24thState

Ways You Can Help Insure Poor Children

S-CHIP is proof that no good deed goes unpunished.  A Republican initiative passed in the 90's to insure poor children, S-CHIP has been used and abused by the states to  provide health care to adults and  children currently covered with private insurance.

When Bush brought the plan up for renewal, the Democrats said he wasn't giving enough - they want another $20 billion, and have been red-faced and screaming about how Republicans want poor kids to go uninsured.

Ignore the fact that Republicans originated the bill and want to extend it. Ignore that the bill is set to include children not poor, on insurance, and in some states, includes the adults.

Put everything else aside, and recognize the S-CHIP extension for what it is.  A stupid idea pushed because it allows Democrats to say Republicans hate poor people.  So what can you do?  Why, mock it, of course. 

Sorry mom.  I have to start smoking again.  For the children. 

hattip:  Robert Bluey

Will Social Media Have An Impact On The Election

If you're looking for polling software for your blog, Flektor has some cool themes and easy to use software.  i' created this poll in just a few moments, and can embed it anywhere. Here's a question on the importance of social media (or lack of).

Flektor is also launching a polling widget campaign to political bloggers in concert with the Presidential Dialogues (the next one is Monday, the 29th, at 12:30 in Cedar Rapids.  Barack Obama is starring.  If you add the Flektor poll to your site, be sure to send a note to communitymanager@flektor-inc.com so we can link back to you.  All parties welcome. It's a non-partisan site.

 

1777666666666666666666!

And you thought Team America rocked.

hattip:  IMAO, from HotAir.

Can We Stop Pretending The National Media Is Objective?

I went to my chiropractor's office twice in the last week.  The first time, I picked up a Newsweek magazine gushing about strong female leaders, in anticipation of Hillary winning the presidency.  The second time, I see a Time cover asking how she will rule.

Ummm - could you be more biased towards a candidate? 

My gym also has the misfortune of playing the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news at 5:00 and 6:00.  I laugh out loud when I watch them.  The role of the media as a stooge of the left has gone from pretend objectivity to outright partisan bias.

I was shocked to see how bad it was.  It explains a lot.  If you get your news from the nightly news, or read too many of the once respectable periodicals, then you're plainly uninformed. 

2004 saw the new media rise up and have an impact on the Presidential Race.  In 2006, the media struck back, going to the mat to protect the Democratic Party.  In 2008, if it is possible, the media has given up all pretense of fairness. 

It's a sad day when people who think they're educated because they read the paper and watch the news are so sadly misinformed.  Bloggers have a lot of work in front of them.

An Offer To Missouri Newspapers

I have excellent news for Missouri Newspapers.  Papers that belong to the National Newspaper Association, including the Columbia Daily Tribune, The Southeast Missourian, and the Ozark County Times, have been offered some insider information on the war in Iraq.

This is much better than the drivel from the AP and Reuters, which usually consists of second- or third-hand information from Iraqi stringers who get paid to give leads on stories (both true and false) that depict the war as going negatively.  This is real information from one of the war's best journalists, Michael Yon.

Michael has been in the places you read about.  Fallujah.  Anbar.  Baghdad.  He reports from the front line, in the best tradition of great wartime reporters like Ernie Pyle.  Michael is an independent, and his work is entirely financed from donations by readers.

Michael is disturbed about the reports he sees in the "major" newspapers, so he's offering a real deal.  Free syndication of his articles.  If you have not read his dispatches, you aren't informed.  He's a fascinating read, and it provides a useful counterpoint to propaganda from both the military and the media.

Michael is no apologist or shill.  Check out a few of his words on the war.

I’ve written about the small and petty ways the military’s Public Affairs Offices can sour even the most earnestly and positively-inclined reporters. I’ve written about how the military’s entire approach to media has failed utterly to serve both the particular mission in Iraq and the greater cause of an informed and vibrant democracy. I’ve written about reporters who got the story right, about those who got it all wrong, and also about those whose reports, good or bad, never saw the light of day.

I’ve written about why an effective and engaged media is especially crucial for the kind of counterinsurgency strategy only now being applied comprehensively in all areas of Iraq. I’ve written about how the current system of over-reliance on questionable sources creates a pressure to rush to judgment.

