Categories
culture politics

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.

Categories
culture

A Desperate Defense

Apparently (but not really surprisingly) the defense team for Brian David Mitchell has decided to stand up as a prime example of exactly what is wrong with our justice system today.

They started this case by trying to get a change of venue. That was understandable although I don’t think we have an extradition agreement with Antarctica – the only place on the globe where there would be zero bias against their client. When that failed they said in their opening statement that they did not dispute the facts of the case. Now, after the prosecution has rested their case and the defense has had a day to call their own witnesses they are apparently desperate because their first witnesses have already shown that the insanity defense they had intended to argue is absurd. (Their client being certifiably insane is not absurd but the idea that he is not fully responsible for his actions is absurd.)

Three weeks into the trial they have suddenly discovered that one of the charges against their client may not be technically accurate.

This is not the action of a legal team seeking to ensure that justice is done but rather the action of a legal team who is willing to do anything to win their case.

In a healthy justice system both the prosecution and the defense legal teams would be working for the same goal—namely the goal of finding the true criminal(s) in the case and ensuring that they receive the appropriate consequences for their criminal behavior.

Unfortunately in our win-at-all-costs justice system the defense team is hoping that their client, who is obviously guilty and who has repeatedly shown that he has the dangerous attitude of thinking that he is above the law, will be able to get out of this with nothing more than a very badly damaged reputation.

Categories
thoughts

Judging on the Wrong Metric

I have been reading the series of articles published by the Deseret News about the consequences of pornography addiction. It has been pleasing to see the problem explored publicly. One of the things that has interested me is in reading through the comments from readers. Some are obviously still in denial about how serious, dangerous, and pervasive the problem of pornography is in our society. One comment in particular caught my attention as it highlighted the kind of attitude that can completely hobble a discussion of how to address this issue. I’ll save my readers the trouble of trying to wade through the poor grammar and rambling thoughts of the actual text of the comment. Here is the idea it was conveying:

“who has never thought about, or done, from birth onward till today, any activity that results in erotic stimulation. Even after you read or heard about the Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children.”

The comment implies two things: 1) that anyone who who has ever done anything that could cause them to answer “yes” to the above query is unqualified to speak out against pornography, and 2) that virtually everyone has to answer yes to that query. The problem with that metric is that even if the second implication were 100% accurate the first implication is completely wrong. I suspect that the comment author considers it hypocritical of someone to answer yes to that question and then publicly speak against pornography. If a person is willfully and unrepentantly indulging in pornography then that is undoubtedly hypocrisy. On the other hand, The metric of that question ignores the option of repentance. It wrongly eliminates from the discussion those who have to answer yes who have subsequently rejected the legitimacy of whatever forces them to answer yes. That kind of thinking would reject the opportunity of an ex-gang member speaking out against gangs when the truth is that ex-gang members can provide an authority on the subject that others never could.

That comment reminded me of how dangerous quick and thoughtless judgments can be in hampering our efforts to seek truth and in hampering the process of repentance for ourselves and those we interact with.

Categories
culture Education politics

Addressing the Symptoms


photo credit: sigma.

As if to prove the point I made in my last post about passing out casts and crutches, the Seattle Post Intelligencer this week published an essay from Brad Soliday, a teacher in eastern Washington, where he shares his perspective about how the increasing money bring allocated to education is being misspent because it is focusing on a mistaken solution.

I doubt it is truly coincidental that while real education spending has risen 49% in the last two decades it is dysfunctional or broken families that have seen a corresponding rise in society rather than educational outcomes (which have flat-lined despite the ever rising funding). This should be irrefutable proof that those perpetually sounding the cry that education is underfunded are either misinformed or intentionally deceptive (I’m sure there are some who fall into each of those camps). Education is under-supported due to the disintegration of a solid family foundation in society but money cannot solve that problem.

