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BOISE, Idaho — A New York City resident plans a long-distance run as a Democrat for the Idaho U.S. Senate seat now held by Mike Crapo, a Republican. William Bryk, who is 54, hasn't raised a nickel for the May 2010 primary. The Spokesman-Review reported he also hasn't been to Idaho in his life, but says he was prompted to run because Crapo faced only a write-in challenger in 2004. Bryk says he didn't want to let that happen again in 2010. Election law requires Idaho candidates to be residents of the state only by the day of the general election; Bryk says he'll move to Idaho if he wins the Democratic nomination. Labels: Idaho politics If legislators are going to be cutting individual programmatic functions in other agencies, though, it’s going to be interesting to see how they do it. Currently, the Legislative Budget Book used by the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee JFAC) uses an “incremental” way of describing the budget for the new fiscal year. In other words, it starts with the amount the agency received the previous year, then makes various adjustments to that figure to produce a “maintenance” figure—which would allow the agency to continue doing what it’s been doing—then adds new programs and requests. In other words, the programs that have been approved in previous years aren’t listed in detail in the budget book, at least as it currently exists. So it’s not clear how members of JFAC would receive program-specific information in order to cut existing programs. Certainly the budget development manual provided by DFM to the agencies doesn’t look any different. Labels: Idaho politics Labels: history, Idaho politics Labels: health care, Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: freedom of speech, Idaho politics On March 25, 2008, two Capitol security officers blocked Pentico's entry to the Legislative Annex and told Pentico not to enter the annex, the third and fourth floors of the Borah Post Office (the temporary home of the governor's suite of offices), and the state Department of Education. "I was asked not to have (Pentico) come back, and I relayed that information to him," Idaho State Police Corporal Jens Pattis told me Wednesday. Pattis said he consulted with Otter adviser Clete Edmunson and House Sergeant-At-Arms Judy Christensen on how to handle Pentico. Edmunson said Pentico wanted Otter to inject himself in Pentico's dispute involving Boise State University and the State Board of Education, and persisted even after being told Otter would have no part of it. "He just kept coming back to us," Edmunson complained. Was Pentico belligerent? I asked Edmunson. "I wouldn't say belligerent," Edmunson answered. "Obstinate might be the right word for it." "He wouldn't take no for an answer," added Mark Warbis, the governor's communications director. ... Equally troubling is that a very small number of government employees proclaimed three public buildings off-limits and then compelled Pentico to obey - not because they were afraid of him, but because they were tired of dealing with him. They alone determined the point at which a diligent constituent became an obstinate one. And they alone determined that Pentico's obstinance had crossed an imaginary line requiring their action. For such a severe action, there seems to be little or no real record of the events leading up to the decision to bar Pentico from state offices, as evidenced by several competing stories. Edmunson and Pattis said the House of Representatives' Judy Christensen was included in a chat about barring Pentico, but Christensen said she doesn't know who Pentico is and doesn't recall having a discussion about him. "He's not barred from the building by any means," Christensen said unsuspectingly last week. At the Department of Education, officials were under the impression Pentico was banned because he had threatened State Board of Education members. He had not. And while Pentico was banned from the Department of Education, he was not forbidden from going to the State Board offices one floor up. Yet the Board is an original source of the conflict that soured the relationship between Otter's aides and Pentico. Labels: freedom of speech, Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics NRA-ILA encourages you to attend Friday, April 17th Labels: gun rights, Idaho politics Rep. Walt Minnick, Idaho's best liaison to the Democratic majority, surprised his colleagues and some Idaho institutions with the news he wouldn't bring federal dollars to his district through the widespread but controversial use of earmarks. Minnick said he knew some people would be upset. Labels: Idaho politics The former Idaho sheriff who disappeared after he claimed to have terminal cancer has been arrested in Louisiana. Caddo County deputies found Jim Dorion after a tip led them to a residence in Shreveport, where Dorion and his wife have been staying, the Shreveport Times reported. The former Nez Perce County Sheriff is wanted in Idaho on three felony counts of accessory to burglary filed by the Idaho Attorney General's Office on Friday. Labels: Idaho politics Labels: gun rights, Idaho politics State Senator Patti Anne Lodge (R-13), Chairpalodge@senate.idaho.gov Labels: gun rights, Idaho politics Members of a new business group advocating immigration reform have been subjected to personal attacks and racist comments since announcing last month that they would advocate reforms to help secure an adequate labor supply, according to a lobbyist for the group. Brent Olmstead of the Idaho Business Coalition for Immigration told the House Agriculture Committee on Monday that the group’s members have received disturbing feedback since announcing its aims on newspaper opinion pages across the state. “Most of these letters and e-mails have ignored the issue of immigrant labor and instead have been based in personal insults and racist comments,” Olmstead said. “In response, the coalition promises to stick to the issue and what can be done to improve the availability of labor for Idaho’s employers.” The coalition includes the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, agriculture groups, food processors and contractors. Olmstead said some people have criticized the group for seeking “cheap slave labor.” He said Idaho agriculture pays more than the minimum wage. Irrigators make more than $8 an hour, and the fast-growing dairy industry pays $10 to $14 an hour, he said. “These are good paying jobs in rural Idaho, and they often come with benefits,” he said. Olmstead said his group opposes making mandatory the federal “E-verify” program, as some states have. E-Verify is an Internet-based system operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Free to employers, it links to federal databases to help them determine employment eligibility of new hires and the validity of their Social Security numbers. If U.S. citizens and legal residents are unemployed, why would any sensible person want to "reform" our immigration laws to let more workers into the country? If an employer hires $8 per hour workers, you can be pretty sure that they aren't going to be getting health insurance. The losers on this are the taxpayers who end up subsidizing emergency rooms and Medicaid so that employers can hire $8 per hour workers--instead of paying a market wage to hire those who are already legally present. I'm not angry at illegal immigrants who want a job. I'm angry at employers that think that they have a right to socialize the costs, while enjoying the individual benefits of cheap labor. The only immigration "reform" that makes sense is enforcement of the existing laws. Either employers will have to pay legal workers better, or figure out how to automate those jobs. Either is a win for the U.S. This would have been a bad idea last year. But now? Talk about a "tin ear." I am also disappointed to see IACI involved in this. Based on discussions that we had last year when I was running for State Senate, I am surprised to see them hostile to E-verify. Perhaps it was a good thing for them that I lost! UPDATE: A reader points out that perhaps this crowd has learned from Citibank, which similarly has enjoyed individual benefits, and socialized costs. Labels: Idaho politics, immigration A Minnesota appeals court today rejected Sen. Larry Craig's (R-Idaho) latest effort to withdraw his guilty plea, 18 months after he was arrested in a Minneapolis airport bathroom during an undercover sex sting. Since pleading guilty in August 2007 to disorderly conduct charges, Craig has tried to pull back that plea, arguing that his behavior was not illegal and that he was pressured into the plea by police. The Hennepin County District Court denied that petition in October 2007, and the Minnesota state Court of Appeals today affirmed that decision. In his appeal, Craig argued that the district court fundamentally erred in its decision, that the state's disorderly conduct statute was unconstitutionally broad, and that his behavior in the airport bathroom stall should be considered legally protected speech. The Appeals Court rejected all three arguments. "Appellant has not shown that the district court abused its discretion in denying his petition to withdraw his guilty plea, and neither he nor amici have shown that the disorderly conduct statute is unconstitutionally overbroad," wrote Edward Toussaint Jr., the appeals court's chief judge. Toussaint added that even if Craig's actions in the stall were considered speech, they can be restricted because they invaded the "privacy interest" of a "captive audience" -- in this case, the undercover officer in the neighboring stall. Labels: Idaho politics So far the federal Bureau of Land Management has received applications for more than 130 projects in the desert Southwest that could occupy more than 1 million acres of land. A million acres is more than 1,500 square miles. On the other hand, the Mojave Desert measures over 50,000 square miles. According to one estimate, if all these projects were built they could supply enough electricity to fuel 20 million homes. While some national environmental groups recognize that such trade-offs are necessary, some local groups are fiercely fighting the development of utility-scale solar power generation in the desert. The California-based Alliance for Responsible Energy Policy argues that the push for Big Solar promotes the "permanent destruction of hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine public lands designated for multi-purpose use that belong to the people." The Alliance also accuses the development of solar power in the desert of "wilderness killing, unacceptable groundwater depletion and the erosion of hard fought protections of public lands and private rights." The San Diego-based Desert Protective Council also opposes the construction of a high voltage power line that San Diego Gas & Electric says it needs to transmit renewable power from a solar generation project planned for California's Imperial Valley. The power line would run through an existing right-of-way in a state park, but each of its 141 new towers would average 130 feet in height. "Our take has been from day one, 'Here we go again,'" said Terry Weiner, Imperial County conservation coordinator for the Desert Protective Council to the San Diego Union-Tribune. "Here is where we can do everything out in the desert that we don't want to do in our own backyards in the city,'" The Desert Protective Council has allies in this fight. "The idea that we're going to sacrifice critical pieces of our environment to protect other pieces of our environment seems a little ironic," said Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the nonprofit California Parks Foundation in the Los Angeles Times. "That's an irony I cannot accept. We have to find a way to do both." In other words, no trade-offs. These groups want renewable power to be generated locally, preferably by placing solar photovoltaic arrays on roofs. "It's not just businesses that have slowed things down, it's not just Republicans that have slowed things down, it's also Democrats and also environmental activists sometimes that slow things down," declared a frustrated Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) during a speech at Yale University this past spring. "They say that we want renewable energy but we don't want you to put it anywhere, we don't want you to use it." Schwarzenegger added, "I don't know whether this is ironic or absurd. But, I mean, if we cannot put solar power plants in the Mojave Desert, I don't know where the hell we can put it." Labels: enviromental lunacy, Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics A growing majority of Americans believe that gaining control of the border is more important than legalizing illegal immigrants, and three out of four (74%) say the government is not doing enough to make that happen. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of voters in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey say controlling the border is more important than legalizing the status of undocumented workers, while just 21% think legalization is more important. Only 14% think the government is doing enough to secure the borders. Thirty-four percent (34%) say the current immigration situation makes them angry, and another 25% characterize themselves as mildly frustrated. For 40%, immigration is just one of many issues. These numbers are comparable to the findings in a June survey on the same topic. At that time, 83% directed their anger at the federal government, while only 12% blamed the illegals themselves. "President Ronald Reagan was right when he said, “The simple truth is that we’ve lost control of our borders and no nation can do that and survive.” Securing our borders is a matter of national security, personal security and financial security. We cannot claim to be serious about the war on terror or say that we support our troops when terrorists, in many areas, can simply walk across our borders. While employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants should be prosecuted, the fact remains that terrorists are not coming here looking for jobs. While illegal immigrants are clearly causing serious financial pressure on our schools, courts and health care systems, the terrorists are not coming here for education or health care. Something is terribly wrong when we send our military to secure Iraq’s border with Syria while at the same time refusing to secure the borders of this country. Congress must take immediate action to secure our borders. Securing our borders will not only enhance our national security, it will improve our financial security by stopping the epidemic of illegal immigration and the great strain that illegal immigrants place on our state and local governments. I would like to note that in 2005 our border patrol apprehended some 115,000 illegal aliens from countries other than Mexico (no one knows how many others made it through). There are some who say we must give amnesty to the millions of illegal immigrants in our country – I disagree. Amnesty does nothing more than reward illegal behavior. We must keep respect for the rule of law as the principle shaping the heart of our border and immigration policy. It is nonsense to think that a person who broke our laws to enter our country illegally will suddenly begin obeying our laws if we give them legal status through a grant of amnesty. Labels: Idaho politics, immigration Profits aren’t bad. But record profits that come from huge subsidies and high prices on a basic necessity are flat-out wrong. The special tax breaks and incentives given to “big oil” are an egregious example of how Washington insiders have got their priorities backwards. Taxpayers shouldn’t bear the brunt of breaks for special interests lining their pockets with our dollars. We shouldn’t be giving preferred tax treatment to the biggest oil companies in the world, who are reaping record profits while driving the average Idahoan into the poorhouse. Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics The District 22 legislative races see only one contested race, where Clayton Cramer is seeking to unseat Republican incumbent Tim Corder. When someone accuses Corder of being too liberal (or at least not conservative enough), you can pretty much figure Cramer is way out in right field -- in fact, beyond the bleachers. Corder may be a little more conservative on some issues than we'd normally like, but there is no question he is a hard-working, responsive and intelligent legislator who has represented District 22 well. The editorial board unanimously and strongly endorses Corder for re-election. Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics, machining Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: deinstitutionalization, Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics, mental illness Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics, mental illness Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: freedom of religion, homosexuality, Idaho politics Try Boise, Idaho, with its, um, potatoes. A new study funded largely by the Department of Homeland Security ranked 132 American cities according to vulnerability to terrorist attacks. Boise was the only city in the western half of the country to make the top 10. It came from four years of work and a series of mathematical formulas developed by Walter W. Piegorsch, a professor at the University of Arizona, with help from Susan Cutter at the University of South Carolina and Frank Hardisty at Pennsylvania State University. The study was published in December by Risk Analysis, a well-regarded journal. The researchers assessed the vulnerability of each city to a terrorist attack based on three things: socioeconomics, infrastructure, and geophysical hazards such as the potential for flooding or fire. The analysis measured not whether a city would make an attractive target to a terrorist but rather how well it could withstand an attack, Piegorsch said. "This wasn't a question of what places a terrorist wants," Piegorsch said. "The targetability is not an issue here; it's the vulnerability if they were targeted." Labels: Idaho politics, terrorism Labels: economics, Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics How big is the problem of uninsured Idahoans? A website sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which wants everyone covered, claims that the 2006 Current Population Survey data indicates that 14.7% of Idahoans are uninsured. That's actually better than the national average (although not by much). Here's a report put together by Mathematica Policy Research for the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee last year. It estimates that 16-18% of the "non-elderly population" of Idaho was uninsured as of 2005. (People over 65 are covered by Medicare; hence the discrepancy with the 14.7% figure.) Characteristics of the uninsured are unsurprising: the 18-24 and 25-34 populations seem to be especially prone to being uninsured, while only 10% of the 0-17 population are uninsured. This is probably, at least in part, because large numbers of Idahoans graduate either high school (and don't go on to college) or graduate college, and lose eligibility under their parents health insurance plan. While no report gives a breakdown of illegal immigrants versus legal residents, the combination of low pay and lack of knowledge of our system means that illegal immigrants in California are disproportionately uninsured. I would be surprised if that is not the case in Idaho as well. Fixing the illegal immigrant problem would certainly make some progress on fixing this problem, too, both by encouraging illegal immigrants to leave Idaho, and because doing so would drive up the wages of legal workers who compete with illegal immigrants for low-paying jobs. We should not overemphasize the part that illegal immigrants play in this problem. Federation for American Immigration Reform (an advocacy group) estimated in 2007 that there were about 35,000 illegal aliens in Idaho. Even if none of them were insured (which seems unlikely), this would be, at most, about one-seventh of Idaho's uninsured population. I'm not thrilled that 10% of the 0-17 population are uninsured, but that also means that 90% of children are insured, either privately, or through governmental insurance programs such as Medicaid or SCHIP. Why are there Idahoans who are uninsured? I was uninsured for a few months, back when I was 19 years old, mostly because I wasn't thinking about it. I worked for an employment agency with no benefits. Ijust never thought about the need for health insurance--I was in good health, and seldom saw the doctor. After a few months, I did start to think about it, and I went out and bought individual health insurance that covered just hospitalization. I figured that I would pay everything else out of pocket. It made the cost of coverage a lot more reasonable. I'm guessing that many of Idaho's uninsured are in that situation because of poverty. The statistics in that Mathematica Policy Research study shows that 45,000 adults with incomes below $15,000 per year were uninsured--or 49% of that income group. I would expect that most of these couldn't afford health insurance, and were too well off to qualify for Medicaid. Ditto for the roughly 70,000 uninsured adults with incomes in the $15,000 to $25,000 per year When I looked into this last year (when I was considering retiring), I found that a basic individual health insurance policy will cost about $300 to $400 a month for an adult, with deductibles in the $2500 per year range. You should consider such a plan to be coverage for serious things that go wrong--and you will be paying for your prescriptions and office visits. I'm told that if you can tolerate a $9000 per year deductible, you can get coverage for $99 per month (at least in some parts of Idaho). Still, while much of the under $25,000 per year group may not be able to afford health insurance, there are still uninsured adults making more than $50,000 a year. Not as many, or as high a percentage--but whatever is causing 4% of people in this income bracket to be uninsured, poverty isn't likely the reason. That's a net income of at least $3000 per month. You can afford to buy health insurance with that kind of income--and if you can't, that's a foolishness problem, not a poverty problem. Much of the uninsured problem seems to be with unemployed people, those living in rural areas, and working for small employers. Of employers with less than 10 employees, only a bit more than 30% offer health insurance to their employees. Part-time employees, also unsurprisingly, are disproportionately uninsured. Most group health insurance plans are only available to full-time employees (either 30 or 32 hours per week, depending on the plan). Labels: health care, Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics Labels: abortion, Idaho politics "Today we had media people on the Floor of the House during the Pledge of Allegiance. It was noted by several members of the Body and myself that they did not verbally participate in the Pledge. "Please inform members of the press that if they choose not to participate in the Pledge they have ample time following the Pledge and before the 11th order to join us on the Floor." Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat, coasted to victory over a challenger so broke and dispirited that he had dropped out of the campaign. But the ouster of the Democrats from control of the Senate means that Senator Baucus, 60, will relinquish his powerful post as chairman of the Finance Committee, which handles legislation on taxes and Social Security. Mr. Baucus's re-election to a fifth term became almost a certainty after Oct. 10, when his Republican challenger, State Senator Mike Taylor, withdrew after Mr. Baucus broadcast an ad that Mr. Taylor said implied he was gay. Mr. Taylor, who had already spent $1 million, was 20 points behind. Perennial Democratic strategist Bob Shrum drops a bombshell in his new book, according to a report in today’s Washington Post. In the book, he says he asked former Sen. John Edwards at the outset of his 1998 Senate campaign, “What is your position, Mr. Edwards, on gay rights?” “I’m not comfortable around those people,” was Edwards’ reply, according to Shrum. To say the denials today from Edwards’ camp are unconvincing would be a gross understatement. Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics Why do I keep thinking of the very funny 2004 campaign ad from Jerry Zucker (one of the writers of Airplane!) with the guy who keeps changing his mind--about which wire to cut on the bomb, which woman to marry--and especially the end, where Mr. Indecision starts to look at the clergyman who was about to perform the wedding with a lustful look in his eye? Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics Labels: humor, Idaho politics The Letter I Am Sending Today to My Idaho Legislators Is there a serious and avoidable problem with Idaho's mental health system? I am seeing some troubling signs that deficiencies in how we deal with the mentally ill are impairing public safety. This letter will give a series of recent incidents that at least suggest that the legislature has a duty to ask some questions. The most visible example involves Jason Hamilton, the recent sniper in Moscow. He had a history of violence, and after a suicide attempt, was ordered to submit to a psychological examination--at which time he told the psychiatrist, that the next time, "he would try to take a large number of people with him." Three months later, that's exactly what he did, killing three people and himself.[1] I've tried to understand why Hamilton wasn’t hospitalized for mental illness. It doesn't seem to be a deficiency of our laws. As I read Idaho Code 66-322, Hamilton was clearly someone who needed to be hospitalized. So why wasn't he? Was it lack of space? Did the psychiatrist not believe that Hamilton seriously intended mass murder? Did he not realize that Hamilton had a history of violence? Was the psychiatrist afraid of being sued if he recommended that Hamilton be hospitalized? If the problem was just the short, unhappy life of Jason Hamilton, perhaps we could just write it off as one individual tragedy. But there are plenty of other worrisome examples that suggest that something isn’t working here. John Joseph Delling is being held on two murder charges, among many other crimes. There are some indications that Delling's problems involve mental illness. News accounts suggest that Delling's conviction at 17 of a crime of violence was because of mental illness. "The victim requested that Delling be given a mental evaluation, but it's not clear whether an evaluation took place."[2] More recently, family members recognized that his behavior suggested mental illness, and took away and sold his guns.[3] There are plenty of other examples, such as Brent Eugene High of Nampa, who was arrested back in January after allegedly murdering two housemates with an ax. He told police that he did it, and his remarks and actions suggest schizophrenia. His attorney is arguing mental defect.[4] This isn't just an Idaho problem, of course. America has had a lot of recent incidents where people with significant mental illness problems have become headlines by committing or attempting murder--and very often, there was plenty of advance warning, with previous hospitalizations and indications that they were psychotic and dangerous.[5] This problem is gaining national prominence—at least partly because of the Virginia Tech murders a few months ago. The New York Times wrote about "spree killers" several years back, and also noticed that much of the problem is associated with mental illness.[6] Professor Bernard Harcourt of the University of Chicago Law School has recently pointed to a statistically significant relationship between the mental hospital institutionalization and prison population rates and murder rates from 1928 through 2000.[7] Not every mentally ill person is a danger to others, of course. Many are completely harmless to others—but dangerous to themselves. It is heartbreaking to read news accounts from Oregon of mentally ill people who have starved themselves to death, while family, friends, and police looked on helplessly.[8] To a large extent, the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1960s and 1970s is to blame. Isn’t it time for our legislature to start asking some questions about this? There’s no question that some of the changes that Idaho might have to make are going to cost some money. But I find myself wondering if it is really that much more expensive to provide sufficient care for the mentally ill before they become tragic headlines. Murder trials, cleaning up crime scenes, psychiatric evaluations to determine competency to stand trial--these aren't cheap, either. And while hospitalizing a mentally ill person for many years (as some may need to be) is expensive--so is life in prison for murder. Dealing with homelessness isn't cheap either, and this is at least partly a consequence of the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. The January 2006 unsheltered homeless survey for Idaho showed that 5.1% of the homeless by their own answer were seriously mental ill, 14.3% described themselves as "disabled" but would not identify in what way, and 10.1% were homeless because of substance abuse (with which mental illness is often masked).