Utah’s experiment with a four-day workweek for most state workers is over. The state of Utah first instituted the condensed workweek in 2008. The Associated Press reported that lawmakers ended the trial for the majority of state workers, saying it was not saving as much money as predicted. The state will return to a five-day workweek on Tuesday, September 5.

Todd Sutton, of the Utah Public Employees Association, said the adjustment back to a five-day workweek won’t be easy for many employees. Some people had arranged daycare schedules for the four-day week, while others were using their free Fridays to work second jobs or volunteer.

“Employees struggled because they adapted their lives to one schedule,” Sutton said. “And then it goes to a different schedule.” It’s clear that residents and leaders in Utah have mixed reviews on the sudden schedule change.

“I think it’s a horrible idea,” Larry Swift told the Salt Lake Tribune. Swift runs a business that sells construction equipment and was registering his car Thursday evening.”I think it’s really nice to have something open after 5 o’clock so you don’t have to take time off work, ” he said.

According to the Examiner, many state workers were unhappy with the change initially, but have adjusted to long days and three-day weekends. Many are unhappy about adding another day’s commute to their week. At the same time, some are pleased about shorter hours and more time with their families on a daily basis

Jon Huntsman, former Utah Gov., launched the “4/10″ workweek — 10 hours a day, Monday-Thursday — for thousands of employees in 2008, said the AP. The hope was to improve efficiency, reduce overhead costs and conserve energy at a time when budgets are tight and resources are dwindling.

A 2010 legislative audit showed the savings never materialized, in part due to a drop in energy prices. According to the AP, while Utah legislators as a whole found the four-day workweek unproductive, some cities in Utah saw the shorter workweek as a major success.

Mayor John Curtis, of Provo, Utah, said the 4/10 system improved employee morale and saved money. He said the four-day workweek might be more effective at a local level than with a state government. “People don’t have that same interaction with state employees … and the state needs hundreds of offices, while we only need one,” Curtis said.

Provo is one of the state’s largest cities with more than 100,000 people. The four-day workweek has been in place for years, with city offices open Monday through Thursday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Utah isn’t the only state that has tried an alternative workweek schedule in lieu of the traditional five-day workweek.

In El Paso, Texas, Mayor John Cook, is proposing a year-round four-day workweek after experimenting with it during the past two summers.According to the AP, Cook said the projected savings for the city of about 800,000 people was more than $400,000 annually, primarily because of lowered utility and fuel costs.

Creative solutions are becoming more popular for governments facing tight budgets, said Rex Facer, a Brigham Young University associate professor who has studied the effectiveness of four-day workweeks. Lawmakers in both Oregon and Texas considered four-day workweek bills this year, but neither passed, the AP reported.

According to Facer, more than 200 cities have implemented or experimented with the four-day workweek on some level.

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Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman thus far has been a nobody. In a crowded field of outspoken crazies, somewhat same candidates such as Huntsman, sort of get forgotten by the news media. However, Huntsman campaign has begun to speak out, blasting other candidates for their extreme views.

The former Utah governor and ambassador to China attacked Texas governor Rick Perry for his ideas on evolution. Perry said last week in New Hampshire that he didn’t believe in manmade global warming, calling it an unproven scientific theory. He also defended the teaching of creationism in schools because evolution “has some gaps to it.”

Huntsman responded in a tweet, saying “To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”He furthered argued his position on ABC’s “This Week.”

“When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Science has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position,” Huntsman stated.

Huntsman said he couldn’t remember a time when “we actually were willing to shun science and become a party that was antithetical to science. I’m not sure that’s good for our future and it’s not a winning formula,” on the Sunday morning show.

Meanwhile, Perry continues to argue his extreme views. On a campaign stop in South Carolina, the long term Republican governor stated he believes the earth’s temperature “has been moving up and down for millenniums now and there are enough scientists out there that are skeptical about the reasons for it.”

Perry also commented on the Federal Reserve last week and its chairman, Ben Bernanke. Perry threatened Bernanke, stating that if he printed more money, it would amount to a treasonous act.  Huntsman said he wasn’t sure that “the average voter out there is going to hear that treasonous remark and say that sounds like a presidential candidate, that sounds like someone who is serious on the issues.”

Huntsman added that “people are crying out for us to get back to some level of sensibility and this just kind of perpetuates the name-calling and the finger-pointing and the blame game where we want solutions.”

“These sideshows,” Huntsman said, take “us that much farther off the ball” from the focus of fixing the economy and creating jobs.

Image Courtesy of  http://www.flickr.com/photos/thewestend/

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Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) believes that the poor, not the rich, should pay more to help reduce the nation’s debt. Just another example of a Saturday Night Live skit that has come to life. “I hear how they’re so caring for the poor and so forth,” Hatch said in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, in reference to Democrats.

“The poor need jobs! And they also need to share some of the responsibility.” Hatch made these comments during debate on a motion that would allow the Senate to begin debating a non-binding resolution that says millionaires and billionaires should play a more meaningful role in reducing the nation’s debt. The motion passed 74 to 22 despite Hatch’s argument. Only one Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) voted against the debate while Sen.

