Prince Is a Genius

Prince will give away his new cd in the newspaper and with concert tickets. I love it.

The record-selling intermediaries respond with this threat: "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday."

I still have the fondest memories of The Clash for selling me their 3-album Sandinista for peanuts (back in the day).

UPDATE: My friend Andrew Keen continues to cause a stir with his book (Cult of the Amateur), arguing that not much good comes from amateurs’ use of new media to displace experts and intermediaries by simply getting out their stuff and letting people decide whether they like it (instead of, say, music industry experts filtering through the possibilities and publishing the best stuff – like Musical Youth and Milli Vanilli).

Andrew is wrong, of course, as these amateurs show by using new media to share a simple song at the dinner table (Gilberto Gil) or mountains of content (WILCO).

John McCain and Mark Shurtleff

On KVNU, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff responded to my request that he and the Gov., as prominent McCain supporters, get serious with Sen. McCain about his campaign’s repeated Mormon-baiting. General Shurtleff said that he would talk with Sen. McCain about the matter tomorrow. Bravo!

Whether it is accidental or intentional, it should stop. I think the world of Mark, and I’m very pleased that he will have that conversation.

Mr. Burningham's Decree

I wondered if State School Board Chair Kim Burningham had his Board’s authority to boycott the Legislative Interim Education Committee. Apparently, he did not. Board member Dixie Allen wrote:

[T]he State Board took no official stance on appearing at the Interim meeting. In fact, we received Board Chair Burningham's letter about the same time as you. I, for one, asked for an explanation from Chair Burningham, which he gave to all Board members. His issues were defined as availability of someone from the state office and/or the Board, who had some clear understanding of the legal issues or non-issues surrounding the subject to be discussed. I trust that the reasons for not attending were as simple as timing.

After hearing the committee audio, I find myself very sorry that we were not involved in the discussion and believe that many of our Board would have been very supportive of such a discussion.

Odd and unfortunate.

Paris is Free, But Speech Isn't

We live in strange times. Apparently, our system values all speech (no matter how racist, frivolous, or incorrect), except when that speech is about who governs us and how they govern. Our political leaders believe that speech about them needs to be regulated. This is 180-degrees wrong.

Free speech matters most when it is about things that matter. Though legislative intent is a tricky business, I’d bet the intent of the First Amendment has more to do with unregulated speech about government than it does with unregulated speech about Paris Hilton. (Though I predict she will win the Nobel Peace Prize in the next 5 years for her work on “health issues, criminal rehabilitation, and, like, other stuff”).

Hence, I think the Supreme Court got it right when it struck down some censorship on political speech. But, I wish it would have gone further and struck down the whole act. Letting governmental leaders regulate speech simply results in less speech about those leaders. It allows the leaders to better control the dialogue. Dialogue is devalued and incumbency is bullion.

UPDATE: Don Surber weighs in.

Huntsman and Shurtleff Need to Step Up

Gov. Huntsman and Attorney General Shurtleff loaned their political cachet to John McCain. Since then, in an effort to derail Mitt Romney, McCain repeatedly has said that Mormons are freaks and terrorists.* The Gov and AG have many Mormon constituents who don’t appreciate being called freaks and terrorists. Gov. Huntsman and AG Shurtleff should demand that McCain move beyond hollow lip service and actually fire the latest religion-baiter. Should McCain refuse, they should drop their endorsements. That might let the Senator know that these highly-effective “slips” also have a downside.

* It does not matter that the actual words keep coming from staffers. If a staffer says it and is not fired, the boss likes that it is being said, no matter what kind of lip service he offers to the contrary. This is simple political stuff.

UPDATE: Colonel Takashi notes that "the criticisms are not about Mitt Romney, they are about 6 million Americans!" Exactly. I'd point out, though, that we're not talking about "criticisms." We're talking about bigotry.

Also, I don't intend the post to be about the job performance or character of the Gov. or AG. For what it's worth, I'm proud of both and believe they are serving us well. As I state, though, they have a unique opportunity to correct a major wrong. Political strength often is not about standing up to "others." It is about standing up to our own. I have no doubt that John McCain has tremendous virtues. But on this one, he keeps screwing up. If he lacks the discipline or decency to stop himself, I hope my two friends will do what they can to stop him.

Obama and New Media

Politics needs a good shake. And the Internet is poised to give it. No doubt, all candidates will struggle this election cycle to adapt to new media. And that’s a great thing. As candidates lose the ability to control the message (apologies to McCain-Feingold fans), real glimpses of the candidates and actual substance could emerge.

