I tuned into General Conference, with my hopes set on coffee. Instead, to my sadness and dismay, we were given coercion.

“Time is running out” was a running theme, coupled with warnings that family ties would be eternally severed for those who do not walk the one-size-fits-all path. As we are so concerned with calling things by their correct names, let’s start with this:

Tying the eternal salvation and exaltation of church members to a checklist of requirements, which includes but is not limited to paying money to the church, is spiritual extortion.

Teaching that families may not be together after death because of differences in beliefs, inability to conform, or unwillingness to make specific prescribed covenants is spiritual coercion.

Perpetuating this belief as a universal truth for everyone is psychological torment and religious manipulation.

These teachings are alienating to a myriad of families, including divorced families, blended families, single-parent families, step families, childless families, extended families, grandparent families, foster families, joint families, families by choice, non-nuclear families and LGBTQ families.

It also carelessly promotes “othering” among traditional families because opportunities for learning, growth, connection, empathy and understanding of people in situations that are different but no less worthy, can be stifled by these beliefs.

As a single mother who has had no choice but to step away from the church for my own safety, I see that my children (who still sometimes attend) are damaged and harmed when they hear this rhetoric, as it causes psychological trauma and is emotionally threatening.

No mother should ever have to hear her child ask, “Why can’t we be in the same heaven, Mommy?” It is not OK. And it is certainly not healthy.

And as a community health nurse, I find it deeply concerning, ethically speaking, as it is fundamentally indicative of an unhealthy institutional system. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should not be in the business of spiritual alienation, family separation or ecclesiastical intimidation. But, as it appears, it most definitely is.

Life is not black and white. It is a million shades of gray plus all the colors of the rainbow. Heaven will be just as colorful and vibrant.

I fully embrace the teachings of Jesus Christ, which is why I teach my children that nothing will separate us. Ever. Because this is what Christ taught.

Heaven will be a place of love, not longing.

It will be a place of healing, not hurting.

It will be a place of well-being, not wounding.

It will be a place of peace, not pain.

It will be a place of connection, not coercion.

It will be a place of acceptance, not abandonment.

It will be a place of reception, not rejection.

It will be a place of optimism, not ostracism.

It will be a place of inclusion, not anguish.

It will be a place of tranquility, not trauma.

It will be a place of togetherness, not terror.

It will be a place of safety, not separation.

It will be a place of elation, not encumbrance.

It will be a place of goodness, not grief.

It will be place of happiness, not heartache.

No, time is not running out. We have an eternity to be with our families, our friends and our loved ones. And I like this happy heaven better.

Lesley Butterfield, Roanoke, Va., is a lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a registered nurse and writer who advocates for trauma-informed care across communities.

Filmmaker Mitch Davis has big plans for his new movie, a sequel to his 2001 film “The Other Side of Heaven” — one of the few movies about members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that received worldwide distribution.

Davis, in touting the upcoming “The Other Side of Heaven 2: Fire of Faith” at a news conference Wednesday, said that when it comes to stories of faith, filmmakers have to go big or go home.

It took millions to make the new movie, Davis said, because “if we don’t spend that kind of money, no one cares what we have to say. … It’s not enough to make a movie that just 11 people in Provo see.”

The 2001 film was based on the young missionary adventures of John H. Groberg, now an emeritus general authority in the Latter-day Saint faith, who served in Tonga in the 1950s. The new movie shows Groberg (played, as in the original, by Christopher Gorham) as a family man, with his wife, Jean, and their children, returning to Tonga as a mission president.

The new movie is set to be released on between 200 and 300 screens nationwide on Friday, June 28. The date is sandwiched between two summer blockbusters: Pixar’s “Toy Story 4” opens the Friday before, and the Marvel superhero movie “Spider-Man: Far From Home” will dominate the Independence Day weekend the week after.

To help lay the groundwork for the new movie, the original will make a return engagement in three Utah theaters — the Megaplex Theatres at Vineyard (Provo), Thanksgiving Point (Lehi) and Legacy Crossing (Centerville) — for one week, starting May 17.

Also, BYUtv — the cable channel owned by the church — has signed on to screen “The Other Side of Heaven” on back-to-back nights, Sunday, June 23, and Monday, June 24.

Michael Dunn, managing director of BYUtv, said he was excited to screen the movie because “literally, an entire generation doesn’t know this story. … [This movie is] something the entire family can get their arms around.”

BYUtv also will get the exclusive TV and streaming rights to the sequel, to air sometime later this year or in early 2020, Dunn said. (BYUtv, like Excel Entertainment, the movie’s U.S. theatrical distributor, is owned by the church.)

The original “Other Side of Heaven” played on 334 screens nationally and made $4.7 million at the box office in 2001, equivalent to about $7.5 million in today’s dollars, Davis said. It then went on to sell 4 million DVDs, supported by Walt Disney’s home entertainment arm.

“The Disney brand didn’t hurt us, and Anne Hathaway’s face helped us,” Davis said.

Hathaway was 18 when she played Jean Groberg in the first film, which came out the same year as her star-making role in “The Princess Diaries.” “We didn’t ask her” to be in the sequel, Davis said, because “her fee would have been more than the budget of the film.” (Natalie Medlock, a British-born actor from New Zealand, plays Jean in the sequel.)

That success, Davis said, meant “The Other Side of Heaven” attracted international distribution, something most movies with Latter-day Saint themes don’t get. It played in nearly every majority-Muslim country in the world, he said, and was bootlegged in China.

For years, Davis resisted calls to make a sequel, in part because he didn’t think he could replicate the scope of the original. “I didn’t want to make a 10-cent movie, and besmirch or diminish Elder Groberg’s story by making it small,” Davis said.

Groberg kept at Davis, though, in part because Groberg was given a push from Thomas S. Monson, then the president of the church. (Monson, years earlier, was the one who nudged Groberg to write a book about his missionary experiences.)

A year or so ago, Davis said, Groberg renewed his pitch. “He said, ‘Mitch, I thought maybe when President Monson died, he’d be less insistent and less persistent,’” Davis said, recalling Groberg’s words. Groberg then added, “I’m not getting any younger, Mitch, and neither are you. It’s time.”

Davis would only say the budget is in the seven figures, but said filming in Fiji, with a generous 47% production incentive, stretched their dollars further. The production used local crews from New Zealand and nearby Pacific Islands, and reunited many of the local cast members from the first film.

Davis said he hopes the Latter-day Saint audience in the United States will be “the slingshot” to propel the sequel to a global audience. Groberg, now 84, is more sure of the movie’s success.

“I don’t just hope the message will get out, I know the message will get out,” Groberg said. “I felt the hand of the Lord in this.”

This Pat Bagley cartoon appears in The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday, April 11, 2019. You can check out the past 10 Bagley editorial cartoons below:

• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/04/09/bagley-cartoon-name/" target=_blank><u>The Name Caller</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/04/08/bagley-cartoon-radical/"><u>Radical Extremists </u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/04/05/bagley-cartoon-official/"><u>Official Mugging</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/04/04/bagley-cartoon-church/"><u>Church Approved</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/04/03/bagley-cartoon-brexit/"><u>The Brexit Knight</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/04/02/bagley-cartoon-national/"><u>National Security Crisis</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/04/01/bagley-cartoon-troubling/"><u>Troubling Downturn</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/03/29/bagley-cartoon-gop-health/"><u>GOP Health Care to Die For</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/03/28/bagley-cartoon-medicaid/"><u>Medicaid Expansion of Our Own Design</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/03/27/bagley-cartoon-millenials/"><u>Millennial’s World</u></a>

Want more Bagley? Become a fan on Facebook.

