Just to be clear from the beginning, this topic is inspired by the Kevin Garn story and while I will refer to that story specifically everything I say is meant to apply to any matters of the private morality of a public official.

First, I would like to say that Rep. Garn seems to be dealing with this in the best way he knows how. Second, I agree with this comment on Holly’s site saying that we should:

hold our elected officials to the highest moral and ethical standards

Having said those things, I don’t believe that Rep. Garn’s problem is any of my business because he is not my representative. If he were my representative that would be another story.

If he were my representative then I would think it perfectly appropriate to ask whatever questions I felt necessary to determine who the issue should weigh in my voting decisions.  If he were my representative my position right now would be to thank him for his service and encourage him to step down and let someone else serve so that this issue could not hang like a cloud over the office that he had been entrusted with. That would be my position despite the fact that I believe this situation is not quite as salacious as it would appear to be at first glance (like if you read the headlines and not the rest of the story).

Because he is not my representative I consider this to be a matter between him and his constituents. My interest in the story should go no further than to wonder if my representative was among those who gave him a standing ovation and if she was, to ask her why she would do that. Personally I think the appropriate response to hearing a colleague read that kind of prepared statement should be shocked silence, certainly not a standing ovation.

If this is typical of his many previous campaigns it is a wonder that he was ever elected to anything and no wonder that he lost so many races he ran in. More importantly, if this is any indicaion of how he operates then he has no business being a legislative aid in Washington, let alone a senator. His rightful place in the capital could be nothing more than “tourist” if this disappearing act is any indicator. So far it appears that every single candidate is working harder than Mr. Cook despite the fact that every one of them had a headstart.

I think this is especially disappointing to find such a lack of contribution in the middle of the legislative session—I could have at least commented on some bills such as the rainwater bill (which I favored) and the administrative subpoenas bill (which I opposed).

While I know that I am not able to maintain the daily posing schedule that I had previously expected I also know that my very thinking begins to atrophy if I give up posting altogether.

I have yet to find the proper balance but I am working on it and hope that I. will still have people interested in reading and responding to what I write by the time I find the proper balance.

Having studied the candidate previously I had some idea of my order of preference, but I really enjoyed this debate as it allowed me to really get things sorted out. Here’s my order of preference:

1. Mike Lee – I don’t think that surprises anyone considering I already publicly endorsed him but after hearing him with all the other candidates together I am that much more confident that he should be our Senator come next year.

2. Tim Bridgewater – I really like Tim overall. I think he’d make a decent senator – I just think that Mike would be better at filling the Constitutional duties of a senator.

3. (tie) Laura Bridgewater – she sat in for her husband for the first bit of the debate as he was running late and she had a good grasp of what our next senator should be and do – she’d be a great support to Tim if he were elected.

3. (tie) Sharon Lee – I’ve heard her speak before and believe she is a good support for Mike. I hadn’t thought to rank her among the candidates until I saw Mrs. Bridgewater in her husband’s place among the candidates but I think either of those two spouses would be better than the other candidates.

5. (tie) Bob Bennett – Despite his failings Bennett is not the worst choice available to us in this campaign. Like a typical Washington insider he is so busy viewing everything as “extremely complicated” that he seems to have lost sight of most of the simple facts that should be informing our complicated decisions.

5. (tie) James Williams – I had high hopes for James. I had heard really good things about him from people attending other debates, but after listening to him I am forced to conclude that he is a good and well-intentioned man who is out of his depth politically. Philosophically he has good principles, but I don’t believe that he would be an effective force at representing those principles or the people of Utah.

7. Cherilyn Eagar – I remember being excited about the possibilities when I started investigating her as a candidate, but seeing her in a debate showed her as combative, passionate, and disrespectful. If I wanted someone like that there must be 20 other states I could move to where I would have two such Senators in place already. She argues that having a conservative woman in the Senate would be a powerful thing – I’m sure that’s true, but I’ve already named two other conservative women from Utah who would make better senators.

I sincerely hope that I can offer thoughts that others will find valuable even as I scale back the time and energy available for that purpose. At the least, those who are paying close enough attention to wonder at my relative silence will have an explanation – and may know what to expect going forward.

Holly Richardson writes about Tim Bridgewater’s momentum. When she talks about his fund raising she doesn’t mention that over 80% of it was a loan to himself. Tim likes the coverage (naturally) and the next day he posts her article on his RedState diary. Tim gave all the proper attribution and everything – I’m not trying to accuse him of plagiarism. The day after that Thomas Burr writes that “Holly Richardson is boosting Tim Bridgewater’s campaign” over at RedState. Whether it was an oversight or a calculated move is open for speculation, but the fact is that Holly didn’t promote Tim over at RedState – unless she did so under Tim’s name. Finally, Tim gets to tweet about the article by Thomas Burr which declares how beneficial Holly’s support is.

