Despite what some people may think, my outlook on life is not based on how politically active my fellow citizens are. If it was, this report from the Deseret News would have made today really lousy.
Utah now has the nation’s worst voting participation rates.
We should have participation closer to 65% like Minnesota rather than 36%. We should also have more than 58% voter registration (in fact we should have more than the 67% national average).
I really don’t mind so much if the voters in Utah always choose Republicans to represent them in Congress so long as they replace at least one incumbent on a regular basis (I’d say at least one new face every other election cycle). For that reason, if for no other, I was happy to hear that Jason Chaffetz ousted Chris Cannon in the Republican primary yesterday. District 3 will have a new face and we are guaranteed to have another new face by 2012 with the addition of District 4.
Today I am hoping that Republican primary voters show that they can see through party connections to select a candidate who might actually be qualified for the office of State Treasurer by selecting Richard Ellis to represent the party on the November ballot.
There are other races where I have a preference, but no others that I could vote in.
I should not be surprised that the Hatch re-election committee is among biggest donors to other Republican campaigns. The only consolation is that very little of that $200,000 he donated for candidates outside of Utah came from donors inside of Utah.
Hatch gets his money mostly from special interests outside the state. He casts his votes for whatever the national Republican party line dictates and he spends his time and energy doing whatever furthers his government backed interests. His only connection to Utah is that this is where he receives the votes to continue living in Washington D.C. without having to work on K Street.
What really irks me is that the people of Utah have considered this to be adequate representation for the last 3 decades so they keep sending him back. (Okay, I admit that I have not been paying attention to Senator Hatch for 3 decades so it’s possible that he was more representative of Utah when he started in the Senate.) It’s nice to see that more people are voicing their displeasure with our non-representative senator-for-life.
Nobody should be surprised that some west-side cities don’t like the idea of tolling on the Mountain View Corridor. Some are suggesting that it is unfair. I think tolling generally is not a bad idea but I think I would agree that tolling on MVC while leaving I-15 free would be unfair to the growing west-side.
A state study found the tolls would pay for about $1.1 billion of Mountain View’s $1.8 billion price tag. But council members worry about long-term costs.
They fear some residents may have to cough up $200 a month to use the road. They also worry about fee-dodging commuters bypassing the highway altogether, clogging up and wearing down other routes.
While the Utah Department of Transportation has not selected a toll road as its preferred funding option – it’s being considered along with sales or gas taxes and car-registration fees – the council members want to kill the idea for good.
It would make more sense to me to toll I-15 if we wanted to toll only one of those roads. It is the more direct route for the majority of commuters and would be likely to generate higher revenue and have fewer people trying to go around the toll road. Personally, I think the best plan would be to add congestion pricing to both roads. That would be fair to both sides of the valley and revenue would be more reflective of actual usage on the roads because the higher usage roads would generate the most revenue for maintenance and future expansion.
The Texas Supreme Court has just shown what justice looks like:
The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that the removal of FLDS children from the YFZ Ranch was unwarranted — and the decision to take them was an abuse of judicial discretion. . . .
In its ruling, the high court said that state law gave the lower court broad authority to protect children “short of separating them from their parents and placing them in foster care,” including removing alleged perpetrators from a child’s home and preventing the removal of a child from the jurisdiction of the investigating agency. (emphasis added)
One of the hard things in opposing the actions of CPS is trying to illuminate the distinction between protecting the children and ignoring the rule of law. Unfortunately it is all to easy for an agency like CPS to abuse the power that is placed in their hands and in many cases where that happens it is also very easy for the courts to side with the professional and well organized government agency while discounting the plea’s of the distraught and disorganized parents. Naturally in a case as large as this the parents were not so disorganized as they often are when it is a single family – or even a single parent – trying to challenge the government agency.
The important thing right now is that the Texas Supreme Court got it right in saying that CPS overstepped their bounds but that they are still allowed to investigate allegations of abuse and take less drastic steps to protect the children.
The Ogden Standard Examiner had a great guest commentary by the chairwoman of the Weber County Democratic Party. LaFray Kelley asks a good question:
Why should the presence or absence of an ex-Massachusetts governor on the ballot for president have any influence on your judgment over how well your local state legislators have done in representing your interests? It’s obvious when you think about it: Who’s on the ballot for president has nothing at all to do with how your state and local elected representatives are doing.
Unfortunately she fails to recognize that there is an answer to her question that is worth considering about our political culture. The presence or absence of an ex-Massachussetts governor may have no bearing on how our local or state elected officials are doing, but because of our high interest in Utah regarding this particular ex-governor his presence or absence does effect our general interest in casting a ballot at all in November. The problem is that our political culture is biased towards the highest levels of government when it comes time to perform our civic duties.
Ms. Kelley quite accurately states that our votes are more likely to affect the outcome of local and state races and that those races have a greater impact on our lives.
The message here is simple: Exercise your right to vote for whomever you want for president, but recognize your votes for state and local candidates are far more important — and have far more impact. These are the votes where you have a civic duty to closely examine the issues and the candidates. It is especially important to find out about nonincumbent candidates, so you understand what your choices are. This admittedly will take extra effort, but that effort is perhaps the most important duty you will exercise as a citizen.
While I fully agree with Ms. Kelley on her conclusions I am forced into skepticism regarding her motives for two reasons. First, the party she represents is the party that most clearly espouses the attitude that promotes the top-down approach to government, especially in social issues. Second, her timing is off. If we really want to change the system we should be starting at the precinct caucus meetings and during the primary season. By putting her commentary out after the state conventions she has assured that there are very few primaries available to consider non-incumbent candidates. For the most part, our only options are for the general election in November and the vast majority of us can choose between an incumbent (not changing the system) who is a Republican, or a non-incumbent (who she has just touted as the avenue for change) who is a Democrat like her.
Such timing undercuts the level application across parties that any argument for change should have because change is not just changing parties, it is changing the political system by examining the candidates and issues before your choices are whittled down to one or two. That truly is “perhaps the most important duty you will exercise as a citizen.”
I was disappointed today when I heard news of a hearing in the Texas-FLDS fiasco where a mother was trying to get custody of her nine month old baby. What surprised me was the age of the child since my understanding was that mothers of children under 1 year had been allowed to stay with their children. Thankfully it was only a short time later that I stumbled upon the best news I have yet heard in this case – an appeals court overturned the ruling that put all those children in state custody. The news was:
The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the grounds for removing the children were ”legally and factually insufficient” under Texas law. . . . The appellate court ruled the chaotic hearing held last month did not demonstrate the children were in any immediate danger, the only measure of taking children from their homes without court proceedings.
This was exciting news for two reasons – first, a bad ruling was overturned; second, this ruling indicates that children are not to be taken from their homes without a court hearing unless they are in immediate danger. That standard of immediate danger is perfectly reasonable and it’s good to see a court recognize that the legal standard was not met in this case of abduction. (Anyone who argues that this was not an abduction had better go look up the word because unlike the CPS argument of immediate danger this case perfectly matches the definition of abduction.)
Check out the Sunlight Foundation’s Fortune 535. It gives numbers of the net worth of each member of Congress based on congressional reporting requirements. Some of the numbers won’t be very surprising, but others will probably make you take a second look. In any case, make sure you do more than just look at the final number. For example – I looked at the Utah congressional delegation and saw that Sen. Bennett was the richest of the 5 ($5 million) and Rep. Bishop was the poorest ($16,000). Another glance shows that there’s more to the story. Rep. Bishop started his congressional career 6 years ago with a net worth of negative $55,000 and Sen. Bennett has seen his net worth drop by $43 million over the last decade (losing nearly 90% of his original worth).
I’m not trying to argue who is a good guy, or a bad guy. Nor am I trying to stir up pity for either of them. They just make a good illustration of the need to look deeper than any one number to get a better picture of the intersection of money and political figures.
I was listening to a story on NPR about young Indians abroad returning to help their country. One statement that caught my attention was the assertion that Indians who have lived in Western cultures have experienced the problems and some of the attempts to fix problems that the West has been dealing with for decades and which the Indian culture and economy are just beginning to experience as the economy there expands. Because of their perspectives from other nations they have a unique ability to help India avoid some pitfalls that the West has seen – if enough people will listen to them.
Later I was having a conversation about transportation issues in Utah and it occurred to me that the same phenomenon applies here. People in Utah who have spent appreciable time back East in areas of higher population density are much more likely to be supportive of mass transit options, tolling, and other transportation options that are often distasteful to those who have lived in the sprawling west all their lives. If those with the perspective of having lived back East are heard we might be able, as Utah continues in its rapid population growth, to avoid some pitfalls such as becoming another concrete urban jungle like Los Angeles. Only if we start making better use of transportation infrastructure options besides increasing amounts of asphalt.
Trax is good, FrontRunner is good, but lets try to make sure that such transportation options are part of the fabric of the area, not just an anomaly that feeds people into the downtown Salt lake City area.