Saturday, May 9, 2009

Weekend Tids and Bits

Gracious to the End: The Newark Star-Ledger is winning praise for the way it is handling salary cuts, kind of like cheering the headsman for a sharp axe and good follow-through.

For the record, the cuts go on a progressive scale --  five percent of the first $40,000, ten percent of the next $40,000 and 15 percent beyond that. This comes after bigtime buyouts, mandatory ten-day unpaid leave, and no more pension plan contributions. Plus, employees will be picking up a quarter of their health plan costs, taking another $80.11 a week from employees on the family plan.

My hometown paper for more than three decades, the Ledger has that thin, wasting look you usually see not long before the end.

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TANJ! (There Ain’t No Justice):  The United States Department of Justice say’s it will save $6.7 million over the next five years by moving legal notices about property forfeiture from newspapers to http://forfeiture.gov. That’s probably only the beginning across, federal, state and local governments and is just one more nail in a newspapering coffin already having more nails than wood.

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You Can Flu Some of the People All of The Time. . . Media outlets and authorities fond of seeing themselves mentioned completed the Swine Flu (Sorry Mr. President, H1N1 virus) cycle last week, moving from Prepare For The End to a much milder Prepare For The End (but it’s not coming for the forseeable future). The good: countries got to practice the drill they’ll need for a major threat. The bad: over-reaction, especially in Mexico, that caused far more economic damage than it prevented disease. The silly: Afghanistan taking the sole pig in the Muslim Country’s zoo off exhibition and into quarantine, lest it infect the faithful who have more to worry about with their bullet epidemic than a possible virus.

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JP Morgan Chase was one of the financial institutions that passed the government stress test. That’s probably because of the conservative financial policies found at the branch, where I tried to pay for a Mothers Day Visa gift card with a Chase Visa debit card. Sorry, the kind teller said, only checks or cash are accepted.

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Friday, May 8, 2009

Limbaugh’s Talks vs. Powell’s Deeds

 

 

Who is the best hope for Republican rebirth, Colin Powell or Rush Limbaugh?

 

Rush Limbaugh thinks Colin Powell should “close the loop and become a Democrat.”

 

Colin Powell wonders about Limbaugh, “Is this really the kind of party that we want to be when these kinds of spokespersons seem to appeal to our lesser instincts rather than our better instincts?"

 

With the finely honed instincts that only decades of journalism can supply, I’ll say they don’t much like each other, and resist the ingrained impulse to find someone in authority – say a sheriff, somewhere – to say the same thing so I can avoid the appearance of opinion.

 

Firm in the belief that an informed electorate ignores facts about as often as an ignorant one, I nonetheless offer some simple biographical facts on both men to help readers buttress the opinions they’ve already formed.

 

Rush Limbaugh was born January 12, 1951, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. His dad was a lawyer.

 

Colin Powell was born April 5, 1937 in New York City’s Harlem. His parents were Jamaican immigrants.

 

Powell has a bachelor’s degree in geology from City College of New York and an MBA from The George Washington University.

 

Limbaugh is a graduate of Cape Central High School and dropped out of Southeast Missouri State University after two semesters and a summer.

 

Limbaugh’s radio career started at WIXZ in the Pittsburgh area and over the years he went on to become the savior of AM radio and a voice heard on well over 600 stations nationwide.

 

Colin Powell joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps at City College, and became a second Lieutenant in the United State Army in June, 1958. He became a brigadier general in 1979 and rose to become a four-star general in 1989. He also served as Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Security Adviser.

 

Biographical comparisons of any two men over 50 could go on for pages. Let’s just say both Limbaugh and Powell are self-made men who made it to success. Both have their admirers and their detractors.

 

But if you are found out to be a Republican, and asked which man might deserve anointment --- or perhaps condemnation – as the voice of Republicanism, consider this:

 

Colin Powell has done a lot.

 

Rush Limbaugh has talked a lot.

 

For a drowning Republican party to choose between a lecture on traditional swimming techniques or a guy jumping in to hand them a flotation device ought not to be difficult.

 

Let’s see if they make it so anyway.

