Pete Ashdown

All of the county Democratic conventions are on my calendar now. I am going to try and attend as many as possible. In spite of having a possible airplane ride to St. George, I think there is a distinct possibility that there isn’t enough time to do both Weber County and Washington County conventions, which start 30 minutes apart from each other. In this case, I am asking for any volunteers in Washington, Iron, and Grand counties to represent my campaign to their conventions. Please email my staff to let them know if you would be willing.

I could also use some driving help to get to some of these conventions. Also email staff if you are able. You only need a current license, I will provide the transportation and gas.

Please attend your county convention! I look forward to seeing you there!

I prepared this short video with the intention of having it played at caucus meetings throughout the state of Utah. Since I will be attending my precinct caucus meeting tonight at 7:00PM, I need to have others share information about my campaign for U.S. Senate at their caucus meetings. In this short video, I briefly outline the primary points of my campaign for U.S. Senate 2012. Please let me know if you can help me spread my message by showing this video at your caucus meeting or if you know of others who are able to.

You can either stream the video from Youtube, or download it in advance for a laptop, tablet, or smart phone. Please do the latter if you are unsure of Internet access at your caucus location. It is possible that older versions of Windows will not be able to playback this video. In this case, I recommend downloading VLC and using that for playback.

Also, if you are in Salt Lake City today, please drop by the campaign office at 780 E. South Temple between the hours of 2pm and 6pm and pick up some stickers, signs, and buttons to take to your meeting. Thank you for your participation in the democratic process.

If you do not know your caucus location for your precinct, you can find it via the state’s website here.

During my 2006 U.S. Senate campaign, I rigged a small wireless camera to an embedded PC to take pictures out the window of my car and motorhome while travelling throughout Utah. Although the system didn’t always work, and sometimes the sun melted the glue on the velcro holding the camera to the dash, and sometimes it went out of focus, the result is an interesting stream of travel and stops throughout a statewide political race. You’ll catch glimpses of of the 25+ parades we did, beautiful scenery throughout the state, and a short breakdown outside Green River where I had to climb underneath and fix the motorhome.

One of the impressions a first time candidate is given is that PAC (Political Action Committee) financing is an essential part of their campaign. In 2006, after two trips to Washington, numerous letters to “Leadership PACs” and endless meetings, the grand total of PAC contributions made up less than 4% of the overall money raised. The first thing I decided after the campaign ended in 2006 was to not seek PAC money again.

One of the regrets I have in the last campaign is being suckered by other elected Democrats into their email-address-sucking contests where supporters of each candidate were encouraged to “vote” for their favorite candidate. These contests never yielded any results for the campaign, and they only got the people who cared about my election stuck on mailing lists they didn’t ask to be subscribed to.

Yet the PAC system is what incumbents thrive on. The percentages reverse for people who are already elected, where PAC money is the dominant form of financing for those who carry the water. Which is why I’m done with it. Although I’m sure there are legitimate PACs pushing valid interests, I think the system as a whole is wrong. It continues to perpetuate our cash infested broken democracy.

I support public financing. I believe it will take a constitutional amendment to implement public financing on a federal level. Until that is done, the playing field between incumbent and challenger will always be in favor of the former, and money will continue to imbalance governmental interest away from the majority of Americans. Russell Simmons presented one such proposal recently. I find it ironic that he is doing it, while the author of the amendment remains anonymous, but I think the initial text is good. It is time we pushed this forward.

Of course, until that amendment is passed, challengers still face an enormous uphill battle. I can use your help in that fight.

At the end of my last campaign in 2006, I believed that in spite of my failure to win election, another victory was had. By making the operations of my campaign transparent, by demonstrating accountability by publishing the details of my days, and by including anyone who wished to help craft policy, I had demonstrated a new way of campaigning. A way to utilize advanced communications to enrich and enlighten the democratic process. Yet although these efforts were praised, to this day, I believe they have not been duplicated.

Other campaigns have utilized the Internet for organizing and fundraising, but I am disappointed to see the opportunity for opening campaign operations along with accountability and transparency being lost. Although strides and promises have been made by candidates running for office, who subsequently won office, the doors on our elected officials, the people who are working for us, inevitably swing shut against the public.

Behind those doors are where decisions about our country are made, and without a window into the process, you are shut out. The balance of influence is tilted, weighted, and pointed to those who have the cash to buy it. The remainder of us are left to email, phone, and petition in the hope that somehow our voice will be heard by those whose primary concern from the day they take office is their own reelection.

Since 2006, I have yearned for a candidate who could embrace and understand the potential of communication and the Internet. I have hoped for someone who sought to balance the influence of the people, all of the people, in Washington. I have wished for an individual who cared less about being relected and self preservation, than they did about moving our country forward. I do not believe everyone in Washington is self-serving and corrupt, but I have difficulty finding anyone deserving of my respect.

So it comes to this – If you are unable to respect the existing system, do you have the self respect to change the system? Running for office once is hard, I know that from experience. Today I am telling you that running for office again is even harder. I am fulfilled in my professional life. I do not need this campaign, nor do I lust for public office. Yet, life begins at the end of your comfort zone, and I still believe I can make a difference.

