Residents are encouraged to schedule a one-on-one meeting with Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker for a 10-minute talk on most any subject of city concern on May 31. Shake hands, give thanks, or give an earful.---

As part of the Mayor's ongoing open-door dialogues, residents can schedule appointments starting now with Mayor Becker. The meeting would happen on May 31 between 4-6 p.m.

Slots are filled on a first-come, first-serve basis, and residents are encouraged to discuss any subject of city business. Residents can schedule appointments in person at the Mayor’s office at 451 S. State, or by calling 801-535-7704.

Thousands marched in protest of the NATO summit this past weekend in Chicago where Democracy Now! reports that “Iraq Veterans Against the War held a ceremony where nearly 50 veterans discarded their war medals by hurling them down the street in the direction of the NATO summit.”---

Top of the Alty World

“No NATO, No War”—Democracy Now!

The Republic Report profiles American Tradition Partnership, the shadowy group trying to overturn Montana’s century-old ban on corporate spending in state elections.—Republic Report

In the world of Spotify, Rhapsody and Pandora more music is disseminated to listeners but it just isn’t paying the bills for musicians.—The Austin Chronicle

Top of AltyUtah

KRCL’s Troy Williams hosts Green Party presidential hopeful Roseanne Barr as she discusses her campaign to combine capitalism and socialism for an idea she calls “peopleism.”—RadioActive

The Left Show hosts “ridiculously good looking candidate” Ryan Combe, Democratic candidate for congress challenging incumbent Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah.—The Left Show

City Weekly interviews University of Utah Psychiatry professor Jan Terpstra on how society has failed the homeless and the mentally ill.—Salt Lake City Weekly

Major changes to Salt Lake City’s public transportation could be coming in the future, including the loss of the free-fare zone.—KCPW

KCPW also highlights the refugee experience in Utah by hosting guests from Salt Lake County Refugee Services the Asian Association of Utah and more.—KCPW

Rantosphere:

CW founder John Saltas reflects on the media’s morbid obsession with its own demise, “If they write one more obit about the newspaper industry, I’ll puke.”—Salt Lake City Weekly

The Long View:

CW profiles Utahns living double lives such as Malcom/Deborah Dean, founder of the group Engendered Species.

“He’s emphatic that he’s heterosexual, happily cross-dresses and will never seek sexual-reassignment surgery. ‘I’ve done things people consider macho—like riding a bicycle across the country from the Pacific to the Atlantic. I was one who pulled people off rooftops in New Orleans after Katrina. I enjoy my ‘boy stuff’ enough not to give it up.”—Salt Lake City Weekly.

Tim Lawson has always boasted of close connections with politicians ranging from legislators to his friend Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. Now, the corporate-fixer-turned-gluten-free baker is looking to get the attention of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, by suing him in a civil suit for defunding the Food and Drug Administration in a way he says will jeopardize millions of Americans who suffer from Celiac’s disease.---

In an impromptu press conference Thursday, Lawson explained that the lawsuit was targeted at Hatch for underfunding the FDA’s ability to test gluten levels in foods. Currently, the FDA is proposing to adopt a label used in Europe that would allow food to be labeled “Gluten Free” if it contains 20 parts per million gluten. For the roughly 9 million Americans who suffer from Celiac’s like Lawson, even those levels are enough to trigger potentially life-threatening reactions.

“With Celiac, some people are genetically unable to process gluten in their diet that causes an autoimmune response,” Lawson says. “The body -- for a lack of a better way of putting it -- starts attacking itself.” Lawson knows firsthand, as he suffers from the disease himself, while five of his seven children are gluten intolerant. In recent years, Lawson has opened New Grains, a gluten-free bakery with his wife, and has become a board member of the national Celiac Sprue Association.

He says that Hatch’s failed to do his duty as a Senator on the Human Health and Services Appropriations Committee by failing to fund the FDA to be able to conduct adequate testing of food for gluten. The lawsuit seeks relief in the form of “damages in the amount necessary to properly fund the FDA so that products labeled gluten free do not contain dangerous amounts of gluten.”

