Month: October 2008

Rejecting Amendment A

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Let me start off by saying that Constitutional Amendment A does not have anything sinister or devious in it. In fact, there is very little in it to raise objections about. My primary objection is rooted in my position on constitutionally based governments in which I prefer to reject any amendment to the established law unless I see good reason for the change – in other words, I default to opposition where constitutional amendments are concerned.

This amendment would clarify the specifics of succession in the office of Governor and Lieutenant Governor. The specifics themselves are fairly mundane, but the situation being addressed is one that hopefully and probably will never occur. (Davis Didjeridu reminds me that a vacancy can happen for less than tragic reasons – such as federal appointment – making this situation more common than I had been thinking.) In the event that one of those vacancies did occur, common sense should allow the succession to happen seamlessly even without these specified specifics being added to the State Constitution.

There is one place where I have a specific objection to the amendment. In the section dealing with the succession of the Lieutenant Governor, it specifies that the Governor must receive the consent of the Senate for the person they would appoint to fill the vacancy. This appears to violate the separation of powers considering that the Governor, when running for office, needs no consent from the Senate when picking a running mate. I see no reason that selecting a replacement should have tighter safeguards than the original selection.

In summary, there is little to recommend this change, and more to discourage it. I won’t be overly concerned if it does pass, but I believe that not making such a change is the better choice.

Tags 2008, amendments, ballot initiatives, elections, State Constitution, Utah

Local

Test the Candidates

When I talked to Kyle Roberts the other night I discussed how important communication was for me when I look at candidates and elected officials. It has been very exciting to see as Kyle has begun to implement some of my suggestions to open more channels of communication for the residents of House District 20. He is making more use of his blog (which he had before we talked) and he has added the option for residents to get his blog updates by email (or a variety of other means). As I have seen him implementing things I had suggested I realized that one of the things that voters can do in choosing a candidate to support is to test the candidates.

Go beyond reading what the candidates say and treat them like elected officials. If you like to ask questions or make suggestions to your representatives you should be doing that with the candidates. The key to representative government is citizen involvement – early and often. If we just vote and then stay out of the political process until the next election cycle the end result will be a government that is out of touch and out of control. It becomes dysfunctional like Washington D.C.

I like this discovery and I plan to make use of it in all races of interest to me in the future. I also like being able to follow the efforts of other people who are proactive in contacting candidates. Thad Van Ry provides a good example of that as he sent questions to the candidates for Senate District 23 (my senate district) and then posted their answers. (That is his intro to the series of answer posts.)

Tags candidates, civic participation, communication, elections

National State

Politics Goes Local

The Senate passed the bailout bill (that they had no business voting on) and with an added 315 pages of pork they might be exposing the real reason that the House did not pass it on Monday. All that extra sugar coating is likely to make the bitter pill go down easier. This reminds me why watching Washington politics is so depressing.

On a happier note, I met with Kyle Roberts last night and really enjoyed getting to know him better. I look forward to helping him to become my representative in the Utah Legislature.

I’m sure I will have some things to rant about on the national level, but I am going to focus on state and local issues for a while (like the proposed amendments to the Utah Constitution) and quit paying attention – as much as possible – to the coming Obama administration and the continued shenanigans that will remain rampant inside the beltway.

Tags bailout, civic participation, House 20, Utah

culture life meta State

Make “the Silent” a Minority

Post author By David
Post date October 1, 2008
14 Comments on Make “the Silent” a Minority

Recently my niece approached me to ask questions about politics. She’s a young teenager, years short of being able to vote, but she wants to become informed and involved so that she could positively participate by the time she can vote. The conversation served as a reminder to me of how important it is for our young people to be able to obtain information on political issues that is not tainted by the rancor that often pervades political discussions. In other words we need a clearinghouse for civil civic conversation. I decided that I wanted to form an organization that would work for that purpose.

When I read the plea at Ladies Logic regarding our atrocious levels of participation in Utah (and remembered my own pleas to encourage greater levels of participation here), I realized that the time to act was now and that the need was not only for our youth who are approaching or recently passing the age where they can vote but also for every citizen who can’t bring themselves to really participate in the dirty game of politics – many of whom simply stay out of the discussion and vote without becoming well informed on the issues. We need to reach “the silent majority.”

The group I will be forming will be open to, even encouraging of, participation by people of all political perspectives. The only requirement for participation is a commitment to avoid the playground politics of name calling and guilt by association. The aim of the group will be to draw people out of the silent majority until the silent become the minority by fostering civil dialog between people of differing perspectives. We will not aim to come to a consensus except the consensus that wider participation is better than narrower participation. I would like the group to seek to engage other group members in public discussion of issues so that people who have been silent will have a chance to be exposed to various positions on important issues without the likelyhood of being personally insulted by those who disagree with them. I also would like the group, individually and collectively, to engage in discussing issues with candidates for office and elected officials with an emphasis on local candidates and officials and a balance of local, state, and national issues.

In addition to my own energy, and knowledge I need the energy and experience of others who can help me to spread the word, engage effectively with public officials, organize group efforts, and generate ideas to further these aims.

I would ask anyone who believes in the importance of broad political participation, especially if you are in Utah, to please contact me publicly or privately to help me get this off the ground. Leave me comments or drop me an email if you have interest in participating, ideas about what can and should be done, or if you know of people who could help me in this.

Tags Anything but Neutral, civic participation, connections, discourse, elections, issues, voting

National

Government Gray Area

When the House voted down the bailout on Monday I was very surprised by the result, but I was not particularly surprised to hear that of the Representatives facing close re-elections, only two voted in favor of the bailout. This looks like a blatant reminder that the primary concern of elected officials tends to be keeping their jobs rather than showing leadership. I say that while acknowledging that I feel strongly that rejecting the bailout was the right choice. The urgency with which the bailout was pushed makes me immediately wary. Government should never work that fast on anything of importance – except in cases of our nation being attacked. In other words, the members of the house did the right thing, but it appears that they did it, in most cases, for the wrong reason.

Today the Senate is set to vote on the bailout bill – despite the fact that they have no Constitutional authority to appropriate money except in concurrence with the House. Unlike the House, where every member is facing re-election, 2/3 of our Senators are insulated from an immediate election. Because of this I expect that the bailout bill will pass in the Senate as Senators feel more free to lead with re-election not being an immediate issue for most of them. I have not been able to read a draft of the Senate version of the bailout, but assuming that they have not written a new bill from scratch I fully expect that they will do the wrong thing for the right reasons.

I’m really not sure which is worse, but our options in Congress (when we have options) seem to be that our elected officials do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or the wrong thing for the right reasons.

UPDATE 11:00am: There is no way that any Senator will have read the full text of this bill – it is 451 pages long. I have no idea why it is so long because as of the parts I have read nothing of significance has changed. In fact, the page numbers for the entire first section of the bill (which contains the bulk of the substance) appear to be unchanged. None of the issues I raised with the House bill have been addressed in any way.

Tags bailout, change congress, government, money