How Very Ironic

Posted on 2009-04-22 by David

When I attended the breakfast meeting with Senator Bennett, he mentioned Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter – the three Republicans to support the Obama bailout bill – as "the three predictable crossover voters." I found it very ironic to read the results of a poll of Democratic Senators:

In fact, Hatch ranks No. 3 among Republicans whom Democrats say are the least partisan and most enjoyable to work with — behind only Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine (liberal Republicans who were among the few GOP members who supported Obama’s stimulus package), that newspaper reported.

Apparently Senator Bennett didn’t want to remind attendees that our conservative state is represented by some not-so-conservative senators. He got Collins and Snowe right, but Specter is not on the list. While Bennett was not among the easiest Republicans to work with according to the overall poll results, he was listed as being among the easiest to work with by four of his Democratic colleagues – I’m sure another term or two can finish softening him up.

The results also confirmed what I had concluded – that Hatch was once conservative:

That is a big change from Hatch’s early career, when he was seen as one of the most conservative and pugnacious Senate Republicans. Now, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., told The Hill, for example, that Hatch is among those who "want to get something done, and they’re not necessarily driven by ideology."

I have come to appreciate the fact that Hatch was conservative in the early part of his career and I am not opposed to having a politician who knows when to compromise. I do have serious issues with elected officials who just "want to get something done." They do the nation and their constituents no end of disservice when they take action for no reason other than to appear active. I also have serious issues with any politician who does not seem to know when to hold their ground and stand on principle – a skill that Hatch has lost if he ever really understood the proper line.

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An Unbiased Perspective

Posted on 2009-04-21 by David

Admittedly I am a person who does not believe that anyone is unbiased – and I’m fine with that. The closest a person comes to unbiased is when they can state a position which contradicts their biases or while acknowledging how that position does not support their biases. When President Obama said that $100 Million here and there eventually adds up to real money in Washington I could not help but notice when Paul Krugman – not exactly the strongest proponent of smaller government – disagreed. He calculated that $100 million per day for an entire four year term would only be 2% of one year’s budget. His conclusion was perfect:

OK, politics is theater. But you could argue that the president shouldn’t feed the bogus claim that we can close fiscal gaps by eliminating a bit of waste.

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Convention Surprise

Posted on 2009-04-20 by David

I attended the Davis County Republican Party organizing convention on Saturday. There was one very surprising outcome for me from attending. Senator Bob Bennett spoke at the conventions and by the end of his speech I realized that I could potentially vote for him in 2010 if he survives the Republican nominating convention and primary (if necessary) next year. I’m still absolutely sure that there must be at least half a dozen Republican politicians in this state that would be far better for the state than Senator Bennett can be he is still better than the majority of likely Democrat and third party candidates. Even if he were running unopposed I could not vote for our sitting senator at the Republican nominating convention but I may find that he is the best available option in the general election if he is the Republican nominee.

How’s that for a ringing endorsement.

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Tea Party and Town Hall

Posted on 2009-04-17 by David

The real effectiveness of the tea parties is not likely to be known for some time. Two days later various factions are still trying to sort out what actually happened and what it all means. I am encouraged by the prospects that it will turn out to be more than a short-lived release of frustration for political newcomers.

Last night I had the opportunity to attend a town hall meeting with my congressional representative, Rob Bishop. I had heard about these meetings from various sources, but this is the first one to take place since I moved into the district. It was an interesting mix of support for Rep. Bishop and confrontation (speaking about the questions and comments from the audience).

One gentleman, who may well have been a tea party attendee, got up and expressed his frustrations at not having a political home after the supposedly conservative Republican party had forsaken the opportunity to promote conservative government. He asked how he could ever trust the party again. Rep. Bishop gave a very unsatisfactory answer (in my mind) that he would just have to sit back and wait. I later talked to that gentleman and invited him to visit my site – I hope he does so. My answer to the question is that those of us who really believe in conservative principles need to get active in the party and make it answerable to those principles rather than blindly following whoever is incumbent. (P.S. Rob Bishop is far from being the worst Republican Incumbent around these parts.) Sitting back and waiting is a great way to allow the status quo to become ever more entrenched in the party and in society.

I found various statements by Bishop which I agreed with and others that I did not agree with. The subject of earmarks came up multiple times and I found some of his answers insightful. For example, Rep. Bishop recognizes that earmarks are easily used as a distraction that diverts attention while the pile of money being spent continues to grow while the size of the pile is a larger problem than the earmarking process. He explained that earmarks are Congress setting priorities for appropriated money rather than the administration setting those priorities. That left me with two questions that I will demand answers on from my congressman.

