May 18, 2013

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Senator Stephenson files bill to encourage Beretta to move to Utah

May 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Beretta

Maryland’s loss could become Utah’s gain.

As Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley this week signed one of the strictest gun control laws in the nation,  firearms manufacturer Beretta considered  the effect of the new law on it long-time manufacturing operations in the state.

“We are confronted with a state government that wants to ban our products at a time, by the way, when numerous other state governments are courting our investment,” Beretta General Counsel Jeff Reh is quoted as telling lawmakers in February. “Not surprisingly, we are concerned.”

State Senator Howard Stephenson thinks Beretta might find Utah an attractive alternative to Maryland and wants the legislature to do what it can to make it more so.

Stephenson thinks Utah would be a great home for Beretta’s manufacturing operations. By removing barriers to manufacturing, Beretta could find Utah a great place for its manufacturing operations, he told me this evening. He has opened a bill file to get the process started.

Howard StephensonWith Utah’s Second Amendment friendly laws, strong business environment, and educated workforce, Stephenson says taking steps to encourage Beretta to move or expand into Utah as soon as possible could pay off.

“In Maryland, Beretta has paid more than 31 million dollars in taxes,” said Stephenson in a statement on the Utah Senate Site.  ”They currently employ more than 400 people.”

For example, Stephenson told me that while Utah has already removed many of the taxes on manufactured goods, Utah retains taxes on goods with a useful life of less than three years. Removing these taxes on manufactured goods completely would enhance the opportunity for a manufacturer like Beretta even more. Many of the parts and components in Beretta’s firearms and other products must be replaced in less than three years.

Even though the Utah legislature isn’t due to be in session until next year, Stephenson told me that if Beretta is interested it would be possible to call a special session to pass any specific legislation drafted.

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Filed Under: Second Amendment Tagged With: , , , , ,

Review | Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff

May 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War IIThere was a moment when reading Mitchell Zuckoff‘s latest book, Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II, that I crossed over from a mildly interested reader to a rabid page turner. I’m pretty sure it was in the first chapter, if not the first couple pages.

Frozen in Time is, as its title only slightly exaggerates, an epic tale. Spanning from World War Two until the present, it is a work of non-fiction, to be sure, but no less gripping and exciting. Set in Greenland (and not the warm part, because there isn’t one), Zuckoff tells the story of the rescue of downed airmen during the winter of 1942. What begins as the search-and-rescue of a missing cargo plane soon becomes a fight for survival as a B-17 involved in the search slams into a glacier, stranding its nine passengers on the ice. A second daring rescue by a Grumman Duck amphibious plane results in another crash, and the nine airmen are forced to wait the winter out in the remains of their destroyed plane.

Heroic efforts by both rescuers and rescued are the subject of Zuckoff’s story. There are crevices, unstable glaciers, planes landing blind on the ice, hot wired radio equipment, frostbite, dog sled teams, hypothermia, fear of polar bears, and, always, snow. Snow, snow, and more snow. Taking place in the past and the present, Zuckoff weaves in a modern story about the efforts by the U.S. Coast Guard and North South Polar to find and recover the remains of the Grumman Duck lost during the rescue effort.

After reading Lost in Shangri-La last year, I was more than impressed that Zuckoff was able to raise his game. His dedication is admirable, as well. Asked by Lou Sapienza, head of North South Polar, if Jon Krakauer (the author of Into Thin Air) wouldn’t be a better choice to write the book, Zuckoff replies with natural aplomb: you haven’t got Krakauer; you’ve got me. However, it soon becomes clear that Zuckoff’s confidence is as much hope as it is faith as the expedition to recover the Grumman Duck hits financial setbacks and Zuckoff puts expenses for the trip–about which he is writing a book–on his credit card and then on a second mortgage to his home.

It’s an investment that pays off and in grand conclusion. A modern-day treasure hunt, not for gold, but for men lost in the greatest quest–to save their fellow-man–Frozen in Time is a fast and enjoyable read, full of suspense, mystery, tragedy, and victory. I can’t wait to see what Zuckoff will write next.

[Review previously published at Attack of the Books!]

Get the book from Amazon and start reading!

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Courage shown in speaking up against John Swallow [KSL]

May 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The following is an op-ed piece that I wrote for KSL as posted this afternoon.