“Politicians by nature don’t understand proportions -- they have one mouth and two ears so they should start using them proportionally,” Lawson says. “If he cared at all about the Celiac community, he would pull his head out of his ass instead of sitting up there thinking he’s the kingpin.”

For more information about the lawsuit or for information about Celiac and gluten-intolerance resources, visit Lawson’s blog here.

The former Zephyr Club in downtown Salt Lake City, 301 S. West Temple; closed since October 2003.---

Q Salt Lake reports that a recent study has found “gaydar” appears to be a real phenomenon. The University of Washington study had respondents guess orientation from pictures of 129 participants, and, “For women’s faces, participants were 65 percent accurate in guessing sexual orientation. For men’s faces, the accuracy was 57 percent.”---

Top of the Alty World

“Study Finds Gaydar Exists, is Effective”—Q Salt Lake.

Truthout reporter Mike Ludwig joins RT News to discuss the limits of the Obama administration’s rules on fracking, the process of hyradulic fracturing of natural gas and other fossil-fuel deposits that activists worry could poison groundwater, and one micro-brewer worries could poison beer supplies—RT News.

The Texas Observer reports on a rare case where a gay union helped save a Texas man from being deported back to Mexico for being in the country without documentation.—Texas Observer.

Democracy Now! Hosts Ben Jealous, the CEO and President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, to talk about the latest developments in the Trayvon Martin shooting case and racial profiling in America.—Democracy Now!

Top of Alty Utah

KRCLRadio hosts former Salt Lake Tribune staffer Glen Warchol, who was recently laid off from the paper, to discuss the local media landscape in Utah.--RadioActive

Doug Fabrizio discusses the pros and cons of energy development in the rural West, from Utah to Colorado and Wyoming.—RadioWest

A novel gold-storage and investment business keeps clients' gold outside of the traditional banking system and has placed a vault in Salt Lake City for its customers.—Salt Lake City Weekly.

From political fixer to gluten-free advocate, Tim Lawson is suing Orrin Hatch for defunding the FDA in a way he says jeopardizes the lives of millions of American who suffer from gluten intolerance in the form of Celiac’s disease.—Salt Lake City Weekly.

Rantosphere The High Country News delves into Utah’s battle over public lands and RS 2477 roads. “The fight isn’t about families’ access to private land and favorite picnic spots, [activists] say, but rather state access to resource-extraction opportunities.”—High Country News.

The Long View:

The OC Weekly looks at the troubling case of two Los Angeles County Transit Cops who drew guns on an unarmed homeless man and subsequently beat him into submission. The cops alleged the man possessed cocaine and during the fight swallowed the evidence.

“The deputies' story seemed plausible, especially because everyone knows cops would never, ever lie. But there was a huge problem: The rock-cocaine tale was fictitious. Toxicology tests done on Jones within minutes of his arrival at the ER proved he had no drugs in his system, not even a faint trace of cocaine. Oops. But Jones—whose face is now slightly deformed as a result of the officers' crushing blows to his head—would remain stuck in a twisted La-La Land. [Officers] Harper and Sherred continued to push charges. To bolster their stance, they wrote supplemental reports that added a new element to justify them drawing their weapons immediately upon arrival. They speculated that Jones had been urinating on the wall or preparing to perform an act of indecent exposure, instead of using rock cocaine.” –OC Weekly

The news from the Salt Lake City Police Department watch log has in the past few days reported some rather bizarre incidences that required police intervention, including the case of a trespassing couch surfer, and a fracas involving a dog and a man in an automated wheelchair.---

According to the watch command log, it was shortly after 3 a.m. Sat., May 12, that a resident awoke to find an individual had broken into his home and was fast asleep on the man’s couch. Apparently, the individual had left a party up the street and entered a stranger’s apartment through an open back door. For this post-party foul, the perpetrator was booked into jail for trespass.

In other curious crimes, the watch log reports that Tues., May 15, a man was arrested for aggravated assault. The incident boiled down to two men getting into an argument that resulted in the arrest of perpetrator Aaron Thomas for aggravated assault, when Thomas’ dog bit the other man.