Jeff Sessions (R-Ala), who had called the resolution “pathetic”, voted to move ahead with the debate. But, the attention fell on Hatch on Wednesday when he suggested that the wealthy in the nation are already doing too much. Even though, if you remember, the nation’s effective tax rates are at modern lows since the Bush administration slashed rates in 2001 and 2003. In his view, it seems, the middle class and poor should be picking up the slack.

“The top 1 percent of the so-called wealthy pay 38 percent of all income tax. The top 10 percent are paying 70 percent of all income tax,” Hatch said. “The top 50 percent pay somewhere near 98 percent of all income taxes. 51 percent don’t pay anything,” Hatch said, suggesting the payroll taxes that the poor and middle classes pay towards Social Security yields them an especially generous benefit. “Democrats say they [the 51 percent] pay payroll taxes.

Well, everybody does that because that’s Social Security. They pay about one-third of what they’re going to take out over the years in social security,” Hatch railed. “Obamacare — a family of four earning over $80,000 a year — gets subsidies. Think about that. That’s what we call the poor?”

Hatch hedged that the poorest of the poor shouldn’t have to pay taxes. But he was clear that people who qualify for subsidies because they can’t afford things like health care should dig deeper. “Now, we don’t want the really poor people who are in poverty to have to pay income taxes,” he said.

“But 51% of all households. And that’s going up, by the way, because of our friend down in the White House and his allies.” Dude, you cannot get blood from a turnip. There is nowhere else for me to dig. The wealthy have savings and retirement accounts. I don’t.

Image Courtesy of  http://www.flickr.com/photos/bvcphoto/3178527172/

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It is official. Michele Bachmann could not wait until her planned announcement later in the month. She had to get it out now.  She IS running for president. During the GOP presidential debate on Monday night, the Minnesota congresswoman could not contain herself. Out of the blue, she announced that she has filed the papers to be an official candidate for the Republican nomination.

Just an hour before the debate began, a fundraising letter was sent to supporters about the decision. “We cannot risk giving President Obama four more years to dismantle our nation. We must act now,” Bachmann wrote in the letter. “That’s why I’ve made the decision to get in this race.”

Despite Bachmann’s relative political inexperience, she is relatively well known. She has made some controversial statements and gaffes. She makes frequent television appearances and has proven before that she can raise extraordinary amounts of money. Bachmann is the first woman to enter the race officially.

“Our country needs a leader who understands the hardships that people across America have been facing over the past few years, and who will do what it takes to renew the American dream. We must become a strong and proud America again, and I see clearly a better path to a brighter future,” Bachmann said in a statement issued through her new campaign.

Not to be outdone, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman announced that he will announce his candidacy. Yes, there is where we are at now. Candidates are making formal announcements that they will announce that they are running at a later date. I don’t understand either.  Huntman, who clearly is enjoying announcing his candidacy, also stated on his Facebook page that he is “getting in.” His campaign “leaked” his initial campaign schedule as a presidential candidate. I guess just to cover all of his bases.

The Republican, who served as President Obama’s ambassador to China until this spring, told reporters of his plan in New York on Tuesday. “I intend to announce my candidacy for the presidency of the United States of America a week from today,” Huntsman said during a discussion about China policy with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Huntsman has been building his campaign for a month. He made his third trip to New Hampshire over the weekend and has been constructing his national campaign headquarters in Orlando, Florida for some reason.

Image Courtesy of  http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/

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There have recently been two separate, but eerily similar UFO sightings.  The first one occurred in Utah on January 26^th.  The second sighting occurred halfway around the world over the Dome of the Rock in Israel on January 28^th.  Since these sightings, the skies have been relatively quiet.

In Utah County, three red lights appeared between 7:15 and 7:30 in the evening.  Witnesses described the lights as hovering in formation and dropping what appeared to be flares.  One witness to the event, Mike Galbraith, was in a parking lot of a shopping plaza in American Fork, Utah, when he noticed the strange lights.  Galbraith, who served in the Air Force, grabbed his cell phone and quickly started to record the strange event.   Galbraith said, “They looked like they were flying in formation perfectly together and then whatever was dropping looked like it was burning real bright.” Galbraith doesn’t believe the trails of white that appeared to drop straight down from the red lights were flares. He stated that military flares don’t typically look like that.

“They usually shoot out the sides, or they shoot down, and there are a lot of them and you could definitely hear them.”  He said there was no sound.  He also said he could not tell the shape of the objects, but they were unlike any plane or helicopter, and were flying at an unusual altitude.   The control tower at the Provo airport had no reports of anything unusual, nor did the Utah County Sheriff’s Department.

Two nights later, an unidentified object was seen hovering over the Dome of the Rock.  Captured on video, the image is startling and, if real, one of the best videos of a possible UFO sighting.  On the video, a ball of light appears in the sky and hovers for a minute.  It then begins to descend, straight down directly over the Dome of the Rock for a moment.  The craft then flickers and shoots upwards at an incredible speed, to the shock of the witnesses.  The video also shows a series of red lights flashing in the sky, similar to the Utah sighting. There were four videos of this event captured from different angles.  Although many have dismissed it as a hoax, some suggest that only one of the videos is a fake and the other ones are unknown.

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