The Opt-Out Letter
Posted by Joshua Sharf in PPC on November 18th, 2010
It’s rare to see anyone in the federal government actively trying to devolve power back to any sort of state or local authority, but Rep. John Mica (R-FL), is doing exactly that. Rep. Mica was the ranking member of the House’s Transportation Committee, and is likely to become its new chairman in a couple of months. He’s also one of the authors of the original TSA legislation. Mica has sent a letter to about 150 airport administrators around the country asking them to opt out of TSA’s screeners and hire private screeners instead.
I’ll post the full letter later, but two points are worth commenting on.
Under this program, TSA continues to set standards, pay all costs, and conduct performance oversight.
It’s unclear if this means that TSA has the authority to require private contractors to conduct the problematic scans, or whether those can remain up to the screeners’ discretion. Much of the momentum for opting out won’t come so much from reducing federal bureaucracy as much as from opting out of these procedures. It’s possible that the push to have airports opt out is a political tool designed to reduce TSA bureaucratic empire, or to create the threat of doing so, in order to push TSA to drop the procedures.
Rep. Mica also makes a couple of claims that, on the surface, make sense: that private screeners’ performance is better, and that they have been responsible for the “positive innovations” (his quotes) that TSA has adopted. Both of these are believable, but a citation for those past studies, and examples of those positive innovations would go a long way toward building the case for an opt-out.
DIA is the fourth-busiest airport in the country; such an opt-out here would be a major development and perhaps set the pace for other airports to follow suit.
UPDATE: The letter is embedded below:
It’s From an Old Familiar Score
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Israel on November 17th, 2010
The latest story from the neverending story that is the Middle East “peace process” is that Prime Minister Netanyahu will agree to a 90-day extension of the moratorium on building in the West Bank, in exchange for completing the 1300 units just approved, and delivery of 20 F-35 jets capable of reaching Iran. Many saw this as opening a window of opportunity for the Prime Minister to let the Palestinians continue their obstreperousness.
Many Americans assume that because the US Military tends to be more conservative, the same must be true of the Israeli military. In fact, Israel’s military and intelligence services tends to be to the left (although not the Academic Suicidal Left), and it appears that they may be operating in coordination with elements in the Obama Administration to pressure Netanyahu through the press:
Israeli intelligence and military officials have warned in recent days that if a peace deal isn’t achieved soon the moderate Palestinian leadership in the West Bank could collapse and give way to more radical Hamas militants, backed by Iran and Syria, who already rule the Gaza Strip.The warnings come as the United States makes a last-ditch effort to revive talks between Israel and the Palestinians that stalled almost as soon as they resumed in September.
It’s also not as though we haven’t seen this before:
- February 26, 1995 – South Florida Sun-Sentinal – “Middle East Peace in Pieces”
- “Many U.S. diplomats say in confidential interviews that the partners for peace had but a short window of opportunity, a window that opened when the PLO and Israelis issued the declaration of principles for peace 18 months ago. Now, U.S. officials fear, that window has closed.”
- October 15, 1998 – Austin American Statesman – “Decks Clear for Mideast Talks”
- The decks literally cleared in southern Israel a few days later, when a bomb injured 64 people
- July 24, 2000 – St. Paul Pioneer Press – “Clinton Rejoins Peace Talks, Pressure High, Time is Short“
- August 14, 2000 – New York Times – “Washington Feels Time is Short for Restarting the Mideast Talks”
- April 5, 2002 – Jerusalem Post – “The Postwar Window of Opportunity”
- December 12, 2003 – New York Times – ‘A Bush Aide Criticized Israel For Not Doing More To Foster Peace”
- “In Rome international donors to the Palestinians said that, because of the installation of a new Palestinian prime minister, a ”window of opportunity” had reopened, permitting the resumption of negotiations with Israel.”
- October 19, 2006 – UN Security Council – “Mideast Peace Envoy Tells Security Council…Urgent to Help Restart Dialogue”
- “ELLEN MARGRETHE LØJ ( Denmark) said the challenge for the parties to the conflict, as well as for the international community, was to ensure that they embarked on a process leading towards lasting peace…. It was now up to the parties to avail themselves of that window of opportunity.”
