Provo Municipal Council asked if diversity in Provo matters (April 21)

As long as people are free to choose where they live, what does the resulting diversity, or lack of it, matter? Yes, there are good things about growing up with neighbors from other races and cultures, but it’s not as important as the freedom to find a home you want to buy or rent according to your budget. — Ronald Hathcock

A very important message for Provo. Thanks for sharing! — Janae Moss

BYU No. 1 in the nation for launching business, foreign language PhD’s (April 24)

Thank you for noting, again, the top-notch faculty and inspired programs at BYU. I believe it was Dallin H. Oaks who, as president of BYU, declared that he wanted it to become the “Harvard of the West.” It’s statistics such as those reported in this article that make it obvious his vision has continued over the years, and in many disciplines is coming to fruition. — Paul Hardin

Utah County lawmakers grill health, education officials over school mask mandate (April 23)

More Utah County crazy. These legislators have forgotten one big thing –transmission at home. Kids (who are unvaccinated) can pick up the virus at school and bring it to susceptible individuals at home. The school year is almost over and I think kids can keep wearing their dang masks for a few more weeks in order to save lives. You would think the “right to life” people would figure out that concept. — The KingsCourt

Unfortunately they haven’t forgotten, they simply don’t care. Their concern is re-election and moving up the totem pole and that comes from ignoring everyone except their extremist base.

Once again, the elephant in the room is the move to Authoritarianism where these guys remove any checks and balances and actual expertise to force through the idea that a few should prosper while the rest of us sacrifice. — Tammy H. Hodson

New Zealand is the best COVID success story on the planet so far.

Less than 3,000 cases and only 26 deaths!

They set an example of compassion and intelligence!

All they did was take it seriously. — [\/]?[X] [\]![-]![L]

Napolitano: Big Tech and free speech (April 23)

Big tech censorship is a confusing issue for me.

Of course naturally, my first instinct is to say no, they should not be allowed to censor people’s speech, unless they’re sharing something illegal, or DIRECTLY telling their audiences to hurt people. I don’t mean Trump saying the election was rigged, ending with a Capital riot. That’s not direct enough for me. Trump would have needed to say, “Go raid the Capitol, let’s stage an insurrection and take this back.” He would have needed to say that DIRECTLY for me to think he needed to be banned.

BUT …

They’re also private companies, and they shouldn’t be governed on who they can and can’t ban. Because at the same time as I’m saying people should only be banned for DIRECT statements of encouraging violence, or sharing illegal material … I also think that PRIVATE COMPANIES should be able to ban ANYONE, for ANYTHING they want. I think companies should be able to ban people over what they look like, how many fingers they have, or whatever. Yes it’s discriminatory, but I think that private companies should be able to do that, if that’s what they want to for whatever reason. It obviously wouldn’t end up well in the public sphere, but that should be up to the people, not the government.

There’s a weird line that some companies are toeing, somewhere between a platform, and a publisher. It’s a sort of gray area right now, so it’s hard to govern, because if they’re a platform, they’ve got one set of rules from the government, and if they’re a publisher, they have another. And with some of the censorship that’s going on, there’s some companies that are moving toward becoming publishers of sorts, and only allowing people to share opinions if it lines up with theirs, especially when they’re implementing “fact checking” over any post that contains a controversial statement or topic. And I don’t have a problem with that, but again, what category do those kind of actions fall under, platform, or publisher?

I’m quite split on this issue, and I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on this. — Frank Okaga