Author Archives: whmacken2013

by - 0 comments

Berlin Redux: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

In July 2009, speaking at Moscow’s New Economic School, Obama said long-standing assumptions that the US and Russia were antagonists vying for spheres of influence were inaccurate.

“Given our interdependence, any world order that tries to elevate one value or people over another will inevitably fail,” he said. “That is why I have called for a ‘reset’ in relations between the United States and Russia. This must be more than a fresh start between the Kremlin and the White House, though that is important.”

“It must be a sustained effort among the American and Russian people to identify mutual interests, and to expand dialogue and co-operation that can pave the way to progress,” he added.

Obama calls for reset of U.S.-Russian relations in 2009

Obama calls for reset of U.S.-Russian relations in 2009

All this just 12 months after Bush’s hopes for better relations with Russia had been shattered by its war with Georgia.

Now, five years later, Russia has annexed the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine and the United States is sitting by helplessly.

Obama has said that Russia, by its actions in Crimea, is on the wrong side of history.

Perhaps Obama is forgetting history.

In 1933, Adolph Hitler emphatically proclaimed Germany’s commitment to peace.

“The German government “…is…of the conviction that there can only be one great task in our time: securing peace in the world,” he declared to the Reichstag. “The German Government wishes to engage in peaceful discussions with the other nations on all difficult questions,” he added.

Hitler proclaims Germany's pursuit of peace

Hitler proclaims Germany’s pursuit of peace

That same year, however, Hitler laid the groundwork for what would become the pretext for forcefully absorbing other countries. “We have particularly at heart the fate of the Germans living beyond the frontiers of Germany who are allied with us in speech, culture, and customs and have to make a hard fight to retain these values,” he said in a policy statement submitted to the Reichstag on March 23, 1933. “The national Government is resolved to use all the means at its disposal to support the rights internationally guaranteed to the German minorities,” he said.

When Germany annexed Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland in 1939, it was justified as an effort to “liberate” the predominantly German area and protect the abused ethnic German population . Foregoing action, Britain and France chose to negotiate a deal that preserved “peace in our time”.

Austria was next. In March 1938, a coup d’état was engineered by the Austrian Nazi Party of Austria’s state institutions in Vienna and Germany annexed Austria into the Third Reich that same month. The Nazis then held a plebiscite allowing the people to vote on the annexation and claimed that the vote in favor was 99.8 percent. (Sound familiar?)

The reaction from the Allies? Mostly words.

It wasn’t until Germany and the Soviets invaded Poland in 1939 that Britain and France declared war on Germany, too late to stop the Soviets and Nazis from slaughtering millions of Jews and Polish intelligentsia through starvation, forced labor and mass killings.

The Russian portion of Poland, by the way, was incorporated within Russia by Soviet “elections” and Russian citizenship was conferred on the Polish inhabitants. (Sound familiar?)

Allied action also came too late for Ukraine, which was overrun by the Nazis in 1941 after years of brutal killings under Stalin, during which millions of Ukrainians were murdered and millions more were sent to concentration camps.

Now we have Putin talking about the need to “protect” ethic Russians in Eastern Ukraine.

“It’s all nonsense. There are no kinds of Russian units in eastern Ukraine. No special forces, no instructors. They are all local citizens.” Russia's President Vladimir Putin

“It’s all nonsense. There are no kinds of Russian units in eastern Ukraine. No special forces, no instructors. They are all local citizens.”
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin

On April 17, 2014, in a televised Q&A session with the Russian public, Putin observed that the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s Parliament, had granted him the right to use military force in Ukraine. “I really hope that I do not have to exercise this right and that we are able to solve all today’s pressing issues via political and diplomatic means,” he said.

And today, with Russian-connected demonstrators fomenting unrest in Eastern Ukraine, Russia had the gall to accuse the new Ukrainian government of flouting a just concluded agreement intended to diffuse the crisis. “The Geneva accord is not only not being fulfilled, but steps are being taken, primarily by those who seized power in Kiev, that are grossly breaching the agreements reached,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a press conference in Moscow.

Here we go again?

by - 0 comments

Warning: this post may trigger thinking

Universities apparently have a new mission…protecting students from exposure to speech that makes them uncomfortable. God forbid, we don’t want our academic institutions subjecting kids to provocative ideas that might challenge their preconceptions and destroy their youthful innocence.