In his defense, Thomas claimed that the dog attacked only because the other man attempted to run him over in an automated wheelchair. That’s what happens when you bring a dog to a wheelchair fight.

For more than a year, a course at the Department of Defense’s Joint Forces Staff College taught officers that “total war” may be necessary against the nation of Islam, even discussing “taking war to a civilian population wherever necessary,” Wired reports.---

Top of the Alty World: “U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam”—Wired.

The Florida Supreme Court heard a crucial foreclosure case that could have national ramifications for banks that used automated robo-signatures for foreclosure proceedings.—Democracy Now!

Truthout interviews the protest organizers for the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago on the high cost of the organization’s military campaigns and reliance on drone warfare.— Truthout.

Top of Alty Utah

New data shows sexually transmitted disease, poverty and a lack of insurance are on the rise among Utah children.--KCPW

Governor Gary Herbert and his Democratic opponent respond to President Barack Obama’s support for gay marriage by sounding their opposition.—Q Salt Lake.

The American Legislative Exchange Council is holding an annual meeting in Salt Lake City this summer, and KRCL’s Nick Burns hosts Maryann Martindale from Alliance for a Better Utah and Brendan Fischer from the Center for Media and Democracy to discuss ALEC’s influence on state legislators.—RadioActive

The president of the Utah Adoption Council resigned in protest over unethical practices of some adoption agencies.—KUER

Valley Mental Health looks to the future after receiving Medicaid certification for a new program.—Salt Lake City Weekly.

Rantosphere:

Truthout’s Marjorie Cohn calls out “Romney the Bully” writing that “Romney made a career of bullying when he was head of the private equity firm Bain Capital. Bain would invest in companies, load them up with debt and then sell them for huge profits.”--Truthout

The Long View:

From CW’s cover is a look at the Goshute tribe’s battle over water that could be siphoned off to Nevada.

“Water is fundamental to the Goshutes’ beliefs, and they fear losing to Las Vegas’ thirst the sacred waters, around which their ceremonies revolve, that tumble down 11 streams from the Deep Creek mountain range. In the Goshute language, Steele says, water is referred to as a human being, a living entity. It is in the water that the spirits of their ancestors reside. If the water goes to Las Vegas’ fountains and man-made Venetian canals, the spirits will go there, too.”—Salt Lake City Weekly

The former Zephyr Club in downtown Salt Lake City, 301 S. West Temple; closed since October 2003. ---

Two versions of the Violence Against Women Act are being debated in Congress,but only one would give tribal authorities the power to fully protect Native American women, reports the site Indian Country Today Media Network. “Tribal authority to prosecute non-Indians for crimes against tribal citizens was removed by the Supreme Court in 1978, creating an Indian country landscape where non-Indians violate Native women with impunity.”---

Top of the Alty World:

“Violence Against Women Act: Overdue Justice for Native Women”—Indian Country Today Media Network.

Democracy Now! hosts Kenneth Roth with Human Rights Watch to discuss the opening proceedings of the military tribunals for the five 9/11 bomber suspects that recently began at Guantanamo Bay.—Democracy Now!

“Mitt and the GOP Boys Club” explores the trouble Romney’s campaign will have in reaching out to women voters.—Boston Phoenix.

Top of Alty Utah

Utah Physicians for Clean Air leader Dr. Brian Moench talks about his work developing an environmental curriculum with a group of University of Utah students to educate the next generation.—RadioActive.

KUER takes a look at Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s visit to Utah in designating new conservation areas as part of the approval of a major natural-gas project.—KUER

A blind, Vietnamese immigrant says getting arrested in Washington, D.C., to protest possible Medicaid cuts was something she had to do even if civil disobedience wasn’t part of her upbringing.—Salt Lake City Weekly.

KCPW hosts Chief of Staff to Salt Lake City David Everitt and a resident to talk the pros and cons of having walkable, neighborhood bars and taverns.—KCPW

Openly gay GOP candidate Fred Karger will be in Utah’s June presidential primary.—QSalt Lake.

