1984 is George Orwell’s cautionary tale of a dystopian society where the government maintains its control by regularly and systemically disseminating false “information” to the people it governed.

As I watched Donald Trump deliver his State of the Union address at the end of February, it felt like we were living an Orwellian nightmare. And that was before March, and Iran.

Every president enjoys the freedom to spin his State of the Union. Both Republican and Democrats exaggerate their accomplishments, minimize their failures, and scapegoat the opposing party. We have grown quite used to this.

But never before has an American president so blatantly, so repeatedly, and so shamelessly lied to the American people.

Let’s start with the economy. Trump claimed he inherited an economic disaster, with record inflation, stagnant growth, and a loss of manufacturing jobs. In reality, The Economist in fall 2024 called the U.S. economy “the envy of the world,” praising how successfully we had rebounded from the COVID recession.

Yes, inflation reached 9% during Biden’s term, but in 2024 it dropped to just below 3%, and is now around 2.4%. However, job growth has fallen dramatically, from 1.4 million jobs added in 2024 to just 181,000 in 2025. Unemployment was at 4% when Biden left office, and is now at 4.3%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the United States lost 108,000 factory jobs in 2025 (despite all the Trump tariffs) and the trade deficit in goods grew.

Yes, the stock market did indeed hit record highs in 2025. But the S&P rose 24% in 2024, compared to 18% in 2025. And GDP grew only 2.2% in 2025, lower than any year of Biden’s presidency, and significantly less than the 2.8% growth in 2024.

Trump claimed gas prices are below $2.30 a gallon in most states. In fact, only two states were below $2.50, and the national average was $2.95. Trump did not “lift 2.4 million people off food stamps” — almost all were kicked off by new eligibility rules.

Tariffs are not paid by foreign countries. They are paid by the U.S. importer and mostly passed on to consumers. Studies estimate tariffs cost the average American family about $1,700 a year in higher prices. Tariff revenue cannot replace income taxes. The United States collected about $300 billion in tariff revenue last year, compared to $2.4 trillion in income tax revenue in 2024. And tariffs are regressive, while the income tax is progressive.

Trump claimed eliminating fraud would balance the federal budget. This is absurd. A 2024 GAO report estimated that even if all fraud could be completely eliminated (totally unrealistic), it would reduce the federal deficit by one-third. And the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” will increase the national deficit significantly. In 2025, the deficit grew another $1.78 trillion. The CBO projects the deficit to be $1.9 trillion for FY 2026 and $2 trillion or more in 2028. Trump is making our deficit worse, not better.

Trump did not inherit rampant crime at home. In fact, violent crime and murders have been declining steadily since 2022.

US drug prices are not the lowest in the world. In fact, the median list price for brand name drugs rose 4% last year.

Trump has not protected Medicaid. To pay for the tax cuts in the “Big Beautiful Bill,” he cut $990 billion in Medicaid spending. The CBO estimated that 7.5 million Americans would lose their health insurance and another 2.1 million would lose coverage because of changes to the Affordable Care Act.

I could go on and on, but the point is simple. The public deserves a president who will tell us the truth. Senators and U.S. House members should demand honest and accurate information. Watching one side of the aisle stand up and applaud as lie after lie is told will not produce a more perfect union. It serves only to divide us further.

You cannot rationally choose among competing policy proposals if you are buried under an avalanche of falsehoods.

Gene DeSantis is a Kamas resident.

The post Tapping an Orwellian nightmare appeared first on Park Record.

One of the first lessons I learned as a young New York Assembly staffer was about budgets. Every budget reflects choices, a balancing of competing priorities. Needs and wants are virtually unlimited, but the resources to pay for them are finite. The budget process is a competition of sorts, as various stakeholders attempt to claim their piece of the pie.

Voters don’t make any of those budget choices. They elect representatives and those representatives choose for them. Your recourse as a taxpayer is to not vote for those representatives whose budget choices you disagree with.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the budget choices made by our Utah senators and House members, and see if you agree.

Our Utah delegation all voted in 2024 for Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which allocated $112.4 billion to the Department of Homeland Security. Within the department, the amount assigned to Immigration and Custom Enforcement was $85 billion — $10 billion in base funding and a $75 billion “supplement” than can be drawn on over four years.

To give some perspective, the total ICE budget 10 years ago was less than $6 billion. In 2024 it was just $10 billion. ICE is now the highest-funded U.S. law enforcement agency, with a budget larger than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. The ICE budget today is larger than the total military spending of many countries.

With that new money, ICE instituted signing bonuses of $50,000. The number of ICE officers swelled to 22,000 (larger than nearly every police department in America). The new hires received 47 days of training (in honor of our 47^th president) and were sent out to U.S. cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul to round up illegal immigrants and to carry out the mass detention and deportation that Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller and Donald Trump ordered.

