Archive for 2015

This past weekend, I had the honor of speaking on a panel titled “Social Media and Blogging for Writers” at Cincinnati’s Books by the Banks festival with Chuck Sambuchino, author of Create Your Writer Platform.

The panel and festival opened up ideas for a number of future topics I hadn’t thought about before such as “How to sell your book at a book festival.” I hope to explore a few of these topics in weeks to come. Today, though, I’d like to talk about some of the great questions that were asked about social media and blogging for writers.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled yesterday that charter school operator White Hat Management can take possession of publicly paid for assets of charter schools and charge the public to buy them back. This case arose when school boards in the Akron and Cleveland area fired White Hat Management, a company […]

We often hear that unions are somehow on a par with corporate special interest groups when it comes to lobbying.

From 2008-2015, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its Institute for Legal Reform spent $792,420,000 (#1 and #3 in the graphic). This is roughly 3x what second place lobbying organization the National Association of Realtors spent.

By comparison during the same time period, the first union to appear on the list at #182, the AFL-CIO, spent $22,300,000. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent roughly 35x the AFL-CIO on lobbying over this eight year period.

We didn’t know what to expect when we drove down to Ashland, KY for the Kim Davis hearing. We figured the religious right would be there with their megaphones and hate signs. And they were. As were the media.

The pleasant surprise, however, was the number of equality supporters.

Thought you might enjoy a few pics over Friday morning coffee.

What does your kid’s sex education look like?

Choosing the Best is a company that claims to be the leader in abstinence-only sex education. Choosing the Best is based out of Atlanta, Georgia and run by Bruce and Donna Cook. CTB materials are used in 15 states and are part of the $1.5 billion in spending on abstinence training over the past 25 years.

Choosing the Best WAY is the curriculum designed for 6th graders to:

give students age-appropriate insight into what’s happening to their changing bodies and emotions, explores their new interest in the opposite sex, and teaches abstinence as the best WAY

I was introduced to Choosing the Best WAY through a presentation by Jim Helton about its use in the school his kids attend in Northern Kentucky.

Most of the CTB curriculum is based on fear and shame and, according to studies, doesn’t increase rates of sexual abstinence, the entire purpose of the program.

Here’s what this program looks like from the Choosing the Best WAY Student Manual.

Conventional wisdom has it that Donald Trump will eventually go away and a more moderate candidate will step up to consolidate the Republican party.

While this may be true and was certainly the playbook in 2008 and 2012 with McCain and Romney, I think the Donald has the potential to stick around.

He really knows how to attack the establishment candidates from the right, he’s more media savvy than the other Tea Party candidates, and he doesn’t have to play by the rules.

There’s also a few things we could learn from him. No, seriously.

He’s a populist

Corporate special interest groups blanket the airwaves with a conceptual model of our economy as a machine that should be left alone and not tampered with. This model, or frame, encourages inaction and the view that government somehow “tampers” with the machine when it acts in any way, shape or form.

This is, of course, ridiculous. We’ve always created rules for economies. Without them, we’d have black markets, a slave trade, child labor, company stores, and endless exploitation.

How do we know this? History. These things happened until we fought against them and made markets better. They will happen again if we don’t fight.

Yet many people who buy into this model of the economy as a machine are convinced that all we need to do is leave the machine alone and it will work better. Over and over the media repeats this to the point where many recite it as common sense.

The best way to address the faulty model people are being taught in the media is to illustrate a better model. I’d like to see a commercial that says “here’s the problem, money in politics, and this is how things should work.” Without further ado, here’s commercial #02: Democracy.

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Ask most people in America how our country really works and it doesn’t take too long to get to the following picture.

Government works for certain large, multinational corporate special interests and we, the people, are at the bottom.

Large multinationals pour billions into organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and these groups, in turn, help elect “friendly” politicians and pass legislation that benefits those at the top.

The problem is, quite simply, money in politics.

How do we fix this? Smaller government?

Many of you here are familiar with the tragedy of Leelah Alcorn, the transgender teen who committed suicide in Cincinnati this winter by throwing herself in front of an oncoming tractor trailer. Because I live in Cincinnati, I was the first person to write about it here at Daily Kos. […]

In breaking news, CNN crack national security analysts took snapshots of this terrorist flag at the London pride parade today.

Lucy Pawle, CNN London correspondent, had this to say:

This man dressed in black and white was waving what appears to be a very bad mimicry but a clear attempt to mimic the ISIS flag, the black and white flag with the distinctive lettering. If you look at the flag closely, it’s clearly not Arabic, in fact it looks like it could be gobbledygook.

Pawle goes on to say: “I seem to be the only person who has spotted this.”

Corporate special interest groups have hit upon a very powerful framing of the economy and government that involves something they call “redistribution”.

It has been played over and over in the media more than any annoying pop ballad I can remember. So much so in fact that I bet you could describe the framing w/o me saying a word.

It looks like this:

You earn your money. It is yours. Then the government takes it away in the form of taxes (often referred to as theft) and gives it to someone who hasn’t earned it (redistribution).

When people you know say “socialism,” it is this process of taking from the “deserving” to give to the “undeserving” they are talking about.

I state this argument as strongly as possible here because this is what we’re up against. Professional, audience-tested propaganda.

If we, when you are talking to people, fall into arguing the side that wants to “redistribute,” you will be seen as someone who wants to use government to take away and give to the “lazy” or “undeserving”.

There is an easy way to flip this framing and talk about the actual situation with people you never thought you could reach.

All you have to do is talk about distributing it right to begin with.