[9] I look forward to hearing from you that the legislature is prepared to start asking questions. As you might gather from this letter, I have been researching the subject for several years now, and I would be happy to provide assistance to legislative staff in looking into what actions, if any, the legislature might need to take for the benefit of Idahoans. [1] Associated Press, “Moscow gunman's suicidal admission,” KTVB, May 22, 2007, last accessed August 16, 2007. [2] Associated Press, “Man accused of shooting 3 during cross-country road trip; high school link probed,” USA Today, April 10, 2007, last accessed August 16, 2007. [3] Rebecca Boone, Associated Press, “Classmate slaying suspect called erratic,” Boston Globe, April 11, 2007, last accessed August 16, 2007. [4] Kaycee Murray, “Both Nampa murder victims identified,” KTVB, January 29, 2007, , last accessed August 16, 2007; Heath Druzin, “High pleads not guilty in double murder,” Idaho Statesman, June 23, 2007. [5] “Slaughter in a School Yard,” Time, January 30, 1989, 29; AP, “Police Still Unraveling Trail Left by Woman in Rampage,” New York Times, May 22, 1988, last accessed April 24, 2007; Jaxon Van Derbeken, Bill Wallace, and Stacy Finz, “L.A. Suspect Dreamed of Killing: History of erratic behavior, ties to neo-Nazi group,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 12, 1999, A1, , last accessed April 29, 2007; Jim Yardley, “DEATHS IN A CHURCH: THE OVERVIEW; An Angry Mystery Man Who Brought Death,” New York Times, September 17, 1999, last accessed April 29, 2007; “Tapes, letters reveal gunman's chilling actions, thoughts,” CNN, September 17, 1999, last accessed April 29, 2007; Bill Miller, “Capitol Shooter's Mind-Set Detailed,” Washington Post, April 23, 1999, last accessed April 24, 2007; Martin Kasindorf, “Woman kills 5, self at postal plant,” USA Today, February 1, 2006, last accessed April 24, 2007; Jim Maniaci, “'Crazy as a loon',” Gallup [N.M.] Independent, February 2, 2006, last accessed April 24, 2007; “Close the loophole Cho sneaked through ,” Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot, April 25, 2007, last accessed April 25, 2007; Dr. Michael Welner, “Cho Likely Schizophrenic, Evidence Suggests,” ABC News, April 17, 2007, last accessed April 24, 2007; UPI, “AROUND THE NATION; Courtroom Gunman Is Freed in Bail,” New York Times, April 13, 1986, last accessed April 24, 2007; Jeremy Hay, “Son held in slaying of mother in RP,” Santa Rosa (Cal.) Press-Democrat, April 19, 2007, last accessed April 24, 2007; Jaxon Van Debeken, “Slasher Suspect Had Violated His Previous Probation: Authorities lost track of case,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 13, 1998, last accessed April 24, 2007; Michael A. Fuoco, “Baumhammers' attorney to argue mental infirmity,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 1, 2000, last accessed April 24, 2007; Jim McKinnon, “Baumhammers' father protests death penalty,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 10, 2001, last accessed April 24, 2007; Frank Trippett, “The Madman on the Ferry,” Time, July 21, 1986, last accessed May 13, 2007; Jim O'Grady, “Officials Decide to Release Man Who Killed 2 With Sword,” New York Times, March 26, 2000, , last accessed May 13, 2007; Susan Kuczka, “As teen heals, issues about attacker linger,” Chicago Tribune, August 28, 2007, last accessed September 9, 2007; Steven Gurr, “Man shot during confrontation: Officials say man had mental history, made threatening gestures,” Gainesville [Florida] Times, September 7, 2007, last accessed September 9, 2007. [6] Laurie Goodstein and William Glaberson, “The Well-Marked Roads to Homicidal Rage,” New York Times, April 10, 2000. [7] Bernard E. Harcourt, “From the Asylum to the Prison: Rethinking the Incarceration Revolution,” Texas Law Review, 84[2006]:1766-75. [8] Michelle Roberts, “Free to Die,” Portland Oregonian, December 30, 2002, last accessed May 7, 2007. [9] Idaho Homeless Policy Council, Idaho’s Action Plan to Reduce Homelessness, last accessed August 17, 2007. Labels: deinstitutionalization, Idaho politics A spokesman, who insisted that Mr. Craig is not gay and was not trying to solicit a police officer in a men’s room stall, said that the Idaho lawmaker had initially announced his resignation from the Senate in hopes of avoiding publicity, and “to make the whole thing go away,” after he discovered that pleading guilty to a crime failed to make it go away. “Essentially, Sen. Craig is still experimenting with ways to make previous mistakes vanish,” the unnamed source said. “If backing out of his resignation and revoking his guilty plea doesn’t work, he may apply for a refund on the airline ticket that took him to Minneapolis in the first place.” Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics This post has a simple premise: Mike Rogers (the liberal blogger, not the Congressman) has the legal right to "out" any gay politician he wants to "out." He does not, however, have the legal right to extort a gay politician, especially when the desired payoff is a vote from that politician. Extortion is a felony, and when the targets of extortion are politicians, the entire system is corrupted in a vile and unacceptable way. 18 U.S.C. § 875(d) states, "Whoever, with the intent to extort from any person . . . any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate . . . commerce any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee or of another . . . shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both." Arguably, Mike Rogers extorted Larry Craig by threatening to "out" him if he did not vote against the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. For this, he deserves the condemnation of all morally responsible citizens of this country and, at least, an investigation by the federal government to look for possible criminal wrongdoing. The facts of Mike Rogers' scheme were covered here at RedState when Mr. Rogers "outed" Senator Craig three weeks before the 2006 elections. At the time, Senator Craig denied Mike Rogers' allegations, and no one had any reason to believe Rogers over Craig. The story blew over. In light of recent events, it appears that Mike Rogers really did have the goods on Craig, to a remarkably specific extent (to wit, that he engaged in gay sexual acts in public restrooms), which makes his actions a very serious matter indeed. While Senator Craig deserves opprobrium for placing himself in a position to be extorted, all believers in clean representative democracy should shudder at the thought of a private citizen influencing the votes of a United States Senator through extortion. Senator Craig has justly resigned. Now we should examine whether Mike Rogers ran afoul of 18 U.S.C. § 875(d). Our system of representative democracy cannot countenance such brazen attempts to corrupt legislators. Make no mistake: Mike Rogers' attempt to coerce Larry Craig into a specific vote by threatening to publicly damage his reputation was no more defensible or tolerable than a quid pro quo involving votes traded for cash. Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics According to the court documents, Craig was in a bathroom near the "Northstar Crossing" part of the terminal. The restroom is inside the security clearance area, but it is located in the foot court, far away from the airport gates. Craig likely would have had to switch airlines in order to pass by this restroom, a very unlikely occurance. This is a PDF map of the airport. The bathroom is in the central food court location, which is also verified by an online gay cruising website which lists this as the location: Don't forget that in the court documents, Craig was caught peeping at the police officer through a crack in the door before he went into the stall and began his motions. DK: All right. I, I know I can bring you to jail, but that's not my goal here, okay? (inaudible) LC: Don't do that. You You DK: I'm not going to bring you to jail LC: You solicited me. Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics The more I hear about Larry Craig’s likely replacement, Jim Risch, the more I like the guy. I've already noted that he’s solidly against illegal immigration. Now here's a Risch quote on Katrina: Labels: Idaho politics Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics The most serious finding by the Statesman was the report by a professional man with close ties to Republican officials. The 40-year-old man reported having oral sex with Craig at Washington's Union Station, probably in 2004. The Statesman also spoke with a man who said Craig made a sexual advance toward him at the University of Idaho in 1967 and a man who said Craig "cruised" him for sex in 1994 at the REI store in Boise. The Statesman also explored dozens of allegations that proved untrue, unclear or unverifiable. During its investigation, the Statesman interviewed 300 people, visited the ranch where Craig grew up, and made two trips to Washington, D.C. On May 12, two days before its interview with Craig, the Statesman finally interviewed Rogers' "best source," the man who says he is certain he had a brief sexual encounter with Craig at Union Station, which is two blocks from Craig's office. The man said the sex occurred in two restrooms on a weekday afternoon. He estimated the encounter lasted three or four minutes. The man's motive was twofold. A lifelong Republican, he recently had re-registered as a Democrat because he's angry with what he sees as the GOP's gay-bashing. Second, he was tired of Rogers picking on congressional staffers and offered him the chance to "out" a senator. The Washington-area man's story has remained consistent, beginning with his Aug. 9, 2004, e-mail to Mike Rogers: "I've hooked up with Craig ... why not out some actual members and not their staffers?" Craig told the Statesman he was unaware of rumors about him being gay going back to his college days. Craig had about 150 fraternity brothers at Delta Chi during his U of I years. The Statesman interviewed 41 of them. Of those 41, three said there were jokes about him being effeminate and possibly gay. Most said that had Craig been thought to be gay, he would have never become a leader in the fraternity and the student body. As president of Delta Chi, Craig secured a $100,000 loan to remodel the fraternity house, instituted study hours, and blackballed members for drug use. They called him "Mother Craig" for his officiousness. After shedding 50 pounds the summer before college, he was elected state president of the Future Farmers of America on his second try. He also was student body president at U of I. Graduating in 1969, he won the Donald R. Theophilus Outstanding Senior Award. Five years later, at 28, he was elected to the state Senate. He's been in public office ever since. Most of Craig's college friends say he was disciplined, studious and serious, even if he was awkward with women. One woman who dated him off and on for a year asked not to be named, but said, "I don't imagine that he ever held my hand. He was into the gotta-hold-the-door-for-the-woman sort of thing. But I always felt like I was an accessory. I might as well have been his briefcase." Craig said he did sometimes invite women because a date was expected. But he said he had a serious girlfriend in college; they split over religious differences. He declined to name her. Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics Craig's arrest occurred just after noon on June 11 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. On Aug. 8, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct in the Hennepin County District Court. He paid more than $500 in fines and fees, and a 10-day jail sentence was stayed. He also was given one year of probation with the court that began on Aug. 8. Squirt.org is a site that runs a bulletin board for such men. "If you enter from the terminal, turn left and go past wash basins, urinals to the back where the stalls are. This place is THE most cruisy public place I have been," wrote one poster. "Just passed thru here the other day. This place is so hot. This place has a constant flow and variety of hot guys," wrote another. Even another poster wrote, "This is the best spot for anonymous action I've ever seen." Of all the postings in Minnesota, the airport restroom was ranked the top by that website. The details of Craig's arrest are not unique. According to a post in June at cruisingforsex.com, another public sex site, "Twenty people were arrested within the past week. Plainclothes officers wait in the stalls and tap their feet and even put their foot on yours and then arrest you when you look under the stall wall." LGBT equality advocates have also pointed out the perceived hypocrisy of Craig's arrest. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force said in a statement Monday, "There is sad irony that a United States senator from Idaho has been caught up in the same kind of thing that destroyed the lives of dozens of men in Boise in the 1950s, so tragically chronicled in `Boys of Boise.'" NGLTF added, "And by the way, why are Minneapolis tax dollars being used to have plainclothes police officers lurking idly in airport restroom stalls?" Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics A job for the sex cops I can think of a lot of good points to raise when discussing the consequences of adolescent sex. The risk of pregnancy? Check. The danger of STDs? Yes. A little moral suasion on the pitfalls of casual sex? Sure. But a stern warning that the cops may be peering into the back seat? Sounds like a nonstarter. Yet Bryan Fischer, executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance, wants to see the book thrown at hormonally challenged teens. Fischer opines that if the state's schools did a better job of teaching kids about the state's seldom-enforced laws against extramarital sex, they'd be less likely to have sex. Of course, the teachers need some backup from the cops. "Perhaps classroom education and consistent and visible enforcement of existing Idaho law would have a wonderfully salutary effect on sexual mores and sexual conduct in the Gem State," Fischer wrote. "Consistent and visible enforcement" targeting adolescent sex? Better phone dispatch for additional units. Meanwhile, hang onto your wallets. This sure sounds like a big-bucks, big-government solution to a private matter. Does anyone really want to pay additional property taxes to hire cops and deputies to work the sex beat and pay the county prosecutors to take these cases through the courts? Does anyone really want to pay to build the jail and prison cells needed to carry out the maximum sentences Fischer extols on his blog — a six-month term for "fornication," or a three-year hitch for adultery. And lastly, does anyone really think Bryan Fischer is a conservative? Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics State Controller Donna Jones said Idaho's $247 million surplus should be enough to fix roads without raising taxes. "Taxes are too high on Idaho's families," Jones said in a statement released Monday. "Instead of looking at raising taxes to pay for road and bridge repair, the Legislature could potentially use $200 million of this surplus to tackle Idaho's backlog of road repairs." Hanian said there are plenty of needs for the surplus money, like overflowing prisons, higher education, pre-kindergarten and mental health, as well as the costs that will likely stem from this year's forest fires. "When it comes to surplus dollars, the needs comes up like quills on a porcupine," Hanian said. Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics Labels: Idaho politics
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New York Arrogance
I saw this story in the October 29, 2009 Idaho Statesman, and I still can't quite get over the arrogance of it:
How kind of him! He can find out that we don't have tails and horns before he lowers himself to being the Democratic nominee!
Idaho Budget Cutting
Sharon Fisher has an article at New West's blog about the painful process of budget cutting for Idaho state government:
This is, as I understand it, how the federal government does budgeting as well--start with an assumption that every program is necessary, and at its current level, and then adjust accordingly. Now, if every governmental program was created for good reasons, and those reasons remain just as valid today as they did when it was created, this would be just fine.
But we all know that programs acquire a life of their own, and even when they no longer make sense--or at least, don't justify as big a slice of the pie as they used to--they survive. I gave two examples to my students last week: the strategic helium reserve (originally in support of our warfighting dirigible fleet) that persisted into the 1990s. The last I checked, this program was still consuming money in figuring out how to dispose of the assets and liabilities. The other was the program that required U.S. military bases in Germany to use anthracite coal from the U.S. for power generation, shipped in American bottoms. More than a decade after our bases stopped burning anthracite coal, at the request of the German government, we were still shipping it over--and then burying it on leased land.
It's a big project to sit down and revisit the decisions to create every program. But when a budget crisis arrives, maybe that's what they need to do. They may not get much else done in the meantime, but perhaps that a feature, not a bug.
The Idaho Constitution Gets More & More Curious
Art. XIII, sec. 1 directs:Bureau of immigration -- Commissioner. There shall be established a bureau of immigration, labor and statistics, which shall be under the charge of a commissioner of immigration, labor and statistics, who shall be appointed by the governor, by and with the consent of the senate. The commissioner shall hold his office for two years, and until his successor shall have been appointed and qualified, unless sooner removed. The commissioner shall collect information upon the subject of labor, its relation to capital, the hours of labor and the earnings of laboring men and women, and the means of promoting their material, social, intellectual and moral prosperity. The commissioner shall annually make a report in writing to the governor of the state of the information collected and collated by him, and containing such recommendations as he may deem calculated to promote the efficiency of the bureau.
Yet when I search Idaho government pages for information about this "Bureau of Immigration Commissioner," and search the Idaho Code, the only actual reference that I can find is in this report from the Division of Building Safety, which acknowledges that the Bureau of Immigration Labor and Statistics was created in 1899, and eliminated in 1919.
State constitutions tend to accumulate debris over time, as ideas of one era become unfashionable, or get struck down by the courts--but tend not to get removed, since this requires a vote of the people to amend the state constitution. I've read that the infamous "The Chinese" article XIX of the 1879 California Constitution wasn't actually removed until 1952, even though it had been unenforceable for a long time before that. If Idaho Const., Art. XIII, sec. 1 merely granted authority to the legislature to create such a bureau, and the governor to appoint such a commissioner, that would be one thing. But this seems to obligate both to do both. A general cleanup of the Idaho Constitution would seem like a good idea.
I'm pretty sure that Art. XIII, sec. 5 is also no longer enforced:Aliens not to be employed on public work. No person, not a citizen of the United States, or who has not declared his intention to become such, shall be employed upon, or in connection with, any state or municipal works.
This is probably the more subtle Idaho version of the California Constitution's Art. XIX. It is pretty clearly contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, which has been repeatedly recognized to protect the rights of permanent residents.
Interesting Telephone Meeting With Rep. Minnick (D-ID)
A couple of nights ago, I received a phone call that let me join into a telephone town meeting with Rep. Minnick (D-ID) concerning health care. I was really quite impressed--if there were more Democrats like this, I wouldn't regard the Democrats quite so negatively. (Of course, on either coast, someone like this wouldn't stand a chance of winning the Democratic nomination for Congress.) He made it quite clear that he was not supportive of the so-called "public option," apparently because he can see that the goal of it is to destroy the private insurers. He was also quite supportive of looking for ways to increase competition in the health insurance market--although he was also arguing for regulations to prevent insurers from refusing or dropping coverage based on pre-existing conditions.
I guess what I found most encouraging is that Minnick was saying that rather than push for a health care reform bill that represent some Democratic views, that it would make more sense to push for reforms that enjoy broad, bipartisan support. But that wouldn't be the corrupt dirty package that Pelosi and real Democrats want, so I'm guessing that Minnick's not going to get his way.
A Friend Is Running For Boise City Council
Lucas Baumbach. I don't live in Boise, but some of you do! You might want to visit his campaign website, and see if you want to get involved.
Chris Pentico's Sentencing
I showed up at the courthouse--and found a sign on the second floor, where Judge Swain's courtroom is, announcing that the Chris Pentico sentencing had been moved to courtroom 504. I suspect that they moved the sentencing because of the anticipated crowd--and it was a crowd. There wasn't a seat free, and the aisles were filled with folding chairs and standing people. I noticed Dan Popkey of the Idaho Statesman present, taking notes.
Rep. Pete Nielsen (R-ID) testified in mitigation of the sentence. (Essentially, arguing why the sentence should be light.) One of the claims made by the prosecution was that the governor's staff had asked to have Pentico banned. Nielsen testified that when he first heard about this ban, he contacted both Captain Rogers, of the capitol security detail of the state police, and Clete Edmondsen of the governor's office. Rogers at first didn't know who gave the order, and Edmondsen claimed to know nothing of it. (I believe that Nielsen passed this word back to Pentico at some point, which would at least give Pentico reason to be unsure if he was banned or not.) Later, Captain Rogers got back to Nielsen, and told Nielsen that Edmondsen had ordered Pentico's ban.
Nielsen also testified that in the almost four years that he had known Pentico, through Elmore County Republican Party activities, and at the legislature, he had never known Pentico to be anything but honest and polite in his dealings with others. Nielsen also turned over a letter to the judge to this effect signed by a number of other members of the legislature. (And remember: one of the original reasons for banning Pentico was that he made members of the legislature "nervous.") I don't know how many other members signed that letter, but I don't get the impression that it was more than a couple.
The prosecutor claimed that the reason Pentico was banned was that had repeatedly harassed staff in the Board of Education offices, and requested that Pentico be given a $500 fine ($300 suspended), 90 days in jail (85 days suspended), and a no-contact order with the governor's office, Idaho department of education, and a couple of other branches of the government, for some significant period of time. (I don't have the period in my notes, but I think it might have been two years.)
Pentico's attorney, Derr, is pretty old--beginning to get the shakes associated with Parkinson's. His statement wasn't spectacularly well delivered, and at one point, he called a witness out of the crowd, Wayne Hoffman of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, who had apparently worked at the Board of Education during the time Pentico was supposedly harassing staff (although he was never arrested or ordered to leave the premises during that period). After a few words between them, Derr changed his mind. Derr should have talked to Hoffman first before calling him as a witness, I think.
Where Derr did best was point out that the statute prohibiting trespass requires you to be told to leave and not return--and when Officer Pattis claims that he told Pentico that there were places that he was not welcome, and was not to return, these were not places that he had been at that day, and was not at them at the time of notice. More importantly and more eloquently, Derr asked if any officer could tell any citizen they can only exercise their First Amendment rights in writing, or with a police escort to and from a government office? There's an obvious chilling effect when you have to give 48 hours notice to the police that you wish to deliver a complaint to a government official. (This was the circumstances under which Officer Pattis says he told Pentico that he could hand deliver complaints to the governor's office.)
Judge Swain argued that the statute under which Pentico was convicted is defective, in that it treats both public and private property the same, but that he was obligated to "apply the laws to the facts." He also acknowledged that there was a First Amendment conflict in a situation like this--which suggests to me that he didn't read the Korsen decision as carefully (or perhaps as broadly) as I did. He did acknowledge that Pentico's conduct, assuming all the facts that he obviously believed to convict him, constituted a de minimis violation of the statute. Because of "the unusual facts of the case," such as Pentico's community standing, lack of criminal history, indeed, lack of any evidence of dangerousness, "no jail time" "no fine" "no court costs" and "no no-contact order." All of this was a withheld judgment for thirty days. If Pentico can stay out of trouble for that period of time, the conviction disappears.
I don't know if Judge Swain was influenced by the large crowd of well behaved people that showed up to make sure that justice was done. In one sense, I would hope that Swain was not influenced. Justice shouldn't be determined by popular sentiment. On the other hand, if there's something fishy about a case, and a defendant has this much of the public concerned about it, maybe it should influence a judge to rethink his position.
Clearly, Judge Swain was putting it back on the legislature to fix what he acknowledged was a defective statute. I approached Rep. Nielsen after adjournment, and indicated that he needs to introduce a bill next session to fix this. He agreed, and asked me to suggest some language. I told him I would think about it for a few days, and do so.
Pretty clearly, there are circumstances where it is appropriate to exclude someone from governmental offices. But those circumstances need to be pretty extreme--not just to make government officials and their employees comfortable. I would suggest that requiring a judge to issue a restraining order should be the first step, or perhaps the second step--something that provides for due process, and an impartial observer to decide whether a citizen's legitimate reason to enter public parts of government offices is exceeded by the legitimate needs of government to operate without intimidation or physical danger. Any ideas that you have: let me know.
UPDATE: Dan Popkey's article about the sentencing hearing was mostly correct, but what was left out is no surprise, consider Popkey's political leanings. The comments by the liberals that dominate the Idaho Statesman's comment board are unsurprising: lots of personal insults to Pentico, and general contempt for the First Amendment right of free speech and right to petition government officials for redress of grievances. If you aren't engaged in nude dancing, Idaho liberals aren't big on those protections.
Chris Pentico & The First Amendment
I mentioned several weeks ago that an acquaintance had been convicted of trespassing for dropping off a letter complaining of what he considers unlawful activity by Boise State University with respect to funding of student clubs. I now have the transcripts of the trial and pre-trial hearings. The trial itself is astonishingly uninteresting, except for the March 25, 2008 incident in which Officer Pattis told Pentico that he was not welcome in state government buildings. If you believe Pattis, he was orally warned that he would be arrested for trespassing. If you believe Pentico, he was told that he wasn't welcome. There was no written warning to Pentico. From the cross-examination by Pentico's attorney of Officer Pattis, on p. 25:BY MR. DERR:
In a criminal case (as this is), there's a requirement for a guilt beyond a reasonable doubt--and whether Mr. Pentico was formally warned that he would subject to arrest if he returned to the state office buildings seems to be Officer Pattis's word versus Chris Pentico's word. While there was a recording of Pentico's arrest on April 2--the only recording of what happened March 25, when Pattis claims to have to told Pentico that he was subject to arrest if he returned, seems to have some problems. From p. 32 of the trial transcript, is this exchange between the prosecutor (Wallace) the defense attorney (Derr), and Judge Swain:
Q You did not provide any written orders to Mr. Pentico on March 25, did you?
A No, sir. I did not.
Q Nor any other statements, except what you’ve testified to, I mean as far as trespassing and coming back, not welcome?
A Not to -- not that I remember, sir.MR. DERR: Well I’m looking for a tape, a video, that I wanted to show of 3/25.
It appears from the rest of the transcript that Derr never got it to play--and if this audio confirmed Officer Pattis's claim about the March 25th conversation, you would have expected the prosecution to have played it, because it would have demonstrated that Pentico had been warned not to return, at risk of arrest. Whether Pentico knowingly violated the law hinges entirely on whether he was warned that he was risking arrest for a crime if he returned--and all the state is Pattis's word vs. Pentico's word.
THE COURT: Does state have it?
MS. WALLACE: Well, Your Honor, we previously disclosed a tape from 3/25. There’s no audio on it and it’s an encrypted CD that doesn’t play, and that’s previously been disclosed. Mr. Derr called me about it yesterday and mentioned that it doesn’t play well, and it just doesn’t play well. That’s what we’ve disclosed and we gave what we had.
THE COURT: Alright. Well there we go. Ball’s in your court, Mr. Derr.
(Off-record colloquy of defendant’s counsel)
MR. DERR: I don’t know how to run this machine.
THE COURT: Well Mr. Derr, I’ll tell you what I tell all the young lawyers that come before me to practice. Presentation of evidence is the responsibility of the proponent of the evidence. We’ll give you a little time to figure it out and then we’ll -- do you if it -- will it even play?
More troubling is that the judge had ruled in pretrial motions that no First Amendment challenge to the charge would be allowed. From the April 20 pretrial motion, pp. 4-6:THE COURT: Well I’m concerned about the late disclosure, but I’m also concerned about the proffered testimony in your motion which states that Mr. Parker will be a character witness, and knows among other things, of his valuable and extensive activities in First Amendment matters, which is specifically not relevant to this trial, Mr. Derr. That’s a legal question, and I’ve already ruled. We’re not going to have testimony about Mr. Pentico’s actions were justified under the First Amendment.
MR. DERR: I see. And of course, the Court understands we’ve argued that before. We think that’s the basic element of this case.
THE COURT: Well Mr. Derr, I’m very concerned. You don’t have to agree with my ruling --
MR. DERR: I know.
And yet being able to petition for redress of grievances is a fundamental human right, recognized by the First Amendment. The testimony of the Claudia Nally, under direct examination by the prosecutor, is pretty clear about Pentico's behavior at the time he dropped off the letter on April 2, pp. 27-29 of the trial transcript:
THE COURT: -- but you do have to follow it. You can appeal, but we’re not going to have testimony about the First Amendment in this trial. There are only two issues here. One is whether Mr. Pentico was properly advised that he could not be present on certain specified locations, and number two, was he present, physically, on certain specified locations. The state is not going to be allowed to present testimony about why he was excluded. On the other hand, Mr. Pentico is not going to be allowed to present testimony regarding the content of his communication or assert that it’s protected by the First Amendment. That’s a legal question and I’ve ruled. I don’t see that based on your motion, Mr. Parker has character testimony of a pertinent nature to the trial, that in combination with the late disclosure, I’m going to grant the state’s objection. Mr. Parker will not be allowed to testify.Q And do you recall -- well, you must get to know people pretty well working in that office. People coming and going. Are you familiar with a man by the name of Christopher Pentico?
