Lance Christy & Friends: Blog

Sent to Senator Dmitrich and Representatives King and Mathis

I recommend you vote FOR SB 173 and AGAINST SB202.

SB173 was produced by Governor John Huntsman's Renewable Energy Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force. I participated with some of the members of that task force in developing the Renewable Energy Portfolio recommendation. That recommendation was modeled on a Renewable Energy Portfolio adopted by the Oregon Legislature. SB 173 sets the target that 25% of Utah's electricity come from renewable sources by the year 2025. There are interim targets and some exclusions. For example, if consumers would be paying too high a rate for additional renewable energy source to meet a renewable energy target, the provision could be suspended. SB173 also (somewhat like SB169) sets up a task force to develop renewable energy zones throughout the state, based on an assessment of where the renewable energy generation resources are (e.g., wind, geothermal, hydro) and would create economic incentives to entrepreneurs to set up generation plants using these regional resources. SB173 also establishes an authority to coordinate development of transmission lines in Utah so the renewable energy from new generation sites can be transported efficiently to market.

Oregon Representative Jackie Dingfelder, one of the sponsors of Oregon's RPS bill, notes that 22 states have adopted such legislation and none have confronted more than a one percent rise in electricity cost in the state after adoption. It is typical for these adopted RPS to have specific percentage of renewable energy source in the state electric portfolio from a catalogue of renewable generation sources by a particular year, and to have interim benchmark targets to keep things on track.

SB202 was introduced on behalf of Rocky Mountain Power, which had participated in the Renewable Energy Initiative but then decided to produce its own bill, apparently for marketing reasons. SB202 lacks mandatory targets, interim targets, or a timetable for implementation of renewable energy source as part of Utah's energy portfolio. Senator McCoy states he believes the language of SB202 effectively cuts out competition with Rocky Mountain Power for any generating source of less than 300 megawatts capacity.

From my review of a number of studies published recently both in the United States and in Europe, including one by the American Solar Energy Society of which I am a member, I can assure you that we can meet SB173's 25% RPS goal by 2025 by installing off-the-shelf renewable energy technology. In all likelihood, we can exceed that percentage if we put our minds to it, and with application of new renewable energy technologies in late-stage development.

As Samuel Johnson remarked, "The threat of a hanging focuses the mind wonderfully." For better or worse, it appears to require the threat of a Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard with achievable hard percentages to be achieved by specific years to focus the minds of utility company executives to adjust their accustomed ways of doing business to incorporate renewable energy into the public electric utility portfolio with any degree of dispatch. We need to cut our total planetary carbon dioxide emissions to at most 20 percent of what we emitted in the year 2000 to avoid run-away climate change due to warming releasing even more greenhouse gas from natural sources in which it is sequestered, such as frozen tundra and hydrate deposits on ocean floors. If we start in 2008, we can reach the target with cuts averaging 2 percent a year. If we wait until 2012, we have to cut emissions by an average of 4 percent a year to meet the 2050 target. Cutting emissions at 2 percent a year is a lot easier and cheaper than making larger annual cuts. As the Stern Report in the U.K. documented in detail, the economic consequences of not making the cuts is far more expensive than what we have to spend to make the cuts.

We need to do the sensible thing and pass SB173.

Sincerely yours,
Richard Lance Christie, Moab, Utah

This is sage advice from the Civic Engagement Project.  I have a couple of things to add, which expand on what is said in the piece by Amedei:

First, when speaking to a representative about why you want them to vote a particular way and the reason why, make the effort to translate that reason why into the language and values used by the official.  Don't skip your reasons for wanting the legislation in terms of social justice or welfare values, but put the reasoning that locks into the official's own primary concerns first.  If the official is primarily concerned with maintaining the local jurisdiction's tax base, talk about the effects of his decision on the issue on likely future tax revenues.  If the official is primarily concerned with the health and vitality of local business, talk first about the effects of her decision on the issue on likely future business viability and profitability in the community.  Then you can mention how the legislation, in addition to likely being good for tax base or business, also helps low income people, or improves community amenities and makes Grand County a better place to live for everyone, corrects an existing social injustice, or whatever.