On a recent trip to Santa Barbara, CA I spotted a brief item in a local paper about the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). Its Associated Students Senate had passed a resolution to begin the process of instituting mandatory “trigger warnings” on class syllabi.

“Having a trigger warning on a syllabus allows a student the choice to be present and gives a student advance notice of possible triggers and the choice to be present or not instead of having to leave in the middle of a class or lecture,” the Resolution said.

The high level of Students Senate debate at the sun-steeped school overlooking the blue Pacific was exemplified by the supportive comment of Off-Campus Senator Beatrice Contreras, “I’ve been in this kind of situation before — it sucks; we should pass it.”

University of California Santa Barbara

University of California Santa Barbara

The Los Angeles Times opined, and rightly so, that the whole idea is foreign to learning. “Trigger warnings are part of a campus culture that is increasingly overprotective and hypersensitive in its efforts to ensure that no student is ever offended or made to feel uncomfortable,” said a Times editorial.

Still, the concept appears to be gaining ground.

In February, Ohio’s Oberlin College put out guidelines asking faculty to refrain from using in their course materials information or works that would offend students. If professors believed such materials were essential to the course, they were expected to place a “trigger warning” in their syllabus. If students felt the material would be too emotionally difficult, faculty were encouraged to make such triggering material optional.

Faculty were urged to “be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression,” to remove triggering material when it doesn’t “directly” contribute to learning goals.

For example, faculty were cautioned that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, a highly-praised novel about the struggles of a man from an Ibo village in Nigeria, may “trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more.”

After strenuous criticism within the school and in the media, Oberlin has temporarily suspended the trigger policy, pending further faculty review.

The issue has surfaced at Rutgers University, too, where a student wrote to the university newspaper endorsing notifications to students of material that might trigger discomfort.

“…literature courses often examine works with grotesque, disturbing and gruesome imagery within their narratives,” the student noted. “For instance, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s critically acclaimed novel, “The Great Gatsby,” possesses a variety of scenes that reference gory, abusive and misogynistic violence. Virginia Woolf’s famous cerebral narrative, “Mrs. Dalloway,” paints a disturbing narrative that examines the suicidal inclinations and post-traumatic experiences of an English war veteran.”

Even the liberal New Republic ran a piece criticizing the trigger-happy trend. “Structuring public life around the most fragile personal sensitivities will only restrict all of our horizons,” wrote Jennie Jarvie. “Engaging with ideas involves risk, and slapping warnings on them only undermines the principle of intellectual exploration.”

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas had the right answer to all this foolishness.

“…a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute,” he wrote in the majority opinion in   Terminiello v. City of Chicago  “It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea.”

A university free from challenging or disturbing thoughts is a university free from learning.

 

Addendum, 11/19/14:

The Microaggression Farce

The latest campus fad, which sees racism everywhere, will create a new generation of permanent victims.

by - 0 comments

I just can’t keep up; who am I supposed to deplore now?

It’s just getting hard to keep up.

So many people with so many different points of view is proving to be a real conundrum.

Brandeis University recently invited Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

a visiting fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute , a campaigner for women’s rights and a critic of intolerance, to receive an honorary degree at the school’s commencement on May 18.

Some of her comments allege a link between Islam and mistreatment of women. “The connection between violence, particularly violence against women, and Islam is too clear to be ignored,” she said in a Wall Street Journal piece. “We do no favors to students, faculty, nonbelievers and people of faith when we shut our eyes to this link, when we excuse rather than reflect.”

An outcry of opposition to her appearance arose from some Brandeis students and The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights and advocacy group. “She is one of the worst of the worst of the Islam haters in America, not only in America, but worldwide,” Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council, told the New York Times.

Unwilling to face the heat, Brandeis cancelled its invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. “We cannot overlook that certain of her past statements are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values,” the university, that bastion of free speech and academic inquiry, said in a statement explaining its decision.

So, if Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes to Portland to speak, should I go and listen or publicly deplore her, start a social media campaign against her and urge that everybody boycott her appearance?

I’ve also been reading about how upset some people are with Chauncy Childs, the owner of a planned Moreland Farmers Pantry in Sellwood. When it was discovered that she’d posted comments on Facebook about her opposition to same-sex marriage, some folks went ballistic.

