Categories
culture politics

Restriction vs Empowerment

Photo by Tony Young

My 6-year-old son frequently wants to use sharp knives and it is not uncommon for him to get them out of a drawer unsupervised when he has a task that he believes would be served by using a sharp knife. He likes to use then for reasonable things but as far as I can figure out I have only two options to solve this: I can make the knives less and less accessible or I can teach him how to use them safely. In order to make the best decision on how to handle this I should consider the real issues surrounding the situation rather than simply reacting to the immediate danger.

The whole conundrum reminds me of the issue of gun violence in our society. If we want to make a decision that will actually make a positive impact on the situation we have to understand what is really happening in context.

Categories
State

Public Office and Private Morality


photo credit: aurélien.

Just to be clear from the beginning, this topic is inspired by the Kevin Garn story and while I will refer to that story specifically everything I say is meant to apply to any matters of the private morality of a public official.

First, I would like to say that Rep. Garn seems to be dealing with this in the best way he knows how. Second, I agree with this comment on Holly’s site saying that we should:

hold our elected officials to the highest moral and ethical standards

Having said those things, I don’t believe that Rep. Garn’s problem is any of my business because he is not my representative. If he were my representative that would be another story.

Categories
State technology

Evolving News

It’s interesting to watch as nothing turns into a news story. Here’s the roundup of one such process from this week.

Holly Richardson writes about Tim Bridgewater’s momentum. When she talks about his fund raising she doesn’t mention that over 80% of it was a loan to himself. Tim likes the coverage (naturally) and the next day he posts her article on his RedState diary. Tim gave all the proper attribution and everything – I’m not trying to accuse him of plagiarism. The day after that Thomas Burr writes that “Holly Richardson is boosting Tim Bridgewater’s campaign” over at RedState. Whether it was an oversight or a calculated move is open for speculation, but the fact is that Holly didn’t promote Tim over at RedState – unless she did so under Tim’s name. Finally, Tim gets to tweet about the article by Thomas Burr which declares how beneficial Holly’s support is.

So with a couple of nudges from Tim this little game of Chinese whispers has produced, with a little invented fact here (Holly promoting Tim on RedState) and a little omitted fact there (Tim providing almost all his own campaign funding), almost a week’s worth of positive coverage.

The point here is not to accuse Tim of anything untoward – it is to illustrate the cycle of coverage growing in a vacuum. Tim did nothing this week (at least nothing to garner more coverage in those articles) and yet he got a four days of positive news from a topic (fund raising numbers) that seemed to have died before Holly’s post.

Categories
State

Bob Lonsberry Contradicts Himself on Term Limits

It’s not really fair to expect everyone to have an up or down opinion on a candidate within a week of their campaign being announced. For that reason there should be nothing surprising about the fact that Bob Lonsberry is not sold on Mike Lee (yet). As he aired his minor reservations with our latest 2010 Senate candidate he got talking about term limits – because Mike Lee thinks we should have a term limits amendment (perhaps like this one) – and Bob’s position completely failed to add up. At first I was planning to just comment on Bob’s site, but I felt that this deserved a full post.

There is a disconnect between Bob’s position on term limits and what he says later in his article. Here’s what he thinks of term limits:

Yes, people serve way too long in Congress. Yes, we have a professional political class right now. But the insinuation that the era of the Founders was much different doesn’t stand up to the test of history. Several of the Founders themselves held elected office for years on end. Some for the majority of their lives, and our Republic was benefited by their service.

And any person with Mike Lee’s knowledge of the Constitution must understand that an amendment mandating term limits would go against both the letter and the spirit of what the Founders wanted. Term limits don’t limit the freedom of politicians, they limit the freedom of the voters. We don’t need term limits, we have elections. And if Mike Lee, or someone else, can pose a viable alternative to Bob Bennett, and convince voters of that fact, the Constitution’s existing system for replacing politicians will work perfectly.

Later he makes this statement which exposes the weakness of his position:

I’m also bothered by Mike Lee’s age. Not that a 38-year-old can’t serve well in the Senate, but that he’s got so much life left. True, he is saying that people shouldn’t make a career of Washington, but so too did the two current Utah senators, both of whom have since made a career of Washington. Everybody running against incumbents is against long tenure in office. And everybody running for re-election believes in experience and seniority.

My concern is that at 38, Utah could be biting off something it will take 30 or 40 years to chew. I’m nervous about that.

The one selling point for 76-year-old Bob Bennett is that, at his age, he’s got a built-in term limit. He’s also, as they say, the devil you know. (emphasis added)

In case you missed the disconnect, Bob says that the founders already established a way to limit terms through regular elections and then worries that we might be stuck with Mike Lee for 40 years because he’s relatively young.

Here’s the half-truth that opens up the heart of the problem:

Term limits don’t limit the freedom of politicians, they limit the freedom of the voters. We don’t need term limits, we have elections.

