Vote Totals in Iowa

Posted on 2008-01-05 by David

I had written before that the Iowa Democrats should publish their vote totals rather than just “delegate equivalents.” Today I discovered that USA Today is reporting the votes in the Iowa caucus results. Thanks to this more detailed information I finally see how Hillary Clinton managed to get one more delegate than John Edwards even though she got a lower vote total. (In one district she got enough higher to get one more delegate than Edwards and everywhere else she was close enough that her lower totals did not lead to fewer delegates.)

It appears that they will report the same amount of information on all the states as the primaries progress (they had Wyoming Republicans from today).

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Candidate Questions vs President Questions

Posted on 2008-01-04 by David

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.

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Iowa Caucuses

Posted on 2008-01-03 by David

No, I’m not liveblogging nor am I going to analyze the results. I do wonder why I find it so fascinating to watch the results come in. That’s the same question I asked myself in November 2006 as I watched the results between Orrin Hatch and Pete Ashdown. The difference is in 2006 I was happy early on when Ashdown was slightly ahead (the more democratic areas seemed to report first) and I sat and watched as all the lemming votes floated in for Hatch to win.

Thankfully this time there was no such turn of fortune. Obama won among the Democrats by a very respectable margin and I am left to wonder how Hillary will spin her third place finish, especially as the later votes show her falling further behind Edwards rather than keeping right up with him. Huckabee won quickly among the Republicans so that I could turn my attention to wondering which candidates would drop out. My only disappointment is that Ron Paul could not stay closer to McCain and Thompson.

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Magna Carta

Posted on 2008-01-02 by David

I don’t intend to review these historical documents each day, but I do want  to get started and I decided to go basically in historical order. Ever since I wrote yesterday I have been intrigued by the first of these documents – the Magna Carta or Great Charter. Prior to today I had never given more than a cursory look at the actual text of the Magna Carta, mostly for me it has just been an ancient document that helped establish the foundation of freedom upon which the Constitution was built. It appears that there were two versions, one given in 1215 and then a revised version – omitting some sections – in 1225.

The Magna Carta establishes the independence of the church from the control of the king although I would have to study my history to see what that meant in practical terms. It also addresses the laws pertaining to inheritance and the payment of debts protecting heirs (especially heirs under the legal age) and debtors from having their property taken unduly. It also established the rights of widows to own common property upon the deaths of their husbands.

Based on the 13th section (the original document had no such breaks) it appears that the people of the city of London had gained some freedoms that were unusual for the time. The Magna Carta dictated that all cities should enjoy the same privileges as London had obtained.

I find what appear to be precursors to a judicial system that allowed for standardized punishment, juries (four local knights were the prescribed jury here) and possibly a system for appeals. Free men were given the right of a trial by a jury of their peers before they could be imprisoned or stripped of their rights. Also included was a provision that fines should be “only in proportion to the degree of his offence[sic], and for a serious offence correspondingly, but not so heavily as to deprive him of his livelihood.”

Government officers are prevented from taking goods for the government without the consent of the owner and appropriate compensation. They were also required to produce witnesses besides themselves in order to put a person on trial.

Standards of measurement and value were to be established throughout the kingdom.

Except in time of war, merchants were to be allowed free passage into and out of the country – so long as they did not swear allegiance to another country.

A congress of 25 barons was to be established (perhaps a precursor to the House of Lords) which had the authority to seek redress if the king should break any of the provisions of the Magna Carta. They also had the authority to seize anything save the members of the royal family if redress was not given within 40 days after they notified the king of any offense against this charter. I particularly like this portion:

Any man who so desires may take an oath to obey the commands of the twenty-five barons for the achievement of these ends, and to join with them in assailing us to the utmost of his power. We give public and free permission to take this oath to any man who so desires, and at no time will we prohibit any man from taking it. Indeed, we will compel any of our subjects who are unwilling to take it to swear it at our command. (emphasis mine)

More historical information – such as the fact that it was renounced soon afterwards by the king and that many parts of it were repealed in the 18th and 19th centuries (no wonder the American colonies broke away in the late 18th century) – can be found in Wikipedia under Magna Carta and 1215. Another interesting fact was that it was (closely) based on the Charter of Liberties given by Henry I.

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A New Birth of Freedom

Posted on 2008-01-01 by David

How do we rekindle the flame of liberty in the heart of all American citizens?

