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Jennifer Rubin: On Korea, Trump has already been ‘played’

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President Donald Trump looks with disdain on those who get snookered, which is odd since he’s the easiest of marks for anyone with a red carpet and a batch of insincere compliments.

His defensiveness about being “played” was evident when asked about the upcoming meeting with North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un. “We’re not going to be played, OK? We’re going to hopefully make a deal, if not that’s fine,” he said on Friday at the White House during a press availability. He claims he is different from all previous presidents. Sadly, that is true — he is more ignorant and susceptible to flattery than any of his predecessors.

Trump shows every sign he is already being suckered. He blessed talks between South and North Korea on formally ending the Korean War and tweeted gleefully the war might be over. Does he know they cannot end it on their own without other parties to the armistice, including China? Chances are he doesn’t know this is part of a stage show designed to lure in an American president blinded by his own need for personal affirmation.

He touted North Korea’s cessation of missile testing at a facility that, it turns out, may have collapsed and become inoperative anyway The danger of a gullible president is never greater than when a manipulative dictator is practiced at telling Western leaders what they want to hear.

Trump seems to be under the misconception that we haven’t gone down this same road with Pyongyang before. Wrong. My Washington Post colleague Max Boot explains that “the news coverage of the 2000 meeting between South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang parallels the euphoria over Friday’s meeting in Panmunjom between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong Un.” Never have we gotten so far, never have we had so much enthusiasm for a deal, Trump says. Yeah, right. If Trump actually believes this, chances are he is falling for Pyongyang’s act.

While I am quite confident that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton understand that “denuclearization” from North Korea’s perspective means the end of a U.S. presence on the Korean peninsula and dissolution of our security guarantee for Seoul, I’m not at all certain that Trump does. In order to secure a PR victory and garner praise, Trump might well sacrifice American interests — and certainly those of allies he thinks have been taking advantage of America’s largesse.

He wouldn’t be the first president to be certain of his genius in obtaining a historic breakthrough. Trump, like his predecessors, fails to grasp the essence of the regime we confront.

Nicholas Eberstadt, a founding director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, explains in a New York Times column:

“For North Korea to end its war on the South, and accept the South as a legitimate, coequal government on the peninsula, would mean abandoning the quest that has legitimized the Kim family’s rule for three generations. The decision would call into question why, exactly, North Korea should hold power at all. It would be system-threatening — a mistake on the scale of the string of blunders by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev that doomed the Soviet Union.

“And so the North, rather than committing to a legally binding (and potentially destabilizing) peace treaty, is likely to do again what it has gotten away with in previous meetings with the South: dangle aspirational goals in jointly signed, but totally unenforceable, official statements.”

Because Trump is the master of believing what he wants to believe and trying to win favor with whomever is sitting in the room with him, the real danger is that Trump impulsively accepts frothy promises in exchange for concrete concessions. The North Koreans are practiced at conning U.S. administrations into believing they have found the key to peace on the Korean Peninsula. Meanwhile, Pyongyang retains a nuclear arsenal that Kim, like his father, believes is essential to the regime’s survival and to reunification of the peninsula on its terms.

I would suggest Trump’s advisers print out directions to him on little cards — “DO NOT BETRAY OUR SECURITY ALLIANCE WITH SEOUL” — but I’m afraid he doesn’t as a rule follow such advice, caps or no caps. Pompeo will have his work cut out for him to avoid a blowup that results in miscalculated aggression by the North, or worse, a rupture in our alliances because Trump has succumbed to flattery.

Trump has been under the impression our Asia allies have been “ripping us off.” Wait until he strikes the “best deal EVER” with Kim Jong Un. Then you’ll really see how America gets ripped off.

|  Courtesy

Jennifer Rubin, op-ed mug.

Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Washington Post, offering reported opinion from a center-right perspective.


‘We don’t seem to be a priority’: A Utah veteran found his VA clinic room filled with trash and dirty medical tools

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When American soldiers bathe in Iraq, where a grimy film coats every surface, they are reminded by bathroom signs not to ingest anything that comes from the tap.

So when Christopher Wilson left the Army after two tours in Iraq and sought medical care for his service-related injury at the Department of Veterans Affairs, he expected a cleaner environment than what he encountered at a VA clinic in Salt Lake City on April 5.

Wilson was shocked by what he found inside a clinic room during his appointment, he told local media: an overflowing trash can, medical instruments strewn about on the counter and a filthy sink. He snapped photos of what he saw.

Those photos rocketed across social media Friday, prompting an apology from the hospital system’s chief of staff and triggering an investigation.

The fallout comes amid a cascade of problems and controversies at VA. Trump has vowed to strengthen the agency, but it has been beset by numerous leadership vacancies, including VA secretary and a permanent undersecretary for health who are tasked with overseeing VA’s sprawling network of 1,243 medical facilities.

Karen Gribbin, the chief of staff of VA’s Salt Lake health-care system, told KVFS she has launched a probe into the incident and will review procedures with staff.

“I was taken aback by the condition of the room. The patient, Mr. Wilson, should not have been placed in the room in that condition,” Gribbin said, apologizing for the incident.

Wilson’s photos appear to be of a clinic room meant for creating and applying casts and not procedures such as injections, Gribbin told the Deseret News. She struggled to explain why Wilson was placed in the room, and what procedures are in place that detail how and when rooms are cleaned in between patients.

Gribbin, who oversees all VA medical operations in Utah, eastern Nevada and southeastern Idaho, called the incident a “rare event” and said Wilson was not exposed to blood or bodily fluids from other patients.

But, she said, “I do not want another veteran to experience this.”

Her office and VA’s Salt Lake heath-care system did not immediately return requests for comment.

VA care has consistently been rated as good or better in comparison with private health care.

But scandals within the agency have often been related to how long veterans wait to get access and how they are received by staff. In 2014, a systemic crisis involving long wait times led to former VA secretary Eric Shinseki’s resignation.

Veterans have long been frustrated by a perception of apathy at VA facilities.

“The people who are there to serve us kind of see us as a hindrance more than anything. We don’t seem to be a priority,” Wilson said. He and his father could not be immediately reached for comment.

Wilson said he hoped attention on the issue would help, but also expressed skepticism about what Gribbin and VA can accomplish with the probe.

“It just feels like I’m beating my head against the wall sometimes with them,” Wilson told KVFS. “If you had the choice, would you go there? I wouldn’t. I don’t like going there.”

Kragthorpe: Chris Paul is back to bother the Jazz in the playoffs, but Joe Johnson won’t haunt his old team

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Houston • Houston guard Chris Paul skated into the lane, stopped and popped a jump shot over Jazz center Rudy Gobert.

Hmmm. Where have we seen this before?

The Jazz succeeded in breaking up the Los Angeles Clippers with their Game 7 victory in a first-round playoff series last year, only to face Paul in the Western Conference semifinals this spring. He’s merely a sidekick of James Harden in Houston’s backcourt, illustrating the Rockets’ volume of talent.

Joe Johnson is another reminder of the Jazz’s 2017 playoff breakthrough. One of the Jazz’s stars in that memorable series vs. the Clippers, he’s now deep on Houston’s bench as his career winds down. So the Jazz won’t be haunted by their February trade that brought Jae Crowder to Utah and eventually led to Johnson’s signing with Houston.

Paul, though, is back to bother them in another playoff series. He posted 14 points and five assists in the first half of Sunday’s Game 1 as the Rockets took a 25-point lead in a 110-96 victory.

And that’s without Paul’s being asked to do everything offensively, as in Los Angeles — especially after Blake Griffin was injured in the first half of Game 3 against the Jazz. Paul was by far the biggest reason the Clippers forced a Game 7, although he finally wore down with 6-of-19 shooting and 13 points in a 104-91 loss in Los Angeles as the Jazz advanced.