Rantosphere:

Brandon's Big Gay Blog reflects on North Carolina's passage of a state Constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage and offers thanks for holding out so long before passing the amendment. "[T]hanks for trying, North Carolina! You have become the 30th state to codify a hateful anti-marriage law in your constitution."--Salt Lake City Weekly.

The Long View: The Verge takes a look at get-rich-quick schemers, including Utah’s own Jeremy Johnson, an Internet marketer who the Federal Trade Commission is currently going after for $275 million. “Johnson, or ‘the millionaire adventurer,’ as he is known in Utah, became a national news story in 2010 when he organized a trip to Haiti to deliver medical supplies in the wake of the earthquake. As the Mormon Times gushed, Johnson lives in a six-million-dollar home that ‘looks like a European palace ... only a little smaller,’ with porticos, balconies, a turret, and the one accessory that no European palace could be without: a rock-climbing wall.”—The Verge.

Hollie Blank was in a party mood this afternoon at Valley Mental Health's Fresh Start, celebrating not only its growing success but also brighter future thanks to the commitment of Medicaid funding for the peer-driven program.---

Several years ago, Fresh Start and a sister therapy program called Wellness and Recovery replaced the popular but controversial Pathways as part of a restructuring by then-Valley CEO Deborah Falvo that, in part, led subsequently to a rift with major Valley funder, Salt Lake County. That rift ultimately saw the county take control of its $50 million annual contract away from Valley and give it to Optum Health back in September 2010.

Some clients City Weekly spoke to back in the summer of 2009 expressed deep concern about losing Pathways to a unique-to-Utah drop-in day program that would be run by clients. Pathways had been a highly structured program for mentally ill clients with therapists providing support, but Fresh Start, by comparison, was largely run and staffed by higher-functioning clients.

Blank says that while the program suffered a dip in numbers after it recently moved from downtown to 3900 S. 1141 East, it nevertheless was seeing 150 clients a week, apparently around double the number who attended when Fresh Start began.

Part of the reason for today's festivities, she says, was that Fresh Start had earned a Medicaid certification, allowing Valley to bill for the program. That meant, says PR consultant Kelly Starkey, that Fresh Start would be extending its programming and hours, thanks to the funding, along with expanding "our peer teaching program, where clients teach skills" they have developed, whether knitting, running a bingo game or engaging in leadership activities. 

What's particularly important about the  Medicaid certification, Blank added proudly, is that now, instead of being supported by Valley, "we’re self-sufficient."

She says the program has four consultants advising six peer specialists. "It's very much peer-driven." While the Wellness and Recovery program that started along side Fresh Start has been phased out, she believes Fresh Start nevertheless incorporates a number of wellness-type therapy groups, including anxiety and bi-polar groups, where peers are both teaching and sharing their own experiences with clients.

The Salt Lake Tribune continues in its grim march toward newsroom efficiency, today laying off nine newsroom employees --- , with A&E reporter and 30-year news veteran Glen Warchol tweeting this morning that he was among them.

The Tribune's own article, by Paul Beebe, rather vaguely noted that "Five of those laid off were assigned to the paper’s copy desk. Four worked at other duties in the newsroom." When a commenter on the article asked who was laid off (so that he or she could send story ideas and tips to the appropriate reporters), the site administrator simply said, "We've updated the staff contact list online. Most cuts were on the production side, not news gathering."

So, if you happen to have a copy of the Trib's previous staff roster, you might deduce who the unlucky souls are.

“No sense mincing words in this message to you,” Salt Lake Tribune editor Nancy Conway wrote in a memo to the staff, posted in a blog on JimRomenesko.com. "Today nine people in our newsroom have lost their jobs because we need to cut costs."

Beebe's article said the layoffs represented a 7.5 percent cut of the newsroom staff, reducing the number of journalists to 119 employees. The layoffs will make way for a restructuring in the news room. Conway said that copy editing and page design tasks "will be integrated with existing news teams to create independent news hubs."

