Month: January 2009

Orrin Depends on Sloppy Journalism

Post author By David
Post date January 7, 2009
14 Comments on Orrin Depends on Sloppy Journalism

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The news media is supposed to help us make sense of the world around us, but to a large degree most news organizations have relegated themselves to being nothing more than data streams. A perfect example today comes with the news regarding the D.C. Voting rights bill that Orrin Hatch introduced (again) yesterday. In the Washington Watch section of today’s Utah Policy we get news of the event with no analysis and a mention of, but no link to, the press release. They manage to quote Hatch as he contradicts himself (I’ll get to that in a minute) but offer no analysis or context. The Washington Post covers the story in a biased fashion, but at least in their case we could expect that as Washington has everything to gain and nothing to lose by this bill. Simply put, the residents of D.C. have a legitimate complaint and they would rather compromise on the issue than take the time to make the change in the right way. The compromise is that they offer to help Utah to a temporary solution to Utah’s legitimate concern of being denied a seat in conjunction with a permanent solution to their predicament. Looking at the Deseret News coverage we find the story played as a tussle between Hatch and Jason Chaffetz but still little analysis of the merits of the bill.

Let’s see what analysis of the merits of the bill would tell us.

The residents of D.C. have a legitimate grievance about their lack of voting representation in the House. The proper solution would be an amendment that would grant voting representation in the House to the citizens of any territory that pays federal taxes, or returning the residential portions of D.C. to Maryland as suggested by Rep. Chaffetz – this bill does neither of those things. Likewise Utah has a legitimate complaint about being denied another seat after the 2000 census. The proper solution is our pursuit of a redress through the judicial system and a bill to examine and improve the methodology of counting for the census as well as growing our way outside the margin of error in the census system. We have the growth, we pursued the judicial relief, and this bill does not address the census methodologies in any way.

Let’s see what sloppy journalism ignores in Hatch’s statement.

While the 2010 census and reapportionment might provide Utah an additional seat, the failure of the 2000 process showed that this is not a sure thing. This bill maximizes the chances of securing an additional seat for Utah, which has had one of the country’s fastest growth rates since the last census.

I have no doubt that when Hatch spoke he emphasized the word "might" regarding Utah gaining another seat after the 2010 census. Somehow he can get away with saying that, and admitting that Utah has one of the fastest growing populations since the 2000 census, without anyone questioning in their stories how having one of the fastest growth rates in the country would allow us to still be below the margin for error in the next census.

For those who are wondering, the bill makes no mention of Utah. It provides two new seats in the House and assigns one to D.C. The supporters of the bill are trying to work fast before Utah gains their seat in the 2010 census because they aren’t willing to wait until Congress will give them what they deserve, which is representation in the house without resorting to a gimmick such as offering a balancing seat to poor, picked-on Utah. They also fear that after 2010 there will not be a Republican state with a legitimate grievance about their apportionment of representatives. I understand that legislation is dependent on the art of compromise, and rightly so in most cases, but gimmicks are not the same thing as compromise.

Orrin is not representing the interests of his constituents – he’s simply representing the interests of some of his friends in Washington. If that were not the case he would not have to lie to us and say that we might not get our deserved representation from the 2010 census.

Tags amendments, Deseret News, fourth seat, media, Orrin Hatch, Utah Policy, voting

culture National

News and Government

I have been reading Breaking The News and consequently thinking about the role of the media in disseminating information and the effects of that process in the political arena. I don’t know that my thoughts are fully formed here, but I had to get something down.

The media has been called the Fourth Branch of Government because of how important an informed electorate is in a system of popular government. There is certainlya lot of truth to that idea. I looked for some other perspectives on this issue and found a 2006 article that was very much opposed to the differences between members of the media and elected members of the official branches of government. I also found a 2007 article suggesting that cash is the fourth branch of government and a 2008 article that claims that the military is the fourth branch. These claims got me thinking about what it meant to have a fourth branch, and why we are so fascinated with identifying it.

