Tag: questions

Funding Fire Departments

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

As we drove through heavy smoke that seemed to be blowing north from the fire in Draper last night, our girls started asking about firefighters and how we (as a society) support them. It got me thinking about firefighters as a service of government. Although they are every bit as legitimate and important a service as police, I rarely think about the Fire Department in relation to government.

Since my brain was chewing on the subject it apparently decided to throw me a what-if to consider. I wanted to share here to see what others thought.

Virtually every structure is insuread against fire – this means that insurance companies are highly interested in the work of firefighters. Would it make sense to privatize the fire department by having insurance companies be in charge of funding them? If so, what kinds of changes in service would you expect to see?

I’m not trying to suggest that our fire departments need to be privatized or that they should be. I just wanted to get some feedback on that random idea.

Tags children, fire department, government, insurance, money, questions, services

meta State

Regions for BNN/Utah

It’s been a busy month for me personally since I asked about implementing regional classifications for Utah blogs listed on BlogNetNews. I am finally ready to implement regional categories. The options are going to be:

- Salt Lake
- Utah Valley/Happy Valley
- Weber/Ogden
- Cache Valley/Logan
- Davis
- Dixie
- Tooele

The classifications will be self-selection – if you want to be identified in a particular region you just email me or leave a comment with the region(s) you want to be listed in. Please only request to be listed in regions where you have an interest (that would generally be living or working in that region). Please do not choose Salt Lake if your only interest is that you follow the legislative session.

If you are going to be listed in a region with two names, please vote on which name you prefer to use. (We’ll use straight democracy – I’ll break any ties.)

As an example, I could be listed in the Davis (live) and Salt Lake (work) regions – in the past I could have been listed in Utah Valley (before I moved).

Update 8/28/08: The names of the geographic categories have been settled. Only Utah Valley has more than the basic name attached to it (valley) because “Utah” might appear to be general for the whole state (even though that would have been redundant).

Tags BNN, questions, Utah

culture National

Who Are You Voting Against?

Post author By David
Post date August 8, 2008
9 Comments on Who Are You Voting Against?

I really wish I could find the article I glanced at yesterday postulating that the presidential race is not looking like a blowout for Obama because the contest has been framed as a referendum on Obama rather than a referendum on Bush and the Republican party.

The thought that struck me is that when an election gets framed as a referendum on a candidate that candidate or party usually loses. I think that the reason that Gore did not receive enough support in 2000 to overcome the Nader voters is that the voters were fatigued by the emotionally charged Clinton presidency. In 2004 the vote got framed as a question of whather Kerry was really presidential or if he was just another politician. I think that 1996 was 2004 with Dole in the place of Kerry.

The exception seems to be 1988 which was a referendum on Reagan in which Bush I won.

What do you think? Is this how the outcome of our elections is decided – by voting against whoever the debate is centered on? (If so I would predict that 2010 will be a bad year to be a Democrat seeking election – regardless of the outcome this year.)

Tags 2008, 2010, civic participation, elections, Obama, questions

meta State

Editing for BNN/Utah

I have been given the opportunity to function at the editor for BlogNetNews/Utah. That is not likely to produce visible changes to the site because the purpose of BNN is to remain neutral while providing an image of what’s happening in the various corners of the blogosphere. Functionally, it means that when people want to have their blog added to BNN/Utah I will be the one who receives and processes the request. On the other hand, I have been invited (if I choose) to categorize the Utah blogs geographically.

There is currently some categorization between liberal and conservative leaning blogs and a category to identify blogs connected to MSM organizations but there has been no geography-based categorization thus far. You can see how the categorization works by clicking on the arrow next to “Sort By” in the header. If you visit BNN/Virginia you can see an example of geographic categories in use.

Having been given that invitation, my first action as editor is to ask my fellow Utah bloggers whether they would be interested in geographic categorization – which would allow people to sort blogs based on those categories – and if so, do you have any recommendations on what categories would make sense for Utah?

Tags BNN, questions, Utah

National

Imagine This

Post author By David
Post date May 31, 2008
5 Comments on Imagine This

I know this will sound crazy but imagine for a minute that Mexico (or some of the 31 states of Mexico) were to petition to become states as part of the United States. (There is nothing in the constitution to stop them so long as they have, or choose to adopt, a republican form of government.) How would you react? How would you expect your fellow citizens to react?

After imagining the unimaginable, does this thought affect the way you think about immigration (illegal or otherwise)?

Tags hypothetical, immigration, questions

culture

Candidate Questions vs President Questions

Post author By David
Post date January 4, 2008
3 Comments on Candidate Questions vs President Questions

Thanks to Scott’s post on Presidential Qualifications I really got thinking about the difference between what we should look for in a president and what we often do look for in a candidate. Scott quoted three questions that Dr. Lawrence Lindsey suggested we should be asking to choose a good president:

- “Has the candidate faced a crisis or overcome a major setback in his or her life?”
- “Has has the candidate had a variety of life experiences?”
- “Can the candidate tell the difference between a foreign enemy and a political opponent?”

