Voice of Utah

For those of us who thought it was a bunch of hooey for a bunch of Utah legislators to jet over to China at taxpayer expense, the Senate Site offers an explanation by Taowen Le, Professor of Information Systems and Technologies at Weber State University and Provincial IT Representative of Liaoning Province, on why this trip to Liaoning Province will benefit not only Utah but the entire world.  Utah legislators will be "laying groundwork for key long-term outcomes," the professor writes, followed by an itemized list of said outcomes.

When we perused the list, we did not both immediately conclude, "This looks like a fairly transparent effort by an interested party to conjure up post hoc rationalizations for a boondoggle after an embarrassing news article in which legislators couldn't come up with any justifications themselves."  Nor did we ask, "If this trip is so great for Utah businesses, why don't Utah businesses pay for it?"  Nor did one of us think, "Hmm...these sound a lot like the reasons that my two co-workers and I needed to go on that business development trip to Vegas a couple of years ago..."

No, we were too excited about the last item on the list:

8. Help establish world peace along the way

The world today has far too much misunderstanding about the U.S. and its people. Many people mistakenly believe bringing world peace is the task of federal governments only. Despite the sad reality that whenever peace is broken, it is the ordinary people that suffer, they sometimes fail to realize that true peace comes only when there is true mutual understanding and true mutual respect among different peoples of the world. Mutual understanding and mutual respect could not possibly be achieved without communication and exchange among the peoples at all levels. During their visit to China, Utah legislators will be able to discuss face-to-face with their Chinese counterparts any concerns people in Utah might have about China. Directly or indirectly, such mutual understanding will inevitably influence the way they make laws and regulations there.

Neato!  It's about time someone other than Miss America contestants shouldered the world-peace burden.  How do we submit our concerns about China for our representatives to pass on?  And why stop with China?  After all, who better to facilitate world peace than a group of part-time legislators from the 34th largest state in the union?  Will the State Department reimburse some of the expense?  Gosh, the China 14 haven't even left yet and we might already have our first business opportunity directly resulting from this trip:  Rent-An-Ambassador!