Personally I would argue that cash has no will of its own and thus cannot act as a governing force. (It is simply a resource to be used in influencing people.) On the other hand, the idea of the military as a fourth branch of government is plausible. The more I have thought about it, the more I believe that there is always a hidden branch of government (meaning a tool that influences the government and the culture of a nation without being an official governing force). That tool is either religion (cultural morality), media (information), or military (force). In fact, it may be that religion may be a replacement for government (tied to the hidden branches of media or military) when it is a governing force, but not a hidden branch.

There are definitely countries where the military is that fourth branch and I am convinced that military and media both play a role in virtually every society – the fourth branch in any country being whichever of the two holds the most dominant controling position. Thankfully the media is the more dominant cultural tool in our nation (presently). So while I believe that our fourth branch has been compromised, just as each of the other three branches have also been compromised, we are still free from the tyrany that coincides with the military as the fourth branch.

I believe that the problems in our media have the same roots as the problems in our government – we the people have distanced ourselves from the source of our information and become less critical and demanding.

I’d love to hear other thoughts on this issue, but for the time being I’ll go back to ruminating.

Tags government, media, thoughts

Local State

Legislative Accountability

Post author By David
Post date January 5, 2009
2 Comments on Legislative Accountability

John Florez has a good perspective on what constitutes True government accountability and the forces that work against citizens from receiving the benefits of that accountability. I thought his comparison of the legislature to a corporate board of directors was very apt. My thoughts were sparked by the following statement:

This year, with new legislative leadership, might be a good one to spend more time holding oversight hearings on how effective certain state departments are in solving the problems they were created to resolve — their legislative mandate. . .

For legislators to start asking the tough questions to hold state departments accountable puts their political seat at risk because they threaten and have to fend off special-interest groups that benefit from maintaining the agency status quo. Therefore, it’s critical that legislators, in very real ways, know the public will support them when they hold oversight hearings regarding agencies’ effectiveness and demonstrate what returns taxpayers are getting on their investment. For legislators, those are tough calls but vital in keeping our government working in the public’s interest.

Oversight hearings would provide the openness and accountability in our government that we all want.

Bureaucratic momentum is a powerful force and tends to discourage any real accountability. The first priority of any institution is survival, not the fulfilling of any legislative mandate. Because of that, government bureaucracies have become very adept at promoting their own survival and continuation. In fact, they have learned how to turn failure and ineffectiveness into a tool for budgetary and institutional growth. Bureaucrats have long practice at befriending legislators and promoting their perspectives so that those legislators will be disposed to grant them their budgetary and policy requests. The fact that government jobs are considered to be a very safe area of employment is a testament to how effective their survival tactics usually are.

Despite all these advantages for institutional continuance, I see a glimmer of hope. If legislators will actively seek to cultivate their relationships with the group of voters that they represent they can preempt the ability of any special interest groups to unseat them for asking tough questions when holding real oversight hearings.

Constituents can show that they will support their legislators by being vocal in requesting real accountability and in vocally supporting their legislators through the legislative process. If they do so the legislators should have confidence that they can ask tough questions and demand accountability without fear that doing so will cost them their seats.

As constituents it is to our advantage to focus our efforts on those who represent us. If we voted for our representatives we should have done so because we believe in what they are said they would do, and if we did not vote for them we should be letting them know what we want from our representative. Many politicians say that they intend to represent those who opposed them as well as those who voted for them, but if we do not communicate with our representatives, whether we voted for them or not, they are not able to accurately represent us.

I have found that my efforts are much more rewarded by contacting my representatives, whether I voted for them or not, than if I spend my time shouting into space about what the legislature as a whole should be doing.

Tags civic participation, Deseret News, House 20, legislation, Utah

culture

Federalist No. 46

The subject and position of Federalist No. 46 is not substantially different from Federalist No. 45 and my reaction is largely the same as before. On the other hand, Madison makes an important point that expands the scope of my reaction.

Notwithstanding the different modes in which they are appointed, we must consider both of them as substantially dependent on the great body of the citizens of the United States. . . The federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes.