Oddly enough, even though there seems to have been some claim that Pentico was harassing people working there--there was no testimony at trial about this, and it seems that the judge had decided not to allow it--and yet this would seem to be the only legitimate basis for denying Pentico his First Amendment right to go into government buildings, and leave a letter complaining about improper governmental actions.
A Yes. I am.
Q And how do you know that person?
A He has been in the office, to the best of my recollection, five or six different times, not necessarily at this location, but at the Capitol building also.
Q Okay. And back in -- in March and April of 2008, did you receive information that he wasn’t welcome anymore?
A I did, actually.
Q And after you received that information, did you see him again?
A I did, actually. He came in on April 2nd and dropped off a letter.
Q Okay. And when you say April 2nd, was that April 2nd of 2008?
A 2008. Mm-hmm.
Q And tell us about when he came in.
A He -- he just came through the front door and I was actually kind of surprised to see him, and he came in and said he had a letter he’d like to drop off. And I said I’d take the letter. And he left it on my desk and then he went out the door.
Now, Mr. Pentico is a somewhat intense person--but no more intense than I am. He's not someone that anyone would have much reason to fear--he's not 6'4" with bulging muscles. He's fairly slight of build. To deny someone their First Amendment rights should require some pretty strong evidence--but the judge seems to have decided that it was irrelevant to the question. It's unfortunate that the ACLU here isn't interested in First Amendment questions.
Mr. Pentico is supposed to be sentenced on Monday; I guess that I will go to see what happens.
UPDATE: Wayne Hoffman at Idaho Freedom Foundation interviewed some of the players in this matter, and has some interesting reporting:
There are at least two cases in which the Idaho courts have attempted to define the limits of the trespassing statute under which Pentico was convicted with respect to public property. The Idaho Supreme Court decided State v. Korsen (2003) and an Idaho district court decided State v. Stonecalf WarriorWoman (2008). Neither is exactly on point, but Korsen in particular should have given Judge Swain some guidance.
In the WarriorWoman case, a New Ager announced that she wasplanning on attending a concert at NIC, on February 27, 2007, for the purpose of making a political statement. NIC learned of this through a posting placed on the internet by Warriorwoman. Tr. p. 2, Ll. 16-25; p. 2, Ll. 8-11. NIC also received a telephone call from Warriorwoman saying she was going to be at the Raining Jane concert that night, and she was going to bring a “Tomahawk with a 30-million-year-old part to it, that she planned to dance and would be wearing too tight of clothing, and she wanted a black student and a yellow student to dance with her.” Tr. p. 5, Ll. 1-8. The stated reason was “She was holding the four corners of the earth to save the evil American.” Id., Ll. 24-25.
WarriorWoman was arrested at the gate for refusing to allow for a search of her backpack, and was told that she was trespassing. The decision decided that while she might have a right to free speech, the tomahawk crossed the line from speech to conduct. It's not a terribly good decision, in my opinion, because it fails to answer the question of whether WarriorWoman could have been denied entry if she had said that she was going to show up and hold up a sign expressing her opinion.
The Korsen decision is again not exactly on point, but closer. The defendant, Korsen:
At trial:
David Korsen appeared at the office of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare in Boise to discuss his child support obligations. He informed personnel at the office that he might get loud and that he was not going to leave until he obtained some relief regarding his support requirements. He learned from the social worker that only the court could grant the relief he was seeking through making adjustments to child support payments he owed. The discussion grew louder and louder and, although Korsen did not use profanities or make any threats, he refused to leave the offices. The police were called, and Korsen was arrested at the scene on a charge of trespass under I.C. § 18-7008(8), because he refused to leave after being asked by the regional director of the department, who was in charge of the offices, to vacate
the premises.The magistrate concluded that the statute violated the Constitution because it was void for vagueness as applied to public property and because the statute failed to properly inform a person on public property about the specific conduct prohibited by the statute.
The Idaho Supreme Court overturned this ruling. With respect to vagueness:Neither the magistrate nor the district court examined the constitutionality of I.C. § 18-7008(8) as it applied to Korsen’s specific conduct in this case. Nor did they examine the statute in toto. Rather, they applied a hybridized form of the facial test, which ordinarily is used to determine if a statute is void in all its applications, by considering the statute only in its application to public property. By finding the statute vague, not as applied to Korsen’s conduct, but as to all applications on public property alone, the magistrate and the district court used an improper standard for determining whether the statute was facially vague. It was improper to conclude that the statute is invalid on its face as applied to public property, because the standard to sustain a facial challenge requires that a statute be held impermissibly vague in all of its applications. See Hoffman Estates, 455 U.S. at 497. Furthermore, because the magistrate failed to examine the individual conduct of Korsen, consideration of the “as applied” standard with respect to only public property was in error.
This argues that Judge Swain should have considered evidence of whether Pentico's conduct constituted constitutionally protected activity or not. He apparently did not allow it. The Idaho Supreme Court also found that the lower court had erred because they had concluded that any free speech was protected on public property from such a trespassing charge, rather than looking at the specific conduct of Korsen. And this paragraph seems to fit Pentico's case rather well:As an example of the statute’s reaching constitutionally protected speech, the district court pointed out the situation of people entering the Capitol to meet with legislators, asserting that, because the threat of prosecution under the trespass statute “potentially chills such clearly protected activity, the Court finds that the statute is unconstitutional in a substantial portion of the cases to which it applies.” This conclusion, however, illustrates the district court’s erroneous application of the facial overbreadth doctrine. A statute will not be invalidated for overbreadth merely because it is possible to come up with a hypothetical situation in which the statute is
Okay, Pentico's situation isn't hypothetical. The following paragraphs indicate that Korsen's conduct ceased to be free speech when he was informed that he was barking up the wrong tree:
unconstitutional as applied. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. at 800. Rather, “there must be a realistic danger that the statute itself will significantly compromise recognized First Amendment protections of parties not before the Court. . . .” Id., at 801-02.The facts in Korsen’s case do not provide a situation where the exercise of free speech was impinged. Rather, Korsen showed up at the Health and Welfare office to conduct legitimate business, i.e., to discuss his child support obligation with the agency charged with overseeing collection of child support. When it appeared that his desire to obtain modification of the obligation could not be obtained at that office but, as he was informed, was a matter that properly should be addressed to the court where the obligation was established, the purpose of his visit to the Health and Welfare office came to an end.
There seems to be no claim that Pentico was doing anything but freedom of speech and petition of public officials for redress of grievances. Persistent, yes. The governor may not have wanted to involve himself in the dispute that Pentico was raising. But it was within the governor's power to do so. Banning Pentico seems a pretty clear violation of the First Amendment.
Assuming that a criminal trespass prosecution is filed pursuant to I.C. § 18-7008(8) against a person on public property who is exercising his or her free speech rights, the statute could be attacked as applied to that constitutionally-protected conduct. This does not render the statute substantially overbroad. A reasonable reading of I.C. § 18-7008(8) shows that the statute does not reach a substantial amount of constitutionally protected conduct. The district court therefore committed reversible error in determining that the statutory language is overbroad.
Gun Safety Class For Women
I love these little reminders that I don't live in California anymore! From the April 29, 2009 Idaho World:
I'm A Bit Stumped By This
The Idaho legislature recently passed a bill that, at least in Idaho, would be right up there Mom and apple pie:Adds to and amends existing law relating to sport shooting activities to provide for a limitation of liability on certain sport shooting activities and to provide exceptions; and to provide an exception to governmental liability relating to certain sport shooting ranges.
Essentially, it protects the operator of a shooting range from being sued except if the operator:(i) Commits an act or omission that constitutes gross negligence or willful and wanton disregard for the safety of the participant and that act or omission caused the injury? or
The reason should be obvious: shooting is intrinsically somewhat hazardous. You accept certain risks if you are firing a deadly weapon, or going somewhere that deadly weapons are being fired. (Sort of like skydiving.) The net effect is that if the operator of a shooting range is making a reasonable effort to keep it safe, you can't sue him. It also seems to protect the operator if he has taken reasonable efforts, and another customer does something stupid, irrational, or criminal, that causes injury to another customer.
(ii) Intentionally injures the participant.
I believe that if the operator saw customer X do something obviously dangerous (like handling a gun on the firing line while customers were downrange), and didn't tell customer X to knock it off, and this lead to customer Y being injured, this would qualify as "gross negligence" or "willlful and wanton disregard."
Such a bill prevents ambulance chasing antigun lawyers from using a a trivial error by an operator, or the actions of another customer, from being used to bankrupt a shooting range. You can see why those who look out for ambulance chasers and antigun activists would oppose such a bill.
Well, the bill passed the legislature, but State Senator Tim Corder (who represents me up there), was one of only five state senators to vote against it! The other four who voted against it? All Democrats? All representing Boise. (The ambulance chaser, antigun part of Idaho.)
I know that this vote won't go down well with the voters of Corder's district. But my experience in the last election when I ran against Corder in the Republican primary was that a lot of Republicans I talked to disagreed with Corder's votes and bill sponsorships, often at the level of complete bewilderment. It wasn't that there were angry, but they found how he voted and the bills he sponsored so bizarre that they seemed to have trouble holding Corder responsible for his actions. Yet they still planned to vote for him, because...well, they went to church with him (and a church that can't possibly be happy with that sexual orientation bill he sponsored), and he was from Elmore County. (Our district includes Elmore and Boise Counties, and Elmore is the majority of the votes.)
I'm really hoping that someone from Elmore County runs against Corder in the Republican primary next time around. As near as I can tell, that's the only way to unseat someone who votes more like a Democrat than a Republican.
Walt Minnick Wants To Hear From Us
Well, maybe not. But he will!
Remember: polite, calm words. Minnick is a sportsman, and needs reminding that the Second Amendment wasn't passed to protect the right to hunt, but so that the people retained the authority to overthrow a tyrannical government if it ever came to that. I'll be there.
Congressman Walt Minnick's
Town Hall Meeting on the Second Amendment
2:30 P.M.
Council Chambers, Meridian City Hall (First Floor)
33 East Broadway
Meridian, Idaho 83642
Walt Minnick (D-ID) Keeps Surprising Me
First, he was one of a small number of Democrats who voted against Obama's porkulus bill, proposing a much smaller, much more realistic bill. Now he eschews earmarks. From the April 2, 2009 Idaho Statesman:
Now, it's true that Minnick's actions, alone, won't make any difference in the orgy of irrational spending going on up there, and earmarks are only a tiny part of the problem. But the earmarks are among the least justifiable part of our current budget process. I didn't vote for Minnick, and I am not likely to vote for him in 2010, but I can respect the courage that it takes to say "No" to the special interests that dominate American politics. It's unfortunate that the Republicans that represent Idaho in Congress don't show this same courage.
"We are in scrambling mode," said Marty Peterson, lobbyist for the University of Idaho, which like many public colleges has relied on the practice to pay for some projects and programs.
"In this tough economic time, we all need to cut back," he said. "I strongly support many of the projects submitted to my office, so I understand why this decision will not be popular with some and that it may meet criticism."
Minnick said he would not push for earmarks - specific spending authority placed in congressional bills - for at least one year. He said he would try to bring money to Idaho by helping businesses and agencies win competitive grants offered in the stimulus package.
What Is It About Lewiston, Idaho?
From the March 3, 2009 Idaho Statesman:
I remember some years ago watching a horrifying documentary about some guy from Washington State who was serving time for a murder committed in Lewiston a decade or two back. As the documentary portrayed it, this guy murdered a couple that had taken in his runaway daughter, raped her, then pimped her out. He took the law into his own hands because the Lewiston Police Department was supposedly compromised because the couple was closely related to someone important there.
Not Quite As Far As Montana
House Joint Memorial 3 has been introduced into the Idaho legislature, and would put the Idaho legislature on record as opposing HR 45, the bill before Congress to require a license (with written tests, fingerprinting, etc.) to own any handgun, or any semiautomatic detachable magazine weapon. (That includes plinkers like the Ruger 10/22, and hunting rifles like the Remington 7400.)
Idahoans Take Note
There is a bill before the Idaho Senate Health & Welfare Committee that makes a number of fairly minor revisions to the current daycare licensing system. (What? You didn't think Idaho licensed daycare? It certainly does.) One of the provisions which seems fairly uncontroversial was not well drafted--and NRA's input on the matter, to prevent it from being overbroad, was apparently ignored.
S.1112 adds a new provision to Idaho Code 39-1102:(f) Firearms or weapons which are on the premises of a daycare facility must be kept in a locked container that is inaccessible to children while daycare attendees are present?
Okay, we don't want toddlers (or even more dangerous, eight or nine year olds) digging around in one of the bedrooms while a harried daycare provider is busily resolving intrapersonal disputes between other clients, finding a handgun, and deciding, "Whoa! This is cool!" and then causing a tragedy. However: this measure, because it isn't carefully worded, prohibits the following situations:
1. Someone has been stalking you. You've taken out a restraining order; obtained a concealed handgun permit; and you carry your gun on you for protection of yourself and your child. You go into the daycare center to pick up your child. The daycare center has now violated this provision. Indeed, if a police officer entered the daycare facility without securing his gun, pepper spray, and baton in a locked container, the daycare center would be in violation of the law. It isn't likely that this would ever cause a problem for the daycare center. But this needs to be fixed.
2. Lots of Idahoans have a gun in their car, for self-protection, or during hunting season. If you pull into the parking lot of the daycare center, is the daycare center in violation of Idaho Code 39-1109? Other provisions of S.1112 with respect to water hazards and fences show that "premises" is not limited to the building itself, but includes the yard--and very likely the parking lot.
I'm going to write to State Senator Corder (who is the author of the bill, and my representative in the state senate) and suggest some more narrowly written language should be considered. Here's the full list of members of the committee that need to hear from that perhaps the language needs to be sharpened to refer specifically to firearms and weapons within the daycare center itself, and exempting otherwise lawful and temporary possession of a firearm by those dropping off or picking up from the daycare center.
Weapons is also inadequately defined. Does it include a broadsword? Sure. A hunting knife? Sure. A Swiss Army knife? A kitchen knife for cutting up vegetables? This needs a more precise definition. By the way, speaking of "weapons"--love the last name of one of the state senators: Broadsword.
State Senator Joyce Broadsword (R-2), Vice-Chair jbroadsw@senate.idaho.gov
State Senator Denton Darrington (R-27) ddarring@senate.idaho.gov
State Senator John McGee (R-10) jmcgee@senate.idaho.gov
State Senator Charles Coiner (R-24) ccoiner@senate.idaho.gov
State Senator James Hammond (R-5) jhammond@senate.idaho.gov
State Senator Melinda Smyser (R-11) msmyser@senate.idaho.gov
State Senator Nicole LeFayour (D-19) nlefavou@senate.idaho.gov
State Senator Les Bock (D-16) lbock@senate.idaho.gov
UPDATE: Senator Corder tells me that this was an oversight--the drafter neglected to include NRA's recommended language. We can stop ripping fresh orifices.
How To Make Yourself Very Unpopular Right Now
The February 2, 2009 Idaho Statesman reports on the consequences of bad timing:
Gee, U.S. citizens and legal residents are losing their jobs--and a group arguing for immigration reform to increase the number of workers gets some upset letters? I am so surprised.
Larry Craig, Loser
Senator Larry "Happy Feet" Craig just lost another appeal. From the Washington Post:
The "I didn't know I was doing pleading guilty" argument I might accept from some guy with a limited education. But Larry Craig, while foolish, isn't stupid, nor is uneducated. He could have argued that his arrest was a "misunderstanding," and doing the "Aw shucks, this doesn't happen in public restrooms in Idaho" might have worked. A Minneapolis jury might have given Craig the benefit of the doubt for such an argument; pleading guilty pretty well blows out that argument.
Breaching Dams
The Sali for Congress campaign claims that Walt Minnick (the Democrat whose TV ads won't ever say that he is a Democrat) supported breaching the dams on the Lower Snake River back in 2003:Minnick was quoted by the AP in 2003 as saying, “We only have hopefully one more lawsuit to say as a matter of law that if we’re going to recover the salmon that dams have to come down now.”
I can't find that quote anywhere online. I don't find it hard to believe--but I would like something a bit more authoritative than "quoted by the AP in 2003."
I understand the arguments about the dams. If we were deciding whether to build those dams today, the case for them might not be so strong. There is a strong argument that the land saved from flooding downstream isn't much more than the land flood upstream, and that if you look at the energy that went into building those dams, perhaps the total power output by hydroelectricity wouldn't be so compelling.
But we don't have the time machine option. The energy constructing those dams? It was spent. The power that comes out of them now is free. Breaching the dams won't get the energy that was spent back out.
There are environmental costs to having those dams. But not having them also has environmental costs, because we either start living in caves again, or we have to build some alternative power plants.
Right now, environmentalists want wind power (unless it interferes with their view of Cape Cod) and solar power. But I wouldn't count on that being their claim in ten or fifteen years, when they will come up with some new reason why today's "look the future" power sources are suddenly evil--and we have to go back to living in caves.
UPDATE: A reader handed me a AP article that appeared in the Twin Falls Times-News, August 20, 2003, p. B01, that discusses the efforts to breach the dams, and quotes Minnick:
That seems to settle the question. Minnick is part of the crowd that considers economic questions "trivial"--usually a sign that someone is so rich that they no longer understand that real people have to have real jobs.KETCHUM -- Ten years ago Bruce Babbitt got taken to the woodshed by Bill Clinton for impulsively saying he wanted to see a dam destroyed before he left the Department of Interior. Tuesday night, Babbitt, the former Secretary of Interior, glanced out at the Big Wood River in Ketchum and proclaimed that the dams were about to come down to save wild salmon. "They've got to come down," he said, adding that economic arguments are trivial. "The question is how.
...Steve Mashuda, attorney for Earthjustice, told those in attendance that his organization plans to bring litigation against Idaho Power Company and others to make them realize the cost of keeping dams in place. "We will have salmon recovery in the upper Snake River in the near future. And I don't just mean a few, but millions," added Walt Minnick, a salmon recovery advocate from Boise. "We only have hopefully one more lawsuit to say as a matter of law that if we're going to recover the salmon that dams have to come down now."
UPDATE 2: I mentioned that in 10-15 years, environmentalists will be opposing what they theoretically support today, to force the peasants back into living in caves. A reader points me to evidence that we don't need to wait that long:
A Friend Is Running For Idaho State Senate
T. Allen Hoover is running for Idaho State Senate district 17. He won the Republican nomination--but this is a Boise state senate district, so he could use some help. For those of you nearby, he could use some volunteers. For those at a distance: money helps! Hoover is strongly pro-gun, pro-life, and definitely a conservative.
Allen is an interesting character--not Mr. Polished and Hubba-Hubba politician. If it gives you some idea what kind of guy he is, he likes to tell the story of turning in a paper for a college class, and the professor marked him down for citing something to the first printing of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America--when clearly, he used a later edition. No, Allen was working from a first printing!
For those who helped me with my primary challenge to Senator Corder: thank you. Help put Mr. Hoover in office, and it's almost as wonderful as putting me there!
Where The Money Is Coming From
It is always interesting to see where the money is coming from in elections. To my surprise, Walt Minnick has raised quite a bit more money than Bill Sali (more than one million dollars vs. not quite $650,000 for Sali)--and when you look at where the money is coming from, it does suggest something about who wants Sali out.
If you go to OpenSecrets.org, they give a variety of ways to breaking out the data. The breakdown of in state vs. out of state money shows that, surprisingly enough for an incumbent, the majority of Sali's contributions are coming from Idahoans: 59%. Minnick's money is even more lopsidedly the other direction: 69% is coming from out of state.
The big individual contributors to Bill Sali are business PACs and the NRA. Minnick's big contributors seem to include a lot of labor unions--no surprise there. The breakdown by zipcode is quite interesting--and may not go over well with a lot of Idahoans.Top Metro Areas
Walter Clifford Minnick (D)
Metro Area Total BOISE CITY $137,848 NEW YORK $118,073 SEATTLE-BELLEVUE-EVERETT $44,100 PORTLAND-VANCOUVER, OR-WA $30,027 SAN FRANCISCO $20,200 William T. Sali (R)
Metro Area Total BOISE CITY $29,600 WASHINGTON, DC-MD-VA-WV $12,100 CHICAGO $4,500 PHILADELPHIA, PA-NJ $2,300 BOSTON, MA-NH $2,300 CINCINNATI, OH-KY-IN $2,300
Where Does Walt Minnick Stand On Illegal Aliens?
A recent survey by Rasmussen Reports shows that there is overwhelming support for stopping the influx of illegal aliens into the United States:
Where does his Democratic opponent, Walt Minnick, stand? Under "Issues," Minnick has a number of different pages--but not a word about illegal immigration that I can find. Nor was I able to find anything that Minnick has said in the news media on the subject.
I don't know about you, but I think it would be quite entertaining to try and get Minnick to say where he stands on this issue. Since he is a Democrat, I rather suspect that he is going to try and weasel word his response rather than admit that his objective is to keep cheap, easily exploited labor coming into the country for the benefit of business interests.
UPDATE: Here's a video where Minnick agrees that we need to control our borders for national security reasons. He agrees that something needs to be done on the demand side, such as prohibiting hiring of illegal aliens. (Well, it's a bit late to do that. That's already illegal.) Minnick does claim that we need more immigration to fill jobs that Americans won't do, at least when the economy is growing. Minnick says that it "doesn't make sense" to arrest and deport illegal aliens, and wants to give them an incentive to "come out of the shadows" by paying a penalty and getting at the back of line. But he also said that deporting them doesn't make sense. It appears that he supporting the McCain/Kennedy amnesty proposal.
UPDATE 2: Just to be clear about this: Minnick is correct that we don't have the resources to track down and deport all twelve million illegal aliens. But we do have the resources to deport those who come to our attention as a result of Social Security matching when someone starts work, or when an illegal alien is arrested. We do need to work on the demand side--by punishing employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. We do need a better fence. But when city and county governments prohibit their police officers from informing ICE about illegal aliens that they have arrested--that's idiotic. It might take ten years to get this problem under control, using all of these methods. But it's better than rewarding those who have broken our immigration law, by giving them a path to citizenship.
Bill Sali (R-ID) Blog
I guess that it won't be a surprise that Bill Sali, who represents the 1st Congressional District here in Idaho, has a blog trying to get him re-elected. I'm not sure how many Idahoans even know what blogs are--much less read them--but like a lot of such innovations, it costs almost nothing to do, and I like to think that blog readers are such technologically sophisticated and thoughtful sorts simply because they read blogs that this will make a difference. I may be biased, of course, in favor of the idea that people who read blogs are especially clever and with it.
I will confess that backing Bill Sali isn't all that difficult a decision. The last thing I want is a bunch more puppets of billionaires up in Congress, which makes nearly any Democrat running for the seat a bit suspicious. One thing that I like about Bill Sali is that he says stuff that just infuriates left-wing newspapers like the Idaho Statesman--and when he makes clearly true statements such as that America was founded on Christian principles--it just drives the leftists crazy. That alone should be at least one argument in Sali's favor.
Even if I didn't support Sali, my only encounters with Walt Minnick, who ended up with the Democratic nomination, sure haven't impressed me. Back in March, I pointed out that a letter that Minnick wrote to a number of newspapers around Idaho about the real problem of the uninsured was just flat out wrong:I saw a letter to the March 26, 2008 Idaho World from Walt Minnick, the Democrat intent on unseating Bill Sali, attacking Sali for his approach to solving the problem of uninsured Idahoans. In that letter, Minnick complained about "the 40% of Idahoans who don't have insurance." That sounded high, but I just assumed that Minnick is as careful as I am when making factual claims. I guess not.
I also saw Minnick speak at a candidate's forum in which I participated, and I was not impressed. Minnick talked a lot about alternative energy, but it sounded far more like "Congress can spend money on stuff, and we'll get clean, renewable energy from it" than anything that suggested that he really had a clue about economics. These remarks on his web page seem to be more of the same mix of "the oil companies need to be taxed more" and the kind of subsidies to business that created the corn ethanol idiocy:
Here's a website sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which wants everyone covered. It claims that the 2006 Current Population Survey data indicates that 14.7% of Idahoans are uninsured. That's actually better than the national average (although not by much).