 

John Swallow

SALT LAKE CITY — I’m sure there was a moment when Traci Gundersen wondered if making a bar complaint against Utah Attorney General John Swallow was a wise step for her career.

As far as I can tell, she’s the only person who has been inside the attorney general’s office and has come forward to call “foul” on the attorney general.Unlike others who have publicly accused Swallow of wrongdoing in recent months, Gundersen is unique in that she is not under indictment, in jail or anonymous. In other words, unlike other Swallow accusers, she seems like an honest person with nothing to gain by the claim. Rather, she is a reputable and upstanding attorney who worked in the Utah attorney general’s office during Mark Shurtleff’s term.

Not only has she worked in the attorney general’s office — where she was when Swallow was first brought on by Shurtleff to be groomed as his successor — but her work there caught the attention of others in state government and she was lured away to a job as director of the Utah Division of Consumer Protection. Her job, from 2010 to until last week, when she left the office voluntarily, was to protect Utahns against scam artists and pyramid schemes.

A longtime employee of the state and a well-respected attorney, she must have known that accusing the state’s chief legal officer of violating the attorney/client relationship — one of the most important tenets of the legal profession — would put her on dangerous footing.

Unlike Jeremy Johnson, who is under indictment, accused of a litany of scams, Gunderson is an attorney in good standing with the Utah Bar.

Unlike Marc Sessions Jenson, who is currently interned at the Utah State Prison for failing to pay $4 million in restitution for scams, Gundersen has nothing to gain by attacking Swallow.

But she does have everything to lose.

By taking her complaint straight to the Utah Bar, a body that has the ability to discipline, disbar or impose sanctions on any member of the Utah Bar — including Swallow — she added yet another dimension to the layers of Swallow’s difficulties. Swallow will now need to undergo review by the Utah Bar Association.

With everything to lose, and nothing to gain, Gundersen’s bar complaint, filed quietly and without fanfare, is an act of true courage.

What makes Gundersen’s charge against Swallow so compelling is that it lies in an event that Swallow does not deny. On the contrary, in an interview with Doug Wright, Swallow said, on the air, that he was “proud” of the phone call.

The event in question is a recorded conversation between Swallow and what City Weekly described as “the owner of a telemarketing sales floor” by the name of Aaron Christner.

Recorded while Swallow was still running for attorney general — and still collecting checks for his campaign — Swallow is heard promising to take over the Utah Division of Consumer Protection — housed in the Utah Department of Commerce — and move it into the attorney general’s office.

What makes the call suspect is that at the time the Division of Consumer Protection already had a $400,000 civil penalty imposed on Christner and his business partner Ryan Jensen, as well as an order to cease and desist operations. Further, the Division of Consumer Protection was Swallow’s client, which Swallow readily acknowledged during the call. As his client, Swallow was under a duty not only to tell them that he had been contacted by Christner, the target of their efforts, but to consult with the division on how it would want to proceed.

In the real world, clients give direction on how to proceed with a case to their attorneys, not the other way around. Sure, attorneys know the law, but they cannot act without consulting with their client.

To collect on the penalty, the division referred the case against Christner, and the $400,000 penalty and cease and desist order, to Assistant Attorney General Jeff Buckner, who filed a case with the 2nd District Court in late 2011. However, Christner and Jensen were difficult to find, and throughout early 2012 the division continued to look for them.

Meanwhile, in defiance of the cease and desist order, Christner and Jensen opened another telemarketing company, the last of several proxy companies they are accused of using to hide alleged scams.

Meanwhile, during this time the Republican nomination battle to replace Shurtleff as attorney general was in full swing, and an associate of Christner’s suggested that he should get in contact with Swallow, specifically to attend a fundraising breakfast at Mimi’s Cafe. Christner took the advice to heart and called Swallow, then chief deputy attorney general under Shurtleff with oversight of “the civil divisions and all litigation involving the state of Utah.”

