I’m a big fan of local control for practical reasons. You often get elected officials that are much more responsive and in-tune with the needs of their constituents. Bad decisions are contained to a much smaller effective area and experimentation with good ideas leads to more of them. When elected leaders fail to make good decisions or respond to the needs of the people, the “throttle factor” is often much better with your city council member than a state or federal representative.

We’ve seen this play out on the federal level for decades now. Bad decisions made at that level affect everyone rather than just a limited subset of the populace. The all-or-nothing gamesmanship often leads to contradictory laws and policies that are confusing and keep either from actually prevailing. Our state legislature often rails upon these failings, but now they’re turning around and doing the exact same thing to the cities and counties.

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The New Yorker has a fascinating look into how one man, Jeffrey Bremmer, has saved hospitals millions of dollars by finding health care “hot spots”. The approach he takes is a lot like what New York did in the 90s to reduce crime: they identified the areas that cost the most and focused resources there. While that’s now becoming a standard practice for police departments nationwide, the same approach just isn’t catching on in the medical world.

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One of the loudest screams you’ll hear from so-called “conservatives” (whatever that label means anymore) is that mass transit is a wasteful hole of socialism and should be first on the chopping block. The complaint is that a mass transit trip often requires twice as much money as is collected in fares, effectively a 50% subsidy. That would hold some water, except that here in Utah, highways are receiving a scant 33% of their maintenance and construction costs from user fees. Even the much-maligned Amtrak is managing to collect 46% of its costs in fares. Nationally, highways are mustering 51% of their costs from user fees.

So apparently the difference between the “proper role of government” and “wasteful socialist boondoggle” is, at best, around 5% of costs. Just so you know.

Many moons ago, my high school US Government teacher would constantly stress to always check the source of any information. Unsurprisingly, I’ve found that the source matters immensely. In fact, it’s become commonplace to find think tanks and lobbying groups simply parroting the talking points of contributing members. You’ll often find the same thing happening with a poll or research study; the group paying for it almost invariably gets the result they were seeking. It’s almost become expected to immediately look at the source of information for whatever obvious bias exists.

Here in Utah, it’s happened to us yet again with a new study claiming pervasive and widespread discrimination against sexual minorities. Unsurprisingly, the study was commissioned by Equality Utah, a gay rights group. What’s truly surprising, though, it that the group doing the study openly disclosed its own shoddy methods. They admitedly depended exclusively on self-selection for the survey results, a method rife with bias as only those who feel most strongly are likely to respond, skewing the results heavily. What’s also telling is that it depends on those who sought to respond to report if they had personally been on the receiving end of discrimination, but there’s no methodology to verify the actual occurrence of said discrimination. In short, the only thing that the “study” confirms is that sexual minorities feel that they are discriminated against, but it makes no effort to confirm or quantify that perception. Instead, it just gives in to the all-too-human tendency towards victimhood (which, I would stress, no group is immune from).

Look, I’m not saying that the discrimination doesn’t exist, nor am I claiming that nothing ever need be done about it. (I’m personally ambivalent on anti-discrimination ordinances falling slighting in the ‘against’ camp.) What I am saying is that if you’re going to attempt to quantify it, do it right. Making such an obviously biased survey in a ham-fisted attempt to garner sympathy only retrenches the opponents and turns off anyone on the fence with your martyr complex. Reacting to this questioning of the methodology with mocking and hostility also isn’t going to help your case. Being honest will earn you respect and influence, probably more than you would lose if the data is against you.

Local government is the most important level of government there is. No level has more power to directly impact your day-to-day life with services such as police, fire, garbage pick-up, and plowing. Because of this impact, it’s important to try and keep up with what they’re doing. It can often be really hard, though, to show up to meetings from 2-4 times a month and sit through lengthy discussions about zoning, business permits, and other mundane but necessary minutiae of running a city or county. Because I’m at home every evening with a toddler while my wife goes to school, it’s near-impossible for me to make the trek of almost 90 blocks to keep tabs on the Salt Lake County Council. I thought I could find an easy way to keep up on them via the county website; I thought wrong.

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What a mess this is. Rep. Craig Frank got a nasty surprise over the weekend when he found out that he doesn’t actually live in the district he was elected to represent. Utah County has kept its mouth shut about the bad maps it had been handing out, the legislature is trying to get a special session to get Rep. Frank re-districted back into his seat, and there’s plenty of blame and finger-pointing going around. I feel a little bit bad for everyone.