Paul had played brilliantly in two victories in Salt Lake City, scoring 34 points in Game 3 and 29 in Game 6. But when the Clippers lost Game 7, the dismantling of their team became inevitable. Rather than lose Paul in free agency, the Clippers arranged a trade with Houston that gave them some value in return, yet marked the end of an era in Los Angeles (Griffin would be traded to Detroit in January).

Paul now performs for a team that’s built around Harden and went 65-17 in the regular season. He professes to like the freedom of not always having to handle the ball and carry the offensive load. Asked about playing with Harden, Paul said, “Has it been fun? Absolutely.”

And he knows something about playing against the Jazz. He thrived against them in the playoffs last spring, when he learned how to deal with Rudy Gobert’s presence in the paint. “We just try to push the tempo, mix it up, try to get [3-pointers], get out in transition,” he said, explaining how the Rockets scored 64 points in Sunday’s first half. “Gobert sort of sits back and they try to funnel you to him, so just try to mix it up with floaters, lobs, midrange shots. … We just try to score, basically.”

Yeah, that seems to work.

Every shot Paul made Sunday evoked images of that Jazz-Clippers series, which the Jazz wouldn’t have won without Johnson. The veteran forward will have a place in Jazz history, having been instrumental in the franchise’s first series victory in seven years. He delivered a Game 1 win with 21 points and a floating, buzzer-beating shot and then took over the fourth quarter of Game 4, finishing with 28 points on a night when Gordon Hayward went home at halftime due to illness.

Yet if he played like the Joe Johnson of old in that series, he just looked old this season. Johnson will turn 37 in June. In February, the Jazz sent him to Sacramento and Rodney Hood to Cleveland, acquiring Crowder in a three-team trade. Sacramento waived Johnson, enabling him to sign with Houston.

Johnson is reunited with Mike D’Antoni, his coach long ago in Phoenix. “We have a lot of history together,” D’Antoni said, describing Johnson as “always somebody I trust in.”

Steve Griffin / The Salt Lake Tribune


Utah Jazz forward Joe Johnson (6) holds the arm of Houston Rockets guard James Harden (13) during the Utah Jazz versus Houston Rockets NBA game at Vivint Smart Home Arena in Salt Lake City, Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016.

He’s just not needed. Due partly to other players’ injuries, Johnson played a significant role right after joining the Rockets. He scored seven points in a Feb. 26 win over the Jazz. In five games of a first-round series vs. Minnesota, though, Johnson played a total of only 25 minutes, scoring four points.

The Rockets are even deeper now, with forward Luc Mbah a Moute having returned from injury. Johnson didn’t appear in Game 1. So there will be no story line in this series about Johnson hurting his old team. Fans can just enjoy the memories of what he did for the Jazz last spring, when Johnson helped them beat Paul’s Clippers.

Spokesman: George H.W. Bush to remain in hospital

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Houston • A family spokesman says former President George H.W. Bush will remain hospitalized “to continue regaining strength” as he recovers from an infection requiring his hospitalization a day after his wife’s funeral.

Bush was admitted April 22 to Houston Methodist Hospital. He’s being treated for an infection that spread to his blood.

Family spokesman Jim McGrath said Monday the 93-year-old Bush “is in great spirits and is looking forward to going home soon.” McGrath has previously said Bush hopes to travel next month to his family’s home in Maine, where he spends the summers.

Bush has a form of Parkinson’s disease and a history of pneumonia and other infections.

He was hospitalized after attending the funeral and burial of his 92-year-old wife, Barbara, who died April 17 at their Houston home.

Commentary: It’s sad, but Russell Westbrook is right about some Jazz fans

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I am not a Russell Westbrook fan. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Westbrook is the player I like the least in the NBA. I believe he’s a selfish, inefficient player who is all about padding his own stats.

It frustrates me that his flaws are often overlooked by the national media and by basketball fans in general because of the highlights he generates. We tune in to “Sports Center” and see his vicious dunks and explosive drives to the basket. They are amazing, and he’s a generational talent. Because of those highlights, though, the general public and media often ignore his arrogance, abysmal assist-to-turnover-ratio, and hapless shooting percentage.

I offer my opinion about Westbrook to hopefully demonstrate that I am by no stretch an apologist for him. In fact, it is my disdain for him that makes it so painful to agree with his postgame criticism of Utah Jazz fans.

As fans, we want to dismiss his comments about the vulgarity and personal insults he hears from fans “especially in Utah” as “sour grapes” and being a sore loser. Maybe he is just being a poor sport. It certainly matches his pattern of behavior. Whether he’s being a sore loser or not, his comments should cause us some pause for self-reflection.

I have attended hundreds of sporting events live throughout my life — Jazz games and otherwise. Nearly every time I attend a Jazz game, I have left embarrassed about something that a Jazz fan did or said. I have heard the most vile insults under the roof of the Salt Palace, Delta Center, Energy Solutions Arena, Vivint Smart Home Arena, etc., that still make me cringe just thinking about them — racist epithets, homophobic slurs, personal insults and more.

Westbrook’s comments Friday night felt especially apropos given my experience at the same game. I spent a lot of money on tickets and arranged babysitting. My wife and I were excited to watch our Jazz close this series out.

Seated clear up in the upper bowl, two men next to me began hurling personal insults and vulgarities at players and Oklahoma City fans even before tipoff. It was offensive and embarrassing.

After the first quarter, I finally asked them politely and calmly to stop using the word “fag” and making other derogatory comments about LGBTQ people. They immediately turned on me, trying to get me to fight them for the rest of the game.

Seriously, I felt as if I were facing a bully in high school as I had these men in my face saying, “Come on! Fight me!” I’m embarrassed for them.

Jazz fans: Cheer, yell, boo, go crazy when Westbrook chucks up his fourth airball of the game! I just ask you to be aware of the line. It’s painful to admit it, but Westbrook was right.

Ben Belnap

Ben Belnap, Heber City, creates and conducts professional development courses for educators and is a practicing psychologist.

Letter: Helpless man with Alzheimer’s has a criminal record, but deserves assistance

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An acquaintance is 64 years old, and has Alzheimer’s. He can’t work because the Alzheimer’s is too advanced, so he lives on $700 a month in Social Security.

Thanks to our Legislature, he can’t get Medicaid; so he can’t afford to get declared disabled by a doctor and receive more in SS benefits. He applied for subsidized housing but was turned down because of a felony on his record from the early ’90s for possession of marijuana. He has no family for help, so given the high rental rates in the area, this confused, elderly man will likely end up homeless.

I understand they are trying to weed out (no pun intended) people who have criminal records, but shouldn’t there be some discretion allowed on the part of caseworkers?

Shar Wood, Taylorsville

Sandy police looking for man who allegedly exposed himself to a child in South Town mall bathroom

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Police are asking the public for help finding a man who allegedly exposed himself to a child in the bathroom at a Sandy mall and then knocked the child’s mother to the ground when she tried to take his photo.

About 7 p.m. on April 21, the “unknown male” approached a 9-year-old boy in the bathroom at the South Town mall, a news release from the Sandy Police Department said.

The man pulled down his pants and exposed himself to the child, the boy told police. While his pants were down, the man allegedly told the child to “come closer,” the release says, but the boy instead ran out of the bathroom.

The boy found his mother and pointed out the person who had approached him in the bathroom, according to the release. The mother used her cellphone to take a photo of the suspect, the release said, but when she tried to take additional pictures, the man knocked the phone out of her hands and then pushed her down to the ground.

The man then fled the mall and asked other patrons to take him to the nearby TRAX Station, police said. He was last seen getting into a late-model black Ford Mustang.

The man is described as being in his mid-20s, standing between 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-10 with dark hair. The woman’s photo, included in the news release, shows him wearing a white V-neck shirt and jeans.