I have been thinking about that question. It continues to disturb me that high turnout in an election approaches 50% participation. That is evidence of the disengagement that indicates a passive (or absent) desire for freedom unlike the active desires of Americans at the founding of our nation. I have said before that I would be happy with the outcome of any election where turnout topped 70%.

As this has been churning through my mind trying to come to some approach to the question, I started doing some searching through the things I have written before. Most powerfully I found my Independence Day post from last year quoting American by Choice that “true American citizens are made and not born” and that “Americans, both natural and naturalized, must be trained–they must be made.”

I went on to talk about how to transmit this “made” American culture through the way we celebrate our national holidays. Naturally my focus then was on the 4th of July. The more I think about it though, we should be celebrating our American culture by participation in the rituals that made America what it is – that would be exercising our rights to vote and participate in the various levels of government.

A week later I revisited the topic after I had found a list of what could be considered the founding documents of our nation. To that list I would add the Federalist Papers which I found among my searching today. That gives me 103 documents to study and react to as I continue my search for how we make Americans so that we may experience an end to our Uncivil War and find – as Lincoln sought during our Civil War:

“. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” (Gettysburg Address)

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Ready to Vote

Posted on 2007-12-31 by David

Votes will start to be counted this week. The Iowa caucuses take place on Thursday as a wide open presidential election promises to dominate the news coverage for another 10 months. I have already done individual endorsements of the candidates and an advance ranking of what candidates I liked best. Now, with actual votes on the line, here is my final position on the candidates I could vote for. In alphabetical order I could vote for:

    • Joe Biden
    • Mike Huckabee
    • Barack Obama
    • Ron Paul
    • Mitt Romney

The Republicans include a Small-Government Constitutionalist that the media does not understand, and hence does not cover (Ron Paul), a man who knows how to get things done (Mitt Romney), and a more articulate champion for “compassionate conservatism” than our current President (Mike Huckabee). The Democrats include a fresh face of optimism (Barack Obama) and a man who is everything that Hillary pretends to be – experienced and essentially moderate (Joe Biden).

Many people say this is a change election (I’ve heard that before but we’re still doing the same thing in Washington) and if your view is to change Washington then the order of candidates (from most change to least) would have to be:

    • Ron Paul
    • Barack Obama
    • Mitt Romney
    • Joe Biden
    • Mike Huckabee

Based on my positions (where change is not the only factor) I would support the candidates in this order (My support from 1-10):

    1. Ron Paul (10)
    2. Mitt Romney (7)
    3. Joe Biden (6 – I like his positions better than Obama)
    4. Barack Obama (6 – I like his tone and his chances in the primaries better than Biden)
    5. Mike Huckabee (4 – if you think our current domestic priorities are acceptable then Huckabee would be better able to sell them than Bush has been)

While everyone who doesn’t support Ron Paul will argue that he hasn’t got a chance, I argue that his real support is much broader than any other candidate (with the possible exception of Obama). The problem is that his supporters as a group may not be reliable about getting to the polls (it’s hard to say because they are such an unorthodox group politically). I think that if Ron Paul can place at least 3rd in Iowa behind Romney and Huckabee (I say third because the caucuses are more complex than a simple primary) and second (or possibly even 3rd) in New Hampshire behind Romney or McCain then the media will have to pay more attention to his showings in those states which will have surprised the media and the general public. This increased coverage will make those who might not have supported him before less apprehensive about voting for him and he will have a very real chance (unless Romney wins both of those states outright).

Obviously I want Ron Paul to win the Republican nomination but I would be extremely happy to see an Obama/Biden ticket in November. Then I could have a decent choice even if the Republicans choose an unacceptable candidate like Giuliani for the general election.

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Ron Paul Running Mate

Posted on 2007-12-28 by David

I have often wondered who Ron Paul would choose as a running mate. I got my answer from Phil Harris. Alan Keyes joined the race for the Republican nomination long after I stopped doing candidate endorsements, but when I looked at his positions I found someone who was ideologically very similar to Dr. Paul on most issues.

Dr. Keyes is light years behind Dr. Paul organizationally and financially, nor does he inspire the same fervor among his supporters, but he seems to bring a similar love and understanding of the Constitution. Another advantage would be that Dr. Keyes, being black, would quell the baseless fears of those who dislike the small financial support that Dr. Paul has received from members of some white-pride types of fringe groups. Dr. Paul would demonstrate that their prejudices are not connected to him.

