Categories
National politics

Donald Trump

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Photo by Gage Skidmore

It would have been so easy to not give The Donald a fair shake in my candidate evaluations and simply say that his arrogance and tone automatically disqualified him as a candidate. Considering how much support he has even as his sophomoric personality has been on public display I think it is important to treat him as a serious candidate and study his campaign itself rather than the media coverage of his campaign.

Categories
National politics

Evaluating Presidential Candidates

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Image by Donkey Hotey

Eight years ago with two crowded presidential primaries I did a long series evaluating each presidential candidate. I evaluated every candidate I could find, not just those in the two major parties. It was an interesting exercise although I opted not to do it again in 2012. I wasn’t planning to do it for 2016 either because I had expected Hillary Clinton and the following GOP candidates (in no particular order) to be the focus of the race: Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, and possibly Bobby Jindal. With the way the race has been shaped by other candidates I’ve decided to do it again – specifically, I decided to do this after watching both Scott Walker and Rick Perry have the life sucked from their campaigns by Donald Trump who is a vastly inferior candidate to either of them (having tipped my hand on Trump I should probably do my write-up of him first). Last time I evaluated 38 candidates, this time I will only do candidates from the major parties.

Categories
politics technology

Net Neutrality vs Open Infrastructure

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Image by Steve Rhodes

Adam Kenigsberg did a very brave thing in posting a case against Net Neutrality and inviting his friends to “start a vigorous debate in the comment thread.” As someone who has long been interested in Net Neutrality and who has vacillated between favoring it, opposing it, and being undecided about it I was interested in what would follow before I even saw the comment thread.

Notes and Context

The case against Net Neutrality was written by David Veksler who has written quite a number of interesting cases for and against a variety of things. If you enjoy thoughtful consideration of issues his cases deserve a look. I wanted to make that clear lest anyone think that my deconstruction of his case indicated any lack of respect for his approach to this or any other topic. I would also note that his case was written more than 7 years ago. Much has changed about the internet and the surrounding industries in that time. For example, AOL was still merged with Time Warner at the time and Facebook had been open to the public for less than a year and wouldn’t have its IPO for another five years after this case was published.

Categories
Local politics

Endorsing Laura Belnap

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School board elections tend to fly under the radar compared to other elections in Utah. I suspect that at least part of the reason for that is that they are non-partisan so candidates aren’t affiliated with a party (at least as far as their campaigns are concerned) and the parties aren’t involved in promoting the campaigns of any candidate for those offices. I’m not going to make any argument about whether that is good or bad, but I feel confident that it is a natural consequence of having these be non-partisan. As a voter I have generally felt less informed about School Board candidates before they are elected and the records of Schoold Board members after they are elected than I do about candidates and holders of other offices. Because of that traditional lack of feeling informed I have decided that despite being busy and foregoing other endorsements this cycle I am going to make this endorsement of Laura Bellnap for State School Board.

Laura Belnap stands head and shoulders above her opponent in her understanding of the way to address the issues in our education system in Utah. She recognizes the importance of keeping parents informed and involved to ensure that their children get the best available education. She recognizes the value of technology from an educaitonal perspective without blindly thinking that technology alone will solve all our problems. She is also able to see the value of Common Core along with the pitfalls of it where too many people see only one side or the other.

It is because I expect that many voters are in the same boat I have often been in with regard to school board elections that I consider it important to share my perspective when I feel that one candidate so solidly stands above the other in this important race.

Categories
culture politics

Public vs Private Companies

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Photo by Paul Riismandel

Coverage of the Hobby Lobby case seems to be consistent in saying that the U.S. Supreme Court is essentially deciding the question of whether not-specifically-religious corporations can exercise religious rights. The issue in this case is requiring insurance coverage for federally determined forms of contraception but if the decision is based on the ability of companies to exercise religious rights then it could also extend to whether companies can choose under what circumstances they will offer their services.

It struck me this morning that the question isn’t really whether corporations can exercise religious rights. The real question is: at what point in the pursuit of profit do individuals diminish or forego their right to religious expression? Those siding with the government in this case are afraid that companies will be able to use the guise of religious belief to get around the expense of some legal mandates. After all, if the Green family (Hobby Lobby) can claim religious belief avoid paying for some expensive forms of birth control for their employees why can’t the Walton family (Walmart) do the same?

Categories
National pictures

Confusing the Point

Edward Snowden
Image by: DonkeyHotey

This may be the most obtuse argument I’ve read regarding Edward Snowden. I don’t want to be too hard on Jay Evensen but the logic he uses here is terrible. A conspiracy theorist could come up with many sinister motives for such a poor argument against Snowden but I’m sure it’s something much more mundane like trying to meet a publishing deadline.

Let’s break it down.

First we have an attempt to discredit Snowden based on his connection with Russia.

{Snowden} chose exile {in Russia} because he faces charges of espionage in the United States for revealing things he felt were so egregious he no longer could keep quiet about them. And yet neither he nor his friend, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, seem concerned enough about the blatant abuses in Russia or other countries to dig deeper and expose more.

But it’s no longer convincing, or even noble, to claim a sort of relativistic neutrality while hiding in Russia.