I must be honest though. If I thought I stood a chance of overhauling the tax code as a junior senator, I would tell you so, however, I have little to none. This campaign will confront many of the issues head-on, but primarily it is about influence. It is about what happens to someone after they win office. It is about your voice and whether it is heard. I do not pretend to channel the founding fathers, but when it comes the influence of money and government, I believe they would be ashamed. This government can not be changed by running campaigns in the same way. As in 2006, I intend to innovate rather than follow the recipe. I want to break the mold of campaign consultants and cash. I admittedly made mistakes in 2006, and I will not repeat them. I will not seek PAC funds, nor will I ever again. I will not setup a SuperPAC to funnel outrageous amounts of donor money into whatever I wish behind public inspection. I will not go begging to the those in Washington who continue to perpetrate this broken democracy.

This means of course one thing. I depend on you. I can only do this upon your shoulders. I need your help. If the people are to peacefully strike a blow to the powerful, then it needs to be done one step at a time and multiplied. With you, it is possible for this campaign to win. This is why I am proud to announce my candidacy for U.S. Senate, representing the great state of Utah.

The New York Times has a nifty web calculator for experimenting with proposed tactics for reducing the federal budget deficit. Although simplistic, it is an interesting exercise that counters the idea that the budget deficit can’t be fixed without privatizing social security or eliminating the Department of Energy and/or Education. I’d like to see a larger interactive budget calculator that allows you to tweak all aspects of federal taxation and expenses. It might reveal some interesting results. Here is what I came up with.

Representative Carl Wimmer courageously speaks out on why Democrats need an open primary.

The Mike Lee campaign called me this afternoon to apologize for asking me to shut off my video recording. Apparently they have been visited more than once by someone with a video camera who is there only to disrupt the campaign, and both the staffer and the campaign communications director had no idea that this individual was not me, so they assumed the worst. The campaign promised to give me some time, on camera, with Mr. Lee if I come to a future event.

I appreciate their apology and I will try to take up their offer at another time.

Seeing Mike Lee was going to do a “Meet & Greet” in Salt Lake City today, I went to see for myself what this Republican candidate for U.S. Senate was all about. I asked him several questions and got answers that I agreed and disagreed with. I would tell you more about our discussion of his endorsers, the 4th & 14th amendments, his desire for term limits but his repeated votes for Hatch and Bennett, and why our government is a “tyranny” in spite of the supremacy clause of the Constitution, but unfortunately his campaign wouldn’t allow me to record anything.

It’s the 21st century boys. Get used to being on camera. Trying to block people from recording what your candidate says doesn’t bode well for being transparent and accountable in Washington.

Publius, Junius, American Farmer, Common Sense, Silence Dogood, Caesar, Senex, Phocion, Historicus, The Sons of Liberty

If these names had been connected to individuals, the American Revolution may have never happened. If these names had not written letters, handbills, columns and essays under pseudonyms, the public may not have come together against the tyranny of the British crown.

John Adams estimated that his cousin Samuel Adams used between 50 and 100 pseudonyms from the beginning of the American Revolution to its end. Samuel Adams himself said there were too many to count. If the pen is mightier than the sword, anonymity is its shield. Transparency is the key to accountability in government and law-enforcement. If that accountability can only come through the anonymity of a whistle-blowing citizen, then so be it. How many dissidents in Iran wish to have their names connected to their Twitter accounts right now? There is no difference between an anonymous blogger and someone handing out paper 245 years ago. The Fourth Amendment was written for this reason.

If I was a gun maker in revolutionary America, a list of my customers would be valuable information for the British. Would that list be included in my “papers and effects”? What makes the same information recorded by computer on a hard drive any different? The founding fathers demanded warrants be issued with very specific instructions because they had been subjected to the tyranny of inspections and seizures without cause or notice. New technologies do not require the reduction of old protections.

The Attorney General’s office has been twisting arms on the senate floor in a full court press to get HB150 through. The way this bill has been rammed through the House and committee meetings is evidence in itself that something is askew. Representatives of the AG’s office have not only discounted that I am the only Internet Service Provider protesting this bill, they have insinuated that I knowingly harbor child pornographers.

The last line of defense from the AG is that HB150 is actually good for Internet Service Providers. That ISPs can easily refuse an administrative subpoena and fight it in court. I’m not sure how going to court to defend my customers’ Fourth Amendment rights is actually easier than law-enforcement following the letter of the Constitution. I can tell you the latter costs me a lot less time and money.

Enlarging law-enforcement powers by writing a bill with “child predators” at the top is an easy task. What legislator in their right mind is going to stand against that? They aren’t going to be praised for upholding our constitutionally protected liberties, they’re going to be eviscerated for being soft on the lowest form of criminal. This is how these administrative subpoenas snuck out of government as an internal tool between departments and into our daily lives as a bypass of U.S. and Utah Constitutions. The justification is made that this type of information request has been upheld in the courts as constitutional. The Fourth Amendment is a single sentence made up of 54 words. In spite of these judicial opinions, I read warrantless requests for any amount of information as otherwise. With the constant cry that activist judges are shredding our constitution, it is up to our legislature to affirm our rights. They have repeatedly done so on the 2nd and 10th Amendments this session. They cannot turn around and punch a hole right through the 4th just because the Attorney General claims it’s easy.

Thank you to The Eagle Forum, The Sutherland Institute, The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board and The Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers for publicly opposing this bill.

If you do one thing today, call or write the Utah Senate.