Megan on Hillary Clinton

While driving to Grandma and Grandpa's house for Thanksgiving last week, my 4 year old daughter Megan heard a clip of Hillary Clinton on the radio. It was a particularly shrill clip (Sean Hannity's replacement played it so I am sure it was impartial). Megan said "that's not a very nice person." I said "do you think she should be our next president?" She said "no Daddy."

So there you go. Megan would vote against Hillary. I guess I would too given the chance. But my vote would be based on politics and not neccesarily a sound bite on a far right conservative radio program.

My next $11,995 bike

Will definitely be one of these Arantix open lattice carbon-fiber bikes by Delta 7 sports. At 2.7 pounds for the frame, the frame itself weighs about 8 to 9 times less than my current low-end of the high-end mountain bike.

We have a bog in Orem?

Turns out that the recent stink in Orem is a bog fire burning out by Geneva Road.

PECASE awarded to professor at BYU

This is a very big deal. The PECASE ain't quite the Nobel Prize (congratulations Dr. Capecchi!), but it's the top award in the US for young faculty. Congratulations to Adam Wolley and the Chemistry/Biochemistry Dept. at BYU.

Memo to BYU students angry over parking

In a representative democracy, such as Provo, you need to vote. Otherwise, your only recourse is making angry statements about parking at city council meetings.

A $cout executive is...

Well-paid. And honestly, I have no problem with that. But if we could just file trip permit applications over the web and/or email, I'd be much happier. The IT infrastructure in my Council is just new maturing into web 1.0, sort of.

How change education in Utah, step 1

Step one is to go to your neighborhood caucus meeting and elect delegates which represent your views on education. Neighborhood caucuses (or is it caucii?) are held in March. You will know most of the people there, they will be your neighbors.

The caucus system puts a lot power at the grass roots level, the you have to go to your caucus meeting.

In the Post-Voucher Era

Let it not be said that Utah Republicans blindly follow their state party leadership like sheep.

Memo to George F. Will at the Washington Post

George:

Nice op-ed piece on the Utah voucher fray out in the wild-wild-west. In paragraph 6, you mention that Utah's pending population boom will bring many students into our already crowded school. The good Senator Bramble and the Chamber of Commerce radio ad raise the same issue. I am not convinced. Here's why:

But public education is funded by property tax. Won't those newcomers need somewhere to live? If we assume that they won't live in existing structures with existing residents, then new residences will need to be constructed for these newcomers. Won't that increase the tax base and increase property tax revenue?

Vouchers actually make the situation worse. According to the Voter Information Pamphlet, vouchers will cost the Utah tax payer an extra approx. $40,000,000 in 13 years (that's cost of voucher program minus savings to public ed.). So not only will we have to build more schools, we'll also have to pay more money to fund the voucher program.

The fun thing about vouchers is that it's a financially complex issue. I must be missing something. Somebody please tell me where I am wrong.