There are two parts to this. The first is that Snowden had a choice of where he took exile. This argument requires that we ignore the fact that while Snowden chose exile because of the charges of espionage in the U.S. he was unable to fly to any of the other locations that offered him exile. Russia was functionally his only option. The second is that Snowden should be exposing Russian digital espionage. This argument relies on ignoring the fact that Snowden’s revelations about the NSA are not based on some super hacker skill on Snowden’s part. Snowden’s information was based on him holding a position of privileged access within the NSA which he would never have within Russian intelligence.

Then we have an effort to defend the NSA by saying it does necessary work.

The U.S. government spies on people. We get it. The NSA is a huge agency with the resources to build a profile on just about anybody it chooses. We get that, too.

But why does the NSA do it? Could there be noble reasons, even if the methods aren’t the best?

Does Snowden care at all about the security of the nation he fled? Does he think the NSA should stop spying altogether, or can he imagine a reason why a spy agency might be important in a dangerous world? What would he consider proper spying?

Again this comes in two parts. The questions for Snowden can’t be asked sincerely unless you have only listened to the non-Snowden side of the story. He has been very clear that he recognizes the necessity of espionage activities and that the reasons behind his actions were the systemic abuses whereby the agency overstepped their constitutional authority (which someone might argue is occasionally necessary) and hid their actions not only from the American public at large (which is certainly necessary to some degree where espionage is concerned) but also from the very congressional committees with oversight over their actions (which is a red flag of the first order in all cases).

Using “Could there be noble reasons, even if the methods aren’t the best?” as an argument here would be like saying of the John Swallow case that raising money is necessary to run a campaign so even if he got money from payday lenders it really shouldn’t be a big deal. That argument completely misses the point of the outrage which isn’t that Swallow got money from payday lenders and that the NSA was spying. The reason for people to be upset in both cases is the way John Swallow and the NSA both went to great lengths to hide their activities from the very people they were supposed to be working for and the organizations that were authorized to provide oversight for their operations.

It occurred to me as I reviewed the article that the point Mr. Evensen wanted to make was that Russia was a greater threat to liberty than the NSA. If so, this was not the way to try making that argument.

Categories
Local politics State

I’m In

Well, I’ve been struggling with the question of whether I should run to replace Jim Nielson in House District 19 since he announced that he won’t run for another term. Apparently Mike Leavitt told Mitt Romney about it and Mitt took the time to share his thoughts:

Email From Mitt

 

With that encouragement how could I not take the leap. I’m glad that Mitt is using his iPad to dispense so much wisdom. The people of House District 19 will be the beneficiaries of it.

Thanks for your support Mitt. On to victory!

Categories
culture politics State

Funding Education

Senator Pat Jones has an idea about how to bring in more money for our public education system in Utah. I appreciate what she is trying to accomplish and laud her efforts to make a difference but as someone who definitely qualifies as having a large family (this bill will hit me twice as hard as at least half the households in the state) – in other words as someone whom this bill targets for funding – I have to say that there are a few problems with the logic behind this effort.

Categories
politics State

Facts Aren’t Always Impartial

I was listening to Doug Wright this morning talking about the John Swallow situation and I found myself laughing at the linguistic gymnastics he was engaged in trying to discuss the situation without suggesting that impeachment might be the proper course of action to untangle the mess that Mr. Swallow has created.

I can’t decide whether the verbal somersaults were a result of Mr. Wright trying to appear unbiased while secretly agreeing with the Eagle Forum that impeachment should be reserved as a tool we use after we know an official is guilty of serious crimes such as the FBI might investigate or if it was simply a result of Mr. Wright not understanding that being personally impartial does not require the pretense that the facts of the situation be impartial – as if there are facts in favor of Mr. Swallow the way there are so many facts that clearly demonstrate that a legislative investigation is already warranted. Of course there are many unproven allegations out there but there are enough allegations backed up with enough evidence to clearly warrant an investigation by the House.

Here is my unbiased (and unvarnished) opinion. Unless the House is able to investigate and prove that the many emails, recordings, and receipts that we already have in relation to Mr. Swallow’s interactions with Mr. Jensen and Mr. Johnson were fabricated then Mr. Swallow has clearly violated the public trust and should not hold any position of public trust – even if everything he did was technically legal as Mr. Swallow obviously believes (which is why he insists on directing our focus to the existing investigations by the FBI – which necessarily cannot address the issue of public trust).

Categories
politics State

Impeachment isn’t the same as Removal from Office

I don’t know if John Swallow’s attorneys are honest (like many people) in mistakenly conflating the opening of impeachment proceedings with the potential outcome of conviction and removal from office or if they are simply perpetuating that misconception in the hopes of protecting their client. Either way, it is once again time to try to clear up that misconception.

The attitude from Mr. Swallow’s attorneys is quite clear in their letter:

“This discussion about impeachment is based on innuendo and unsupported allegations in the press from indicted and convicted felons and a few political enemies of Mr. Swallow,” attorneys Rod Snow and Jennifer James said.

I would expect exactly that attitude from any attorney regarding their own client. The problem is that it misrepresents the situation. Some of the allegations do come from indicted and convicted felons but beyond those indicted and convicted felons the allegations are also coming from many others – not just “a few political enemies.” They may choose to describe everyone who has made allegations as a political enemy but the number of people making allegations can hardly be quantified as “few.”