  1. If we get rid of earmarks won’t that allow us to focus on the size of the pile of money?
  2. While I might prefer that Congress set the priorities for government appropriations rather than the administration, why should the priorities be set at the federal level at all? (except on truly federal priorities like defense spending) Wouldn’t it be better to just appropriate money to "transportation" and direct that 2% of the money goes to Utah, 5% to California, etc. then let the states and municipalities decide which projects (I-15 expansion, Mountain View Corridor, repaving existing streets, expansion of light rail, to name a few local options) deserve the transportation funding?
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Federalist Nos. 71 – 72

Posted on 2009-04-16 by David

In three sentences Federalist No. 71 conveys the primary reason to prefer a republic over a democracy:

It is a just observation, that the people commonly INTEND the PUBLIC GOOD. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always REASON RIGHT about the MEANS of promoting it. (emphasis original)

By separating the people from direct decision-making a republic insulates the nation from mob rule.

I found great irony in the following truth:

The representatives of the people, in a popular assembly, seem sometimes to fancy that they are the people themselves, and betray strong symptoms of impatience and disgust at the least sign of opposition from any other quarter; as if the exercise of its rights, by either the executive or judiciary, were a breach of their privilege and an outrage to their dignity.

Sometimes today it seems that the representatives of the people in our "popular" assembly have fancied that they are the people themselves and they often appear impatient or disgusted at opposition from the voters when they are busy trying to promote the will of the President.

In talking about the duration in office of the president (Federalist No. 72), Hamilton comes out in staunch opposition to term limits:

Nothing appears more plausible at first sight, nor more ill-founded upon close inspection, than a scheme which in relation to the present point has had some respectable advocates, I mean that of continuing the chief magistrate in office for a certain time, and then excluding him from it.

As in various other decisions in the original Constitution we have changed our stance on that since that time. Unlike other such examples I believe that this change has been positive or at least neutral for the nation. In fact I have been one to favor the possibility of adding term limitations to other elected positions. There is one way in which I could see someone arguing that term limits may have contributed to our imperial presidency:

An avaricious man, who might happen to fill the office, looking forward to a time when he must at all events yield up the emoluments he enjoyed, would feel a propensity, not easy to be resisted by such a man, to make the best use of the opportunity he enjoyed while it lasted, and might not scruple to have recourse to the most corrupt expedients to make the harvest as abundant as it was transitory;

I’d love to hear other perspectives on whether our two term limit on the presidency has been a good or bad thing for the country now that we have had half a century to see the results.

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Political Action vs Reaction

Posted on 2009-04-15 by David

It’s tax day and I doubt anybody who reads this has not heard in advance about the many "Tea Party" events that have been planned around the country for today. Ive been hearing about them from various sources for months and I have been conflicted in my feelings related to such activities. From a constitutional perspective we have a first amendment right to free speech and peaceable assembly so barring any violence there is no question as to the legality of these events. My conflict is in the way the events are being promoted.

Many of the public figures who are promoting these events paint them as a kind of legitimate political action. Among those who really care about the issues of constitutionally limited government and perpetual government deficit spending there are many, such as myself, who recognize that these tea parties have no possibility of bringing about real political results – they are a grand publicity stunt played off of the frustrations of one segment of the population. As such they are merely a  political reaction and political reactions are easy to spin. Promoters are spinning this as an argument against larger government and deficit spending. Detractors are spinning it as a bunch of ridiculous anti-Obama rallies.

Real political action, in contrast to political reactions, is very difficult to spin. It takes much more time and effort than simply gathering some press coverage and getting people to show up one day carrying signs and shouting in megaphones. Real political action, for those who are interested, would include regularly seeking information on issues of interest to you. It would include attending county party organizing conventions. As Rob Miller so aptly said, "If you believe that you have something to contribute to the American experience, you should come to a county convention." In Davis County that would be this Saturday (4/18) for both Democrats and Republicans. If you really want to make a difference you should be looking to be a delegate to county and state party conventions (or even national conventions if you are so inclined). It means participating in those caucus meetings and conventions where parties are organized and candidates are chosen. It means not letting your party get away with ignoring its principles in the name of political expedience. (That does not preclude the possibility of compromise, but it does reject the argument that all of politics is compromise.)

Thankfully today I have come to my own resolution regarding that internal conflict. Real political action is what this country desperately needs from many more people of all political persuasions. We need people who are willing to put in the work and engage in civil debate even when the debate gets spirited. While political reactions do not qualify as real, effective political action they can serve as a first step for those who have not participated in real political action before. I hope that whatever else happens with the tea party events we will see many among the attendees who will start to take part in lasting political action.

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Federalist Nos. 69 – 70

Posted on 2009-04-14 by David

In Federalist No. 69 Hamilton argues that the president is not as powerful a position as some have made it out to be while in Federalist No. 70 he argues that having any less power vested in the president would be a recipie for bad government.

I have found it to be very interesting, not only in these Federalist Papers, to see the proposed government compared to the state governments that existed as well as to foreign governments. For example, Hamilton shows how the office of president as proposed holds powers inferior not only to the king of Great Britain (to which it had been compared by detractors) but also in virtually every instance to many of the governors of individual states. The other thing that I find interesting in this study is how closely subsequent state governments model the federal Constitution when they were being established.