To those questions, Scott then listed the three questions that we seem to ask about the candidates that we choose to support:

- Is this candidate most likely to win?
- How closely do I agree with this candidate?
- Do I like this candidate’s personality?

Now Scott leaves me asking myself, are these two sets of questions complimentary to each other, contradictory to each other, or independent of each other?

I tend to think that the two sets of questions are complimentary. The first set (for selecting a president) should be asked first because there is nothing to gain by choosing a candidate who can win if they can’t pass the test of whether they are likely to be a good president. I think that set of questions is what I was crudely trying to answer through my candidate endorsement series earlier last year. If we could ask those questions generally we might be better at retaining the good candidates who sometimes drop out early when they can’t capture our attention with the second set of questions. On the other hand, there is a lot of value to be had by applying the second set of questions to the available candidates after they have been passed through the sieve of the first question set.

Once the primaries are over, if your favored candidates are no longer in the race it can be useful to return to the first set of questions and see which of the remaining candidates (if any) qualify. (The only time the second set of questions should apply is when there are multiple candidates available that pass that first critical standard.)

Now I ask myself if my positions on the candidates would have been any different if I had followed this process more exactly for the 2008 field.

Tags national candidates, questions

State

Term Limits

I asked what people were interested in and the interest seemed to be term limits. I decided to do some initial research and found a good resource on term limits. The states that currently have term limits are:

ARIZONA
ARKANSAS
CALIFORNIA
COLORADO
FLORIDA
LOUISIANA
MAINE
MICHIGAN
MISSOURI
MONTANA
NEBRASKA
NEVADA
OHIO
OKLAHOMA
SOUTH DAKOTA

In addition I was surprised to find that Utah was on a short list of states where term limits had been enacted and later repealed.

IDAHO
MASSACHUSETTS
OREGON
UTAH
WASHINGTON
WYOMING

A little more digging and I learned that Utah enacted term limits by statute in 1994 (just before I was paying close attention to politics) and repealed them in 2003 before they ever affected any legislators (the limit was 12 years and the statute only lasted for 9). So now we know that our Utah legislature is not anxious to limit themselves.

Now I would love to hear from anyone who has experience in the states with term limits. Jason has voiced his unqualified support of the limits in his state. Does anyone else want to share? Are there any opinions on lifetime bans versus limits of consecutive years of service? I am not ready to choose sides on that yet.

I would also be interested to know more about the decision to end limits before they began in Utah. Perhaps Steve Urqhart might have some insights there that he would share (hint – information from 2003, or hints on where to get some would be nice because my short search led to a bunch of dead links).

Tags connections, issues, questions, term limits

Issues To Vote On

While casting about for something to write today I began thinking about what issues are important to me. There are many political subjects I am interested in, but not always new material to write about. Sometimes there is discussion worth following that I don’t feel I have anything to add (like the current warm-fuzzies coming from the "let’s move on from referendum 1" discussion). Other times the news is truly dead or full of things I have no interest in. At those times I have subjects that I am interested in, but I am looking to discuss the issues and not just pontificate in a vacuum. The question is, what should I discuss that other people are interested in?

The answer seemed obvious – ask.

If I were talking about what modifications to our primary election system who would be interested? What if I were talking about the value of term limits for elected officials?

Based on past experience there seems to be some interest in those subjects, but I would like to hear whether others think those are worth discussing and would be interested in participating in such a discussion. Please let me know which of these would interest you – "both" and "neither" are perfectly valid answers.

Tags issues, questions

Local

That’s My Town

I stumbled across an interesting post about Baby Boomburbs as described in a new book from the Brookings Institute. “Boomburbs” are fast growing cities of more than 100,000 people which get lost in the shadows of their larger neighbors (so, anything within a 20 mile radius of New York City). “Baby Boomburbs” are similar except they have 50,00 to 100,000 residents. Normally I would have thought that this was academically interesting except that I had just read a story where the mayor of Lehi was quoted listing the population here as 45,000 (I had thought it was closer to 30,000). I don’t know how precise that 45,000 is, but it puts us close to the classification of “Baby Boomburb.” With our incessant growth we could reach 50,000 before the next census if 45K is anywhere close.

This makes me even more interested in what they had to say about these cities. I’d like to see what challenges they identify and how much that does or does nto align wtih the challenges that I have identified, or that the residents of Lehi seem tuned to right now.

Tags community, population, questions

culture

Formalism and Details

I have been thinking about the merits of formalism in our laid-back society. I wonder how many people even have a basic understanding of parliamentary procedure or know what Robert’s rules of order are. I suspect that more people are familiar with the details of table manners than are familiar with the details of how to run an organized meeting.

I studied Robert’s rules of order when I was starting as the president of a graduate student organization. Before that I was aware of the general structure of parliamentary procedure but not with the details. Now, as I question if these are dying arts, I start to wonder what we might gain by making people more knowledgeable about these kinds of formalisms. In the world of text messaging is there something to be gained by putting more emphasis on the rules of spelling, grammar and punctuation.

I really would like to know what other people think about this. What is the value of the details? Are we losing those skills in our society?

Tags insights, questions, thoughts