Since long before I was on this earth, politicos of all stripes have frequently talked about balanced budgets, both at the state and federal levels. Many states have adopted laws or even constitutional amendments to ensure that, unlike the feds, expenditures do not exceed revenues. In many cases, these help keep states from going gorging on debt spending. There are, however, a number of pitfalls lurking just around the corner that can thwart the intention of such laws and even serve as an impediment to sound government finances.

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Odds are good that if you want to practice a particular profession or trade, the state requires that you complete a specific course of training, pass some exams, and renew a license with them, sometimes requiring additional training. This is often sold as a way to ensure that everyone in a profession is competent to perform the job and helps protect the public from rank amateurs. The reality, however, is a much uglier thing revealing that industries often seek to be regulated and licensed as a way to cut down on competition and set up barriers to entry. It could be said that despite this, we still get a valuable service in weeding out those few bad actors. But with the Internet available to quickly spread both positive and negative feedback on businesses and individuals, is licensing even worth it anymore?

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This weekend, the Utah GOP decided to effectively ban “troublemaker” Mike Ridgway from the party entirely. This comes after a long line of public intra-party fights, nasty name-calling, and legal wrangling. His detractors accuse him of “bad behavior” including “intimidation” and “threats”, but without citing much of anything in the way of specific incidences. Ridgway portrays it as a fight against a corrupt “good old boys” network that won’t follow its own rules and has no problems using threats and intimidation of its own. No matter how you feel about the parties involved, though, this whole mess stinks to high heaven.

Let’s bear in mind how this became messy in the first place. A number of years ago, Ridgway managed to get into some arguments concerning following party rules, something the leadership apparently wasn’t doing. In the process, he ended up crossing infamous bully Mark Towner, at the time a party insider who all too often ended up embarrassing those he associated with by his own bad behavior. (And Mark, don’t email me any more empty legal threats about this like you did the last time. You’re a public figure, so try using that thick skin you always claim to have, eh?)  Towner was the one really leading the anti-Ridgway charge, likely as a way to curry favor with the party leadership. You may recall that Steve Turley did the same thing not too long ago.

At any rate, Towner managed to get a judge who’s friends with his wife to issue a restraining order barring Ridgway from being anywhere he or his wife happened to be, including any party functions. In addition to this, the party had Ridgway arrested for showing up to a party meeting (which I understand Towner wasn’t even at), but SLC DA Sim Gill couldn’t find any charges to press against him. The real irony here is that Towner, for all his maneuvering, ended up leaving the Republican Party and even sought to be Scott McCoy’s replacement. (If you want a good laugh, watch him trashing on vouchers despite having been deeply entrenched on the pro-voucher side.) Why is the GOP leadership so willing to continue Towner’s personal vendetta with Ridgway long after he has both left and trashed the party?

My take is that they are so invested in being anti-Ridgway that they can’t back down now or risk admitting that they goofed up big time. Mike wasn’t always as sharp-tongued and insistent as he is today, and I think we can blame the bad treatment he received at the hands of the party he was trying to fix. Hey Utah GOP? You created this mess, and you’ve picked a heck of a way to deal with it. If he’s an “uncivil jerk”, an “intimidator”, or a “harasser”, it’s because you forced his hand. You can only beat someone so much before they’ll lash out.

So other than a sense of injustice at how the party system can grind people up and spit them out, why should you care? Consider that the GOP (and to a lesser extent, the Democrats) are experiencing an insurgency of sorts as party reformers make attempts at seizing control and changing the direction of the party. All it takes is for another Towner-like bully to label you a “troublemaker” and you’re persona non grata. Could people like Connor Boyack or Claudia Wright be persecuted and demonized by their chosen party simply for demanding that the party get better? If the way the GOP treats Ridgway is any indication, I’m betting on it.