Anyone who recognizes the man or has any other information is asked to contact Sandy police at 801-568-7200 or through an anonymous tip line: 801-568-INFO(4636).

Veterinarians want you to know vaccines will not give your dog autism

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The British Veterinary Association, which represents thousands of practitioners in the United Kingdom, felt compelled to hop onto Twitter last week to issue a notable statement: “There’s currently no reliable scientific evidence to indicate autism in dogs (or its link to vaccines),” the group wrote.

The tweet came in response to a widely condemned call-out from the television show “Good Morning Britain” for interviews with pet owners who believe their dogs developed “canine autism” as a result of vaccines or who refuse routine shots over worries about side effects. But the association also suggested its response had roots across the Atlantic: “We are aware of an increase in anti-vaccination pet owners in the U.S.,” it said, “who have voiced concerns that vaccinations may lead to their dogs developing autism-like behavior.”

So has the anti-vaxx movement, which has fueled measles outbreaks in recent years, spread to American pets?

Not exactly, according to major veterinary groups in this country. John de Jong, a Boston-area veterinarian and incoming president of the American Veterinary Medical Association, said his organization firmly agrees with its British counterpart: There’s no evidence for autism in dogs or any link to vaccines — a theory that has been thoroughly discredited in humans. But he also said he has never been asked by a client about this notion, nor does he know of other veterinarians who have.

Heather Loenser, a senior veterinary officer with the American Animal Hospital Association, echoed that.

“I have never had a client voice that concern,” Loenser, who practices in New Jersey, wrote in an email, adding that she has only “seen it pop up on social media from time to time.”

No one tracks pet vaccination rates. That said, both Loenser and de Jong said they’ve seen small increases in clients who question the necessity or frequency of pet vaccinations. De Jong said some are influenced by breeders who tell buyers to wait on shots until after a dog has produced litters, while others express a vaguer skepticism about possible side effects.

More generally, he said, the doubts are reflective of a pet “humanization” trend that has driven a surge in organic and grain-free pet food sales, expensive and invasive end-of-life care, and doggy fitness centers.

“It’s fair to say that a lot of what we see in veterinary medicine seems to follow the curve of what’s popular in human medicine,” de Jong said. “The human-animal bond is at an all time high, and people consider their pets as extended members of the family.”

The rabies vaccine is required by law for dogs and cats in most states. Other “core” vaccines, including those for distemper and parvovirus in dogs, are strongly recommended. They have been highly effective, veterinarians point out. Rabies has been eradicated in domestic canines, and distemper is extremely rare. De Jong said he treated dogs with parvovirus as a veterinary student in the early 1980s but now seldom sees it.

“If you take a look at the general health and longevity of both animals and people in society today, we have longer and healthier lives due to preventive medications, preventive health care, good diets and vaccines,” he said.

Vaccines can have minor side effects like swelling and very rarely more serious ones. And although pets typically are offered a series of immunizations, pet owners can discuss with their veterinarians which ones, other than rabies, are critical. A cat living in a high-rise condo, for example, might not need a vaccine for leukemia, de Jong said.

“Many of our North American colleagues believe, as I do, that vaccines should be tailored to the individual pet based on the animal’s risk factors and lifestyle,” said Loenser, whose organization offers an online “lifestyle-based vaccine calculator” to help guide owners’ conversations with their vets.

While de Jong said the veterinary association has detected no major cause for alarm about anti-vaxx-driven outbreaks in pets, he emphasized how much he hopes the idea doesn’t spread. Many diseases against which pets are immunized, such as rabies, can infect both animals and people.

“Widespread use of vaccines has prevented death and disease in millions and millions of animals,” he said. “The benefits far outweigh the risks, by a mile.”


Megan McArdle: Will new short-term health plans undermine Obamacare?

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In February, the Trump administration announced that it was going to allow insurers to sell short-term, limited-duration health insurance plans to individuals. Reaction to this plan was, let us say, quite mixed.

“If consumers think Obamacare premiums are high today, wait until people flood into these short-term and association health plans,” industry consultant Robert Laszewski told Kaiser Health News. “The Trump administration will bring rates down substantially for healthy people, but woe unto those who get a condition and have to go back into Obamacare.”

Meanwhile, the headline at Investor’s Business Daily cried, “Trump Throws a Lifeline to Millions of ObamaCare Victims.”

Who was right? Well, the Kaiser Family Foundation has released a new report on these plans that might help shed some light on the matter. Ultimately what it tells us, however, is a lot less than we’d like to know.

Start with the plans themselves: What will they look like? According to Kaiser, here are the key features:

Unlike other policies (even before Obamacare), they aren’t guaranteed to be renewable. If you want to renew, you have to go through the whole process of buying a policy again. Which matters because:

These policies are medically underwritten. Yes, this means the return of the dreaded “pre-existing conditions,” for which insurers can charge you more or simply refuse to sell you a policy. They include not just prior illness but also age and sex.

They don’t have to cover “essential health benefits” — maternity, mental health, prescription drugs.

They can have lifetime caps on how much they pay out for your condition.

They can have monster deductibles and otherwise increase your out-of-pocket expenses over the Obamacare caps.

They’re not subject to a bunch of regulations on insurers that limit insurer discretion on how much they charge and how much they spend on care.

You might think these policies are a pretty bad deal for consumers. But consider how much money insurers are saving by limiting the risk that they’ll actually have to pay claims. And then consider that insurers can pass on those savings to you, the consumer. If you’re a young, healthy person who makes too much to qualify for substantial subsidies on an exchange policy — and whose main risk is something like a catastrophic car accident — these policies are actually probably a great deal.

In fact, they’re an even better deal than they used to be, thanks to Obamacare. Because while your main risk as a young adult is probably a traumatic accident, you also face some risk of getting cancer or another very expensive disease. Before Obamacare, that made it somewhat risky to buy a short-term policy, because at the end of its term, you’d get kicked off your plan, and no other insurer would touch you.

But now the worst thing that happens is that you wait for open enrollment to roll around and buy an Obamacare policy. This is a great deal for you young folks. Unfortunately, it could be a very bad deal for the rest of us.

Health insurance, like all insurance, works by pooling risk. Everyone pays premiums, then some people get sick, and some people don’t. The health insurer then takes the pooled premiums and pays the claims of the people who got sick, with hopefully a little left over for profit.

But insurance pools work only if no one has a very good idea of what their “experience” will be — which is to say, if no one can accurately forecast his or her need to collect claims. If you can accurately forecast that need or make a pretty reasonable guess, then the people who expect to have high claims will buy insurance, and the folks who expect to make low claims — or no claims — will just pay for those out of pocket.

Unfortunately, there are people who can fairly accurately forecast their health-care claims: people who already have an expensive diagnosis. Young adults, meanwhile, can be fairly sure they won’t use this much health care this year. So it may be rational for them to skimp on insurance, or go without, while the sick people rush to sign up.

But that will raise the insurer’s average cost for each policy, so they’ll have to raise premiums. At which point, some of the healthiest folks say, “To heck with this; it’s cheaper to just pay out of pocket.” Rinse and repeat enough times, and you have what is known as “the health insurance death spiral,” which eventually ends in, well, the death of the individual market for health insurance.

You can thus understand why many people are very anxious about the administration’s decision: It will entice the healthiest people to leave the insurance pool, raising premiums for everyone else and potentially worsening the already considerable problems with the Obamacare exchanges. It’s not clear, however, how big this risk actually is.

The thing is, by broad logic, Obamacare exchanges already ought to be death-spiraling, because premiums keep going up every year. And indeed, the number of people buying insurance has shrunk somewhat. But not really all that much.