Administrative efforts are underway to roll back protections for our streams and wetlands. A new proposed rule revises the definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) to exclude many wetlands and headwater streams that are critical to fisheries, wildlife and water quality.

In 2015, the EPA finalized a WOTUS rule that established protection under the Clean Water Act on real-world connections between headwater streams, wetlands and navigable water. The 2015 rule was based on scientific information after a multi-year analysis. The new WOTUS rule will eliminate protection for ephemeral streams and wetlands that do not have a direct surface connection to “navigable” water, and it lacks any scientific foundation. Many intermittent streams, ephemeral watercourses and wetlands of the Great Basin would lose protection.

While the new “rule” purports to produce clarity, it might remove protection for many watercourses in the Wasatch Plateau such as the Upper Price River & San Rafeal River, much of the Boulder Mountains lakes and wetlands, parts of Albion Basin or similar alpine areas, the Book Cliffs and the Diamond Mountain area near Vernal. Most of Utah’s desert “island” mountain systems such the Henry’s near Hanksville, the Blue’s near Blanding, and parts of Manti La Sals near Moab also might lose protection.

These “waters” are important sources of what we drink. They also support vegetation, wildlife, fishing and recreation. Activities such as mining, industry and development could move forward in these waterways without federal safeguards. The implications are far-reaching for all of us because “we all live downstream.” Once a river becomes polluted, it is difficult and costly to clean. Preventing pollution in the first instance is more cost-effective than cleaning it up, regardless of where the pollution occurs in the watershed.

The existing 2015 Rule is based on Justice Anthony Kennedy’s 2006 concurring opinion in the United States Supreme Court case of Rapanos et ux., et al. v United States. Kennedy concluded that a wetland constitutes “navigable water” if it possesses a “significant nexus” to waters that are navigable or that could reasonable be made so. The required “nexus” is assessed in terms of the purpose of the law to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.”

Wetlands perform critical functions related to the integrity of other waters. Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito, and Chief Judge Roberts, who made up the remaining majority, took a much narrower view and concluded that “the waters of the United States” include only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water “forming geographic features" that are described in ordinary parlance as “streams, oceans, rivers [and] lakes,” and do not include channels through which water flows intermittently or ephemerally, or channels that periodically provide drainage for rainfall.” The 2015 Rule was based on Kennedy’s interpretation.

When the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, congressional leaders were very clear that water quality must be controlled at the source. If we wait for pollutants to reach traditional “navigable waters,” it is too late.

The important question, in our view, is which policy will advance the goals and objectives of the Clean Water Act? We believe that a broad, inclusive interpretation of WOTUS that will “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters,” is best. Clean water is essential to life. With such a critical commodity, any doubt should be resolved in favor of preservation and protection.

The public may comment on this proposed rule change until April 15. Comments do not need to be formal, legal documents. In fact, views of anglers, recreationalists, conservationists, developers, planners and citizens of all walks of life are valuable. Saying something simple like, “I fish and I want the streams and rivers that are important to me to remain protected” is powerful.

The link for submitting a comment is here.

This is your water. Protect it or lose it.

David Leta and Fred Reimherr are officers of the Stonefly Society Chapter of Trout Unlimited, Salt Lake County.

New York City • New York City’s effort to halt a measles outbreak by ordering mandatory vaccinations in one Brooklyn neighborhood is facing opposition, with lawyers for parents opposed to vaccinations promising to file a lawsuit challenging the order by Friday.

But city health officials say they have they have struck the right balance with the unusual order, and they hope a mixture of outreach and prodding will overcome resistance to vaccines in a slice of the predominantly Orthodox Jewish community hardest hit by the disease.

"The measles vaccine is highly effective," Dr. Herminia Palacio, the city's deputy mayor for health and human services, said Wednesday. "Measles is highly contagious. That combination means this is the right time for this measure."

Palacio spoke a day after she joined Mayor Bill de Blasio and other officials in announcing the vaccine order affecting four ZIP codes in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn and threatening possible fines of up to $1,000 for noncompliance.

Civil rights attorney Michael Sussman called the order "an overreach of authority" and said a lawsuit challenging it will be filed this week.

Sussman also represented a group of parents in suburban Rockland County who challenged the county executive's order barring unvaccinated children from indoor public spaces. A state judge sided with the parents and issued a preliminary injunction against the emergency order last week.

New York City and Rockland County are both struggling to contain a measles outbreak that has mainly affected Orthodox Jewish families.

Some 285 measles cases have been identified in New York City since last fall, compared with two in all of 2017. There have been 168 cases reported in Rockland since the fall.

De Blasio said Tuesday that he was confident New York City's vaccination order would survive any legal challenge.

"This is a public health emergency," the Democratic mayor said. "And the reason the city government is empowered in a public health emergency is to save lives."

Authorities will carry out the order by interviewing Williamsburg residents who have been diagnosed with measles and then interviewing everyone who those people have come in contact with.

"These are skills that we practice every day," Palacio said. "It's not just that they know what questions to ask. They actually do know how to work with people. They have experience gaining people's trust."

The health officials will try to persuade any unvaccinated person who has been exposed to measles to get the vaccine. People who refuse the vaccine or who refuse to get their children vaccinated could be fined, though de Blasio said he hoped to avoid levying any fines.

"Our goal is not to fine anyone," de Blasio said. "Our goal is to get people vaccinated. But we're also trying to help everyone understand there is urgency here."

The city believes an estimated 1,800 children in Williamsburg were not immunized as of December.

Health officials have made robocalls urging vaccination to more than 30,000 Williamsburg households and have stocked health care providers in the community with an ample supply of vaccine, Palacio said.

Officials said their efforts have paid off with 8,000 additional vaccinations in affected neighborhoods compared with the prior year. But they said they were taking additional steps to control the outbreak in advance of Passover, when some families may travel overseas to areas in Israel or Europe that are experiencing measles outbreaks.

Doctors who practice in Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish communities say only a small number of people refuse inoculations outright because they believe erroneously that vaccines are harmful or that they violate Jewish law, but factors including large families may have helped the outbreak spread.

"There is an element of anti-vaccine supporters and sympathizers who do not want to get shots. It's a very small minority," said Dr. Jay Begun, a pediatrician in Williamsburg.

But Begun said a larger number may delay the first measles-mumps-rubella vaccine until 2 years of age instead of the recommended 1 year, vastly increasing the number of unvaccinated children who can be infected.

"Once you delay it a few months, you exponentially increase the vector for infection," said Begun, who said families of eight to 10 children are typical in his practice. "You have a larger pool of babies. The delay it is what's fueling this outbreak."

Begun said he believes the city's vaccination order will be effective. "I think it will help in getting the community covered," he said.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, officials in Westchester County just north of New York City announced that measles has been confirmed in eight children who were apparently exposed to the highly contagious virus while visiting Rockland County or Brooklyn. Six of the children are siblings.

A Utah filmmaker who admitted in an audio interview to molesting a 13-year-old boy in 1993 has been charged with aggravated sexual abuse of a young girl in a more recent case.