It sounds like they aspire to the City Weekly "hub," where our editors, reporters and copy editors collectively write articles, blogs, and listings and then post updates about them on social media. Nimble beings we must be in this brave new age.

To those sent home with a pink slip, our condolences. In August 2010, before shifting to his current A&E reporting duties, Warchol was asked by his editors to cease writing for The Salt Lake Crawler, the biting blog he maintained for more than two years. His final entry for that blog seems sadly apropos for today's news. He ends with, "I see the escape slide is deployed and inflated, so it's time to say, adios, amigos!"

Economic experts rate Mitt Romney’s claim that, under Obama, the government will “control half the economy,” as a sound byte that falls somewhere between “ridiculous” and “stupid” on the scale of fear tactics, according to Mother Jones Magazine.---

Top of the Alty Nation

“Romney’s Biggest Fib?” fact checks a recent claim by Romney stoking fear of the Obama administration’s health-care program taking over the economy.—Mother Jones.

California’s medical-marijuana dispensaries are seeing more pushback from the federal government, that may only get worse in the future.—The North Bay Bohemian.

A Texas man’s battle with the Environmental Protection Agency could have lasting consequences for the future of fracking.—Texas Observer.

In other fracktastic news, Democracy Now! hosts Pulitzer prize-winning author Steve Coll to talk about his book about Exxon Mobile and the role the company’s fracking lobbyists will have in the next election, as well as the company’s controversial business practices in Afghanistan and Indonesia.—Democracy Now!

Top of Alty Utah

More than 100 people gathered in Ogden last week at a candlelight vigil for a young gay man who recently took his life. Speakers offered a message of hope for gay youth facing bullying.—Q Salt Lake.

Several Utah companies skirt FDA regulations by promoting “all natural” hormone therapy treatments for women, even though the claims aren’t backed up by science of clinical testing.—Salt Lake City Weekly.

The Federal Trade Commission recently won a court battle against several fraudulent companies that used to operate call centers out of Utah and are now seeking $450 million in damages.—Salt Lake City Weekly.

KCPW talks about the status of student-loan debt for Utah college grads and hosts University of Utah professor Nicholas Hillman and Dave Buhler with the Utah System of Higher Education to talk about the high costs of higher education.—KCPW

Rantosphere: One Utah blogger, Glenden Brown, discusses the war on drugs and a clean-needle center in Canada, and why, “It’s time we stopped pretending we can jail everyone who's ever smoked a joint and think that we’ve solved the problem of drugs.”—One Utah.

The Long View: From CW’s cover out on Salt Lake City’s growing comedy scene.

“Gay comic Brett Hodson reveals why he’s looking forward to all the closeted Mormons coming to town for the upcoming conference weekend: ‘Nothing works better as lube than shameful, shameful tears.’”—Salt Lake City Weekly.

One doctor received probation and is required to pay a $5,000 fine for inappropriate controlled-substance use, and another doctor is disciplined for not paying fines to another state's medical examiner's board.---

Cottonwood Heights doctor John Corkery had his license to practice medicine placed on probation for three years and is required to pay a $5,000* fine for “unprofessional and unlawful conduct with respect to inappropriate controlled-substance use.” Springville doctor Steven MacArthur also was disciplined by the state with a simple public reprimand for failing to pay fines and fees relating to an order from the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners.

To see if your doctor has been disciplined by the Utah Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing, check out CW’s Doctor Discipline Database at Cityweekly.net/doctors for discipline records going back to 2000.

Utahns can now also search for discipline actions taken against thousands of Utah licensed professionals from contractors to dentists going back as far as 2007, as part of new enhanced search functions recently rolled out by the Utah Department of Commerce.

*Note: This blog has been updated from an earlier post to correct the fine amount for John Corkery

A new ranking has listed 100 cities in America for their porn consumption, with Salt Lake City making the top 100. But the ranking could be seen as good news compared to a 2009 study that ranked Utah number one for paid porn subscriptions.---

Men’s Health magazine recently released its list of “The Smuttiest Cities in America” in the United States, and among the porn capitals Salt Lake City made the list for the 71st most smutty.

