Video of recent Cannon-Jacob debate

Citizens' Resource, a non-profit group dedicated to helping educate Utah County voters, has put together many excellent events in the last several months. They sent out an email this evening with the following information:

Our appreciation to those interested voters who came from both ends of the valley (as well as in-between) to attend the 2006 Primary Candidate Expo, our recent series of candidate debates & speeches at UVSC -- where all candidates in all races for the fast-approaching local Primaries were represented.

We feel the event was a success with good attendance and coverage by the local and national press (CNN’s political unit sent a crew from D.C. for the 3rd Congressional debate).

We’re also pleased to announce that thanks to UVSC Studios and Engineering and Orem City Community Channel, video coverage of the 2006 Primary Candidate Expo will be broadcast daily at 12 NOON & 7 PM on local cable television during this final week before PRIMARY ELECTIONS, 8 AM – 8 PM, NEXT TUESDAY, JUNE 27TH. This same coverage may also be viewed on demand via Google Video at our website, http://www.citizensresource.org.

I recommend to anyone interested in these races--especially if, like me, you are still undecided about the 3rd Congressional candidates--to watch this video. It is well worth your time.

Foot in Mouth: Cannon vs. Jacob

In last week's debate between Chris Cannon and John Jacob, both candidates made a few verbal gaffes. How fun that we can point them out!

Cannon: Cannon made the silly comment that he only accepts campaign contributions from people he agrees with. This opens him to the easy but fallacious charges of guilt by association. Jacob pointed out that Cannon had received and returned contributions from (now) convicted felon Jack Abramoff. Cannon responded by saying that, "Jack Abramoff is a great guy!" He immediately realized what a stupid thing he had said and corrected it to say, "He was a great guy, but he got bent." Nice. Even if true, not such a wise thing to say.

Jacob: When pointing out the folly of trying forcibly deport 12 million illegal immigrants, Cannon jokingly used the phrase "throw the bums out." (It didn't sound as weird in context as it sounds here in print.) Jacob responded by saying (roughly), "Right now I'm working on throwing one bum out." The audience reaction to this low blow was quick and somewhat mixed. Jacob immediately added, "It was meant to be sarcastic." Sarcastic. Okay...

Chris Cannon interview on KCPW

Chris Cannon had an interview on KCPW. I really like to hear candidates in this sort of setting. It is a great way to figure them out. Cannon is aware of the anti-incumbent feeling in the air around the country. I'm definitely feeling it! I don't know as much about Cannon's voting record in particular as I know I'm disappointed in the results we've gotten from the current Republican congress.

The thing I like about Cannon is the realistic viewpoint he has. He recognizes that building a wall on the border won't solve all our problems (because of visa overstays, etc.). He knows the players in Washington and has connections that will help him work the system. I'm not sure how rapidly Jacob will be able to set up those networks. Cannon has a lot of the nuance I like to see in a good thinker.

He doesn't sound very apologetic about the massive spending increases and the giant deficits.

Tomorrow morning will be a debate between the candidates. I may not catch it live, but I'll definitely be listening.

John Jacob Interview on KCPW

I enjoyed listening to John Jacob on KCPW. I was more persuaded by Jacob in this setting than I was in the debate on June 10th. He said a few weird things (like he seems to think that foreign spying is equivalant to domestic spying) but overall was pretty articulate. He pointed out some of the things that are at the root of my frustration with Cannon and the Republican Congress in general. It might be worth voting for Jacob if for no other reason than to send a message. Let's stop spending like crazy and growing the government!

The Tale of Two Flyers: Cannon vs. Jacob

I attended last Saturday's debate between Congressman Chris Cannon and his primary challenger John Jacob. Frankly, I'm not thrilled with either candidate. I'd like to share a few thoughts, both pro and con, about the two candidates in the next few posts.

I suspect a lot of thought goes into the campaign literature that is handed out at events such as this. I suppose that it says something about the candidate to see what he or she chooses to put out.

Chris Cannon's flyer was an 8 inch square glossy trifold. 270 words, 1 possible typo. The flyer was devoted to quotes from four or five people attesting to different aspects of Cannon's character.

John Jacob's flyer was a simple 8.5x11 piece of white paper, printed on one side with a fuzzy printed signature on the bottom. 398 words. It was a "letter of intent" stating core principles for Jacob's campaign.

Which candidate made better use of funds?

No Copyright For DRM'd Works

A commenter on Slashdot just made the most interesting argument. He argues that copyright is granted with the expectation that the work will eventually enter the public domain. Accordingly, he argues, works that can't enter the public domain because of Digital Rights Management restrictions shouldn't be granted copyright protections.

I think the key concept in intellectual property laws should be that the creations *must* enter public domain at some time, and remain in the public domain [forever] after that. Therefore, the law should provide no protection at all to anything that's protected by anything other than the law itself, or for that which isn't fully disclosed.

No copyrights for anything distributed with any sort of DRM, no copyrights for anything distributed under proprietary standards, no protection for any software distributed without source code.

I think this view is a bit extreme, but it certainly raises a valid concern about DRM.

Utah Blogger Conference

My wife and I won't be able to attend because of previous commitments, but it appears that a bunch of Utah bloggers are going to get together on Tuesday, Jun. 13th, 2006 up in Sandy. Pete Ashdown is going to be there along with some other well known Utah personalities in the business community.

I Love Immigration

Most companies are not well served to have the same CEO forever. Fresh blood, fresh ideas, and fresh perspectives are vital in a world full of imperfect people. That is one reason I think a flow of people between the different countries of the world is a good thing.

On the flip side, every culture has been concerned about being eliminated or marginalized. Look at the resistance and opposition there has been to the United States around the world. People of other countries don't want us to impose our culture on them. I suspect that most people in the US have similar feelings about outside cultural influences. We are comfortable in our familiar culture and we don't want to be forced to change because of a rapid influx of immigrants.

So we allow and encourage emmigration and immigration to facilitate the flow of ideas and information around the globe, but we do so with numerical limits to prevent any culture from being overwhelmed by fresh blood, thus killing the old blood.

Deciding on the right number of immigrants is not an easy task. I think we need to loosen up the current restrictions a bit and make it easier for people to immigrate the right way.

I also want to come out in opposition to a group called "Americans for Better Immigration." This group seemed to be pushing for some of the same things that I want, but after reviewing their website I concluded that they really want only a very small amount of immigration. To them, less is more. I see their view as unworkable and selfish. This is a wonderful country and I want to welcome in as many people as we can reasonably support. As we lift these immigrants up, we help the whole world with the rising tide.

National Guard: Heroes of Katrina

I remember hearing some very dire reports during hurricane Katrina. People shooting at helicopters, mass rapings and murders in the Superdome, and rescues delayed for days after the disaster. All, I now learn, totally and completely wrong. Lou Dolinar has written an amazingly informative piece for Real Clear Politics, "Katrina: What the Media Missed."

The upshot is this: The National Guard performed like champs and saved tens of thousands of lives. In most places in the world, Katrina would have killed the tens of thousands that everyone was predicting. Instead, the whole state of LA incurred about 1500 deaths. That is on par with the deaths that have been caused by recent heat waves.

Dolinar awknowledges that FEMA and others were ineffective but that National Guard units from Louisiana and surrounding states, in conjunction with the Coast Guard, were able to handle the rescue. Their command center was in the Superdome. That bit of information alone should have been enough to cast a huge shadow of doubt on the horror stories that were being "reported" about the conditions in the Superdome.

If you're like me, you probably won't go read the article, but it is information packed and very readable and I highly recommend it. Here are a couple of other tidbits that I found interesting outside the summary I've provided above.

Besides rescuers and local first responders, another big story at the
Dome was the medical center. Like a Chinook helicopter landing on your
roof, that sure was hard to miss. Fifteen doctors and a total of 65
medical personnel set up at the New Orleans Arena, within spitting
distance of the Dome. It was primarily for survivors brought in by air
and boat, but also for people in the Superdome with medical problems.
There was never any shortage of medical care, Dressler and Bush both
said.

The success of the makeshift medical center was such that there were just six deaths at the entire Superdome complex: four of natural causes, one drug overdose, and one suicide during the week of supposedly rampant anarchy and death.

They weren't happy campers. Besides the smelly but safe Superdome, which was not a pleasant place, many had been dropped off on the nearest high ground, primarily Interstate overpasses, in the rush to clear rooftops and attics. There were genuine shortages of food and water at these locations, especially at the Convention Center, another drop-off point. They were stuck, as search and rescue and lifesaving continued.

Governor Kathleen Blanco, meanwhile, had a direct pipeline to the command center and clearly knew what was going on, which might explain why she maintained her authority over the Guard and resisted calls from the President to federalize it. It also explains her apparent callousness to those stuck in the Dome - she knew the real situation was not as bad as the media was reporting. At the very least, she deserves credit for standing up to the national media and following the advice of the junior officers on the scene.

Net Neutrality

The concept of "net neutrality" has been in a news a lot recently. Basically, the concern has been that Qwest or Comcast or other ISPs could de-prioritize internet traffic that competes with their other business interests. For example, Comcast could make video traffic from a video-on-demand provider very slow so that online video rentals wouldn't compete with Comcast pay-per-view. Or Qwest could make your Vonage or Lingo service run slowly so that you can't get good voice quality through an internet phone line and you'll have to continue to get a land line from Qwest for your telephone service.

Mind you, neither vendor has proposed these changes, but that is the fear that is driving "net neutrality" legislation before Congress.

Pete Ashdown, a Democratic candidate for the US Senate, happens to be a technology expert. He runs the large Utah ISP, XMission. He has a take on the net neutrality issue on his campaign wiki. Ashdown's technical smarts give him an important weapon in his fight against Orrin Hatch. Many Republicans have come out in support of Ashdown for exactly this reason.

College Isn't For Everyone

John Edwards, former presidential and vice presidential candidate, is championing a new program called "College for Everyone." I think the title of the program is a slap in the face to people who don't want or need a college education. If we really needed everyone to go to college, we would just put it in with the K-12 education system and make it free. But we don't do that because the fact is that most people don't really need a college education.

Most people? I think that a college education is beneficial for making you into a well rounded person, but in most cases it is not essential for the work that you will spend the rest of your life doing. Why would we want to make decent people feel like they are failures because they didn't go to college? It is a noble pursuit, but so are a lot of other things that don't require a college education.

Half Sigma has had some thought provoking posts on this subject over the past year that have really persuaded me.

Where Should Guest Workers Come From?

From an article at sfgate.com (ht Drudge):

"If 60 percent of our illegal immigration comes from a single country, and another 20 percent comes through that country, logic would say the vast majority of visas should go to the country of origin," [Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank] said. "The last thing you would do is create a global temporary worker program, as if somehow we should need Bangladeshis or Russians to pick our fruits and vegetables."

The argument, which is quite persuasive, is that we need to focus on making Mexico strong. Their stability is more important to us than most any other nation on earth because we share a border with them. Things aren't so dicey with Canada because they are already wealthy and stable.

The economies of the United States and Mexico are so interwoven that their success is very important to our continued success. The article also points out an important factor in the continuing stabilization of Mexico.

Last year, Mexico received a record $20 billion in remittances from migrant workers. That is equal to Mexico's 2004 income from oil exports and dwarfing tourism revenue.

Arriving in small monthly transfers of $100 and $200, remittances have formed a vast river of "migra-dollars" that now exceeds lending by multilateral development agencies and foreign direct investment combined, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

The money Mexican migrants send home almost equals the U.S. foreign aid budget for the entire world, said Arturo Valenzuela, director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University and former head of Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

"Where are we going to come up with $20 billion?" to ensure stability in Mexico, Valenzuela asked at a recent conference. "Has anybody in the raging immigration debate over the last few weeks thought, could it be good for the fundamental interests of the United States ... to serve as something of a safety valve for those that can't be employed in Mexico?"

Obviously whatever policies we implement to control illegal immigration from Mexico, we'll have to consider the economic effect that will have on Mexico and whether the US can afford the fallout of that effect.

John Jacob Isn't Clear on Definition of GOP Convention

According to the Deseret Morning News, John Jacob made a goofy comment after getting a higher percentage of the delgate vote than incumbent Chris Cannon at the state GOP convention.

"The delegates sent a message to Washington that they will replace a
Republican with another Republican if they don't get the job done."

Did Jacob think they were going to nominate a Democrat in the Repubican Convention?

Immigration Rhetoric

Recently I heard the following on a clip from The John and Ken radio show from LA, broadcast on May 1, 2006 (starts at the 8:45 mark, but the whole ten minutes is very interesting):

Tony Valdez (Fox 11 News reporter): “…There is a group in Los Angeles that’s called Culture Clash, and they do some very interesting things, satirically and with comedy, and one of the things they say is, ‘We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.’ What I would suggest that these gentlemen [John and Ken] and everyone else who is watching do, is look at your own history, 1846, and see how the United States invaded the country of Mexico…”

Whoa. That is some fiery rhetoric you’re spouting there, Mr. Valdez.

Consider what he is saying: “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.” Oh, really? So you (or even your family) have been living here in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, or New Mexico since 1846? When the border truly did move? Since I doubt there are any illegal immigrants that fit those criteria, this statement is invalid--both legally and morally.

Tony Valdez: “…Remember the last [indistinguishable] you took this country, you killed people in order to take this country for yourself.” (at the 10:03 mark)

Interesting choice of pronouns: “you” and “yourself”. Is Mr. Valdez 100% pure indigenous American Indian? If not, his ancestors, at some time, be they Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, British, etc, did the exact same thing--killing people to take the country for themselves. Is his argument based on how long ago it happened? So anything that happened 160 years ago is fair game, but anything that happened 300 years ago isn’t? That’s pretty darn arbitrary, and pretty darn indefensible.

We have to do something about our immigration problem here in the US. Reasoned debate is useful and has helped inform me of different points of view. Impassioned, illogical, inflammatory rhetoric like Mr. Valdez’s does nothing to further the debate. In fact, it alienates those he is trying to convince.

(Hat tip to Ryan at Blogger of Jared for pointing me to the audio clip--he discusses another part of the same reporter's rhetoric here.)

Mike Ridgway... Hmm...

While I'm not thrilled with Orrin Hatch, I am decidedly less impressed with Mike Ridgway. There seems to be very little chance that he has the social skills to serve as a United States Senator. It takes a certain amount of finesse to deal with the many different types of personalities one will encounter in D.C.

How can I say this? I have never met Ridgway and I've read very little about him. But I did read a couple of entries on his blog. That was enough for me to realize that I won't be voting for him. He just sounds bitter about everything. It is hard to picture him working effectively with other members of the Senate or their staffs.