16 thoughts on “Leading by example”

1. but I think “does not order online” should disqualify you from holding public office.

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   1. Look how those fools in Washington talking about the internets (GW?) and it works on “tubes or something” do.  

      I also wonder how many of the out of the Front Range legislators go get their emissions checked?  If you live out of the emissions zone but work within it, you are supposed to get it done.  (Although there isn’t any penalty if your car fails as far as I can see.)

      It’s a state law, legislators!

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   2. Our legislature is supposed to represent all of us across all of its members. And there is a subset of people in this state who do not order online, nor do much of anything online. It’s important to have that point of view in the legislature so that that demographic is not left out.

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      1. That is so true!

         Out of 100 legislators, at least one should be autistic, 14 should be functionally illiterate, 12 should be heavy consumers of pornography, and three should have spent time in prison. There can be some overlap between the categories.

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         1. I take the over on the remaining categories 🙂

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         2. We can throw straw man arguments back and forth all day. You clearly disagree but I see value in having a legislature that reflects the people of the state. I’m going to disagree with many at times, but that’s what you get with a democracy.

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            1. At least eight of the 100 legislators would have to be straw men, to represent that subset of people in this state.

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2. A statement I heard as a kid has always stuck with me – “criticizing other people for not doing things is easy, doing them yourself is hard.” In the case of following the law, David is now putting a major emphasis on determining whether certain people have followed a law in a way that most people have no earthly idea applies to them. Sounds simple and reasonable – no?

   So I wrote David a letter asking if he has followed every federal state and local law in the past three years. Letter follows:

   Hi;
   
   With your recent diary, you have put a major emphasis on seeing whether certain individuals have followed laws that many people are unaware of and that no government agency has spent significant resources attempting to educate consumers in regards to.

   As you are well aware, the requirement to follows laws, whether you know about them and understand them or not has been in place for years (decades?). All that’s new is the focus on calling people out about it after the fact. But we all should have been following these laws even before this new effort.

   In the spirit of showing leadership by example, I request that you tell me whether you have complied with all laws, federal, state and local, for 2007, 2008, & 2009 whether you were aware of the legal requirements of the law at the time or not. And if you have not followed the laws – why.

   As a prominent blogger who interviews significant leaders and demands compliance with laws from others, I think leading by example on this issue is very important. Because if you cannot be bothered to follow laws you may or may not know about in every instance whether asked by anyone to or not, then why should you expect it of anyone else?

   Thanks

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   1. I speed. And I am delinquent on getting my use taxes paid (but will have that paid in the next 2 – 3 weeks).

      But you are throwing up a straw man argument. One of the laws just passed was to make Internet stores report sales because people are not paying the use tax. So the law passed is to address the specific question I am asking.

      A bit sensitive about this are we?

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      1. Although if the language I used above sounds like a straw man or sounds particularly sensitive, I admit to having plagiarized most of it.

         Of course its fair to ask public officials to follow the laws they write.  If you simply wanted a pledge that now that this practice has been called to people’s attention that they be sure to file their taxes from now on, that seems right on.

         But the tone above insinuates that choosing to focus more on compliance with a law not many people know about is some grand act of hypocrisy unless the public officials knew better than anyone else about the law the whole time.  It’s great to hold public officials to the same standard as the rest of us, and in many ways we hold them to a higher standard.  But they’re still human.  They still don’t know about many things that 98% of the rest of us don’t know about either.  And the mocking tone above and the related “gotcha” attempt is something a little less than encouraging great leadership.

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         1. But I do find it surprising that when this became a hot bill, that they didn’t right then get caught up.

            I also took this tack because many of the supporters discussed this as people should have been filing and we needed the bill because people were not doing the right thing.

            But point taken. I will be more understanding on the point that most people didn’t even know of this requirement, including our legislators. I do plan to write more on this, including an article for HuffPo.

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            1. because its definitely easier to criticize someone anonymously on the internet than… well.. just about anything.

               Anyway, I know more about this now from your diary alone than I ever did before, so thanks in any event.

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               1. So thanks back at ya.

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3. Is this a tax that should have been collected upon purchase or what am I missing?

   Sorry if you’ve gone over this and I missed it. Thanks.  

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   1. It’s got a lot of people confused, including some legislators.

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