While being even in the top 100 of such a list is a cringe-worthy distinction for most Utahns, it may also be a bit of relief compared to a 2009 study called “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?” by Harvard Economics professor Benjamin Edelman, who tracked online subscriptions for adult-entertainment sites.

According to a Deseret News article, the 2009 study broken down by zip code put Salt Lake, Morgan, San Juan and Sevier Counties as tops in the nation for consumption of paid subscription. While that study was conducted in a very different manner and with a different objective and was not specific to cities like the recently released Men’s Health study, it should also be worth noting the studies also differed in how they measured their metrics of smut, and the Men's Health study is too different from the Harvard study to be any kind of direct rebuttal to the 2009 study.

While the 2009 study focused only on paid subscriptions, the recent Men’s Health survey used a variety of other measurements including number of porn searches on Google, number of DVDs purchased, rented or streamed online, number of adult-entertainment stores per city and “for fans of soft-core, percentage of Cinemax-subscribing households.”

Number one in the Men’s Health study turned out to be Orlando, Florida. The magazine also dubbed Florida overall as “the most salacious state.”

When Michael McGinnis brought his coin banks molded into the shape of President Barack Obama to this year's Utah State Democratic convention, the reception, he says, "was pretty unbelievable."---

Every podium had an Obama bank looking out at the crowd, he recalls, and when he sold them on the street, they moved like hotcakes.

A reporter told McGinnis, who is based at an Oregon ranch, that his inventions—along with the PrezHead bank, he's also developed an Obama hitch cover—could change the direction of the presidential race, with the president's face staring out at people from the shelves of family homes or the back of someone's truck.

"I'm shocked Obama himself hasn't contacted me," McGinnis says. You can visit his website here.

The slogans for his two products offer their own rewards: "Cover your balls with Obama" for the hitch, "Bank with Obama" for the coin depository.

McGinnis says he isn't political, but rather "just a person trying to survive the economy. I lost everything I had three years ago, I'm trying to build my world up again."

When people see his presidential piggy bank, he says, "It's the craziest thing. It brings a smile to everybody's face."

He says he's sold 10,000 so far and given away another 3,000. Next stop on his tour of Democratic conventions will be Wyoming and Hawaii.

For Republicans who are feeling left out, he says he's been working on a mold of Mitt Romney, although he's not ready to release photos yet.

The former Zephyr Club in downtown Salt Lake City, 301 S. West Temple; closed since October 2003.---

In Utah, we are terse about tampons. Most women of childbearing age, of course, need and use tampons on a monthly basis, but the box is kept discreetly under the bathroom sink. End of discussion. ---I mean, is the word "tampon" even allowed in sex-education courses at high schools? Because, you know, tampons have to do with women riding the crimson wave and all that unsettling stuff. And now, "tampon" is being bandied about on national TV news and even on Huffington Post, for Pete's sake: Local woman buys tampons.

The real story is what Cindy Davidson found inside her 16-count of Boots tampons purchased at salvage and freight recovery store NPS for $1.99. Lo and behold, there were a couple of baggies of tightly wrapped white powder in two cardboard applicators of what should have been filled with super-absorbancy tampons.

Had it been the '70s or the '80s, she might had been tempted to gently smell and taste the powder to see what it was. And had she done so, and recognized the stash for what it was, she might have viewed her discovery as a form of rebate for all the months she and the rest of modern womankind have worked to make tampon companies profitable.

But in our current "suspicious, white powder" world, she wisely called the cops, fearing it could have some terrorist implications. Following a visit by the local Hazmat team, she and the rest of the world learned the white powder was a drug that might have made that uncomfortable "time of the month" just a little more bearable.

Thus, in Utah, we, as a state, are squirming with just a little cringe of embarrassment:

1. That the woman bought tampons at a salvage and freight recovery store (though I can appreciate her love of $1.99 a box, since brands like Tampax have been sticking it to American women each month for something like $4 a box). Many of us like to pretend we pay top dollar at a very clean, top-of-the-line Walgreens ... nothing but the best for our vajayjays.