You might think that this resilience is due to the individual mandate, but that probably has little to do with it; law or no, millions of people who were expected to buy exchange policies have declined to do so. It turns out that the main factor in whether people buy insurance isn’t the mandate; the main factor is whether they get a substantial subsidy.

The exchanges hoovered up a lot of people who made less than 250 percent of the federal poverty line, which meant that they qualified not only for premium subsidies but also for special “cost-sharing reduction” (CSR) subsidies that limited their out-of-pocket costs. But the exchanges have struggled to expand the market beyond that heavily subsidized group. The overwhelming majority of the people buying exchange policies — 83 percent — qualify for premium subsidies. Almost 60 percent also get CSR subsidies.

And of the remainder, it’s not clear how many are the young, healthy customers who would be most naturally attracted to short-term policies. Only 27 percent of the folks buying on the exchanges are in the prime, cheap-to-cover 18-to-34 age group. (That’s why premiums keep going up; the Obama administration had originally forecast that it needed this figure to be 40 percent to keep premiums stable.) However, it’s reasonable to expect that the young people who have bought exchange policies are disproportionately either quite sick (and therefore in great need of health insurance) or heavily subsidized. For young people who fall into those categories, short-term policies will not present an attractive alternative.

So it’s not really clear that short-term policies are going to poach many existing exchange customers. But there is yet another twist in our winding attempt to forecast the impact of this rule: people who purchase individual insurance policies off the exchanges.

There are actually two groups of those people: those in grandfathered non-Affordable-Care-Act-compliant plans, who do not really concern us, because they presumably like their insurance; and people who buy ACA-compliant plans. That second market is less well-studied than the exchange customers, though data suggest that there are about half as many of them as there are exchange buyers, and many of them aren’t necessarily thrilled about their insurance policies. Though they may be in a minority, they’re an important minority, because of a quirk in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Under the law that established Obamacare, insurers have to treat their on-exchange and off-exchange policies as part of a single actuarial pool for calculating premiums. This rule is arguably needed to prevent insurers from cherry-picking healthy patients (which they have many ways to do, even if they are technically forbidden from using pre-existing conditions to deny coverage). But it means that premiums in these two markets are somewhat linked.

And because of another quirk in the law, that could eventually bring us to a death spiral. It’s well known that subsidies are calculated based on the price of the second-lowest-cost silver plan offered on the exchanges. What’s less well known is that the law contains a trigger that could change that formula: Once total expenditure on premium subsidies hits 0.504 percent of GDP, annual subsidy adjustments switch to an inflation-based formula. If premium subsidies stop going up in lockstep with premiums, eventually, we could see a lot more current customers decide that the price isn’t worth it, even on the exchanges. And, well, commence the death spiral.

Right now, we’re a very long way from hitting that trigger, because of lower-than-expected enrollment, and also a slower-than-expected growth in the cost of health care. But if premiums go up enough, we could start bumping up against its limits. At which point, things in the individual market start looking dire indeed.

But that’s a lot of “coulds” and “maybes” and “mights.” Ultimately, right now we just don’t have enough information about those off-exchange policies to know what effect offering short-term plans will have on their customers. What we can say is that the market for individual health insurance policies is still pretty fragile. And that the Trump administration sure isn’t making it any stronger.

Megan McArdle | The Washington Post

Megan McArdle is a Washington Post columnist and the author of ”The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success.”

‘Hamilton’ actor calls out Salt Lake City theatergoers for using cellphones at Sunday matinee, during Jazz game

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It wasn’t pistols at dawn at Weehawken, but the actor portraying Alexander Hamilton in the touring production of “Hamilton” at Salt Lake City’s Eccles Theater threw down the gauntlet at Utah theatergoers via Twitter.

What got Joseph Morales riled up? Patrons looking at their cellphones during Sunday’s matinee performance.

“SLC, you’re killing me,” Morales posted on Twitter during intermission. “Put your phones away. We can see you. This isn’t a movie. What is up with you guys?”

Most people responding to Morales’ tweet expressed outrage that anyone would be looking at their phones rather than watching Morales and company deliver Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-winning hip-hop history lesson.

One tweeter wasn’t impressed with Morales’ ire.

“Jazz in the NBA playoffs … deal with it. You’re not the biggest show in town,” tweeted Tim Ormond, a Utah Jazz fan who was watching Sunday’s NBA playoff game between the Jazz and the Houston Rockets.

“It was 100 percent in jest, just a snarky little comment,” Ormond told The Salt Lake Tribune on Monday.

Ormond, owner of the translation business InSync Interpreters in Sandy, said he felt blowback from his tweet. People have attacked him on Twitter, he said, and posted fake negative reviews on his business’s Facebook page.

Even Morales answered back. He tweeted a response: “… by all means, go to the game or stay home. This is what we’re dealing with in SLC, folks. So rude it’s shocking.”

Ormond said Monday he sent a direct message via Twitter to Morales, a personal apology for his comment. “I wasn’t intending to belittle his craft,” Ormond said, adding that his apology was a personal one. “I don’t need to take down any of my tweets and do it in a public sense.”

The run of “Hamilton” is in its final week at the Eccles, with evening shows Tuesday through Saturday, and matinees Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday’s show will coincide with game 2 of the Jazz-Rockets series in Houston, while Friday night’s show will run the same time the Jazz host the Rockets in game 3 at Vivint Smart Home Arena.

Morales added a conciliatory tweet Monday: “The world is wide enough for @utahjazz and @HamiltonMusical. #TakeNote.”

The “Hamilton” cast has shown support for the Jazz, with several actors taking advantage of the show’s night off to attend last Monday’s game against the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Salt Lake City isn’t unique in having lapses in phone etiquette in the theater, said Karen Azenberg, artistic director of Pioneer Theatre Company.

“It happens in New York, I don’t want to say regularly, but with some frequency,” Azenberg said. In New York, she said, phones are often a sign of theatergoers trying to record the show, which is illegal.

Actors, Azenberg said, “are actually alive. This is not a movie. This is not the television. These are live people performing directly for the audience. … And while [actors are] not watching the audience, they can see those lights come on. It implies [the audience is] not paying attention.”

“It takes you out of what you’re doing,” agreed Cynthia Fleming, executive artistic director of Salt Lake Acting Company. “Instead of being in that moment, being that character, being in that reality, you go ‘Oh, somebody’s on their cellphones’ in your head.”

Fleming said theater directors are having to adjust to an increasingly tech-centered world. “We’re connected to the world, but we’re not connected to the person sitting next to us,” Fleming said. “It’s a really bizarre thing.”

Azenberg said cellphone etiquette should be observed, whether in the theater or at the dinner table.

“My hope is that it’s actually encouraging the world to pay attention to the thing you’re doing at the moment,” she said.

Tell The Tribune: Is hugging appropriate in the workplace?

MLS week in review: Beautiful Banc of California Stadium witnesses a home opening victory

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LAFC defender Laurent Ciman’s game-winning free kick cut past the Seattle Sounders’ wall, off the hands of goalkeeper Stefan Frei and into the back of the net.

Behind the goal, an already raucous crowd got even louder, as Ciman’s goal broke a scoreless deadlock in the third minute of stoppage time, lifting LAFC to a 1-0 win in its home opener Sunday.

Ciman was the hero of that match, but the real star was the stadium itself. Banc of California Stadium, a $350 million venue, is the most expensive soccer-specific stadium in the country. That money went to making the world-class venue quintessentially L.A..

The stadium is in the heart of Los Angeles, with its architecture framing views of the downtown skyline. Its lobby and suites capture the flashy side of LA — its top level even includes a wading pool — while the stands form a formidable fortress.

With a steep set of stands, fans not only have a better view over the heads in front of them, they’re actually closer to the field. The farthest seats are within 135 feet of the field, while the closest are only 12 feet away. With the supporters section in mind, the North End grandstand seats were designed to fold up, and standing rails were positioned in front of them.

