because that flat tax left a gigantic hole in the budget, etc.
Stop asking questions now. They don’t like that.
Like all things by Utah politicians, it’s not being done to help people, it’s being done to help big business, and poorly.
In the tradition of Orrin Hatch’s fine example they saw a problem, and their solution was to only provide help to a small percentage of the people who need affordable housing. But, it never really was about affordable housing, it was to help Kennecott with the inventory of new homes at Daybreak. Why shouldn’t we, it clogs up our roads, increases pollution, and creates further urban sprawl for our small businesses to suffer.
Makes perfect sense now that we look at everyone who will suffer. Thanks Utah Legislature!