2. That the woman didn't buy local, not even "made in the USA." These tampons come from England. How can it possibly be cheaper to ship tampons to Utah from another First World country, one that offers its citizens socialized medicine?

3. They're called "Boots" -- who wants to put "boots" up there?

4. That, earlier this year, City Weekly awarded NPS a Best of Utah award for "Best Hoarder Hangout." In our blurb, we wrote, "If you love to shop as much as you love low prices, your inner hoarder will be rewarded." We obviously weren't lying but it's a tad embarrassing, all the same.

5. About NPS, The Salt Lake Tribune's One Cheap Chick, Lesley Mitchell, wrote (just yesterday, in fact),"The 'salvage and freight recovery' company pretty much offers everything you can imagine at super-low prices. You'll never know what you'll find at NPS!" True, but an oddly timed story.

6. That, possibly due to Utah's association with Dugway Proving Ground -- the military chemical-warfare plant out west of Salt Lake City -- Utahns are more apt to suspect a white powder is anthrax than cocaine.

Yes, Utah has another "news of the weird"-type story to share with the world. We'll muddle through. However, somewhere else, another individual may not be so lucky. A cocaine dealer is likely ready to give someone the boot for screwing up what was thought to be an ingenious delivery system.

In an early April 2012 news story, the Deseret News reported that assistant secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk was leaving the Washington, D.C., position to become "the only American Indian currently serving as an LDS Church general authority."---

What's interesting about that sentence -- and the entire article -- is that it avoids an intriguing landmine in the LDS Church's history with Native Americans. Echo Hawk is the second Native American to join the First Quorum of the Seventy. The first was the highly controversial George P Lee.

While Echo Hawk is lauded in the story for improving federal relations with "Indian country," Lee's now apparently largely forgotten history in the Mormon church saw him feted by then-LDS President Spencer Kimball as a role model to devout Native American Mormons before Lee was subsequently excommunicated and revealed in the press as a child sexual abuser. Lee died in 2010.

In response to e-mailed questions, Armand Mauss, author of All Abraham's Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage, reflected on Lee's tragic history.

"From about 1950 to 1980, Mormons touted their commitment to Indians as their Rocky Mountain equivalent of the civil rights and other meliorative efforts being made in the eastern U.S. on behalf of black people, a claim that came to be increasingly questioned and criticized by the political establishment of both whites and Indians in the U.S. generally," Mauss writes. "In short, Lee was in many ways both a token and a symbol of the ongoing national ambivalence [and changing political fashions] regarding Native Americans."

During the church's drive to "redeem" what they call the Lamanites of North America, under Kimball's sponsorship, Lee rose through the ranks to join, in 1975, the Quorum of the 70, the first Native American to do so. He was just 32 years old. Lee embraced the church's doctrinal position that Lamanites were to play a key role in the establishing of Zion.

But after Kimball died, the LDS Church, Mauss recalls, shifted its interest in "Lamanites" to Latin America. Lee fought that shift, most notably former LDS Church President Ezra Taft Benson's decision to end the LDS Church's controversial Indian Placement Program, which saw Indian children being fostered by white LDS families.

In 1989, Lee was excommunicated for "apostasy," apparently the most recent general authority to be so removed. Lee took his complaints to the media, arguing that Taft was betraying Kimball's legacy, but the church did not respond.

Four years later, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that Lee had sexually molested a girl the same year he was excommunicated. In 1994, it reported he pleaded guilty to attempted sexual abuse.

Lee died in Provo in 2010. He was 67.

Mauss believes that Lee remains an ambivalent figure for Native American Mormons, at least of Lee's generation, "as someone who tried to do things the white man's way but could never quite get it right." He wonders whether Native American Mormons still remember Lee, and also questions how many of them are still active in the LDS Church.

One aspect of Lee's legacy, he notes, "is that once and for all the "redemption of the Lamanites," so often promised in early Mormonism, will always be in the hands of the white leaders, not ever to be turned over to the Lamanites themselves—at least not in North America."