“What a crowd,” LAFC coach Bob Bradley said after the match. “I’ve been lucky enough to be a lot of amazing places around the world, but the feeling inside that stadium today was incredible.”

And the home side came through. LAFC defeated Seattle, 1-0.

Fans of Los Angeles FC march outside the new Banc of California Stadium before an MLS soccer game against the Seattle Sounders in Los Angeles, Sunday, April 29, 2018. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)

David Villa enters the 400 club

NYCFC striker David Villa’s first goal of Saturday night got him into the 400 club and gave NYCFC the lead over FC Dallas. Then he scored a second for good measure.

The 400th and 401st goals of Villa’s career propelled NYCFC to a 3-1 victory Sunday, handing Dallas its first loss of the season. Villa became one of just six active players to have reached the 400-goal milestone, joining an elite group that includes Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Toronto loses CCL final, returns home for more disappointment

Toronto’s loss to Chivas in the CONCACAF Champions League was a heartbreaker. After fighting back from an aggregate deficit to force the contest into penalty kicks, Jonathan Osorio and Michael Bradley missed their shots from the spot, and Toronto lost 4-2 on PKs after a 3-3 aggregate draw.

The MLS’ representative in the CCL championship returned home to resume league play, which Toronto has struggled in while focusing on the CCL. Saturday was no different. TFC was unable to hold onto a two-goal lead against Chicago, and the Fire forced the match to a 2-2 draw.

Power rankings

1. Atlanta United (last week: 1) • Atlanta’s four unanswered goals earn it the top spot in the rankings for the second year in a row.

2. New York City FC (2) • NYCFC re-established its dominance in a 3-1 defeat of FC Dallas, which had gone undefeated before facing the new York City side.

3. New York Red Bulls (6) • RBNY held its ground as the Galaxy surged in the second half to claim three points on the road.

4. Los Angeles FC (5) • LAFC is undefeated in brand-new Banc of California Stadium. Never mind that the club has only had one home match.

5. Sporting Kansas City (3) • SKC’s attack was silenced by the Revs at Gillette Stadium.

6. Columbus Crew SC (7) • Mike Grella came off the bench to score the game-winner for the Crew and snap a four-match winless streak.

7. Toronto FC (4) • Toronto had a tough week, and a draw against a two-win Chicago team didn’t make it look any better.

8. Orlando City SC (unranked) • Orlando won its fifth straight Sunday at Colorado.

9. FC Dallas (8) • Dallas’ schedule got harder, and NYCFC snapped its unbeaten streak.

Planned Hatch Center to partner with the University of Utah, build facility on South Temple

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Washington • The University of Utah will sell a parking lot in Salt Lake City to a foundation building a center to honor the legacy of Sen. Orrin Hatch, The Salt Lake Tribune has learned.

The Hatch Foundation is set to announce Wednesday a partnership between the forthcoming Hatch Center and the U. as well as a deal to erect a new facility across the street from the Thomas S. Monson Center, the U. reception and meeting facility in a historic mansion at 411 E. South Temple that is named after the former Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints president.

The U. also owns a parking lot across the street on South Temple worth about $520,000, according to tax records.

The Hatch Foundation said it would announce a partnership with a “major research university” but wouldn’t say which Utah school would be involved.

The announcement event is being held at the U.’s Monson Center.

The Hatch Center, as envisioned by Hatch supporters, would honor the legacy of Utah’s long-serving senator who is retiring early next year. The center will house Hatch’s archives from his 42 years in the Senate as well as offer forums to help train future leaders and discussions of policy approaches.

Among those scheduled to be on hand for the Wednesday announcement are Scott Anderson, Zions Bank president and CEO, who is also chairman of the Hatch Foundation; and Kem Gardner, chairman of the Gardner Co. development firm and a Hatch Foundation board member.

Trent Christensen, the foundation’s director, declined to confirm the U. would be the new center’s partner.

The foundation, which is raising millions of dollars toward building the center, has come under fire previously for not voluntarily disclosing its donors. While some lobbying groups have filed reports with the Senate of donations to the foundation, that’s only a small percentage of the contributions fueling the center’s bank account.

The foundation has raised nearly $6 million, according to its latest tax filing. As a nonprofit, the group does not have to list its nonlobbyist donors.

A pamphlet introducing the Hatch Center and seeking donations lists options for gifts from $10,000 to more than $1 million.

Workers at Utah VA hospital under fire for treating a veteran patient in a dirty room ‘just didn’t see’ how dirty it was, chief of staff says

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(Al Hartmann  |  The Salt Lake Tribune) 	
Karen Gribbin, M.D. and Chief of Staff of Salt Lake City Veterans Administration Hospital responds to photos of a dirty clinic room tweeted over the weekend by a veteran at a press conference Monday April 30.

A top medical official at the Salt Lake City veterans hospital again apologized Monday for the dirty room where a patient was treated.

Karen Gribbin, chief of staff for health care at the George E. Wahlen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, said that staff members were focused on ending the wait for veteran Christopher Wilson when they showed him to the unkempt room April 5.

“They just didn’t see the state of the room,” Gribbin said of the staffers.

Wilson later Monday was skeptical of that explanation.

“That’s the first thing I noticed when they opened the door,” Wilson said in a telephone interview, “and I don’t believe for a second that [staff] didn’t notice either.”

Wilson served in the Army and had two tours in Iraq. He sought care for his service-related injury at the hospital.

News of the dirty room began spreading on social media Friday after his father, Stephen Wilson, tweeted photos taken during his son’s podiatry appointment.

The photos showed an overflowing trash can and plaster in a sink, on a counter and on the floor. Wilson later learned, he tweeted, that the room is typically used to build and remove casts for patients with diabetic ulcers.

Those photos rocketed across social media Friday, prompting apologies from the hospital system’s chief of staff and triggering an investigation.

Wilson is scheduled to appear Tuesday on the Fox News morning program “Fox & Friends,” he said.

Gribbin, who apologized over the weekend, again gave Monday what she called a “sincere apology” to Wilson.

“This is not the kind of patient experience we strive for in Salt Lake City,” Gribbin told reporters at an afternoon news conference.

Gribbin, a physician, said a review is underway. She said discipline is possible for the staff members, but she emphasized that administrators are still trying to learn what occurred.

“Staff really is quite upset this happened,” she said.

Gribbin said the day of Wilson’s visit was a busy one, yet she made no excuses for the room. She said VA staff operates as a team and, if housekeeping wasn’t available to clean the room, other staffers should have pitched in to do so before taking a patient into the room.

When asked whether any policies were violated by taking Wilson into the untidy room, Gribbin replied: “It was certainly not within practice.”

And when asked whether the room was actually unsanitary, Gribbin replied: “I think it was unsightly.”

But staffers “feel the frustration of the veterans who are waiting” and wanted Wilson to receive treatment, so they took him into the room without noticing the mess, she said.

Wilson, 33, said he was medically discharged in 2008 with the rank of sergeant. He declined to discuss how he received his injuries but said he is a combat veteran.

He said he has been getting treatment at the VA since his discharge.

“It seems like it’s going downhill rather than uphill,” he said.

He said he appreciated Gribbin calling him Saturday morning to apologize but also found that she was making excuses.

“The way she talked on the phone, it seemed like it was more of a covering my a-- call,” Wilson said. “She seemed to kind of explain that health care is a messy business sometimes.”

On Monday, Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, said Christopher Wilson’s experience was “completely unacceptable.”

“I will work to find out additional details in order to understand what must be done to prevent this from happening again,” Love said in a statement. “I recently visited the facility and plan to follow up with others in the very near future.”

Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, a former Air Force major, said he will see that the situation is resolved quickly.

“This situation at the VA center in Salt Lake City is unacceptable,” Stewart said in a statement. “As a former Air Force pilot myself, I know our veterans deserve to be treated like the heroes they are.”