Sterling Van Wagenen has been charged with one count of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony, in 3rd District Court in West Jordan.

The girl was between 7 and 9 years old when the abuse allegedly occurred between 2013 and 2015, according to a probable cause statement. It said the girl told her parents that Van Wagenen had inappropriately touched her twice: once in her home in Salt Lake County and once at a location in Utah County. Van Wagenen touched the girl under her clothing in one of the encounters, the statement said.

Van Wagenen posted $75,000 in bail Monday, according to court records.

The charge comes after Van Wagenen’s admission in an audio interview that was released in February by the Truth & Transparency Foundation. In that interview, Van Wagenen said he had reached under a 13-year-old boy’s pants in 1993, when the boy was at a sleepover at a friend’s house. Van Wagenen was the friend’s father.

Van Wagenen said in the interview that he admitted to the abuse then to police and to his lay leaders in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He never faced criminal charges but was disfellowshipped — a penalty short of excommunication — from his faith.

“I went through the church disciplinary process and was disfellowshipped for about two years,” Van Wagenen told the foundation, the nonprofit group behind the MormonLeaks website. “I repented and there were no further incidents. I reported the abuse to the police, as I was instructed to by my stake president, and the parents elected not to press charges.”

The audio interview was recorded in 2018 by Van Wagenen’s now-adult victim, 25 years after the fact.

Van Wagenen was once a leading figure in Utah’s movie world. In 1978, he co-founded the Utah/U.S. Film Festival, which grew to become the Sundance Film Festival. He was named the founding executive director of the Sundance Institute in 1981, hired by his cousin’s then-husband, actor-filmmaker Robert Redford.

Van Wagenen’s involvement with Sundance ended when he left the nonprofit’s Utah advisory board in 1993.

Van Wagenen was a producer of the 1985 film “The Trip to Bountiful,” for which Geraldine Page won a best-actress Oscar. His directing credits include “Alan & Naomi,” the second and third installments of “The Work and the Glory” — based on author Gerald N. Lund’s fictionalized accounts of early Mormonism — and an episode of the BYUtv series “Granite Flats.”

He was executive producer of the 2018 film “Jane and Emma” about the friendship between Emma Smith, wife of church founder Joseph Smith, and African American convert Jane Manning James.

After the recording became public in February, Van Wagenen resigned a professorship at the University of Utah’s Film & Media Arts Department. The Salt Lake Film Society severed ties with Van Wagenen, who was an adviser to the nonprofit’s Media Accelerator Studio.

Washington • In 1964, although there was scant chance that Americans would choose to have a third president in 14 months, Lyndon Johnson took no chances. The economy was sizzling and in November Johnson would carry 44 states. Nevertheless, he wanted low interest rates, so he summoned to his Texas ranch Federal Reserve Chairman William McChesney Martin Jr., the longest-serving chairman (1951-1970), for whom one of the Fed’s two Washington buildings is now named. Johnson (this from “Capitalism in America: A History” by Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge) “gave [Martin] the once-over, shoving him around the room, yelling in his face, ‘Boys are dying in Vietnam and Bill Martin doesn’t care.’”

In 1969, Richard Nixon, already plotting reelection, summoned to the White House Arthur Burns, who Nixon had nominated to become Fed chairman. According to John Ehrlichman’s memoir “Witness to Power,” Nixon said:

"'Arthur, I want you to come over and see me privately anytime. ... I know there's the myth of the autonomous Fed.' ... Nixon barked a quick laugh. ... 'And when you go up for confirmation some senator may ask you about your friendship with the president. Appearances are going to be important, so you can call Ehrlichman to get messages to me.'"

Past instances of presidential pressure on the Fed are pertinent to Donald Trump's hectoring of Jerome Powell, the Fed chairman he regrets having chosen. Trump's public coarseness makes Johnson's and Nixon's private behavior seem comparatively couth. Fortunately, Powell seemingly regards the president's clamor for low interest rates as white noise, unworthy of notice.

The Fed's structure largely insulates it from political pressure, but structure can only do so much. Today's controversy concerns Trump's nominees to fill the two vacant seats on the Fed's seven-member board of governors, Herman Cain and Stephen Moore. Whether or not their untidy sex lives are disqualifying, a sufficient disqualification is that both are notably partisan Trump acolytes and neither has satisfactory credentials or experience.

The GOP’s descent into vaudeville began with the 2008 vice presidential nomination of Sarah Palin, it accelerated in 2011 when Cain was taken seriously as a presidential candidate, and it reached warp speed with the party’s capture by the man who takes Cain seriously as a maker of monetary policy. Cain’s certitude about his economic nostrums is inversely proportional to the study he has invested in the subject, which probably has involved less effort than he recently invested in organizing a PAC to promote Trump’s re-election. Cain’s and his nominator’s boundless confidence in their economic beliefs demonstrates the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It is named for two Cornell psychologists who in 1999 described the bias by which the lower a person’s intellectual ability, the more the person tends to overestimate it.

Some thoughtful people regret, as Cain does, the end of the gold standard, but they understand, as he does not, that fiat money is here to stay. Similarly, Moore might be right that the Fed would function better if it bound monetary policy to a prudent rule. There are, however, reasons to doubt that Moore knows what the rule should be (he certainly wrongly ascribes a particular rule to former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker), and there are reasons to expect that the rule he would advocate at any moment would reflect his assessment not of macroeconomic facts but of partisan advantage.

The fact that presidents nominate judges with whose jurisprudence they agree does not of itself “politicize” courts, because most cases that courts consider are not directly related to partisan issues, and because the political fortunes of presidents and their parties are rarely immediately impacted by the court’s decisions the way the Fed’s economic decisions can impact them. Hence the danger of Trump’s crude attempt to lower the Fed’s intellectual quotient while increasing the perception that the Fed is a political plaything. In a crisis like that of September 2008 the Fed influences not just the U.S. money supply but something that can suddenly be even more important — the world’s confidence supply. The Fed’s prestige is perishable, and endangered by these two nominees.

Populism, democracy's degenerate byproduct, incubates hostility to people possessing specialized knowledge (aka "elites"), but senators can withhold consent from particularly egregious abuses of institutions that are particularly dependent on the perception of competence. The Cain and Moore nominations will be two more tests — of political courage, and of their institutional responsibility — for Senate Republicans to fail. The possible good news is that these two confirmation votes might bring us closer to the day when supine senators grow weary of being embarrassed and embarrassing.

George Will’s email address is georgewill@washpost.com

Fourteen years ago, when Real Salt Lake was birthed as a new expansion team in Major League Soccer, commissioner Don Garber had been on the job only six years. When he was hired, the owners of the then-10-team league tasked him with stabilizing and growing the league.

As he figured out the first step of that equation, the next step turned out to be RSL. As he sat in a chair on the 24th floor of the Wells Fargo building Wednesday talking to a small contingent of reporters, Garber spoke about the evolution of the Salt Lake City club that grew into an MLS mainstay.

“I have a special place in my heart for Real Salt Lake,” Garber said.

The MLS commissioner, now in his 20th year on the job, called RSL a “model club” for other markets looking to join the league. He credited owner Dell Loy Hansen for investing in an MLS team, a United Soccer League team (Real Monarchs), a National Women’s Soccer League team (Utah Royals) and an academy that sits on a massive training complex in Herriman.