Categories
politics State

Selective History

Perhaps it’s just me, but if I were Michael Otterson I would find it irksome that the same position I had represented for the church for more than a year was suddenly newsworthy as if something had changed.

It looked like a stunning reversal: the same church that helped defeat gay marriage in California standing with gay-rights activists on an anti-discrimination law in its own backyard.

. . .

The ordinances passed and history was made: It marked the first time the Salt Lake City-based church had supported gay-rights legislation.

More than a year ago – months before the votes started coming in for California’s Proposition 8 the LDS Church stated its official position that they were supportive of the basic rights of all people, including homosexuals, such as probate rights and housing rights. They stated that they were amenable in theory to the Common Ground Initiative but could not take a public position on bills that had not yet been drafted.

The position of the church never changed. Some people claim this is a PR move to blunt the backlash over their role in defeating Prop. 8, but the only thing that changed is that unlike the theoretical five bills of the common ground initiative, the Salt Lake City council actually drafted two bills. The church publicly supported the bills – in keeping with the position they had already taken.

Sadly some people still don’t get it and are suggesting that the church should take a further step by actually writing bill proposals for the state legislature to consider which would extend these same benefits statewide that were just passed within Salt Lake City. The fact is that the church will do just have they have done up to this point – they will not write legislation and they will take no position on theoretical bills that have not been written. When bills are written that are acceptable the church will support them. Bills they can’t quite support will get no comment. In the Utah Legislature they don’t even have to worry about addressing bills that are worthy of their opposition.

Categories
culture politics

Federalist No. 17

Prior to Federalist No. 17 I had never completely disagreed with any of the federalist papers. Unfortunately , in discussing the possibility of a national government becoming stronger than would be desirable, Alexander Hamilton completely missed on his guess that:

It will always be far more easy for the State governments to encroach upon the national authorities than for the national government to encroach upon the State authorities.

Hamilton admits his lack of vision by saying:

I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons intrusted (sic.) with the administration of the general government could ever feel to divest the States of the {authority which should belong to them.}

My own assessment of where Hamilton went wrong was that he imagined an electorate that was perpetually working to stay informed. Instead today we have an electorate that has been diluted from the original – adult males who own property – to include any citizen, male or female, over the age of 18. I don’t mean to suggest that we should raise the voting age again, or make property ownership a requirement again, but I think it is fair to note that anyone who happens to be 18 does not necessarily have the same interest or inclination to become informed in their vote as someone who has property ownership which is directly affected by the actions of their representatives. Maybe we should adopt some requirement of tax payment – thus excluding those who have reached the age of 18 but who are simply living with their parents and not taking any adult responsibilities.

In truth, I think the biggest culprit is not the change in voting requirements as the rise of a society that is constantly lulled into complacency by a media culture that is predominantly experienced through passive reception. That seems to create a feeling of disconnectedness where people don’t have any real connection to government except to hear whatever the media covers – and the media naturally focuses on the larger national government more than more local government.

This disconnection would explain why the following assertion by Hamilton does not hold true today:

. . . the people of each State would be apt to feel a stronger bias towards their local governments than towards the government of the Union; unless the force of that principle should be destroyed by a much better administration of the latter.

In Utah today we have a state government that is acclaimed to be among the most wisely managed and yet many of our citizens think of little beyond presidential elections and the elections of our state representatives at the federal level.

Categories
politics

Popular Misconceptions

In arguing that the appellate court was wrong on the FLDS Sunny Hostin perpetuates some very popular myths that help CPS and many people following the story to assuage their guilt about the hostile actions being heaped upon this fringe community. Here we will debunk some of those myths. Thanks to the format of Ms. Hostin’s commentary it will be easy to take it a point at a time.

Isn’t this a polygamist ranch we are talking about? Under Texas law, it’s illegal to be married to more than one person. Weren’t all of these children living on a ranch purchased in 2003 and built by Warren Jeffs, the self-proclaimed prophet of the group, who was convicted last year in Utah of being an accomplice to rape?

