Pursuit of Liberty – Page 4 – Political musings of a patriot

Thoughts on Caucus System Reform

Post author By David
Post date June 12, 2013
No Comments on Thoughts on Caucus System Reform

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Curt Bentley has an excellent post in which he discusses the issue of reforming the caucus system. I really appreciate the methodical approach he has taken to examine the issue. I completely agree with each of his guiding principles and while I suspect I am more comfortable with the caucus system in its current form than he seems to be, I also want to see it strengthened through some reforms that will make it better at promoting voter participation and issue-centric campaigns. I agree with his assessment of what the caucus system does well and with his conclusion that dumping the caucus system entirely is not the way to go. As for his assessment of what the caucus system doesn’t do well, I have some thoughts I’d like to share and I sincerely hope that Curt and others will share their feedback on those thoughts.

Tags caucuses, civic participation, primaries

politics State

Don’t Be Fooled

Photo by Alan Parkinson

When the news began about accusations against John Swallow his first response was to dismiss the allegations based on the tainted source from which they sprang and then duck his head and send out lots of emails about what “he” was doing for the state. When the volume and variety of allegations increased Mr. Swallow adopted a new standard answer which sounds reasonable on the surface but is likewise meant to distract from the issue arising from the multitude of allegations. His standard andwer is that he has done nothing illegal and therefore he will not resign. Holly Richardson does a great job of explaining the standard which governs the impeachment process and that standard is “high crimes and misdemeanors” not “committing illegal acts.” In doing so she illuminated the way that Mr. Swallow is using his standard answer to deflate the very appropriate calls for impeachment by playing on a general misunderstanding of what constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Let me start by making this very clear. We tend to think of high crimes being obviously criminal like murder but the fact is that obviously criminal acts such as that are felonies and felons are not even allowed to vote, let alone hold office. Lesser criminal acts are classified as misdemeanors so having ruled those out we can understand that “high crimes” are acts which may not even be actionable in the criminal system. As Holly points out, they are issues such as “breaches of ethical conduct, misuse of power, and neglect of duty.”

Tags impeachment, John Swallow, Utah

Local politics State

Strengthening Our Caucus System

Post author By David
Post date May 30, 2013
3 Comments on Strengthening Our Caucus System

Image by Cherie Priest

I really appreciated Paul Mero’s take on efforts to change our caucus and convention system. Unlike Mr. Mero, I’m not well enough connected to be invited to take part in private meetings regarding how to change Utah’s caucus and convention system. On that particular issue that is the largest of our differences.

Like Mr. Mero I have been annoyed at the misinformation that I have seen spread by and among delegates with extreme positions on a number of issues – HB 166 among them. Like Mr. Mero, I have tried to pay attention to the efforts to change the caucus/convention system but I have not found those proposed changes to warrant any particular support from me. The core of where my views align with those expressed by Mr. Mero are summed up in the following quote:

Yes, I’m sure some delegates have stated that they don’t want increased participation in the political process. But, to be fair, most of those voices are more concerned about how blissfully ignorant most Utahns are about the world around them than those voices are about consuming political power. So, yes, these delegates do believe they are better informed and for good reason – most of them are! Not all of them have the right answers, for sure. But it’s a bit disingenuous of my friend to chastise any serious citizen for wanting her candidate to be elected or her policy to become law – for heaven’s sake, that’s exactly what everyone wants!…

If reformers want their candidates elected to office, they should make a case that appeals to the most responsible citizens who take time to engage in a democratic process that has served this state since its founding.

Tags candidates, caucuses, civic participation, conventions, primaries

culture politics

Causes and Symptoms

Photo by Center for American Progress

In the practice of medicine we have come a long way from the days when doctors could do little more than treat the symptoms their patients were experiencing and hope that they were physically strong enough to recover from the underlying condition that was producing the symptoms. There are still times when doctors are limited to treating symptoms – such as when a condition has not been diagnosed yet or when it is so far advanced that it is beyond the reach of our available medical care – but generally in modern times our doctors seek to treat the underlying cause of a problem rather than the symptoms. We need to do more of that in the healthcare industry – especially as it relates to our most pressing chronic condition in the industry: uncontrolled costs.