Here's a report put together by Mathematica Policy Research for the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee last year. It estimates that 16-18% of the "non-elderly population" of Idaho is uninsured as of 2005. (People over 65 are covered by Medicare; hence the discrepancy with the 14.7% figure.)
I'm not quite sure what "special tax breaks and incentives" he's talking about. There is the depletion allowance:
In tax law, the deductions from gross income allowed investors in exhaustible commodities (such as minerals, oil, or gas) for the depletion of the deposits. The depletion allowance is intended as an incentive to stimulate investment in this high-risk industry, though critics argue that mineral deposits are valuable enough to justify high levels of investment even without tax incentives. See also depreciation.
Yes, I'm sure that there are ways to convert forest and agricultural waste to biofuel. But if the consequences of government subsidies of corn ethanol are instructive, it might be an argument against more such encouragement. As I have pointed out in the past, there is a rather fundamental difference between funding basic research and subsidizing energy waste:With respect to purely research activities, my sympathies with respect to alternative energy are a little stronger. (Of course, "alternative energy" includes nuclear power.) While some serious boondoggles definitely come out of such research projects, there is no question that some of the government promoted R&D has created some useful results. If we could get fusion power plants operating, petroleum would become just an interesting source of plastics--and oil exporting countries that have little to offer the world but overblown thuggish leaders would go back to the fourteenth century. No loss.
Maybe Minnick is smarter than he sounds and smarter than his website suggests. But so far, I am not persuaded.
That said, I think it is important to distinguish true R&D from actual production. Figuring out a way to efficiently produce ethanol from corn is an R&D activity; tax exemptions are not. Figuring out a way to produce photovoltaic cells at $1 per watt is an R&D activity; using tax exemptions to sell $5/watt cells for $1/watt may just hide that we're wasting energy making the cells.
All Larrys Are Alike, I Guess
Larry LaRocco is the Democratic nominee running after Senator Larry Craig's seat. So what happened when someone printed up campaign buttons for LaRocco, hoping that some of the Obamamessiah magic would rub off? They put a picture of Obama next to a picture of a Larry--Larry Craig! The amusing details can be found at the July 27, 2008 Idaho Statesman.
The Last Postmortem on the Campaign
I attended the Boise County Republican Central Committee's reorganization meeting. (They apparently had gone moribund some time back, as I discovered during the campaign.) I had a chance to talk to a number of those present--several of whom expressed great surprise that I lost the primary, especially since I was much more in tune with what they perceive as the political sympathies of most Boise County Republicans. I did hear a few interesting aspects which may partly explain my loss:
1. When Corder first got himself elected in 2004, he visited every business in the district, trying to drum up support. He has name recognition because of it.
2. Yes, the mailers from IACI PAC did come across as too slick, too professional for our district. As one person put it, "When I saw these, I said, big money from out of state." (And this is someone who still voted for me.) In fact, IACI PAC's funding, I think, is all from within Idaho. Corder's pathetic, amateurish mailers...were exactly right for this district.
3. Only some noticed that my campaign sent out mailers, and that the others were from IACI PAC. They were similar enough in graphic layout (although not in content) that many of those present assumed that they were all from the same organization. And these are considerably more politically aware voters than I would guess the average Republican in Boise County.
I have also concluded that while there were people who were genuinely upset about IACI PAC's inappropriate use of a picture of a soldier in uniform, there are others who I believe were just Corder supporters trying to stir up trouble.
Someone named Geoff commented over at IdaBlue attacking me for not doing enough about the IACI PAC mailing. At first I assumed that he was a genuinely upset veteran--who apparently went out and got Corder yard signs because of the IACI PAC's inappropriate use of that picture. But when I asked him why he would vote against me for something that I didn't do, didn't like, and had no control over, his response was this:"I didn't do it"... "It wasn't my fault"..."It was something I had no control over"..."I don't like it either".......as opposed to "I will put a stop to it immediately, and their apology is forthcoming"- which one sounds like a victim, and which one a leader? I will vote for a leader over someone who chooses to be a victim.
My response:Geoff, I was prepared to believe your claim that you weren't a Corder partisan using a legitimate complaint as a basis for attack. But no longer.
I'm no longer assuming that Geoff is what he claims.
You tell me that I should have said: "I will put a stop to it immediately, and their apology is forthcoming"
How do I stop it? In case you haven't noticed, there is this little thing called freedom of speech. I don't have the authority to stop someone else from mailing campaign materials. Even government officials don't have the authority to do that.
And how do I force a group that doesn't even want me to inform them of my campaign activities to apologize?
Idaho Statesman Reporter Called Me Up
He wanted to talk about the campaign and the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (IACI), whose PAC sent out mailings supporting me that I now know did me some damage--and may not have done me much good. I did my best to emphasize that the laws concerning independent election campaigns are the real problem, but I will be only slightly surprised to see an article in the Statesman shortly with the headline:IACI Wanted Me To Bear Their Alien Love Child!
Sign Removal & Surprising Encouragement
Yesterday afternoon and today afternoon were both spent retrieving "Cramer for State Senate" signs from roadsides. Nearly every sign I put up in Boise County was still there, so we got nearly all of them back.
In Elmore County, not a single one of my signs remained. At first, we thought that either city crews or public spirited sorts had just gone through and indiscriminately removed every campaign sign, but we found a few signs from other campaigns still in the places where our signs had been--so I suspect that every campaign did what it is supposed to do--and my volunteers over in Elmore County removed our signs.
My wife was out for a walk, and ran into the wife of one of the local real estate developers. The wife told my wife that I should try again. She was apparently quite impressed with my ideas--once she had read enough to understand what I was talking about. (Perhaps this isn't a good sign for the reading level of the campaign flyers I produced.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Dialing for Votes
The conversations that I am having with voters that I call on the phone are very interesting. Generally, I'm getting:
1. Largely friendly reactions, not committing one way or the other, but often asking questions about where I stand on issues that they care about.
2. People who are committed to voting for me because of Corder's support for S.1323, the sexual orientation bill. (And many of these are former Californians, who know where this takes us.)
3. A couple of people very committed to Corder--to the point of being uninterested in talking.
4. One reminder that you should never let how well someone fits a demographic profile cause you to make assumptions. I talked to a 78 year old Republican woman who was very concerned about the religious right's influence in the Republican Party--in particular, because of her support for same-sex marriage. But she seemed to be pretty libertarian, and was planning to vote for me because she agrees that the government shouldn't be telling people what they do in private--and that includes hiring decisions.
5. One person who indicated that she and her husband were going to vote for me because they had some personal run-in with Corder, and were so upset with him that they wanted him out of office. Maybe not the best reason to vote for me, but I'll take the votes where I can get them!
The Downside of Independent Campaigns
I received a very irate letter today from a retired soldier:I find your use of the Unites States Army uniform to further your campaign to be an outrage. This is prohibited under DOD policy, and imperils the poor soldier depicted. Further, the flyer I received contains no photograph of you, leaving the impression that it could be you depicted in the photo. I strongly recommend you denounce this flyer immediately and apologize to the thousands of men and women in uniform whose sacrifice you cheapen by dragging them into a campaign flyer.
I explained that I had no control over the flyer, didn't pay for it, produce, or have anything to do with it--that it was from an independent campaign that is hot to remove Senator Corder. As much as I appreciate the help of independent campaigns, this is the downside of them--people may see these materials and not realize that they are not something the candidate controls.
I would not have used the photograph in question; I would have preferred my picture on it. I don't back down even slightly from the point of the flyer, however: that Corder's vote in committee saved the state not one penny, but did make it more difficult for taxpayers to voluntarily contribute to the state's veterans' services program.
UPDATE: I received an upset phone call along the same lines today who also didn't realize that these are from an independent campaign committee. Although I suspect that the real reason for the upset was that this was a Corder supporter. She defended Corder's sponsorship of the "sexual orientation and gender identity" bill as a way of protecting heterosexuals from discrimination by gay-owned businesses, and insisted that such a law would not produce any lawsuits.
Mountain Home News Endorses My Opponent
From the May 21, 2008 Mountain Home News:
Campaign Activities
I went to the Mountain Home Senior Citizens Center last night as part of a candidates' forum. Again, the format was really not well suited to this: one minute opening statements by all the candidates, and then written questions from the audience. Still, I had a number of people approach me afterwards to tell me how impressed with how intelligent I am. (Perhaps it was just the comparison that made me look good.)
One person on the Elmore Republican Central Committee whom I have called several times approached me and explained that he had not returned my calls because he was planning to vote for Corder. After hearing me speak, especially on the Second Amendment, he had changed sides, and asked for a campaign sign.
My wife and I also went out to the most eastern part of the district, Glenns Ferry and Hammett, to plant campaign signs. The contrast between northern Boise County and eastern Elmore County is quite dramatic. Both are sparsely populated--but eastern Elmore County is high desert, while northern Boise County is mountainous pine forest.
I had another lobbyist show up at the house this morning to give me money. What really impresses me is how little work I have to do to raise money--it flows in, in surprisingly large chunks from gun rights activists, and in chunks from lobbying groups that I have never heard of, never talked to, and would not have thought were interested in me in the least.
So, what strings are attached to all this special interest money? I confess that until last year, I assumed that when interest groups gave you money, it was often a form of disguised bribery. John Lott's book Freedomnomics has one section where he evaluates voting records of politicians who have announced that they are retiring. One could assume that if politician A has been voting for X because interest groups are giving him money for that purpose, that once the interest group money stops coming in, politician A might stop voting for X. Lott found that politician voting behavior didn't really change once they announced retirement.
This doesn't mean that special interest group contributions don't influence the political process. They aren't raising and giving away money because they are such nice people that they want everyone to be involved in politics. Both from what Lott's study found, and from talking to former members of the Idaho legislature, it is pretty clear that special interest group money does influence legislation--but not in the corrupt "buy off politicians" way that a lot of people assume. It is a considerably more subtle than that.
Let's say that there are three people that want to get elected to public office: Mr. Jones, Mr. Brown, and Mrs. Smith. Mr. Jones is a Big Government liberal who support lots of governmental regulation of business; Mrs. Smith supports free market capitalism; Mr. Brown thinks the big issue the legislature needs to deal with are the space aliens among us. Business interests are going to give money to Mrs. Smith, even if they aren't 100% in agreement with her, because they believe that she is generally going to vote their way. Trial lawyers, labor unions, and other left of center groups are going to fund Mr. Jones, because they believe that he is generally going to vote their way. Mr. Brown is not going to get much funding at all, because the "space aliens among us" crowd is pretty small. (The mind control implants manufactured on Tau Ceti 4 help to keep that crowd small.)
So what happens if Mrs. Smith goes off the reservation, and starts voting for business regulation? The groups that used to fund her campaigns get less and less willing to help. If her leap to the left is dramatic enough, she may find that Mr. Jones's interest groups may start to help--but I suspect that small changes in Mrs. Smith's voting to the left aren't going to be dramatic enough for Mr. Jones's backers to consider Mrs. Smith worth backing. The net effect will be that moving towards the center will often lose more funding than it will gain.
A former neighbor of mine who was a member of the Idaho state senate for several terms described how this happened to him. He was a Republican, but definitely quite a bit to my left on business regulation issues, and over time, the business interests contributed less and less, and his re-election campaigns required more and more of his own money--and finally, he decided that it wasn't worth spending this much of his own money for a job that only pays about $16,000 a year, and involves a substantial time commitment. So he decided not to run for re-election.
UPDATE: Just to clarify: I was addressing the problem of campaign contributions. There is, without question, some serious, direct bribery that goes on out there. The FBI for a while was running around the country, seeing how long it took to give direct bribes to state legislators--and having a depressingly easy time finding legislators in California, Arizona, South Carolina and probably a few states that I missed who were quite prepared to take a cash payment in a nakedly quid pro quo action.
Nor do I want to suggest that interest group money is completely without worrisome consequences. But it just isn't quite the nakedly corrupt problem that a lot of people assume.
One reader suggested that a fairly ideological sort like myself probably is less prone to being corrupted by the process. There's probably some truth to that. The less rigidly you adhere to a set of standards or ideas about the proper role of government, the easier is to bend to the wishes of the moment. This is one of the reasons that politicians that are proud of their "pragmatism" worry me a bit.
The one area which is a real problem is that if an obscure issue comes up, interest groups are likely to have the expertise, the money, and the motivation to present their position in a way that the general public won't. A politician who doesn't know much about this obscure issue may find himself swayed by an interest group's arguments in a way that is not good for the public interest. But this is a problem whether that interest group comes bearing money or not. The best that can hope for is that there will be opposing interest groups who can bring their expertise and motivation to the legislative process. But opposing special interests are not quite the same as serving the public interest.
Scenic Boise County
I was out this morning placing campaign signs across the more scenic parts of Boise County. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera, so you will have to trust me on this. The road through Garden Valley is quite similar to California 4 through the Sierras--Alpine meadows; white water rivers; snow-capped mountains; pine forests; lots of exposed granite.
I was pleased to see campaign signs already up in a number of places that I haven't been in a couple of years; the troops have been at work. But I also found a few places that screamed to have my sign--usually the places where a "Corder for Senate" sign was already there.
I also stopped at the Garden Valley Rifle Range, since I saw a number of people shooting there. The crowd was fathers with their kids, mostly shooting .22 LR--but unfortunately, all of them were from Ada County, which is out of my district. It was still very gratifying to see fathers demonstrating to their sons appropriate behavior with a firearm, which is something of a corrective to the media portrayal of firearms.
Overapplying a Principle, I Think
I tend to write rather wordy campaign literature. I would say because I am a thinker. Others would say that I am a blowhard. Whatever. I do realize that successful, professional campaign literature tends to be rather minimal. The first professional flyer from my campaign is going out tomorrow, and it is definitely short on words compared to my natural tendencies.
Today I received the first piece of campaign literature from the incumbent, and I would have to say, it appears that someone may have overapplied the principle of minimalism. Here's the two sides of it.
Either that, or he's appealing to the marginally literate voter demographic.
UPDATE: Perhaps the politician thing is beginning to stick. "Not to imply that there any marginally literate voters in my district, of course. And if you are reading this blog, you are obviously a lot more than marginally literate!"
Is Idaho Subsidizing Liquor Sales?
Am I missing something here? Idaho has a number of state liquor stores. This is a state monopoly on sales of distilled alcohol, as near as I can tell--but since I don't buy distilled alcohol, and barely drink wine, this is an assumption on my part.
In looking at the Fiscal Year 2009 budget, I see that the state liquor stores are forecast to provide $11,574,000 in revenue from sales. But the State Liquor Dispensary's FY2009 budget recommendation from the governor is $19,205,100. Unless I'm missing something--or the state liquor stores are returning almost as much profit from non-liquor as they do from liquor--Idaho would appear to be subsidizing liquor sales.
If you can enlighten me on this subject, I would be obliged.
UPDATE: IdaBlue has details about other budgets; we aren't subsidizing liquor sales.
The Videoconferenced Legislature
I mentioned one of the Boise County commissioner candidates who wanted to see live video feeds of commission meetings to more involve the voters and save gasoline. While there is, I think, a problem with this because of how few voters in this county have a broadband connection, I think there's some merit to the idea of using videoconferencing in another governmental arena: the state legislature.
For the roughly 1/4 of the legislators who live within fifty miles of the statehouse, the drive isn't a big problem. It costs some money, and takes some time--but for legislators who represent Twin Falls, or Moscow, they need to spend four to ten hours driving to and from Boise or flying. Then they have to stay in a hotel at least weeknights.
What's wrong with this?
1. It costs a pile of money. The IRS has just raised the mileage rate to 50.5 cents per mile. For a legislator who lives in Twin Falls, that's $129 each week (assuming that he goes home on the weekends). For Tom Trail, who represents Moscow in the lower house, that would be $302 for each round trip. (I presume he flies.)
2. It is bad for the environment. Look, I'm no ecocrazy, but whether you drive or fly, there's a lot of gasoline or jet fuel burned by this much travel.
3. It wastes time--lots of time. For many legislators, it wastes five to eight hours a week going back and forth. Even for those who live nearby and who go home every night, this can be an hour to two hours wasted every day.
4. The more time you spend in Boise (especially for those who spend weeknights in town), the less in touch you are with your district. I don't know how big a role this plays in causing adulterous affairs, but I would be surprised indeed if being away from your spouse too much doesn't play a part in the well-known problems that politicians everywhere have with this.
5. For some legislators, telecommuting means that they have a chance to keep an eye on whatever their full-time business is. (Remember that Idaho legislators are part-time--and many of them have regular jobs or own businesses.) This means that some people who might otherwise find it impractical to run for legislature could now seriously consider it.
There are jobs where it just isn't practical to use videoconferencing as a substitute for being there. But being a legislator is about as close to being the perfect application of videoconferencing as I can imagine.
1. A legislator doesn't have to physically hold or touch anything. (And much of the time that they do so, they end up in trouble because of it!)
2. A legislator's primary tool of trade is words. He is writing or reading laws and regulations--stuff that is especially well suited to transport as a stream of disembodied electrons.
3. Legislators hear public comment and expert testimony in committee hearings--but this can also be done by videoconferencing. At worst, the public will be at the statehouse speaking before a camera to a room that consists of video screens showing the legislators. (I suppose that some legislators might prefer to be there in person.)
4. The actual cost of videoconferencing equipment these days isn't all that high. The only really significant expense would be expanding the broadband services to some of the more remote parts of the state where legislators live. This is one of those examples of how the state government, by guaranteeing demand for broadband services for a legitimate governmental purpose, has the potential to create the telecommunications infrastructure required to bring global business opportunities to many of the beautiful but remote parts of this state. Communications infrastructure, like canals, railroads, and highways, has the potential to substantially improve the economic vitality of what are otherwise remote places.
Other Candidates Today
These were candidates running for other offices than mine. One (whose name I didn't remember) was trying to get the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate (trying to get Larry Craig's seat), and suggested that we could solve many of the economic problems of rural Idaho by having the Idaho legislature take back federal lands so that Idaho could administer them for the benefit of the timber workers. He wasn't saying that as a member of the U.S. Senate, he would try to get Congress to transfers the National Forests back to the states--but that the states should simply take back ownership.
Hmmm. I think South Carolina tried that with Fort Sumter. There was some unpleasantness as a result. You might want to look it up.
Another candidate is trying to get the nomination for one of the county commissioner positions. (Idaho counties are administered by commissioners, roughly equivalent to supervisors in a number of other states.) She made what sounded like a pretty good suggestion at first glance: put the county commission hearings online as live video, to enhance public involvement and reduce driving costs. This is a fine idea--but I asked her, "How many Boise County residents have a sufficiently broadband connection to watch streaming video, except in a 60x20 pixel window?" My guess is that that the vast majority of Boise County residents are dialup.
Let Me Say Something Nice About My Opponent
In some ways, he is not your conventional notion of a politician. He gave a speech at an event today in which he said something quite direct and blunt. He pointed out that since the environmentalists largely destroyed the timber industry in much of the West, rural counties like Boise County have been dependent on Craig-Wyden Act funds which are supposed to provide transition funding as we move on to...something else. Each year, it gets a bit harder to get Congress to provide the funding--and when the day comes when they stop funding Craig-Wyden, counties like Boise are going to have to raise taxes to cover operating costs.
This isn't an easy thing to tell people--especially here, where enthusiasm for tax increases is extremely low. Corder didn't sugarcoat this, either. It made it just a little easier for me to make something of the same point in a different way: Idaho isn't a particularly bad operation in terms of Big Government. The legislature makes a serious effort to keep spending under control, and sometimes goes a bit too far in the penny-wise, pound-foolish direction.
I explained that the contractor who built my house asked me if I was going to be able to cut taxes, and I had to tell him that I wasn't going to make any promises that I couldn't keep. There are some services that the government provides that are either necessary, or that make life a lot nicer, and those services are paid for by taxes.
The format of this event was too much like a Presidential debate. We each had five minutes to speak, and then time for a few questions. No one had any questions for me. I can't believe that I spoke so powerfully that everyone had made up their mind based on my five minutes.
Gun Control Movement & Political Fundraising
Snowflakes in Hell has an interesting comparison of fundraising by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence's Political Action Committee and the NRA's Political Victory Fund. NRA-PVF has raised about $8.4 million, and spent about $3.7 million. The Brady Campaign's PAC has raised $73 and spent $3,161. Yes, you read that right: $73. Not $73,000. Not $73 million--but $73.
Okay, it's not exactly a fair comparison. The gun control movement gets an enormous amount of free promotion from the mainstream news media--although somewhat less than they used to get. The Democratic Party, in spite of both Obama and Clinton trying to distance themselves from gun control, is an almost wholly owned subsidiary of the gun control movement. This means that the gun control movement doesn't need to spend even close to as much money as our side does to elect its friends to office. But there does come a certain moment when the disparity becomes so large that it makes the gun control movement irrelevant.
Perhaps the more interesting point that Snowflakes in Hell makes is what this astonishingly weak fundraising tells us about the level of support that the gun control movement has in America. Traditionally, gun control financial support has come from a small number of billionaires (and not all on the left--think of Reagan's crony Justin Dart). Our support comes from rather more ordinary people:More importantly, if you go to opensecrets.org yourself, and look at NRA-PVF’s top donors, you’ll see professions like “Machine Operator”, “Police Officer”, “Computer Technician”, “Engineer”, “Mechanic”, “Truck Driver”, “Art Teacher”. Sure, you also have your attorneys, doctors, and businessmen, but think about how much $1000 dollars means to a truck driver? Or an Art Teacher? Meanwhile the Brady’s have raised not just a little money, but nothing. Think about that, and what it says about where the passion is on this issue.
At least, that's what I hope it means. My primary election is coming up in a bit less than three weeks, and I know that NRA members will be looking at my grade and my opponent's grade--and I suspect that very few are going to vote for him.
"Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign"
If you are old enough, this chorus will bring back memories. Anyway, my campaign signs arrived today, and we are busily distributing them and putting them up. A couple of interesting lessons learned:
1. These are 14" x 22" signs--which is a common size in urban and suburban settings for front yards. But out here in rural Idaho, along high speed roads, these are a little small. In retrospect, I should have ordered 100 of the larger size, instead of 250 of this size.
2. The metal stands that these signs come with work fine in relatively soft soil (such as a lawn). They require a bit of hammering to put into a lot of the hard soils that we have in Boise County.
I really find the notion of campaign signs obnoxious. They convey no real information--nor can they, considering that they are intended to be read by passing drivers. They exist for one purpose only--to create name recognition, and the illusion of widespread support for the candidate--and they aren't cheap. For the same money, I could have done a mailing to about 500 households that gave a thoughtful discussion of public policy. But the name recognition is very important--more important than intellectually engaging the voters.
In some ideal democracy, voters who knew nothing about the candidates would either learn enough to make rational decisions, or not vote for either candidate. But the real world isn't like that. Many people vote based on, "I've seen that name around" or decide to not vote for someone because, "They don't stand a chance."
Anyway, if you live in my district, contact me about a sign. We've got plenty, and the more of them we have up, the more likely we are to win.
UPDATE: Here's the sign:
Government Size & Efficiency
A reader shared this example with me of an interesting problem with consolidating small governmental agencies and made some very useful suggestions:You mention that many small school districts in Idaho have lots of administration, and wonder if perhaps they should consolidate. Such consolidations can, in the short run, create interesting political problems if the populations of the districts are unequal, especially if rural districts are consolidated with an "urban" district.
One problem with trying to improve efficiency of small districts without consolidation is that in some cases, there might not be enough work to keep someone working full-time at a particular position for a single district--and yet, if you make the job part-time, suddenly, you discover that many potential employees can't afford to take a job without benefits. This is one of those cases where it may make sense to consolidate several governmental agencies--or perhaps arrange for a single employee to be shared by several agencies, full-time with one agency, but with the other agencies sharing the expenses.