Chauncy Childs

Chauncy Childs

According to The Oregonian, the outrage even extended to people who came to Childs’ defense. “The idea of blacklisting and boycotting people for their thoughts and beliefs, as opposed to their actions leads to a world that is less tolerant, less caring and more segregated,” Nick Zukin, co-founder of Kenny and Zuke’s delis, told The Oregonian. Gay rights activist Byron Beck lambasted Zukin and urged people to boycott his businesses, too.

“They’re choosing to open a business in a very open-minded neighborhood,” Tom Brown, president of the Sellwood Westmoreland Business Alliance, said without apparent irony to The Oregonian. “I think their personal views are going to hurt.”

Given this situation, should I stop by the Moreland Farmers Pantry if I’m in the neighborhood or deplore its owner’s views and pass it by?

And, by the way, I’m debating whether to install the Firefox browser on my laptop, but I’m conflicted.

Not long ago it was discovered that Brendan Eich, the newly appointed CEO of Mozilla, developer of the open source browser, Firefox, donated $1,000 in 2008 to support the campaign for Proposition 8, a California ballot proposition that aimed to ban gay marriage in California.

Brendan Eich

Brendan Eich

The donation was uncovered in 2012 when Eich was Mozilla’s Chief Technology Officer, but it didn’t become a huge controversial public issue until he was appointed CEO in late March 2014.

At that point Eich came under heavy fire from some Mozilla employees, gay-rights activists, executives of companies active in the Firefox marketplace and others.

Will Oremus, senior technology writer at Slate, said Eich’s departure was a sign of the times.

“There was a time when supporting gay marriage made you a radical,” Oremus wrote. “Then there was a time when it made you a progressive. Now we’ve reached a point where not (emphasis in the original) supporting gay marriage makes you unfit to lead a major Silicon Valley organization.”

The National Organization for Marriage, initially created to support Proposition 8, has jumped into the fray, too. It has called for a boycott of Firefox “to protest the company forcing out its CEO over his support of Proposition 8.” A conservative website, TruthRevolt.org, has urged people to uninstall the Firefox browser in protest of “Mozilla’s decision to fire Eich.” (Note: Eich resigned)

Others took the anti-Eich crowd to task for attempting to quell free speech and silence those who hold dissenting views.

So, what do I do? Should I deplore Mozilla for giving in to the pressure of the crowd and intentionally get a Firefox browser or should I bond with the critics of Eich’s donation and boycott Mozilla products?

And while I’m thinking about it, what should I do about all the other companies whose employees, including some executives, made donations in support of Proposition 8?

FiveThirtyEight put together a table of thousands of dollars of Prop. 8 donations by major Silicon Valley companies that showed money coming from employees of firms such as Google, Apple, Intel, Oracle and Yahoo.

A further analysis of the data showed that 83 percent of the donations by Californians were in opposition to Proposition 8, but there was a lot of variation between companies. At one big tech company based in California 60 percent of employee donations were in support of Proposition 8.

Should I deplore that company, maybe boycott its products?

Oh, I almost forgot Chick-fil-A. You may remember how, in 2012, the chain’s president, Dan Cathy, was reported to have said, “”We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit…We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families.” His comments spawned outrage among some gay rights activists and politicians and calls for a boycott of Chick-fil-A.

Dan Cathy

Dan Cathy

I know there aren’t any Chik-fil-A’s in Oregon, but if I come across one out of state can I stop for a bite to support free speech or am I still supposed to be deploring them?

 

 

 

 

 

by - 0 comments

All I need to know about life I learned from a cow

 

learnedfromcow

 

◦   If it’s good, milk it for all it’s worth

◦   Successful people are “moo-vers and shakers”

◦   Don’t be just one of the herd

◦   The cream always rises to the top

◦   Don’t stoop to a barnyard mentality

◦   Don’t be bossy

◦   It’s better to have milked and churned thean to have never milked at all

◦   If you need to get somewhere, hoof it

◦   Some days can be udder frustration

◦   If you’re feeling low, moo yourself a little song

◦   Chew your food 50 times before swallowing

◦   Don’t let others corrall you

◦   Munch hay while the sun shines

◦   He who lives with the herd learns to watch his step

◦   Following your heart will always steer you in the right direction

◦   Party ’till the cows come home

Source: anonymous

by - 0 comments

Four Pinocchios – the gender pay gap

In an aggressive attempt to turn attention away from other issues less favorable to them as the midterm elections approach, Obama and the Democrats are yet again trying to generate some return from their “war on women” mantra. This time they’re highlighting with carefully choreographed actions what they insist is gender pay inequity.

