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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Friday, May 30, 2008
PayPal Email Notifications Not Coming Through? I rely on PayPal for the ScopeRoller business, and I had a recent embarrassing situation. A customer submitted an order through the ScopeRoller web site. The money ended up in my PayPal account--but the email notification that is supposed to tell me about this did not. It didn't go in my junk folder--it just never arrived. Almost a month later, I received an email from the customer, upset because his order hadn't been filled, and demanding his money back. Of course, I apologetically refunded his money. Today I heard from someone I bought some skateboard bearings from (for a double secret project--one of my readers will know what for) on eBay, who hadn't received notification of payment--and then discovered that my payment had arrived--but the email notification did not. If you rely on PayPal, it is probably a good idea to check your account periodically to verify that you are getting notified of incoming money. The Problem of Violence is Cultural and Moral And this article from the May 30, 2008 London Evening Standard really captures this well, describing how their equivalent of emergency rooms are being overwhelmed by stabbings:
Of course, the rest of the article suffers from the usual delusion that education is going to solve the problem. It will not. There is a serious cultural and moral problem that has developed, and no amount of education is going to fix this. Labels: crime Thursday, May 29, 2008
More Reasons for the Very Bad Election Results I found several additional reasons that individually contributed to the poor results, I suspect. 1. Jamie Anderson, who signed up to run for county commissioner as a Republican, sure didn't sound like one to me at one of the candidate forums--she sounded like a liberal to leftist Democrat. Sure enough, that's exactly what she is. But a lot of Democrats voted in the Republican primary here in Boise County to help her get the nomination--and while they were on the Republican ballot, they appear to have voted heavily for Tim Corder--who is something of a Democrat Lite. This may explain why I didn't even carry Boise County--and why there were only 182 votes for the Democrat running for state senator in the Democratic primary. Yet another argument for a closed primary. Since there are seldom contested Democratic primaries, the temptation for Democrats to play games like this are very strong--and they have a strong reason to protect Tim Corder from a Republican challenge. 2. A co-worker who lives north of Horseshoe Bend tells me that at school, his daughters are able to play with the children of other newcomers--but the children of the families that have been here for generations pretty much keep to themselves. I suspect that the same thing is at play at election time. My family hasn't been here for several generations. If this is a factor, I have no hope of ever getting elected, as long as Tim Corder or one of the other third generation Idahoan families decides to run. 3. I answered a number of questionnaires, including one from Idaho Chooses Life and the Cornerstone Institute. Both of them were asking very binary questions about complex issues. In particular, I did my best to articulate that concerning abortion, Idaho has gone about as far as it can under Roe v. Wade, and until the Supreme Court overturns it, there's not much that the state can do--but in the meantime, pro-life groups should be working hard to persuade pro-choice people over to the pro-life side--or at least neutralize them. The reason is that passing laws to restrict abortion is unlikely to be successful at reducing abortions--and I gave the example of Oregon. Before Roe v. Wade, Oregon had a very restrictive abortion law--and yet it had 199 abortions per 1,000 live births. Pretty clearly, the law was not being followed, nor prosecuted. Much of the decline in abortions in the 1990s wasn't because of laws, but because pro-life groups successfully persuaded a lot of people that abortion was either murder, or a bad choice, or pragmatically a bad idea. But all those subtle points were lost in the detailed statements that I attached to the questionnaires--only the simple yes and no answers went up on the web. I am inclined to think that the next time, I will simply not return questionnaires like this. The Boise County Republican Central Committee is going to reform on Monday night. I think I will show up, and try to find out exactly what is going on here. In this primary, I emphasized several significant areas of difference with the incumbent: illegal immigration; sexual orientation as a protected class; and more alternatives to the public school system. It is possible that Republicans here are heavily in favor of illegal immigration, sexual orientation as a protected class, and maintaining the public school monopoly. If so, I am terribly, terribly confused by what is going on here. Labels: Idaho politics Oregon-Like Weather The last couple of weeks (ever since I finished balancing Big Bertha 2.0) has been like Oregon: cloudy when it isn't raining. Tonight is the first night that I have been tempted to roll out the telescope. If this keeps up, everything will be green and beautiful--and then the liberals will move here and make the