The voters are the ones really hosed. As many as 3300 are in electoral limbo now, unsure of who represents them in Congress or the legislature. Rep. Frank also got a raw deal because he bought a house based on the bad Utah County maps and ended up on, quite literally, the wrong side of the street. The Utah County Clerk is trying to figure out how it all went wrong.

In all of it though, nobody is asking why it happened. A big part of it is that the area in question was a whole lot of nothing when boundaries were originally drawn in 2001. Then Cedar Hills incorporated, started annexing bits of county land, houses and roads started going up, and before you know it, where exactly those lines used to be starts getting a bit fuzzy. It’s a lot like trying to establish the ownership of a mortgage after it has changed hands a half dozen times in just a few years.

This is all a job of the county surveyor. So how did that ball get dropped? Is the office understaffed? Are they using poor practices? Is it a case of bad leadership? All roads lead there. The surveyor is required by Utah Code 17-23-1 to hash out such details. We should be asking not just how and why it didn’t get done properly, but how it got messed up to the tune of 3300 voters, a not so insignificant number of people. That’s the question not being asked.

While I appreciate that something needs to be done, Speaker Lockhart’s push to change the boundaries to include Rep. Frank again just doesn’t feel right somehow. (The House GOP Caucus apparently feels the same and voted down a special session to address it.) I know, the voters picked him, he thought he had determined he’d still be eligible for the office, and you can’t really blame either of them. We have to ask ourselves, however, if such a remedy would still be employed if the mistake was discovered, but Rep. Frank was still living inside his district. I would guess probably not. It also seems kind of rash to make a quick fix now ahead of a redistricting process that refuses to draw an incumbent outside of their district, even if all other reasons say to do so. Such a change now could drastically alter the boundaries of current districts in both houses.

In all, we have a bad situation and no particularly good fixes. I hope that expediency doesn’t win out here.

There’s been a lot of talk about civility, but most of it is so much well-intentioned non-specific background noise. Civility is one of those things like mom, apple pie, and America that you can profess belief in and yet know nothing about. I think only a few steps are needed to truly achieve those lofty and nebulous goals.

First off, you should generally be operating under the assumption that your political opponent on an issue has as much of a deep desire to do what’s best for the country/state/county/city as you do. This isn’t to say that those who seek to use power either for their personal gain or for its own sake do not exist, but they are very much a minority. Most of the people I’ve dealt with on the opposite side of the table truly believe that their way is best; insulting them by ascribing some kind of deep, Machiavellian malice to them is likely to get you nowhere but a screaming match.

Second, name-calling, while sometimes fun, doesn’t help matters at all. Calling someone a “pinko commie bedwetter” or a “fascist goose-stepping thug” might seem like a good idea and be personally satisfying, but it’s the “adult” equivalent of calling someone a doody-head. That might score you points with your own crowd, but you will alienate both those on the other side and many who haven’t made up their mind on the issue with your blatant and obvious childishness.

Third, there is rarely any consensus among coalitions, so don’t assume that someone on the “other” side isn’t willing to work with you. All political parties, even the smaller ones, consist of coalitions and factions. They often have some kind of nebulous agreement on some broader topics, but rarely will they actually concur on specific details. The Republicans often fight between the libertarians, fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, neo-conservatives, paleo-conservatives, moderates, and a host of other groups who all want their seat at the table. The Democrats fare no better with progressives, liberals, socialists, Blue Dogs, libertarians, greens, and many others who similarly want to steer the fate of the party. Even small parties like the Constitution Party have warring factions that fight over specific policy positions.

Which brings me to point four. Assuming that any individual has adopted all tenants of their chosen political label is overly simplistic. Any Republican or Democrat can likely cite at least a half-dozen things their party does that boils their blood. Most libertarians and minarchists have their limits as to how little government they are actually willing to accept. Also don’t forget that many independents are that way because both parties likely do things they’d rather not be associated with. It’s really easy to say “you call yourself a libertarian, so you must believe X” or “you believe X, so you’re obviously a Republican”, but it is rarely accurate and often just leads to off-topic shouting matches where people have to try and label themselves.