The first step in treating an underlying problem is to correctly identify it. As is often the case with health problems, our healthcare industry is suffering from multiple underlying problems which interact with each other in ways that magnify their combined effects and often make an accurate diagnosis difficult to make. Thankfully we have had people interested enough in this issue for long enough to have made some headway in identifying at least some of the more pronounced underlying problems. These include the cost of new medicines and health care technologies, weakening of market influences in our health care decisions, misaligned incentives in the system, and inefficiencies in the practice of medicine (like misdiagnoses, inaccurate record keeping, reliance on emergency care by some patients, and problematic record sharing between parties).

I can’t claim to have solutions to all of these underlying problems, nor can I be sure that these represent a complete set of the real problems driving our symptom of skyrocketing costs. On the other hand, I am confident that the way we will solve the problems in our healthcare industry will follow the same pattern that people used to solve the problems that the practice of healthcare has become so adept at addressing. It will require many individuals and groups tackling the problems from a variaty of perspectives and experiementing with a variety of solutions. It won’t be done simply by turning the problem over to government and expecting them to insist on providers not charging outrageous amounts for the care we wish to receive (which is essaentially the premise behind the Affordable Care Act).

While I am anything but optomistic about the eventual benefits of the Affordable Care Act, I am encouraged at many other examples of private organizations taking steps to identify and address various of the systemic problems that afflict our health care system. Some of the initiatives I know of which give me hope is the innovative ways that some companies try to reduce health care costs without reducing employee benefits (Walmart, for example), the growing prevalence of individuals having high deductible insurance plans coupled with health savings accounts (which helps to introduce stronger market forces and healthier incentives into the health care system), efforts to bring more transparency to health care from groups like Pricing Healthcare, experiments in combining data-mining with hands-on care to reduce the costs associated with statistical outliers, and the rise of Direct Primary Care Practices and retail clinics.

We are nowhere near solving this problem and we need much more in the way of innovation and fresh perspectives but we have reason to hope that this problem will be cured in time.

Tags health care, innovation

General

Why John Swallow Should Resign Even If He Did Nothing Illegal

Post author By David
Post date May 15, 2013
1 Comment on Why John Swallow Should Resign Even If He Did Nothing Illegal

If a call for for Attorney General John Swallow to resign is based on a presumption of his guilt then Mr. Swallow is right that that we should wait until the investigations into the various allegations against him are completed. I think it is time to make the argument for why he should resign despite the assumption that he is innocent. By choosing not to resign the Attorney General is proving beyond any doubt that he is less interested in what’s good for the people of Utah than he is in his own benefit. If felt it was time to make this argument publicly after hearing Mr. Swallow on the radio talking about how he and the others in the Attorney General’s office are getting up and going to work every day despite all the allegations against him. I absolutely believe that to be true but it illustrates why John Swallow has no business in public office – he is clearly not interested in what is best for the people he is supposed to be serving.

John Swallow essentially admits this in this article from the Deseret News.

“I’m a little handicapped right now because of the situation I’m in. I get that. People say, ‘That’s not fair. You ought to leave.’ I can’t control the situation I’m in, and if I felt I did something that wrong, I would leave,” Swallow said. “But I’m not about to walk out of this office because people make allegations that aren’t true.”

As evidenced in that statement, Mr. Swallow is making his decisions based on his personal interests. The only reason that he would resign is if he were convicted of illegal activity. Mr. Swallow contends that he has done nothing illegal and I make no pretense that I know otherwise. The way I see it there are two reasons for him to step down even if he is innocent. Either of them should be sufficient cause for a true statesman to step down from office – at least temporarily.

There are a number of statements that Mr. Swallow is known to have made – such as in his now infamous campaign telephone call – that he defends as being legal and yet clearly display judgement not worthy of a good public servant. Having shown such blatant poor judgement, a statesman would step aside and take the time to reestablish the credibility of his judgement before trying to take on a high-profile public office.
No matter how hard he and his deputies work, the sheer volume of complaints against Mr. Swallow – and especially the fact that those complaints have resulting in multiple ongoing investigations by various official organizations – siphons off much of the time, energy, and efficacy of his office such that the people of Utah are not getting the kind of representation they deserve out of the Attorney General’s office. Again, a statesman would step aside – regardless of whether he did anything wrong – when the allegations against him were distracting and diluting his ability to serve effectively.