- March 31, 2007 – Bloomberg – “EU Says Palestinian Government Gives Window for Mid East Peace”
- May 2, 2008 – MonstersAndCritics.com – “Rice Warns Time Is Limited For Achieving Mideast Peace Deal”
It seems that, to paraphrase an old saying, in the Mideast, whenever one window closes, another one opens.
Of course, this is only another iteration of the game that the enemy (the Palestinians, not the Israeli left; only Obama calls his own countrymen “the enemy”) has played ever since Soviet times: Give us what we want peacefully, or the next guy will take it by force. Nice.
Can We Spare Denver Passengers TSA?
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Denver, PPC, Privacy on November 17th, 2010
By now, pretty much everyone has heard about John Tyner, the Oceanside, CA man who reasserted his individual dignity by refusing to submit to either the option of groping or self-pornification in the service of what Reason‘s Matt Welch (and now, Rep. John Mica (R-FL) calls, “security theater.” You know, the fellow that TSA has decided to make an example of for us all.
In addition to being large, impersonal, and top-heavy, what really worries critics is that the TSA has become dangerously ineffective. Its specialty is what those critics call “security theater” — that is, a show of what appear to be stringent security measures designed to make passengers feel more secure without providing real security. “That’s exactly what it is,” says Mica. “It’s a big Kabuki dance.”
It’s good to see that someone – one of the authors of the original TSA legislation, no less – is telling us that yes, indeed, all this stuff is to make us feel better, not actually to make us safer. I’ll grant that there is something to the operational theory that ever-changing rules and oddly intrusive regulations keep the bad guys off-balance and force them to take risks that make failure and detection more likely. Except that the underwear bombers and the ink toner bomber weren’t really stopped because the system worked, were they?
It’s not often I disagree with Dennis Prager outright, but this morning, he and guest Michael Fumento were seeking to defuse the panic over the scanners. Now, Fumento has a creditable history of taking on irrational public fear – see last year’s swine flu plague that swept away civilization, for instance. But in this case, they’re not taking into account that the TSA has dealt with us in bad faith over these scanners from the beginning. We were assured, for instance, that pictures could not be stored or shared. Which is why they’re all over the Net.
The fact is that these options are insulting, intrusive, humiliating, and demeaning, and the sort of thing that a free people should never have to put up with simply to get from point A to point B. The argument from Big Sis that they’re absolutely necessary, that nothing else will do, that no other solution short of Amtrak or Greyhound is possible, is pretty rich coming from a Lilliputian government that routinely ties down its citizens and businesses with regulations, and then excuses the extra cost on the grounds that they can always find a work-around.
It’s time for Big Sis to find a work-around. And not the current SPOT program.
In a May 2010 letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Mica noted that the GAO “discovered that since the program’s inception, at least 17 known terrorists … have flown on 24 different occasions, passing through security at eight SPOT airports.” One of those known terrorists was Faisal Shahzad, who made it past SPOT monitors onto a Dubai-bound plane at New York’s JFK International Airport not long after trying to set off a car bomb in Times Square. Federal agents nabbed him just before departure.
Now, Mica has written another letter to over 150 airport administrators reminding them that they can opt out of TSA, and hire private contractors for screening instead. At one point, this seemed to be an attractive option for many airports. In 2004, Mica tried to remind them of the option, but Peter DiFazio (D-Public Employees Unions) suspected a nefarious Bush plot to continue reducing the size of government.
Since the rules actually state that security screeners have the right to use their judgment in determining which screening methods to use, presumably passengers at private security wouldn’t feel it necessary bring a wad of one-dollar bills to get them through security.
In most places, citizens lack the means to force their local airports to do this. The good news is that we do. DIA is owned and operated by the City and County of Denver. With Denver’s municipal elections coming up in May, there’s no reason we couldn’t place a ballot measure requiring DIA to transition to private, non-union, security contractors within a year.
Those Darned Ballot Initiatives II
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, PPC on November 9th, 2010
A final word on 60, 61, and 101. They violated two basic rules of drawing political lines – 1) create contrasts, and 2) make sure that more people are on your side of that contrast. These were written in such a way that even true fiscal conservatives didn’t believe they could support them. Which meant that not only didn’t they get passed, they passed up an opportunity to let the Republican candidates define differences between themselves and their opponents.