My initial reaction was that, like the states, the people in general are no longer guarding their liberty so much as their financial security. Some further consideration convinced me that Madison was right and that my reaction was actually an indication of the fundamental problem.

The adversaries of the Constitution seem to have lost sight of the people altogether in their reasonings on this subject; and to have viewed {the federal and state governments}, not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but as uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to usurp the authorities of each other. These gentlemen must here be reminded of their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone

Although it is easy to feel that the government has gone out of control we must remember that we still have relatively free, fair, and regular elections. The fundamental problem which allows the government to exced their constitutional bounds is not that there are no reins, but that we the people have let go of the reins (this is especially true in places like Utah where the participation in even the most basic civic functions like voting is abysmal). The result is that our runaway horse of government is sometimes staffed by officials elected to virtually hereditary positions and while we may yell about the dangers of the course being taken by our uncontrolled stagecoach, the actual solution is for us to undertake the challenging task of grasping the reins once more and asserting our control over the horse of government. Only after we have tried our hands at the reins can the horse truly be said to be a runaway – prior to a serious attempt at control it is our own failure and not the fault of the horse.

One final quote that I really appreciated:

Measures will too often be decided according to their probable effect, not on the national prosperity and happiness, but on the prejudices, interests, and pursuits of the governments and people of the individual States. What is the spirit that has in general characterized the proceedings of Congress? A perusal of their journals, as well as the candid acknowledgments of such as have had a seat in that assembly, will inform us, that the members have but too frequently displayed the character, rather of partisans of their respective States, than of impartial guardians of a common interest;

Interestingly, the final protection against a federal takeover of the lives of the citizens (as cited by Madison) is the right of the people to keep and bear arms. An alarmist would be quick to take every attempt to regulate the keeping of arms by private individuals as a fundamental threat to individual liberty – and their alarm would not be without legitimate foundation.

Tags civic participation, documents, federalist, government, history

National

Annapolis Convention

It was not so long ago that I became aware of the Annapolis Convention of 1786. Though I had started reading the resulting report before I got my pocket Constitution I was very excited to see that it was included there. It was there that I finally sat down and read the report through. I found it interesting that the major theme of the convention proceedings was that a Constitutional Convention should be called precisely because the remedies necessary for the defects in the Articles of Confederation exceeded the scope of authority that had been granted to the delegations from the states that attended the Annapolis Convention (5 state delegations were at the convention, 4 more had been commissioned but were not at the convention, and the final 4 states had not commissioned delegations for such a convention). With that background it becomes very hard to consider the argument that the members of the Constitutional Convention exceeded the bounds of their authority. Having had this report published I would think that every state would have sent delegations to the Constitutional Convention with fairly open-ended authority.

Sometime after reading these proceedings I began to wonder what might come out of a similar convention today. Of course the delegations to the Annapolis Convention were charged with addressing a specific issue (the regulation of commerce) and found that no viable solution was forthcoming which would not affect many other issues as well. I do not imagine a convention charged wtih fixing an issue, only one charged with studying our government and comparing what our government is doing with what was written in the original Constitution, what is written in the succeeding ammendments, and poosibly providing their perspective on where our practices are improvements from what is written and where they should be brought into conformity with our established Constitution.

Because all three branches of government would be under review, the delegations should not include those who are currently holding political office at the federal level (I was at first inclined to think that such a review could be conducted by judges from around the nation). Instead, I think that such a convention should consist of people chosen from the local people from each state – for the sake of variety and balance I would imagine an ideal convention to consist of three Republicans and three Democrats from each state (and probably D.C. as well). Some people might think a convention of 300 participants would be too large to be effective in such an undertaking, but considering that there are over 300 Million people in the country it seems reasonable to have that many representatives. (Besides, it’s still smaller than the House of Representatives.)

Those who argue that the large states are being underrepresented (as some undoubtedly will) should be reminded that the convention would have no power except to study, publish their findings, and possibly make recommendations. I believe that the voters of our nation would be very surprised by the findings of such a convention.

Tags Articles of Confederation, Constitution, documents, history, ideas