If Mr. Swallow were making his decisions based on the interests of the people of Utah his statement would have looked a lot more like this:

“I’m a little handicapped right now because of the situation I’m in. I get that. I and my deputies get up every day and work hard for the people of Utah but I recognize that the allegations made against me limit the effectiveness of all our work. The people of Utah and those working in the Attorney General’s office deserve an unencumbered chief legal officer therefore I have decided to step down as Attorney General.

“I sincerely hope that after the investigations are complete and my innocence has been established I will have another opportunity to serve the people of this great state.”

The real reason why he is not resigning is that whether he is innocent or guilty John Swallow will not materially benefit from resigning. If he were interested in the good of the people he was elected to serve he would resign because it is abundantly clear that regardless of his innocence or guilt the people of Utah would be better off with a new Attorney General.

Tags ethics, John Swallow, public service

General

Unfounded Assumptions on Gun Control

Post author By David
Post date January 28, 2013
No Comments on Unfounded Assumptions on Gun Control

When I wrote about the value of empowering my son to use sharp knives rather than restricting him from using them and compared that to the issue of gun control I got a number of opposing comments that were so full of assumptions that it warranted a separate post to address those assumptions. This is that post.

In the very first comment the assumption was stated that because I was raised pro-gun and the commentor was raised anti-gun our biases might prevent us from being able to have a productive conversation. I sincerely hope that is not the case but for the record I was NOT raised pro-gun. I was raised without any real reference to guns. My bias is not so much pro-gun as it is pro-solution with a bias towards individual liberty.

Tags 2nd Amendment, guns, logic

culture politics

Restriction vs Empowerment

Post author By David
Post date January 25, 2013
No Comments on 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.

Tags 2nd Amendment, media, perspective, safety, violence

culture National politics

Saving Social Security

Photo by 401(K) 2013

A comment by Doug Wright on his show this morning got me thinking. Doug talked about how incensed he was by a comment made by someone running against Harry Reid that her father never cashed a social security check because he refused to take a handout. (I’m assuming he was referring to Sharron Angle but I’m too lazy to confirm that because the identity of the person he was quoting has no bearing on my subject.) Doug was incensed because of the characterization of Social Security as a handout considering that “we have all paid into it.”

The thought that struck me was that perhaps Social Security should be charity – as opposed to an expectation. The way the system is currently set up, everybody who pays into Social Security expects to receive checks from Social Security when they retire. That’s not entirely true of my generation, many of whom are highly skeptical that Social Security will still be around when we arrive at retirement age, but it is historically true. How much of our Social Security solvency problem would evaporate if we were to add means testing to the social security calculations such that those receiving payments would receive reduced payments or no payments depending on the amount of wealth they had available (regardless of whether they were tapping into that wealth).

Tags Doug Wright, entitlements, KSL, social security

culture

The Scary Flu Monster

Photo By UIC Pharmacy

It always frustrates me when politics and fear drive institutional decisions rather than making decisions based on facts. One of my biggest pet peeves in this area is the hype surrounding the flu vaccine. I was reminded of this today when I heard about the new study casting doubt on the effectiveness of the vaccine.

To be clear, I am not at all opposed to people choosing to get vaccinated, nor am I opposed to organizations providing incentives such as free access to the vaccine in hopes of helping more people to choose to get vaccinated. My problem comes when organizations mandate that people get vaccinated – which is becoming more and more popular in health care organizations regardless of whether any employee or class of employees has any significant likelihood of having any patient contact. I also have a problem with all the public disinformation campaigns where the flu vaccine is heavily pushed by giving the impression that they are more effective than they really are.

The study that I heard about today indicates that the flu vaccine is effective in just over half of those adults who receive it. This is fully 1/3 less effective than has previously been claimed.

Along with that I was disappointed with the way the story was presented by KSL. They talked about the study and how disappointing it was to have this finding coming at the beginning of the flu season. That is in line with their reports last week that the flu was reaching epidemic proportions already early in the flu season. That statement would not bother me except that it’s hard to call this the beginning of the flu season when they were reporting 5 months ago that flu season was right around the corner. That made me question how long flu season is. As is often the case – Wikipedia provided the answer:

In the United States, the flu season is considered October through May. It usually peaks in February.