The prospect of a Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton presidential succession is a damning commentary on the health of our political process. Individual merits – like leadership, ideas, and character – matter less than simply being handed the keys to the political machine. Instead of citizens having broad electoral choices, political machines simply pass around presidencies like cold sores during spring break.

Given that wretched situation, I watch Obama with fascination. The Clinton machine inevitably will secure the Democratic nomination for Hillary – unless Obama can rattle and reinvent the system and bring in new participants by the terabyte. Obama’s campaign, though, is having difficulties breaking out of the old school top-down command-control system and fully embracing new media types who naturally are inclined to help him. At old school politics, he gets crushed. We’ll have to see if he adapts to the new media.

The AG, the State School Board, and Me (and my 103 colleagues)

We had a good conversation in the Education Committee regarding the relationship of the State Office of Education and the Attorney General. The State Office did not send a representative. An editorial and some bloggers are encouraging the Legislature to butt out. Sorry. Can’t do that. The relationship is a function of statute. If considerable dispute exists regarding that relationship, it is the Legislature that should resolve the issue.

And this matter does present a very significant issue on a going-forward basis. Legal decisions can cost the State millions of dollars and, more importantly, can impact the citizens of the State. (For example, the bad legal advice of an in-house lawyer at the Auditor’s office played a significant role in costing the State $50,000,000 in a dispute over the status of the Workers Compensation Fund; in response to that, the relationship of in-house agency counsel and the Attorney General’s office was clarified -- or so we thought -- by statute). It is an important matter (as I believe most State School Board members would agree) for agencies to clearly know from which source they should receive legal counsel and the effect that legal counsel has on them.

Of course, we are in a highly charged political atmosphere (on vouchers) that bleeds over into this issue. But, it seems naïve (or partisan) to argue that controversy should preclude consideration of process issues. Process issues arise in choppy waters. They almost always will be brought to light by some controversy that strains at the margins of Constitutional or statutory authorities. In calm seas, we simply sail along.

I suggested to the committee that it do nothing until we get past the November voucher vote. Right now, each side believes the other is acting purely for political reasons, leveraging everything for political advantage. We have a short window until that hot-button issue is resolved. Then, I assume the involved parties can resolve the relationship issue just like we do the many other issues we routinely address.

Reforming Politics As Usual

The LA Times ran an article on Politicopia. Part of the fun of getting some mentions is that I'm contacted by people working on great ideas to open the doors of democracy to non-insiders.

My friend Britt Blaser is busy working on a project he calls "Independence Year." His meager goal is to bring together people who will work to reform politics between the next two Independence Days. I love the idea, and am happy to lend a helping hand. There are many disjointed parts in various garages. With a presidential election pressing down on us, it would be a perfect time to coordinate some of these efforts.

As the article mentions, Politicopia aspires to contribute to the open democracy movement by using a soon-to-be-completed platform that will allow people to fully network with each other while they create and exchange political information. The platform is being created by Open Resource Group, LLC and Zaah Technologies. Mike Melillo, who has been working on a similar idea, also is jumping into the mix.

I continue to be impressed by the eagerness that people in the open government movement have to work together to bring about something worthwhile; that's all the more reason for Independence Year.

Conversation Stopper

I just received an email from Kim Burningham, Chair of the Utah State Office of Education, to Sen. Howard Stephenson, Co-chair of the Legislative Education Interim Committee. It says:

Although Superintendent Harrington initially may have indicated some availability to attend the Education Interim Committee meeting this coming Wednesday, after due deliberation, I, representing the State Board of Education, respectfully decline to send a representative to that gathering.

It is unclear what role the committee has in relation to what essentially is business to be conducted confidentially, if at all, between the Attorney General and the state board. It is clear, however, that any further politicization of the relationship between the Attorney General and the state board is unwelcome to the board, if not to Mr. Shurtleff, and would be ill-advised in any event.

This is tragic. In the way our State has structured education policy there always will be – and always has been – tension at the margins between the elected Legislature and the elected State School Board. The way the process works these things out is through meetings and discussions.

Despite the Chair's decree, as independently-elected members, I would hope that some school board members would choose to show up and discuss what we have learned or should learn from recent events. No one can dispute that we've been in some uncharted territory recently. The Utah Constitution remains intact, the Utah Supreme Court has provided a ruling that gives definition to the upcoming election, and I haven't noticed any rioting in the streets. Why not sit down as duly-elected officials and discuss matters?

Blau Exchange Interview

I had a fun interview with Paul DiPerna on vouchers and Internet politics for the Blau Exchange.