We now have heavily armed, masked ICE agents smashing car windows and dragging people out of their cars; breaking into the home of a US citizen and dragging him out into the snow wearing boxer shorts and Cross; and shooting and killing two U.S. citizens (Renee Good and Alex Pretti). 

ICE insists it is targeting “violent criminals”. But as of Nov. 30, 2025, 74% of the people ICE locked up in detention centers had no criminal record whatsoever. Many of the detainees with a criminal conviction were guilty of only minor violations. Some of those arrested were U.S. citizens.

The same bill that gave huge increases to ICE also cut taxes. On average, the “BBB “Big Beautiful Bill” reduced taxes for the wealthiest 1% by over $50,000 per year. The top 10% got their taxes cut by $14,700.

Put another way, the bill will give $1 trillion in tax cuts to the top 1% — paid for in part by cutting food assistance (SNAP benefits), Medicaid and Affordable Care Act subsidies. And still the deficit swells.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that Affordable Care Act tax credits cost about $92 billion in 2025. That’s not much more than the $85 billion that went to ICE. Would we be better off with more Affordable Care Act subsidies and fewer ICE agents?

Are we as a nation better served with massive tax cuts benefiting primarily the top 1%, or with more support for child care, clean energy, mass transit, food assistance, environmental protection and caring for our veterans?

Budgets are choices, and they reflect moral judgments. If you think your senators (Mike Lee and John Curtis) and your representative (Mike Kennedy) made wise choices, let them know.

But if you think an army of masked ICE agents five times larger than the Minneapolis Police Department is inciting unrest and inflaming tensions; if you think we are better served with Affordable Care Act tax credits than by an ICE that dwarfs all other federal law enforcement; if you think tax breaks that go disproportionately to the wealthiest should instead be used to help the neediest, then tell them. They work for you.

Their budget choices are supposed to represent your wishes. The “Big Beautiful Bill” does not reflect my moral judgment, and it probably does not reflect yours.

Gene DeSantis is a Kamas resident.

The post Do U.S. budget choices reflect our morality? appeared first on Park Record.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation in 1970, the average American spent $353 a year on health care.By 2023, that figure had exploded to $14,570 per person.

Even adjusting for inflation, that means spending grew from $2,151 in 1970 dollars (adjusted to 2023) to $14,570 an increase of almost sevenfold.

Put another way, in 1960 health-care spending accounted for roughly 5% of GDP. Today, that figure is 20% — which means $1 of every $5 in the U.S. economy is spent on healthcare. That figure keeps growing, and it’s unsustainable.

Medical expenses have always outpaced inflation, but over time that disparity has exploded. Even though the United States spends far more than every other nation on health care, we have little to show for it. At 79.3 years, we rank 55^th in life expectancy, far below other industrialized countries like Japan (84.7), South Korea (84.3), Italy (83.7), United Arab Emirates (82.9), Canada (82.6), New Zealand (82.1), the UK (81.3), Chile (81.2), and even Albania (79.6).

Our system of health insurance is badly fragmented. Poor people get their insurance from Medicaid. Most people over 65 get covered by Medicare. Many working people have some coverage (of widely varying cost and quality) through their employer. Still others buy insurance in the private marketplace.

The most recent data from 2024 shows 8.2% of Americans — roughly 27 million people — have no health insurance at all. And that number is sure to grow if premiums jump.

The net result of this inefficient patchwork system is that we pay far more than the rest of the developed world with worse outcomes and tens of millions of people getting no preventative care at all.

That means problems that could have been detected and treated early on are left undiagnosed until the person ends up acutely sick in an emergency room. There, the prognosis is much worse and the cost of treatment is exponentially greater.

This month, Congress is debating whether to extend COVID-era health insurance subsidies. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” ended those subsidies. Democrats want to extend them for three more years. The next few weeks will determine what, if anything, is done to prevent more than 20 million Americans from getting walloped with higher premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

But extending the COVID era subsidies is literally just putting a band-aid on a gaping wound.

The real solution, universal health care, is politically impossible. Bernie Sanders has tilted at this windmill for many years, and it simply is not happening.

When Obama got the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, he could not get enough Democratic votes (and no Republican votes) to adopt a public option. This compromise proposal would have allowed Americans to choose between keeping their existing insurance plan or opting into Medicare, where their premiums would be based on their income. 

A public option has existed for ages in higher education. Students can go to a public college (like the University of Utah) or pay more money to go to a private college. Similarly, parents can choose to send their elementary or secondary school age children to a private school or their local public school. Both the public and private options coexist quite well.

A public option allowing people to enroll in Medicare could be phased in over time. For example, we can start with people aged 55-64, then a year or two later 44-54, and so on, until that option eventually was made available to everyone regardless of age.

Medicare is more efficient than private insurance. No money is wasted on shareholder dividends/profits, big CEO salaries, advertising, fancy offices, etc. Overhead costs are minimal. Most Medicare dollars go to hospitals, doctors, pharmacists and other providers. Providers rarely have to wait and refile to get claims paid. The system functions smoothly.