 

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Thursday, May 7, 2009

Newspapers And Digital Pixie Dust

 

 

If you think the problem with newspapers isn’t the news as much as the paper, today’s announcement by Amazon of the Kindle DX is encouraging, kind of like hearing that one of your hangmen discovered a previous commitment.

 

Aimed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as a better alternative to ink-on-paper newspapers, magazines and maybe textbooks, the pencil-slim tablet slightly smaller than a sheet of typewriter paper boasts a 9.7-inch diagonal black-and-white display and a $489 pricetag. (Two earlier, smaller and cheaper Kindle versions aimed more at books, although they included newspaper content.)

 

The idea behind all Kindles is that you pay a small amount to download what interests you and mechanical production/delivery costs for the information providers largely disappear. Since newspaper production can be 20 percent and more of fixed costs, publishers are tempted to jump into Amazon’s lap with tails at full wag.

 

New York Times Company Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr., there for the Kindle DX unveiling with Bezos, called it "an important milestone in the convergence of print and digital."

 

The publishing industry buzzed with talk of subsidizing Kindle costs in return for multi-year subscriber commitments, taking the mobile phone industry as an example. And other equipment manufacturers hastened to remind that their own digital reader widgets were also in the running.

 

Now let’s insert some of the “balance” so beloved by traditional reporting.

 

Here’s a widget that costs as much as a cheap notebook computer and has lots less functionality. It may sell as well as mobile telephones that only make phone calls, assuming you can still find any for comparison.

 

Newspaper and magazine publishers hope you’ll stop getting news and information for free from the web and start paying for it on this widget. It’s the same strategy employed by smitten young things who move in with their boyfriends while their mothers wail “he won’t buy the cow if he gets the milk for free!”

 

Textbook publishers hope you’ll stop paying outrageous prices for new text books and buy them via Kindle. Already grumbling about used textbook sales, they know deep in their hearts that no student will ever find a way to copy and distribute the information illegally. They know because the entertainment industry told them it never happens with music and videos.

 

Maybe those hopes will come to fruition and maybe the whole idea of a newspaper, magazine or textbook will adapt to the digital age.

 

Or maybe it will develop that publishers as we know them once prospered because they owned the very, very expensive and therefore rare means of production and distribution. Advertisers paid hefty fees to in effect “rent” those production/distribution machines to reach readers, providing almost all the money in the game, grumbling but quite aware that for many markets, it was the only game.

 

The advent of technology supporting personal computing devices and the internet changed all that forever, and sprinkling digital pixie dust on old economic models does not guarantee that they’ll fly, even when Tinkerbelle is Jeff Bezos and Neverland is an Amazon subsidiary.

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Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Homeland Security’s Laughter Lexicon

 

 

The Department of Homeland Security’s real strategy for keeping the bad guys away surfaced Tuesday in a Washington Times story that made it clear our plan is for terrorists to laugh themselves to death.

 

A couple weeks ago, word got out that our ever-vigilant DHS guardians had decided returning war veterans might be prone to extremism, especially right-wing extremism. You know -- trained and experienced killers and all that.

 

The howl over that anti-veteran slur came from everywhere. But Tuesday’s Washington Times story says even before that bureaucratic belch, DHS had put together – and hastily deep-sixed – a Domestic Extremism Lexicon.

 

The DHS document said the lexicon would assist “ federal, state, local, and tribal homeland security and law enforcement officials in conducting analytic activities.”

 

Maybe, but the  lexicon seems more anal than analytic.

 

Every paragraph begins with (U//FOUO), which Homeland Security says means Unclassified For Official Use Only. (Readers are encouraged to explore what other uses the letter F, U and O might have in describing this tax-dollar-supported effort.)

 

The  Domestic Extremism Lexicon says its purpose is “definitions for key terms and phrases that often appear in DHS analysis that addresses the nature and scope of the threat that domestic, non-Islamic extremism poses to the United States. Definitions were derived from a variety of open source materials and unclassified information, then further developed during facilitated workshops with DHS intelligence analysts knowledgeable about domestic, non-Islamic extremism in the United States. “

 

Sounds pretty impressive, until you read the first of the definitions so thoroughly researched:

 

“(U) aboveground (U//FOUO) A term used to describe extremist groups or individuals who operate overtly and portray themselves as law-abiding.”

 

If the NYPD, LAPD, Chicago, Dallas, Miami and other major police departments were blown away by the insight and clear thinking this revealed, they kept it quiet.

 

That may be because they were stunned to learn also that:

 

“(U) lone terrorist (U//FOUO) An individual motivated by extremist ideology to commit acts of criminal violence independent of any larger terrorist organization. (also: lone wolf)”

 

And in a document remarkable for its completeness of purpose, even if it may not have been the intended purpose, law enforcement agencies could discover:

 

(U) underground (U//FOUO) A term used to describe clandestine extremist groups, individuals, or their activities.

 

We also learn:

 

(U) Cuban independence extremism (U//FOUO) A movement of groups or individuals who do not recognize the legitimacy of the Communist Cuban Government and who attempt to subvert it through acts of violence, mainly within the United States. (also: anti-Castro groups)

 

The Department of Homeland Security is clearly so dedicated that it forgot the Kennedy administration-backed armed invasion at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, or that the United States has no formal diplomatic relations with Cuba, both of which would seem to fit the terms of its definitions. There’s probably a good explanation for this, but it can’t be shared because, as the document says right at the top:

 

(U) Warning: This document is UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY (U//FOUO). It contains information that may be exempt from public release under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552). It is to be controlled, stored, handled, transmitted, distributed, and disposed of in accordance with DHS policy relating toFOUO information and is not to be released to the public, the media, or other personnel who do not have a valid need-to-know without prior approval of an authorized DHS official.

 

Those of us who pay taxes probably don’t have a problem with this sort of thing being exempt from public release. The challenge is to get it exempt from public funding.

 

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Tuesday, May 5, 2009

SOME INTERESTING OBSERVATIONS on the Death Star looming over print journalism and how the survivng mammals might prosper scurrying among the dinosaur bones may be found at http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/pontin/

That's Technology Review published by MIT and the author is Jason Pontin, editor in chief and publisher.

Wanted: National Go Away! Act

 

 

The Obama Administration is launching so many initiatives at once that national pundits find themselves having to work eight-hour days, which makes them cranky, so they write stories about “over-extending” or “spreading too thin.”

 

Those not familiar with the national pundit corps may worry that such stories often lack attribution and are written as though the pundit’s expertise were sufficient. A simple profile photograph of most of the national pundit corps would quickly put those worries to rest. By and large, the pundits show great personal expertise in extension and spreading -- they don’t call them heavyweights for nothing, you know.

 

But both the busy Obama Administration and the national pundit corps are ignoring the crying need for a national Go Away! Act. As a public service, here’s why it’s needed and how it would work.

 

The Need: Noticing that telemarketers were driving their constituents nuts with their carefully timed-to-dinner pitches, politicians created a National Do Not Call registry with penalties for calling registered  telephone numbers. Also noticing that telemarketers both contributed to political campaigns and helped run them, the politicians put in a tiny loophole.

 

It explainscalls from or on behalf of political organizations, charities, and telephone surveyors would still be permitted, as would calls from companies with which you have an existing business relationship, or those to whom you’ve provided express agreement in writing to receive their calls.”

 

This tiny little loophole sounds like the eye of a needle through which camels must pass for rich men to get to heaven, but in New Jersey, it’s big enough for whole stampedes of horses all galloping back-end-first into my phone receiver. In the last week, my ears have been battered with:

 

            --Four calls on behalf of persons running for governor of New Jersey. I understand that running is part of their life cycle and that first they run for elected office and then run from prosecution for what they did when they got it, but can’t they just go from larval-stage candidate to full-grown inmate without bothering the rest of us?

 

            --Five calls from the company that administers our prescription drug plan, all following a script that announces ordering a three-month supply of drugs by mail as a moneysaver, failing to mention that it would also cut the local pharmacist out of the loop, allowing the drug plan to pocket the pharmacist’s share.

 

            --Two calls from the insurance folks expressing concern over worries I might have that they were certain could be eased by paying them more money, and two more from charities committed to helping the less fortunate right after they help the charity staff.

 

There were other calls, but they all need The Solution:

 

In a national Go Away! Act, Congress could require all telephone companies to develop software that would allow any irritated customer to terminate one of the Do Not Call Registry loophole calls by punching *46 2929, the Touch-tone codes for *GO AWAY. Upon receipt of the code, phone company machines would record the calling number and terminate the call.

 

Software would then dial the calling number 15 times at random over the next 24 hours with some compelling message, perhaps the Collected Works of George W. Bush or War and Peace in an ancient Latin translation.

 

It could work – there’s a need, a will and a way. Just give me some time to put together a political organization to call you about it.

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Monday, May 4, 2009

Plunging Into Stormy Waters

 

When the gods of politics are feeling cranky, they take it out on Louisiana. Just look at the recent track record.

 

Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal’s response to President Obama’s first Congressional address was an opportunity for Jindal to establish himself on the national stage. He did. He established himself as having watched the late children’s TV star Mr. Rogers way too many times.

 

Senator David Vitter, another Republican, had his moment in the sunshine when his phone number turned up in the 2007 client list offered by the “D.C. Madam.” First elected to Congress replacing Rep. Robert Livingston whose quest to become Speaker was torpedoed by an adultery scandal, Vitter admitted to “serious sin” and said he had sought forgiveness from God and his wife.

 

He apparently got forgiveness from at least his wife, in spite of her earlier being quoted by CBS News during the Clinton/Lewinsky mess as saying "I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he (Vitter) does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."

 

Lorena Bobbitt, students of high-level journalism will recall, addressed problems in her marriage by using a carving knife on her husband’s penis. Apparently still intact, Vitter is running for reelection next year and perhaps facing Stormy Waters.

 

Stormy Waters, also known as Stormy Daniels, is a porn actress and director of note, and while not affiliated with a political party, is featured on a website http://draftstormy.com, which says she will be on a listening tour in Louisiana next week about a possible Senate run. The Baton Rouge native’s possible political ambition has already been the subject of several media interviews.

 

All of which may or may not be a publicity stunt, but those who have followed Stormy Daniels’  film career are certainly familiar with all of her many positions and can testify that she has absolutely nothing to hide. Given her background, Daniels running against Vitter in a Republican primary would keep memories of his own scandal standing tall.

 

The draftstormy.com website goes out of its way to say it’s not authorized either by Daniels or the company that produces her movies. Whois lists the registrant, administrator, technical and billing contacts for the site as 1 & 1 Internet, Inc., of Chesterbrook, PA.

 

Citizens of the Pelican state will certainly not lack for all the political entertainment their collective beak can hold.

 

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Sunday, May 3, 2009

Paul Gillin has a good powerpoint presentation from a talk he gave on what happened to the old media model and what might become the new at: http://www.slideshare.net/pgillin/world-without-media-what-will-fill-the-void-1337289?type=powerpoint
Even A Blind Hog Finds An Acorn Now And Then, and so does the New York Times in this nicely reasoned editorial on immigration reform.Catch it at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/opinion/03sun1.html

Short Sermon On Torture

 

NOTE TO TERRORISTS FACING U.S. CAPTURE AND POSSIBLE TORTURE:

 

The Pew Center for the People & the Press took a survey and the results suggest your best bet for a happy U.S. captivity is to be in the hands of a person who is unaffiliated with a religious group and attends religious services seldom or never.

 

The unaffiliated no-shows had the lowest combined percentage of those who said using torture against suspected terrorists can often or sometimes be justified – just 42 percent of the unaffiliated, and 45 percent of those who skipped services.

 

So if your primary jailer is someone who isn’t a church member and doesn’t go in any event, you’re better than even to avoid the Rainy Cheney.

 

On the other hand, 62 percent of white, evangelical protestants don’t think it’s a problem to encourage dialogue by often or sometimes slamming you naked against a wall. Fifty-one percent of white, non-Hispanic Catholics would agree.

 

Final note: Above all, don’t quote to any Christian words from Christ as depicted in the Bible, for example, Matthew 5:43-47 of the New Living Translation:

 

“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else?”

 

Tell these birds to love their enemy and they might just love you to death.

 

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