Some veterans defended the Salt Lake City VA on Monday.

Darrel Roberts, age 70, commander of American Legion Post 71 in Holladay, said he received excellent care at the hospital when he broke his leg in a motorcycle accident a few years ago. Other veterans with no insurance rely on the Salt Lake City VA for all their medical care, he said.

“If we get rid of the VA hospital,” Roberts said, “we won’t have anything, anything at all for the veterans.”

Andrew Wilson is a Vietnam War veteran and one of the founders of the Utah County Veterans Council. He called the Salt Lake City VA an “exceptional facility.”

Wilson, who is no relation to the family who took the photos, said those photos won’t have much traction with veterans who rely on the Salt Lake City facility for their care. He said he would be more concerned if the dirty room was at a VA hospital with a greater history of problems.

“If this was the VA in Virginia, I’d be up in arms,” Wilson said. “I’d say, ‘I want to see the other rooms.’ ”

VA hospitals across the country have had multiple scandals related to wait time and quality of care in recent years. The Salt Lake City VA has fared better than most of its counterparts. In 2015, the director of the Salt Lake City VA, Steven Young, was sent to Phoenix to take over a VA medical center there that was at the center of a scandal that gained nationwide attention after extended waits were blamed for patient deaths.

In October, the union representing Department of Veterans Affairs and about a dozen VA workers held a rally outside the Salt Lake City VA hospital to demand that the agency fill tens of thousands of vacant positions around the country to help boost veterans′ care and improve working conditions.

Protesters held signs that read: “VA vacancies go up. Vet care goes down.” Passing cars honked to show their support.

(Al Hartmann  |  The Salt Lake Tribune) 	
Charles Talcott, who works in therapy at the VA, joins other members of the American Federation of Government Employees and veterans at a rally at George E. Wahlen VA Medical Center in Salt Lake City Monday, Oct. 16, to highlight dangerously low staffing levels at the facility.

Shortages can be found across a range of job titles at the Salt Lake City VA, from housekeepers to medical staff in the intensive care unit, Clayton McDaniel, local president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents many VA workers, said during the rally.

Reporter Thomas Burr contributed to this story.

Incumbents won all legislative races at conventions this year — but voluntary turnover is still near a quarter-century high

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No challenger managed to beat an incumbent Utah legislator in party conventions this year. However, lawmakers are leaving voluntarily in near-record numbers.

As the convention season ended over the weekend, 24 incumbents are now leaving office out of 90 legislative seats up for election this year — and all of them are departing voluntarily.

Incumbents survived every challenge they faced at conventions, although four were sent to primary election showdowns.

Even four of the five current lawmakers who sought other offices survived convention challenges. The only one defeated — current Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper — was topped by another incumbent, Rep. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, in a state Senate race.

Adam Brown, a political science professor at Brigham Young University, has compiled data about how many freshmen entered the Utah House every year back to statehood (but he did not do the same for the Utah Senate).

(Leah Hogsten  |  The Salt Lake Tribune)  Utah House of Representatives District 30  candidate Fred Cox sets up his signs in the commons area at the Salt Lake County Republican Party Organizing Convention at Cottonwood High School, Saturday, April 14, 2018.

So far this year, 18 House members decided not to seek re-election, meaning the 75-member House will have a minimum of 24 percent turnover.

Over the past quarter-century, “only 2013 had more turnover [27 percent] than we are guaranteed to see for 2019” in the House, Brown noted.

“If two more House incumbents fail to return — either because of primary or November losses — then we would tie 2013,” he said. “If three or more fail to return, then we’ll have the most turnover since 1993,” which had 36 percent turnover.“

In the most recent big turnover year of 2013, several of those hitting the exits did so because redistricting was pitting them against other incumbents, Brown said.

Also, numerous members of the conservative Patrick Henry Caucus that year decided to run for higher office, Brown observed, “and nearly all are out of politics as a result.”

He sees nothing like that this year, and no overriding reason for the large number of departures.

Some left because of age (such as 80-year-old Sen. Pete Knudsen, R-Brigham City), some because they are moving (such as Rep. Justin Fawson, R-North Ogden), some left after long service (such as Senate President Wayne Niederhauser, R-Sandy, and Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab), and several decided to run for other offices.

Nationally, Congress is seeing a high number of retirements, but Brown says that is likely for different reasons — especially because of low approval ratings of President Donald Trump that complicate re-election by fellow Republicans in midterm elections. Brown does not see that as a factor in Utah’s GOP-dominated legislative races.

“In Congress, people are afraid it’s not worth the fight,” Brown said. “Outside of a handful of districts, I don’t know that’s the case with most of these open seats” in the Utah Legislature.

He listed a few examples in which incumbents perhaps retired to avoid a tough and potentially embarrassing fight for re-election.

That includes Christensen switching to run for the state Senate and losing. “He saw the handwriting on the wall” in his own House district, Brown said, after Christensen had won two years ago by just five votes.

Al Hartmann  |  The Salt Lake Tribune
Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper, sponsor of the legislative organization amendment bill, listens as Democrats urge a "no" vote on the house floor Tuesday, Feb. 23.

Two incumbents also withdrew just before conventions as they faced spirited campaigns by challengers who raised more money: Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, said she resigned for medical reasons; Rep. Lynn Hemingway, D-Millcreek, who missed the entire legislative session this year to be with his wife, who became sick in New York City, said he pulled out because of her ongoing illness.

Among the four incumbents forced into the June 26 primary is newly appointed Sen. Brian Zehnder, R-Holladay, who sided more often with Democrats this year in party-line votes than his own party, upsetting some GOP members in one of the state’s few true swing districts where either party could win.

Also landing in a primary is Rep. Christine Watkins, R-Price, who switched from being a Democrat a few years ago. She faces Carbon County Commissioner Jae Potter. House budget chairman Brad Last, R-St. George, faces Mark Borowiak, a substitute teacher.

Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful, was forced into a primary because of an unusual rule in Davis County to punish candidates like him who also gathered signatures to qualify for the ballot. Instead of needing the usual 60 percent of delegate votes to clinch the nomination at convention, he was required to win 70 percent. Ward won 66 percent, so he will face former state GOP Vice Chairman Phill Wright in the primary.

FILE - In this Jan. 23, 2018, file photo, Republican state Rep. Ray Ward talks on the House floor, in Salt Lake City. Utah's House of Representatives has passed legislation barring abortions sought because a fetus has been diagnosed with Down syndrome. Ward unsuccessfully tried to amend the bill to require that the state pay $1.8 million annually to provide services to people with Down syndrome. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

Even though primary and general elections are yet to come, it’s all over but the shouting for Reps. Corey Maloy, R-Lehi, and Marc Roberts, R-Salem, after they eliminated their only challengers at convention. Four others had no one file against them at all: Sen. Stuart Adams, R-Layton, and Reps. Brian King, D-Salt Lake City; Adam Robertson, R-Provo; and Travis Seegmiller, R-St. George.

Five other incumbents now face challenges only from minor party or unaffiliated candidates: Reps. Walt Brooks, R-St. George; Kay Christofferson, R-Lehi; Val Peterson, R-Orem; Robert Spendlove, R-Sandy; and Lowry Snow, R-Santa Clara.

Why are incumbents so successful? Brown said it has been well researched through the years by political scientists.

“The first factor is some people are politically capable and others are not. The fact that somebody became an incumbent tells you they already are the politically capable type,” he said. “Some challengers can’t give good speeches, they don’t know how to organize delegates, they don’t know whom to hire. Incumbents generally do.”

Also, “There is the scare-off effect. The people who are politically talented,” such as city council members, mayors or political activists, “are more likely to sit it out because they can see there’s a capable incumbent in place who is willing to fight,” and it makes more sense to “wait for an open seat or when there is a clear vulnerability.”

