Month: December 2007

Ready to Vote

Warning: Undefined array key "adf" in /home4/hpvcxhmy/public_html/wp-content/plugins/similarity/similarity.php on line 69

Warning: Undefined array key "sim_pages" in /home4/hpvcxhmy/public_html/wp-content/plugins/similarity/similarity.php on line 70

Votes will start to be counted this week. The Iowa caucuses take place on Thursday as a wide open presidential election promises to dominate the news coverage for another 10 months. I have already done individual endorsements of the candidates and an advance ranking of what candidates I liked best. Now, with actual votes on the line, here is my final position on the candidates I could vote for. In alphabetical order I could vote for:

- Joe Biden
- Mike Huckabee
- Barack Obama
- Ron Paul
- Mitt Romney

The Republicans include a Small-Government Constitutionalist that the media does not understand, and hence does not cover (Ron Paul), a man who knows how to get things done (Mitt Romney), and a more articulate champion for “compassionate conservatism” than our current President (Mike Huckabee). The Democrats include a fresh face of optimism (Barack Obama) and a man who is everything that Hillary pretends to be – experienced and essentially moderate (Joe Biden).

Many people say this is a change election (I’ve heard that before but we’re still doing the same thing in Washington) and if your view is to change Washington then the order of candidates (from most change to least) would have to be:

- Ron Paul
- Barack Obama
- Mitt Romney
- Joe Biden
- Mike Huckabee

Based on my positions (where change is not the only factor) I would support the candidates in this order (My support from 1-10):

1. Ron Paul (10)
2. Mitt Romney (7)
3. Joe Biden (6 – I like his positions better than Obama)
4. Barack Obama (6 – I like his tone and his chances in the primaries better than Biden)
5. Mike Huckabee (4 – if you think our current domestic priorities are acceptable then Huckabee would be better able to sell them than Bush has been)

While everyone who doesn’t support Ron Paul will argue that he hasn’t got a chance, I argue that his real support is much broader than any other candidate (with the possible exception of Obama). The problem is that his supporters as a group may not be reliable about getting to the polls (it’s hard to say because they are such an unorthodox group politically). I think that if Ron Paul can place at least 3rd in Iowa behind Romney and Huckabee (I say third because the caucuses are more complex than a simple primary) and second (or possibly even 3rd) in New Hampshire behind Romney or McCain then the media will have to pay more attention to his showings in those states which will have surprised the media and the general public. This increased coverage will make those who might not have supported him before less apprehensive about voting for him and he will have a very real chance (unless Romney wins both of those states outright).

Obviously I want Ron Paul to win the Republican nomination but I would be extremely happy to see an Obama/Biden ticket in November. Then I could have a decent choice even if the Republicans choose an unacceptable candidate like Giuliani for the general election.

Tags endorsements, national candidates, Ron Paul

National

Ron Paul Running Mate

I have often wondered who Ron Paul would choose as a running mate. I got my answer from Phil Harris. Alan Keyes joined the race for the Republican nomination long after I stopped doing candidate endorsements, but when I looked at his positions I found someone who was ideologically very similar to Dr. Paul on most issues.

Dr. Keyes is light years behind Dr. Paul organizationally and financially, nor does he inspire the same fervor among his supporters, but he seems to bring a similar love and understanding of the Constitution. Another advantage would be that Dr. Keyes, being black, would quell the baseless fears of those who dislike the small financial support that Dr. Paul has received from members of some white-pride types of fringe groups. Dr. Paul would demonstrate that their prejudices are not connected to him.

I’m not saying that this would happen, only that I have finally seen someone who would seem like a good running mate for Dr. Paul.

Tags 2008, national candidates, Ron Paul

National

Budget Math

I wish I knew where they got their deficit spending number, but KVNU’s For The People really caught my attention with the side-by-side listing of the deficit spending in the budget President Bush just signed. They claim that $240 Billion of the $555 Billion is deficit spending. That’s over 43% of the total budget being paid with imaginary cash. The original excuse for deficit spending (back in the Depression era) was that it could be used to fund emergencies, as a temporary measure to get us past tough times such as war or depression. The problem here is that no matter how great the emergency, if you are spending everything you earn plus another 76% of what you are bringing in it’s time to find a way to reduce your costs by 40% (which would still leave us with deficit spending this year of $20 Billion).