I’ve written about how dangerous this war is for reporters who claim there is no real consumer demand for articles about Iraq that would justify the risks. The internet erosion of the mainstream media subscriber base and advertiser support doesn’t reduce demand for news from the ground in Iraq, but it does dry up funds for anything but local stringers with spotty notions of accuracy.

Michael Yon is offering free reprinting of his dispatches to newspapers who belong to the NNA (National Newspaper Association).  Check here to see if your local paper belongs to the NNA.  All it takes is a few friendly citizens writing their editors and asking them if they'd like free, boots on the ground content.  While you're at it, send a note to the Kansas City Star and the Post-Dispatch and suggest they pay for some syndicated content.  They might be surprised to see that hosting Michael Yon dispatches would go a long way towards rekindling newspaper subscriptions from disgruntled conservatives.  They could keep their editorial pages, but if they published Michael, they would be doing the state, and their readers, a favor.

At the very least, ask editors if they know who Michael Yon is and ask the editor to read him.   And if you are moved, as I was, reading Michael's work, consider donating so he can keep it up.  To find out more about the NNA syndication project, go here.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Doug Ross made a compelling post on the danger of playing politics with the wiretapping laws.  His post speaks for itself, but since Glenn suggested it should be a commercial, I popped over to Flektor and made it one.

I wonder what the RNC would pay for something like this?  Heck - I'd give them money if they just had the courage to run it.  Run it in Pelosi's district for fun. 

Sam Page Knows How To Hire A Campaign Manager

Sam Page is running for Lieutenant Governor against Peter Kinder.  He's from Creve Coeur, and he's a medical doctor.  That was pretty much all I knew about him a few weeks ago.

And then I got an e-mail from his campaign manager, David Woodruff.  In it, David wrote that he knew that I was a center-right blogger, but he politely asked I would write about Sam's fundraising goals for the quarter just ended.

I didn't, because although I'm not a Republican blogger, I'm also not in the habit of electing Democrats in a polarized nation (I consider myself a conservative, not a Republican.  Currently, most of the issues I care about are better run by Republicans in my view).  But I like to be fair, as I try to be with Claire McCaskill when she does things that I appreciate as a Missouri voter, and I have to say that David's strategy in speaking with me was a positive one.  Positive enough that if he did find an issue that I agreed with, I'd write about it.  We haven't found one yet, but if more campaign managers treated bloggers like this, I think we'd all be better off.

This doesn't mean that sugar and sweets and butt-kissing is the way to get things done.  My conversations with David have been civil, and the key is David is genuine.  I have to say that I respect that.  And so while I'll still vote for Kinder, and Kinder's team would get more response out of me - I can't say anything negative about Sam Page.

Good job David.  When the elections over, you're welcome to come work for my clients, anytime.

Newspaper Blogs: The Good, Bad And Ugly

Jeff Jarvis describes the problem with newspaper blogs. 

So I think that if newspapers are going to blog, they should have lots of blogs at lots of addresses, lots of people creating lots of brands. And this also means that they must be written in the human voice of the person, not the cold voice of the institution. And, while we’re at it, this means that they must join in and link to other conversations; that is they only way they will spread and grow, not because they live six clicks deep into a giant newspaper site. We are seeing the links and the voice. But the architecture remains a problem.

It's pretty spot on, and it's a useful bit of advice for Missouri newspapers.  There is a difference between writing and blogging, and newspapers need to learn this before the audience goes somewhere else {cough}craigslist{cough}. The question is out there.  How do you respect the community without kowtowing to it? 

Today, Columbia Tribune had an editorial about the Wild, Wild Blogosphere. 

i liked a lot of what the publisher said, but one red flag went up.  I heard from a PR guy that newspapers have started to use blogs to publish stories they can't confirm.  Sounds like a fake, but accurate nightmate.

Except, with blogs editors don’t preview everything written. We rely on the good judgment of the reporters and criticize them after the fact. Seldom do we need to criticize.

Readers must consider the source, but with blogs the source is often anonymous, providing more information and less accountability. Sometimes this is a positive tradeoff, and editing can minimize irresponsibility, but bloggers have instantaneous access to Web sites, giving readers good reason to be more wary of information contained on the Internet than in the so-called mainstream media so often sniped at by purveyors of the "new" media.

