Rep. Mia Love/Speaker Ryan on Facebook Live Town Hall
Love: “Americans have got to feel like they have control over the success of their own lives.”
WASHINGTON D.C. – Congresswoman Mia Love appeared with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan on a Facebook Live Town Hall Meeting today, focusing on poverty.
“The federal government cannot do it on its own,” Congresswoman Love said during the Town Hall. “We have got to do everything we can to work with our local agencies because they know the people specifically.”
Speaker Ryan said: “Imagine if the government freed up the local control, removed the handcuffs, and got the power and the money back to the communities so that they could customize solutions.”
The Town Hall coincides with the House Republican's 'Better Way' platform, which offers bold, forward-looking ideas from around the country to tackle some of the biggest challenges of our time: Poverty, jobs and economic growth, constitutional authority, health care and national security.
“We can solve these problems. They’re huge,” Rep. Love said. “But I firmly believe that every single person, once in their lifetime, has to take on an impossible task and I think we’re up for it.”
Watch the full Town Hall Meeting as it streamed live here.
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Soldier Hollow Classic Sheepdog Championship Gains Worldwide Acclaim
Labor Day Crowds and Local Volunteers Make Event a Homegrown Success
MIDWAY, UT — June 28, 2016 — The 2016 Vita Bone Soldier Hollow Classic Sheepdog Championship will return to Utah for its 14th year, drawing competitors from around the world to the beautiful town of Midway on Labor Day Weekend.
Sheepdog handlers from Scotland, Wales, South Africa, as well as nine Canadians and more than 30 U.S. competitors, will face off on what is considered one of the sport’s toughest courses. Rugged terrain and feisty wild-range sheep have prevented a number of the world’s best handlers from standing atop the podium, earning the Soldier Hollow Classic a wildcard reputation.
Yet, competitors return every year, lured by the beauty of Heber Valley, the enthusiasm of record-setting crowds and the hope of claiming some of the $30,000 winning purse. It has all been made possible thanks to the hard work and dedication of local organizers and volunteers, who spend weeks preparing and volunteer their holiday weekend to manage livestock behind the scenes.
“We’re fortunate to have such dedicated volunteers—from Logan County to Utah County and everywhere in between—all helping to make the championship a success,” said Mark Petersen, founder of the Soldier Hollow Classic. “From the delivery and care of livestock to ensuring our foreign fans get live updates online, it wouldn’t be possible without such hard work behind the scenes.”
Events will kick off on Friday, September 2, with the championship round taking place the following Monday. Adding to the festive atmosphere of the Soldier Hollow Classic will be a number of other activities, including the Wild Wonders animal show, K9 Kings, Earthwings demonstrations, local food vendors and the always-popular Splash Dogs.
For more information and a complete schedule, visit SoldierHollowClassic.com.
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Non-Profit Organization is Seeking Local Host Families for High School Exchange Students
ASSE International Student Exchange Programs (ASSE), in cooperation with your community high school, is looking for local families to host boys and girls between the ages of 15 to 18 from a variety of countries: Norway, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Japan, to name a few.
ASSE students are enthusiastic and excited to experience American culture while they practice their English. They also love to share their own culture and language with their host families. Host families welcome these students into their family, not as a guest, but as a family member, giving everyone involved a rich cultural experience.
The exchange students have pocket money for personal expenses and full health, accident and liability insurance. ASSE students are selected based on academics and personality, and host families can choose their student from a wide variety of backgrounds, countries and personal interests.
To become an ASSE Host Family or to find out how to become involved with ASSE in your community, please call the ASSE Western Regional Office at 1-800-733-2773 or go to www.host.asse.com to begin your host family application. Students are eager to learn about their American host family, so begin the process of welcoming your new son or daughter today!
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DJI and AirMap Deliver Real-Time Wildfire Awareness and Geofencing Capabilities for Drones
Reliable, Real-Time Awareness of Wildfires Reduces Drone Interference for Operators and Firefighters
July 14, 2016 – DJI, the world's leading maker of unmanned aerial vehicles, and AirMap, the world’s leading provider of airspace intelligence and navigation services to unmanned aircraft, added real-time wildfire alerts to their geofencing data Wednesday to help keep unauthorized drones from interfering with firefighting operations.
AirMap now obtains wildfire information directly from the U.S. Department of the Interior’s incident command system and immediately pushes it to drone pilots through AirMap’s iOS and web apps, AirMap’s API, and the GEO geofencing system included in the DJI GO flight control app. This data is more current and includes more active wildfires than Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) published by the Federal Aviation Administration.
“AirMap delivers dynamic airspace intelligence to unmanned aircraft in order to provide the safest operating environment possible,” said Ben Marcus, CEO of AirMap. “Through our partnership with DJI and other drone manufacturers and application developers, more than 70 percent of the drones operated in the United States now benefit from wildfire information in real time.”
“DJI wants to equip its customers with safety-critical information that will help our first responders, whether or not a TFR has been issued,” said Brendan Schulman, DJI Vice President of Policy and Legal Affairs. “This enhancement to GEO will help prevent DJI drones from inadvertently taking off within, or flying into, a wildfire location without authorization.”