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Federalist No. 68

Posted on 2009-04-13 by David

Due to the number of people in recent years who have called for the abolition of the electoral college I was very interested in what Hamilton would say on the subject in Federalist No. 68. Imagine my surprise then when that paper opened with this:

THE mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents. The most plausible of these, who has appeared in print, has even deigned to admit that the election of the President is pretty well guarded.

Even the opponents of the Constitution in 1788 felt that the electoral college system was praiseworthy. Of course, the electoral college today does not operate as the founders envisioned it back then. They planned a system where the people would choose members of the college to represent them in selecting the best person to become our president (and vice-president). Today the average citizen does not know the name of a single member representing them in the electoral college – we vote for a President and electors who have pledged to vote for the people’s choice (usually on a winner-take-all basis within each state) are assigned to officially cast the votes in the electoral college. no longer do the members of the electoral college deliberate on which presidential candidate will be the best for the nation – they simply vote blindly for the choice of the people if the people choose the same person they have pledged to vote for. In other words, we have already gutted the electoral college system and turned that element of our republic into a democracy while maintaining the weighted balancing between states that the founders sought.

Here is a description of what we have gutted from the process:

The choice of SEVERAL, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of ONE who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes. And as the electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.

Perhaps instead of calling for the abolition of the electoral college we should be calling for the reinstatement of the electoral college.

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Federalist No. 67

Posted on 2009-04-10 by David

In Federalist No. 67 Hamilton is clearly upset at those who oppose the proposed Constitution because of their outrageous misrepresentation of the content of the Constitution in relation to the office of President. As I read the example of misrepresentation that he recounted I recognized the same spirit of selective fact presentation that is altogether too common among activists of all stripes in our nation today. In some ways we really have not changed that much in the last two centuries.

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Federal-Sighted

Posted on 2009-04-09 by David

Most people have probably heard of the two basic classes of vision problems, far-sightedness and near-sightedness. For those who are not clear on the differences, far-sightedness is characterized by the eye being able to focus on objects at a distance while objects up close are blurry. Conversely, near-sightedness is characterized by the eye being able to focus on objects in close proximity while objects further away are unclear.

I have come to the conclusion that as a society we generally suffer from a political far-sightedness that I call federal-sightedness – that is, we focus on issues at a federal or national level while allowing local and state issues to become excessively fuzzy. Just as with personal vision problems that develop slowly and without our notice, our first reaction is to compensate in subtle ways. We step back from near issues and view them from a federal perspective. Rather than tackling problems close up we attempt to fix them from an arms-length away.

The problems associated with this perspective were illustrated to me from a recent comment stating that, “By definition you can’t have individual liberty while at the same enforcing your preferred level of societal morality.” This statement assumes a situation where there is a single layer to government and social order.

The comments were following a golf course analogy at the time  so lets follow through with that imagery to show what I mean. If the governing body of golf were the only source of rules the statement would be true. The reality of the situation is that the governing authority should be promoting individual liberty by only mandating a minimal set of rules defining what makes an acceptable golf course. This would include basic rules regarding how the game of golf is played. It would include rules such as mandating that an official golf course must have 18 holes, that each hole must have a par rating between 3 and 5, that the entire course must have a par total between 69 and 73, and the rules for determining the par rating for a hole. On the other hand, the governing body should avoid making rules such as requiring that the third hole on each course must be a par-5 hole.

While the governing body lays out the general rules of golf the owners and operators of each golf course can determine the design of their own course, their hours of operation, their standards for membership etc. We need not conclude that the governing body is shirking its responsibility to promote individual liberty simply because some golf courses (or even a majority) have closed membership policies.

The antidote for federal-sightedness is local activism. Local activism helps us to focus on those things which are within our locus of control thus making for a much more functional society. This was brought to my attention with the news today of a group that stopped waiting for federal funds before fixing a bridge that had been destroyed in a flood. Although they had as much claim on federal disaster relief funds as New Orleans after Katrina or Minneapolis after the collapse of the I-35 bridge they changed their focus from waiting for help to making a difference with what they had. The end result, their bridge is fixed sooner and without costing $4 million.

I have seen much evidence of federal-sightedness among those who are politically active online – in fact I have suffered from this malady myself. Thankfully I am coming to my senses and trying to be more involved in finding solutions that are closer to home. It is a move that was recently demonstrated by Rob Miller as he decided to shift his political activity from the state party level to the county party level. Obviously we need people involved at all levels but I am left wondering how many of our federal problems would evaporate or whither away to manageable levels if we were more busy as a society focusing on the issues directly around us and spending less time waiting for help from a larger society.

Our propensity for federal-sightedness has been assisted by newspapers focusing on larger and larger issues at the expense of focusing locally. The newspapers are suffering from that ill-considered shift and so is society. Hopefully if we shift our focus back closer to home we will experience a social renaissance in which our problems become manageable – just as I noted that newspapers with a local focus are surviving better than national papers.

There is an opposite to federal-sightedness which is local-sightedness. This condition ignores the larger society and holds dangers of its own. Thankfully it is a much more rare condition today than federal-sightedness.

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