Voters Choose Chaffetz

And decidedly so. Read articles about the race in the SL Trib, Deseret News, and Daily Herald. Congratulations to Jason Chaffetz for an impressive campaign, and good luck on the next phase.

I'm curious to learn more about the Democrat challenger, Bennion Spencer. It's funny that in the media there is this assumption that Chaffetz has it won at this point. I wonder with the political climate this year if that will really be true. Okay, it probably will be, but you never know. I know I'll take a serious look at both candidates.

The Herald Backs Cannon

The Daily Herald yesterday published an editorial backing Chris Cannon for the District 3 seat for US Congress. The editorial includes some really good arguments that fall right along my reasons for leaning for Cannon over Chaffetz. I keep hearing that if you talk to Cannon one on one you can't help but be impressed with his grasp of the issues. One of these days I'd love to have that one on one. Maybe then I would be a little more comfortable overall with Cannon.

iProvo Emergency Transition

The Daily Herald reported on Broadweave's emergency transition of MStar phone customers on Friday. There's some discussion on the transition over at freeutopia.org. I'm glad to see that people are recognizing that Broadweave did some good things here. Unfortunately, this quick transition cut short plans to thoroughly test the process, but overall the number of problems have been satisfyingly low.

That said, if you are one of the customers with a problem it doesn't make you feel better to know that most other customers are not having problems. Broadweave is saying that they are committed to fixing the problems as fast as possible. If you were an MStar iProvo customer and you're having phone problems call 691-5800.

Also, let me know how they do in fixing the problem for you. I'm curious.

Parties for the People

I just read this editorial on the SL Trib site. I liked it. Political parties are not an end to themselves. I'm a Republican now, but I don't agree with everything the Republicans in office do and I would have no problems being a Democrat if I decided their platform represented me better.

What's the Deal With Oil Shale?

Oil shale development is suddenly getting national play. See this AP article. Utah's Congressional delegation is all for it. Colorado's is against it. Why is that? You would think that both states stand to benefit economically from shale development.

From the above mentioned article, the CO people are saying there are environmental issues with developing oil shale. I'm willing to dismiss these kinds of concerns when a New York senator raises them about a project in Utah, but when a Colorado senator raises them about a project in Colorado, it's worth looking past the partisanship and seriously considering the concern.

To extract oil from shale you have to mine the rock that holds the oil, put it in a big oven and heat it until the oil comes out. Then you can put the rock back. So I have a vision that large scale oil shale development means huge strip mines across eastern Utah - digging out the rock, bake out the oil, put the rock back.

This does not sound like a low impact project.

Chaffetz Taking Pot Shots

Here is one of the things that concerns me about Jason Chaffetz. In this SLTrib article it talks about how Chaffetz took a public swat at the Governor in the convention, then uses the Governor's positive comments about Chaffetz in campaign literature.

Now, I think I understand why the swat - even at an incredibly popular figure like Gov Huntsman. Chaffetz is trying to position himself as not the establishment. Oh, and stridently conservative. District 3 likes that.

But there's more to being in Congress than campaigning. You have to work with people. You need friends to get things done. It doesn't help to take pot shots at the people you need to work with later. Sure, articulate your policy stance. But don't start public fights when you don't need to. You can say "global warming's a farce" without saying "global warming's a farce, but the Governor still believes in it!"

Oh, and Jason, why is global warming a farce? And how does that affect your policies? I'm looking for "I'm convinced global warming is a farce because X. This means that I don't support Y and do support Z." I looked on your website and didn't see anything on global warming.

Cannon vs. Chaffetz - Who to pick?

I'm having a hard time deciding between Chris Cannon and Jason Chaffetz. I have generally been pretty anti-Cannon. Whenever I go to a meeting with him and listen to him speak to the crowd (I haven't spoken with him individually at all) I'm struck with how partisan he sounds. This last round he talked about how the recent Republican majority in Congress failed to do a good job because there weren't enough true conservative Republicans in office. The way to fix that problem is to vote in more Republicans.