On Wednesday, the Senate fell short on the number of yeas to move forward on the so-called “Paycheck Fairness Act”. Bluntly revealing the political nature of the entire effort, Democrats leaped at the opportunity to send out a fundraising solicitation bemoaning the loss within minutes of the vote.

Image

Obama routinely cites U.S. Census data showing that the average full-time female worker earned 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. (The U.S. Department of Labor says women in full-time jobs earn 81 cents for every dollar men earn.)

But the pay situation is not quite as simple as Obama and his Democratic colleagues say. Today the New York Times featured a story on the issue: Democrats Use Pay Issue in Bid for Women’s Vote, making that point.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) makes the same point in its annual report, “Highlights of women’s earnings in 2012”: “In 2012, women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings of $691. On average in 2012, women made about 81% of the median earnings of male full-time wage and salary workers ($854).” That appears to support Obama’s assertions.

But every “full-time” worker, as the BLS notes, is not the same: Men were almost twice as likely as women to work more than 40 hours a week, and women almost twice as likely to work only 35 to 39 hours per week. Once that is taken into consideration, the pay gap begins to shrink. Women who worked a 40-hour week earned 88% of male earnings.

Then there is the issue of marriage and children. The BLS reports that single women who have never married earned 96% of men’s earnings in 2012.

The supposed pay gap appears when marriage and children enter the picture. Child care takes mothers out of the labor market, so when they return they have less work experience than similarly-aged males.

The reality is that multiple factors affect the earnings data, including the types of jobs worked by women, the number of hours they worked, their area of specialization/college major, hours worked and the career progression of some women.

One factor affecting the pay women receive is their work/home patterns. Women who leave the workforce to care for their children at home and later return to work often find that lower wages await them than if they had kept working. A Pew Research Center study released on April 8 revealed that the share of mothers who stay home with their children has steadily risen in recent years.

According to Pew, the share of mothers who don’t work outside the home rose to 29% in 2012, up from a modern-era low of 23% in 1999.

Image

Another Pew study in 2013 found that mothers are much more likely than fathers to have reduced work hours, take a significant amount of time off, quit a job or, by a small margin, turn down a promotion in order to care for a child or family member.

Pew said today’s young women are the first in modern history to start their work lives at near parity with men. Pew pointed out, however, that there’s no guarantee that today’s young women will sustain their near parity with men in earnings in the years to come. Recent cohorts of young women have fallen further behind their same-aged male counterparts as they have aged and dealt with the responsibilities of parenthood and family.

Still, it would be wise not to ignore that while the public sees greater workplace equality between men and women now than it did 20 to 30 years ago, most believe more change is needed, the Pew Research Center notes. Among Millennial women, 75% say this country needs to continue making changes to achieve gender equality in the workplace, compared with 57% of Millennial men.

So there’s still a lot of work to do.

by - 0 comments

Not all that glitters is gold; With crowdfunding it’s caveat emptor

Crowdfunding must be legit, right? After all, even Caroline Channing, the tall blonde in the TV show “2 Broke Girls,” went on a crowdfunding website, gofundyourself.com, to raise $1,500 for a new pair of pants.

But as millions of Americans jump on crowdfunding websites, some ugly truths are surfacing.

Some contributors are finding out the hard way that their munificence can enrich others at their expense.

In 2012, the Oculus Rift Project, developers of what they called “the first truly immersive virtual reality headset for video games”, brought in $2.4 million from 9,522 supporters across the country in a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.

In March 2014, Facebook acquired the company, then called Oculus VR, for $2 billion. The venture capital investors in Oculus are expected to see a 2000 percent return on their money. The Kickstarter contributors’ return? Zero. Zip. Their money was a gift, not an investment.

A lot of Kickstarter donors were bitter. Some because they opposed the fledgling company selling out to a corporate behemoth, others because they felt cheated. Clearly they didn’t really understand the rules of the game when they pitched in.