The fifth and final point is that we often all want the same goals, just with different means to attain it. I don’t know anyone who likes dirty air, unemployment, or people dying in the streets. Grandstanding by saying that your opponent likes and wants those things is flat-out lying any way you slice it. Sure, criticize a policy approach to your heart’s content and point out any flaws you see in it, but don’t forget Hanlon’s Razor while doing it. Also don’t be afraid to point out ideas you like; that small gesture doesn’t cede any ground, but rather gets your opponent to drop their defenses just a small bit and consider your solution.

Is all of this easy to do? Sure, in theory. The practice can sometimes be very, very difficult, especially if you’re the only one doing it. In the long term, I think it’s worth it.

I remember a time not that long ago when progressives and libertarians could find at least one point of agreement: defending civil liberties from the abuses of unchecked executive power. In the last couple of years, however, progressives aren’t talking much about civil liberties and the libertarians are the last ones left keeping a watchful eye. And thank goodness we are.

fter almost two years, Obama’s record on civil liberties is at least as bad as his predecessor, if not worse. Gitmo is still detaining, FISA is still wiretapping, organizations that try to deliver the president’s promised transparency are vilified by the White House, we’re virtually strip-searched and actually molested in the next escalation of security theater, and those who try to expose the government’s illegal and immoral acts are tortured at the hands of the military. But progressives, by and large, are keeping their mouths shut. I’m only left with one conclusion: the vast majority of progressives are raging hypocrites. Now that the president has a D next to his name, the criticism has all but vanished.

So what’s the deal, progressives? Where’s the outrage now that the new boss is doing what the old boss was doing, only worse? Until you start openly criticizing Obama at least has harshly as you did Bush, you have no credibility on civil liberties.

Wikileaks has probably just redefined the world we live in. I know, it’s really easy to make statements like that. In this case, it’s entirely true. Wikileaks has proved once and for all that the Internet has won in the war for access to information.

First off, it has proven that removing data is impossible. There are now 1200 (and counting) mirrors of their site data around the world, accessible to anyone. There’s even a “poison pill” of data floating around on bittorrent just waiting for the key to unlock it to be in the wild. By trying to quash the site via hosting providers, the feds have just been cutting up a starfish. If you really want data to be secure, you can’t let it get on the Internet. Once you do that, the game is over and you have lost.

Second, it shows that the Internet will absolutely react to companies that will not stick up for their customer’s rights. PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard have all been knocked offline by vigilantes angered at the termination of services. It’s all been done via volunteers who download an open-source application to volunteer their bandwidth for DDoS attacks. With the push of a button, someone can become part of a virtually untraceable weapon that can take down the engines of our commerce. That kind of ease should give pause to anyone else who won’t stick up for a customer’s rights.

Third, we’re now getting to see some truly atrocious goings-on from our foreign policy. Other nations trying to goad us into war with Iran? Check. Acting as foreign lobbyists for credit card companies? Check. Funding a contractor that buys underage boys to pimp out in Afghanistan? Check. We probably wouldn’t know any of these things without Wikileaks, and we have a right to know about these things before we’re asked to support our foreign policy.

A lot of people are saying some pretty ridiculous things about lives being in danger because of this sunshine. Hogwash. If any lives are in danger, it is because the federal government meddles too much in foreign affairs. We have no business manipulating the legislative process of another country. We have no business occupying another country. We have no business launching a preemptive war. These things, trying to extend American hegemony across the globe, are what put Americans in danger. That we now get to see the very ugly details of what that policy entails is just pointing out what we tried so hard not to know.

I’m hoping that the revelations posted by the site expand into the promised banking malfeasance and other corporate wrongdoings. I hope other governments get their dirty laundry hung out in the open. I hope these powerful interests get the full scope of their malevolent actions put on public display. After all, if you have nothing to hide, what’s the big deal?

If our military leaders are certain that the benefits outweigh the risks, there’s little evidence that there will be a significant impact on operational readiness, and they’re using data-driven and not ideology-driven means to determine this, I don’t see why there’s a reason to keep “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” around. If the converse is true or there’s no data to support repeal, drop the issue. I’m personally pretty sick of the emotional nonsense surrounding the issue when it should be a simple matter of cold hard numbers and what’s truly best for the military.