After a few preliminary questions, including Christner informing Swallow that he was being pursued by the Division of Consumer Protection for $400,000 in civil penalties, Swallow offers to help Christner sit down with Shurtleff and then bashes into the Division of Consumer Protection, his own client:

“(T)he way Utah’s so dysfunctional right now, is the client is the Department of Commerce and Consumer Protection, and that is something we, uh, control or even influence greatly, it’s because the work for the governor’s office, and now when I’m attorney general you know, this is kind of confidential, I will try to restructure it so consumer protection is under the attorney general (office) and the attorney general has more authority over those investigations. In fact, complete authority over that,” said Swallow, according to the complaint.

If you can’t tell, Swallow is telling Christner that while Swallow can’t do anything now — because Swallow’s client is the Division of Consumer Protection and they’re calling the shots — once he’s in charge, he’ll flip the relationship and start telling them who they can and cannot pursue.

It’s like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. The lawyer will take over the client’s organization and start calling the shots.

But that’s not even the rub, not yet. Swallow never told his client — the Division of Consumer Protection — that he had had a conversation with the guy that they had been chasing. The first they heard about it was from the newspaper when City Weekly published the recording of the conversation online.

If you’re looking for a rule — and I know you are — look no further than Rule 1.4 of the Rules of Professional Conduct, which requires that an attorney “inform” the client and “consult with the client about the means by which the client’s objectives are to be accomplished.”

Clearly, Swallow has not consulted nor informed his client of relevent and important communications with an accused malfactor.

Worse, Swallow is expressing an interest in the outcome of the case, a clear violation of another rule, that of Rule 1.8(i):

(i) A lawyer shall not acquire a proprietary interest in the cause of action or subject matter of litigation the lawyer is conducting for a client.

In this case, Swallow has been introduced to Christner through a fundraising function, has explained that when he is elected he will attempt a take-over of the government agency that is chasing Christner, and seeking political favor for the action.

If exchanging political contributions for a desired outcome in violation of the law is not a proprietary interest, I don’t know what is. Whatever it is, it isn’t honest.

And the complaint goes on.

Gundersen has now done what no honest person has yet done: she’s made a claim and backed it up by filing charges with the appropriate body. She’s put her name, and her reputation, on the line against a powerful man with powerful friends. Whether it results in moving the Utah Bar to take action against Swallow remains to be seen, but what is not in doubt is her courage.

I hope more like her will step forward in coming weeks and months. It’s time for the attorney general’s office to move out from under the cloud of scandal and restore its integrity, and I fear that we won’t see it happen while the current occupant retains his office.

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Filed Under: Characteristics of Lawyers, Leaders, News Round Up Tagged With: , , , , ,

Poll Results from “Insiders” on the Utah Nomination System

May 10, 2013 by 1 Comment

A couple of days back, I presented a very brief summary of the debate occurring in the Utah Republican and Democratic Parties about the efforts of an outside group, the County My Vote committee, to influence how Utah’s parties conduct their nomination system. You can read it here.

I posted a poll of my readers asking what they thought should happen. Should the system change? Should the parties give up control of the process? Etc.

You might call these people the “Publius Online insiders.”

Not surprisingly, most of them were Republicans. I can’t help it if Democrats opted not to vote.  ;-)

Here are the results of the completely non-scientific poll:

Should the parties control their nominations

What changes would you support

Party affiliation

Are you feeling left out?

You can still vote in my completely unscientific poll below:

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LaVarr Webb’s insiders weigh in on Utah’s nomination system [POLL]

May 8, 2013 by 5 Comments
Crowds of people fill out precinct forms, paw over piles of political pamphlets and get informed at a Republican caucus meeting at the North Davis Preparatory Academy in Layton Tuesday, March 23, 2010. Brian Nicholson, Deseret News

Crowds of people fill out precinct forms, paw over piles of political pamphlets and get informed at a Republican caucus meeting at the North Davis Preparatory Academy in Layton Tuesday, March 23, 2010.
Brian Nicholson, Deseret News

Don’t forget to vote in the poll at the bottom of this post!

If you’ve been following inside politics around Utah of late, then you know that the talk among the party insiders–in both the Republican and Democratic Parties–has largely centered around whether Utah’s caucus system needs an update, should be jettisoned to make way for an open primary, or otherwise modified. (If you’re interested in how the Utah caucus system works, check out this interesting document by Dana Dickson that spells out the details. It can also be found embedded at the bottom of this post).