I’m not saying that this would happen, only that I have finally seen someone who would seem like a good running mate for Dr. Paul.

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Budget Math

Posted on 2007-12-27 by David

I wish I knew where they got their deficit spending number, but KVNU’s For The People really caught my attention with the side-by-side listing of the deficit spending in the budget President Bush just signed. They claim that $240 Billion of the $555 Billion is deficit spending. That’s over 43% of the total budget being paid with imaginary cash. The original excuse for deficit spending (back in the Depression era) was that it could be used to fund emergencies, as a temporary measure to get us past tough times such as war or depression. The problem here is that no matter how great the emergency, if you are spending everything you earn plus another 76% of what you are bringing in it’s time to find a way to reduce your costs by 40% (which would still leave us with deficit spending this year of $20 Billion).

What really got me about all of this is that although we are in a war right now that war only accounts for $70 Billion so we could remove that spending completely and we would still have $170B out of the $485B being paid on promises. (That’s still 35% deficit spending.) There was $28B in domestic spending that the President didn’t want (only $142B to go) and $10B in pork earmarks. In other words, nobody even attempted to spend less than 30% of the budget with play money. If Congress had started with the budget proposed by the President and simply subtracted everything they didn’t like we would still have been spending more than $100 Billion dollars that we didn’t have. I think we can say that this government is numerically bankrupt – who cares that they exercised their power to raise their credit limit so as to prevent them from being financially bankrupt this year.

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NCLB and Federal Education

Posted on 2007-12-26 by David

My father-in-law is a professor at BYU and, like me, is very interested/involved in efforts to improve public education. As the voucher debate this year demonstrated, there are very different perspectives on how that improvement can be achieved. (Yes, I do believe that people on both sides of that issue were genuinely interested in improving education.) Such is the case with me and my father-in-law. Not long ago we were talking about educational issues and he said, “Many people do not realize that NCLB was a continuing step in a decades long effort to improve education. It was not born out of nowhere.” He referred me to a seminar given by Vance Randall discussing NCLB and that movement. I believe that he intended that statement to ease my distaste of NCLB. In fact, I was neither surprised nor comforted by the statement.

I finally went to see the video of the seminar, as he suggested, and found my position unchanged. It made me finally do some research asking what we have gained with the intrusion of the federal government in our education system. The answers are – the federal government has gained authoritative control over much of our education for the minimal investment of taking our money in taxes, attaching strings, and giving it back to us enough to fund between 3.9 and 15.8% (average of 7.3%) of our education spending. I don’t know where else an investor can get a controlling interest for under 10% investment. The country has gained, according to Neal McCluskey:

. . . national academic performance has not improved. Math and reading scores have stagnated, graduation rates have flat lined, and researchers have shown numerous billion-dollar federal programs to be failures. (See his full report which is partially based on the work of Vance Randall.)

I learned from the seminar by Dr. Randall that Congress turned a 26 page proposal by President Bush into the 1000+ page bill that passed as NCLB. Proponents of this increased federal incursion argue that states have the ability to opt out, but as McCluskey succinctly coutners:

[S]tates can refuse their share of billions of federal education dollars and thereby avoid having to adhere to federal regulations, but turning down the money is difficult, especially since the federal government took the money out of state taxpayers’ pockets in the first place.

The education lobby would seem to have this debate won handily since nobody wants to vote against helping kids learn. The only recourse for those who would like to return the control of education to its rightful place (parents and lower levels of government) is to make the facts available. It is easy to get caught in the trap of trying to argue that the federal involvement is the problem in our education (a case that is not easy to make in a way that the average voter would care to digest). Whether federal involvement is a problem or not is irrelevant, instead we need to take the ample data that we have which proves that federal involvement is conclusively not the solution.

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Second Guessing Good Works

Posted on 2007-12-23 by David

I liked this story – Attorney offers to pay cab rides for people who have been drinking. Apparently this same attorney did the same thing last year too. Some people commenting on the story talk about all the free advertising that he receives through this. Surely had does receive the benefit of name recognition and improves his image through this gesture. I say, who cares what benefit he receives out of it. If this saves one fatality then it’s way more than worth it.

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