For example, my wife grew up just outside State Center, Iowa, population 1349 at the 2000 census. Sometime when she was a kid, they consolidated all the west Marshall County schools into one district. State Center was by far the largest community in the consolidated district. Fortunately, the area is pretty homogenous, and the schools weren't really politicized, but they renamed State Center Elementary to West Marshall Elementary, and named the new middle and high schools to "West Marshall" as a gesture to people from outlying areas who were concerned about State Center "taking over" their schools. (This is the sort of trivial issue that people will get really worked up over if everything is running ok otherwise, and even sometimes when things are really broken.)
One thing I'd suggest is looking at what demands the state (and the counties) make of school districts, and what minimum level of staffing that requires, and see if it's reasonable to reduce some of those demands instead of pushing districts to consolidate. (I'd expect in Idaho that some of those consolidated districts will be rather large geographically, which carries its own costs - how effective will a superintendent be if he has to spend 4 hours on the road to visit some of his schools?) Some of the small school districts may be inefficiently small, but sometimes inefficiency is a cost worth paying for keeping people involved and feeling like they have some control. Reducing the inefficiency while retaining the same level of local control is a better outcome than consolidation, especially if consolidation is "forced" by the state.
Why It Has Been Silent Here
I've been busy talking to people, getting the first direct mail piece printed, and identifying who gets that first mailing, etc. The Idaho World had a nice article about my campaign which is generating some positive responses from voters.
And I've been getting the shorter tripod built so that I can put the Celestron CI-700 and Big Bertha 2.0 on it. I still have some misgivings about whether the square tube that I will be using for the legs will be stiff enough to support the weight--I'm try this first with something heavy and cheap, just in case the tripod either bends or fails.
I also spent yesterday struggling to mill the part required to fill an order for a caster assembly for the Vixen HAL tripod. I finally gave up, and refunded the customer's money. I just couldn't get the mill vise to hold the chunk of Delrin in place well enough. Why?
I've had this problem intermittently before, and I am now convinced that the screw that clamps the vise in position is the problem. It is a socket (Allen) head 10-32 screw--and over time, the wrench damages the socket from a hexagon into something closer to a circle--and so I can't get enough torque.
I could just keep replacing the screw. They are cheap. But the problem is that there isn't a bright line that separates "adequately tight" and "not adequately tight." The damage to the head takes place very slowly, and so it isn't obvious when it is time to replace it. I think I will replace it with a hex head 10-32 screw instead--something that I can use a wrench to tighten that won't chew up the interior surfaces.
Goldilocks and Governmental Size
One of the concerns that I had when I entered this contest is that some of the smaller school districts in Idaho seem to be top heavy with administration for the number of students that they have. There is clearly a point where it is more efficient to merge several small school districts into one, with a single superintendent, and a common staff for administration and purchasing, instead of having four or five districts each doing its job independently. I was focused on efficiency--but that's not the only problem with small governmental agencies.
I spent a bit of time listening to a tale of governmental corruption from one of the voters in my district--and I was able to confirm with others that this isn't paranoia. I won't go into all the details, except to say that it is a small governmental entity where a very small number of closely related voters are able to use their power to enrich the patriarch of the clan at the expense of the taxpayers of Idaho.
There was a time when I would have scratched my head about this, but there is plenty of precedent. The city of Cotati in California into the 1980s had a very curious situation that was somewhat similar. At the time that this situation developed, there were only about 2000 people living there [correction: 3475 at the 1980 census], and one extended family with many dozens of members exercised so much political power that the criminal justice system was corrupted.
I first became aware of this because my mother-in-law worked as a telemarketer at a company in Cotati. One night, some drunken yahoos were throwing rocks at the windows, and they called the police. The police came out, calmed the drunken yahoos down, and explained that members of this extended family were privileged from arrest for misdemeanors because of the political power that the family exercised. I have since read about this remarkable situation in mainstream publications. In the 1980s, the population of Cotati grew substantially, and the political power of this family collapsed because of that population growth. By the time we moved out of the area in 2001, the family privilege from arrest for misdemeanors no longer existed.
It is apparent if you live in a large city that corruption is a fundamental part of how things work. You may recall in the 1980s 60 Minutes did a hidden camera thing in Chicago where they caught large numbers of restaurant inspectors openly demanding bribes to pass restaurants--it was just a fringe benefit of the job.
A friend of mine built a house in the Los Angeles some years ago--and was having a heck of a time getting final approvals from the building inspectors. There wasn't anything actually wrong with the house, and it was apparent that the reasons for rejection were excuses. He finally figured out that there was someone that needed a bribe--but because he wasn't part of the building community there, he didn't know whose palm needed greasing--and it isn't like he could call up the Building Department and ask who was in charge of accepting bribes.
We all know that bigness can mean corruption--but pretty clearly, smallness can also mean corruption. If the number of voters in a political entity gets small enough, and especially if there is a mechanism by which that entity can suck money out of other governmental bodies, the temptation to do so seems to be irresistible.
I suspect that someone, somewhere, has a done a doctoral dissertation with a ponderous title like Optimal Polity Size For Efficiency and Public Sector Integrity that has determined how small an entity can get before inefficiency and corruption take over, and similarly, how large an entity can get before corruption takes over on the other end of the scale.
Property Taxes & Government Services
I've spent quite a bit of time talking to people around my district today, by phone--ecofriendly campaigning! I keep hearing one recurring complaint about what happens to property taxes when someone moves in with lots of money and builds a nice house.
One of the complaints this evening was that a person moved into this rural community and built a million dollar house. For those of you on the coasts--we have a lot of million dollar views in Idaho, but few million dollar houses. Other houses in the area were then reassessed because of the increase in value--and people living in ancient, not good shape farmhouses now have their property taxes rise dramatically.
One of the points that I made when answering a questionnaire for a PAC several weeks back was that property taxes, which pay for government services, should be determined based on the cost of services--not the value of the house. A 1200 square foot costs the same amount for the fire department to protect if it is worth $100,000 or $400,000. The insurance company has a good reason to charge you a higher premium for the more expensive house, but the fire department doesn't. They need the same equipment, the same number of firefighters, the same amount of water.
It is true that as property values rise, government employee salaries might have to rise as well, and so there has historically been a weak connection between the cost of providing government services and the value of homes--but this is only a weak connection. It would make a lot more sense for property taxes that are paying for government services that are associated with a piece of property to be set based on the likely cost of those services.
Fire services for a bare patch of land would be pretty minimal compared to a house. Without question, even an unimproved land require some fire protection services because of wildfire, but there are no structures to save, and usually, no lives. I suspect that there would be few differences between a one story 1200 square foot house and a one story 3000 square foot house. At most, the differences would be in the number of likely occupants; it might make sense to charge a bit more for five bedrooms vs. three bedrooms.
As the number of stories increase, or distance from a public road or water supply to the dwelling increases, there would be legitimate reasons to increase the fire services charge. It should be obvious that a five story building has much higher service costs than an equivalent low-rise shopping mall (you need those hook and ladder rigs). Some businesses might well justify a higher service cost because of hazardous materials.
Police services are a similar situation. It might well be that a nice house in Eagle has more stuff to steal than a crummy house in a rundown section of Boise. But again, pricing should have some connection to actual demand for services. I would expect that a lot of bars would end up with substantially higher service charges than family restaurants, simply because alcohol does breed fights. Some neighborhoods with big burglary problems would end up paying much higher police service costs for that very reason.
Now, at this point, some of you are going to start screaming "discrimination!" because the poorest neighborhoods in many places have the highest rates of burglary, murder, robbery, rape, etc. This might well be the case (although crimes like motor vehicle theft and burglary are often much more common in nicer neighborhoods), but think very carefully about this, and you will start to see one great advantage to realistic pricing: it provides information from which you can make rational economic decisions.
If property taxes in your neighborhood go up because of an increase in burglaries, you have a very direct incentive to correct this localized problem by being more actively involved in your community and improving the security of your home. If increased neighborhood vigilance, more alarm systems, and more care in locking the house when you leave reduces burglaries--you will see some decline in police service fees within a year or two. There is a strong, fairly direct incentive to take steps that make you and the rest of your neighborhood more secure. The same would be true with respect to fire hazards, especially in rural areas where some people let the weeds build up until the nearest fire department issues an abatement order.
I remember reading some years ago, right after California passed Proposition 13, that the city of Inglewood started to look at doing something like this to get around the freeze in residential property taxes. They went so far as to start evaluating individual commercial buildings for how much work they would be for the fire department. In some cases, particular buildings that were considered especially dangerous would have experienced increases. In some cases, such as the Forum (a sports and concert forum), the net effect would have been a reduction in property taxes--because the Forum was apparently especially well designed with respect to fire exits, and automatic fire suppression.
This is another area where the current system isn't terribly rational. If I build a house with automatic fire sprinklers in it, built largely of non-combustible materials (lots of steel and glass, for example, with tile roofing), it substantially reduces the risk of fire destroying the house. My insurance company may give me a discount on the fire insurance. But I'll pay the same property taxes as my neighbor who builds a house that meets the minimum building codes--but is otherwise a firetrap.
I will admit that I cringe a little at the thought of cities and counties evaluating each and every building for fire and police services. One problem is that it would be a very time consuming process, at least the first time, and it would involve a good bit of rather invasive evaluation. Some people wouldn't be willing to allow that kind of interior inspection--and I can't say that I blame them. Another problem is that there would be inevitably some subjective evaluations on some of these questions--and anything subjective means that there would be lawsuits--and sometimes with good reason.
It might be best to leave this at the level of objectively, externally measurable aspects of buildings and neighborhoods. How many stories is the building? What is the construction method on the building plans? How far from the nearest water supply? How far from the nearest public road? What are the external materials: combustible or not? Do the building plans show a built-in fire suppression sprinkler system? How many fire service calls were there in this square mile area in the last year? How many police service calls?
You could spend a lot of time arguing about the details, of course, and I'm sure that there are some details that I have completely missed. But it would solve a number of problems with the current system--and encourage property owners to make more rational economic decisions about government services.
Talking to Elmore County Republican Party Activists
I have been strongly encouraged to believe that I have a decent shot at winning the Republican primary--which almost guarantees a victory in this district in the general election. I spent last night calling Republican activists in Elmore County--and I discovered that indeed, there might be a real shot at this, so I am trying to talk some of the national gun rights groups to open their wallets enough to pay for the direct mailings required to make this happen.
I Went Head To Head With My Opponent Last Night
I cannot imagine him being foolish enough to debate me in any public forum. I showed up at the Elmore County Republican Central Committee meeting last night to introduce myself. So did Senator Corder. I picked three issues of concern:
I was pleased to see one of those in attendance ask, "Are you the Clayton Cramer?" He meant the historian--and he told me later that he has read everything that I have ever written on the subject of gun control. Ah, fame (even of the minor variety that I enjoy) has its virtues!
Senator Corder emphasized how many generations his family has lived here. He talked about helping individuals do battle with the state bureaucracy using what he called his "magic telephone book" and his opening line for getting bureaucrats to listen, "This is Senator Tim Corder." This would be a fine speech to give to a bunch with no particular ideological interest in what government does--but Republican Party activists, not surprisingly, tend to care about issues--not just making the bureaucracy do its job.
What startled me most of all--and in California, would probably have required Jack Bauer to torture an elected official into admitting--was when Corder told us about how much better off we are because the state hires his trucking company for various contracts. What really startled me, however, was when he told us about his trucks leaving one Transportation Department district and going into another in furtherance of some state contract--and some sort of problem came up. So he used his "magic telephone book", and an hour later, his trucks were again moving.
Now, Corder emphasized that because of his willingness to use his official position in behalf of his private business interests, all of us as taxpayers saved a lot of money. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this. But I would regard this entire interaction of private business interests, state contracts, and leaning on a bureaucrat--even if the bureaucrat was in the wrong--as a serious conflict of interest.
The audience asked a lot of useful questions that helped to clearly distinguish Senator Corder and myself. Concerning S.1381, the bill to allow concealed carry permit holders to carry on public university campuses, Senator Corder was very pleased that it didn't even get out of committee. I explained that:
1. It was an emotional reaction to the Virginia Tech tragedy, and wasn't the best solution--which is to solve the mental health problem.
2. As a short-term solution, I supported S.1381, because I have family who spend time on campus--and I want them safe. Allowing concealed carry permit holders to carry on campus makes them safer.
3. There is a very serious question as to whether the current ban on open carry on campus would survive a challenge, based on In re Brickey (Ida. 1902).
Another question that came up was concerning student organizations. Some state university campuses apparently will not recognize or provide any funding to student organizations that are religious in nature. Others treat them like non-religious student organizations. Corder thought it was just fine to allow the university administration to continue this discriminatory policy. I pointed out that being public universities, they have an obligation under the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment to treat religious and non-religious organizations the same.
Campaigning As Educative Tool
You know, even if you don't get elected, campaigning for public office is a way to educate people about important issues. (Or so you tell yourself, when you start to confront the likelihood that you aren't going to win.) I spent some time last night talking to representatives of the Idaho Education Association (the teachers' union). I was surprised that when I opened the conversation with my support for vouchers, they didn't seem horribly angry. I also used the opportunity to point out that in most industries, if a simple employer dominates the market, it is generally not good for the wages of workers--and this alone is a reason why public school teachers should be supportive of more private schools.
I also spent a bit of time today talking to a reporter from the Idaho Statesman--I think quite a bit more time than she originally intended to spend. But I have such interesting stories to tell! And it was also a chance to discuss the destructive social consequences of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. The reporter is young enough that she doesn't remember what big cities were like before we went down this path.
I will be at the Elmore County Republican Central Committee meeting Thursday night. I wish that Boise County had a functional Republican party organization.
Did This Cost-Cutting Save Any Money?
I'm told that part of why Idaho Health & Welfare, about five years ago, adopted a much stricter interpretation of their current standards for Medicaid reimbursement of mental health services, was to get spending under control. You might criticize this as a skinflint approach--except that it seems not to have worked. From Budget: Mental Health and Substance Abuse in Idaho (2006), p. 3, we can see that the Medicaid portion of the mental health services budget rose from $59,388,281 in FY 2003 (actual) to $115,447,200 in FY 200y (estimated). That means Medicaid budget for mental health services almost doubled in a period of limited inflation and at most, a few percent growth in the state population. Huh?
My guess is that the problem may be that by effectively cutting off mental health services in rural Idaho, this strict interpretation meant that a lot of people with mild mental health problems received no services--and by the time their problems became acute, requiring hospitalization, the costs were much higher.
I'm a tightwad on government spending, but there are times that a short-term view of the problems is not only inhumane, it's more expensive.
Pay Scales For Teachers
One of the Idaho Education Association's goals is to have the legislature mandate a minimum starting salary for teachers of $40,000 a year. Look, I do think that teachers are generally underappreciated and often underpaid. But here's a reality check. In Ada County (where the capital is located), and the median household income in 2004 was $50,754 per year, this would mean that a starting teacher would be making probably $10,000 a year more than the average worker (figuring that many but not all of those households have both husband and wife working). Okay, you could argue about this a bit I suppose; a lot of non-teachers here don't have college degrees--although a lot do. But many of those non-teachers have filthy, disgusting jobs that involve significant risk of injury, don't have health insurance through their employer, have no hope of tenure, and work twelve months of the year--not ten.
There are a lot of counties in Idaho where this proposal makes no sense at all. In Elmore County, one of the two counties that make up my district, the median household income in 2004 was $37,148 per year. This would mean that starting teachers in Elmore County would be making almost twice what the average worker does.
When you get to some of the more remote counties, like Madison County, the median household income drops to $32,569 per year. If starting teachers get paid twice what the average person earns (some of whom may have been working for twenty years), this is not going to make any friends for the IEA.
Who Is Keith Russell Judd?
He's one of the choices on the Democratic Presidential primary here in Idaho May 27th--and whether you think Barack Hussein Obama or Mrs. Bill is going to get the nomination, you have to admit that Keith Judd is probably the least likely winner. From the April 16, 2008 Houston Chronicle:BOISE, Idaho — A federal prison inmate got himself listed on the ballot for Idaho's May 27 primary as a Democratic presidential candidate, the state's top election official said.
You don't say.
Keith Russell Judd is serving time at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Texas for making threats at the University of New Mexico in 1999. He's scheduled for release in 2013.
Judd, 49, qualified for the ballot by submitting a notarized form and paying the required $1,000 fee, state Secretary of State Ben Ysursa said. As a result, Democratic voters will be able to choose between Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Judd.
"We got conned," Ysursa told The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash.
It's Judd's second presidential bid in Idaho, the newspaper said Wednesday. In 2004 he declared as a write-in candidate for president, which requires only the submission of a declaration, and didn't get any votes.
No matter how many votes he gets this time, he won't get any national convention delegates. Idaho's delegates are chosen at party caucuses.
"The good thing is the Democratic presidential primary has absolutely no legal significance," Ysursa said.
Prison officials told the state elections office that Judd sent out about 14 checks to states seeking to get on the presidential election ballot and about half had been returned. He qualified as a write-in candidate in Kentucky, California, Indiana and Florida, but Idaho apparently is the only state where his name will appear on the ballot.
"It's a mockery of the system, and it's too bad that this kind of thing can happen," said Chuck Oxley, a state Democratic Party spokesman.
Interesting Conversation Today
I had a conversation today with people involved in mental health services in Boise County--such as those services are. What they told me seems inconceivable--unless the objective of Idaho's Department of Health & Welfare Department is to demonstrate the truth of the statement, "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."
I was told that the rules that Health & Welfare has for Medicaid reimbursement (since states actually administer the Medicaid program) require that mental health counseling must be done in a permanent facility, with at least two counselors, supervised by at least one psychiatrist, also in that facility.
I can somewhat see the point of having a psychiatrist providing supervision for mental health counselors. These rules might make sense in a county of several hundred thousand people. In a county with 7200 people, spread over several hundred square miles, this effectively prohibits Medicaid providing any mental health services in our county--and most others. The density just isn't high enough.
So what happens to patients who are having mental health problems and who are covered by Medicaid (people with very low incomes)? I suspect that they don't get services until they reach the point where they end up hospitalized in Boise. By that point, what was mild depression might have escalated to a suicide attempt--and schizophrenia or bipolar disorder has escalated from something just starting, to something full blown. Before the people I was talking to reached that point, I was suggesting what they want--someone "riding circuit" from town to town on a regular basis. It wouldn't conform to H&W's rules, but it would allow serious problems to be identified before they reach a crisis point.
I'm guessing that there is some legitimate motivation for these rules, and someone either is too stupid to see that they don't make sense in rural Idaho, or too inflexible to work around it. Even if the goal was to save money by preventing poor people in rural Idaho from getting mental health care (and that would mean that there are monsters at work in our state government), I am very skeptical that this even saves any money. A couple weeks in a mental hospital in Boise is going to run well above $10,000. You can pay for a lot of hours of a psychiatrist, psychologist, or counselor for that kind of money--and perhaps short-circuit at least some of those hospitalizations. The money might be coming out of a different budget--but the taxpayers still end up paying it.
There's Has To Be More To This Story
I received an email about this incident forwarded from the person who was ticketed--and which was forwarded to a big chunk of the state legislature as well. I also spoke to the person ticketed a while back, and he told me an abbreviated form of this tale. If as described, there's something dirty going on in state government here. (Forgive me for being surprised.)
He also included a copy of the citation:
April 10, 2008
Honorable Secretary of State Ben Ysursa and Honorable Idaho legislators,
It was interesting when I stopped by the Capitol Annex on Tuesday March 25, 2008. I was going to ask a few questions of a representative, but was stopped by an officer. This representative had already agreed to ask a few questions that would be directed to the Attorney General's Office. This officer said my presence made a few of the legislators nervous. He also said I was not welcome at the Capitol Annex. This officer was just transferred to this Capitol Annex security duty just two days prior to this incident. Then Officer Pattis (serial number 3359) joined him and said the same thing and added more. Officer Pattis, an Idaho State Trooper, said I was not welcome at the State Board of Education's offices. This is interesting; I have not been there in years (literally). Furthermore, I have not attended a State Board of Education meeting for quite some time as well. Then he added "I was not welcome on the third and fourth floors of the Borah building; this is where the Governor's offices are located." Officer Pattis also made the comment if I "had to use the post office in the Borah Building, to get in and get out." He also added "Do not contact legislators" and "Do not e-mail them." He also gave me the implication problems would occur for me if I did. There is no written notification or anything of that nature. I have not threatened anyone either. I believe there has been a pretty clear breach of law here. I am also under the impression that Officer Pattis willfully carried out an unlawful order. I want to know the authorization and jurisdiction for these orders. I also consider it inexcusable to use law enforcement to intimidate law-abiding citizens to not contact with their elected officials.
I checked with Representative Pete Nielsen on Thursday night, March 27, 2008 at my Elmore County Republican Central Committee meeting. Pete said he would make a copy of what I wrote and take it to Representative Rich Wills. The orders would have to come from the executive side of state government according to Pete. This concerns me a lot and makes me very nervous. I did have some discussions with people on the Senate Education committee. A few of the issues would put the Attorney General's Office in an embarrassing position. I have no qualms discussing these matters in public, if official avenues of redress, investigation, and discussion (confidential or otherwise) are being denied. I did not tell very many people this particular detail of importance: on January 12, 2008, I had a private discussion with Attorney General Wasden at the Republican Central Committee Meeting. It was Attorney General Wasden that asked me to go through legislators with questions. This is one of reasons that I do not believe it is Lawrence at all, but I can be wrong.
One of the embarrassing examples discussed is Attorney General Wasden does believe it is appropriate to have a Deputy Attorney General for the State Board of Education (Jeff Schrader) that is married to a Boise State University Dean (Dr. Cheryl B. Schrader) and Attorney General Wasden claims this does not constitute a "conflict of interest." In my personal meeting with Luci Willitts and Mr. Jeff Schrader via Laird Stone a few years ago, Mr. Schrader claimed "conflict of interest" because of that relationship. This was in the context of official business. Attorney General Wasden claims an investigation occurs. I claim an investigation was halted. Furthermore, when the State Board of Education was asked in an open forum to recuse their lawyer or seek third party arbitration, they ignored this action. Requests for executive session testimony was also ignored. These actions could have been used against State Board of Education members with respect to their competency and integrity in a manner that could challenge their fitness to sit on that Board. Furthermore, three of the current members and one of the former members who desires a reappointment are lawyers. This is not the only issue that I discussed.
I would be willing to provide more details upon request. You have my permission to share this e-mail with other legislators, the press, and the Governor himself. I do believe Clete Edmunson (Governor Otter's Educational Advisor) has taken part in this matter for other reasons. The information I presented in December at Glenns Ferry's Capitol for a Day never received a response. Clete gave me "the legislature is in session and I am too busy to respond to you" act on January 31, 2008 when I ran into him at the Capitol Annex. I have a request for a meeting with the Governor where I stated I was not happy with his behavior; this request has gone unanswered. It was Governor Otter at the Young Republican's luncheon that personally gave me every indication that a meeting after the session was doable. In my request, I also wanted to discus the State Board of Education and its behavior too. I find it very disturbing to tell a person you do not have access to public property or to your public elected representation without proper procedures and due process. I am going to ask you who gave that order and if an investigation is needed?
After consulting with many people, I was told what Officer Pattis had done was inappropriate, shocking, illegal, and what most people considered extremely suspicious. It is my understanding, that a law enforcement officer can detain someone for an immediate danger, but a future banning a person from public property without a restraining order, summons, or a court order is illegal. "Due process" is needed in such matters. On April 2, 2008 I went to see one of my representatives at the Capitol Annex to find out what was happening on this matter and to give him a copy of the complaint I was turning into the Attorney General's Office, the Governor's Office, and the Secretary of State. The complaint contains the earlier parts of this e-mail with Officer Pattis' name misspelled (as Pettis) and one grammar mistake which is corrected in this e-mail. I then went to the Borah Building. I first went to the Secretary of State's office. While I was at the Governor's Office, I asked for my complaint to go to Bob Wells. I believe he is in charge of the Idaho State Police for the Governor. Upon leaving the Borah Building and turning in complaints, Officer Pattis stopped me at the corner of 8th and State Street. Officer Pattis was in a patrol car. I was on foot. He decided to put me in handcuffs and cited me for trespass (18-7011). This was less than 5 minutes after I left the Borah Building. On the citation, it says 8th and State Street. This is a public intersection. "How can I be trespassing at a public intersection?" If Officer Pattis had intended or forgot some other location for the trespass, I consider it a major oversight to neglect including it on the citation.
