Tag: 2012

Scott Howell for US Senate

Post author By David
Post date October 22, 2012
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When I wrote a better to the editor in support of Dan Liljenquist during the GOP primary earlier this year one of the comments that was made in response to my letter was that once Hatch won the primary all the Liljenquist supporters who were so opposed to Hatch would turn around and support Hatch in the general election. I knew then that was not true – some of those supporting Liljenquist were supporting him because they could not support Hatch and follow their conscience at the same time.

Once Hatch won the primary I found myself needing to examine the democratic candidate for Senate to see if I could cast my vote for him. I have been learning what I could about Scott Howell over the last few months and while there were some things that I liked in what I saw I was not certain that I could cast my vote for him.

After looking, listening, and learning what I could I reached out to Scott to ask a few final questions to determine if I could cast my vote for him or whether I would be forced to vote “none of the above.” The goal of my questions was to try getting a picture of his political view independent of party affiliation. To that end, I found my answer in his response to my question of who he would support for Senate Majority Leader. The first words out of his mouth were, “Harry Reid has to go.”

In and of itself that line would not earn my vote (although I completely agree with it) but as we talked, I saw in Scott a man who understands that we need to change the leadership in our government to make the changes that our nation needs. To put it the way Mitt Romney would, we need to fire the management that got us into this mess.

In contrast, I have no doubt that if I asked that question of Orrin Hatch he would look at me as if I had asked if water was wet and then tell me that Mitch McConnell would be his choice for Senate Majority Leader – how could Hatch possibly argue that seniority is critical and argue for new leadership? Hatch has been busy telling Utah that it is our time to lead. That is just a reference to his claims that he will be the next chair of the Senate Finance Committee. Today Nate Silver puts the odds of the GOP retaking the Senate at 13% which means that Hatch has about a 7% chance of chairing the finance committee.

Mr. Howell’s recognition of the need for new leadership coupled with the virtual guaranteed that Senator Hatch will be unable to deliver on the centerpiece of his campaign made this choice easier than I expected it to be. Right now the best choice Utah has for US Senate is Scott Howell. I still think the best candidate we had for the position this year was Dan Liljenquist but we still have an option to upgrade from our current senator with someone who knows that its time for a change.

As for the future, the fact is that I trust the promise Scott made to me that he will serve no more than two terms more than I trust Orrin’s promise that this is absolutely positively his last term (unless he still has a pulse in 2018) and I think the odds of getting a good candidate other than Scott are better with an incumbent Democrat than with an incumbent Republican (that’s true even if Orrin does keep his promise not to run again).

Join me in voting for Scott Howell for Senate because it is Utah’s time to lead and the best way to lead is still to send someone new who has not been a longtime part of the problem.

Tags 2012, Dan Liljenquist, endorsements, Orrin Hatch, Scott Howell, senate

politics State

Endorsing Dan Liljenquist

Post author By David
Post date June 19, 2012
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Photo from Dan Liljenquist

There is a general agreement that our government needs a course correction but there are a variety of visions about what changes need to be made and who is best suited to make those changes. Our senate race in Utah is a race between a vision of changing direction or keeping our current seniority and its attendant benefits. This is where we need to consider what is truly best for the country. The value of seniority is that it lends increased status and bargaining power to dole out favors to other lawmakers in exchange for votes on key legislation or to dole out favors to constituents regardless of whether those favors are a good idea for more than those getting the handout. This is precisely what is wrong with Washington. The compromise that comes with votes traded for favors is what brings us $16 Trillion of debt. This comes because of omnibus bills where favors have been traded so that these massive bills contain pet clauses either funding projects or carving out exceptions in revenue streams for favored groups. There is a better approach to compromise.

Rather than doling out favors and producing massive bills stuffed with perks that curry specific votes but are not generally desirable it is possible to compromise by removing provisions that do not garner sufficient support and producing smaller, more limited bills that accomplish less, cost much less, and only encompasses those aims which have been agreed upon by the legislators.

Dan Liljenquist is running for US Senate in Utah. He likes to say that “reality is not negotiable” and yet, while tackling some of the most challenging problems our state faced, he was able to secure almost unanimous (and in many cases completely unanimous) support for his important bills. Dan knows how to work with people and secure support on both sides of the aisle without doling out favors to other legislators.

I have had the opportunity as a constituent of Dan’s to sit in town hall meetings as Dan has patiently addressed the concerns of citizens related to the reforms he was proposing to save the state from fiscal ruin. I have seen Dan patiently address the concerns expressed about his reforms without talking down to people or resorting to demagoguery on the issues.

This stands in stark contrast to Orrin Hatch who has a penchant for trying to fund pet projects as well as talking down to people.