What really got me about all of this is that although we are in a war right now that war only accounts for $70 Billion so we could remove that spending completely and we would still have $170B out of the $485B being paid on promises. (That’s still 35% deficit spending.) There was $28B in domestic spending that the President didn’t want (only $142B to go) and $10B in pork earmarks. In other words, nobody even attempted to spend less than 30% of the budget with play money. If Congress had started with the budget proposed by the President and simply subtracted everything they didn’t like we would still have been spending more than $100 Billion dollars that we didn’t have. I think we can say that this government is numerically bankrupt – who cares that they exercised their power to raise their credit limit so as to prevent them from being financially bankrupt this year.

Tags economics, money

National

NCLB and Federal Education

Post author By David
Post date December 26, 2007
No Comments on NCLB and Federal Education

My father-in-law is a professor at BYU and, like me, is very interested/involved in efforts to improve public education. As the voucher debate this year demonstrated, there are very different perspectives on how that improvement can be achieved. (Yes, I do believe that people on both sides of that issue were genuinely interested in improving education.) Such is the case with me and my father-in-law. Not long ago we were talking about educational issues and he said, “Many people do not realize that NCLB was a continuing step in a decades long effort to improve education. It was not born out of nowhere.” He referred me to a seminar given by Vance Randall discussing NCLB and that movement. I believe that he intended that statement to ease my distaste of NCLB. In fact, I was neither surprised nor comforted by the statement.

I finally went to see the video of the seminar, as he suggested, and found my position unchanged. It made me finally do some research asking what we have gained with the intrusion of the federal government in our education system. The answers are – the federal government has gained authoritative control over much of our education for the minimal investment of taking our money in taxes, attaching strings, and giving it back to us enough to fund between 3.9 and 15.8% (average of 7.3%) of our education spending. I don’t know where else an investor can get a controlling interest for under 10% investment. The country has gained, according to Neal McCluskey:

. . . national academic performance has not improved. Math and reading scores have stagnated, graduation rates have flat lined, and researchers have shown numerous billion-dollar federal programs to be failures. (See his full report which is partially based on the work of Vance Randall.)

I learned from the seminar by Dr. Randall that Congress turned a 26 page proposal by President Bush into the 1000+ page bill that passed as NCLB. Proponents of this increased federal incursion argue that states have the ability to opt out, but as McCluskey succinctly coutners:

[S]tates can refuse their share of billions of federal education dollars and thereby avoid having to adhere to federal regulations, but turning down the money is difficult, especially since the federal government took the money out of state taxpayers’ pockets in the first place.

The education lobby would seem to have this debate won handily since nobody wants to vote against helping kids learn. The only recourse for those who would like to return the control of education to its rightful place (parents and lower levels of government) is to make the facts available. It is easy to get caught in the trap of trying to argue that the federal involvement is the problem in our education (a case that is not easy to make in a way that the average voter would care to digest). Whether federal involvement is a problem or not is irrelevant, instead we need to take the ample data that we have which proves that federal involvement is conclusively not the solution.

Tags Education, NCLB

culture

Second Guessing Good Works

Post author By David
Post date December 23, 2007
No Comments on Second Guessing Good Works

I liked this story – Attorney offers to pay cab rides for people who have been drinking. Apparently this same attorney did the same thing last year too. Some people commenting on the story talk about all the free advertising that he receives through this. Surely had does receive the benefit of name recognition and improves his image through this gesture. I say, who cares what benefit he receives out of it. If this saves one fatality then it’s way more than worth it.

Tags media, reactions

National

Platform of the American People

Post author By David
Post date December 22, 2007
No Comments on Platform of the American People

Newt Gingrich chose not to run for President because it would conflict with his movement, American Solutions (a good choice in my opinion). American Solutions has now published the Platform of the American People. They claim that the positions in this platform are supported by majorities from both major parties as well as a majority of independents. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at that platform. I have not come to any complete conclusions on the platform yet, but I have discovered that some of their majorities are closer to even than others. I did some objective, numerical analysis – taking all their data for granted – and here are the issues that appear to be the most widely supported.