Other crowdfunding supporters are finding that the whole process is more like the wild west, with little real oversight and no assurance that those seeking donations are legitimate.

wild_west

 

The GoFundMe crowdfunding website, for example, is pretty loose in its oversight. “With hundreds of thousands of campaigns, it’s not feasible for GoFundMe to investigate the claims stated by each campaign organizer,” the website says.

PandoDigest, issued by PandoDaily (http://pando.com), a web publication focusing on technology news, analysis, and commentary, recently wrote about a crowdfunding campaign run on Indiegogo for a device called the Healbe GoBe (http://bit.ly/1hAamf2), “the first and only wearable device that automatically measures the calories you consume and burn, through your skin.”  So far HealBe has raised $984,787.

PandoDigest questioned the legitimacy of the product. “…keen to be the first reporter to cover this marvelous piece of technology, I started asking questions,” James Robinson, a Pando reporter, wrote on March 20, 2014. “What I discovered was something far from the slick, bay area startup Healbe purported to be. Rather, I found a publicity shy company, operated remotely from Russia, promoting a device unsupported by any medical or scientific evidence whatsoever.”

“For someone looking to lose weight, it sounds like a wearable sent from heaven,” PandoDigest reported. “The only problem is, there’s no evidence that Healbe actually works. Worse than that, many medical experts have told our James Robinson that the device’s underlying technology has no way of doing what it claims to do. One doctor called it “some straight Ghostbusters, Peter Venkman bullshit.”
’

Questions about the device have led many contributors to ask for refunds.” I would like a refund of my pledge Dual Pack $325,” said Richard Torriani. “I am now skeptical of the claims made on your campaign page and have concerns about the legitimacy of the campaign itself. If the GoBe proves to be everything that is promised, I will gladly purchase one when they are released publicly.” Some commenters are also asking Healthbe to step in and sort out people’s concerns.

According to Indiegogo, it’s free to sign up, to create a campaign, and to contribute to a campaign. When a campaign raises funds, Indiegogo charges a 9.0% fee on the funds raised. If you reach your goal, you get 5.0% back, for an overall fee of 4.0%. the Healbe GoBe campaign’s original fundraising goal was $100,000, which has obviously surpassed. That means Indiegogo has earned almost $40,000 on the $987,592 of contributions to date, a nice haul, indeed.

caution-sign_shutterstock_62217049-300x199

Given all the questions and concerns, does Indiegogo have any responsibility to halt the campaign? “Our team of anti-fraud experts focuses on keeping our community safe,” it’s website says. “They’re responsible for developing new features to create a more secure and trustworthy environment for you. Our anti-fraud systems constantly monitor the performance of our product, helping us identify and eliminate fraudulent activity and scams.”

 

by - 0 comments

The real war is on our children

Democrats are again pulling out from their rhetorical basement accusations that Republicans are waging a “war on women”. Meanwhile, they’re ignoring another war that’s real, the “war on our children” that government spending addicts are prosecuting.

Our children are going to pay a heavy price for the fiscal insanity that has already led to national debt in excess of $17 billion.

Obama-National-DebtThe increase in our national debt over the past 25 years. years has been mind-boggling. In 1990, it was $3.2 billion, in 2000 $5.7 billion. By 2010 it was $13.6 billion. Now it has leaped to $17.5 billion.

But Democrats, in the spirit of “see no evil”, want to keep the issue under wraps and focus on other things. During a February 2014 House Financial Services Committee hearing, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) even complained about two real-time running national debt clock displays in the hearing room. Ellison said it was just intended to send an ideological message.

Obama says his FY2015 budget proposal is an “opportunity agenda”. Yes, an opportunity for $564 billion more debt, an opportunity to increase total national debt to nearly $25 trillion over the next 10 years and an opportunity to pander to Americans who want it all without paying for it.

As Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said, Obama’s budget is a declaration that “deficits don’t matter, debt doesn’t matter, and that reality itself doesn’t matter.”

Some Democrats are arguing that annual deficits are dropping, so we can all back off worrying about the problem.

But the most recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) budget forecast projects that after a few years of lower deficits they’ll climb again for an indefinite period. In addition, the national debt will increase annually by much more than the amount of the deficit because a considerable amount of federal borrowing is not counted in the budget.