So with a couple of nudges from Tim this little game of Chinese whispers has produced, with a little invented fact here (Holly promoting Tim on RedState) and a little omitted fact there (Tim providing almost all his own campaign funding), almost a week’s worth of positive coverage.

The point here is not to accuse Tim of anything untoward – it is to illustrate the cycle of coverage growing in a vacuum. Tim did nothing this week (at least nothing to garner more coverage in those articles) and yet he got a four days of positive news from a topic (fund raising numbers) that seemed to have died before Holly’s post.

Jane Hamsher wrote about the 11 Dimensional Chess approach to health care legislation that the Obama administration tried. That sent me back to some earlier thoughts I had shared about how we visualize the political spectrum. The simplest way to view things is one dimensional. Like the opening image here it breaks down into a right/left, red/blue, conservative/liberal, Republican/Democrat, or another single-axis spectrum. Many people recognize how inadequate such a simplified view is and various people (including myself) have sought to devise two-dimensional representations of the political landscape.

Of the many maps out there I think the easiest to comprehend is this from the Worlds Smallest Political Quiz:

With an axis measuring personal freedom issues and an axis measuring economic freedom issues it is not difficult to grasp the lay of the land according to this graph. Unfortunately this two dimensional representation, like all other two-dimensional representations, falls short of accurately describing reality.

I don’t know how many distinct axis may usefully divide the political landscape to understand the many varied perspectives that play into our national political debate but I have identified at least one more axis besides the personal and economic freedom axis – there is the power axis that deserves to be considered. How much political power a person has seems to have a distinct influence on their political outlook. Unlike the personal and economic outlook axis, which are virtually independent of each other, the power axis tends to insert some biases into people. The more political power a person attains the more likely they are to gravitate towards some degree of Big Government statism. I’m not sure which is the cause and which is the effect (I suspect they are simply intertwined) but there definitely seems to be a correlation between rising power and rising acceptance of statism. (I wish I could come up with a visual representation for this.)

While it is important for us to recognize that third dimension, perhaps another important insight can be gained from simply accepting the existence of any new axis – our perspective can be deceptive as to the view of others. From whatever your vantage point in the political universe your understanding of other viewpoints will be greatly enhanced anytime you are able to acquire a description of the other viewpoint from a vantage point that is not substantially the same as your own. Without that different perspective your view is reduced to two dimensions or less and you may fail to discern where others differ in their perspectives, or you may fail to recognize the significance when two people (perhaps as different as Ms. Hamsher and myself) agree on a particular point.

Last night I finally got to meet Mike Lee in person. I had been looking forward to the opportunity for a number of reasons. As long as I have been interested in this Senate race I have been carefully looking at the many candidates (past and present). Even before Mike entered the race I had met almost every candidate seeking this seat and, despite how promising a few of them initially looked, I had found many that I could not endorse and none that I was comfortable endorsing. In fact, by the time Mike announced his intention to run I was almost ready to support him by default (there was only one other candidate I had not completely ruled out by then).

After meeting Mike last night and talking to him, asking a few questions and listening as he answered the questions of a few other people, I came away knowing that this was a candidate I could endorse as completely and freely as I would endorse myself if I were a candidate for some office. Mike Lee is the right candidate for this position. He has the knowledge and the capacity to fill this office well and he is in the race for the right reasons. In fact, as I talked to him I discovered that he is in the race for the exact same reason that I have been so interested in this race for so long.

My plan now is to go out and do everything I can to make sure that I don’t have to try making another endorsement as the field of candidates is whittled down. I plan to still be cheering Mike on in December.

It now seems clear that the only way the U.S. is going to avoid an economic crisis is if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change. The young lack the political power. Only the old can lead a generativity revolution — millions of people demanding changes in health care spending and the retirement age to make life better for their grandchildren.

He arrives there from this bit of data:

One of the keys to healthy aging is what George Vaillant of Harvard calls “generativity” — providing for future generations. Seniors who perform service for the young have more positive lives and better marriages than those who don’t. As Vaillant writes in his book “Aging Well,” “Biology flows downhill.” We are naturally inclined to serve those who come after and thrive when performing that role.

The problem that he identifies is that:

The odd thing is that when you turn to political life, we are living in an age of reverse-generativity. Far from serving the young, the old are now taking from them. First, they are taking money. According to Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution, the federal government now spends $7 on the elderly for each $1 it spends on children.

Second, they are taking freedom. In 2009, for the first time in American history, every single penny of federal tax revenue went to pay for mandatory spending programs, according to Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute. As more money goes to pay off promises made mostly to the old, the young have less control.

Third, they are taking opportunity. For decades, federal spending has hovered around 20 percent of G.D.P. By 2019, it is forecast to be at 25 percent and rising. The higher tax rates implied by that spending will mean less growth and fewer opportunities. Already, pension costs in many states are squeezing education spending.

So his conclusion is that the problem is reverse-generativity and that the only people who can stop it are those who have the most to gain by perpetuation or even accelerating it. Why do I find that hard to swallow?