The point of a blog is not to tell stories that couldn't make it into the regular paper.  I'm not sure what insidious dark force has been whispering in the ears of newspaper editors, but if this is the general trend, then Dan Rather is going to have a lot of company on the ashheap of history. Using blogs to publish questionable stories that you can't find three sources for is a quick road to internet oblivion.

The blog is not the publisher of last resort. 

To really make a difference - reach out to the blogs and find experts on the subjects that you write about.  There are experts blogging in medicine, business, on social issues, and on local politics.  In many cases, they know more than your reporters, and oftentimes more than the names in your rolodex.

This doesn't mean all blogs are worthy.  We all know that most blogging is junk.  but if 1% is quality writing, then 150,000 blogs in the US are reliable.  Join those communities, and your paper will get better.  Reach out to local bloggers and ask them to critique your product (in their area of expertise), and you will get better.

What you can't do is split the two apart, and try to make blogs a subsection of the paper.  That's what most papers have done (The Post Dispatch is one example).  These blogs aren't blogs at all, but amateur columns written on the cheap and connected to no one. Talk about cannibalizing your audience. If the blogs at the Post Dispatch are doing well, what are you paying your columnists for?  If they're doing poorly, why have them?

No - blogs are separate, but still part of a community.  Figure out the community, and you'll figure out the blogs. That's the lesson to take home.  Prime Buzz from the KC Star is a good first step.  They aggregate blog content, giving publicity to bloggers when they write well, but ultimately, papers will have to do more.  If they want bloggers to work with them instead of against them, that is.

And for many journalists, that's a big if.

p.s.  If you are a journalist and you only read partisan attack blogs like FIred Up and the Source, then you are not blog-savvy.  You're a partisan shill.

Our Progressive Tax System

We hear that the Bush Tax Cuts benefit the top 1% of Americans.  Democratic presidential candidates all want to cut back those tax cuts to pay for their pet projects, but it's just another semantic ploy.

All income tax cuts benefit the wealthy, because the wealthy pay a huge majority of the taxes.

In fact, the top 1% pay more in income taxes than the bottom 95%.  That's how progressive the system is.  It's so bad, that 50% of the country doesn't pay anything in income taxes, which means that income tax cuts can't help them at all.

We're rapidly reaching the point in this country where democracies cannot function.  That's when 51% of the country realizes it can vote to piss in the cornflakes of the other 49%.

Enjoy your breakfast. 

The Fallacy Of The Iraq War Bill

It's all over the place.  Democratic presidential candidates point to the cost of the Iraq War (over $500 billion), and say that the money could have been spent to solve healthcare, education, or bridge construction problems.

Sounds like a good deal, but don't fool yourself.  Just because the money could have been spent in other areas doesn't mean that it would have been spent, or would have been spent wisely.

Let's say we take some of that money and make it easier for people to go to college.  Good idea, right?  Nope.  It ends up raising the price of tuition for everyone.  An interesting note in that article.

Unfortunately, there’s little reason to believe even these dramatic funding increases will lead to improvements in student learning in American schools. Since the early 1970s, inflation-adjusted federal spending per pupil has doubled.  Over that period, student performance has not markedly improved, according to the long-term National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is designed to measure historical trends.

In other words, spending more money hasn't done anything.  We've been reforming Social Security, Medicare, education, and healthcare as long as I've been alive.  Can anyone say that we've actually improved any of those programs?

I'm 34, and I know for a fact that I'll never receive a dime of Social Security or Medicare back from the government.  I pay the full 15.3 percent of my earnings (as does my wife) to that sinkhole, and will get none of it back.

I pay almost $700 a month for insurance for just two people, and both of us our healthy.  And yet if we had a medical problem, we all know that we'd face a lot of extra costs "not covered" by our insurance.

We pay property taxes that keep going up every year for the schools, and yet the education system doesn't ever seem to improve. 

Could it possibly be that in the wealthiest society the planet has ever known, more money is not the answer?  Maybe our government should work for us, and not just take more money and tell us how to live our lives.