Yes, I know, this has not been the sole issue of discussion.  Party leadership elections are fast approaching , as well. The caucus is near and dear to many Utah politos’ hearts, though, and it has been the route many of them took to get elected. Further, many feel like the caucus allows and encourages unparalleled access to the political process and to elected officials, to say nothing of allowing candidates with little financial backing an opportunity for public office on a level with better funded candidates.

For examples, look no further than Senator Mike Lee. In 2010, then-candidate Mike Lee saw then-Senator Bob Bennett knocked out at the Republican State Convention by delegates who tied Bennett to the government’s massive Wall Street bailout (remember TARP?).  Lee then faced off against Tim Bridgewater in the Republican Primary, securing the nomination. He easily won election in November.

In fact, many of those discontent with the current system look to the 2010 convention as a reason for opening up the Republican Primary and/or ending the caucus system. Proponents of change argue that then-Senator Bob Bennett would easily have won an open primary in Utah, but extremist Republicans, in control of the convention, denied him the right to be on the ballot.

LaVarr Webb, publisher of Utah Policy and leading member of the group seeking to change the Utah caucus system

LaVarr Webb, publisher of Utah Policy and leading member of the group seeking to change the Utah caucus system

One of those behind the effort to change the Republican (and maybe the Democratic) caucus system is LaVarr Webb, publisher of the Utah Policy, (tagline: “Where political junkies get their daily fix”). He sent a letter on April 12, 2013 from his group, the “Count My Vote” executive committee,  and addressed to Republican and Democratic Party leaders.  The letter ostensibly seeks to help more people get involved, but alarmingly appears to all but threaten if party leaders don’t bring about changes to the nomination system.

After acknowledging some of the qualities in the nomination system that I noted above, the letter goes on to threaten a statewide referendum by  ”Count My Vote”  if the system is not changed by the political parties.  I quote in part:

We believe this matter to be of such high importance that we are in the process of filing the proper paperwork and putting together a large, statewide signature-gathering effort to place a proposal on the 2014 ballot allowing all voters to choose an alternative candidate nomination process

To avoid the state referendum, Webb says that the parties must

  1. Allow more people to participate in caucus meetings than just those who are available at a specified time. Just because you are sick or have children is no reason to be denied a vote in delegate and party leadership selection.
  2. Raise the threshold necessary to avoid a primary and eliminate multiple rounds of voting. In other words, any candidate who receives a marginal level of support (Webb suggest 20 or 25% of delegate vote) has the opportunity to face a primary election.
  3. Make the changes statutory. In other words, once the parties have made the changes, hand them over to the state legislature so that the nomination process is out of the hands of the political parties.   This last one makes about as much sense as asking your parents to pick out your spouse for you.

Read the full letter here or scroll down to see it embedded.

Ironically, it may be that those who consume Webb’s political content–his Utah Policy Daily–don’t necessarily agree with him.  A recent poll on his site on whether Utah’s Democratic Party will change its nominating system came out looking less than shiny for a direct primary.

UPD Caucus Poll 5-6-13

What do you think? Should Utah’s parties change their nomination process?

 

LaVarr Webb’s letter to the Utah Republican and Democratic Parties

Webb m e m o r a n d u m 4-12-13

ABCs of the Utah Caucus System

 

Utah Caucus ABC s

Filed Under: Democratic Politics, Politics, Republican Politics Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Time for more government oversight of abortion practices

May 6, 2013 by 3 Comments

Because I believe that the scope of government should be limited, I believe that less governmental regulation is, generally better. It raises the cost of doing business and–when it isn’t saving lives–it just sucks money out of the economy.

Congress–and the Utah Legislature–should have a very good reason before creating a new regulations that will require government employees to regulate and inspect some private sector activity.  Sufficient numbers of, and adequately trained, police, educators, and food quality inspectors are one thing; the proliferation of the nanny state is quite another.

But what is one  government regulation I would quite gladly support? The regulation of abortion, especially those such as the abortions allegedly carried out by Kermit Gosnell over his thirty year practice as a “doctor.”