Garber said RSL is the only club in the MLS that has all four components in its market. The only one that comes close, he said, is the Portland Timbers, which has three of the four. He added that RSL is an example of what can be done in the markets where the league looks to expand.

“Salt Lake doesn't sit around the table as one of our new teams anymore — been here for 14 years,” Garber said. "And yet when you look at what they've been able to achieve, when we're talking to Nashville and St. Louis and Sacramento, we're using Salt Lake as a model as to what is it you need to do in a small market to be successful.”

Soccer analyst Alexi Lalas, who toured the RSL complex in Herriman for the first time Tuesday, said a facility like that gives a smaller market like Salt Lake City a leg up when recruiting players not only in North America, but overseas.

“There are teams all over the world that would kill or die to have the type of facilities and the type of commitment that has been put into creating this type of environment and culture right now,” Lalas said of RSL’s facility. “It rivals anything that I've seen before domestically or internationally. If I was a young American soccer player I would be very, very happy if I had the opportunity to be in this market.”

Garber said it is clear to him that Hansen and the RSL organization as a whole wants to build soccer in the region, and the way he’s decided to spend his money proves that. He added that MLS owners as a whole are still in investment mode with their teams.

“He can be profitable tomorrow if he wanted to,” Garber said of Hansen, "but he might not have the Royals and the Monarchs.”

Utah Megan Huff smiled during the long break between the televised second and third rounds of the WNBA draft Wednesday night when the ESPNU graphic listed her as the eighth-best player available.

Huff's name soon became more prominent and permanent in the draft coverage. The Utah forward was drafted by the New York Liberty with the second pick of the third and final round, No. 26 overall.

“I was nervous and I didn't know if I was going to get picked, so it's a relief to know that I'm going to go to a training camp and I can really prove myself,” said Huff, who joined her former coaches and teammates to watch the telecast at the Jon M. and Karen Huntsman Basketball Facility.

The 6-foot-3 Huff, known for her outside shooting ability, is the sixth Utah player drafted into the league in the past 14 seasons. She was projected to go somewhere in the third round of the 36-player draft, with Draftsite.com slotting her at No. 27 and ESPN.com listing her at No. 32.

“It's never been something I thought was going to happen,” Huff said. “It's just something you say as a kid: 'I'm going to be a professional basketball player.' ”

Being taken so high in the third round, by a team that needs help after losing its last 13 games of 2018 to finish 7-27, should significantly increase Huff's chances of making the roster. New York picked Louisville guard Asia Durr at No. 2 overall and 6-9 center Han Xu of China, who recently worked out with Huff in Los Angeles, at No. 14.

Utah's Megan Huff, after being picked by New York in the WNBA draft. pic.twitter.com/2sEKRAmh75

— Kurt Kragthorpe (@tribkurt) April 11, 2019

As Huff’s Ute teammates checked the Liberty’s roster after the draft, they discovered a lack of forwards. Huff can fill a position of need, if she shoots consistently and proves that her athletic ability and defense meet the WNBA’s standards.

Jonathan Kolb, the Liberty’s newly hired general manager, told The Salt Lake Tribune that the team was conscious in the third round of not duplicating the skills of another player on the roster. “That went into our decision-making: Who can bring a little something different that we don’t have? Megan brings a different element, and it’s a myriad of things," Kolb said. "She kind of does it all. She has a diverse skill set.”

The Liberty last week named former California associate head coach Charmin Smith as an assistant to coach Katie Smith (no relation). With her Pac-12 background, Charmin Smith endorsed Huff, Kolb said.

Ute coach Lynne Roberts was hopeful that Huff would become her first WNBA pick. “In my talking with a lot of teams in the WNBA in the last month, everyone is aware of her huge upside,” Roberts said. “The New York Liberty are getting a tremendous talent with so much potential to grow.”

Huff averaged 19.6 points and 9.9 rebounds as a senior, leading the Utes to a 20-10 record. After transferring from Hawaii, she became the third player in school history to score 1,000 points in two seasons, and the draft further validated her decision to prove herself against top-tier competition in the Pac-12. Even though potential No. 1 pick Sabrina Ionescu of Oregon chose to stay in school, the conference had four players drafted in the first two rounds: Stanford's Alanna Smith (No. 8), California's Kristine Anigwe (No. 9), UCLA's Kennedy Burke (No. 22) and Oregon's Maite Cazorla (No. 23).

Huff will report to training camp May 5. The Liberty, who play home games at the Westchester County Center in White Plains, N.Y., open the season May 24 vs. Indiana.

The closest Huff would come to playing in Utah is Las Vegas on June 14 (Las Vegas is the original Utah Starzz franchise, having relocated from San Antonio last year). The Liberty will visit Seattle, near her hometown, July 3.

Los Angeles • A short list of things that that mattered more to the Jazz on Wednesday than the outcome of their own game against the Clippers:

Whether or not the Oklahoma City Thunder defeated the Milwaukee Bucks. (They did.)

Whether or not the Denver Nuggets beat the Minnesota Timberwolves. (They did.)

Whether or not the Portland Trail Blazers got the win over the Sacramento Kings. (They did.)

For about nine-tenths of those latter two games, the Jazz looked to be getting the results they wanted: The Blazers were losing by 25 at halftime, for example, while the Nuggets had an 11-point fourth quarter deficit.

But remarkably, both the Blazers and Nuggets came back in their contests, leaving the Jazz to face the Houston Rockets in the first round.

Once those games wrapped up, their 143-137 loss in L.A. didn’t matter so much.

There was one other game that mattered more to the Jazz: Game 1 of the NBA playoffs this weekend. Utah plays at Houston at 7:30 p.m. MDT on Sunday.

Therefore, it wasn’t particularly surprising when they announced hours before tipoff that all of Donovan Mitchell, Rudy Gobert, Derrick Favors, Ricky Rubio, Kyle Korver, Raul Neto and Dante Exum were out for the game, for various maladies real or imagined. All but Rubio and Neto made the trip to Los Angeles for the game, though.

Grayson Allen, Royce O’Neale, Joe Ingles, Jae Crowder, and Ekpe Udoh started, but Ingles played only 14 minutes, while Crowder was limited to just 16. And it got very much like an SLC Stars game very quickly, as the Jazz had Naz Mitrou-Long, Tyler Cavanaugh and Tony Bradley were inserted into the game in the middle of the first quarter.

“We always put players’ health first. That’s a given. This time of year, you’re aware of those things where, if there’s opportunity,” Jazz head coach Quin Snyder said. It’s an ache or a pain that if it were a different situation, they might choose to play through. It’s better to see a larger picture.”

As you’d expect, that meant getting out to an early deficit. The Jazz face a 17-point deficit in the late stages of the first quarter, as Clippers players like Patrick Beverley and Danilo Gallinari found success against the Jazz’s makeshift lineup.

But the Jazz did fight back, led by Crowder and Allen. Crowder has taken Allen under his wing for much of the season in practice as the two work with Jazz assistant coach Johnnie Bryant, and together, they dragged the Jazz back into the game. Allen did it by attacking the rim and finding his way to the line, while Crowder made four threes in the first half. In the end, the deficit was only four by the time that halftime rolled around.

And the third quarter was more of the same: The Clippers playing something near their usual rotation, the one that they’ll bring into their game against their matchup with the No. 1 seed Warriors, and the G League Jazz hanging tough. In fact, it might have been even more impressive, as Snyder decided not to play Ingles or Crowder in the second half.