Medigap insurance (also known as Medicare supplements) is readily available and quite reasonably priced, and consumers could purchase them to cover the 20% of costs that Medicare doesn’t cover.

In the long term, extending ACA subsidies is at best a stopgap measure and not a real solution. Lawmakers need to look at a Medicare public option to help ensure that eventually all Americans have basic health care coverage at a price they can afford.

The other huge cost driver — RX drug prices — will be the subject of another piece. In the meantime, let’s hope our elected representatives don’t put a huge lump of coal in our Christmas stocking.

Gene DeSantis is a Kamas resident.

The post The health insurance debacle appeared first on Park Record.

We are taught in civics class that it’s our duty to vote, to choose the legislators we want to represent us. With the sole exception of statewide races, that is a myth. We do not choose our legislators. They select us.

Gerrymandering — the drawing of district lines to favor the party drawing the electoral map — has existed for more than a century. Many decades ago, as a young New York State Assembly lawyer, I remember watching legislators fight over a boundary line, trying to move a problematic block of voters into someone else’s district or shift a reliable block of voters into theirs.

Today, with supercomputers, the ability to amass highly detailed and accurate demographic data, and using the proven techniques of “packing” and “cracking,” it’s pretty easy for the party in power to virtually eliminate competitive races.

“Packing” refers to placing as many of the voters of one party into as few districts as possible. The result is that a packed district is won decisively (say 80-20) rather than having multiple districts that are won 55-45.

“Cracking” is the opposite. The mapmaker splits a group of voters with the same political affiliation across many districts, thus diluting their voting strength and making it impossible for them to form a majority in any single district.

How successful is gerrymandering? Look at the U.S. House of Representatives, where President Trump ordered Texas to redraw their House maps to create five more reliably red districts. And look at California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom and California voters responded by drawing new lines that created five more reliably blue districts.

The Cook Political Report analyzes the competitiveness of House races. They currently list 187 seats as solid red (meaning Democrats have virtually no chance of winning) and 179 as solid blue (Republicans have no shot). Another 25 House seats are likely or lean red, and 28 are likely or lean blue.

That means of 435 House seats, only 16 are toss-ups, races where each side has an equal shot at winning. Think about that: Fewer than 4% of House races are truly competitive. The outcome has been all but preordained in the other 96%.

Look at North Carolina, a fairly purple state. They elected a Democrat as governor, and will likely elect a Democrat (former Gov. Roy Cooper) to the Senate in 2026. But their House seats are split 10 red and four blue. An excellent job of gerrymandering! Or look at another purple state, Georgia, with a Republican governor, two Democratic senators, but a House delegation of nine Republicans and five Democrats. Gerrymandered quite efficiently!

Democrats are equally skilled at gerrymandering. In Maryland, for example, there are seven blue House seats and just one red. And there is discussion of redrawing the lines to make it eight to zero!

I often hear well-intentioned people ask why Republicans and Democrats cannot work out a compromise. Why can’t everyone just give a little? Why did our government shut down for 43 days? Why won’t anyone compromise?

Well, the answer is simple. If you are the House member in a safe red seat or in a safe blue seat, you are really not concerned about the general election in November. Your district is reliably red or blue.

What you need to worry about is a primary. And the worst thing you can do is move towards the center, and attract a primary challenger from your right flank (if you’re a Republican incumbent) or from your left flank (if you’re a Democratic incumbent).

Thus, there is zero incentive to compromise. Compromise is politically risky, fraught with political peril!

How did the federal government shutdown finally end? House members never moved an inch. But Senators (where lines cannot be gerrymandered) compromised. Now look at the eight Democrats who voted to end the shutdown: two from Neveda (a purple state), two from New Hampshire (a purple state), one from Maine (purple), one from Virginia (purple), one from Pennsylvania (purple), and one (Durbin, Illinois) who is retiring.

The lesson is crystal clear: Legislators who are more concerned about primaries than general elections have zero incentive to compromise. It makes them look weak and exposes them to the risk of a primary challenger. Legislators who are more concerned with winning a general election understand that they must compromise, must seek the center, appeal to more moderate voters.

The polarization we see in Washington is a direct and predictable result of gerrymandering. And we are now witnessing gerrymandering on steroids, before the midterms, and totally unrelated to normal reapportionment (following new Census data showing population shifts).

If you truly want to see legislators work together across party lines, if you support consensus building, if you want more compromise and less partisan gridlock, the solution is simple. Make more districts competitive. End gerrymandering, and more politicians will move towards the center.

Government works far better if districts are fairly drawn by neutral parties. Unless and until that happens, partisan gridlock is inevitable.

Hopefully Utah’s courts will support an end to gerrymandered lines. We shall see.

The post How gerrymandering is killing compromise appeared first on Park Record.