Examples:  (a)  When dealing with a County Commission ideologically fixated on "private property rights" which thought any talk of "community welfare" could only come out of the mouth of a dedicated Communist, I explained proposed Land Use Code regulation of private property in terms of how it resolved the conflicts we had experienced over how one person's exercise of what he thought his private property rights were was seen as trespassing on his neighbor's exercise of their private property rights.  (b) When talking to Councilcritters fixated on local business welfare about need for public subsidy of moderate income housing, I describe it as "workforce housing" and point to the increasing difficulties businesses are having recruiting and retaining qualified employees because of lack of local housing new employees can afford to acquire.  Note in these examples that there is no deception; my arguments are the honest truth as I know it, but phrased in terms that establish with the official that I understand and share their values and concerns.  When dealing with any official, it is critical to first establish common ground - what you agree on - before getting into any differences.  By establishing common ground, you avoid being seen as a cone-headed alien who is incomprehensibly wrong-headed and therefore to be placated and made to go away without having one word one says be understood by the official as something relevant to him and his responsibilities of office.

Second, there are some a powerful psychological laws underlying Amedei's talk of "relationship building."  One law was explored by a psychologist named Zajonc in a long series of social psychological experiments which were replicated by other researchers.  That law is that "familiarity breeds liking."  Repeated exposure to an idea or to a person (unless they act as a punishing stimulus) causes the evaluated positivity of that person or idea to increase as a direct mathematical function of the number of exposures. 

A second law was revealed by decades of research into social conformity and how people create cognitive schemata - "maps" of social reality.  ll human beings, being social animals, are equipped with an unconscious, hard-wired community consensus detector.  The ability to detect and conform to community consensus without having to think about it is a powerful survival skill for members of a tribal species.  Politicians are in the role of tribal leader who resolves conflicts over tribal values or issues.  Both politicians and their constituents make unconscious judgments about where the "center of gravity" of community opinion on an issue lies based on the number and strength of opinions they detect being expressed about that issue among members of their "tribe."  Most political constituents belong to community subgroups, who are most often in interaction with other members of that subgroup.  Opinions which differ from the norm for that subgoup are therefore seen as being held by "not-us" people, and therefore to be both of suspect validity and under-estimated as to their prevalence in the polity as a whole.  The official who comes from such a subgroup is exposed to people and opinions from outside that subgroup, and should have a set because of being an officeholder that he or she is supposed to fairly weigh different opinions; the needs and perspectives of different groups in the polity; deciding what is best for the polity as a whole.  Underlying this weighing of different opinions and perspectives is the official's experience of the number of people in the community who hold those different opinions and perspectives.  If the official detects 50 times from members of his subgroup of origin during informal social contacts that they don't see affordable housing is a problem which needs to be addressed for the good of the community, while the official only hears once or twice from a couple of constituents who do think it is a critical problem, the official will see affordable housing as a matter of concern to a minority fringe and will resist taking any action to facilitate affordable housing against which there is any political resistance.  If the official hears from large numbers of people on repeated occasions that affordable housing is a critical issue in the community, backed up by statistics showing how lack of affordable housing is going to hurt local business viability, the tax base, and community viability in the long run, then the official is likely to support voting for measures to subsidize community moderate income housing and is equipped to justify his doing so to someone who comes in opposing the measure.