Dan is the man we need in Washington, D.C right now. We would be better off as a state and as a nation if we sent Orrin out to focus on his music career.

Tags 2012, Dan Liljenquist, Orrin Hatch, senate

National politics State

Perspective on Palin Endorsing Hatch

Post author By David
Post date May 23, 2012
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I was a little surprised at the news that Sarah Palin had endorsed Orrin Hatch. It’s not that I had expected her to endorse Dan Liljenquist, just that I would not have expected her to see an entrenched, entitled incumbent as the type of person who could fix what’s wrong in Washington. As I thought about it however I realized that there were a few things that might show her endorsement to be a very hollow one to begin with. First and foremost being that she probably knows absolutely nothing about Dan Liljenquist. In other words her endorsement of “Mr. Balanced Budget” is probably as meaningful as Mitt Romney’s endorsement which came back before Senator Hatch even had a challenger. Here are a few key things to consider about this endorsement and what it shows about this race.

Palin endorsed Hatch because he asked for her endorsement (see here). I strongly suspect that Dan Liljenquist never did. What is really happening with this race is that the reality behind it is quite different than the way it is being painted. Hatch and the GOP establishment players are painting this and every other challenge to an incumbent as a tea-party extremist challenge to the status quo. I will not make any attempt to argue how true that is for the various races around the country but let me illustrate the differences between how this race is framed versus what is actually happening.

Tags 2012, Dan Liljenquist, Orrin Hatch

National politics State

We Need a New Generation in Washington

Post author By David
Post date February 1, 2012
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Investors Business Daily has a pro-Hatch propaganda piece up that deserves a few tweaks.

First, the headline says that republicans must gain control of Congress for the economy to recover. Do we really need to remind everyone that Republicans had almost uninterrupted control of Congress from 1995 to 2007. Had Republicans retained control of Congress beyond 2007 does anyone really believe the economy would not still have gone into the great recession?

Second, IBD claims that re-electing Orrin Hatch is crucial if Republicans regain control because “Orrin Hatch will be the first genuine free-market conservative to {become chairman of the Senate Finance Committee}.” Yes, the same Orrin Hatch who cosponsored PIPA until it was politically untenable and wanted to blow up the computers of anyone with pirated software while his own website was powered by an unlicensed copy of software is now “a genuine free-market conservative.” The author, Ernest Christian, claims that all the prior chairmen of the committee whom he had worked with were either liberals or moderates. I’ll take him at his word on that but his description of moderates as “too often … unwilling to make a clear-cut choice between the free-market principles of conservatives and the big-government desires of liberals” is perfectly descriptive of Hatch. The fact that Mr. Christian has been working with every SFC chair since 1970 shows what is really going on here – it’s one old political dog going to bat for another.

For those who want to see the economy truly recover there is only one answer – we need a new generation of conservatives in Washington and we need enough of them there to change the way the rest of the Republicans act in office. As soon as we say “new generation” you know that Orrin Hatch will never fit that bill – he’s as entrenched an incumbent as you’ll ever find.

Tags 2012, Dan Liljenquist, Orrin Hatch, Pursuit of Liberty, senate

National politics

Campaign Platform of the President the Nation Needs

Post author By David
Post date January 26, 2012
No Comments on Campaign Platform of the President the Nation Needs

The other day I was sitting on a bus with time to let my mind wander. I was thinking about our presidential campaign season and the ideas being promoted by our current candidates – including our current president – when I found myself considering what kind of a president I think our nation needs – specifically I began to formulate what ideas he would offer in seeking the presidency. I decided to write up the platform ideas that came to mind. I’d love to hear what others think of this. I have written this in the first person not because I claim to be this candidate but because I would expect a candidate to articulate the platform from a first-person perspective.

Any budget proposal that I submit will not exceed actual tax revenues for the previous year. Any budget bill that I sign will be paid for, either because Congress has passed a budget that does not exceed the tax revenues for the previous year or because they have clearly raised the necessary taxes as part of the bill to pay for any spending over the amount of taxes collected in the preceding fiscal year.
I will not attempt to expand the powers of the presidency. I will stick to my constitutional duties. I will refrain from using the extra-constitutional powers that have previously been granted to the president, such as the ability to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial, and request that Congress officially revoke those powers from me and future presidents.
I will insist that Congress fulfill their constitutional duties. One major part of Congress fulfilling their duties is that I will order all regulatory agencies to enforce only those things that Congress has passed into law and not to enforce regulations created by regulatory agencies based laws passed by congress where those regulations were not specified in the bill. I will not sign bills in which Congress leaves the authority to specify particular regulations to other bodies such as regulatory agencies.
I will not sign any bill into law, nor allow any bill to become law without my signature, unless it has been made available for public review and comment for a total of no less than seven days prior to becoming law. The seven days counts only the time after the final version of the bill is made available. That time may include any combination of time before the bill is passed by Congress and time after the bill has been passed by Congress. In other words, Congress may choose to pass bills without allowing seven days for public input but the only way I would act on a bill without seven days of public input would be to veto the bill. I will also not sign any bill into law unless I have had time to read the bill in full.
As commander-in-chief of our military I will seek to maximize our national defense. The emphasis there is on the words “national” and “defense” – all military spending and activity will be focused on defending our nation in the most effective ways possible. We will seek to improve our defensive abilities wherever possible. If the use of military force ever becomes necessary under my watch I will act decisively with the intent to end the conflict as quickly and effectively as possible.
I will not run a campaign for a second term. I will simply do my job as President. My campaigning will not exceed participation in scheduled debates and defending myself against any false accusations that are made by those who hope to replace me. If that is not enough to win me a second term then I do not deserve a second term.