Vouchers and the Cost of Private Schools

A post at DemocracyForUtah concludes that vouchers aren’t a good idea, because they don’t cover the full freight of private school tuition. It is true that vouchers will not cover the full tuition cost at most private schools in the state. However, a few points should be included in the discussion.

The post uses the very expensive tuition at Rowland Hall-St. Marks to argue that private school can be beyond the reach of poor people, even with a voucher. I believe RW-SM is the most expensive school in the State. The gap would not be so big at others; at some, the tuition voucher would cover the full cost.

Most importantly, though, it is not the intent of the vouchers to cover all costs everywhere. The intent is to provide some help. Other costs beyond the amount of the voucher (which also would include transportation and school lunches) will have to be picked up by the parents or by scholarships through the private sector. The end result of expecting parents and the private sector to contribute is that more money flows into educating Utah children without leaning harder on the taxpayers. In many areas of government, such as government, we successfully provide incentives for the private sector to help fund worthwhile activities.

For what it's worth, the voucher would not cover the cost of educating a student at any Utah public school. In other words, the voucher amount is less than the amount of money that would have been spent on each child were he/she to attend the public schools. Regardless whether a child is rich or poor, the avoided costs to the school district are the same. So, yes, even rich people would get a $500 voucher (instead of the $3,000 voucher for the poorest). It takes a lesser incentive to get people with more resources to act.

Lastly, I don’t think poor people will look down their nose at the $3,000. Many parents work very long hours to fund private school tuition for children who were lost in the public system. If it means the parents have to work 400 hours less a year and can coach baseball, help their children with homework, sleep, etc. (or even in some cases – rare though I hope they are – sell less pints of blood), they probably think that’s a pretty good thing.

Better Dialogue or Louder Yelling

Andrew Keen is hitting some nerves with his book – Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture. The premise of the book is that experts and professionals perform valuable functions in weeding out what is worthy and what is not, so that non-experts may then consume that expert-filtered content. By replacing those experts with rubbish content on the Internet, Keen’s theory goes, the Internet harms society.

(Interestingly, this is a point raised in the comments to my last post: broader political participation is not beneficial, if people have no idea what they’re doing.)

Tongue firmly in cheek, Larry Lessig writes one of the more brutal reviews I’ve ever read, arguing that Keen is intentionally and subversively trying to prove (contrary to his stated thesis) that intermediaries are of limited worth, since Keen himself passed such a bad book by the intermediaries at Doubleday who decided to print it. Ouch.

I’m glad to see that Jeff Jarvis has agreed to debate Keen. As I argued a few weeks ago, Keen clearly intends to be incendiary, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t raise points that should be considered. We should be asking ourselves whether we’re using the Internet to do good things or just to do bad things “better.”

Along those lines, I am interesting to watch the tone of the Utah blogosphere. Yesterday, a fellow Utah blogger and I were discussing the shallow vitriol that is creeping into the Utah political blogosphere. If that’s where we’re going, we might as we’ll let the experts at Hannity and Combs yell at each other for us.

Meaningful Political Dialogue

In all my PDF posts, I neglected to discuss my presentation. My panel addressed embracing voter-generated content. I presented with Josh Marshall and representatives of MySpace (Jeff Berman) and MoveOn (Eli Pariser). A synopsis of my points:

1. The fringes control the present system, disenfranchising (or at least discouraging and disgusting) most Americans.

2. Solutions elude us because a functional democracy requires that the majority, not small groups on the fringes, control the process.

3. The political process needs to be changed, rather than merely plugging new people (typically of good will and intent) into a system that will eat them.

4. Politicopia and this blog attempt to provide a forum to improve political dialogue.

5. We should work to encourage more participants in the process, not merely stir up the fringes. To that end, I’d appreciate thoughts on what a political site should have/be to encourage dialogue.

The Scoop on the Second Voucher Bill

Ask a simple question, get a simple answer.

I asked Legislative Research and General Counsel why the second voucher bill (HB 174) contained some, but not all, of the language from the first voucher bill (HB 148) -- resulting, arguably, in the effect that the referendum does not apply to portions of the bill that were amended/superseded by the second bill that is not subject to the referendum. Note use of the word "arguably."

If any part of a section from the first bill was being amended, that entire section of code appeared in the second bill. If a section was not being amended (e.g., the mitigation money), that section did not appear in the second bill.

Hardly a conspiracy.

We, the Media, and Assignment Zero

Much to my surprise, new media guru Jay Rosen approached me at the PDF Google party, and told me that Assignment Zero wanted to interview me on Politicopia and crowdsourcing (people working together to produce products and solutions). Assignment Zero (sponsored by NewAssignment.net and Wired magazine) itself is a crowdsourcing experiment in journalism. Professionals and amateurs are working together to cover stories.