To paraphrase Woody Allen, "Ninety percent of politics is just turning up."  A lot of what Amedei spells out here I classify under "providing officials with political cover."  Whether an official seems to believe similarly or differently to you as a progressive, to get them to vote for a progressive cause they need to have two things in order to have "political cover" which will embolden them to vote as you seek them to:  (1) They need to be able to demonstrate substantial constituent support for their voting for their measure.  It is a consensual political value that elected representatives are supposed to REPRESENT the interests of their constituents.  We therefore need to provide political cover for them in the form of performing such political theater as is necessary to make it appear they are representing their constituents will in the matter by voting the way they vote.  (2) They need to be able to demonstrate that what they are voting for serves positive consensual community values.  We therefore need to provide political cover for them in the form of equipping them with facts and reasoning so they can demonstrate they are serving their constituents' interests by voting the way they vote.  -Lance Christie

At 12:19 PM 2/4/2008, you wrote:
 

When Your Elected Officials Seem “Hopeless”

Here’s a familiar line: “My representatives won’t listen to me no matter what I say. They believe the opposite of everything I believe.  We’re total opposites.  I’d be wasting my time talking to them.” Familiar yes, but wrong.

While it is true that successful political movements work with traditional allies and “swing votes” in the political middle, good advocacy is about winning over (or neutralizing) the opposition. Here are 6 reasons for approaching elected officials who oppose your view.

...conveying your position is basic to good advocacy.

As citizens and voters, our job is to ask them to vote a particular way, and explain our reasons why; their job is to be asked. They can’t represent you (your issue, your group) unless you tell them how you wish to be represented, and why. That’s basic.

...opponents dismiss us when we aren’t clear about what we are for.

Someone who fails to spell out their position can be written off as a “knee-jerk liberal;” a well-articulated position is harder to ignore. Besides, elected officials often reflect the views of their voters -- people you also have to win over.

...they and their colleagues respect constituent pressure.

If and when you DO win your legislators over to your side, they’ll need to be able to say their constituents pressed them to do it. This is especially important if you are asking them to take a position with which their own political party disagrees.

...good advocacy is a way to educate and build relationships.

Legislators’ positions often reflect what they believe their constituents want and value.  Your letters, telephone calls, and visits inform your elected representatives about your issues, while also conveying that there is strong support for your position. Never give your elected representatives the right to say, “I never heard from anyone on this issue.”

...people and minds change.

Even the most apparently immovable legislators have been known to change their position on issues -- particularly when the voters back home make clear they want a change. Twenty-five years ago almost nobody in public office was pro-choice, pro-diversity, or anti-tobacco; today, growing numbers of elected officials are.  They didn’t change by accident, and didn’t change overnight: the persistent work of good advocates was key.

...we can’t give up.

Part of our job is to be a presence. The people elected to represent all the people should NOT be allowed to cast votes affecting children, families, and other vulnerable people safe in the knowledge they won’t have to face them or their advocates.  Our elected representatives should always feel that someone is watching -- and that someone is us.

When Your Elected Officials Seem Like “Sure Votes”

Here’s a familiar line: “My representatives are already on my side. I’d be wasting my time and theirs talking to them.” Familiar, but wrong.

While it is true that successful political movements build new allies and neutralize opponents, all good advocacy efforts include ways to work with the legislators who agree with you. Here are some ways to think about elected officials who support your view.

 
...saying thank you is basic to good advocacy.

Thanking supporters is essential to any political movement. Saying “Thank You” tells legislators you noticed their actions and appreciated their effort -- even when you lose.

 ...people (and their minds) can change.

Even the most principled politicians have been known to change their position on issues.  As time passes, a politician’s values can change or opponents’ advocacy can take its toll. Also, there is always pressure on politicians to compromise on controversial issues. Don’t let your inaction give your supportive legislators a reason to change their minds!

...your advocacy gives supporters a basis for their position.

Legislators take positions based on their perception of what their constituents’ value. The more letters, telephone calls, and visits your elected representatives receive, the more you both can claim support for your position. This will help in recruiting other supporters and in diffusing any opposition. For example, you can put a human face on your issue by introducing a constituent who would be directly affected by the upcoming vote.

...their colleagues respect constituent pressure.