In the Wall Street Journal:
The ballot measures mirror tea-party goals. So Natalie Menten, who runs the proponents’ campaign, expected lots of help from the movement.
She didn’t get it.
A large majority of Colorado’s elected officials, both Republicans and Democrats, have urged voters to reject the measures as too extreme. The opposition raised millions from businesses and unions for ads warning that the measures would kill jobs and strip funding from schools, roads and prisons.
In the face of such forceful opposition, many tea-party activists stepped aside to focus on other priorities, such as state legislative races.
“It does disappoint me,” Ms. Menten said. “It tells me they want to go out to the capitol and hold up a sign” but not take real action.
No. They took real action. They got involved in campaigns they believed they could win.
Now, look at what happened in Arizona. Two years ago, they rejected (barely) a ballot initiative that would have made sure that people could always purchase their own health care. This year, they passed an Amendment 63 look-alike.
Here’s an idea. Two years ago, we barely killed a right-to-work initiative, and an initiative to get rid of affirmative action in public hiring and contracting. This year, we came within a few points of neutralizing Obamacare here.
Why not take a page from the lefty handbook, and try these again? Better yet, why not think about how the initiatives will help get people elected by clarifying differences, coordinating ballot initiatives with electoral politics, rather than falling in love with whatever new idea we come up with in the interim?
How Bad Was the West, Really?
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics, PPC on November 9th, 2010
Conventional wisdom right now is that the West was excluded from the Republicans’ big gains in the rest of the country. And by a certain standard, that’s true. Not too many people would have guessed that the state legislatures in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan would go Republican, with the latter two also electing Republican governors. The West didn’t see any such seismic shift (apologies to those living in rift valleys and on fault lines). But the Republican gains, outside of California, were still pretty substantial.
Consider that in the 10 non-California western states (Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona), the count in the US Congress went from 27-15 Democrat to 23-19 Republican, a net gain of 8 seats out of 42. The Republicans also picked up two governorships (Wyoming and New Mexico).
The gains in state legislatures were also significant, although in some cases, merely amounted to pushing the Democrats closer to extinction:
- In Washington, the state Senate went from 31-18 Democrat to 24-22 Democrat, with 3 seats undecided
- In Oregon, the House went from 36-24 Democrat to 30-30, and the Senate went from 18-12 Democrat to 15-13 with 2 undecided. Imagine a state legislature not merely split, but with both houses evenly divided.
- David Sirota, phone home. Montana went from 50-50 to 68-32 Republican, although the State Senate saw only modest gains, from 27-23 Republican to 28-22.
- In Arizona, the State House went from 35-25 to 40-20 and the State Senate from 18-11 to 21-9
- In Colorado, as we know, the Republicans recaptured the State House
- In New Mexico, the Republicans cut into the Democrats’ lead, moving it from 45-25 to 37-33, and putting pressure on the Democrat majority to negotiate with the newly-elected Republican governor. The State Senate remains firmly in Democrat hands, 27-15.
- And in Idaho, where Labrador retrieved CD-1 for the Republicans, the State House went from a lopsided 52-18 to an even-more lopsided 57-13; the State Senate stands at 28-7
This is hardly the stuff of Democrat strangleholds, or even strongholds.
And a look at the ballot initiatives gives even more hope.
- In Nevada, a proposal to weaken eminent domain protections went down by better than 2-1
- In Washington, the initiative losses of 2009 were redeemed, as voters rejected a state income tax (34.6% in favor), repealed a series of state sales tax increases (62.4%), and restated existing law (suspended by the state legislature) requiring 2/3 legislative majorities or voter approval for tax increases
- Both Utah and Arizona passed laws requiring secret ballots for union elections
- Arizona passed a law similar to one that it had narrowly rejected two years ago, and similar to our own Amendment 63 (55-45)
- Arizona also eliminated affirmative action in public hiring or contracting (60-40)
California, as always, with its 46% Democrat registration, remains problematic. But unless you expect it to become a net exporter of political ideas, along with jobs and population, the biggest threat from California isn’t contamination so much as default.
The Role of Parties (Tea and Not) and Chairmen
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, National Politics, PPC on November 8th, 2010
So, I’ve finished winding down the campaign, collecting all the signs I could still find, sending out thank-yous to volunteers and contributors, and wrapping up the accounting. Time for a few thoughts on where were are and where we go.