By the end of the fourth quarter, though, the Clippers got the memo, finally ending the game with their younger unit. As that happened, Allen and teammate Georges Niang found their stride. Allen attacked the rim and got fouled with 38 seconds left, nailing both free-throws — his 35th and 36th points in the game — to give the Jazz a two-point lead late. But a Mitrou-Long foul on Sindarius Thornwell seconds later would tie the score. After the teams traded misses, it was time for overtime.

The Clippers got out to a 6-point lead there, but a key Niang and-one cut the deficit to 3. But that’s as close as the Jazz would get: the Clippers immediately countered with a 7-0 run to win it.

It was the last of games that didn’t finish as planned.

The first time Marvin Oliveros watched the video that shows officers fatally shooting his brother, it was on a small computer screen at the Salt Lake City police station.

His parents couldn’t bear to come down there. His sister was with him, but before the bullets sounded, she walked out of the room. Oliveros sat through the entire recording alone and, when it was over, he cried.

His brother, Cody Belgard, was 30 years old and did not have a gun when he was approached by officers after a confrontation on Nov. 9. But one of the worst parts for Oliveros is that when he saw the footage, Belgard appeared to have his back turned as he was struck. Of the hundreds of times he’s watched it since then, he’s focused on that.

“Now I watch it almost every day,” Oliveros said of the shooting, which he keeps a copy of on his laptop. “Without that video, anything could have been said about it. But this shows exactly what happened.”

Oliveros joined a group of about 50 residents Wednesday night — including other family members of people shot by officers in Utah — to speak to the board of directors for Unified Police Department. It’s one of the biggest police forces in the state. And it’s considering whether to discontinue its use of body cameras because of the high cost.

“A big part of the evidence we’re relying on in our case is the body cam footage,” Oliveros told the nine members of the governing board who sat at the front of the room. It’s what prosecutors are using to determine if the officer was legally justified to use deadly force against Belgard, which has not yet been determined. Or if Oliveros’ brother was shot without reason.

“That makes it very valuable,” Oliveros pleaded. “He’s innocent.”

The department first met in February to discuss possibly eliminating the cameras and tabled the issue so it could hear from the public. At the hourlong meeting Wednesday, 20 people lined up behind the microphone.

They shared testimonies of interactions with police that didn’t go well. They argued that cost shouldn’t be the main consideration. They wore shirts and buttons with the faces of Utahns killed by police in past years, including Belgard and Darrien Hunt. And they talked about how the cameras create a sense of public trust.

Many who spoke were people of color — whose communities are statistically most likely to be affected by police brutality.

“Will we have a comment period for the handguns carried by police?” asked Cristobal Villegas.

Carlos Martinez added: “It’s clear historically that our community has had a very divisive relationship with officers. Many of us see them as an occupying force.”

After each person finished, the crowd snapped their fingers in support.

The back two rows of the auditorium at UPD’s headquarters were filled with officers.

In 2017, the department outfitted 125 of its 410 officers with body cameras. The force was able to pay for that, in part, with the help of a grant that expires in three years.

It has already funded $146,000 toward the costs. But UPD has had to pay an additional $348,000 for the cameras and data storage. The board of directors, as it prepares a budget, is now weighing whether it should get cameras for every officer, continue covering that 30 percent or eliminate them altogether.

“No one is advocating for that last one, but it’s one of the options,” said board member Steve Prokopis. “The UPD board will not be making a decision tonight.”

Those who attended the meeting Wednesday held a rally outside before it started. As it rained lightly, they chanted “Body cams now!” The group, led by the advocacy organizations Utah Against Police Brutality and Black Lives Matter, is calling for all officers on the force to wear a body camera.

They say that would hold police agencies more accountable for their actions, safeguarding officers from fake allegations and residents from improper force. According to a report presented to the board of directors, that would cost more than $450,000 per year.

“You can look at both the financial cost and human cost,” said Jason Groth, a justice coordinator for the ACLU of Utah. “And you’re saving costs by not spending days in court” to litigate cases of deadly force.

Since UPD officers started using cameras, there have been more than 1,600 cases of use of force; 23 of those have resulted in complaints with seven involving body camera footage. All officers in those cases were cleared.

Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera, who oversees UPD, said she’d like to gather more data on how often the camera footage is reviewed, how much time officers spend downloading and if the department could get more grants to fund expansion. She is supportive of keeping the cameras but skeptical of the budget.

“We believe if more grants come through, we can go that route and help pay for body cameras in the future,” she said.

Gina Thayne, the aunt of Dillon Taylor, who was unarmed when he was shot and killed by Salt Lake City police in 2014 (a case that was later ruled justified), said watching video of that has brought her comfort. She said it’s clear to her that her nephew wasn’t at fault.

Thayne asked the board of directors to consider body cameras to be a standard piece of equipment just as important as a bulletproof vest or a holster.

“The camera can’t lie,” she said. “Dillon was never able to have a voice and say what happened. But the footage is worth a million words.”

Before the meeting, Sen. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, posted a letter on Twitter asking that UPD keep its body cameras. He’s sponsored legislation in past years on the issue but stopped short of requiring police to keep footage. He said he would consider future bills to help departments with funding.

My email to the @UPDSL board subtly encouraging the continued use of body cameras. #utpol #utleg pic.twitter.com/n07vdaTxlt

— Dan McCay (@danmccay) April 10, 2019

At the meeting, several residents suggested that the department ask the Legislature for more money. Others said UPD should shift around the dollars it has and reprioritize. One man said each officer should have to trade in a weapon for a body camera. Another said other departments in the state are able to use body cameras for less money.

A woman talked about her youngest brother, who has a mental illness, and how she worries about what will happen if he runs into police on a bad day. A retired teacher said that when she didn’t have money for supplies, she bought them herself; officers, she added, should “do whatever they have to do to get the money to do the job.”

As hard as it is to watch and regardless of the cost, Oliveros said he’s glad he has the video of when his brother was shot. At the end of the day, he suggested, “It’s evidence. It’s irrefutable.”

Suffice it to say that the Jazz will be happy to finally have learned their playoff opponent.

“Trying to figure it all out is hard," Jazz head coach Quin Snyder said before the game. "We’ve got like 10 pages of spreadsheets that’s down to like 1 page now, so we can try to figure it out. What you realize is most of it you can’t control anyway.”

That’s one reason why the Jazz haven’t resorted to some of losing measures of other teams around them. For example, the Nuggets chose to rest their best players on Sunday against the Blazers, even though doing so risked the No. 2 seed. The rationale? Getting the Rockets out of their playoff bracket, setting themselves up for a potential run to the Western Conference Finals. The Jazz could have lost intentionally on Tuesday against Denver, but chose not to given those external factors out of their control.

Then there’s this, from Snyder’s perspective: every team in the West, especially in the playoffs, is going to be a tough out.

“I remember someone saying that we’re two games out of last, and however many games out of the playoffs,” Snyder said. It wasn’t quite that drastic: The Phoenix Suns were always pretty solidly at the bottom of the conference. But as late as Dec. 18, the Jazz were the 14th seed in the 15-team Western Conference with a 14-17 record, before digging themselves out of their early schedule to finish with a 50-win season.

“There’s just a lot of good teams. It’s fitting that so many matchups and seedings are going down to the last day,” Snyder said.