For example, Sarah Cove interviewed me and posted her notes. Anyone can use those notes to build a story or part of a story. Utlimately, some of the finished products will be published in Wired magazine. Pretty cool.

Regardless how the finished products turn out (and I suspect they will be very good), publishing source materials, like interview notes, is a tremendous idea. Anyone interested in the story can examine those materials and draw his/her own conclusions.

Do Something

At PDF, I was inspired by the activism of Farouk Olu Aregbe. One day Farouk simply decided to be part of the solution. Long story short, he has motivated more than 300,000 college students to get politically active and organize for Barack Obama.


On a non-PDF issue, last week I mentioned the military blog of my friend Tad Trueblood. Tad pointed me to Sheikh Dan, who decided to do something cool in Iraq.

Rube Goldberg's Democracy Machine

Utah needs to clarify the vote that will take place in November on vouchers. Someone asked me if I find value in Rep. McKiff’s proposal to enact additional legislation stating that HB 174 (the second bill) is contingent upon a vote on HB 148 (the first bill). I don’t.

As I understand the proposal, it would only add a few more confusing elements to the Rube Goldberg machine. The proposal is to leave the two general session bills in place but pass a third bill that would make operation of the second bill (which currently is law) contingent upon a vote on the first bill. If that isn’t an accurate description, someone please clarify.

In support of his proposal, Rep. McKiff raises 3 points: (1) he’s tired of dealing with the issue, (2) voucher opponents feel duped, and (3) only a referendum on HB 148 (and no other election) will suffice. The first two points, of course, are gratuitous. Nonetheless,

Point one: Rep. McKiff has been in the Legislature 5 months; if he is tired of dealing with an issue of tremendous significance after such a short tenure, it probably says more about his approach to problem solving than it does anything on the merits of the issue. Though it would be convenient to wave away issues we don’t favor, that’s not really a best-practices solution for democracy.

Point two: if Rep. McKiff believes someone took actions to blindside voucher opponents by passing the second bill, he should name names and provide details. As an elected representative of the people, he owes the public an explanation; light not heat; tell us who did it and how, so that we can examine the evidence and, if appropriate, beat the person(s) with sticks. As I am aware of the facts, the second bill was passed at the request of voucher opponents, voucher opponents were the only ones who knew they were going to file a referendum in the next few days, and voucher opponents were the ones who chose to file a referendum against one of the bills, instead of file an initiative on the issue. Again, if that isn’t an accurate description, someone please clarify. And unless he’s just making up stuff to support a political position, I really hope Rep. McKiff will put some teeth into his accusations and let us know who blindsided voucher opponents by strategizing the second-bill scenario.

Point three: Rep. McKiff argues that a referendum vote is the only thing that honors the will of the people. Okay, what is the will of the people – to review just the first bill that was passed and later amended/superseded or to review the voucher program as represented by both bills? If just the first bill, which to some degree is no longer on the table, then let the vote be on that bill; let the second bill (HB 174) then stand on its own – whatever the courts tell us that means. If, however, the people intended to vote on the program that was passed during the session (as represented by the two bills), then a vote on just one of those bills (with the third bill running the second bill through the Rube Goldberg machine) does not honor the will of the people. Though voucher opponents’ choice of a referendum instead of an initiative was wrong, we shouldn’t have to strain too hard to realize that the intent of the people who signed the referendum is straight forward – to determine whether the voucher program should stay or go.

Rather than win-at-all-cost politics, this situation deserves clarity. To that end, I again propose that we simply convene a special session to pass one voucher bill that will be voted on by the people – yes or no.

Progress???

Speaker Curtis (and I understand the Governor also) might favor the idea of a special session to wipe out both voucher bills and pass a new one (which would be the same as the final product from the session) with a delayed implementation date to allow for a vote by the citizens. Cool.

However, I see that some of the more zealous voucher opponents are still positioning for procedural advantage. ("I think it is a very bad idea," said Rep. Sheryl Allen, R-Bountiful. "It is a way to actually prevent a binding vote," said Rep. Kay McIff, R-Richfield). Two steps forward, one backward, I guess.

At this point, the win that really matters isn't on vouchers; it is on democratic process. Give people a clear vote, and let's live with the outcome. I hope the Gov. jumps in with both feet. He has a great ability to bring people together, and that is clearly needed. If our leading citizens call for a clear path, I believe it will emerge. Again, call me naive, but I believe this exercise can lift political dialogue and participation in Utah to new levels.

Speaking of good political dialogue, this post at the Wasatch Watcher impressed me.