In other words, this is halfway through the flu season and approaching the peak. I guess they could argue that we are at the beginning of the peak of flu season but that is misleading at best when they have been promoting the flu shot for 5 months already.

Secondly, since I was at Wikipedia I wanted to get some information about the effectiveness of the vaccine that was not tied to this shocking new study. What I found there was even more disappointing to me. All my life I have been taught that the flu vaccine was most important for the physically weaker members of society like elderly and young children. Imagine my surprise when Wikipedia informs me that:

The group most vulnerable to non-pandemic flu, the elderly, is also the least to benefit from the vaccine.

So now I can see that the vaccine is less effective than previously claimed and that those who have been most encouraged to receive it are least likely to benefit from it. In a final blow to the hype surrounding this vaccine I also learned that, although we are strongly encouraged to get vaccinated each year:

protection without revaccination persists for at least three years for children and young adults.

This leads to one of two conclusions. Either vaccination every year is excessive or else we are fighting a losing battle against a disease that mutates every year so that we must be perpetually subjected to a vaccine that is barely 50% effective.

I don’t know about other people but that tells me that mandating that people receive the vaccine is based on an agenda that goes well beyond the facts – and I hate the very idea of such fear mongering.

Tags choices, disinformation, health care, vaccines

National politics

The Issue of Secession

Image by The COM Library

We just had an election. Once it was over some people began talking about seceding. This is not the first time the United States has faced such a situation. I was reminded of that after seeing Lincoln. As we talked after the movie Laura asked why we fought rather than just letting the southern states leave. We talked about some of the implications of secession – it is certainly not a simple topic – but as I have been thinking about it I came to the conclusion that the fact that there is no provision for secession in the Constitution might need to be changed at some point. With that in mind I decided to draft such a provision to further explore the nuances of the concept of secession.

I would like to make it clear that I am not in favor of seceding at this time nor do I foresee a time when I would favor it but I think that creating a clear path for secession might be useful in making the possibility more understandable for those who might wish to consider it. In fact, if crafted correctly it might even serve as a deterrent to some who might pursue the idea without due consideration.

I based my draft on the concepts embodied in the provisions for the admission of new states (Article IV Section 3). Specifically I wanted to promote self determination, a deliberate process, and continued order. Here it is:

States may petition the Congress to secede from the Union. The Congress must vote on a treaty of secession within two years of the petition or else the petitioning state may offer its own treaty of secession which the Congress must vote on within 10 days. The President may not veto a treaty of secession unless he is a resident of the petitioning state or the treaty was drafted by Congress within the two years allowed. Secession shall not be completed until after a one year waiting period which begins after the Congress and the Legislature of the petitioning state have ratified a treaty of secession and after the Legislature and the people of the petitioning state have each voted in favor of secession in separate votes conducted at least 350 and no more than 400 days apart. If the treaty of secession is ratified more than four years after the vote of the residents of the seceding state, the residents of the seceding state must approve the treaty of secession in a popular vote during the one year waiting period.

During the one year waiting period the seceding state shall have all the rights and obligations of all other states in the Union. If the President is a resident of a seceding state the vice president shall assume the office of president at the beginning of the waiting period for the duration of the term.

Seceding states may be readmitted to the Union in the same manner as new states at any time but must remain independent from other political unions for a period of five years following their formal secession.

Parts of states may secede from the Union by first following the procedures to become a new state. In cases of a partial state secession a treaty of secession must be ratified by the Congress and the Legislature of the newly approved state and the one year waiting period must be observed but the people of the new state may vote in favor of secession prior to the creation of the new state and the legislature of the new state may vote in favor of secession anytime within the first 400 days after the creation of the new state regardless of when the people of the newly created state voted in favor of secession.

It was interesting to see what details came to my mind as I tried crafting this provision. I would love to hear from others if there are issues I have failed to address or if there are things you would change about this draft.

I’d also be interested in hearing any other thoughts about secession that anyone would care to share.

Tags Constitution, secession, states rights, thoughts