During the time I was handcuffed, a second officer pulled Officer Pattis aside and had a private talk with him in the back of his patrol car; I found this very unusual as well. Even though Officer Pattis said he would give me his business card with the citation, he did not. He also claims everything was being recorded. Officer Pattis uncuffed me at this point in time. In fact, Officer Pattis had problems taking off the handcuffs and had to borrow another officer's key to do so. I was accompanied by a security guard to the Attorney General's Office where I turned in the aforementioned complaint that included Officer Pattis in it. I was also escorted by two security guards almost all the way to my car by the Capitol Annex.
Officer Pattis would not release who gave that order to detain me. I find this extremely disturbing. I have a right to face my accuser; I have a right to face who gave those orders. I would also like to know if a picture of me sits in the visors of a number of patrol cars around the Capitol as well. Law enforcement does not act like this by random. To this date, my representatives (Pete Nielsen and Rich Wills) have not been able to get "who gave that order" from the executive branch.
The timing and nature of these actions were also a concern to me. The actions from Officer Pattis occurred after the Milford Terrell re-appointment confirmation in the Senate. The Senate Education committee knew I was opposed to Milford's nomination because of the actions of the entire State Board of Education. The comment from Officer Pattis involving the State Board of Education's offices is very suspicious. Officer Pattis' comment to not contact legislators also looks strange and would not allow for oversight by legislators; this erodes the bonds of trust of our elected officials between the public as well. This is the major reason I do not believe legislators are involved in these strange actions, except possibly after the fact. Pressure from the State Board of Education and the Governor's Office cannot be discounted.
To me, there is a more important issue. I was sharing confidential information with legislators. At no time should members of the public be intimidated to see or contact their legislators to prevent sharing of information and concerns! This is a fundamental trust as far as I am concerned and this goes beyond party loyalty. I know good people on both sides of the aisle. I do not believe that legislators want to be working in a vacuum. I also hope the public is invited to take part in the legislators' decision making process. These past actions have called into question if the moniker of the "Citizen's Statehouse" is still appropriate.
Respectfully,
Christopher A. Pentico
Elmore County Republican Youth Committeeman 
How one can be "trespassing" at 8th and State street (at the state capitol) eludes me. There has to be more to this story. Either he wasn't just walking up to the state capitol, or there's some very San Francisco like abuses of power going on.
Campaign Experiences
Results of the First Mailing
The first mailing effort was a bit disappointing. I mailed a letter and a flyer to every Federal Firearms Licensee in my district. If you don't know what an FFL is--this is a license issued by the federal government which is required to be either gun dealer, a gun manufacturer, or certain categories of serious gun collectors.
The letter explained who I was, and why it was in their interests to have a nationally prominent gun rights activist representing them in the state senate. My letter emphasized that more useful than contributions would be if they could:
1. Arrange an event where they could invite friends and neighbors over to meet the candidate.
2. Let me know that they would be willing to have some flyers up in their shop.
3. Put up a sign (once those are available).
Of the 28 FFLs in the district, exactly one (Ponderosa Sports, north of Horseshoe Bend) responded. I would think if there was any group that would respond enthusiastically, this would be the group.
Door To Door
Sunday afternoon, I went door to door along the old highway. A lot of people weren't home, it being a beautiful warm spring day, but of those who were, I was very pleased at how friendly the responses were--especially from other California refugees. One of them was overjoyed to hear what I had to say: "I don't want Idaho Californicated." At another home, I was able to introduce myself as the husband of the woman that their dog Lily follows home all the time. At another house, the wife has worked with homeless mentally ill before, and was pleased to hear my emphasis on improving mental health services.
I did meet a Democrat, however. He was friendly enough, and startled to hear me talking about the mental health issue--which he imagined was a Democrat issue. I explained that deinstitutionalization was originally a Democrat issue.
And in case you are wondering why I was spending time talking to a Democrat when I have to win the Republican primary, Idaho is an open primary state. You can vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary. This guy was going to vote in the Democratic primary because there were several contested races there, so he wouldn't be of much help on May 27. And you never know: I might end up persuading a few Democrats to vote for me in the general election.
The Gun Show Today
This gun show was rather like gun shows were in Sonoma County, California before about 1991. Gobs and gobs of guns, lots of people, but it didn't seem like an enormous of buying of guns was happening. There were lots of accessories, ammunition, and the like going out the door.
I only spoke to one person who actually lives in my district--but quite a few people who have friends or family in district 22, and took a flyer to hand off to them. What startled me, considering that they aren't in the district, was how many people I spoke to knew who the incumbent was, and agreed that he was too liberal to represent district 22--and maybe even too liberal to represent a district in Boise. I am getting encouraged. The one person with whom I spoke who was actually from my district sounded very positive, and I suspect will arrange a coffee with neighbors and friends over in Elmore County to meet the candidate.
Of course, there's a selection bias here. This is a gun show, and I would expect that would bias the voters a bit conservative. But one recent Idaho arrival (whose accent told me he was from the Northeast) told me that he wasn't even a Republican, and found much in my flyer that he found attractive. He was also one of the more knowledgeable people that I have met in Idaho about the nexus of gun control and black history.
Everyone has a story, and some are more interested than others in talking. I am pleased to report that I only talked to one person suffering from conspiracy theories: Catholic/Masonic/Illuminati/CFR one worldism--five members of the Supreme Court are Catholics! "I've never been much interested in politics," he told me, but Ron Paul running for President got this guy involved. (Why am I not surprised?) One such person out of this many conversations actually is a pretty decent ratio; I shudder to think what the ratio would be at a meeting of DailyKos readers!
These are always difficult conversations for me. Even though this guy isn't in my district, I prefer not to unnecessarily offend or anger someone. Instead, I take the approach that it is best to point out evidence that would damage the neat little world that elaborate conspiracy theories usually spin. For example, I pointed out that several of the Catholic justices are clearly hostile to unconstitutional expansions of government power, and that rather than looking for Cardinal Spellman behind the assassination of John Kennedy, it might more sense to look at the CIA plots against Castro described in the Church Committee report, Lee Harvey Oswald's involvement with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (a Communist front group), and the possibility that this was some sort of tit for tat.
Conspiracy theories are very popular with certain kinds of people. They used to be associated with conservatives, like the John Birch Society, but you can find far more examples today on the left: the perennial JFK theories (and admittedly, how the Warren Commission operated opened a lot of reasons to be skeptical); TWA 800; 9/11, and so on.
The Gun Show This Weekend
I don't spend much time frequenting gun shows; I'm generally too busy. But I will have a table at the gun show this weekend at the fairgrounds in Garden City. It isn't in my district, but I'm sure that some of the crowd coming through will be from district 22, or will have friends or relatives who are in the district.
This is pretty clearly a population that I need to connect with; I would expect that these will be among my more committed voters.
Where Antidiscrimination Laws Take You
I mentioned a while back that a photographer who refused an assignment to photograph a same-sex civil commitment ceremony was being sued before the New Mexico Human Rights Commission for discriminating against homosexuals. The photographer has now been ordered to pay costs of $6637.94. Professor Volokh discusses the issues involved, and predictably, lawyers and law students are piling on, most of them defending why this is a good thing.
Homosexuality, freedom: pick one.
This is why State Senator Corder's bill prohibiting employment discrimination based on sexual orientation is so dangerous--it creates all sorts of opportunities like this.
Boise: Terrorism Target?
I think I saw this mentioned a while back, but found it so incredible that I didn't pursue it any farther. From April 5, 2008 MSNBC:Quick: Name the Western U.S. city most vulnerable to a terrorist attack. Is it Los Angeles, with its crowded roads that make quick escape impossible? San Francisco and its iconic bridge? Or Seattle with its Space Needle and busy port?
There was a lot of liberal ridicule of Governor Kempthorne for putting up concrete truck barriers around the statehouse after 9/11. Maybe he wasn't so far off, after all.
"Is this a typo or what?" asked Bobbie Patterson, executive director of the Boise Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Where in the world did this information come from?"
A Terrifying Increase in Unemployment
The April 5, 2008 Idaho Statesman reports this terrifying news:the largest one-month increase since March 1982, when the nation was in the midst of a 19-month recession.
But don't panic: here's the beginning of the sentence:Idaho's jobless rate jumped two-tenths of a percentage point to 3 percent in March,
Do you remember the 1970s when pundits were explaining that the changing economy meant that there was no realistic chance that we would ever get unemployment down to 5-6%? It had been doctrine among economists for many decades that a 4% unemployment rate was nearly optimal for a modern economy, since most of that unemployment is what is called "frictional"--people who have lost one job (perhaps even by quitting) but have not yet found a new job. If unemployment rates went too low, the theory went, it would start to drive up inflation, as employers had to increase wages to attract workers away from existing jobs.
If you are part of this population that loses a job, yes, this increase in unemployment rates is a bad situation. But a 3% unemployment rate really means that some workers may need a few weeks to find a new job. This is not a crisis, no matter how much the news media would like it to appear to be one.
KIDO 580 AM Will Be Interviewing Me Saturday Morning
At 7:00 AM Mountain Time. Why, I believe some of you in other states may even be able to hear this!
Advantages Of Running For Public Office
A stack of lobbyists want to take me out to lunch next week. I'm sure that their motivations are entirely and exclusively for the public interest, of course.
Solving Idaho's Uninsured Problem
I've added this to the campaign web site--I thought the rest of you might find this interesting. It's an expansion of what I wrote here a few days ago.
What Is The Nature Of The Problem?
range (48% of this income range). Solutions
What can Idaho government do? I'm still scratching my head about this, but I can see several possible solutions:
What is "Priority Doctrine"?
One of the humbling aspects about running for public office is you discover how many aspects of public policy about which you know nothing. I received a questionnaire from the Idaho Farm Bureau today, and one of the questions that they asked was my opinion about "priority doctrine." What the heck is that?
It turns out that Idaho, unsurprisingly, has long had a policy that the first user of a water source has priority over later arrivals when it comes to arguing who gets how much. It appears that the Idaho Department of Water Resources had other plans.
My first reaction is to giving priority to the first user of a water supply is that this seems fair. I can imagine that there are circumstances where this might not be appropriate, and I'm sure that environmentalists would insist that the first user of some of these water supplies have scales.
Never Underestimate How Irritated Voters Are
I was in town today (or should I say, "in village?") and someone that I see pretty regularly approached me to ask, "Are you running for state senate?" I admitted to the crime of being a politician, and discovered that he shared my view that the incumbent is voting for bills like he represents Boise--not like he represents the very conservative people of his district. To my surprise (and perhaps I shouldn't be surprised), this voter knew that Senator Corder had introduced the "sexual orientation and gender identity" bill--and was not happy about it.
A Fascinating Piece By A Johns Hopkins Professor
I mentioned a few days ago my revulsion at a partial sex change who is now pregnant--a pregnant "man" by his/her/its definition. A reader pointed me to this long and important article by Professor Paul McHugh, the head of psychiatry for Johns Hopkins University medical school--rather an expert, by the terms of such things. It is too long to summarize fairly, but he explains why he made the decision that Johns Hopkins would no longer do sex change operations, and why increasingly, other university medical schools are following suit:The subjects before the surgery struck me as even more strange, as they struggled to convince anyone who might influence the decision for their surgery. First, they spent an unusual amount of time thinking and talking about sex and their sexual experiences; their sexual hungers and adventures seemed to preoccupy them. Second, discussion of babies or children provoked little interest from them; indeed, they seemed indifferent to children. But third, and most remarkable, many of these men-who-claimed-to-be-women reported that they found women sexually attractive and that they saw themselves as “lesbians.” When I noted to their champions that their psychological leanings seemed more like those of men than of women, I would get various replies, mostly to the effect that in making such judgments I was drawing on sexual stereotypes.
Professor McHugh has a detailed discussion of the characteristics of men who want to be women--and regular readers of my blog will not be surprised by what they found:
...
Two issues presented themselves as targets for study. First, I wanted to test the claim that men who had undergone sex-change surgery found resolution for their many general psychological problems. Second (and this was more ambitious), I wanted to see whether male infants with ambiguous genitalia who were being surgically transformed into females and raised as girls did, as the theory (again from Hopkins) claimed, settle easily into the sexual identity that was chosen for them. These claims had generated the opinion in psychiatric circles that one’s “sex” and one’s “gender” were distinct matters, sex being genetically and hormonally determined from conception, while gender was culturally shaped by the actions of family and others during childhood.
The first issue was easier and required only that I encourage the ongoing research of a member of the faculty who was an accomplished student of human sexual behavior. The psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Jon Meyer was already developing a means of following up with adults who received sex-change operations at Hopkins in order to see how much the surgery had helped them. He found that most of the patients he tracked down some years after their surgery were contented with what they had done and that only a few regretted it. But in every other respect, they were little changed in their psychological condition. They had much the same problems with relationships, work, and emotions as before. The hope that they would emerge now from their emotional difficulties to flourish psychologically had not been fulfilled.
We saw the results as demonstrating that just as these men enjoyed cross-dressing as women before the operation so they enjoyed cross-living after it. But they were no better in their psychological integration or any easier to live with. With these facts in hand I concluded that Hopkins was fundamentally cooperating with a mental illness. We psychiatrists, I thought, would do better to concentrate on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia.Most of the cases fell into one of two quite different groups. One group consisted of conflicted and guilt-ridden homosexual men who saw a sex-change as a way to resolve their conflicts over homosexuality by allowing them to behave sexually as females with men. The other group, mostly older men, consisted of heterosexual (and some bisexual) males who found intense sexual arousal in cross-dressing as females.
Now, some of you are going to say, "If it makes them happy, what's wrong with them doing this?"
1. Medical resources spent on this wrongheaded procedure are not available for legitimate medical problems. Even if the confused ones pay for this procedure entirely themselves, it is still using plastic surgeons who could be doing legitimate reconstructive surgery, hospital beds, and operating rooms.
2. In some cases, the taxpayers are paying for sex-change operations. San Francisco, which is self-insured, does so--up to $50,000 per employee, according to this February 18, 2001 New York Times report. Berkeley apparently did likewise last year, according to this account copied from the May 8, 2007 Contra Costa Times. This October 10, 2007 KTVB channel 7 report tells us that the federal courts have been wrangling over whether two Idaho prisoners have a right to a treatment for "gender identity disorder."
Really bad ideas don't seem to stay private; they soon became a constitutional right.
An Army Of Davids
That's the title of a book by Professor Glenn Reynolds about how new technology and market forces are allowing individuals who aren't powerful in themselves to combine forces and destroy the existing power structure of Big Media and Big Government. I sent out the call last night--and it is happening.
Contributions are starting to trickle in through the campaign web site, which became operational sometime during the night. Each contribution is relatively small--$25, $50--but collectively, they will become a mighty river of money.
A pro-gun blogger issues the clarion call for pro-gun activists to put their money where their mouths are.
One of my readers is a graphic artist; he's putting together a logo for the campaign.
I needed a list of zip codes in the two counties that make up the district. No problem; another reader used his knowledge of GIS to pull that information together into a spreadsheet for me.
Another reader is a website designer; he has offered to polish up my rather basic campaign web site.
Win or lose--this is going to be fun!
Campaign Webpage Is Up
It is here. The domain www.cramerforsenate.org will point to that same location in a day or two--but it takes a while for this domain name to propagate out through all the domain name servers.
Elk: I Never Realized How Important They Are!
I don't just mean the breeders who raise domestic elk for the table--I mean the antiwolf and prowolf crowd who argue about the wild elk. I'm doing my best not to stick my foot in my mouth on this issue--and more importantly, not in a wolf's mouth--while I am trying to understand this issue.
Someone sent me this YouTube video that claims that the introduction of the wolves has largely wiped out the wild elk population. As near as I can tell, the differing factions are:
1. People that want the wolves removed. They claim that the Canadian wolves introduced into central Idaho are substantially larger than the Rocky Mountain wolves that were originally here. (I don't know if this is true or not; I haven't had time to research this claim.)
One of these groups seems to be made up elk hunters who claim that the reintroduced wolves are taking vast numbers of elk, reducing the herds too dramatically. I notice that the person making that claim in the YouTube video is also in the elk hunt guide business. Hmmmm.
Another antiwolf group are those who use the wilderness and don't want their horses and dogs spooked by the wolves--and may prefer not being shredded themselves. The Idaho World had a report in the last week or two of someone's dog who was killed by a wolf near their home. If I had small children still at home, and I lived somewhere wilder than Horseshoe Bend, I might well be in this group myself. Wolves are like land sharks; extremely competent, and without the same soft and squishy feelings for our children and pets that the wolf-huggers have for the wolves.
Ranchers are concerned about wolves killing their livestock. I'm not sure that it is practical to fence in their livestock--wolves are pretty smart and powerful animals.
2. People that want the wolves here.
Some of these wolf-huggers, in love with nature, but who don't have to live in it.
Some of these seem to be more intelligent and serious ecologists who believe that wolves belong here to act as a natural restraint on the native prey. I will say that there is some merit to having natural predators at work, along with man. Wolves will take out some elk that human hunters might not--especially the sick, and the young ones that aren't quick enough. If the claim about the reintroduced wolves is correct, however, there might be a serious question if we are restoring the natural balance.
Some hunters seem to either accept the presence or the wolves, or see them as being an important part of the natural balance. This doesn't surprise me; a lot of hunters are, at heart, nature lovers. It has always been astonishing to me how Sierra Clubbers managed to create a gap between themselves and hunters--a group that has very similar views of the importance of nature.
As I said, I don't have an opinion on this yet (although I lean towards the idea that wolves perform a useful ecological role--but their numbers in populated areas need to be kept under control). Maybe it is wisest not to get in between these two factions. I will say that fear of wolves might encourage Sierra Club types to reconsider gun ownership while enjoying the Idaho wilderness.
"This Isn't Even Wrong"
So said the email from a reader pointing to me something that reads like either a horrifying piece of 1930s science fiction (except that no one would have thought this plausible), or a satirical piece from The Onion. This, unfortunately, comes from the March 25, 2008 National Post of Canada:An Oregon man who used to be a woman says he is pregnant with a baby girl.
I think I disagree with my reader. If true, this is very wrong. Oh yeah, you can tell something of what the expectant couple are like from the name of the firm that they run:
Thomas Beatie's first-person story appears in the April issue of The Advocate, a Los Angeles-based newsmagazine for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people.
According to the story, Mr. Beatie was born a woman but decided to become a transgender male and legally changed his sex to male. He had his breasts surgically removed and started bimonthly testosterone injections, but kept his vagina.
Now identifying as male, Mr. Beatie legally married Nancy Beatie, the story says. The pair wanted a biological baby but Ms. Beatie was unable to carry a child. So they decided Mr. Beatie would carry the child.
"How does it feel to be a pregnant man," Mr. Beatie writes in the article. "Incredible. Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child ... I will be my daughter's father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family."
Before getting pregnant he stopped injecting testosterone, and his body "regulated itself after about four months," he writes in the Advocate piece.
One year and nine doctors later, the couple got access to a cryogenic sperm bank and purchased anonymous donor vials for a home insemination. Without the aid of fertility drugs, progesterone or exogenous estrogen, Mr. Beatie got pregnant, he says. But the pregnancy was ectopic, and rarer still, with triplets. After surgery, Mr. Beatie lost all his embryos and his right fallopian tube.
But the second pregnancy has been a success, writes Mr. Beatie: "We are happily awaiting her birth, with an estimated due date of July 3, 2008."Yesterday, the couple-- who run a T-shirt printing company called Define Normal -- refused to tell their story, citing U.S. deals with TV and print media outlets.
I won't "define normal" but I will certainly define sick, and this is it. Of course, if State Senator Tim Corder had his way with S.1323, an employer who refused to hire this pregnant "man" would be punished for discriminating based on "gender identity."
What Am I Missing Here?
There has to be some reason that 11 members of the Idaho House voted against this bill. Maybe because they don't believe in a woman's right to choose? From the March 25, 2008 Idaho Statesman:BOISE, Idaho — The House has passed a measure making it a crime to violently coerce a woman into getting an abortion.
Oh, here's the explanation:
Lawmakers voted 55-11 on Tuesday to approve the bill, a scaled-back version of an earlier proposal. The bill now goes to the Senate.
The measure would apply to anyone who threatens, conspires or inflicts physical injury or death on a pregnant woman.
The crime would either be a misdemeanor or a felony depending on whether the offense involves actual violence.
Republican Representative Bob Nonini of Coeur d'Alene says the bill would help protect pregnant women who are pushed to do something they don't want to do.Opponents say the law is unnecessary since the threat of physical violence is already a crime.
And so having a second statute under which someone can be charged is a problem because....what? I would think that there are a number of situations where a person could be charged with different crimes for what is essentially the same offense.
Pledge of Allegiance
Apparently some members of the press corps are choosing not to say the Pledge of Allegiance with the rest of those present in the Idaho House. The letter from Speaker Denney to the dean of the press corps says:
My reactions are:
1. Perhaps the non-Pledgers aren't citizens of the U.S. (Not likely, but it is possible.)
2. Perhaps the non-Pledgers are showing us how they really feel about the U.S.
3. Perhaps the non-Pledgers regard the Pledge as a meaningless piece of symbolism.
If the answer is #2, I prefer the honesty of media people telling us where their loyalty isn't. If the answer is #3, they won't mind abiding by Speaker Denney's request, because it is just a meaningless piece of symbolism, right?
I am proud to say the Pledge of Allegiance (in spite of its socialist origins), but it is symbolism. It is part of the late 19th century and early 20th century's peculiar blending of jingoism and ritual into a pseudo-religious patriotism. Our elaborate procedures for how to display the American flag, and how to dispose of flags when no longer serviceable, are peculiarly ritualistic, with the flag treated rather like a religious icon.
I follow these rules because I do not want to offend others, and because there is an enormous amount about our nation that deserves respect--and therefore our flag and the ritual patriotism is also deserving of respect. But we should never forget that the symbols are not the nation, anymore than the map of Idaho is Idaho.
Trade Associations
When I was in Washington last week, I was really impressed how many associations are there. I mean, if you are going to be lobbying Congress, that's where you need to be--but it is still startling how many thousands of these groups exist. Here's a picture from near our hotel in Alexandria:
Click here to enlarge
I had recent opportunity to chat with the lobbyist for the Idaho Elk Breeders Association. At this point, you may be asking yourself the same question I asked: "There is an association for that?"
Some of you may even be asking, "What's an elk?" We went looking for an elk herd a few weeks back a few miles north of our home. These are elk:
Click here to enlarge
So I decided to research the Idaho Elk Breeders Association, and I found this article about the controversy over a bill regulating the industry introduced by the state senator I am trying to unseat:Friday's three-hour debate featured bickering elk ranchers who criticized the bill -- even though it had been drafted by members of their own industry association.
I'm still scratching my head trying to understand all the different players on this, and where I stand on this matter. It is still an astonishing little universe that most Idahoans doubtless don't even realize exists.
"The industry, regardless of what you've been told, 80 percent is totally against licensing," said Charles Warner, an elk rancher from Kellogg in northern Idaho and a board member of the Idaho Elk Breeders Association.
He said other members of the association came up with the licensing plan in secret.
Warner argued licensing was a violation of his property rights, especially when years of disease testing have shown no signs of chronic wasting disease, brucellosis or tuberculosis in domestic herds.
Two Republicans, Reps. Dennis Lake, of Blackfoot, and Jim Patrick, of Twin Falls, voted against the bill because they were against new regulation.
Meanwhile, three Democrats on the panel said the bill was too weak and they believed its failure could add momentum to a possible citizen initiative, like Montana's in 2000 that outlawed so-called "shooter bull" operations, to clamp down on elk ranches.
"(The bill) is a whitewash from industry," said Rep. Branden Durst, D-Boise. "It's a way they can inoculate themselves from a citizen initiative, and I think that's a travesty."
Idaho has 78 elk ranches that harvest elk for meat and antler velvet. Seventeen also allow fenced hunts for trophy bulls, which some hunting groups argue violates fair-chase ethics of wild hunts.