Ralph Lawler calls his last regular season game

Ralph Lawler has called 3,229 games for the Los Angeles Clippers over the past 40 years, but on Wednesday night against the Jazz, he called his last regular-season contest.

Lawler was honored with a logo on the Staples Center court before the game, while Clippers’ players wore Lawler-themed shooting shirts. Clipper fans received Lawler bobbleheads, which play Lawler’s famous phrases at the push of a button: “Oh me, oh my!," “Bingo!," and “The lob, the jam!”

While he was known for those phrases, scattered around 40 years of the highlights of the Clippers and their opponents, Lawler also introduced “Lawler’s Law," which states that the first team to 100 points will win the game. Since 1996-97, Lawler’s Law has been correct 93.10% of the time, though this season it has dropped to 87.9% in a high-scoring year.

New York • The supermarket tabloid under fire for paying hush money to a former Playboy model to help Donald Trump in his 2016 presidential campaign is on the auction block.

The parent of the National Enquirer said Wednesday that it is exploring a possible sale as part of a “strategic” review of its tabloid business. The decision by American Media comes after the tabloid said it paid $150,000 to keep Karen McDougal quiet about an alleged affair with Trump and being accused by Amazon chief Jeff Bezos of blackmail.

American Media said it was considering a sale so it could focus more on other parts of its business, including its teen brand and broadcast platforms.

"Because of this focus, we feel the future opportunities with the tabloids can be best exploited by a different ownership," said American Media CEO David Pecker in a statement.

Pecker is a longtime Trump ally who helped bury potentially embarrassing stories about the future president over the years by paying hush money in a tabloid practice called "catch-and-kill." The Associated Press reported last year that Pecker kept a safe that held documents on hush money payments and killed stories, including records on ones involving Trump.

In August, the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan agreed not to prosecute American Media in exchange for the company's cooperation in its investigation of campaign violations. That probe eventually led to a three-year prison term for Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen for campaign violations among other charges.

American Media came under fire this year from Amazon founder Bezos for what he said were threats to publish explicit photos of him following a January story on him that included lurid texts exchanged with his mistress, former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez.

Bezos said the tabloid promised not to publish the photos if he stopped his private investigators from trying to find out how the tabloid obtained the texts. Bezos took to social media to accuse the National Enquirer of blackmailing him.

An American Media attorney denied that the tabloid committed blackmail, but the attack from Bezos threatened potentially big legal costs and at a bad time for American Media. The company is struggling under a heavy debt load after years of borrowing to buy other publications.

The Bezos attack also threatened to upend American Media's non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors. The Associated Press reported in February that prosecutors were looking into whether the publisher violated terms of the deal, which included a promise not to break any laws in the future.

American Media is controlled by its biggest investor, a hedge fund called Chatham Asset Management. A phone message seeking comment from Chatham was not immediately returned.

In addition to the National Enquirer, American Media said it was also considering selling two other brands, Globe and National Examiner.

American Media owns news, celebrity and sports publications such as Us Weekly, Star, OK!, In Touch, Life & Style, Men’s Journal, Muscle & Fitness, Snowboarder and Surfer.

Police have confirmed that a shooting happened at Jordan Landing on Wednesday night at Zurchers, FOX 13 reports.

An officer with the West Valley City Police Department says a 16-year-old boy pulled up in a car with two associates behind the business next to Bangerter Highway. While they were behind Zurchers, the teen was shot. He was transported to a hospital. The officer says they don’t know who the shooter was, and that detectives are currently working to find any leads.

See more at FOX 13.

Editor’s note: The Salt Lake Tribune and FOX 13 are content-sharing partners.

This story will be updated.

Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 143-137 overtime loss to the Los Angeles Clippers from Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. A series of unfortunate events

It’s honestly one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen. Jazz broadcast assistant Conner Varney wrapped it all up, I thought: In order for the Jazz to play Portland, the Jazz just needed one of these things to happen.

• Minnesota to win a game that they were up 11 in, with 3:27 left in the game. Win probability at that point: 98.7%.
• Sacramento to win a game they were up 25 with 8:35 left in the third quarter. Win probability at that point: 98.2%
• Don’t forget yesterday’s games! With Houston up 14 in Oklahoma City with 9:26 left in the 4th, they had a 96.1% win probability. There was also a 97.5% chance of Houston winning that game when they had the ball, up four points, with 30 seconds left.
• Oh, and then the Lakers were up 3 on Portland with 1:47 left in the fourth last night. They had a 79.4% chance of winning then.

According to @inpredict the Jazz are horribly unlucky

Utah needed just ONE of these to play POR:

MIN up 11 vs. DEN with 3:27 left: 98.7% win probability

SAC up 25 vs. POR with 8:35 in the 3rd: 98.2% win probability

HOU up 14 vs. OKC with 9:26 in the 4th: 96.1% win probability

— Conner Varney (@nbaconner) April 11, 2019

Those are 1 in 898,957 odds. Nearly one in a million.

I mean, how does that happen? I want to put particular emphasis on the absurdity of the Portland result: the Blazers had decided to lose that game, so they played six players all game long, their very worst. They were down by 28 at the half and were trying to lose. They won.

If you’re looking for someone to blame, blame Kings coach Dave Joerger, who decided it was safe to pull his starters at halftime of that game, thinking that they could keep a 28-point lead against the worst players on the Blazers’ roster. They could not.

Blame Chris Paul, who took a wild shot at the end of that Rockets possession with 30 seconds left. Or blame the whole Rockets defense, who somehow allowed the ball to get to Paul George, OKC’s only dangerous shooter, without a timeout or a play being called.

Blame the Wolves for collapsing in such a fashion, giving up a 12-0 run right when it seemed like they were actually going to be able to pull off an upset.

Blame me. I booked my hotel in Portland at halftime of their game, because, again, Portland was down 28 and was trying to lose. I thought that was safe. I jinxed this.

2. Anyway, the Jazz play Houston now

Is that *that* much worse than playing the Blazers from a Jazz perspective? I do think it’s significantly worse: this Blazers team showed some real weaknesses in last year’s playoffs, things that Quin Snyder and the Jazz could have copied. Enes Kanter is obviously exploitable on defense, but so are Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum. Keeping Lillard and McCollum in check would have been a challenge, one that the Jazz might have failed at, but I think the offense would have been much more effective.

But I will say this: I think the Jazz will be more challenging for the Rockets than last season. I don’t think it’s because of their relative health: I don’t know how effective Ricky Rubio will be, as he hasn’t really been a plus in any of their four matchups this year, and doesn’t seem like a great fit against the Rockets’ switching defense. And of course, losing Dante Exum is a blow.

My reason for some optimism is this: last year, the Jazz’s strategy on James Harden largely worked, and in each game, he took a smaller and smaller role, missing more and more shots. It was really Chris Paul who saved them, but this season, he hasn’t been as effective. Whether it be due to injury or age, Paul’s shooting about 4% worse than last year.

And, there’s no Trevor Ariza, who did a pretty effective job on Donovan Mitchell all series long. Mitchell’s gotten a little bit better at dealing with rim protectors like Clint Capela. Rudy Gobert’s gotten a little bit better at defending in space and in switches, and is doing a better job of contesting the midrange this year.

