Happy July 4th weekend. There will be activities up and down the state and great weather to enjoy them. Amid the fun, we should all take a moment to reflect on our political heritage and the sacrifices made by so many over many generations so we can enjoy the freedom and blessings we have today. See Independence Day thoughts below. Utah Policy Daily will be back on Tuesday.
Urquhart Exploring Senate Bid
Very interesting things are happening in the U.S. Senate race. Republican State Rep. Steve Urquhart had lunch Thursday with Democratic Senate candidate Pete Ashdown. It was one of those lunches where two potential political opponents meet to get to know and size up one another.
The reality is that Urquhart is very seriously considering the prospect of challenging Sen. Orrin Hatch for the GOP Senate nomination. If Urquhart pulls the trigger, this would be the most serious intra-party challenge of a big-time incumbent in many years. A number of top-level Republicans have been challenged within the party, but it has generally been by far-right, non-mainstream candidates.
Urquhart is plenty conservative, but he’s also mainstream, smart, hard-working and gutsy. If he goes for it, he’s going to be tougher than a lot of people realize. While the conventional wisdom is that Hatch is unbeatable, Urquhart could give him a race.
Correction
Several of you pointed out my mistake in listing Randy Julander as part of a political power couple instead of Rod Julander. I knew it was Rod, but with my old and feeble brain deteriorating by the second, I somehow wrote Randy. My apologies to Rod and Paula Julander, and also to Randy Julander, the water guy.
UPD Reader Joe Demma, who is senior advisor to Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, suggested Gordon and Carlene Walker as another political power couple. He is director of Community Development and was Carlene's campaign manager. She is a state senator. Joe, only half-joking, also suggested that, “the most powerful woman in Utah politics has GOT to be Interior Secretary Gale Norton. She controls 70% of all of our land.”
Other readers suggested Rep. Becky Lockhart, chair of the House Rules Committee, and Sen. Patrice Arent as powerful women in Utah politics.
On-Line Town Meeting
Residents of Cedar Hills in Utah County had a robust debate over beer sales and a Sunday closing ordinance. While the debate was conducted in meetings, over back fences, on talk radio, and in rallies and speeches, it was also (and still is) occurring on-line.
UPD reader Joel Wright sent along this report about the Cedar Hills Forum, which he called “an amazing way to conduct a town meeting”:
“Cedar Hills City Council Member Jim Perry created the Cedar Hills Forum in March 2004, which allows any one to post any topic related to Cedar Hills, and then allows anyone to respond.
“Council Members Perry and Lowder frequently post and respond, as well as current Mayor McGee and former Mayor Sears. I think it is a fabulous way for our city leaders to get and give feedback. There are already 180 members, with new ones joining every day. To say the least, it really creates a sense of community in Cedar Hills.
“While the debate can get heated at times, it almost always remains civil. It’s a fantastic community resource. Furthermore, it’s a lot of fun. You can post a picture of yourself, or choose a picture from Star Wars Characters or a host of other characters, and you get labeled as ‘vocal’ once you make 20 postings, and ‘outspoken’ once you have 50 postings. It’s just a lot of fun.
“The main page is here, and the page with all the discussion on the Initiatives is here.
“I would love to see the Forum get more attention in the media – I think it would be a great example for city officials throughout Utah. Furthermore, our State Legislators all ought to have something similar.”
Municipal Broadband Battle
Interesting article by National Journal on the on-going fight by the big phone and cable companies to prevent municipalities from offering broadband services and infrastructure. We’ve been through that fight in Utah with Qwest and Comcast trying to destroy UTOPIA and iProvo. Now the battle is moving to the federal level.
Washington Watch
Bringin’ Home the Bacon
The Senate passed the Fiscal Year 2006 Interior Appropriations bill late Wednesday night, and with it numerous Utah land and water projects pushed by Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett. Here is a Bennett press release listing the Interior and environmental projects totaling $23 million that he sought, and a similar Hatch press release. The Interior bill will now go before a Senate-House conference committee for final negotiations.
Extra $ for Rural Schools
When teachers and students in Utah’s rural areas return to school this fall, they will be greeted with nearly $700,000 in federal assistance available for literacy programs that Sen. Bob Bennett secured in the U.S. Department of Education budget, says a Bennett press release.
Independence Day
Thoughts of the Founders
(Source: The Federalist Patriot)
"I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not." --John Adams (1776)
"The Sun never shined on a cause of greater worth." --Thomas Paine (1776)
"Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!" --George Washington (1779)
"[T]he flames kindled on the 4 of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them. ... The Declaration of Independence...[is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson (1821)
What July Fourth Means to Me
By Ronald Reagan (1981)
For one who was born and grew up in the small towns of the Midwest, there is a special kind of nostalgia about the Fourth of July. Somewhere in our [youth], we began to be aware of the meaning of [important national] days and with that awareness came the birth of patriotism. July Fourth is the birthday of our nation. I believed as a boy, and believe even more today, that it is the birthday of the greatest nation on earth.
The day of our nation's birth in that little hall in Philadelphia, [was] a day on which debate had raged for hours. The men gathered there were honorable men hard-pressed by a king who had flouted the very laws they were willing to obey. Even so, to sign the Declaration of Independence was such an irretrievable act that the walls resounded with the words "treason, the gallows, the headsman's axe," and the issue remained in doubt.
[On that day] 56 men, a little band so unique we have never seen their like since, had pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Some gave their lives in the war that followed, most gave their fortunes, and all preserved their sacred honor.
What manner of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, eleven were merchants and tradesmen, and nine were farmers. They were soft-spoken men of means and education; they were not an unwashed rabble. They had achieved security but valued freedom more. Their stories have not been told nearly enough.
John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. For more than a year he lived in the forest and in caves before he returned to find his wife dead, his children vanished, his property destroyed. He died of exhaustion and a broken heart.
Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships, sold his home to pay his debts, and died in rags. And so it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston and Middleton. Nelson personally urged Washington to fire on his home and destroy it when it became the headquarters for General Cornwallis. Nelson died bankrupt.
But they sired a nation that grew from sea to shining sea. Five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep, three million square miles of forest, field, mountain and desert, 227 million people with a pedigree that includes the bloodlines of all the world. In recent years, however, I've come to think of that day as more than just the birthday of a nation.
It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution in all history.
Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government.
Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people.
We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.
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