Along the way he offers this tortured logic for his conclusion:

I used to think that political leaders could avert fiscal suicide. But it’s now clear change will not be led from Washington. On the other hand, over the past couple of years we’ve seen the power of spontaneous social movements: first the movement that formed behind Barack Obama, and now, equally large, the Tea Party movement.

Spontaneous social movements can make the unthinkable thinkable, and they can do it quickly.

. . .

Old people now have the time, the energy and, with the Internet, the tools to organize.

The examples of spontaneous social movements were both driven primarily by younger people. He offers no evidence that this older generation will suddenly stop doing the things that helped them amass their political power in favor of taking the route that their grandchildren are pioneering – especially in an effort that would diminish their political power and rob them of their spare time.

Altruism and performing service is much easier and more immediately rewarding when it is directed at friends and relatives than when it is directed at an anonymous society.

The fact is that it really is clear that change will not come from Washington – it will have to come to Washington in the form of new voices and new leaders who have the ability to look past traditional divisions and traditional ideas and push through some new ideas using new alliances to bring about the kind of transformational changes that could actually avert eh looming economic crisis that virtually everyone agrees is on the horizon.

For some time I have been internally conflicted on the issue of congressional earmarking. Many people, including such diverse characters as President Obama and Congressman Chaffetz, have been vocal about calling for an end to earmarks. Others such as my own Congressman, Rob Bishop, reply that earmarks are not an addition to the total size of our federal expenditures – but simply a direction regarding the spending of money already appropriated. Believers in small government who make that argument say that our focus should be on reducing total expenditures rather than shutting down the earmarking process. Personally, I would like to see an end to earmarking and a significant reduction in total spending. (Earmarks alone are an insignificant portion of our spending.)

Almost 10 months ago I attended a town hall meeting for Rob Bishop in which the issue of earmarks was raised. Afterwards I wrote to Rep. Bishop asking these two questions:

1. If we get rid of earmarks won’t that allow us to focus on the size of the pile of money?
2. While I might prefer that Congress set the priorities for government appropriations rather than the administration, why should the priorities be set at the federal level at all? (except on truly federal priorities like defense spending) Wouldn’t it be better to just appropriate money and direct how much should go to various states and then let the states and municipalities decide which projects deserve the funding?

Apparently my questions were not even worthy of a form letter – I received no acknowledgment, let alone an answer.

In his State of the Union address last week President Obama (once again) called for greater transparency in the earmarking process. In response, Senator Jim DeMint rightly reminded us that:

We can see earmarks as plain as day now, but big spending politicians are unashamed. . . We should permanently end the earmark favor factory, but if the President won’t do that, he should at least impose a moratorium on this waste until we balance the budget.

Putting all that together I realize the truth that the primary problem small-government proponents want to address with earmarks is total spending and that while transparency is generally a good way to keep things running more appropriately even sunlight does little to deter earmarking – because it is considered an appropriate method to ensure you “get your fair share.”

Somehow after reading Sen. DeMint’s response the whole issue crystallized in my mind and I understand what’s really going on and what needs to be done.

Earmarks are not a large portion of the budget. Removing the amount of money spent on earmarks from the budget while allowing the earmarking process to continue would do virtually no good. Worse than that, it’s impossible because there is more to the earmarking process than the amount of money that gets earmarked out of the overall budget appropriation. Earmarks are a catalyst that changes the way our society looks at government spending.

The first and most repulsive change of thought is demonstrated by the lobbyists who are lobbying not for ideas, but for funding. These are the lobbyists who aim to get kickbacks from Congress for their clients. With earmarking in place it is possible to go directly to Congress and convince people far removed from the project to spend money from other taxpayers on a specific priority. This may be in contradiction of the desires of the local population but even if it is not it is never beneficial to the nation at large – even though the nation at large is footing the bill.

The second and more damaging (in the long term) change of thought that the  earmarking process promotes is that it encourages the perception that the Federal government should be involved in local decision making – even when those local decisions have little or no impact on the nation at large. Suddenly the people in New York and California have almost as much influence as the people of Pleasant Grove, Utah when it comes to making decisions about what will be displayed in a city park in Pleasant Grove, a city that few of the residents of other states would even be able to find on a map – let alone ever visit. This change of perspective reduces states and cities to nothing more than administrative subdivisions of the federal government. This is a fundamental shift away from the federalism envisioned by the founders of our nation and, in my opinion, is a very dangerous shift to perpetuate.

While abolishing earmarks will not immediately reverse these two changes it would remove the catalyst for them and greatly improve the chances of countering their influence. Without earmarks there would  be a massive reduction in the value of many lobbyists. Those who are promoting ideas would still be around, but none could come promising a financial return on investment in the form of appropriations from Congress. Without the constant influence of such lobbyists there would be a chance to reduce federal expenditures – especially in local projects. This in turn would make it possible for people to stop trying to inflate local interests into items of national consequence.

(I’m probably not the first to figure this out, but we need to articulate it better.)