On the other side is Jason Chaffetz, who sounds really good in speeches, but he's an unkown quantity, and can he get things done in Washington?

So I was a delegate at the Republican State Convention, and I was leaning Chaffetz when at the last minute there were two things that pushed me over to Cannon. 1) Chaffetz passed around a leaflet that added his position that we should eliminate the "anchor baby" provision of the constitution. 2) Cannon passed around a leaflet that showed how he does get a lot of things done in the background.

I'll reserve my problems with this "anchor baby" position to another post. But the other thing made me think: "Maybe Cannon is actually pretty effective in Congress, he's just a really poor campaigner." This article from The Daily Herald seems to be saying much the same thing, and I've heard it from a couple of other sources, too.

So I did vote for Cannon at the convention. I'm one of the 5 people that could have ended Cannon's run in Congress, but swung from Chaffetz to Cannon in the last few days. I'm still not sure it was the right call. I'd love to be convinced for sure, but some minor miracle would have to happen in Cannon's campaign for them to suddenly be good at communicating with voters. So far they seem to be happy with barely surviving the convention, then win in the primary on the power of incumbency.

Meanwhile I'm stuck balancing on a fence.

iProvo Broadweave a Done Deal

Provo's city council voted 4-3 in favor of approving the sale of iProvo to Broadweave last night. Steve Turley stated that he thought process was more important than end result and that the process from the creation of iProvo to the sale was done wrong. Cindy Clark and Sherrie Hall Everett both said that they were concerned that the sale was does very quickly and that they hadn't had enough time to fully digest and understand the sale to be able to approve it.

Now the success or failure of the network is on Broadweave's shoulders. It will be interesting to see how this goes.

Tonight's iProvo Vote

Provo's Municipal Council is supposed to consider the purchase of iProvo again tonight. It will be a long meeting, and they're even starting the meeting early.

From what I've seen and heard, there are only two likely things to happen tonight: 1) the council will approve the sale or 2) the council will vote no and require the city to issue an RFP and accept other bids for a period of time. I suppose there's a possibility for a #3 - the council will put off making a decision for one more week.

Personally, I'm sympathetic to some of the arguments George Stewart made against doing the RFP/bid process. It just seems like a gamble. Unless there is currently another credible, well-funded bidder, Provo stands to risk losing employees, customers, and putting Broadweave in a position where it could renegotiate better terms. I'm not saying that will happen, but the risk seems to outweigh the reward in this case.

I realize this is slightly a change from what I've said previously, but I am particularly sympathetic to the idea that key employees could be lost during a period of uncertainty. I have been through a number of mergers and acquisitions in my career, and I have certainly experienced that during those periods of uncertainty the best people start looking around to see if there's something better somewhere else. It tends to be good for the employees, but it' really bad for the companies. This is already a problem for iProvo and Broadweave. A two month pause would make it even worse.

I still want to see a voting member of the board for Provo, but overall I think the council should approve the sale.

• Broadweave has a good chance of success operationally with Veracity on its team.
• Provo will get most to all of its telecom debts paid under this deal. This is better than any other sale of a municipal network that I've read about so far.
  
• If Broadweave fails Provo has both the capital call agreement and the ability to foreclose on the network and any improvements to the network. Failure would be bad for Provo, but it would be manageable.

I guess we'll see what happens tonight.

Getting Less Vocal on Broadweave

I haven't had a whole lot to say on the Broadweave/iProvo situation the past few days. From my position working in software with Veracity I have started diving in to the details of operationally accomplishing the merger of systems and acquisition of new customers. As a result, I'm starting to have inside knowledge of Broadweave that it is not fair for me to comment on.

At this point I'm doing everything I can so that should Broadweave successfully acquire the iProvo network, they will succeed at swallowing that elephant.