As a result, the CBO projects $7.9 trillion will be added to the nation’s cumulative public debt over the next decade.

That’s because revenue will keep up with economic growth, but spending will grow even more. “Spending is boosted by the aging of the population, the expansion of federal subsidies for health insurance, rising health care costs per beneficiary, and mounting interest costs on federal debt,” the CBO said.

According to the CBO, interest payments will soon become the third largest item in the federal budget, after Social Security and Medicare. Right now, interest on the debt costs $233 billion. CBO projects that interest costs will reach $880 billion by 2024. As interest costs grow, they could crowd out investment in other priorities, including education, research and development, and other programs that could help our economy grow.

Large and growing federal debt that restrains economic growth will give policymakers less flexibility to respond to unexpected challenges, and eventually increase the risk of a fiscal crisis.

A Peter G. Peterson Foundation survey released on March 25, 2014 concluded that 67 percent of people say their concern about the national debt has increased over the past few years and 79 percent say that addressing the national debt should be among the President and Congress’ top 3 priorities.

And yet, Democrats continue to resist deficit-lowering efforts.

Deficit reduction surged as a policy priority during Obama’s first term: Between 2009 and 2013,  the share citing the deficit as a top priority rose 19 points, according to a January 2014 report from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. In the most recent 2014 survey, majorities of Republicans (80%) and independents (66%) continued to say reducing the budget deficit should be a top priority for the president and Congress, but just 49% of Democrats viewed it as a top priority, the lowest percentage since Obama took office. Going back 20 years, the gap between Republicans and Democrats on the issue has never been as large as it is today, Pew said.

Not exactly a hopeful sign for the emergence of bipartisan cooperation on the issue.

 

 

 

 

by - 0 comments

The Merkley Razzle-Dazzle: Both ways is the way I want it

Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) can’t seem to make up his mind.

In 2012, he voted for a bill to reform the federal flood insurance program, a bill everybody knew would mean higher insurance premiums for property owners to deal with a $24 billion debt the program had built up.

Now he’s portraying himself as a champion of the besieged middle class by lambasting those premium increases and voting to roll them back.

Merkley’s situation is captured perfectly in A.R. Ammons’ terse poem: “One can’t have it both ways
 and both ways is the only way I
 want it.”

Merkley is obviously assuming that Oregonians just don’t know his voting record or have very short memories.

RazzleDazzle

In 2012, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was $24 billion in debt, partly because of big losses associated with damage from hurricanes Sandy and Katrina.The program was widely criticized for its below-market insurance rates and huge losses associated with multiple claims on homes and businesses that had flooded repeatedly.

Merkley voted for a bill designed to improve the program’s solvency by having property owners pay insurance rates that better reflected flood risks and reimbursement costs. The bill became law as PL 112-141 on July 6, 2012.

It was abundantly clear from the get-go that affected property owners were going to have to pay a lot more money for federal flood insurance. “The solvency and debt-reduction requirements imposed…by the 2012 reforms…virtually ensures that premiums will be going up across the board,” said an Association of State Floodplain Managers’ summary of the legislation.

But then Congress started hearing from constituents outraged that their flood insurance premiums were rising, some by hefty amounts.

Merkley responded by adopting the “Give ’em the old Razzle Dazzle” approach, holding a September 2013 Senate hearing that gave him and others an opportunity to vent about problems with the flood insurance reform.

“The flood insurance bill, in combination with flood zone remapping, is delivering a massive financial blow to middle class families,” Merkley said. “This is unacceptable and substantial changes in the program are needed.”

In March 2014, Congress backtracked on the reform law, passing the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act that reversed some rate hikes and capped annual increases.

In a March 18, 2014 e-newsletter to his constituents, Merkley called the 2012 flood insurance reform law (that he had voted for) “misguided” and said he’d been hard at work to fix the huge rate increases resulting from it. Didn’t he understand what was in the 2012 legislation when he voted for it? If not, why did he vote for a bill he didn’t understand?

President Obama signed the rollback bill on March 21, 2014, even though his administration had argued in January that abandoning the 2012 reforms would “further erode the financial position of the NFIP.”

Members of Congress from both parties and around the country fell all over themselves in an effort to celebrate and take credit for the rollback of the 2012 reforms.