First, on a national level, it’s heartening to see the Tea Party caucus standing firm on substantive issues so far. I think everyone is realistic about what a Republican House, in the absence of the Senate or the Presidency, can actually accomplish. It can block, and it can force the Senate Democrats to take deeply unpopular votes, in effect making them take legislative bullets for the White House. Or not. A series of simple, punchy, one-subject bills should do the trick. They can also defund Obamacare, investigate the White House’s abuses of power in the Black Panther case and Gerald Walpin’s firing. People don’t really expect them to do much more than that, and it appears that both the Tea Parties and the electorate at large are mature enough to understand this.
If the establishment Republicans (I’m lookin’ at you, Lindsay Graham) persist in defending a business-as-usual approach, this thing has the potential to turn into the French Revolution. If we follow Michael Barone’s comparison of the Tea Parties to the New Left of the late 1960s, with the entry of a large number of activists into one party’s politics, increasingly lofty heads will roll, handing governance over to the opposition for a long, long time. If, as it seems can happen in Colorado, the Red Queen-type voices are marginalized while the Tea Party learns to play the general election game a little better, there’s considerable hope. Look for the ProgressNow-types to try to find the wedge issues to undermine that comity.
Which brings us to a discussion of new Republican Party leadership. For the purposes of discussion, let’s assume that Dick Wadhams decides to move on. I’m not going to use this spot to defend or attack Dick. His performance was what it was, and I’d rather focus on the role of the party in modern electoral politics, and more specifically the role that party chairmen – at all levels – play.
It used to be that the Party Chairman was the biggest of bosses, the guy in the smoke-filled room with the biggest cigar. Not anymore. Not since the campaign finance changes essentially knee-capped the parties, creating the era of the 527 and the candidate. The party simply cannot brand itself any more through spending, it can only do so through the candidates that it chooses as its standard-bearers. What made “Democrat” cool in 2008 wasn’t any spending by the party, or even by the 527s, but Obama.
It’s also true that, in Denver at least, we have probably maxed out what we can get through sheer hard work. We’ll still have to work as hard, but we’ll have to start thinking strategically about how to engage more people, expand our base, and our influence.
Candidates aside, the party needs chairmen who understand that aside from the organizing of the regular party activities – districts, Lincoln Day Dinners, candidate recruiting and vetting, and so on – their role is to help coordinate friendly groups, and help reach out to unaffiliated voters who can be on our side. We need to do this strategically, not merely jumping off on whatever seems like a good idea. While the term “social networking” is just a little over-used, I believe that the Left has been using that far more effectively to identify, mobilize, and treat friendly unaffiliated voters as a normal part of the process. We can do that, too.
Ultimately, the goal of these groups is to see certain policies implemented, and in order to do that, we’ll need to elect Republicans, or at least, defeat Democrats. (I’m not going to engage in speculation about the ultimate demise of the Republican party. Take that to another post.) That means that the Republican party will continue to play a central role in partisan politics. And it means that the party chairman’s role, while infinitely more complex in balancing groups and getting them to play well together, is no less central to the success of the ideals we all care about.
Surprise Poll in CD-1
Posted by Joshua Sharf in CD-1, Colorado Politics on October 21st, 2010
A new poll has come to light, showing Republican Mike Fallon trailing longtime paperweight Representative Diana DeGette by only 10 points, with DeGette unable to break 50%. The telephone poll of 700 likely voters has DeGette at 44%, Fallon at 34%, and the undecideds at 22.5%. The poll was conducted by ccAdvertising, one of the larger national Republican polling firms, and has a margin of error of 3%.
A couple of things to note. First, as mentioned above, DeGette is under 50% in a district she’s held for, well, forever. The pollsters did adjust for expected voter turnout, using a fairly complex model. I have no idea how their track record for accuracy compares to, say, Rasmussen.
I also note that the sample appears to over-weight Republicans considerably, with the D-R-U breakdown coming in at 40-31-28. The actual voter registration in Denver is about 50-20-30. That said, the party breakdown is a result of voter self-identification. The pollsters apparently called in the prevailing proportions, but about 10 percentage points’ worth of Democrats refused to identify themselves as Dems, calling themselves Republicans or unaffiliated instead. How to treat party identification is an unresolved problem in poll methodology, but in this case, the pollsters are also trying to account for expected turnout, and probably used self-identification as a response rather than a demographic.