Attorney's Fees & Idaho S.1283
One area of civil litigation that I think is terribly destructive is that, unlike Britain, we do not have a consistent "loser pays" rule about attorney fees. What this means is that if Ms. A sues Mr. B for $500,000,000 because Mr. B said something that hurt Ms. A's feelings, Mr. B will spend thousands of dollars on an attorney to defend a suit that has no merit. Even if the judge looks at the evidence, and decides that Ms. A had absolutely no legitimate basis for the suit, Mr. B is out his attorney's fees. In theory, judges have the authority to order Ms. A to pay Mr. B's fees if it is apparent that there was no legitimate basis for the suit, but in practice, it isn't all that common.
Let me tell you a little story. Back in the late 1970s, my friend Eric and I jointly owned a 1973 Chevrolet Caprice station wagon, which we used for transporting furniture on those occasions when either of us moved. We lent the station wagon to Eric's brother Allan one day.
So Allan is driving down the street somewhere in Los Angeles, and ahead of him, he sees a Ford Mustang smash into a streetlight post. Allan comes to a stop, slightly tapping the Mustang's bumper. The driver of the Mustang is taken to the hospital by ambulance, where she is DOA.
The police officer investigating the crash puts in the police report that the Mustang was a one car accident--that Allan crashed our station wagon into the Mustang after it had already come to a complete stop, and the collision was so slow that there was no damage to either the station wagon or the Mustang from it. The autopsy on the Mustang driver shows that she had a .23% blood alcohol level; only an idiot would fail to see that she probably passed out at the wheel.
So, about six months later, the driver's father-in-law files suit on behalf of the driver's husband. (Father-in-law and husband are both attorneys, of course.) The suit demands $15,000 in damages from Allan (he was driving), myself and Eric (we owned the car), and 20 other people who were either driving cars, or owned cars, that were in the intersection, claiming that we "jointly and severally conspired" to force the Mustang into the post, thus causing the driver's death.
The complaint itself was embarrassingly bad: not just typos, but consistent misspellings, sentence fragments, and so on. Pretty obviously, the California Bar Exam couldn't be that difficult, or perhaps they gave special treatment to these lawyers because English wasn't their native language.
So I take this over to my insurance company, and ask them what they are going to do about it. I was outraged that such an obvious attempt at extortion had been filed. My insurance agent got back to me a few days later and said, "Ordinarily, we'll settle a suit like this for $500 just to make it go away, because it costs us too much to go and litigate it, but this is probably the most ridiculous suit our lawyers have seen this year, so we're probably going to fight it."
Probably? Suits like this that are extortion under color of law. There was simply no legitimate reason for this suit, and even if the grieving husband didn't want to see that the cause of the accident was that his wife was so drunk that she probably passed out, the lawyer who filed the suit should have refused to file it. The cost to my insurance company of going to court was high enough--and the judge was simply not going to impose any penalty on the plaintiff, by requiring him to pay the attorney's fees--that the lawyer had no incentive to tell the husband, "I'm not going to do this." After all: maybe the insurance company would be willing to settle for $500 out of court.
I recognize that a strict application of "loser pays" would prevent many legitimate suits from being filed, especially where the plaintiff is poor, and the defendant has deep pockets. But there does seem to be a point where a suit is so absurd that judges should impose "loser pays" as a way to discourage such suits. Pretty clearly, this suit in which I was a victim demonstrates that there were no penalties for filing absurd lawsuits in Los Angeles at the time. Some of the lawsuits that I have seen filed over the years (such as a multibillion dollar suit against International House of Pancakes by an irate customer who couldn't get the advertised special served to her) tell me that the problem hasn't been fixed.
Now, Idaho's legislature is considering a revision to our state law. The bill is S.1283, and it adds one line to the current statute that lists the available remedies for employment discrimination:(f) An order for reasonable attorney's fees.
Why is anyone proposing to add this? Well, last year, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled in Stout v. Key Training Corporation, 144 Idaho 195, 158 P.3d 971 (2007) that even though federal law provides for someone who wins a suit for unlawful employment discrimination to receive "reasonable attorney's fees" (are there such things?), Idaho law does not have any specific provision granting this.
I don't know what the merits of the underlying suit were. Stout claimed discrimination because she got pregnant. The defendant, Key Training Corporation, apparently trains linemen--and I can see how someone might foolishly have thought that it was a bad idea to have a pregnant woman up on top of high voltage lines.
Regardless of the merits of the case, I can see why Stout, having won the case, thought that she should receive attorney's fees. I actually don't have a problem with this change in the law--but I'm a bit funny in one respect--I think that the law should apply equally on both sides. The way that I read the statute that S.1283 would change, the plaintiff is entitled to "reasonable attorney's fees" if he wins, but the defendant isn't entitled to "reasonable attorney's fees" if he wins.
I can support S.1283 if the winner, on either side, gets to collect attorney's fees from the loser. I can't support something this one-sided, because it creates an incentive to file discrimination suits, with no costs to the plaintiff for questionable or even completely bogus claims.
Senator Craig Isn't Leaving
I received a form letter today: You were frank in expressing your views, and I appreciated it. In fact, I reviewed every letter and contact from Idahoans -- both letters like yours urging me to resign and letters of support from throughout the State.
I had hoped that his replacement would be already in position for the next election. As it is, the Democrats will almost certainly spend a lot of time trying to smear the Republican nominee as a homosexual. If you think that is absurd--that the Democratic Party would never engage in innuendo that relies on nasty stereotypes--well, consider this November 7, 2002 New York Times article:
As you know, I have decided to serve out my term and complete the initiatives for Idaho that are currently underway in the U.S. Senate. When I returned to Washington, D.C. in September, it became clear that I could still work effectively for the State; many of my Senate colleagues have even urged me to remain in office. Resigning would have cost Idaho the seniority and committee assignments that serve key State priorities.
Let me again apologize to you for the mistake I made in pleading guilty to a crime I did not commit. I deeply regret the cloud that has been cast over Idaho because of my actions. I will do all I can to lift that cloud through continued service to our great State.
In the months ahead, I will be voting and working on your behalf in the U.S. Senate. It may not be possible to regain your trust, but I hope you will still continue to give me your input, so that I can do my best to represent you on the issues facing our State and Nation.
He Was For It Before He Was Against It
I'm afraid that all this sleazy activity by Senator Happy Feet has caused him to contract Kerryism. You remember John Kerry's famous "I voted for the war before I voted against it" statement?
Let's see, Senator Happy Feet pleaded guilty to the disorderly conduct charge. Now he says that he did't do it, and wants to withdraw his plea.
First he said he was going to resign from the Senate effective September 30, 2007. Now, according to September 27, 2007 FoxNews:Craig's lawyers asked a Minnesota judge Wednesday to let the three-term senator withdraw his guilty plea in a sex sting at a Minneapolis airport restroom. Afterward, Craig issued a statement saying he will stay in office "for now."
Everything is For Sale on eBay
An amusing remark from Kevin Richert's blog:In the eBay economy, it seems, everything is up for bid.
Including toilet paper which, according to its sellers, came from the infamous Larry Craig stall at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.
Which all goes to prove three immutable truths.
1. Never underestimate the free market's never-ending power to match demand with supply.
2. Never underestimate the power of the Craig story — which, as if weighted with concrete blocks, can always manage to sink a foot or two lower.
3. If P.T. Barnum were alive today, he'd be hawking junk on eBay.
Scrappleface Explains The Un-Resignation
You can always count on Scrappleface to come up with a satirical explanation of something stupid:
Interesting Question: Is This Extortion?
I don't know enough about the extortion statute to know if this claim is right--but wouldn't it be interesting if it is? From Red State:
Senator Craig's Story Just Gets Worse And Worse
The comments over at Huckleberries Online suggest that Senator Craig went rather far out of his way--outside the security zone, and thus he would have had to go back through security--to use the public restroom that he did:
I can't figure out from the map if this is correct, and it is certainly possible that Craig had some reason to go elsewhere in the airport--and then suddenly had an urgent need to go to that particular restroom. If I have a bit of time to kill on a layover, I walk around the airport a good bit--but I have to have a very good reason to leave one security zone, knowing that I will have to go back through security again. It's a nuisance: removing shoes; emptying my pockets; often removing my belt. It also isn't something that you do by accident--it is very clear when you leave a security zone.Across from Food Court. Go through security to main Mezzanine where main shopping is located. Look for Starbucks Coffee stand and Men's Room is across from there.
As Idaho Values Alliance points out, Craig did not have a lot of time to kill:Further, the senator, as a frequent traveler, most likely had access to a VIP lounge for his use during layovers. His layover, according to press accounts, was from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., in other words, over the lunch hour. Most observers will find it inexplicable that a traveler with access to free food and a comfortable and clean bathroom in an essentially private lounge would go out of his way to seek out a public bathroom.
It also isn't looking good for Craig to claim that he had no idea what was going on. Craig admitted that he had used that restroom frequently, and claimed that the police officer solicited him:
I hear now that Senator Craig is reconsidering resignation. I hope not. Even if he somehow manages to withdraw his guilty plea, his credibility and judgment are shown by this whole sordid affair to be wanting. Senator Craig needs to move on, and allow Lt. Gov. Risch to start working on representing Idaho in the Senate.
Our Newest Senator: A Breath of Fresh Air
PoliPundit points out that past behavior by Lt. Governor Jim Risch--and Larry Craig's replacement--has voiced support for two very weird ideas in the past: that illegal immigration is, you know, illegal, and that when disasters happen in Idaho, people here don't wait for the government to show up with toilet paper and designated wipers:“Here in Idaho, we couldn’t understand how people could sit around on the kerbs waiting for the federal government to come and do something. We had a dam break in 1976, but we didn’t whine about it. We got out our backhoes and we rebuilt the roads and replanted the fields and got on with our lives. That’s the culture here. Not waiting for the federal government to bring you drinking water. In Idaho there would have been entrepreneurs selling the drinking water.”
Senator Craig's Special Media Protection
The Idaho World is the weekly newspaper for Boise County. The publisher, Ed Hart, had an article in the August 29, 2007 issue with some interesting personal insights into Senator Craig's orientation:I first heard rumors about Craig's sexual preferences almost 30 years ago, before he was elected to Congress. One of the individuals who also was the subject of those same rumors, Chris Smith, later became my business partner when we purchased the Idaho World. Chris and Larry Craig were rumored to have had a long term sexual relationship ever since their time together at the University of Idaho.
Smith would not confirm nor deny these rumors:However, after numerous conversations about homosexuality and politics, in which Craig's name was frequently mentioned, he left me with no doubt that Craig was gay. On more than one occasion, Chris defended Craig's votes and political stands that were negative towards the gay community, claiming such stands were necessary for him to remain in office, and that he believed Craig was working behind the scenes to minimize the impact of any such poisitions on the gay community. He did not defend others with similar anti-gay views.
Here is where it gets very interesting--and a reminder that it isn't just Yalies who belong to oath-sworn secret fraternities like Skull & Bones that benefit from college relationships that the general public doesn't know about:In spite of his strong affiliation with the Democratic Party, Chris refused to print any negative stories about Craig, the very Republican Senator, and took advantage of many opportunities to portray him in a positive light. When I took over editorial duties, he asked me to essentially continue this policy. While I did not feel it was appropriate to promote Senator Craig, we reached an agreement that I would not run negative stories about Craig, unless the stories had already been widely circulated by other news outlets.
Fascinating--an admission of something that would sound like paranoia if anyone outside of the news media said it. It makes me wonder how many other politicians are enjoying similar protection because of their college relationships (and not just those involving sex). Pretty obviously, Bill Sali (R-ID) didn't travel in the right circles to get this special protection from hostile media!
Senator Craig Resigns
This is a tragedy. I blogged from the beginning that it was necessary, but it is still a tragedy. Senator Craig was an effective voice for gun rights in the Senate; he was a consistent vote for traditional values in the Senate. But his actions in that public restroom, and its aftermath, utterly destroyed his credibility. Why?
1. If he did what he pleaded guilty to, then there was a big gap between his public image and reality. I would like U.S. Senator to be a title that conveys integrity and trustworthiness. (You know, like Ted "Chappaquidick" Kennedy.) This also shows a remarkable self-control problem.
2. If Senator Craig is homosexual or bisexual, keeping it a secret made him prone to blackmail. Being open would be less of a security risk.
3. If he did not do what he pleaded guilty to, then his judgment leaves a lot to be desired. I've never pleaded guilty to even a traffic offense unless I was guilty. I've fought two tickets in my entire life: one for "unsafe speed" (30 in a 35 zone--yes, I don't have the numbers switched) when I was about 19. Another ticket was for "exhibition of speed" in 2000 or 2001, when my tires chirped on a sticky painted crosswalk while leaving an unlawful police checkpoint. In both cases, the judge agreed and dismissed the charges. (She looked very impressed when I cited all the existing case law that demonstrated that Petaluma Police Department was violating the Fourth Amendment with its traffic checkpoint for seatbelt use.)
I am sorry to see Senator Craig have to leave office, but I also appreciate that he recognized the absurdity of pretending that there was no reason to do so.
I Just Noticed That Larry Craig's Three Kids Are All Adopted
At least, according to Wikipedia (which isn't one of the most reliable sources):Craig is married and has adopted the three children that his wife, Suzanne, had from her previous marriage.[5] Through his adopted children, Craig has nine grandchildren.[6]
I see quite a bit of stuff indicating that Craig has a strong interest in adoption issues. I mentioned a few days back the Idaho Statesman's coverage of the nasty rumors about Craig, and that report included this:Craig and the then-Suzanne Scott had their first date on Valentine's Day 1980, when Craig was making his first run for Congress. Craig proposed six months after the scandal, on Suzanne's birthday, Dec. 28, 1982. They married in July 1983.
What's interesting is that Craig specifically responded to a question of whether theirs was a "marriage of convenience." (I recently read an interview with former New Jersey Governor McGreevey's ex-wife. It was a marriage of convenience for McGreevey, to make himself electable as governor--she just wasn't brought in on this detail.)
I think very highly of people that adopt. There are a lot of children out there that need a home. But the more I connect the dots on this, the more it really does look like a marriage of convenience. Maybe Craig has some sterility problem. Maybe his wife decided that she had three kids and didn't want anymore. But in the same way that all the individual actions in that men's room don't mean much by themselves, when you put them all together--it does make you wonder, doesn't it?
A politician has to wear a mask that hides who he is really is--to be different people to different interest groups--in order to get elected. For a lot of homosexuals, unless they choose to be open about it, they also have to wear a mask that hides who they really are. Perhaps all these gay politicians are the consequence of people who get used to wearing a mask about their sexuality--and find it very easy to then leapfrog into politics, a career that does not require, but certainly encourages equivocation, shading the truth, and flat-out lies.
None of this would matter if Craig had either been discreet, or intelligent. But he managed to fail on both counts with this stunt in Minneapolis, and made all of this relevant.
"The Devil Made Me Do It"
I watched Senator Craig's speech in Boise today. What little possibility that I entertained that he might, indeed, have been "misunderstood" is gone. The tone that I heard--a bit of self-righteous indignation that sounded terribly insincere--as he insisted that he isn't a homosexual reminded me way too much of, "I never had relations with that woman!"
Craig used an awful lot of passive voice constructions about the shame that he has brought onto his family, his office, and Idaho. That's not a sign that he has come to grips with who was at fault--either in his actions in the restroom, his attempt to use his office to avoid charges, or his decision to plead guilty.
Worse was his attempt to redirect blame for his decision to plead guilty to the lesser charge. Those of you above a certain age may recall the comedian Flip Wilson's famous excuse, "The devil made me do it!" Senator Craig is blaming his incredibly bad decision to plead guilty, in the hopes of making the more serious charge go away, on what he characterizes as eight months of the Idaho Statesman harassing him about the rumors that have been floating around.
Now, the parallel of the Idaho Statesman to the Prince of Darkness has some merit to it; so does the attempt to blame sinful decisions on others, rather than accepting personal responsibility for a decision so astonishingly bad that it makes me think of the Charge of the Light Brigade. The Idaho Statesman, to their credit, was the only major paper in Idaho that did not discuss the rumors last year about Craig's homosexuality.
The Statesman asked questions of Senator Craig over the last few months that included the very serious but not particularly credible claim that someone had sex with Senator Craig in a public restroom in Union Station in Washington, DC. So his response when he gets arrested under very similar circumstances is to try to bluff his way out with his business card, then hopes that pleading guilty to a lesser charge will make it "go away"?
Many very sensible, intelligent, disciplined people out there manage to confine all the madness, obsession, and self-control problems to one little corner of their lives. (In my case, it's my home office.) For Senator Craig--like a fair number of others--it appears to be their sexuality, and things that relate to it.
I wrote a letter to his office earlier today strongly encouraging Senator Craig to resign his position. At a minimum, his guilty plea shows an enormous inability to make good decisions--probably because it is tied to his sexuality, and fear of its exposure. I also pointed out that he is going to need the time to work through some of his issues. And there is hope for him.
Robert L. Spitzer is the professor of psychiatry who played a vital role in getting homosexuality removed from DSM-III, the American Psychiatric Association's standard for defining mental illness. A few years back, Professor Spitzer became curious to know if reparative therapy (which purports to help homosexuals turn straight) worked. His paper, "Can some gay men and lesbians change their sexual orientation? 200 participants reporting a change from homosexual to heterosexual orientation," Archives of Sexual Behavior 32.5 (Oct 2003): p403-18, asked that question.
Spitzer surveyed 143 males and 57 females who had been primarily homosexual in orientation, had gone through various forms of reparative therapy, and were at least five years post-therapy. These were mostly not people that had fought with homosexual urges, but were actively engaged:Although all of the participants had been sexually attracted to members of the same sex, a small proportion had never engaged in consensual homosexual sex (males, 13%; females, 4%; [chi square](1) = 3.2, p < .10). Significantly more males than females had engaged in consensual homosexual sex with more than 50 different sexual partners during their lifetime (males, 34%; females, 2%; [chi square](1) = 20.6, p < .001). Significantly more males than females had not experienced consensual heterosexual sex before the therapy effort (males, 53%; females, 33%; [chi square](1) = 5.6, p < .025).
The survey group were homosexuals who were highly motivated, and were uncomfortable with their homosexuality--and they were far more successful than Professor Spitzer had expected in changing not just their behavior but their preference:The mean of the Sexual Attraction Scale for both males and females at PRE was in the very high homosexual range: males, 91 (SD = 19.8); females, 88 (SD = 13.8), t(198) : 1.3, ns. The mean of the Sexual Orientation Self-Identity Scale for both males and females at PRE was also in the very high homosexual range: males, 77 (SD = 24.5); females, 76.5 (SD = 26.7), t(183) < sd =" 21.4);" sd =" 14.5);" n =" 57)" n =" 139)" sd =" 14.5);" sd =" 8.1);">To compare the amount of change from PRE to POST, the PRE values were subtracted from the POST values. On the Sexual Attraction Scale, the mean change in females was 80 (n = 57; SD = 20), significantly more than that in males, 67.8 (n = 143; SD = 20; t(198) = -3.6, p < .001). On the Sexual Orientation Self-Identity Scale, the mean change in males was 68.1 (n = 131 ; SD = 28.3), not significantly different from the change in females, 73.4, (n = 52; SD = 29.3; t(181) = -1.1.
The mean age at onset of sexual arousal to the same sex was 12 years (SD = 2.9). About 18 years (SD = 7.8) later, at age 30, was the beginning of the therapy that they found helpful. The mean duration from the onset of the therapy to the participant beginning to feel a change in their sexual orientation was 1.9 (SD = 1.9) years. At the time of the interview, 21% (n = 42) reported that they were still involved in some form of reparative therapy, usually referring to continuing to attend an ex-gay support group or, on their own, having a life-long struggle with the underlying issues that they believed were related to their becoming homosexual. For these participants, the mean duration of therapy up until the interview was 15.0 (SD = 7.7) years. For the 79% (n = 158) of the participants who were no longer involved in any type of reparative therapy, the mean duration of the therapy was 4.7 (SD = 3.5) years.
Now, Spitzer is careful not to overplay this. He reports that some of them still would have occasional lusts for the opposite sex. But it does appear that homosexuality doesn't have to be a life sentence--at least for those who are sincerely interested in change.
The Idaho Statesman Story About Senator Craig
It's here, and it's pretty damaging to his claim that the incident he pled guilty to was a "misunderstanding":Over five months, the Statesman examined rumors about Craig dating to his college days and his 1982 pre-emptive denial that he had sex with underage congressional pages.
Former New Jersey Governor McGreevey also married after enough rumors floated around to become an obstacle to running for higher office. What a tragedy.
I Guess There's Room for a Replacement for Senator Craig (R-ID)
There were allegations last year that I scoffed at because they were completely without credible sources. It appears that Senator Craig pleaded no contest to these charges from an arrest in June. I've been upset with his liberalism for some time, but I am still a little surprised by this. From Roll Call (which is so busy that I can't get through it at the moment), quoted in August 27, 2007 Real Clear Politics:Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested in June at a Minnesota airport by a plainclothes police officer investigating lewd conduct complaints in a men's public restroom, according to an arrest report obtained by Roll Call Monday afternoon.
Closeted homosexuality is a bad thing, no question about it. And this does make my point about the inability of homosexuals to behave like adults. In a public men's room?
Craig claims it was a misunderstanding. If so, he should have vigorously challenged the charge--not pleaded guilty.
How is it that homosexuals, who are about 3-4% of the population, are so overrepresented among elected officials? A professor I had dinner with a few months back in New Jersey, in discussing the McGreevey scandal, pointed out that anyone with a normal family situation would probably not be willing to spend that much time away from home.
UPDATE: Roll Call is still overwhelmed with hits, but USA Today has reprinted much of the article here. It is just barely possible that Senator Craig's claim that it was a "misunderstanding" is correct--but why plead guilty? This isn't like a speeding ticket. This was a very serious accusation--that Senator Craig was trolling for sex with another man in a public restroom--and pleading guilty generally indicates, well, guilt.
The only good news that can come out of this is that a lot of people will have to confront that this kind of behavior, while not necessarily the norm among homosexuals, isn't particularly rare, either. Unfortunately, homosexual legislators, whether open or closeted, do a lot of stuff that reminds you that homosexuals really aren't like the rest of us. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) lover was the result of Frank answering a personal ad so vulgar that I won't quote it--and then his lover ran a prostitution service out of Frank's apartment. More recently, Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) sending lascivious emails to pages less than half his age, and Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA) having an affair with a page less than half his age. All of these actions make an adulterous affair seem downright classy by comparison.
Senator Craig should go ahead and resign, and let Governor Otter name a replacement who can serve out Craig's term with dignity and respect for the people of Idaho. (I'm available!)
UPDATE 2: The more I think about this, the more disturbing it becomes. This isn't something that happened behind closed doors. This wasn't the result of meeting another man that he was attracted to, and with whom they carried on some sort of long-term relationship. This was someone looking for quick, completely anonymous sexual act in a public restroom. I know that there are gay men who find this degrading, vulgar, and disgusting, but if you went to college in California, or have had the misfortune of using the restrooms in rest areas in California, you know that this a very fundamental part of how a lot of gay men operate. I suspect that the danger of being caught while doing this must be part of the thrill--which in itself tells you a lot about the sickness involved.
UPDATE 3: Seen somewhere or another: "I keep voting a straight Republican ticket, but there's not enough straight Republicans!"
UPDATE 4: This report from the Minnesota Monitor indicates that the restroom in question is widely known in the gay community as the place to go:Karsnia was in the restroom as part of a sting operation to clamp down on lewd behavior. The restroom where Craig was arrested is well known among men who seek sex in public places.
Oh yes, and just so you don't think that there is something bizarre about what Senator Craig did:
The site, Squirt.org, lists how to get there: "Across from Food Court. Go through security to main Mezzanine where main shopping is located. Look for Starbucks Coffee stand and Men's Room is across from there," what to expect: "Very cruisy, no security cameras or guards. Most of the time, men will show themselves to you at the urinals and invite into stalls or nearby hotels. Plenty of dark stall action, too!Update: No one is permitted beyond the security checkpoints without an airline ticket now," and some of the biggest pet peeves: "Stall hoggers! Get off and get out! Cleaning crews may be overly curious, but won't interfere."