But negative reaction was also swift. “The new legislation will perpetuate a broken system by keeping premiums unrealistically low, encouraging coastal communities to continue to build — and rebuild — in high flood-risk areas, exposing them to growing risks and costs,” said Rachel Cleetus, an economist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It makes no sense for taxpayers to continue to subsidize flood insurance in high-risk areas that are only going to become riskier with rising seas and worsening storm surges.”

The rollback of the flood insurance hikes may take the heat off Congress for now, but it will have to tackle the issues again because the program’s debt problems have not been fixed. But, hey, that’s for another Congress to worry about.

by - 0 comments

If all you want is clicks, open a porn site

The Oregonian plans to tie reporter’s performance evaluations and pay to the number of online page views of their stories. The goal, according to a presentation made to reporters, is to increase both total unique page views and page views in particular sections, such as sports, entertainment and business.

If all a site is seeking is page views, it might as well just shift to porn. After all, that’s where the real traffic is.

Even though The Oregonian will be joining a growing list of news sites using content metrics to influence coverage, pay and performance, great peril lies ahead.

DangerWillRobinson

It used to be that a newspaper story’s readership and impact were hard to measure. The paper knew its paid circulation and where its subscribers lived, but whether the general audience, or specific key influencers, were reading particular stories and getting engaged in them was a mystery.

Digital journalism has changed all that. Now a news organization can measure precisely the web traffic a particular story generates, allowing the readership of individual reporters and the appeal of certain types of stories to be measured.

In the new dynamic, reporting is being evaluated following the principles of crowdfunding, where success is measured by how much money your online pitch attracts.

The problem, however, is that popularity at an online news site isn’t necessarily the equivalent of quality. A digital story on a celebrity, accompanied by an amusing picture and a reader quiz, might attract a lot of hits, or be great “click bait” as the online world says, but that doesn’t mean it was worth doing.

Equally, a well-written deeply researched story on damaging political chicanery might draw page views only from a small number of public policy aficionados, putting the reporter at a disadvantage in the pay and performance sweepstakes.

There’s no doubt that audience metrics are valuable, and are going to play an increasingly important role in helping traditional newspapers survive. The issue is whether they will be used wisely and to the public good.

As Raju Narisetti, senior vice president, strategy, for News Corp. said recently in a Poynter.org piece, “Editors continue to have a key gatekeeper role to play even in this era of promiscuous audiences, even when they need to become gate-openers. Part of that is exercising good judgment. And if we didn’t do that, stories on Syria, the U.S. fiscal cliff and even the NSA wouldn’t continue to get the play they currently get on our home pages, especially if such decisions were purely based on following cues from reader-engagement metrics.”

Click-based news also doesn’t necessarily translate into public attention. Tony Haile the CEO of Chartbeat, a data analytics company, recently argued in Time.com that more sophisticated measurement of reader engagement is necessary. What’s critical to understand, he said, is a reader’s attention. “… writers living in the Attention Web are creating real stories and building an audience that comes back,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

by - 0 comments

Merkley’s money: what a difference a term makes

HandsOut

Things are different now.

When Democrat Jeff Merkley first ran for the U.S. Senate in 2008, he raised a total of $6,512,231.

Now that he’s a Senator, he’s already reported raising $6,286,013 for his reelection and the 2014 race, in theory, hasn’t even begun. The Republicans haven’t even chosen who will run against him.

That means Merkley’s total haul is likely to go much higher as individuals, special interests and Democratic Party funds ramp up their donations to keep him in office.

The two parties are in a no-holds-barred struggle for control of the Senate, where pollsters and analysts think the Republicans have a shot at taking control with a good showing in the November 2014 elections. Merkley isn’t often mentioned as being in a high-risk race, but then former Senator Gordon Smith wasn’t thought to be vulnerable early on either.

