This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Bruce Ashworth of Fountain Green recently made a couple of woeful discoveries.
State agencies will not accept certain Utah birth certificates as valid identification. And the state penalizes some people who are renewing their driver licenses for their longevity.
Ashworth spelled out his frustrations in a letter to his legislative representatives, Sen. Ralph Okerlund, R-Monroe, and Rep. Patrick Painter, R-Nephi.
The 64-year-old Vietnam combat veteran took his small laminated birth certificate he received from the state several years ago to renew his license. But that certificate is not accepted by the state anymore because it is too small and easy to counterfeit.
It wasn't that long ago the state issued the birth certificate that it no longer accepts. The kicker: He had to pay $18 for a birth certificate of a larger size that proves he is the same person the birth certificate that is no longer valid proves that he is.
Then he was told he would have to pay an extra $12 to have his birth researched since he is so old that the information pertaining to his birth is not in the computer system and easily accessible.
In other words, it will actually take human intervention to find the record of his birth, which the no-longer-valid birth certificate already proves.
He thinks it's absurd and wants his legislators do something about it.
He got a response from Okerlund, who said, "I have found other instances of problems with this system as a result of your report and I am now looking at ways to address the inefficiencies. I apologize for your problems and am researching the matter further to see if legislation is needed to solve these issues."
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Not in Colorado • The Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media sponsored a film competition recently using the theme, "We Love Colorado." The winning video was promised a $1,500 award and a spot on the main page of colorado.gov.
First place went to a video titled "Colorado: The Musical," by Don-John Kullish. It features Kullish and a woman singing about Colorado while showing scenic spots, historic places and other interesting tidbits about the state.
About 90 seconds into the video, it shows a group of people sitting at a famous landmark while the song tells of a great place to hang out with friends.
The landmark is Delicate Arch.
In Utah.
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Welcome to the tea party • Saratoga Springs Mayor Mia Love has indicated she may run for Congress and recently took a trip to Washington, D.C., to test her viability.
Tuesday, she acted like she has already made her decision by doing what all Republican hopefuls in Utah are doing these days to help their political chances: Kissing up to the tea-party Obama haters.
She tweeted to her faithful fans: "Fact: Unemployment went up from 5 percent in 2001 to 9.2 percent in 2011. Obama failure."
Aside from being irrelevant to her duties as mayor of a small hamlet in Utah County, it's interesting how she skipped over the years when George W. Bush was president.
There of course was the post Sept. 11 markets, the dot-com bubble burst, the housing bubble disaster and the credit crunch under Bush.
But that's what tea partyers do.
They conveniently develop amnesia for what happened from 2001 through 2008 and simplify everything into an Obama problem.
When Love was in Washington, she met with the Republican Congressional Committee, Americans for Tax Reform, Freedomworks and Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, so she probably got thorough instructions on how to be a Republican congressional candidate in Utah: Just keep chanting the "It's all Obama's fault" mantra.
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