- It is important for the President and Congress to address the issue of Social Security in the next few years.
- We have an obligation to be good stewards of God’s creation for future generations.
- Children should be allowed a moment of silence to pray for themselves in public school if they desire.
- Al Qaeda poses a very serious threat for the United States.
- Our goal should be to provide long-term solutions instead of short-term fixes.
- We should hold city governments to the same standards for cleaning waste water as are applied to private industry.
- It is important to acknowledge today that the references to God in the Declaration of Independence – that we are endowed by our Creator with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
- When applying for a temporary worker visa each worker should take an oath to obey American law and be deported if they commit a crime while in the United States.
- We approve of a Christmas tree or a Menorah being placed on public property during the holiday season.
- Therefore we should dramatically increase our investment in math and science education.
- There will be incredible possibilities to meet our country’s challenges in a variety of fields because in the next 25 years there will be 4 to 7 times the amount of new science and technology in the world as in the last 25 years.
- We should give tax credits to homeowners and builders who incorporate alternative energy systems in their homes, like solar, wind, and geothermal energy.
- We must rely on innovation and new technology if we are going to compete successfully with India and China.

Each of these is supposed to be supported by a ratio of at least 11 to 1. Does this look like part of an agenda that will help the country? Does it look like an agenda that we could pass? Are there any candidates or members of congress that would want to push these things through?

I’d love to get feedback from others as I look more closely at this.

To see my full spreadsheet where I sorted these issues out by popularity download it here.

Tags American Solutions, issues

State

Health Care Assistance

When I wrote about declining enrollment for CHIP in Utah I did some research on the requirements for CHIP. I learned that even though I am fully employed – meaning I make a comfortable living – my kids would be eligible for CHIP if I did not have the option of insurance through my job. More interestingly I learned that there is another program, Utah’s Premium Partnership for Health Insurance (UPP), which my family would qualify for if I chose a traditional insurance plan. (Actually, my company just switched insurance and I could have enrolled in a traditional plan that would have allowed me to have my full premiums paid – partially by my company and the remainder by the state.) This program helps pay the costs of health insurance premiums for working families.

As I looked at the requirements for UPP it shows some interesting biases that are not good for our health care system. The one that makes the least sense is that they explicitly will not cover High Deductible (HD) plans that qualify for Health Savings Accounts. This essentially discourages people from using the best vehicle we currently have for becoming cost conscious and driving down the real costs of health care. If they wanted to encourage people to get the kind of insurance that is better for the whole system they would give the same amount of money – deposited directly into an HSA – for those who have an HD insurance plan as they give for comparable coverage under a traditional insurance policy. Of course the rules would be the same for qualifying plans whether they were HD or traditional.

Tags government, health care, HSA, Utah

National State

Why We Need A Tax Debate

If anyone wonders why I think we need a tax debate here’s a good example. Congress passed their omnibus spending bill and today Senator Bennett announces that he got $290 Million for Utah in the bill. The assumption underlying his announcement is that any money he brings to the state from the federal government is a good thing.

Obviously if I leave near the Moab Atlas Mill Tailing site I’m happy for the $24 Million dollars. If I work at the Space Dynamics Lab in Logan (which I used to) then I’m pleased as punch that we got nearly $400,000. On the other hand I’m not excited about the golf course in Pennsylvania that the government paid for and the people of Pennsylvania are probably not too thrilled that they have to clean up the tailings mess in Moab so we can all complain that the government is wasting money. Besides that, when the $24 Million is gone will I be satisfied with the tailings cleanup myself?

We need to make federal spending more transparent and start to talk about what we believe is the proper place for government intervention – in other words, what things are appropriate to receive government funding Is government in charge of health care? defense? border security? my retirement? education? my transportation options? the cost of my groceries? what religion I practice (or get exposed to)? the speed of my internet access?

I think that anyone who says’s yes to all of the above, or no to all of the above is extreme.

Tags discourse, taxes

General

Wrinkles In Iowa

I have read two stories now from the New York Times about questionable practices in the Iowa Caucuses. One on Iowa’s Student Vote and another on the reporting of the Democratic Caucus results. In regard to the student vote I was disappointed to learn that:

. . . political operatives often try to suppress the student vote . . . [using] a variety of tactics over the years to keep students from voting. There are often too few voting machines, so lines stretch for hours. Sometimes, students are falsely told that they will lose financial aid, health care or even car insurance if they vote while attending school.