Here’s the bad news: the Rockets have won 20 of their last 24 games. Two of those four losses were by one point, one was by two points. The big loss was by 14 points, and that was to the league-leading Milwaukee Bucks. They’re so, so good right now.

But still: this is the challenge that the Jazz have been planning for since the offseason. Quin Snyder pretty meticulously scouted how to attack switching defenses, how to play differently against the Rockets. The Jazz shouldn’t be favored, certainly, the Rockets should be. But I think it will be a fight.

We’ll have much more coverage on this in the days to come.

3. Tonight’s game

I feel like I’m not doing guys like Grayson Allen, Georges Niang, and Tony Bradley much of a service by only having one point of the Triple Team be about the actual game, but this game was the fourth-most interesting game to them of the night. That much was clear from their rotations and players available early on.

But still, Grayson Allen scored 40 points in a game where the Clippers played an NBA-adjacent rotation! And admittedly, that rotation knew that this game didn’t matter at all, but still, even if it were a pickup game on concrete, that’d be pretty impressive.

“It’s awesome for (my G-League teammates) and us all to get the opportunity to play out there in an NBA game with extended minutes," Allen said. "They did really well too. They showed that they can play and have talent.”

Really, it must have been cool for guys to get a chance to cap off their season by getting a chance to show what they can do on ESPN. Imagine how excited Tony Bradley’s family must be, after a season of watching his games on Twitch and elsewhere online, to be able to watch him play, and play reasonably well on ESPN.

Well, Bradley will tell you.

“It felt surreal. It felt like NBA2K or something in MyPlayer,” Bradley said.

That’s what the whole night felt like, actually: something that couldn’t happen in real life. It did. Game 1 comes Sunday.

There is no gap in the architecture of globalization more serious than the failure of nations to prevent global companies and wealthy individuals from escaping taxation through tax havens, accounting devices and pressure to bring down business tax rates.

Consider, though in a stylized form, the predicament of a middle-aged worker in the U.S. manufacturing industry. He might put his concerns this way:

"First, they told me that we were going to drop our tariffs, and I was going to have to compete with workers in Mexico and Asia who were willing to work for only $3 or $4 an hour. I was scared, but they told me it was for the best because more trade meant lower prices for what I buy and more opportunities for my kids in the industries of the future."

"Second, they told me that my company, where I have worked for the past 20 years, was going to outsource much of the work I do to Asia. But this, too, was for the best because, without being able to access low-wage labor, my employer would fail, and that would not do any of us any good. It didn't seem fair, but I went along."

"Now, they are telling me that there is worldwide competition for capital and America needs an attractive business environment, so a huge reduction in corporate taxes is essential. Otherwise, we will hemorrhage capital, the argument goes. Of course, if mobile corporations and cosmopolitan investment bankers pay less in taxes, people like me are going to have to pay more!"

"I have had enough with the Davos international cooperation project. For me and my family, it always means getting shafted some way, so we won't get shafted worse some other way. Maybe my sneakers will cost more, but I'm voting for people who will put American jobs first, and enough with all this globaloney. If American leadership in the global economy is about whether PwC and McKinsey can operate around the world, or whether Disney gets to sue people when they plagiarize Mickey Mouse, I could not care less."

It is easy to sympathize with this hypothetical worker. And yet, protectionism has never been a winning economic strategy, and if the United States withdraws from the global economy, we will cede influence, power and prosperity to China.

One important part of the way forward is suggested by a recent International Monetary Fund report demonstrating (to anyone able to penetrate its turgid prose) the urgency of global cooperation to adequately tax corporate income. As the world economy has become much more integrated, corporations — by pitting one country against another — have been able to push their tax rates way down. This is not smart economics as populations age and government revenue needs increase. It is not fair as inequity increases and wages lag, and it delegitimizes the entire project of making the world smaller.

How much is at stake? The IMF quotes estimates suggesting that as much $600 billion in revenue was lost due to the lack of effective global cooperation in taxing corporate income. This works out today to nearly $400 for every family of four on Earth and far exceeds global aid flows. The biggest losses come from companies whose business is digital - and so they manage to be everywhere in cyberspace but not physically enough in any one country to be meaningfully taxed.

What should be done? It is hard to know where to finish, but clear enough where to start. The leaders of all major nations need to make a clear political commitment that highly profitable corporations should pay at least a base level, perhaps 15 percent of their reported profits, to governments around the world. They can then task their finance ministers to work out how this can best be done with the IMF and other relevant organizations. Perhaps to motivate business interests, governments could indicate that there would be no new major trade or investment agreements until a cooperative approach had been forged with respect to taxes.

The IMF has shown leadership and courage in highlighting this issue and calling for major changes. It should be relied on going forward to drive the search for a new approach. The stakes go way beyond tax revenue to the political viability of a liberal, open global system. If tax cooperation cannot be achieved and global companies continue to flee and escape taxation, while their workers stay rooted and pay, populist nationalism will flourish and we will all be poorer.

Lawrence Summers is a professor at and past president of Harvard University. He was treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 and an economic adviser to President Barack Obama from 2009 through 2010.

So Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., made more than 1 million dollars, much thanks to his best-selling book. Rarely is turning such a profit in an industry as dicey as publishing better news for your enemies than you, but so it goes: Sanders's critics are thrilled.

It makes sense that they would be. After so much complaining about Sanders's ritzy winter coat and his lake house in Vermont, the opportunity to utter the phrase "made a million dollars" must arrive as a great victory. There is no socialist in America who will ever escape charges of hypocrisy, of course; even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who was a bartender before her election, has been accused of being secretly rich. The reason this line of attack persists is because the politics of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are unabashedly moral in language and sound pretty good; the only way to undermine them is, therefore, to say they don't really mean it.

But back to Bernie: Is there anything to say in defense of a guy who made more than 1 million dollars in a particular calendar year?

In my view — not really; million-makers can defend themselves, at least qua makers of millions. But there is something to say in defense of Sanders as a consistent politician and an honest broker, which is really what his detractors are out to dispute.

First, Sanders’s complaint isn’t that millionaires exist per se — there are millionaires in democratic socialist countries such as Sweden, Finland and Norway — but that the United States’ super-rich are symptomatic of a system that churns out a small class of extremely wealthy people who rule over the vast remainder. Key to Sanders’s argument against the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a small elite is that their largesse allows them to wield disproportionate, anti-democratic political power by funding campaigns and lobbying politicians; seeing as Sanders’s campaign is funded strictly by small donors and he is not a lobbyist himself, it would seem that his having made more than 1 million dollars in a year doesn’t exactly run afoul of that critique.

One might argue that Sanders should’ve donated whatever money he made nearing the million-dollar mark to charity — and one might also ask why he ought not have donated every single dollar he made over his family’s immediate subsistence needs, regardless of the final tally. Sanders does do some charitable giving, but it’s worth noting that charity and socialism are nowhere near synonymous; this is why the right-wing proposal to let free markets reign and rely on individual giving to meet the needs of the poor is something like the political opposite of Sanders’s program. So while charitable giving is certainly a good thing to do, and I wholly endorse doing it, Sanders neglecting to de-millionize himself through alms isn’t a failure to adequately commit to socialism.

It may instead be a failure of another kind: Call it cupidity, or — worse for political types — an insensitivity to optics. Neither misstep compromises the final integrity of Sanders’s politics nor implies he’s insufficiently serious about them, especially after so many decades pushing the same policies with no best-selling books or millions to show for it.