I’ve gone on the record saying that I think Mike Lee is a poser, someone who was at the right place at the right time saying the right things to get elected to the US Senate to replace “Bailout Bob” Bennett. I’ve doubted his sincerity from the moment the candidate nobody had heard of started a series of “lectures on the constitution” ahead of his official announcement. Just yesterday, he announced via Twitter and Facebook that he plans to take on Google in anti-trust hearings. The reasoning behind this shows a dangerous lack of understanding about both free markets and technology.

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Hearing the absolute uproar over the proposed changes to GRAMA in HB477, the Legislature decided to recall the bill. Unfortunately, the only thing changed was the implementation date to July 1, 2011 with a promise to rework it in a special session before the implementation deadline. This may sound like some kind of victory, but it’s really a piece of masterful work to create leverage.

See, anyone wanting to totally kill HB477 is pretty much SOL. If the Legislature decides to not pass any replacement legislation in a special session, the bill stands. That’s leverage against any changes they don’t like including killing the bill entirely. With that kind of threat dangling over their heads, why wouldn’t opponents agree to many more compromises than before to avoid that outcome? They simply wouldn’t.

I don’t like it at all. That kind of maneuvering is terrible policy-making and a far inferior solution to pulling back and working with the public to come up with something better. So what if media bosses are trying to game the process to eliminate the concept of off-the-record communication? Now that the public is focused on the process like a laser, could they really get away with any kind of shenanigans? I’m betting not.

Legislators, please show a bit more faith in the process, no matter how flawed it can sometimes be. I think you owe us that much.

One of the proposals before the Legislature this year is to increase the gas tax. That’s one of those sure-fire ways to provoke a strong reaction since we’re all pretty sensitive about the cost of driving. That said, I don’t think it’s really an increase. And at the risk of putting any kind of future electability in complete peril, I don’t have a problem with it at all.

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If the Utah Legislature was looking for a way to unite people across the political spectrum, HB477 was a great way to do it. Unfortunately for them, it united everyone against the Legislature in a rather loud cacophony, present company included. The bill went from introduced to passed by both houses in just three days with the stipulation that it take effect as soon as it’s signed instead of after the normal sixty days. This alone prompted a strong negative reaction, never mind what the bill actually does: classifying many types of communication as “conversations” rather than “records” and thus not subject to the state’s GRAMA laws, Utah’s version of the Freedom of Information Act. This really doesn’t sound like a whole lot of good.

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On at least a monthly basis, there is a new story of someone legally taking photographs or video who gets harassed by a law enforcement officer without any cause. In some cases, it’s someone innocently taking photographs of a public landmark. In others, it’s a citizen recording a police action of a questionable nature such as this beating of a suspect by a police officer in St. Louis. In all of these cases, the right to freely photograph or record in public should be a given and is often protected by law. Unfortunately, police officers looking to cover up bad behavior often work with district attorneys zealous for convictions to bury people under obscure wiretapping statutes, all for having the audacity to want their own record of events.

A state senator in Connecticut has decided that this needs to stop and has filed an appropriate bill. It not only seeks to recognize the right of people to lawfully record a police action without interfering, but also establish clear civil liability against any officer who would dare to violate said right. As Radley Balko points out, this is kind of a big deal. Officers can (and regularly do) intimidate, harass, threaten, and arrest anyone who refuses to comply with the unlawful order to stop recording because there is no consequence for it. Establishing liability will likely be a suitable deterrent to these kinds of bullying.

I, however, don’t think this goes far enough. (more…)

There aren’t a lot of cases where I find myself in agreement with Ezra Klein on economic issues, but on pensions, I think he may have nailed it. For those unfamiliar, pensions are little more than a way to say “I’ll gladly pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today”. Employees often take a smaller paycheck now so that they can collect income after they retire or leave their position. Unfortunately, the arrangement allows for a lot of lying and number fudging along the way.

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Sen. Howard Stephenson, with whom I often disagree, made some waves when he declared that college might be a waste of time. On the surface, it seems like a silly argument. College graduates still earn more than non-graduates and many skilled job positions still require a degree. That said, the return on investment has been getting much longer and many skilled professional without degrees often have just as much earning potential. I think this opens up a broader discussion on the real value of a college degree and a high school diploma.

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