Again, assuming the pollsters called representative proportions of likely voters, 48% of those responding favor repealing Obamacare, while 52% oppose. This is more favorably disposed to Obamacare than the national average, but indicates a high level of dissatisfaction with the law even in a heavily Democrat area like Denver, and is no doubt contributing to Fallon’s support. Mike’s an ER doctor, and has made actual health care reform a keystone of his campaign.
Does this mean that the race is winnable? That last 10 points is going to be awfully hard to make up, but the pollsters look at that 22% undecided as a gold mine of potential votes. After 18 years, DeGette’s a known quantity, and she probably can’t say much about herself that will move the needle in her direction. More Republicans are undecided than Dems, indicating, perhaps, that they still haven’t heard much about Mike. And over 45% of Unaffiliated voters are undecided. Of those unaffiliated voters, though, many are probably Dems no longer willing to call themselves Dems to pollsters, who are still probably inclined to vote Democrat. ccAdvertising thinks that the undecideds could well break 9-1 for Mike. While I think that’s an extraordinarily optimistic projection, in reality, they’d only have to break a little better than 5-2 for him to actually win the seat, assuming that the partisan breakdown is correct.
All in all, this has got to be good news for Fallon; I just wish it had come a month ago.
UPDATE: Welcome NRO readers! When you’re done, feel free to go over to my own campaign website, at SharfColorado.
Public Pensions, Public Purse
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Budget, Colorado Politics, HD-6 2010, PERA on October 21st, 2010
On the campaign trail, I’ve spoken to any number of public employees and retirees who are worried about PERA, understand the problems, and who recognize the system needs to be changed. Some retirees are even willing to take cuts themselves, although I think asking them to do so would be a breach of faith. Employees and even reitrees are clearly more flexible on this issue than their unions are. To his credit, Mayor Hickenlooper has proposed changes to Denver’s pensions to try to make it more solvent:
For future employees only, the proposal would increase the minimum retirement age from 55 to 60, further decrease the pensions of those who retire early and increase the time required for vesting from five years to seven years….
This year, city workers had to contribute an extra 2 percent of their paychecks to offset losses in the pension fund’s investments…The most recent analysis shows the pension plan ended December 2009 with 88.4 percent of its obligations funded, better than many other public pension plans, including the one for state workers.
Now, an 88.4% funded status is excellent, especially given the status of other public pensions. It speaks well of the conservative management of plan assets, although it’s worth noting that Denver may be using the expected return as the discount rate, rather than the level of obligation, which would overstate the plan’s funded status. (Full disclosure: I’m friends with Steve Hutt, who attends my synagogue, and haven’t had a chance to ask him what discount rate the plan uses.)
Nevertheless, defined benefit plans will almost always encounter, over their lifetimes, a rough patch rough enough to make them insolvent without greater contributions. The Mayor’s efforts are better than doing nothing, but will face opposition in the City Council from unions, and don’t address the fundamental problem of making promises the city can’t keep.
This is important, because dealing with PERA will be an important job of the next governor and legislature. According to Business Insider, Colorado’s pension fund is only 12 years away from actual insolvency, 8th-worst in the country. Unless we deal with this, by getting obligations to current and imminent retirees fully funded, and then converting to a defined contribution plan for new and younger state employees, we will end up bankrupting the state. Pension obligations – backed by unions whose greed is not representative of their members – will eat us alive, leaving almost nothing for actual services and functions.
I’m not sure that John Hickenlooper is willing to make that decision, but I am certain that the current legislative majority isn’t. We need to elect one that is.
Support Amendment 63
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, HD-6 2010, Health Care on October 15th, 2010
Contrary to the headline in this week’s Intermountain Jewish News, I support Amendment 63. Here’s the full text of the letter to the editor, which Hillel Goldberg was kind enough to print:
Last week, the Jewish Community Relations Council voted note to take a position on Amendment 63. While that was the correct decision, as voters, we should strongly support Amendment 63, the Right to Health Care Choice initiative.
Amendment 63 does two things: it keeps the state of Colorado from enforcing any state or federal health insurance mandate, and it ensures that Coloradans will always be able to spend their own money on their own health care, unless they voluntarily enter a program that prevents it. These are protections of fundamental rights that we have as human beings.