But whatever the critique, honest or dishonest, I agree with the general sentiment: A few people owning stockpiles of wealth while many more go without is unjust. So if you’re bothered by Bernie’s big payday, take action now: Vote for him. You can raise not only his taxes but also the taxes of millionaires across the country, and reap the benefits in the form of universal programs such as Medicare-for-all. Have so many birds ever been felled by a single stone?

Elizabeth Bruenig is an opinion columnist at The Washington Post.

@ebruenig

Dear Ann Cannon • I have a friend whose three adult children are very successful. They did well in school. They have impressive careers. They married happily. This friend is enormously proud of her kids — as well she should be. Whenever we get together, however, the conversation always ends up being about her awesome kids, which is hard for me because while I love my children, some of them are struggling right now. And I mean REALLY struggling.

I’ve started to avoid this friend, which is sad because we’ve known each other for years and have a lot of positive history together. Worse, I’ve started to hope her kids will fail at something — anything! — which is totally lame of me. My question is this: How can I change my attitude? How can I be happy for my friend’s kids instead of feeling so resentful?

— Ashamed of My Attitude

Dear Ashamed • Even if your own kids weren’t struggling right now, you may still find your friend’s tendency to make it all about her children hard to take. Most people have limits when it comes to listening to others brag (humble or otherwise) about their kids, right?

Frankly, I don’t think you should feel too guilty about secretly wishing your friend’s children will fail at something. That doesn’t make you a bad person. It just makes you a human person. For now, I’d accept the fact that you feel this way, realizing that feelings are subject to change. In the meantime, you can certainly act happy for your friend’s kids which is a good and gracious thing to do. Express interest and support. Treat them the way you’d want people to treat yours if the situation were reversed.

As for your friend ... well, she probably isn’t even aware that she’s being so overbearing. You can, of course, continue to limit contact with her for now. Or if you do choose to spend time with her, deftly (and kindly) steer the conversation toward another topic, such as what manager Joe Maddon can do to help the Chicago Cubs’ underperforming bullpen, for instance.

I hope this helps.

Dear Ann Cannon • My son, who’s finishing his freshman year in college, just broke up with his high school sweetheart. He’s the one who drove the breakup and I know she feels terrible about it. Here’s my problem: I’ve known this girl for years and I really do love her and I know she considers me a second mother. I realize it’s probably not a bad thing for both my son and his ex-girlfriend to date other people, but I’m sad she won’t be a part of our lives — at least for the foreseeable future. Where do I go from here?

— Sad Mama

Dear Sad Mama • You’re in a tough spot for sure. I’m sorry. You don’t mention the reasons why your son broke things off — and now that I think about it, they don’t matter much anyway. Unless you believe in arranged marriages, your son has the right to run his own romantic relationships in whatever way he sees fit.

So where does this leave you and his ex-girlfriend? As long as your son doesn’t object, you could still acknowledge important events in her life like a birthday or a graduation by sending her a card. And, of course, whenever you run into each other, greet her with the warmth you’ve shown her in the past. At the same time, I think it would be a mistake to get in the middle of whatever happened between your son and his ex-girlfriend by encouraging her to confide in you, even if she’s done so in the past.

It’s sometimes a sad reality that when our children cut certain people out of their lives, they cut them out of our lives, too. Wishing all of you the best of luck.

Ann Cannon is The Tribune’s advice columnist. Got a question for Ann? Email her at askann@sltrib.com or visit the Ask Ann Cannon page on Facebook.

The year was 1979. A policeman, construction worker, cowboy and Indian chief, who for all we knew were definitely straight, were making it fun to stay at the YMCA. Pink Floyd gave us “The Wall,” and a young Orrin Hatch introduced his first balanced budget amendment.

Four decades later, the Village People, it turns out, were totally gay, Hatch has finally retired, and now talk of “The Wall" more than likely refers to the border with Mexico.

The push to amend the Constitution to balance the budget, however, is timeless.

Hatch proposed and re-proposed balanced budget amendments year after year during his long Senate tenure. Sen. Mike Lee has put forward his own balanced budget amendment … and got nowhere.

Now, Rep. Ben McAdams, a Democrat no less, has joined with moderate members of his caucus to introduce a balanced budget amendment, too.

"With this bill, I'm saying let's stop ignoring the issue and start talking about how to address it,” McAdams, D-Utah, said.

Fortunately, talk is cheap, so it won’t add to the deficit.

A balanced budget amendment certainly sounds like a good idea, at least on the surface. The Utah Legislature and many other states have constitutional requirements that they balance their budgets. But what happens the next time the bottom falls out of the economy, like it did in 2008?

“During a recession, tax revenue plummets and that causes you to run a deficit,” said Phillip Garner, an economics professor at Dixie State University. “If the government has to respond to that, they have to raise taxes or cut spending during a recession, which is the opposite of the normal economic prescription.”

Essentially in a financial crisis, it helps if the government spends MORE or taxes less to stimulate the economy. Being forced to cut back as the economy shrinks doesn’t just hamper Congress’ ability to respond to the next financial catastrophe, it could make it much worse.

If Congress ever really wanted to balance the budget, it has all the tools it needs. Lawmakers simply have to do it, and it would be a lot simpler than amending the Constitution. For most of our history, that was the norm, except during major recessions or wartime. Indeed, there was a budget surplus from 1998 to 2001.

But politics always get in the way. Democrats won’t consider anything that touches Medicare or Medicaid, and Republicans want their tax cuts and defense spending. So nothing changes, or if it does change, it changes for the worse.

Thanks to the Trump tax cuts, the deficit for the month of February was an all-time high, despite brisk economic growth. On Wednesday, the Treasury Department announced the projected deficit for the current year will likely exceed $1.1 trillion, the largest since we came out of the recession.

For perspective, back when young Sen. Hatch proposed his first balanced budget amendment 40 years ago, the entire debt — all the deficits since the country became a country — totaled $820 billion. Now we are at $24 trillion, and heading higher.

As bad as it sounds, the situation is not dire, at least not yet, according to Garner. The deficits in recent years have been running between 3 and 4 percent of the gross domestic product, which is manageable in the near term.

“The real problem as far as creating a potential crisis will be in the coming decades when those budget deficits will get much much worse because of the aging of the population,” he said.

Thirty years out, forecasts see the deficits growing to 9% of the GDP — a level that becomes a real problem. Like any economic problem, dealing with it before it becomes a crisis is a lot less painful.

So Lee, McAdams and the rest of Congress, of course, will spring into action, demonstrate real leadership and start to address the problem.

Yeah, right. Congress can barely manage to keep the lights on.

“In the near term, I see pretty much zero possibility of [a balanced budget amendment] happening,” Garner said. “It’s too painful politically to go out there, right before an election, and say we’re going to cause everyone a bunch of pain by raising your taxes a lot or cutting your favorite programs you rely on.”

What we’re left with, then, is theatrics in the form of balanced budget amendments. That way at least our politicians can take a popular — if pointless — stand. They can look like they’re doing something, even if they’re not. They’ll get re-elected and the red ink will keep flowing and the next generation can deal with the consequences.

It took an unbelievable series of events on Wednesday night for it to happen — check that out here — but the Jazz will face the Houston Rockets, with the best-of-seven series beginning Sunday in Houston.

Here’s the schedule: