Zagaja.com

I was recently lucky enough to get a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard for my iPad for my birthday. Getting an iPad keyboard was something I had been considering for a while and the Logitech model (along with ZAGG) seemed to have the most favorable buzz. After using the keyboard for a couple weeks I think it is a great addition to my gadget arsenal, but there are a few drawbacks.

Last night the state legislature, in a bipartisan vote, passed the gun control legislation it drafted in response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook. Some, felt that this was a process that took too long, and in some ways the outcome falls short of our expectations. However, we should not be disheartened. The legislation is a positive step forward, and Speaker Sharkey was right to build a bipartisan bill.

Below is the text of my remarks that I delivered in front of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Government Administration & Elections Committee hearing today.

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I thank you for taking the time to listen to me this morning. My name is Matt Zagaja and I am an attorney and professional political operative. As someone who has worked on campaigns I have seen first-hand the impact money has on elections. That is why I am here today to share three reasons I support House Joint Resolution 3:

Corporate Involvement in Elections Erodes Trust in Government

According to a poll conducted on behalf of Prof. Larry Lessig 75% of Americans believe money buys results in Congress.¹ That belief erodes trust, which erodes participation. In 2010 Rock the Vote conducted a poll of young people who were not planning to vote in the upcoming election and found that 62% of them were not planning to vote because no matter who wins, corporate interests will still have too much power and prevent real change.²

However I do not need polls and data to know this is true. I see it every day. I do not make my participation in politics secret, but I still hear from family and friends that they do not believe things will change regardless of who is in power. When I knock doors for candidates or talk to friends, even some from law school, I still hear a gospel of cynicism that suggests people have lost faith in their leaders.

We Should Incentivize Innovation over Policy Manipulation

At my last job I had the privilege of helping entrepreneurs formulate strategies for their businesses here in Connecticut. When I did this I learned start-ups do not make their money by convincing the government to give them tax breaks; they make their money by innovating. Whether it is a smartphone or personalized genomic medicine, profitable companies make our lives better by engineering new technologies and solutions.

Yet a recent study shows that the return on investment for lobbying can be as much as 22,000%.³ That is a lot of money being made without providing any new value. This kind of return distorts the market and causes companies to waste capital on policy manipulation instead of innovation. Nowhere is this more evident than in healthcare. Last year Aetna inadvertently disclosed more than $7 million in donations to political groups that opposed the Affordable Care Act.⁴</a> This lead the New York State comptroller to file a shareholder resolution demanding greater disclosure and oversight of Aetna’s political spending.⁵</a> I think that the message is clear: shareholders would prefer Aetna make money by finding ways to more efficiently deliver healthcare rather than by spending money to change the laws.

Corporations Have a Disproportionate Impact on Elections and Policy

As you can see I am a fan of free markets and free speech. I believe that everyone should have a voice in the market of ideas, but loud megaphones can cause us to all go deaf.

As someone who has worked on campaigns I understand the importance and pressure of raising funds. I also understand the fear of outside interest groups that might bombard a candidate with attack ads. This fear leads candidates to need to build large war chests for protection. For better or worse the amount of money in these war chests is influenced by the relationships the politicians have with interest groups and this impacts policy.⁶

While overturning Citizens United will not put an end to policy advocacy by corporations, it will curb some of the excesses. Hopefully it will clear up bandwidth and give people without millions of dollars an opportunity to have their voices listened to. Maybe it will allow our public servants to sleep better and live bolder. Thank you.

It is surprising to me how much the debate over working at home versus an office has blown up in recent days. For years different companies and organizations have had varying policies and positions on this issue, but once Yahoo!’s new CEO Marissa Mayer issued an edict ending work at home policies for a small number of employees, there was a strangely large backlash. Business owners, employees, and management theorists all wasted a lot of energy trying to convince people who there was some kind of answer to this. They are wrong. Working from home is something that will work for some companies and employees, but not for others.

Now that I have completed the majority of lessons on Codecademy I decided to head over to another online learning platform, Code School, to learn the Rails framework for the Ruby language. So far I have completed three lesson sets at Code School: Try Ruby, Try Git, and Rails for Zombies. These lessons were good, but in some places it was harder to navigate than Codecademy.

The big difference between Code School and Codecademy is that Codecademy uses only text to walk you through the lessons step by step. The instructions are available for easy reference as you move along. Code School plays a video before you try challenges that demonstrate you have mastered your material. (Though Try Git works in the same manner as Codecademy.) Since one of my weaknesses is a bad short-term memory, I found retaining all the information from the Rails for Zombies video difficult as I moved onto challenges. A friend astutely suggested I take notes during the Rails for Zombie video the way I did for class lectures in law school, and that significantly improved my retention along with giving me a nice reference as I worked on the challenges.

Unlike Codecademy Code School uses a freemium model. This means you can try free lessons and then must pay to continue to the more advanced ones. While I enjoy the fact Codecademy is free, I can accept that Code School has to pay its employees and they kindly give you a $5 certificate towards your subscription when you complete a free course. Since I am impressed with the free lessons overall, I probably will subscribe to it for a month or two.

Overall I am finding these online learning platforms great for wetting my feet in the various programming languages. I have also been refreshing my spanish using DuoLingo. I do not believe that on their own they will replace classroom type learning, in spite of the optimism of people like Tom Friedman about MOOCs and other forms of online learning I think it helps to have peers working on these things with you. It also lacks that feeling of “whoa, I did it” you get after doing a final exam or project. So after I finish learning Rails I will probably try making my own Ruby on Rails project as a personal capstone.

If you are not a computer person, or are looking to expand your programming knowledge, I recommend these online programs as good starting points. However it will be up to you to take the next steps. You can read and watch all you want, but it is up to you to take action and make these skills real.