Mauss doubts that Echo Hawk will have to deal with the same issue Lee did, namely being "touted—as poor old Lee was—as a Native American [or Lamanite] who represents what all Lamanites can become. I feel sure [Echo Hawk] will always be spoken of as a talented and interesting general authority who happens to have Native American [or Lamanite] ancestry."

The Federal Trade Commission won a critical battle in a California court recently against several companies fraudulently hawking “get rich quick” programs, including former Utah call center Mentoring of America. The FTC is now seeking $450 million in relief, to be determined at a future hearing.---

Gary Hewitt and Doug Gravink faced a civil action from the FTC in July 2009, when they were charged with running a scam alleged to have duped hundreds of thousands of consumers out of approximately $300 million. Now in 2011, the FTC believes after further analysis that more than 1 million consumers lost roughly $450 million and that is now the amount of relief they are seeking from Hewitt and Gravink and their various companies including Mentoring of America, a call center that previously operated locations in Utah.

City Weekly reported on Mentoring of America in 2009 of the company’s close connections with, and financial support of, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, despite the company’s fraudulent practices and drug abuse among employees who used drugs like cocaine and heroin while on the job. Mentoring of America offered coaching services for consumers who bought a product from infomercials such as “John Beck’s Free and Clear Real Estate System,” “Jeff Paul’s Shortcut to Internet Millions” and “John Alexander’s Real Estate Riches in 14 Days.”

These products offered by “gurus,” as they are called in the industry, offered services for consumers to start their own businesses making money off of tax-lien deals and other real estate-investment opportunities. The FTC had since 2009 argued in motions that the scheme was wrought with fraud. According to documents, the FTC alleged the infomercials made misleading claims about the effectiveness of the programs. When consumers bought one of the three programs for $39.95, they were often automatically enrolled in a “continuity” program that billed consumers’ credit cards without their knowledge.

According to an FTC press release, the fraud would continue with Mentoring of American call centers then offering “coaching” services to customers to help them use the programs, with such services costing as high as $14,995.

In a November 2011 hearing, FTC attorney John Jacobs argued that undercover calls with coaching telemarketers for the company found sales people making illegal claims about how much money could be earned through the program.

“Looking back at the undercover transcripts, what you see is in one case a telemarketer promising that consumers will make back the cost of coaching—will make $10,000 to $15,000 in 90 days. It reiterates that that’s the common experience,” Jacobs says according to a court transcript.

The FTC in 2009 successfully froze many of the assets of the companies to preserve funds to be used for possible monetary relief.

On April 20, Judge Jacqueline Nguyen of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (Gravink and Hewitt's headquarters were in California) granted the FTC’s motion for summary judgment, siding with the government’s case without the need of going to a trial. Now, the FTC and the companies will present arguments for the amount of relief the companies should pay.

If a transcript from the November 2011 hearing is any indication, Judge Nguyen suggests that the punishment would not be insignificant.

“If the defendants really believed that a case of this size and magnitude can be settled for just thousands of dollars, maybe even hundreds of thousands, it’s just—it’s not a realistic view, let’s just put it that way,” Judge Nguyen said.

After last Thursday's multiple-victim stabbing incident outside Smith's Marketplace in downtown Salt Lake City, the Beehive State was prey to two more stabbings and another two incidents involving the wielding of knives.---

On Saturday, two men playing basketball at Liberty Park got into an argument. One player, described in the watch-command log as a 6-foot-2-inch Asian male, stabbed the other, a 29-year-old male, in the chest before taking off.

Later that night, at the Karamba night club, a fight broke out on the dance floor. When one man tried to shield a woman from the fight, he was allegedly stabbed in the stomach by Raul Izarraraz.

On Sunday, at a downtown Walmart, George Senteno allegedly pulled a knife after being confronted in the parking lot by security staff for stealing a video game. Senteno was booked on charges of aggravated assault and retail theft.

A Hispanic male, approximately 23 years old, also pulled a knife outside a Smith's on 2100 South, after security staff confronted him for shoplifting beer. No arrest resulted.