Yes they were.

This is guilt by association using Warren Jeffs as a convenient Straw Man. The argument would be much stronger if Jeffs had stepped foot on the ranch in the past two years.

Weren’t there 20 girls living at the ranch who had become pregnant between the ages of 13 and 17 and “spiritually married” to old men picked for them by Jeffs or his followers?

Yes there were.

Um, no, there weren’t. The original estimate was 26 and was later upwardly revised to 31. Of those 31 fifteen were proven to be over 17 and one was 14 but was not and never had been pregnant. So only 15 might fit the description but of those 15 we have no data on how old any of them were within the 13 – 17 range and it is possible for any 16 or 17 year-old to be legally married and thus legitimately pregnant. No evidence has been put forth to prove that any of those 15 were married against their will or illegally “married”. We may speculate that some or all of them were, but in a court of law speculation carries no weight.

And if you live on this ranch, don’t you believe in polygamy, arranged marriages between young girls and old men, and that Jeffs is a prophet?

I would think so.

And yet we know of families living on the ranch who did not believe in those things. Probability is high for any family believing in those things but CPS made no distinctions and last I checked we don’t discriminate against belief in this country so they need something more solid than that.

And if you are a young girl that lives on this ranch, isn’t it true you will also be “spiritually married” to an old man chosen for you? Yes to that too. And isn’t this dangerous for the children? What do you think?

Dangerous for which children – note that the standard in Texas for removing children from their parents is “immediate danger.” What is the immediate danger to a five year-old?

There are some fundamental problems with the court’s opinion. The court states that because not all FLDS families are polygamous or allow their female children to marry as minors, the entire ranch community does not subscribe to polygamy. Wrong.

So the entire ranch does subscribe to polygamy – just not the entire ranch . . . I must be missing something.

The court even reasoned that under Texas law, “it is not sexual assault to have consensual intercourse with a minor spouse to whom one is legally married” and that Texas law “allows minor to marry — as young as age 16 with parental consent and younger than 16 if pursuant to court order.” Wrong again.

So the argument here is that it is sexual assault to have consensual intercourse with a minor spouse. This implies that Texas condones sexual assault since it explicitly allows minors to get married as stated above.

The polygamists are not “legally married” to anyone since it is illegal to marry more than one person. They are “spiritually married” and abusing young girls. Finally, the court also states there “was no evidence that …. the female children who had not reached puberty, were victims of sexual or other physical abuse or in danger of being victims if sexual or other physical abuse.”

Oh, I get it. The Department should wait until the kids are actually abused before doing anything.

Actually, these older men are legally married to one of their wives – only the other wives may be cause for abuse charges if they are underage. (If they are not underage then this is just a publicly recognized extra-marital affair – have we started prosecuting those in Texas?) Ms. Hostin is ignoring a huge loophole in the opinion of the appelate court – they recognize that girls who have reached puberty may be deemed to be in immediate danger so CPS can act before they are abused. Of the 450 kids taken, half were under 5 – definitely not in immediate danger. Of the remaining 225 the boys under 16 and the girls under 10 are not in immediate danger of abuse.

Whatever number of children that leaves (let’s generously estimate that it was 100), CPS would have a legitimate reason to take into state custody while they investigate and prosecute any abuse. By taking all 450 children CPS overstepped their bounds and that is why the appellate court was right – as the Texas Supreme Court ruled last week.

Categories
Local politics

Re: Growth Will Force a Lake Bridge

It must be nice to be paid to publish your opinions – especially when there is nobody to dispute your position. With the power of the press you get to proclaim who is right and who is wrong, and you get to make your living taking the time to make a considered opinion not only about the right answer to current issues, but also to the best way to sell that position without regard to the truth. Such an attitude appears to be the driving force behind the Editorial Board of the Provo Daily Herald (DHEB) as they criticize Lehi city for what they see as the inevitability of a bridge across Utah Lake.