As I considered the ideas that I wrote I asked myself whether any of the current candidates would ever articulate a platform like this. My conclusion was that none of them would. I suspect that some Ron Paul supporters would argue that Dr. Paul runs a platform not unlike this. I’ll admit that he comes the closest but I am still not sure that what he would do fully correlates to what I think we need in a president – which may indicate that I have not fully fleshed it out above. Either way – I’d love to hear thoughts on the platform I have outlined.

Tags 2012, Pursuit of Liberty

Local politics

Perceived Electability and IRV – A Case Study

Post author By David
Post date January 11, 2012
No Comments on Perceived Electability and IRV – A Case Study

As a followup to last night’s special election to fill Dan Liljenquist’s term as State Senator, I noticed some interesting things based on my interactions with other delegates and my review of the actual results (round-by-round, not just the final tally).

First let me provide some metrics that some people might be interested in – we had 264 delegates eligible to vote in this election. Of those, 258 showed up and received credentials but only 257 cast ballots.

At the meeting there was discussion about the practice in IRV voting of still only choosing one candidate – more generally that can be applied to choosing anything less than all the candidates. We can’t really know for sure how many people put less than all 8 candidates on their ballots but in the last round 7 ballots were discarded because they did not include either of the remaining candidates – Todd Weiler and Randy Shumway. This means that the election was finally counted with 250 out of 264 possible votes.

Now on to the issue of perceived electability.

I had the sense before the voting that this would come down to a two-way contest between Todd Weiler and Randy Shumway. That was based on what I had observed of the campaigns and what I had seen and heard from various delegates. The interesting side note to that was how many people I heard speaking favorably about Tim Hawkes but wondering whether he could win.

When the results were announced my instinct that it was a two-man race was confirmed as evidenced by who the last two candidates were. When I saw the full results from all seven rounds I discovered that my impression of Tim’s widespread appeal showed up strongly in the voting. From the very first round it was actually a three-man race. Todd had the lead in every round (in fact, until the final round Randy did not receive more votes than Todd received in the first round) but the top three were always Todd, Randy, and Tim in that order. Tim had 58 votes and the fourth place candidate had 16 votes. All the candidates below Tim combined for 43 votes in the first round. The fact that many of those who liked Tim questioned whether he could get elected bore out in the phenomenon that in the first 6 rounds – until he was eliminated – Tim gained more votes than any other candidate. By the time he was eliminated, Tim was only 4 votes shy of Randy.

Tim and Todd seemed more similar than Tim and Randy as shown by the fact that most of Tim’s votes went to Todd. That leaves me to wonder whether there were 5 of those who supported Todd as their first choice who chose Tim second based on the perception that he could not win. If so and they took that perception out of their calculations Tim would have beaten Randy for second place.

My best guess is that this phenomenon is based on widespread misunderstanding of how IRV voting works. Based on how I have heard people talk about it, it seems that many people think that their vote is counted less if it is not their top vote – they think their vote is wasted if they do not guess correctly who is going to win. They seem to instinctively feel that having a second choice vote hurts their first choice candidate rather than recognizing that their second choice candidate can never receive their support unless their first choice candidate is already eliminated which only happens if their first choice candidate was viewed less favorably than their second choice candidate.

I suspect that the voting patterns would be different if people understood that IRV gives them the opportunity to rank all the candidates rather than being dependent on how all the other voters vote if the person they first voted for is not one of the top two vote-getters. They don’t need to see how others voted in the first round before deciding where to throw their support in the second round.