As was described in an op-ed for the Washington Post:

In what can only be described as a “house of horrors,” abortion provider Kermit Gosnell stands trial in Philadelphia, charged with the grotesque murder of at least seven infants, allegedly born alive after botched abortions only to be brutally killed moments later.

ap_abortion_clinic_investigation_39870873-4_3_r536_c534That’s right. I’m not just railing against abortion–which I wholeheartedly oppose on the grounds that a woman’s right to choose begins and ends with the choice to engage in consensual sexual relations (which does not include rape and incest)–but against the murder of babies born alive and killed just moments later, often in the most calloused of ways.

It’s not like Gosnell is recent news, either. Gosnell has been hurting women, and killing babies, since the early 1970s when he was involved in the “Mother’s Day Massacre.”

It was called the Mother’s Day Massacre—the brainchild of Harvey Karman, an eccentric California man without medical training who had served 2½ years in prison for performing illegal abortions in the 1950s. Karman teamed with a young Philadelphia doctor who offered to perform abortions on 15 impoverished women, each between four and six months pregnant, who were bused to the Philadelphia clinic from Chicago on Mother’s Day 1972.

What the women didn’t know was that they were guinea pigs for a device Karman had invented, which he called the “super coil.” He had tested it only on wartime rape victims in Bangladesh, where he had traveled under the sponsorship of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Complication rates were high, and little wonder. A colleague of Karman’s Philadelphia collaborator described the contraption as “basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball. . . . They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman’s uterus. And after several hours of body temperature, . . . the gel would melt and these . . . things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus.”

As in Bangladesh, the Philadelphia experiment was a failure. Nine of the 15 women suffered serious complications. One needed a hysterectomy.

It was this kind of back-alley danger that was supposed to be ended by Roe v. Wade, handed down by the Supreme Court in 1973.  And yet, here we are, thirty years later, and Gosnell is still killing babies and their mothers with his barbaric methods.

Which is why I support more regulation of abortions, including Senator Mike Lee‘s efforts today to move the Senate into action against the kind of horrific clinics Gosnell has run for almost three decades.

Official portrait of United States Senator Mik...

Official portrait of United States Senator Mike Lee. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a resolution supported by Senators. Toomey (PA), Rubio (FL), Cruz (TX), Inhofe (OK), Scott (SC), Blunt (MO), Burr (NC), Vitter (LA), Johanns (NE), and Boozman (AR) Senator Mike Lee is calling for the Senate to take the moral high ground. Said Senator Lee:

The Senate should formally recognize that this is a problem in our country and we have a responsibility to investigate the causes, review the effects of certain public policies, and determine what we can do to prevent any woman from being subjected to these reprehensible practices again.

Further, Lee’s press release says that

[t]he resolution also recognizes that “there is substantial medical evidence that an unborn child is capable of experiencing pain at 20 weeks after fertilization, or earlier,” and resolves that “there is a compelling governmental interest in protecting the lives of unborn children beginning at least from the stage at which substantial medical evidence indicates that they are capable of feeling pain.”

Occasionally, or maybe more than occasionally, I see politicians that take on causes that are either pandering to their political base or that have no more chance of success than Don Quixote tilting at windmills.  I know that there are those who will see Lee’s actions as just that.

In Gosnell, though, we face a very real monster, not a mere facade for fodder to the base. We see horrors that should disturb all Americans, whether they oppose or support abortion. Killing babies, not to mention hurting women and girls in clinics that are unsanitary and staffed by untrained employees, is both disgusting and disturbing. It should give all Americans pause, to say the least. More, though, it should make them angry: angry that a calloused and unfeeling creature like Gosnell has been hurting women for nearly thirty years, angry that our government has done so little to prevent it.

It’s taken too long, and too many have been hurt. It’s time for the United States Senate to take up the issue. One of the major justifications for Roe v. Wade was that it would bring abortions out of the back-alleys and make it safe. In Kermit Gosnell, though, we see that a generation has passed and, though sanctioned by the law, the practice is no more safe, moral, or justified.

It’s time for greater government oversight of abortion. It’s time for the US Senate to look into how abortion is conducted in this country.

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Filed Under: Abortion Tagged With: , , , ,

At TED, Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo

May 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Privacy. Immortality. Forget tattoos…what about your electronic signature? Have you considered that what you put “out there” may never be erased? Or erasable?

(Speaking of tattoos, remember that guy who put Romney’s logo on his head?)

Romney tattoo

Filed Under: Tech and IP Tagged With: , , , , ,
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