place uninhabitable. Labels: telescopes, welcome to Idaho Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Another Mass Murder Stopped Before It Got Mass From the May 26, 2008 Reno Gazette-Journal: The initial investigation indicated that there had been two separate shooters during the incident. One of the alleged shooters, Ernesto Fuentes Villagomez, age 30 of Winnemucca, was among the three men who were dead on arrival. The other was a 48 year old Reno man who was initially taken into custody at the scene as a person of interest.Gee, did this get major news coverage? I wonder why not? Thanks to Dustin's Gun Blog for the pointer. Labels: concealed carry Really Bad Ideas Spread, Like Herpes My friend Eric Scheie over at Classical Values has a rather long piece that starts out about preservation of a beautiful old fire station in Philadelphia, then moves rapidly into a discussion of the economics of cities building sports stadiums and convention centers--and points out what many troublemakers have been pointing for a number of years: these projects are always pitched to the voters as ways of promoting economic development--but they don't work. Of course, once one city screws up and does this, other cities decide that they need to do likewise in the hopes of getting their share of the sports team and convention business. Special interests in the area of the proposed development make out like bandits on these projects, while taxpayers as a whole get looted--and business in other parts of the city are the usual losers. Because Civilization Comes First Why will I be voting for John McCain, the least repulsive of the Democrats who are running? M. Simon over at Classical Values is definitely libertarian, not conservative. There's a lot about McCain he doesn't like--as there is a lot about McCain that I don't like. But he's voting for McCain for a reason. He reminds us that there is a war on against a force that is hard to distinguish from the Nazis, and "my pet issues can wait until our civilization is properly secured." Obama is going to lose that war. Here's the motto for those of us holding our noses and voting for McCain in November: Because Civilization Comes First Labels: 2008 presidential candidates, terrorism A Profoundly Serious Criticism This is a profoundly serious criticism of the Bush Administration coming from someone who was part of it. From the May 27, 2008 Atlanta Journal-Constitution: WASHINGTON — In a book due out Monday, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan offers a blistering review of the administration and concludes that his longtime boss misled the nation into an unnecessary war in Iraq. Now, there's a lot of argument about the intelligence involved. I have been prepared to accept that Hussein's past history argued that if the intelligence was ambiguous, the precautionary principle would argue for taking action. And the British Parliament's Butler Report did find some serious evidence. Still, I find myself asking this rather serious question: if, as McClellan says, he could see that Bush was intentionally misleading the nation into war back then, why didn't McClellan say anything? Why didn't he quit his job and blow the whistle? This would have been a serious malfeasance of office issue; perhaps even an impeachable offense. So why did McClellan stay in his job until forced out in 2006? One's obligations to the nation on something as momentous as going to war should take precedence over personal loyalty. It makes me wonder how much of this is that McClellan is trying to sell a book. Labels: Iraqi WMDs Driving Costs I've noticed that in spite of gas prices here that are beginning to hit $4 per gallon, people are still driving behemoths--with people driving from Boise to McCall in motor homes, and SUVs towing boats and trailers. So I started to do the math to figure out how much it would save to buy a high mileage vehicle to drive in the ten months of the year when we don't have a couple feet of snow. Our Trailblazer gets about 18 mpg by using the cruise control at freeway speed. Figure 1200 miles per month, so 67 gallons. Even at $5 per gallon, that's $333 per month. A Toyota Prius might get 45 mpg. That's about 27 gallons. At $5 per gallon, that's $133 per month. Okay, $200 per month difference in gasoline is pretty substantial--but it won't make the payments on the Prius, and for us, there are at least two months of the year (and sometimes three months of the year) where we have to have a four wheel drive to get in and out. Even a high mileage AWD or 4WD (like a Subaru or Suzuki SX4) doesn't get good enough gas mileage to pay for the capital costs. Even people that don't need a 4WD can't justify replacing an existing car unless gas gets a lot higher than $5 per gallon, or unless they drive 2000 miles a month. There is one and only strategy that works--drive less. I have already reached the point where I seldom make trips to buy anything for ScopeRoller except in an emergency. I don't drive down to Interstate Plastics to buy stock; the $8 shipping charge to have UPS deliver it is cheaper than driving. I look forward to seeing electric vehicles that ordinary people can afford to buy. Labels: cars Disappointing Results All precincts are now in. Corder received 1956 votes; I received 1202 votes. I am a little surprised. When talking to people in person and calling people on the phone, I found only a few people who supported Corder--and even his supporters disagreed with him on issues that I thought would be hot button issues, such as the sexual orientation bill that Corder introduced. We were roughly even in the number of signs in the district--although his signs tended to be larger. Between my efforts and the independent election campaign efforts, material supporting me far exceeded in quantity and professionalism that produced by the Corder campaign. I did talk to people that were concerned that I had too much money behind me. And I talked to people that were concerned about voting for someone who was from California because of California's reputation for liberalism--so they voted for someone who was far more liberal. I talked to people who told me that in Idaho, it is really important that you be a third or fourth generation Idahoan--and perhaps that played a major part. Incumbency is always an advantage, of course. Lots of people here don't seem to much care who runs the government. They aren't conservative; they aren't even libertarian; it's more like, "Who cares?" A late start didn't help. I talked to a lot of really upset people as I worked my way down the phone lists. But not upset enough to vote Corder out. UPDATE: Name recognition may be an issue. I'm told by an economist who has studied this subject that, "over a third of winning freshmen Congressional candidates had run unsuccessfully for Congress previously and the vast majority had run for some office previously." I'm being encouraged by prominent Republican Party officials to do this again in 2010. Maybe I'll just retrieve the signs, and hold them until I make a decision in two years. UPDATE 2: Social conservatives apparently did quite well against liberal and moderate Republicans across Idaho. I am wondering if the problem was my district, or that I am outsider. I had people tell me that being from California originally was a problem, since Californians are all known to be raving liberals. Labels: Idaho politics Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Don't Hold Your Breath Waiting For Election Results Remember that my district includes two very rural, very sparsely populated counties, so it is at least an hour's drive from some precincts to the county seats--and that's in good weather. This being late May, we're having almost winter weather, with pouring rain, cold, and lightning storms. Adding to the delay is that the ballots (at least here in Boise County) are literally paper--and we mark the votes with an X. I'm not expecting to see any results until morning. In the meantime, amuse yourself by refreshing the Idaho Secretary of State's web page. I was slightly surprised when I went to vote that I didn't even need to tell the precinct officials what my name was--they knew me by sight! UPDATE: It appears to be a resounding victory for Corder. Labels: Idaho politics Ways To Annoy Voters One of the political professionals that I spoke to encouraged me to use recorded phone calls to likely voters--and at about $0.10 to $0.11 per call, it was cheap enough that I could have had the robots call every likely voter in the district for less than $1000. But I decided not to do this, because I find these robocalls so annoying. If they annoy me, they probably annoy others. Labels: Idaho politics Italy Going Nuclear Italy has reversed a two decade old policy, and is again interested in nuclear power. From the May 25, 2008 Scotsman: The article goes on to point out that much of the anti-nuclear power movement of Europe was in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster--where a reactor of a type limited to the Soviet Union and its satellites failed--and when oil prices were much lower: The continent turned its back on nuclear power in the 1980s in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, but political and economic conditions are markedly different now. Oil was under $50 a barrel then, global warming was a fringe science and climate change had not been linked to manmade emissions.Not surprisingly, the environmentalists are terribly upset about the prospect of nuclear power plants. Labels: enviromental lunacy Sunday, May 25, 2008
More Conversations I've been working my way down the list of likely voters (those who have voted in four of the last four elections), and I'm pretty encouraged. I have talked to only a couple of voters who were on Corder's side--quite a number who have already decided to vote against Corder because of his actions, or who have decided to vote for me because they were pleased with the literature that they have seen. Quite a number hadn't committed themselves yet--but I guess this is probably a good sign--when the incumbent hasn't generated enough good will to carry him through a partisan primary. I did have one interesting conversation where the voter explained that she was a little worried that the sheer volume of campaign literature suggested that I was showing off how rich I am. I explained that my campaign hasn't spent terribly much--that the independent election campaign trying to unseat Corder has spent, as near as I can tell, more money than my campaign. I have spent an embarrassingly small amount of money out of my own pocket. Thanks to my loyal blog readers, who have contributed relatively small chunks each--but it all adds up! Labels: Idaho politics |