It strengthens an elected official’s hand when they can tell a colleague: “I support this, and I’m getting piles of mail and telephone calls from my voters. They really want this.”

...advocacy is a chance to educate and build a relationship.

Legislators juggle lots of subjects. They may be very supportive of an issue but be unaware of it - or have little knowledge. You can help make them better advocates by arming them with your best arguments. This is a chance to be a resource, and to build a solid relationship – one that may help you in the future. For example, provide your legislator with a Fact Sheet summarizing recent research or its impact on the district, or arrange a site visit to let your legislator see your efforts in his/her Legislative District.

...there is always more to do.

Good advocacy efforts do not stop when you hear that your representative supports your cause. For example, you can ask them to talk to other legislators..., publicize your cause in their District newsletter...., co-sign an editorial piece..., advise you on approaching other legislators..., speak up on the Floor of the legislature or in their caucus....

Prepared by Nancy Amidei for the Civic Engagement Project (amidei@u.washington.edu )

This is my reply to some other folks on the Moab Area Progressive Network in a dialogue about Barack Obama and electoral politics in Utah:

(1)  In respect to initiation of paradigm shifts, John is correct that these are not initiated by INCUMBENT mainstream politicians.  They originate in “closets.”  According to Peck’s Microtrends, it only takes one percent of the population to produce a culture-changing shift.  The one percent in question rarely includes politicians holding office at the time - it may include officeholders on party fringes like Dennis Kuchinich or Ron Paul, but not mainstream incumbents.  However, the propagation of the ideas from these idea leaders through the information leader structure of our polity results in the information leaders who are mainstream party leaders embracing the ideas and then nominating candidates for office that express them.

In looking at the history of politics in the US in the last century, I can find no instance in which a minority party that remained a minority party, or its candidates for office, ever acted as a vehicle for inducing a paradigm shift of national policy.  If the minority party became a majority party, at least at the state level, and succeeded in electing its candidates to office (e.g., the Farmer’s and Worker’s Party of Minnesota, which elected a fellow you remember named Hubert Humphrey as governor), then much of the platform of such a successful third party would be absorbed into the platform of one of the majority parties (in this case, by the Democratic party which absorbed both much of the Farmer’s and Worker’s Party platform and Hubert himself, who became Democratic vice president and then the Democratic presidential candidate against Reagan). 

One sees much the same phenomenon in business and culture generally.  In The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism, Matt Mason makes a case that people at today’s cultural marginalia - punk rockers, graffiti artists, and DJs - are creating more efficient networks, better ideas, and a more benevolent style of capitalism.  However correct Mason is about the present, the history of the past is clear that mainstream business practices and technologies of today started out being practiced by marginal people in small groups who were subject to derision and suspicion from the mainstream.  When it became clear that the marginal folks had invented a better mousetrap, these ideas and practices were absorbed, accepted, and propagated through the culture by its information leaders to become the new conventional wisdom or Best Available Management Practice.

The thing which I perceive past candidacies by Ralph Nader to have accomplished was to keep certain ideas and issues on the table in the presidential debates which would likely otherwise have been ignored altogether.  In particular, it appears to me that what Nader or Perot accomplished was to get issues onto the questions asked of voters by pollsters that would not otherwise have been asked.  When polls showed a substantial majority of voters being in favor of or against an issue forced on the polling table by a minority candidate, typically a majority candidate would annex the issue into his stump speech platform if it seemed consistent with other elements of his platform.  Whether this enrichment of the public debate had any effect on who got elected to office and what they actually did once in office is the subject of another analysis, but I don’t think you’d find much effect on actual enacted policy from minority candidate ideas.  The main effect I see of minority party candidates in national elections is that they can legitimize talking about an issue which would otherwise be considered to be outside the realm of polite discussion, a resident of aluminum-hat wacko territory which is disdainfully ignored altogether by the corporate mass media.  Once legitimized as a subject of political discussion, an idea attractive enough to survive may well find its way into mainstream party platforms in the future.