In Iowa, the suppression has been rhetorical. With Barack Obama’s campaign, in particular, urging students to come out for him, other campaigns have tried to put up roadblocks. . . Clinton said during a campaign stop that the process should be reserved for “people who live here, people who pay taxes here.” Chris Dodd seemed to imply that people who were “paying out-of-state tuition” and participating in the process were somehow being deceptive and unfairly casting themselves as Iowan.

Student are rightly up in arms about these statements. The law in Iowa is crystal clear: students who attend school in the state are entitled to register to vote in the state as long they are not registered anywhere else.

For myself, I would be happy with any vote where voter turnout was above 70% even if I absolutely hated the person who got elected. At least I would know that the person who got elected was elected by an active electorate who disagreed with me.

With regard to the results of the Democratic Caucuses I was surprised to learn that the actual vote count was never made public. In the words of the article:

Under the formulas used to apportion delegates, it is possible that the candidate with the highest percentage of delegate equivalents — that is, the headline “winner” — did not really lead in the “popular vote” at the caucuses. Further, it is possible that a second or third-tier candidate could garner a surprising 10 percent or 12 percent of the popular vote statewide and get zero delegates. . .

The press invests months in covering the caucuses. It and the public it serves are entitled at the end of the exercise to an unambiguous vote count, instead of delegate numbers that camouflage how much popular support each candidate earned.

Such practices serve as extra fodder for those who argue that Iowa is not representative of the nation and does not deserve to always take the lead in the process of selecting our president.

Tags civic participation, elections, media, voting machines

State

Merit Pay and Other Ideas

With Governor Huntsman seeking more money to raise pay levels for public school teachers the Daily Herald calls for something better than a pay-raise across the board. They suggest using the money for merit-based pay increases. I agree completely as I had already suggested that merit-pay might be a good first step to build momentum and consensus in improving our public schools.

Devising an effective merit pay system for a job as subjective as teaching is a challenge, but not impossible. Business managers evaluate subjective factors all the time when reviewing employee performance. What is needed in the public schools is performance evaluation based on some combination of elements, with an accounting for differences in groups of students. The teacher’s job is to drive progress, regardless of the starting point of students. . .

Principals, the front-line managers, should have greater latitude to evaluate performance. They know who their best people are. An evaluation of a teacher might include such things as creating a positive environment for children (perhaps including feedback from parents), innovation, creativity, knowledge of subject matter and communication. If a principal is also subject to merit pay based on overall performance of the school, fears of favoritism should be minimized.

The only group that would oppose merit pay would be the NEA because merit pay could have a negative effect on below average teachers (which would likely be a positive effect on our public schools).

Unfortunately our current system is not set up to encourage teachers to excel. Many teachers come in with high hopes of making a difference in the lives of students only to be worn down within a few years until they quit teaching in public schools. Others may soon abandon their high ideals and rely instead on the job security of a perpetual teacher shortage combined with a large union protecting them from being fired for mediocrity. Few people have the mental and emotional reserves to continue to perform at a high level for an extended number of years in a system that does not reward outstanding achievement. An across-the-board pay raise would not improve that aspect of our school system.

In addition to promoting merit-pay, the Daily Herald suggested some other changes that are worth consideration:

But merit pay is not the only innovation that ought to be evaluated. What would have happened this year, for instance, if the $349 million that went to teachers had been poured into lower-priced staff support? If teachers could be freed from the time-consuming routine of grading and other rote work, perhaps they would have more time to plan, more time to energize, more time to inspire.

Nor should teachers be drawn exclusively from education programs at universities. A great candidate for a teacher is one who is alive with the excitement of a subject and wants to transmit that to others. A wide range of graduates is needed to populate the teaching ranks in Utah’s future schools, and barriers to entry should be minimized.

Those suggestions are too broad to really support without some specifics, but we need to get creative about improving our system. The problems are not going to just go away nor is the cost going to go down over time unless we abandon our ideals or else make some significant changes.

Tags Education, issues, merit pay