Using little more than their own words and logic from that one editorial it is clear that they are using Lehi as a scapegoat on an issue that is uncomfortable but which has no real villain.

Based on their words, only 17% of wage earners in Cedar Valley will be heading north for work in 2040. Would those headed East be very excited to drive to 2100 N in Lehi to travel to Provo/Orem just because it is a full freeway instead of a 6 or 8 lane arterial road (which it will undoubtedly be by 2040)?

The DHEB argues that there are “a dozen east-west corridors of five to seven lanes each” in Salt Lake County and only two in Utah County. If we compare apples to apples then we must recognize that the “measly two-lane compromise that Lehi forced on Utah County” is actually a 4 lane road (two lanes each direction) and will likely be at least 6 lanes within 15 years. That’s respectable compared to the 5 – 7 lane roads in Salt Lake County they are comparing it to as well as the 6 or 8 lane freeway that it is replacing. In addition, this compromise should be built in under 5 years rather than the 2100 N freeway which would not even be started for nearly 10 years. This early increase in capacity should allow for Main Street in Lehi to receive a long overdue widening as well so we could have an extra 10 east/west lanes within 15 years (not counting the 4 lanes at 1000 S. in Lehi). Between main street, 2100 N, and 1000 S, Lehi will have at least 14 east-west lanes for travel on the west side of I-15 – you could hardly expect more form a single city.

Do I expect that 14 lanes would be able to handle the traffic from 1/4 Million people expected to be in Cedar Valley? No. The real limitation on east-west travel in the county is that we have a lake spanning most of our north-south distance between our east and west side communities – why should the DHEB blame that on Lehi? The only possible solutions to that problem are a bridge over the lake or else a reduction in the necessity of east-west travel. Even the DHEB wording that this “will only hasten the construction of an east-west bridge across Utah Lake” is a reminder that such a bridge is a matter of when more than if. Is there any extra environmental impact if it is built 5 years earlier rather than 5 years later?

I find it ironic that it is the Mayor of Lehi, and not the DHEB, that has been talking for years about the need for a Cedar Valley highway (that DHEB is now calling an inevitability) and a lake bridge.

Categories
technology

I Finally Dig Digg

When Digg arrived on the web I wrote it off as another Slashdot – nothing wrong with it, but no reason for yet another account to remember. I change my tune today because of the fact that there are no editors deciding what submissions get posted. By itself that’s no big deal, but I was trying to get access to a story in the Wall Street Journal without paying $80 a year. I learned that you can access full stories when coming from sites like Google News or Digg.

When I couldn’t find the month-old story on Google News I registered with Digg and submitted the story myself (I had already found the link that leads to an article stub when coming from the sites of mere mortals like myself) – through Digg the link produced instant access to a valuable story.

Categories
politics technology

Have Your Say

At the blogger briefing this morning with Mark Shurtleff I was reminded of why I believe that every public official ought to have a blog of some sort. Mark started by talking about how important he things that transparency in government is and how he has used his time in office to try to make more information available to citizens and help citizens work with their government – specifically with law enforcement (he is the AG after all).

Later, the discussion began to focus on blogs and media and I realized that running a blog as an elected official amounts to a certain degree of personal transparency. It indicates a willingness to put yourself out there on record where others can challenge you through comments and other responses. It also provides original source information about your positions where you can explain yourself without a media filter. This can prove very beneficial to any honest public official because anyone who is taking the time to look will be able to see how well you do at sticking to principles or how thoughtful you are in correcting a mistaken opinion as you gain more information.

For those who would say anything to get elected, that inconsistency would become apparent quickly when they blatantly ignore the positions they espoused on the campaign trail or else offer up lame excuses for changing their positions.

Of course blogging politicians will not solve all our problems, and those who do blog are not all perfect, but that willingness to leave a lasting trail and be held accountable is definitely suggestive of a good candidate and a good public servant.