Unauthorized drones near wildfires can pose a hazard to firefighting airplanes and helicopters, and in some cases they have forced aerial firefighting operations to be suspended. AirMap’s new wildfire alerts are designed to help drone operators understand the hazards and restrictions near them when deciding whether it is safe to fly.
The Department of the Interior records 300 new wildfires each day during summer fire season, rising above 500 new fires on the busiest days. The vast majority of wildfires start and spread faster than the time it takes to communicate and post the hazard as a TFR. Often, fires are extinguished before the TFR is issued, and in approximately half of those cases, the fires have been fought by specialized airplanes and helicopters.
DJI is integrating the new AirMap wildfire alerts into the GEO geofencing system in the DJI GO app, which helps pilots avoid flying drones near airports, prisons, nuclear power power plants and other sensitive locations without authorization. DJI pioneered geofencing technology three years ago and has been steadily refining the industry’s best technology to enhance aviation safety.
More information about DJI’s geofencing system is available at http://www.dji.com/flysafe/geo-system. More information about AirMap’s airspace intelligence services is available at airmap.com.
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Utah Representative Rob Bishop is expected to introduce his long-awaited “Public Lands Initiative” (or PLI) bill tomorrow. The legislation, which was originally intended to chart a “grand bargain” between development and conservation interests in southern and eastern Utah, has appeared to be little more than a political cudgel for Rep. Bishop and other members of the Utah congressional delegation.
With legislation expected by tomorrow, here are three things to keep in mind once the bill finally becomes public:
Representative Bishop first announced his plans for the Public Lands Initiative in April of 2013, saying at the time, “There is some land that needs to be preserved and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s also land that needs to be developed, and there’s no reason why the two can’t coexist… There’s a window of opportunity now, which if we were to wait too much longer would probably get closed.”
Most would agree that “window of opportunity” has likely swung shut after three years of missed deadlines, foot dragging, and bellicose rhetoric by Rep. Bishop.
Ever since the summer of 2013, the congressman has been promising a draft of the PLI, yet time and again he missed deadlines, kicked the can down the road a little further, and continued dragging his feet. All the while, Rep. Bishop has become a leader of an effort by a fringe of conservative politicians who want to dispose of U.S. public lands, like national forests and wildlife refuges into state and private hands. Meanwhile, the congressman has insulted conservation stakeholders and burned bridges with Utah’s tribal leaders.
Now, 1186 days since first announcing his plan, we’re finally expecting a piece of legislation with a mere three dozen days remaining on the congressional calendar. By the time Bishop holds a September hearing to mark up his bill, there could be as few as 17 working days left to get a bill through the House and Senate. The odds of passing any piece of legislation as complicated and controversial as the Public Lands Initiative, particularly given Rep. Bishop’s lack of leadership to this point, are miniscule.
When Congressman Rob Bishop issued a draft version of the long-awaited Public Lands Initiative in January, it was panned as an “extreme and deceptive attack on our nation’s public lands that does little for conservation.”
Even though the legislation had been billed as a “grand bargain” that would resolve long-running land and energy conflicts in southern and eastern Utah, the outcome was little more than a one-sided vision for Utah’s lands: more development, more roads, and fewer protections for cultural and ecological resources.
Rep. Bishop continues to insist that the draft was a “good bill,” but very, very few stakeholders involved in the process would agree. Tribal leaders said the draft “adds insult to industry” confirming “the inequitable treatment of tribes over the past three years and our need to seek other means of protecting the living cultural landscape we call Bears Ears.”
Summit County, Utah said the draft PLI did not comport with the consensus proposal developed by the county. One Summit county commissioner wrote, “We took the charge to develop a proposal very seriously and devoted a year to a comprehensive stakeholder-driven process. The draft [bill] appears to disregard or not understand our proposal and its underlying values and agreements.”
One of the few stakeholders that did embrace the draft Public Lands Initiative was the oil and gas lobby. Oil company interests are very clearly prioritized by Rep. Bishop with massive land giveaways and loosening of rules and safeguards that help carefully plan development projects and protect sensitive areas from the impacts of drilling.
Now Rep. Bishop is using his original dead-in-the-water draft as a weapon, telling conservation groups that if they don’t support his new draft, he’ll go back to pushing the original bill that never had a chance to begin with.
The media reports announcing the draft Public Lands Initiative as “dead on arrival” sent Rep. Bishop back to the drawing board. Unless there are significant improvements made to the original draft, Rep. Bishop’s bill will likely end up in the congressional trash heap instead of on top of the president’s desk.
The final version of the bill must at the very least meet a handful of key thresholds:
Congressman Bishop is releasing his latest version of the PLI days before Interior Secretary Sally Jewell visits Utah to tour the Bears Ears area and listen to supporters of the national monument proposal. Bishop says if President Obama invokes the Antiquities Act to protect Bears Ears, it would kill the Public Lands Initiative. Considering his years of delays and missed deadlines, if the PLI dies this session, Rep. Bishop has no one to blame but himself.
For 80 years, politicians have been all talk but no action when it comes to Bears Ears