(2) Obama does indeed show a remarkable capacity to draw young people and politically uninvolved people into supporting him and the Democratic party.  In Iowa, 41 percent of all the unaffiliated voters who participated in the caucuses voted for Obama (17 percent for Clinton), and participation of voters in the Democratic caucuses almost doubled over 2004 with almost all the additional attendees being people who had not participated in past caucuses of either party or otherwise been politically active.

(3) Vice Presidential candidates are typically selected by the party nominee and party brass for strategic and symbolic reasons: because they are thought to be able to attract people to vote for the ticket who would otherwise eschew voting for it.  For example, when Rudy Giuliani was leading in the Republican presidential polls, there was open speculation about him needing to name Mike Huckabee as his vice presidential running mate in order to prevent the Christian right cultural conservatives from bolting the Republican party if Giuliani was nominated.  Similarly, the buzz is that Barack Obama as Democratic nominee would need to name a white southerner like John Edwards as his vice presidential running mate as a warding spell to balance him being from Chicago in the industrial north and being a black person.  Lieberman apparently represented a Jewish hawk fiscal conservative from the industrial northeast balance to Al Gore’s being a liberal environmentalist from below the Mason-Dixon line....or something like that.

Mike Dmitrich is not up for re-election in 2008.  In respect to him, I have two points.  First, the only alternative to Mike as long as he cares to run for re-election to his seat is electing a Republican State Senator.  There is no apparent way to nominate an alternative to Mike through the Democratic Party primaries because of his solid support base in Carbon County.  However, Mike is pushing seventy and had a bout with cancer, so running for re-election again is not a sure thing.  Second, I know Mike pretty well and have found him quite receptive to embracing progressive ideas if I can frame them in language he can sell to the Republicans in the state legislature.  I have the impression he votes for execrable reactionary bills a lot of the time either because he calculates the bills are going to pass anyway and he can gain “street cred” alias political capital with the Republican trogdolytes who control the Utah legislature which he can use later to win a winnable battle, or because no progressive has talked to him about how it is critically important to oppose the bill for stated cause.  The best argument for opposing a Republican bill in the legislature is an argument showing how the bill violates stated Republican party principles of governance policy.

In respect to the Utah presidential vote, if Mitt Romney was the Republican candidate and Hillary Clinton is the Democratic candidate, then I would consider Utah’s electoral vote being Republican as a done deal.  In fact, it is highly probable that Romney would win the presidency because of Hillary’s uniquely high negatives among independent voters, and among a substantial part of Democratic voters.  However, if John McCain is the Republican candidate and Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate, it is quite possible that Obama could carry Utah and win the electoral college vote from Utah in 2008.  There are a lot of conservatives who bear a grudge against McCain for one or another reason, while Obama has an amazing ability to fire up Democratic and independent voters to get to the polls and vote Democratic.  If distaste for McCain discouraged enough Republican voters from going to the polls or led them to vote for third-party candidates in protest, while Obama produced very high Democratic voting turnout from non-Republican voters of all ages and sexes - which is what he has achieved in most primaries so far where independents can vote in Democratic primaries - then it is quite possible for Obama to win a majority vote for president in Utah.  -Lance

Blog entry:

Sibel Edmonds & The MSM Iron Curtain
http://hackslanderson.blogspot.com/

Any remaining doubt that the American MSM (Mainstream media) has degenerated into the functional equivalent of Pravda and Izvestia in the late Soviet Union — submissive oracles of Orwellian obfuscation--has been banished by the recent case of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds in January of this year...

A follow-up article in the London Times -- doing the job our press lords are neglecting to do:

The FBI has been accused of covering up a file detailing government dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3216737.ece

Excerpts:

THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets...

She (Edmonds) says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia...

One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file...

The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent...

The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001.

It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US...

Edmonds: “This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security.”

Travis Kelly Graphics
http://www.tkellygraphics.com