Redefining Conservative
Kevin Richert, who is an editor over at the Idaho Statesman, blogs about Bryan Fischer's suggestion that we let minors know that there are laws prohibiting under-age sex:
It may not be worth spending any money on this. I don't have much confidence that reminding teenagers that they are breaking the law is going to do any good. (I can remember being a teenager--the combination of hormone-deranged and the belief that one is immortal is very dangerous!) I am also skeptical that vigorous enforcement of the adultery laws is going to do much good, either--although I would like to see consequences of some sort for adultery, even if just means providing some benefit to the cheated-upon spouse when the marriage falls apart. But if Richert doesn't like these laws, perhaps he should be asking the Idaho Legislature why they haven't repealed them?
I know that in liberal circles, the idea that adultery is wrong is considered a sign of being a primitive. A few years back, there was a woman in California whose husband was seduced by another woman, and it eventually broke up their marriage. She was circulating an initiative petition to get adultery made into a misdemeanor again. And how the liberals laughed and laughed at her! Regarding adultery as a faux pas--not a real bad thing, but a sign that you aren't terribly clever because you got caught at it--is something of a sign of how sophisticated one is, if you are a liberal.
The idea that Fischer isn't a conservative because he thinks that the existing laws about sexual morality should be enforced is not just laughable, but an indication that Richert isn't terribly knowledgeable about political systems of thought. One of the core principles that distinguishes conservatives from libertarians in the American context is the belief that Christian values about morality (not just sex, but also lying and cheating) should be enforced by the government. This was the case from the earliest Colonial laws, which you can see when you read the 1650 Connecticut capital crimes. Into the 1960s, the idea that adultery was a crime that should be illegal (even if it wasn't often enforced) remained completely mainstream--not even particularly conservative.
Argue if you want that this is a bad idea. I will agree that in a pluralistic society where Christian values are no longer the consensus, laws that were enforceable in 1950 may not fit today. But to argue that Fischer isn't a conservative because he supports a core conservative value--governmental enforcement of laws about morality--just shows that Richert doesn't know what he is talking about.
BinkyBoy Has Escalated From Random Personal Insults...
to libel and false accusations of criminal behavior. After recounting some claims about Minutemen shooting at illegal aliens (which I don't find impossible to believe, except that they would have been on every news show), he blames Bryan Fischer, Rep. Tom Tancredo, and me for this, and includes this amazing claim:No one will benefit from this escalation. This will only result in more deaths. Good job, right wing xenophobes that peddle in hate speech, others are about to reap from what you have sown.
Huh? I've never threatened anyone with a gun, much less BinkyBoy. Such a threat is a criminal offense. BinkyBoy needs to either confess that this is entirely in his head, or file a criminal complaint. Then we can see him go to jail for filing a false report.
Maybe for all of this Clayton will threaten me with his guns some more.
But he is an Idaho Democrat. Why argue real points, when you can just make up lies?
UPDATE: Another Idaho blogger tells me that he once tried to have a polite conversation by email with BinkyBoy, and the response was to use the b-word and threaten him with violence if they ever met. From this I can draw two likely inferences:
1. BinkyBoy has a serious violence problem, and is projecting his own threats of violence against others onto me.
2. Have you ever heard of a straight man calling another man the b-word?
UPDATE 2: This news account indicates that the videotape that BinkyBoy talks about of the Minutemen shooting an illegal immigrant is a fake:CAMPO, Calif. -- One Minuteman leader accused a rival Minuteman leader of videotaping the shooting of an illegal immigrant, but sheriff's deputies investigating the report Saturday said the video was fake, as did the maker of the video.
And stupid, too.
Robert "Little Dog" Crooks, leader of the Campo Minutemen, said he and his friends did shoot the video and sheriff's deputies came out to see what happened, but they know him well.
"Who in their right mind is going to shoot a smuggler, videotape it, then post it to YouTube?" Crooks said.
The video came to the attention of authorities after Jeff Schwilk, founder of the San Diego Minutemen, who Crooks said is his rival, e-mailed another border activist, warning about the Crooks video, according to a local newspaper.
The video, which is shot from the perspective of a gun scope, was probably staged, said Sgt. Mike Radovich of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department Campo station.
The video shows Minutemen targeting an illegal immigrant crossing the border. There's the sound of a gunshot, the immigrant ducks or is shot, and then the video fades out to a grave site, Radovich said.
Crooks gave a similar description of his video. He said he and his friends made the video when the Minutemen were bored discussing President George W. Bush's federal immigration reform bill, which the group calls the Amnesty Bill, and which was eventually turned down by Congress.
"The Amnesty Bill was up in the air, and we said if it goes through it'd bury America," Crooks said. "So we buried America."
The group constructed the fake grave site next to Crooks' trailer, which is near the border fence in Campo, he said. Radovich said he saw the fake grave site during his investigation of the video.
"We're old men and we're bored," Crooks said.
UPDATE 3: The more I look into BinkyBoy's obssessions, the more the use of the b-word explains a lot--such as BinkyBoy's freakout about how an Idaho Statesman reporter used a police report.
BinkyBoy needs to move to San Francisco.
Idaho Democrats
I generally ignore people whose notion of political argument is mixing personal insults and foul language. Snowflakes in Hell noticed the 43rd State Blues blog:I may have my disagreements with Clayton on a lot of social issues, but if this is what passes for reasoned discourse among Idaho progressives, no wonder it’s a Republican dominated state. I sincerely hope this site isn’t run by grown adults.
I won't quote what 43rd State Blues has to say about me--I won't use that kind of language. As 43rd State Blues explains on the masthead:Idaho's Families
43rd State Blues doesn't claim to be a spokesblog for the Idaho Democratic Party, but it is certainly one of the largest blogs devoted to Democratic Party politics in Idaho. I would hope that the Democratic Party would be so embarrassed by it that they would explicitly reject any connection to it--but perhaps they don't have a problem with it.
Idaho's Future
Idaho's Democrats
UPDATE: I was actually expecting that some of the other Idaho Democratic blogs would take the high road and suggest that 43rd State Blues might be better off focusing on substantive criticism instead of insults and pseudo-psychological analysis of gun ownership. But no, The Unequivocal Notion defends the childish behavior and foul language of 43rd State Blues.
I've been assuming that 43rd State Blues was just the problem of one very immature person. But I am beginning to think it might be a progressive thing.
Alamar Ranch Again
I've mentioned previously the controversy about Alamar Ranch, a residential treatment school that is trying to set up operations in a rural part of Boise County. Some of the neighbors don't want it there.
Last night, my wife, my daughter, and I attended the second Boise County Planning & Zoning Commission hearing about this. The neighbors hired an attorney to represent their interests. I am sure that he thought he was being slick and effective at manipulation.* I find it hard to believe the Commission was stupid enough to be taken in by his tactics--but perhaps I'm giving them too much credit. They did finally vote 3-3 (one commissioner recused himself) on the request for a Conditional Use Permit--which means that Alamar Ranch now has to appeal to the County Board of Commissioners.
There were some genuine concerns that opponents of Alamar Ranch expressed--problems about traffic, fire protection, dark skies, and the possible impact on the local school district if any of the troubled teens demanded the public school district create an IEP (as federal law requires). Alamar Ranch responded to each of these concerns in a manner that I would consider appropriate.
The local fire district wanted there to be enough water to supply 1500 gallons per minute for two hours. Fine: Alamar Ranch agreed to build a 200,000 gallon lake. They also wanted a second emergency access road into the property, because the bridge that currently provides access was under water in 1996. Fine: Alamar Ranch isn't exactly sure where the second access road is going to be, but they were prepared to make that part of the Conditional Use Permit--getting this second access road completed and available for emergency vehicles.
Dark skies: they agreed first to use full cutoff light fixtures outside, and at the meeting last night, they agreed to conform to the International Dark Sky Association Simple Guidelines for Lighting Ordinances--something that no other development in Boise County has to do. (I suggested during a break to one of the Planning & Zoning Commissioners that this would be a good thing to require for all other new developments in the county--and he thought that this was a good idea.)
The school district IEP issue: Alamar Ranch explained that because they were going to be doing all the schooling, none of their clients would be making requests on the district, and agreed to put in writing that they would pay any costs that the district incurred because of their clients. They also agreed to kick in $500 per employee pupil that ended up in the district. (Remember that schools are largely funded by property taxes, so this is in addition to what the district will get from employees buying homes in Boise County.)
The opponents claimed that Alamar Ranch would create traffic problems. Alamar Ranch pointed out that if the 135 acres they own were subdivided, it would have about 60 homes on it--and that would cause even more traffic. (Remember that the clients who will be there won't have cars, and can't leave the property.)
The real issue is fear of crime. The neighbors are convinced that these troubled teens (whom Alamar will not accept if they have felony convictions, sex crime histories, or histories of violence) will run away, break into their homes, rape their women, steal their cars, and kill the locals. I'm not exaggerating--that's essentially what the lawyer who represented them at the hearing last night said was going to happen--not might happen, but would.
Now, if this were an open campus, with the troubled teens free to come and go as they please, I guess I could understand a bit of the fear. Teen boys under the best of conditions have some antisocial tendencies, and troubled teen boys are likely to be even more more so. This isn't an open campus, however. It's a very controlled setting precisely because these are troubled teens. Boise County has experience with similar facilities; Project Patch, in Garden Valley, does something similar. One of the Planning & Zoning Commissioners said that they were neighbors, and it was many years before he was even aware that Project Patch was there, and what they did. He also made the point that he was more impressed with the behavior of the kids from Project Patch than of the local kids.
I am not surprised that the Planning & Zoning Commission tied on this. The opponents of Alamar Ranch definitely outnumber the supporters, and I noticed that the farther away the Commissioners were from this part of Boise County, the more willing they were to support Alamar Ranch's Conditional Use Permit. This is the downside of democracy; the prejudices of the neighbors take precedence over property rights. As much as I find Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc. (1985) offensive for how the courts decided to simply overturn majority rule, I understand the temptation. Much like the case in Cleburne, this is prejudice with little factual basis behind it.
The only consolation is that some of the statements made by the Planning & Zoning Commissioners who voted against the CUP strike me as providing a valid basis under Idaho law for overturning their decision. As the county attorney reminded the commissioners before their vote, "You are operating as a quasi-judicial body, not a quasi-legislative body." In short, he was reminding them that they needed to make their decision based on the facts of the case, not based on what a majority wants.
As an example, one of the commissioners who voted against claimed that there was no way for Boise County to monitor compliance by Alamar Ranch with the Conditional Use Permit stipulations. "We don't even have a way to make sure our existing CUPs are complied with." But the county attorney had carefully explained to the commissioners a few minutes before that there was no need to have the county's prosecutor involved; if the Planning & Zoning Commission became aware of a violation of the conditions (for example, if one of the upset neighbors found such evidence), the Commission could revoke the CUP the following week by just a simple vote. So the commissioner would appear to have been just looking for an excuse to vote against, and came up with a factually incorrect reason to do so.
*The attorney quoted the "I know when I see it" line about pornography, and attributed it to Justice Story. I knew that was wrong. It's actually from Justice Stewart Potter in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964):I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
UPDATE: My daughter's remarks were, as usual, a bit more concise.
Alamar Ranch (Continued)
I mentioned the other day that my daughter spoke at the Boise County Planning Commission hearing as well. Here's what she had to say. I strongly encourage you to read it in full, to see how important it is to not give up on a troubled teenager.
Alamar Ranch
I attended a meeting of the Boise County Planning and Zoning Commission last night. Alamar Ranch is a proposed residential treatment school for troubled teenaged boys. There has been some opposition to the project. The supposed objection had to do with increased demands on emergency services, but enough of the discussion in the local newspaper (the Idaho World) and at the hearing last night makes it clear that the real concern driving the opposition is fear that the boys that would be treated at Alamar Ranch would be there just to run away, steal cars, rape the local girls, and in general, turn Idaho City into the next Oakland. (Here you can see pictures of the historic, scenic part of Idaho City. There's no pictures of the rundown, trailer park portions of town.)
Anyway, it was a large crowd that showed up--perhaps 200 people or more. Considering that total population of Boise County in 2005 was 7,535, that's pretty impressive. This was a hot topic.
The Planning Commission staff report was clearly supportive of it, especially because Alamar Ranch has bent over backwards to satisfy every possible concern. The fire department wanted another emergency entry and exit road into the property. No problem. Alamar Ranch pointed to existing emergency service uses in similar facilities, and that they were minimal. They also offered to compare the emergency services use of any 37 home subdivision in the county, and reimburse the county for any emergency service requests above that baseline.
There were concerns that boys at Alamar Ranch could demand the Bogus Basin School District provide services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004; Alamar Ranch put in writing that they would be taking care of all such needs of the boys it will be treating, and would reimburse the district for expenses that might fall on them. Alamar Ranch also agreed to contribute $500 per new student to Bogus Basin School District for any children of Alamar Ranch employees that were new additions to the schools.
An economics professor from Northwestern Nazarene University shared the results of his economic analysis of the likely effects of Alamar Ranch. It would add about $800,000 to $1,500,000 a year to the local economy, because of the number of jobs. Since a lot of these jobs are pretty high paying compared to the average annual wage of $23,862 in the county in 2005, this would probably lift the Idaho City area a good bit.
Even something as trivial as exterior lighting: Alamar Ranch will use full cutoff light fixtures to preserve the dark skies of Boise County.
Contrary to my fears, quite a number of people turned out to speak in favor of Alamar Ranch. Some of them were neighbors; one was a competitor! There's a roughly similar facility in Garden Valley (another community in Boise County) that treats troubled teenaged boys and girls, and the director told of the enormous change in the lives of the troubled kids that they have helped. Another speaker was a psychiatrist from Boise who treats Idaho City kids, but because of the enormous distance that they have to travel, a fair number are medicated rather than provided the individual and family therapy that they need. Having Alamar Ranch in Idaho City would put at least one psychiatrist and many social workers and counselors in the community, where they would be available to provide services independent of Alamar Ranch.
One woman spoke of having to drive 12 hours to southern Utah each way to visit her daughter, who is in a similar program, because there is a critical shortage of space in programs like this.
Here's what I had to say:My name is Clayton Cramer. I live at 36 Sunburst Road, Horseshoe Bend.
I don’t live in this part of the county, so I really don’t know the fine details of the concerns about traffic or fire protection. But I do know that a lot of what I have seen expressed in letters to the Idaho World sounds like prejudice against residential treatment schools, and the troubled teens that will be housed at Alamar Ranch.
So, why do I care about Alamar Ranch? A few years back, my daughter Hilary was a teenager. I think every teenager drives his or her parents crazy, but this was a bit beyond that—my wife and I were very worried that our daughter might not live to adulthood. With great reluctance, and a lot of tears, we sent our daughter from California to a residential treatment school in Utah, after which Alamar Ranch is patterned.
Our daughter was away for 6 ½ months. We visited her every few weeks, injecting vast quantities of money into the local economy each time. It was astonishing to see how rapidly our daughter recovered, while continuing her education. When she was 15, I was worried about whether she would live to 18. Instead, she came home, and finished high school. Shortly thereafter we moved to Idaho. Last year she graduated from the University of Idaho—and brought back a good husband as well. Now she and her husband are working on their master’s degrees at Boise State University.
I mentioned that Alamar Ranch is patterned on the residential treatment school where my daughter went in Utah. How do I know that? Because my daughter’s primary therapist there is Alamar Ranch’s executive director, Amy Jeppesen. What a small world we live in! I have tremendous confidence in Ms. Jeppesen, and I have seen the miracle that she performed with my daughter—and I believe very strongly in the importance of residential treatment schools for kids whose problems can’t be handled in an outpatient setting.
If there are legitimate complaints about Alamar Ranch, I implore you to find ways to work these concerns out with the neighbors. Every unnecessary roadblock that a planning agency puts in the way of a residential treatment school is really an obstacle in the path of helping a kid who is in trouble, become a success like my daughter. What Alamar Ranch will do for troubled teenaged boys is not just a business—it is, for some families, the last hope before a child spirals down into destruction.
One woman I spoke to afterwards told me that she was very impressed with what I had to say; "I think you changed my mind about this."
My daughter spoke about how the very similar program at New Haven Residential Treatment Center changed her life. As soon as she has statement up on her blog, I'll link to it.
UPDATE: My daughter's statement is here. No matter how hard it may be, don't give up on your troubled teenager.
Let's Reserve Felonies For Serious Crimes
Adam Graham applauds the effort of one of Idaho's legislators to get dog fighting turned into a felony:At this point, I’d lean towards toughening our laws. We shouldn’t need a repeat of the dog holacaust that occurred at Michael Vick’s place to stir our legislature to action. Sadly, I think that’s what it may take.
As much as dog fighting repels me, I am a bit reluctant to make it into a felony. For most of American history, the distinction between a misdemeanor and a felony was quite dramatic.
Until the American Revolution, most felonies were punishable by death. For example, from the July 27, 1749 Pennsylvania Gazette, Mary Rogers was sentenced to death for burglary in Boston, and granted a reprieve by the governor only after the hood was over her head. From the June 22, 1749 Pennsylvania Gazette:At a Court of Oyer and Terminer, held at Newcastle last Week, John Gillespie, and John Roach, were convicted of Burglary, and John Slain of Rape, and Sentence of death was passed upon them.
There are many similar examples available.
A felony conviction today takes away many of your rights. You lose the right to vote (in most states), to own a gun, to obtain certain professional licenses. And that loss is usually lifelong. Misdemeanors are generally not so severe. I think felonies should be reserved for only the most serious of crimes.
Dog fighting is primarily done because someone makes money holding these events, or gambling on the outcomes. Here's the current statute that prohibits it; here's the statute that specifies the penalty:any person convicted for a first violation of any of the provisions of this chapter shall be punished, for each offense, by a jail sentence of not more than six (6) months or by a fine of not less than one hundred dollars ($100) or more than five thousand dollars ($5,000), or by both such fine and imprisonment.
Since this is a crime done primarily for economic reasons, perhaps the better solution is to increase the penalties. Someone who makes a few thousand dollars at one of these events might think a little more deeply if the fine was in the $5000 to $50,000 range.
Idaho's Budget Problems
Part of the problem is an unexpected surplus of $247 million. (For you Californians--that's "million" with an "M"--try not to laugh at how small Idaho's budget numbers are.) The other part of the problem is that Governor Otter wants to raise taxes to pay for $200 million in road work. State Controller Donna Jones says that there's enough of a surplus to pay for the road work without raising taxes:
A little later in that same Idaho Statesman article there is an explanation of why we need to raise taxes from Governor Otter's spokesman:
It might well be that there's more than $247 million in needs that require government funds. But if the argument for raising taxes is paying for $200 million in road repairs, shouldn't we pay for those road repairs, and then discuss whether a tax increase is needed? Or if we need to do this in a holistic manner, looking at all the needs, then let's do that. I know that a lot of people in Idaho aren't keen on more funding of pre-kindergarten programs. I am generally supportive of increased funding on mental health--but before we throw money at this, I would like to know if incidents like the recent Moscow mental patient shooting rampage were because of a shortage of hospital space or not.
More About Salisbury's Campaign For Bill Sali's Seat
Over at Idaho Chooses Life (a site I don't think I have ever visited before), they discuss Mr. Salisbury's position:But this does not exactly settle the matter. I am mystified that Mr. Salisbury has chosen to anchor his campaign message in the philosophy of Planned Parenthood – you know, the rhetoric which claims that “the government has no business in our bedrooms”. Apparently it has something to do with his belief that Christians in public life ought not be very explicit about imposing our faith upon others. As the campaign develops he will have opportunity to better express his ideas.
Me too.
We also know nothing about Mr. Salisbury's position on specific policy questions. That may be where we will find the conflict. But on the phone, he was adamant that he found abortion "abhorrent".
In any event, the biggest question that nags is why Mr. Salisbury is running at all. The media’s original description of his candidacy explained he was unhappy with Congressman Sali’s pro-Life politics. After our phone conversation yesterday, it seems that is not the issue. So now I’m left wondering why a pro-Life person would squander resources and enhance Democrat chances for taking the seat by challenging an incumbent with an unmatched pro-Life record.
It is very curious, and perhaps we will learn more about motivations as Mr. Salisbury refines his message in coming months.
I don't think that a general ban on abortion makes a great deal of sense, because there is a large minority of Americans that support utterly unrestricted abortion--and some of them are prepared to go to prison to make sure that abortion remains available. You could pass a general ban on abortion--but you would need a heck of a lot of prison space to lock up all the criminals. The most that such a law would do is reduce advertising of such services, perhaps reducing the abortion rate somewhat, but like Prohibition, making it illegal would aggravate other problems. (Example: A D&X abortion often causes substantial and sometimes deadly infections; I'm sure that someone who was suffering a severe infection after an illegal abortion would delay going to a doctor or an emergency room for fear that it would come to light.)
If you want to make a real difference in the abortion rate, you need to tackle the underlying social problems that are causing so many women and men to be irresponsible about sex and contraception. Change that part of the social equation, and it will be both easier to get abortion restricted, and it will reduce the destructive side effects of prohibiting abortion when the time comes to change the law.
If Mr. Salisbury is as pro-life as the account above indicates, then trying to defeat Bill Sali on the abortion issue makes absolutely no sense. If the objective is to replace Bill Sali because he has become a lightning rod of liberal hostility, that might make some sense--but Sali's social conservatism, as near as I can tell, is the primary reason that Idaho liberals find Sali detestable. I'm sure if Bill Sali were supporting gay marriage, abortion on demand, and higher taxes, his style would be called "challenging, idealistic, and no-nonsense."
Small World
One of the local political controversies going on in Boise County right now is concerning approval of a residential treatment school named Alamar Ranch. What is a residential treatment school? For kids with serious psychological or emotional problems that aren't responding well to treatment within the community (sometimes because the community itself is part of the problem, sometimes because the family interactions complicate matters), these schools provide a controlled, structured environment, therapy, medical treatment (for those problems that are amenable to psychotropic drugs), and continuing a child's education.
I didn't even know about such facilities until my daughter ended up in a heap of trouble--and this seemed like the last resort. I was quite concerned that she wasn't going to make it to 18. So on the recommendation of a specialist, we sent her to a place called New Haven Residential Treatment Center in Spanish Fork, Utah. This was easily the hardest, most painful action that I have ever had to take.
I have nothing but good things to say about what happened to my daughter there. She was there for 6 1/2 months. We visited every six weeks for intensive family therapy sessions and to visit her. As I said, I was sure she wasn't going to make it to 18. Unlike a lot of kids struggling with similar situations, she came home, completed high school, went off to college, met a wonderful young man, got married, and is now working on her Master's in Social Work. The last words of Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son have never meant more:But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'
New Haven was expensive. The cost was $9000 a month, back some years ago. Eventually, my insurance company picked up about 30% of it (although I didn't know it at the time). I was getting ready to move my portfolio from conservative growth stock mutual funds into municipal bonds so that I would have the income to pay for New Haven, when a good friend who was temporarily a multimillionaire (wonders of the dot-com madness) stepped in and practically begged to take care of the bill. (That's when you find out who your real friends are.)
In retrospect, I would have been better off paying for it myself, because the stock market collapsed a few months later, and those bonds would have gone up dramatically while I watched my stock mutual funds sink. But who knew? Most parents in a similar situation aren't so lucky, either because the cost is prohibitive, or because their child is legally an adult--and simply refuses to accept treatment.
Alamar Ranch's request for planning approval created what seemed like a firestorm of upset residents. Some of the concerns were about the strain that it would put on fire services and roads--which seems a bit odd, since schools of this type aren't normally high population density. I began to see some comments in the local newspaper (the Idaho World) that suggested that a lot of the upset crowd was concerned that serious violent criminals were going to be staying at Alamar Ranch--even though Alamar Ranch made it clear that no one with a serious criminal history would be allowed.
As far as I am concerned, New Haven Residential Treatment Center saved my daughter's life, so I wrote a letter to the Idaho World explaining that I was not taking a stand about whether Alamar was a good situation from a planning standpoint or not, and I knew nothing about Alamar Ranch and its program, but that schools like New Haven (and Alamar Ranch seemed to be a school like that) were a very good thing indeed.
After I sent the letter to the Idaho World, I decided to send a copy to Alamar Ranch as well--and I received a reply from the Executive Director of Alamar Ranch. Her name was very familiar--and eventually we figured out why she recognized my name as well. She worked at New Haven--and she was my daughter's primary therapist. Her plan for Alamar is something like New Haven, but aimed at boys.
Not surprisingly, I am now looking for ways to help Alamar get whatever governmental approvals are required, because I now know what sort of person the executive director is.
