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Clayton Cramer's BLOG

Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).



Email me at blogmail at claytoncramer dot com. Sorry to be so indirect, but all spambots must die! But they haven't died yet! Include the word spamIamnot in your subject line to make sure that my spam blocker lets you through.

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Friday, October 17, 2008
 
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:
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." 
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.

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:

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."

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Thursday, September 04, 2008
 
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!

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Thursday, August 21, 2008
 
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 AreaTotal
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 AreaTotal
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

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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:

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.

I know where Bill Sali (R-ID) stands:

"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.

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.

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Monday, August 18, 2008
 
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.

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 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:

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.

Our national energy policy is backwards and fixing it is one of my top priorities. We know we can convert forest and agricultural waste into biofuels to help us wean our country away from foreign oil. The government should provide tax incentives to producers and consumers to help “jump start” these technologies, which can create many new, good-paying jobs in rural Idaho.
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.
This isn't specific to oil, of course, but to all exhaustible resources--including timber. You could, I suppose, make an argument that the depletion allowance doesn't make sense today--but then Minnick needs to be talking about all the industries that enjoy the benefits of the depletion allowance. I somehow rather doubt that Idaho's timber industry--or its mining industry--would be keen on seeing their "special tax break" going away.

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.

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.
Maybe Minnick is smarter than he sounds and smarter than his website suggests. But so far, I am not persuaded.

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Monday, July 28, 2008
 
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.

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Wednesday, June 04, 2008
 
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.

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?
I'm no longer assuming that Geoff is what he claims.

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Tuesday, June 03, 2008
 
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!

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Sunday, June 01, 2008
 
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.)

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Thursday, May 29, 2008
 
More Reasons for the Very Bad Election Results

I found several additional reasons that individually contributed to the poor results, I suspect.

1. Jamie Anderson, who signed up to run for county commissioner as a Republican, sure didn't sound like one to me at one of the candidate forums--she sounded like a liberal to leftist Democrat. Sure enough, that's exactly what she is. But a lot of Democrats voted in the Republican primary here in Boise County to help her get the nomination--and while they were on the Republican ballot, they appear to have voted heavily for Tim Corder--who is something of a Democrat Lite. This may explain why I didn't even carry Boise County--and why there were only 182 votes for the Democrat running for state senator in the Democratic primary. Yet another argument for a closed primary. Since there are seldom contested Democratic primaries, the temptation for Democrats to play games like this are very strong--and they have a strong reason to protect Tim Corder from a Republican challenge.

2. A co-worker who lives north of Horseshoe Bend tells me that at school, his daughters are able to play with the children of other newcomers--but the children of the families that have been here for generations pretty much keep to themselves. I suspect that the same thing is at play at election time. My family hasn't been here for several generations. If this is a factor, I have no hope of ever getting elected, as long as Tim Corder or one of the other third generation Idahoan families decides to run.

3. I answered a number of questionnaires, including one from Idaho Chooses Life and the Cornerstone Institute. Both of them were asking very binary questions about complex issues. In particular, I did my best to articulate that concerning abortion, Idaho has gone about as far as it can under Roe v. Wade, and until the Supreme Court overturns it, there's not much that the state can do--but in the meantime, pro-life groups should be working hard to persuade pro-choice people over to the pro-life side--or at least neutralize them.

The reason is that passing laws to restrict abortion is unlikely to be successful at reducing abortions--and I gave the example of Oregon. Before Roe v. Wade, Oregon had a very restrictive abortion law--and yet it had 199 abortions per 1,000 live births. Pretty clearly, the law was not being followed, nor prosecuted. Much of the decline in abortions in the 1990s wasn't because of laws, but because pro-life groups successfully persuaded a lot of people that abortion was either murder, or a bad choice, or pragmatically a bad idea.

But all those subtle points were lost in the detailed statements that I attached to the questionnaires--only the simple yes and no answers went up on the web. I am inclined to think that the next time, I will simply not return questionnaires like this.

The Boise County Republican Central Committee is going to reform on Monday night. I think I will show up, and try to find out exactly what is going on here. In this primary, I emphasized several significant areas of difference with the incumbent: illegal immigration; sexual orientation as a protected class; and more alternatives to the public school system. It is possible that Republicans here are heavily in favor of illegal immigration, sexual orientation as a protected class, and maintaining the public school monopoly. If so, I am terribly, terribly confused by what is going on here.

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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
 
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.

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Tuesday, May 27, 2008
 
Don't Hold Your Breath Waiting For Election Results

Remember that my district includes two very rural, very sparsely populated counties, so it is at least an hour's drive from some precincts to the county seats--and that's in good weather. This being late May, we're having almost winter weather, with pouring rain, cold, and lightning storms. Adding to the delay is that the ballots (at least here in Boise County) are literally paper--and we mark the votes with an X.

I'm not expecting to see any results until morning. In the meantime, amuse yourself by refreshing the Idaho Secretary of State's web page.

I was slightly surprised when I went to vote that I didn't even need to tell the precinct officials what my name was--they knew me by sight!

UPDATE: It appears to be a resounding victory for Corder.

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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.

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Sunday, May 25, 2008
 
More Conversations

I've been working my way down the list of likely voters (those who have voted in four of the last four elections), and I'm pretty encouraged. I have talked to only a couple of voters who were on Corder's side--quite a number who have already decided to vote against Corder because of his actions, or who have decided to vote for me because they were pleased with the literature that they have seen. Quite a number hadn't committed themselves yet--but I guess this is probably a good sign--when the incumbent hasn't generated enough good will to carry him through a partisan primary.

I did have one interesting conversation where the voter explained that she was a little worried that the sheer volume of campaign literature suggested that I was showing off how rich I am. I explained that my campaign hasn't spent terribly much--that the independent election campaign trying to unseat Corder has spent, as near as I can tell, more money than my campaign. I have spent an embarrassingly small amount of money out of my own pocket. Thanks to my loyal blog readers, who have contributed relatively small chunks each--but it all adds up!

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Saturday, May 24, 2008
 
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!

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Friday, May 23, 2008
 
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.

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Wednesday, May 21, 2008
 
Mountain Home News Endorses My Opponent

From the May 21, 2008 Mountain Home News:

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.

I'm disappointed by not surprised. They refer to their editorial endorsements as "Kiss of Death" which I suspect that it might well be--I rather doubt that many Republicans in district 22 consider Corder's support of the sexual orientation bill to be conservative.

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Tuesday, May 20, 2008
 
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.

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Saturday, May 17, 2008
 
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.

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Thursday, May 15, 2008
 
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!"

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008
 
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.

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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
 
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.

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Saturday, May 10, 2008
 
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.

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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.

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Wednesday, May 07, 2008
 
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.

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"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:

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Monday, May 05, 2008
 
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.

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.
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.

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Sunday, May 04, 2008
 
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 i