Last week I was invited to have lunch with Senator Bayh on Monday of this week, apparently as one of a number of Hoosier bloggers that received the same offer. I wasn't able to make it and was okay with that at the time, but after reading the Indiana Blog Review's roundup of narratives and reflections from those who did, it sounds like it was an event worth attending. In any case, thanks to the Senator and his staff for the invitation, my compliments on taking the time to hear what we have to say.
Category: politics
The "Town Hall meeting" with Congressman Mike Pence this morning at the Leland Residence was fairly well attended (compared to similar such events, not as a function of the district's population) and interesting, I thought. Pence talked about his recent decision not to join the congressional leadership so that he could continue to pursue his ideals and issues (limited government, strong defense, "traditional moral values," etc.), about his two major concerns for the year (deficit reduction and border security) and the "War on Terror." The questions covered giving greater access to passports, whether every child in the country has the right to have healthcare, health insurance costs for small business and how we could change our culture and insurance system, energy concerns and drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, whether being born in the U.S. should give you automatic citizenship, concerns over the abuse of executive privilege related to wiretaps and torture, the federal outlook on highway I-69, and others. As in the past, I appreciated Mr. Pence's time speaking with his constituents, and I admired greatly those who had the initiative to speak and question him. All of my photos from the meeting are here.
I was surprised to pull up today's Palladium-Item online and see four more articles about Don Holbrook and questions surrounding his role with the Wayne County Economic Development Corporation. Last Thursday's article, "EDC leader takes hits from all sides," already seemed unnecessarily harsh in that it publicly framed the EDC's current budget concerns around Don Holbrook's working relationship with the EDC board; the implication was almost that he'd been stealing cash from their bank account. And then today's articles, "Heat's on Holbrook,""'Character assassination' played part in the past,""Raising concerns may cost board member leadership post," and "What EDC members say" make it sound like the EDC is falling apart at the seams with political earthquakes and personal smears. What the heck is going on here?
Continue reading "EDC airs out dirty laundry in Pal-Item"
One: Dave Pollard has posted a really interesting (and quite long) series of essays, studies, and narratives about how to build the ideal collaborative team and the collaboration process in general. Though I haven't grokked all of the implications yet, I generally find their primary conclusion, that attitude is more important than experience or specific knowledge in collaborative work, to be quite true in my own experience. Two: I've posted a list of my personal and professional affiliations. As the traffic on my blog increases and I get some more feedback about some of the more "controversial" posts, I want to make sure I fully disclose what kinds of organizations and projects I'm involved with and have allegiances to - noting just as emphatically that none of them necessarily endorse or agree with what I write here. Three: As reported by Slashdot, the Federal Election Commission has issued a draft advisory opinion essentially finding that bloggers can qualify as journalists for the purpose of the 'press exemption' in federal campaign finance laws. As a blogger, I don't really consider myself a journalist, but I know plenty who do and it's interesting to see this conversation evolve about what protections and privileges bloggers should have.
In an editorial today, the Palladium-Item called for Richmond and Wayne County to embrace job growth in the retail and service sectors, as opposed to the manufacturing sector. I generally support their call for an intentional focus on facilitating the kinds of economic growth that Richmond needs, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they address the difference between the immediate concerns of the unemployed ("if you are without work...there is little reason to scoff at any kind of paying job") and the obligations of those working on economic development to focus on a longer-term vision ("a carefully crafted plan for attracting select retail and services businesses can build upon important quality of life factors locally"). This is a distinction often passed over in our community and many others; the most prevalent calls are usually for bringing in any jobs at all, no matter what the benefits and long-term impact on the community.
Continue reading "Search for more jobs requires driving vision"
I generally avoid national bestselling political books that are just consolidated accounts of the political soap operas that go on in our nation's capital, designed to make more buzz and more money for the journalists or whistle-blowers or former aides that happened to keep really good notes during the experience. But once in a while there are some pretty compelling publications that appear in that genre, and I can't help but dive in. Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack certainly emerges as an example of a page-turner for anyone interested in national politics, the executive branch's decision making process, and especially how the U.S. ended up invading Iraq.
Continue reading "Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward"
It looks like the War on Terror is over. That is, it's now become a Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism, according to the Bush administration's shift in language being used to describe that particular set of economic, military, domestic law enforcement, and foreign policy initiatives. I suppose we've come along way from the national security policy known as "Smoke 'Em Out" or "Bring 'Em On", but this new phrasing doesn't really warm the heart either. As someone who has come to appreciate the value of framing - and how good the current administration has been at it in the political sense - I'd like to suggest a few bits of analysis of what this new frame means.
Continue reading "The War on Terror is Over"
The eminent and celebrated E. Thomas Kemp points us to a wonderful and clever use of news aggregation and weblog technologies, Plogress. Using Perl and WordPress, the apparently anonymous administrator has created a site that sucks data out of the Library of Congress and displays a blog of the doings of individual Senators and Representatives. Now I can keep an eye on Mike, Richard, and Evan through my RSS newsreader! I'm sure they all read my blog, right?
Bruce Schneier has saved future bureaucrats some time and written the core text of the 2015 US Congressional report on the impacts of the REAL ID Act. The report will find that the creation of this national ID card back in 2005 introduced unnecessary security risks, compounded existing data privacy issues, incurred extraordinary costs to implement and maintain, represented a troubling power grab by the federal government over state systems for issuing identification, and, perhaps worst of all, was passed without any serious debate in Congress or in public because of its attachment to a bill funding operations in Iraq. The report will also find that the ID card has not substantially met any of the goals its introduction was intended to achieve. Given the above, the report concludes that the REAL ID Act was a shining example of the quality and sensibility that characterizes much of the law-making that went on at the time.
I always look forward to seeing the speakers that my alma mater, Earlham College, brings to Richmond, Indiana because they often bring perspective, insight, and experience that you just can't otherwise get living in a small Midwestern town. Tonight's event was no different: William Kristol (neo-conservative pundit, editor of the Weekly Standard, Bush/Quayle advisor, and member of the American Enterprise Institute) would be giving a talk entitled "America's Foreign Policy After 9-11" on campus free to the public. I appreciate that Earlham makes the effort to bring speakers and thinkers like Kristol who are so diametrically opposed (e.g. Ann Coulter) to so many members of the Earlham community on campus to present alternate, challenging and often infuriating points of view. And I usually appreciate that the Earlham community handles these encounters in such a principled and respectful way.
Oh wait, did I just say "principled and respectful"? I must have made a horrible mistake somewhere, because at tonight's talk, about 30 minutes into Kristol's speech, a student-looking person got up on stage and smacked Kristol square in the face with a pie.