Member organizations indicated that they knew of beneficiaries of their services who might not be able to obtain insurance, or had undergone serious financial hardship from medical expense. Their conclusion is that the best solution to this problem is Obamacare.
In fact, the law’s benefits will prove illusory. Both organizations explicitly said that the benefits depend on the mandate. Implicit is that Obamacare isn’t insurance, it’s a direct transfer of wealth.
We can easily point to those who benefit; it’s much harder to point to those individuals who will bear the cost – young workers and families who are just starting out, but who will be forced to pay for benefits that they will not receive. It’s a shame they have no advocate on the Council.
Instead of forcing young workers and families to transfer what should be their house, education, or retirement savings to the government, we should make their insurance more affordable by removing unused, expensive mandates that price them out of the market in the first place.
It has been claimed that Obamacare will save $1 trillion. This double-counts $500 billion taken from Medicare, re-spending it, and classifying it as savings. It includes 6 years of benefits for 10 years of revenue, and assumes Congress will cease an annual Medicare adjustment – the “doc fix” – that everyone expects will continue unabated. After 10 years, it will add to our already gargantuan $100 trillion of unfunded liabilities. No one reading (or writing) this piece truly comprehends that number. But we’ll have to pay it.
Instead of strengthening our system, the law’s deleterious effects are already being felt. Insurers are raising rates in anticipation of greater obligations. Insurers are dropping child-only coverage. Low-cost insurance policies for college students are endangered. Employers are shifting costs to those who still have jobs, who will pay with after-tax dollars. It will likely cost small insurance companies and brokers their businesses. The IRS has asked to hire 17,000 new employees to enforce the provisions, a deadweight loss of billions to the economy.
While the effects of the current system on those organization’s members are real, by focusing on those needs as an excuse to oppose Amendment 63, the member organizations assume that the only, or even the best, way to address those needs is the current legislation. Instead, we should encourage innovation and implement incentives for health care consumers to spend their dollars wisely, lowering costs for all.
There is good reason that the JCRC did not take a position. It generally doesn’t take on these sorts of issues, preferring to conserve its voice for issues of distinctive importance to the Jewish community. Supporting Obamacare would have placed the JCRC at odds with the 60% of Americans who want the thing repealed outright. Instead of building bridges, it’s likely to isolate us, dilute our voice, and prevent us from being effective in the future.
Earlier this year, voters in Missouri approved a similar measure by a whopping 71% – 29%. Voters in Arizona and Oklahome will likely also approve similar measures in a few weeks. Democrats in 5 other state legislatures have blocked measures from their states’ ballots this fall, but count on them to be re-introduced this coming year.
Coloradans should seize the chance to protect our own health care choices, and continue the efforts to find sensible fixes to our troubled health care system.
Representing Our District
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, HD-6 2010 on October 13th, 2010
One of the frustrations in any local campaign is the limited opportunity to appear on the same stage as your opponent. Such appearances help to draw clear contrasts between the candidates, and if conducted well, and great opportunities for the voters to understand the choices in front of them.
We had one of those rare chances yesterday at Windsor Gardens Political Day. I’ll post the video of the whole thing later today, but what struck me most was my opponent’s claim that she votes how her constituents would vote on a given issue. In fact, her priorities seem to be far more arcane and abstruse than the concerns I’ve heard people talking about, and had she held more than three town hall meetings in the last two years, Rep. Court might have known that. When I knock on people’s doors, we talk about the budget, the economy, jobs, and education. Rep. Court’s priorities are public financing of campaigns.
It’s also telling that she touted not her infrequent town halls, but her equally infrequent Civics for Citizens lectures. While a more educated electorate is in everyone’s interest, a town hall implies listening, whereas in a lecture, the communication is from the lectern to the audience. Nobody of any political persuasion wants a representative who decides how to vote by putting a finger up to the wind, but still less do they want who who tries to divine what they would do on important issues without the benefit of meeting with them.
It’s one of the reasons I’ve spent so much time knocking on doors this election year, and the reason that I’ll continue to do so even after I’m elected. And it’s the main reason that I’ve committed to bi-weekly town halls during the legislative session. It’s something that many of Lois’s colleagues do, and it’s really the least that we owe the voters who elected us.
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