Tags 2012, Instant Runoff Voting, Pursuit of Liberty

Local politics

Special Election – Senate District 23

Post author By David
Post date January 10, 2012
No Comments on Special Election – Senate District 23

Tonight is the night that county delegates will vote on who should finish the term for Dan Liljenquist. I have noticed over the weeks of campaigning – especially in the last few days – that many of the good ideas that have been promised by one candidate or another are being adopted by other candidates. These adopted positions may be talking points or they may be candidates recognizing a good idea and deciding that they are willing to adopt it on its merits (I think it is usually the latter). Regardless of their reasons there is one idea that I have decided to hold the eventual winner of this special election accountable for. Those who have made this promise already are going to be higher on my ballot than those who have not made or adopted this position.

This one key promise is that a recognition that representation is a two-way street. Whoever wins this special election must demonstrate their understanding of that fact by proactively maintaining open lines of communication with their constituents. I wrote about this a couple of years ago and have been very happy to see multiple candidates speaking to this aspect of holding office. This must include them communicating to constituents in asynchronous ways (websites being the most widespread method for this currently) and regularly being available for synchronous public communication (open houses or townhall meetings being the methods I have seen used for this by others).

Just as those who have made this promise already will be higher on my ballot than those who do not, the first and most crucial step that the winner can do to earn my support for future terms – whether I supported him or not and whether he made this promise or not – it to keep this promise that has been made by multiple candidates in this campaign.

Tags 2012, Davis County, Pursuit of Liberty

politics State

Redistricting in Ut(opia)

Post author By David
Post date September 30, 2011
No Comments on Redistricting in Ut(opia)

I have been watching the redistricting process with interest although I have not been able to be as vocal in the discussions as I might have wished. This late in the process we can see the forces at work and the concerns being raised. On top of that, I have been asked how I think the lines should be drawn (not what my map would look like so much as how I would go about drawing it). It time now to no longer be silent. Before the final vote on the maps is completed by the special legislative session I need to speak up – and so should everyone else who has not already been heard in this process.

I have been pleased with the process at times and disappointed with the results at other times. I am going to talk about what has happened in the redistricting process so far, good and bad, and also answer the question of what I think is the appropriate process for completing this decennial task.

Tags 2012, congress, Pursuit of Liberty, redistricting

General

Orrin Hatch’s Insurmountable Obstacle

Post author By David
Post date February 17, 2011
No Comments on Orrin Hatch’s Insurmountable Obstacle

photo credit: Gage Skidmore

Two years into his bid for re-election (yes, he has already been in obvious campaign mode for two years), in a recent tweet Orrin Hatch invited people to let him know if he was on the right track. My tweet length response was that he could not get on the right track unless he were to publicly admit to the errors in his past voting record. Upon further reflection I have a very non-tweet-length reply as I realized that, at least for me personally, that may not be enough.

Anyone who has been in office for 34 years will have votes in that time which should have been different. Anyone who has been alive for 34 years will have grown and changed within the last 34 years of their life. In other words, I would not expect a pristine record from anyone in Hatch’s position. I don’t consider seniority to be an insurmountable obstacle any more than I consider it sufficient reason to grant him another six years. To mitigate such a long tenure, I will only consider Hatch’s last two terms and pretend that his first 24 years in office were impeccable.

Tags 2012, Orrin Hatch, senate

National

Judicial Appointment

Yesterday I wrote about the president’s power to nominate people for important positions in government. Today we get the news that Justice David Souter will be retiring. (This is doubly convenient as the remaining federalist papers deal with the judicial branch of our government.) I don’t intend to speculate on who the president will nominate but there are a few things we can learn from this confirmation hearing.

During the 2004 election cycle there were a number of conservatives talking up the importance of re-electing Bush because of the probability that at least one justice would be nominated in the next four years. Obama himself said last fall that the selection of a new justice would be “one of the most consequential decisions of the next president.” One difference between Obama and Bush in relation to the opportunity to make a supreme court nomination is that Obama will have a Senate majority large enough to prevent a filibuster (assuming that Al Franken is seated from Minnesota). This means that Obama may not feel any need to moderate his choice as Bush knew that he must. Bush knew that he could not nominate anyone who was too conservative for the Senate. Obama will know that there is virtually nobody with any qualification who is too liberal for this Senate.

Assuming that this confirmation goes smoothly and that the selection proves to be reliably liberal (the new justice can always surprise people on that score), I think we might know what to expect in the next few years in the Supreme Court. The most senior justice, Justice John Paul Stevens, is on the liberal side of the court and is 89 years old. If there is a fresh liberal justice from our new president and a solidly Democratic senate in place I would be very surprised if he did not choose to retire before 2012 (or even before the 2010 elections). I would also not be surprised to see Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg choose to retire. Like Justice Stevens she is on the liberal side of the court and while she is not the next most senior justice she is the second oldest at 76 and might want to ensure that her replacement is also liberal (especially if at least one other justice is a woman by then) before there is a chance of electing a Republican president or having Democrats lose any seats in the Senate.

Tags 2010, 2012, New York Times, Obama, Supreme Court