With 5 years as a U.S. Senator now behind him, the sources of Merkley’s donations are shifting. A smaller share is coming from individual contributors and twice as much from political action committees (PACs). Also, more unions are stepping up as big contributors, his big donors have less of an Oregon focus and Merkley isn’t having to dig into his own pocket.

merkleySenate

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, contributions to Merkley’s campaign committee for his 2008 campaign and for his 2014 campaign as of Dec. 31, 2013 break down as follows:

Screen Shot 2014-03-26 at 10.18.34 PM

For his 2008 Senate race, Merkley’s largest 10 contributors (individuals and PACs) to his campaign committee were:

JStreetPAC $78,180
Council for a Livable World $55,889
State of Oregon employees $35,050
Oregon Health & Science University $33,964
Moveon.org $26,731
Stoel, Rives et al $23,323
League of Conservation Voters $21,500
Intel Corporation $17,920
Newmark Knight Frank $17,300
Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $17,200

The largest contributor to his 2008 campaign, Washington, D.C-based JStreetPAC, makes contributions to candidates who support a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine and robust American military aid to Israel. “I am and will continue to be a staunch supporter of the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel,” Merkley said during his 2008 campaign.“I will always seek to ensure its strength and foster its growth.”

The second largest contributor to his 2008 campaign, Council for a Livable World, is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to reducing the danger of nuclear weapons. Merkley subsequently voted in 2010 for a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia and in February 2014, Merkley and Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) introduced legislation that would cut $100 billion over the next decade from the U.S. nuclear weapons budget.

The bill, S. 2070, would shut down all U.S. missile defense activities, reduce from 12 to eight the number of SSBN(X) ballistic-missile submarines that are set to replace the retiring Ohio-class fleet and limit to eight the number of Ohio-class submarines that can currently be fielded. The bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Armed Services where its languishing.

The largest 10 contributors (individuals and PACs) to Merkley’s campaign committee for his 2014 race as of the end of 2013 are significantly different, with much less of an Oregon focus:

Votesane PAC $31,250
Thornton & Naumes $25,000
Intel Corporation $22,050
Honeywell Intl. $20,000
Operating Engineers Union $20,000
Intl. Association of Firefighters $18,500
Blue Cross/Blue Shield $17,100
League of Conservation Voters $15,314
American Crystal Sugar $15,000
Communications Workers of America $15,000

Votesane PAC, a non-partisan channel for political donations, has funneled $1.6 million to candidates in the 2014 election cycle, with almost all of it going to Democrats.

The only union showing up in Merkley’s list of top 10 contributors for his 2008 race was the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers at $17,200. Three unions show up as his biggest contributors for the 2014 race so far with a total of $53,500.

Also making their debut as major Merkley contributors are individuals from Thornton & Naumes, a Boston, Mass. law firm with class action expertise that has represented people claiming they were victims of asbestos and toxic exposure, defective products, financial fraud, and personal injury accidents.. Law firms and lawyers have been the top contributors to Merkley’s 2014 campaign as of Dec. 31, 2013, donating a total of $296,363.

This only reveals, of course, donations up the end of 2013. Expect a lot of shifts as the campaign progresses.

Merkley has already spent $3,045,241, or almost half, of the funds he’s raised since 2008. Recently, the largest single amount has gone to Mandate Media,a Portland-based internet strategy,services,and advertising firm specializing in progressive political candidates and advocacy organizations. Mandate is also associated with BlueOregon, a widely distributed progressive e-newsletter.

The top 5 recipients of the campaign’s recent expenditures were:

Mandate Media $200,485
CHS Mailing $141,305
Kauffman Group $125,163
Linemark Printing $ 71,639
Benenson Strategy Group $ 47,000

It’s important to recognize that much of the money now being spent on campaigns is so-called independent expenditures, spending by groups and individuals who claim they are not coordinating their activities with a candidate’s campaign committee.

In Merkley’s 2008 race, for example, according to FindTheBest, the following outside groups spent about $675,000 in support of his candidacy:

Committee Amount

Service Employees International
Union Committee on Political Education
(SEIU Cope) $430,238
League of Conservation Voters Inc. $145,317
Democratic Senatorial Committee $ 47,746
League of Conservation Voters
Action Fund $ 40,862
Moveon.org Political Action $ 7,026

It’s likely that similarly large amounts of independent expenditures will occur in the 2014 race.

Data sources: The Center for Responsive Politics (http://www.opensecrets.org), a non-profit, non-partisan research group based in Washington, D.C.; FindTheBest (www.findthebest.com; http://bit.ly/1nYKKSA),a network of for-profit websites connected to help consumers and businesses make informed decisions.

merkleySenate