Utah County Political Shtick

Assorted Flowers Today's blog post is a bit technical. My intention is to explain some of my thoughts on how people behave unconsciously (and sometimes even consciously). At its heart, this is about group psychology, and applying the ideas of classical conditioning . I really came to this understanding from a different direction, however; one informed more by my experience with computer science and physics than by psychology. Image by BruceBlaus . Obtained from Wikimedia Commons . To begin with, I need to describe the humble neuron . Neurons are the basic unit that makes up the brain. They are cells. By themselves, neurons are relatively simple things. The basic feature that makes neurons special is the way they link up and pass signals to one another. A typical neuron is made up of a cell body with an axon and dendrites. The axons and dendrites are basically like tentacles. Typically, the axon of one neuron will connect to one or more dendrites of other neurons. The de

Protected Wetlands in Southern Provo As someone who grew up in California and takes the responsibility of voting very seriously, I have been greatly impressed by the caucus system in Utah. The caucus system in Utah is incredible. It is a state treasure. In my mind, it is the only thing that stands between Utah politics and the toxic politics that I fled in California, and it is more than hyperbole for me to assert that the primary reason I left California was its toxic politics. In California, as with many other states, elections are largely decided with money, and the information is largely controlled by a powerful and politically uniform media. It takes real work to scrape together enough information to make an informed decision on candidates, parsing their statements closely to learn about their ideology, scrutinizing their endorsements rather than just accepting well-recognized names and happy-sounding organizations as de-facto evidence of a candidate's merit. When the

Railroad tracks in southern Provo's wetlands. As many are likely aware, state delegates in Utah recently voted and selected Mike Kennedy, by a slim majority, as their preferred candidate to replace the retiring Orrin Hatch. Some may be surprised that Utah's state delegates didn't overwhelmingly love Mitt Romney . To some, the idea that the delegates would force Mitt Romney to go through the primary process, let alone, actually favor Mike Kennedy by majority, might seem unthinkable. The reality is, that delegates simply are, by and large, much more informed than the average voter. In fact, they're much more informed even, than the well informed voter. Anybody who has read much of my blog would certainly know that I have become unhappy with the former governor from Massachusetts. I've discussed some of those reasons before. In summary, I think he has shown some very poor judgement. The action he took to counter Trump was woefully inept (and I'm not a guy

A view of Buckley Mountain On Friday, the 14th of April, Republican delegates convened to pick the party's candidates for positions in Utah County. I had been following the County Commission Seat A and County Attorney races pretty closely. The County Attorney race was particularly tricky, and the results from delegate voting reflect this. The delegates could not settle on one over the other, so they will have to face each other in a primary. Here we have two candidates with very different backgrounds, yet each one brings something positive to the table. Chad Grunander is a veteran of our County Attorney's office. It is clear that he brings experience and familiarity to the table. David Leavitt , on the other hand, was once the County Attorney for Juab County, and the city attorney for both Nephi and Fillmore. He has been working as a defense attorney, and has been active internationally, founding the Leavitt Institute for International Development . So, it would seem

A group of alpacas, fleeing from the Paparazzi I'm excited to see that Marc Roberts has introduced HB 181, the Home Consumption and Homemade Food Act. I only recently noticed that the legislative session was in full gear, so I immediately jumped on to the website to the Utah Legislature to see what Marc Roberts was up to. It appears that HB 181 is currently in the House Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment Committee. I immediately emailed my political junkie friends and then set about looking at the committee members. I cross-referenced the committee members with the map I generated last November to get a rough measure of how friendly this committee was to basic freedom. (I don't have any data that directly addresses support for past Food Freedom bills, so I'm using the jury issue I mapped out in November as a proxy.) Here are the committee members: Rep. Keven J. Stratton (R), Chair  Rep. Carl R. Albrecht (R)  Rep. Stewart E. Barlow (R)  Rep. Joel K.

A butterfly in a leafy bush. On a few occasions recently, I've tried to do dig around the Utah County website , trying to figure out what bills have been passed, and when. However, I've come up empty handed. The county codes and policies I can easily find, and there are meeting minutes and meeting recordings to pour through. This is great if you already know when something happened, or if one has the stomach to comb through reams of terse descriptions of the topics which the commissioners discussed, or watch days of recorded debate. However, what I would like to find are copies of legislation passed, and voting records. It really has been hard for me to find anything that gives me a really solid idea of what the commissioners are actively trying to do, or how well they are doing it. I'm hoping this is just a matter of ignorance on my part, and that I will be able to find the documentation of passed legislation, and maybe some other evidence of what commissioners are tr