It’s true that term limits limit the freedom of voters by eliminating the option to elect a president they like to a third term (to use our existing term limit as an example) – that’s the only freedom of the voters that is being limited. The problem is that the freedom of voters is already severely limited by our lack of term limits because of our political environment where potential candidates often choose not to challenge an incumbent, especially within their own party. For proof of that just look at how many more candidates tend to run for open seats. With term limits we would lose the option to vote for an incumbent after a set time, but we would gain so many candidates who currently choose not to run against an incumbent.

Bob claims that the founders did not want term limits and he’s probably right (although I doubt they ever addressed the issue to prove that conclusively) but they didn’t want parties either (they did make that clear) and we have parties anyway. The party system without term limits makes the regular election cycle a very weak way to limit terms – especially in a place where one party is dominant. Bob says that if someone can pose a viable alternative to an incumbent and convince voters of that fact then the system works perfectly. The question is, how can that happen when the potential candidates remove themselves from consideration because of the system that tilts heavily in favor of incumbents? And what makes a viable candidate? If a viable candidate is one that has the capacity and interest necessary to tackle the issues and do the job of a senator then I am a viable candidate. If a viable candidate is one that voters are likely to believe in that I am nowhere near viable. The first one should be the criteria, and if it were we would have lots of viable candidates for any office.

In a nation that probably has 80 out of 100 senate seats safely in the hands of one party or another and only about 20 seats that actually have a reasonable chance of changing hands from one election to the next the method of limiting terms that the Founders established is virtually impotent. The era of the founders may not have been much different than our era but it was different in some important ways. In this environment the Founders might find term limits to be a very reasonable method to ensure that the voters had the maximum amount of choice in candidates.

Categories
General

A Bit Late But Welcome to 1984

I wanted to gag this morning when I heard the suggestion on the Wall Street Journal This Morning that those who needed health care had the option to go on the internet to purchase it. Since when was Viagra, or even Advil, considered health care?

Of course I understand what they meant – those who need health insurance can go on the internet and find more and better options than they might otherwise encounter and we have been repeatedly exposed to the notion that “health insurance is health care.” Admittedly that’s not quite “War is Peace” or “Freedom is Slavery” but January 1 is approaching and by the time it arrives we might just find that we have another 26 years until 2010.

Categories
National

Our National Emergency

I was surprised when I learned that Obama declared swine flu a national emergency late on Friday. My first thought was that I had not heard anything to suggest that things were any worse than they had been previously. Looking closer at the announcement the article states that “Swine flu is more widespread now than it’s ever been and has resulted in more than 1,000 U.S. deaths so far.”

While we don’t like the idea of 1000 deaths it’s important to put that into context by noting that the seasonal flu results in 36,000 U.S. deaths each year – that’s an average of 3,000 deaths per month year round. During the flu season that amounts to more than 1000 deaths per week. To really put that into context it should be noted that the seasonal flu produces that many deaths despite the fact that a vaccine is widely available while the swine flu vaccine is barely coming into circulation now.

That is enough information that there are many people who will shout that this is not an emergency – some will even say that this is a scare tactic or power grab by the administration. Going back to the actual declaration I have concluded that there really is a national problem.

The White House on Saturday said Obama signed a proclamation that would allow medical officials to bypass certain federal requirements.

The very real problem that this declaration of emergency addresses is a problem of over-regulation. The government should never regulate something to the point of interfering with the benefits of whatever they are regulating – as they have done with the medical system. (I would call this an emergency except that “emergency” suggests serious immediate consequences if we do not take immediate action whereas a lack of immediate action does not have particularly immediate consequences.)

Categories
culture National

An Island in the Midst of an Ocean

When I complained about the tone of the Sean Hannity show a couple of weeks ago Frank Staheli pointed me towards the Neal Boortz show broadcast on Freedom 570. Over the last couple of weeks I have been listening to the station. I have heard many of the shows as I have listened at various times and found that I was really enjoying the tone of the shows being broadcast – it was an essentially civil island in the midst of  the ocean of conservative talk radio. Neal Boortz  is not my favorite of their shows, but his tone was so much nicer than Hannity.

Today I discovered a mud puddle in the midst of the Freedom 570 lineup. I drove home earlier than usual today and heard the Todd Schnitt show for the first time which had more of a Hannity tone. While it may not be fully representative of the show I was disappointed to hear Schnitt’s coverage of the apparent uproar over a picture of Meghan McCain that got posted on the internet (by Meghan apparently). Schnitt had to take the time to rave about Meghan’s physique and insist that the picture get a more prominent place on his website.

I have not seen the picture, but I have enough information from what I head from Schnitt before turning the show off to comment on the situation. Schnitt has demonstrated his immaturity and lack of class by the types of comments he felt compelled to make. Meghan has shown her naivety by even posting the image and acting as if the uproar was not predictable. Apparently some have called her a slut – without even going to see the picture I think it’s safe to say that she was just plain foolish. The only good that came out of it is that I now know to pass on opportunities to listen to Schnitt.