Finally, incumbents raise campaign contributions without even trying, Brown says.

“Most donations come from organized interests,” he said. “And most organized interests are less concerned about who wins a race than about being on the good side of those who win.”


Kragthorpe: Jazz see Game 2 against Rockets as their chance to start fresh

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Houston

Quin Snyder wore faded jeans.

The Jazz coach’s apparel told the story Monday, during his team’s first opportunity to rest, regroup and prepare for the next round of the NBA playoffs. The only flaw in that sentence is that Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals already took place, with Houston claiming a 110-96 victory Sunday.

Even so, Snyder’s Zen philosophy phrase of the day made sense: “Empty our cup.”

In other words, all the Jazz could do Monday was start over. They didn’t practice, explaining Snyder’s wearing something other than athletic clothing. Wednesday night’s Game 2, the next time he’ll be dressed in a suit, was more than 48 hours away.

The Jazz need that recovery time, emotionally and mentally maybe more than physically, judging by the way they looked Sunday.

“No doubt, no doubt,” forward Jae Crowder said. “We’re not making excuses, but … I think we’ll be fresher and more engaged in what we have to do to take away what they want to do on both ends of the court.”

Quickly adjusting to another opponent’s style and moving on to another series was just challenging for his players, and Snyder knew it. Those six games against Oklahoma City were demanding. The series was draining for those who merely watched it unfold, to say nothing of what it was like to play in it.

I’ve made the point that historically, the Jazz have experienced other playoff series turnarounds like the one from Friday’s Game 6 vs. OKC to Sunday’s Game 1 vs. Houston, and past teams performed decently. Being tired was not enough of an excuse for trailing the Rockets by 25 points at halftime. The Jazz could blame only themselves for not closing out the Thunder earlier, with a 25-point lead in the third quarter of Game 5.

Yet because they missed that opportunity, they had to put even more emotion into Game 6. Everything that happened Friday — Ricky Rubio’s hamstring injury in the first quarter, the Jazz’s falling behind by nine points in the second quarter, Donovan Mitchell’s scoring spree in the third quarter and OKC’s six-shot, extended possession in the final minute — made it an overwhelming night for everybody involved at Vivint Smart Home Arena.

The next thing they knew, the Jazz were facing the 65-win, high-scoring Rockets. That would be a shock to anyone’s system.

Game 2 will be different, or so the Jazz hope. Snyder’s goal for Monday’s regrouping process was that his team would “be in a good place mentally to kind of absorb the things we now need to concentrate on mentally.”

He did say the word “mentally” twice. Consciously or not, he was emphasizing that the between-series rallying process is more than physical. The tradeoff for already having lost Game 1 is the Jazz having more working knowledge of the Rockets now. That will help, to a certain degree.

They’re still playing without Rubio and facing Houston guard James Harden, who scored 41 points Sunday. Most teams would promote their backup point guard to the starting lineup; it’s not as simple for the Jazz to “plug somebody in there,” Snyder said.

As for defending Harden, the strategy might be to “ask him to miss,” Snyder said. “See if he’s magnanimous enough to do you a favor.”

That approach might work as well as anything the Jazz can come up with between now and Wednesday night. They’re just happy to have that much time to figure out something.

Commentary: Fans dehumanize the players they cheer for and against

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Russell Westbrook is right. Let’s be clear on that from the start.

On Friday night, Westbrook caused a stir when he called out Utah fans for their behavior after the Jazz defeated his Oklahoma City Thunder in their NBA first-round playoff series.

Here’s what an irate Westbrook said of Salt Lake fans: “I don’t confront fans, fans confront me. Here in Utah, man, a lot of disrespectful, vulgar things are said to the players. I think these fans, man, it’s truly disrespectful. Talk about your families, your kids, and it’s just a disrespect to the game. And I think it’s something that needs to be brought up.

“I’m tired of going out and playing and letting fans say what the hell they want to say, I’m not with that. … So I just think it’s disrespectful when they get the chance to do whatever they want to do. Needs to be put to a stop, especially here in Utah.”

Conventional wisdom says that athletes deserve whatever fans want to dish out to them given the astronomical salaries they earn. I readily admit that that the size of NBA paychecks raises some reasonable questions about the way we have chosen to distribute wealth in this society. This fact, however, has little to do with the disposition of fans toward players.

The real problem is that fans come to sport seeking a release from the challenges of their everyday lives and view athletes as little more than objects into whom they can vicariously invest their desires, hopes and dreams. This is turn means that fans feel little compunction about directing verbal abuse at players, and still less about exhorting them to suffer violence and injury. Indeed, the harm athletes experience only confirms that sport is worth caring about.

Interviews I conducted with fans for my new book Game Misconduct: Injury, Fandom, and the Business of Sport made this very clear, as fans consistently spoke about how satisfying they found it to watch players play through pain. The professional hockey players I spoke to, on the other hand, echoed Westbrook.

One former NHL player said: “The effort and the sacrifice to play is out of this world and it’s something that people don’t know.” This failure to recognize the level of “sacrifice” made by players “creates misunderstandings … and, that’s normal. If people are not aware of that, how can you be sympathetic to the athlete you’re watching if you don’t know?”

Another former NHL player makes a similar point: “[Fans] see the athlete, they see them on the field or on the ice, and they expect that performance to be there every night and sometimes the player is dealing with something, it could be emotional, but most times it’s physical, that would limit them from performing at their best.”

Like Westbrook, these players recognize that fans effectively dehumanize the players they cheer for and against, whether it is through the abusive behavior they direct toward them or the complete lack of compassion they feel for the suffering athletes endure in order to fulfill their fantasies.

Thus, my only disagreement with Westbrook comes from his characterization of Jazz fans as “especially” problematic. The problem is not Utah, and it is not even fandom at all. The real issue is that we live in a society that systematically propels fans to seek meaning in spectator sport to compensate for the hardship in their own lives.

Westbrook deserves better than what he experienced on Friday. We all do.

Nathan Kalman-Lamb

Nathan Kalman-Lamb is author of the new book Game Misconduct: Injury, Fandom, and the Business of Sport (Fernwood Publishing) and co-author of Out of Left Field: Social Inequality and Sports (with Gamal Abdel-Shehid). He is a lecturing fellow at Duke University, where he teaches on social inequality and sports. You can find him on Twitter @nkalamb.

May is Utah’s Month of the Bird, Gov. Gary Herbert declares

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May is for the birds, according to a declaration issued Monday by Utah. Gov. Gary Herbert.

The Beehive State may also qualify as the Birding State, boasting habitat for 400 avian species, Herbert noted in declaring May as Month of the Bird, timed with many bird-related events across the state and the world.

“Utah is home to 22 Important Bird Areas that have international or state significance for biodiversity and birds,” the declaration states. “The Great Salt Lake and its associated wetlands are recognized as hemispherically and globally important breeding, staging and stopover habitat for millions of waterbirds, including shorebirds.”

Birding has become an economically important recreational activity and birds provide valuable services to humans “by dispersing beneficial seeds, feeding on harmful insects and invasive fish, and otherwise helping to balance natural systems,” Herbert wrote.

Birds also played a critical role in Utah’s pioneer history, commemorated in a sculpture of a California gull on Salt Lake City’s Temple Square. In 1848, locusts were devouring crops when a flock of gulls swooped in to eat the bugs, ensuring the survival of a nascent Mormon settlement that would grow into Utah.

Conservation groups applauded Herbert’s ceremonial gesture.

“Utah is a critical stopover for birds like the western sandpiper that refuel at Great Salt Lake on their way to nest and raise their young in Alaska,” said David Yarnold, president of the National Audubon Society.

Audubon is among dozens of groups that had already designated 2018 The Year of the Bird, marking the centennial of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, one of the nation’s seminal environmental laws protecting wildlife and its habitat.

Events scheduled this month include:

  • May 5: The fourth annual <a href="https://ebird.org/news/global-big-day-5-may-2018">Global Big Day</a>, the largest single-day birding event in the world.
  • May 9-11: 12th Biennial <a href="https://www.fogsl.org/programs/great-salt-lake-issues-forum">Great Salt Lake Issues Forum</a>, hosted by Friends of Great Salt Lake.
  • May 11-12: The first <a href="https://utahcbcp.org/localworkinggroups/WestBoxElder-WBECRM/WBCDtourItinerary2018.pdf">International Bird Day Tour</a> in western Box Elder County.
  • May 12: <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/migratory-bird-day-moab-tickets-44801038111">World Migratory Bird Day</a> at Scott M. Matheson Wetlands Preserve in Moab.
  • May 12-13: 13th annual <a href="https://www.tracyaviary.org/familyyoga/event/8-urban-bird-festival">Urban Bird Festival </a>at Tracy Aviary.
  • May 12: <a href="http://www.migratorybirdday.org/">World Migratory Bird Day </a>in the Americas.
  • May 17-21: The 20th Annual <a href="https://www.daviscountyutah.gov/greatsaltlakebirdfest/home">Great Salt Lake Bird Festival</a>.

“That’s landmark legislation that is still important today, maybe now more than ever,” said Heather Dove, president of Great Salt Lake Audubon. “Birds are under tremendous pressure from all all sides, from loss of habitat to climate change. They are the canaries in the coal mine; if they are not doing well, we won’t be doing well.”

Jae Crowder’s shooting improves as his familiarity with Jazz offense grows

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Houston • Jae Crowder’s reads have gotten better. That’s Quin Snyder’s best explanation to the recent uptick in Crowder’s play.

The Utah Jazz offense has long been intricate under Snyder, with multiple sets, variations and options that Crowder’s had to learn since coming to the Jazz in a trade that sent Rodney Hood to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

With Cleveland, Crowder’s job was easy: He stood in a corner, spotted up from 3-point range, and waited for LeBron James to pass him the ball. With Utah, Crowder’s had to adapt to more in the heat of a competitive playoff race.

It hasn’t always been easy for him. He’s shooting 38 percent from the field with the Jazz, and 31 percent from 3-point range. There have been times when he has not known whether to shoot, or drive the basketball. There have been times where he has looked like he’s forcing his shot.

“Jae’s evolution within what we are doing, I think you are going to see it continue to improve,” Snyder said. “Any time a player is put in a new situation, it’s going to take some time for him to be comfortable. We want Jae to continue to be aggressive and we want him taking shots. He’s asked to play a versatile game, so there will be some grey areas.”

As the Jazz prepare to face the Houston Rockets on Wednesday in Game 2 of a Western Conference semifinal, they can lean on Crowder’s improvement in recent games as a source of production.

Even through his shooting struggles, Crowder’s been able to put an imprint on Utah’s postseason run. He has been a versatile, willing and rugged defender for the Jazz. He has given Utah its first true on-court enforcer since the days of Trevor Booker. He has been able to play multiple positions and is a direct link for the Jazz’ ability to play big or small lineups.

And, now, his shot is starting to fall. Crowder scored a team-high 27 points in Utah’s Game 5 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder. He dropped 21 points in Sunday’s Game 1 defeat to the Rockets.

In both instances, Crowder has been able to find the basket from the perimeter, making a combined 11 3-pointers. He has also done it with a heavier minutes workload.

“I’m just trying to be aggressive and stay aggressive,” Crowder said. “Ricky [Rubio] is out, so that’s a big part of our offense. Any time you are missing key players, people have to step up and do their part, so that’s what I’m trying to do.”

To Snyder’s point, Crowder is recognizing his reads faster, which is leading to better play on the offensive end. Against Houston, he was quick and decisive. When an opening presented itself, Crowder put the ball on the floor and went to the basket. When he had time to shoot the basketball, there was no hesitation. The ball was in the air.

The Jazz’ coaching staff doesn’t mind that Crowder hasn’t shot the ball well. He’s done too many good things in other areas, which is why he’s playing as much as he is. But, they have wanted his reads within the offense to improve. And the recognition of when to shoot or pass is getting better, which, to no surprise, is leading to better shooting.

“Sometimes if you’re decisive and you know you’re open, you’re on balance,” Snyder said. “It involves reading the situation before you get the ball. And I think Jae’s starting to recognize whether to shoot or drive before be makes the catch.”

Jennifer Rubin: After dumping the White House correspondents’ dinner, what next?

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It’s quite difficult to write about the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner when you think the worst kind of journalism is about journalists’ reaction to a party thrown for journalists to honor journalists (and raise money). Let’s get a few things out of the way:

I’ve never liked these soirees, which convey a false and inappropriate chumminess between reporters and the people they cover. I was in favor of dumping the thing years ago; I’m delighted if others now agree.

In an era when the media have been labeled the enemy of the people — and Republican officeholders agree — there certainly is no need to yuk it up with those contemptuous of the First Amendment. Doing so conveys that their crusade against the media is not a serious matter.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders was insulted for lying, not for her looks. The point of the jokes in question was her disdain for the truth, not her eye makeup. (“She burns facts, and then she uses the ash to create a perfect smoky eye.”)

President Donald Trump is certainly meaner, more vulgar and more inappropriate than Michelle Wolf. And let’s not forget that Wolf is a comedian, not a reporter, and has no obligation to uphold any social or professional standards that would apply to the media. (By definition, comedians flout standards of social and professional restraint.) Still, the media should have more dignity than the president (a low bar) and will be held responsible for the words of their featured guest.

The White House Correspondents’ Association leadership is sadly misguided if it thinks the purpose of the evening is to “offer a unifying message about our shared commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility.” The media may uphold those values, but the administration obviously does not, so this statement suggests either a stunning degree of obliviousness or a propensity to adhere to phony “balance.” (Trump says the sky is pink with purple spots; others think it is blue.)

You don’t need a self-indulgent, extravagant party to raise money for journalism scholarships. A credit card or checkbook is sufficient.

Now that we have this out of the way, we have a few ideas about what can be done going forward.

First, cut out the on-camera White House news conferences. To be clear, Sanders repeatedly misleads or innocently offers misleading information (on every upcoming firing/resignation, for one thing, and even on what the president did and did not say). Putting her on live TV to tell falsehoods is not news. It is enabling the destruction of objective truth. The media surely should get the White House position or response on matters on which it reports. (“The White House denied that H.R. McMaster would be leaving, but it has made similar statements regarding other officials who were then promptly fired.”) This does not require a televised event in which the press secretary shows sullen contempt for the media as an institution and evidences no shame in dissembling.

Second, because of the propensity of this administration to lie about easily ascertained facts and events in the works, virtually every utterance from an administration figure should be couched as “the White House claimed” or “the White House argued.” Virtually nothing can or should be taken at face value. When the White House repeats a falsehood after being shown incontrovertible evidence that it is a falsehood, the honest term is “lying.”

Third, instead of a glitzy affair, the media and the country would benefit from an annual lunch to highlight the latest Freedom House report on press freedom. In addition to foreign abuses, the media, regardless of who is in power, should review the current administration’s attacks on the free press and efforts to limit access.

Rather than a third-rate comedian, the host might be The Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian, who was held captive in Iran from July 2014 to January 2016; the parents of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded by Islamist terrorists; or members of the punk-feminist band Pussy Riot, who were imprisoned by Russia. Media freedom isn’t a joke these days, and if the media do not take it seriously, who will?

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Jennifer Rubin, op-ed mug.

Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Washington Post, offering reported opinion from a center-right perspective.

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