Categories
General

Legislator as Communicator

The job of being a legislator demands that anyone who hopes to fill the role be a capable communicator. I’m not talking about the ability to speak in sound-bitese (although there is a place for that). I am talking about the ability to send and receive messages to voters and to other public officials they are called to work with (both outside and within the legislative body they are or hope to be members of).

Sending messages requires the ability both to craft a message and to deliver it in a way that it will be understood. That’s easy to say, but doing it is tricky as the message must be understood across a variety of media. The message must be understandable when it is delivered in written articles, interviews, town halls, sound bites, and in the various abbreviated forms that dominate the realms of advertising. Publishing is very easy in this age (just ask me, I’ve been publishing thoughts for years on many subjects), but some people realize that and seem to forget that actual communication is much more complicated.

Receiving messages  requires the ability to listen, read, or observe without filtering the input to remove any data that contradicts expectations. It also requires a willingness to be open to input from all sides and to make people aware of that willingness. That openness and ability to productively engage with detractors as well as supporters is crucial for a legislator to be effective and to have the necessary information to represent their constituents.

The skills of communication are one of the qualifications of a legislator that are crucial as part of the campaign and the actual job. In fact, the skills of communication should be vastly more important in re-election campaigns than fund raising (this is less true when first campaigning for an office). The only ability that should be as necessary as communicating in a re-election is the ability to work tirelessly.

Categories
National

Under-Informed Health Care Debate

Considering how widely discussed the health care issue is and how long running that discussion has been it is easy for people to think they have all the available and relevant information on the subject. The fact is that despite the appearance of coverage you can only scratch the surface of available information unless you search beyond mainstream news sources. Here’s a letter in the  Salt Lake Tribune yesterday as a case in point:

To President Barack Obama and Congress, I say: Negotiate the various health care reform bills — soon. Get the Blue Dog Democrats on board, and pass a bill — soon, before your public becomes so weary of partisan infighting that we oppose anything you pass.

The Republicans, for all their bluster, have not offered any alternative, except our Sen. Bob Bennett with Oregon Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden, and that bill has received only token Republican support. . .

The author is right that the Health Americans Act by Wyden and Bennett has received only token Republican support – largely because it is only fleetingly different from the various Democrat only bills in circulation. On the other hand, he is far from right that Republicans have offered no alternatives – that’s just the line that Congressional leaders and the administration have been feeding to the media. Just browse the sites of Rep. Ron Paul and Sen. Jim DeMint to get an idea of some of the Republican counter-proposals that have been offered. Then consider that for every idea presented by those two members of Congress there must be dozens of ideas that were offered in negotiations before the Republicans left the tables that never received even token consideration by leaders of the various committees.

On the very day the letter was being published Rep. John Shadegg (AZ-03) was talking about one of those non-existent Republican plans that was apparently introduced back in July and cosponsored by Rep. Rob Bishop (UT-01) among others. (h/t Right Truth) As always in the health care debate, each bill should be measured against the findings of David Goldhill to see if it actually addresses the real problems in the health care system. (Shadegg’s bill appears to do better than the bills actually acknowledged by the media from what I’ve seen.)

Although I maintain that being truly informed requires that we look at more information sources than the mainstream media that also means that we have to be discerning about the accuracy of each information source. I think it’s safe to doubt the accuracy of anyone (especially an MD) that believes that our current health care system suffers from a “lack of government regulation.” I’m amazed that someone could seriously argue that the current proposals under consideration represent free market solutions and that solutions based on free market principles would be a good thing while also arguing that the free market is the cause of our health care woes.

Categories
culture

My Way or the Highway

I have come to the conclusion that any broadcast news is going to be full of content that is designed to help listeners think their are being informed when in reality there is no substance to the content. Usually the headlines are enough to get the point across. That’s why I like getting news from feeds where I can glance at the headline and only take time for the full story (video, audio, or text) if the headline promises information that I don’t already have.

Because of this conclusion I no longer leave the radio on the same station all the time (for what little time I listen to it). Today I found myself listening to Sean Hannity and within 10 minutes I had confirmed why I avoid talk radio. When I first tuned in Sean was busy making sure that his listeners knew how stupid some of his previous callers were in disagreeing with his position on the news story of the moment. Seeing as I agreed with Hannity on that particular story I let it go. A few minutes later a caller voiced an opinion on another story that Hannity disagreed with. This time I had heard the caller and I got to hear the way Hannity responded to him – it was disgraceful.

Hannity badgered his caller and ignored everything the man said that he did not agree with. In this case I could not ignore Sean’s tone for two reasons – first, I heard the caller so I knew what Hannity was responding to; and second, I disagree with Hannity and think that besides being wrong he is doing a great disservice to conservatives everywhere by ruthlessly shutting down debate with anyone who disagrees with him. I accept that there are many people who believe as Sean does on that later issue and although I strongly disagree with that position I could not consider myself a decent human being if I were to shut down any opposing voices as ungraciously as I heard Sean doing today.