May 31, 2006

Getting It

WKRN's Brittney Gilbert sez... "The Tennessean doesn't know a blog from a hole in the ground."

That's partly true. Some of their reporters know blogs very well, and read them, and even get story ideas from them. But "The Tennessean" itself seems not to yet "get" the blogosphere in a meaningful way. I'd be happy to teach them (or any newspaper, for that matter). And not just about how to truly maximize text blogs both by staffers and by tapping into the Nashville-area blogosphere, but by incorporating other "citizen's media" tools and trends.

The reality of the news business in the modern era is that, via blogs and related technologies, a newspaper like The Tennessean can much more rapidly add a digital video component to its news-gathering and news-distribution than a TV news operation like, say, WKRN, could add a print component. That's because it's much less expensive for a newspaper to produce and publish web video than it would be for a TV news channel to launch a printed news publication.

When The Tennessean decides to get serious about the blogosphere and the new era of news production and distribution enabled by cheap digital technologies, it can blow the competition away in a matter of months. The competition is no doubt hoping The Tennessean never realizes this.

Class Act

Not long after WKRN General Manager Mike Sechrist announced on his blog a reshuffling of anchors at Nashville's third-place news channel, commenters on his blog started blasting the changes, often with juvenile or rude language, and often anonymously. One common comment slam: the changes split up the morning anchor team of husband-and-wife Neil and Heather Orne, with Neil moving to evening anchors.

John Dwyer, WKRN's sports director who is moving to anchor the morning news, posted some thoughts on his own rather excellent blog, DwyerWire, about the changes - and about the angry, often anonymous, comments being posted on the blogs about the changes at WKRN. In one post, Dwyer wrote:

I will be off next week and start the morning show Monday, June 12th. I have received some very kind calls and I thank you. The"blog-o-sphere" has also produced some mean spirited responses to the anchor moves. Disagreeing and listing your points is one thing. Name calling is for six-year olds. This technology is an interesting way to interact with viewers but it also has its drawbacks. I'm never a fan of anonymous posting. I think it's gutless. But it's going to happen and I just have to accept it.

As this prospective move was being considered, I took Neil's temperature about it. As you may know, he's co-anchored with his wife Heather for several years. They enjoy the same schedule. With Neil moving to the 6pm and 10pm newscasts, they will be two ships in the night. I needed Neil's blessing before this could proceed. Neil assured me that this was okay. Now, you may be saying, "Well, what do you expect him to say? He's such a nice guy, even if he had a problem with it he wouldn't tell you."

Not true.

Neil and I go back 10-years and I trust what he says. He has a new challenge in front of him and embraces it. This is a new chapter in his life both professionally and personally. Heather and Neil are class people and I'm sure have weighed the variables of an opposite schedule. I trust them that they welcome me to the morning.

TN GOP: Bredesen Should Veto 'Incumbent Protection Bill'

Measure Takes Away Voters' Rights
NASHVILLE - The Tennessee Republican Party today called on Governor Phil Bredesen to veto a bill passed by the General Assembly that would make it extremely difficult for write-in candidates to be on the ballot in the November 7th elections.

"Governor Phil Bredesen has a duty to protect the freedoms of Tennessee voters and veto the so-called incumbent protection bill passed by the General Assembly this past weekend," said Tennessee Republican Party chairman Bob Davis.

The bill greatly increases the amount of votes a write-in candidate must have to be placed on the ballot in the general election. Currently, a candidate must get five percent of those voting in their respective primary. Under the new bill, a candidate must get five percent of all registered voters in their district.

It also mandates that write-in candidates must notify the election commission 50 days before the election, instead of the existing 20 day notice requirement.

"This bill exemplifies bad government," said Davis. "It takes away the safeguards in place to challenge an incumbent lawmaker who may have lost their way. I encourage constituents to call the governor and express their disapproval with this amendment that blatantly takes away their rights."

Historically, write-in candidates have been placed on the ballot after controversial votes in the legislature like the state income tax.

Governor Bredesen can be reached at his office at 615-741-2001.

Fordination

The New York Times has a story today on the race in Tennessee for the U.S. Senate, and why Democrats have their hopes pinned on U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr.

Nashville Government Seized Private Property for Condos

A year ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its controversial Kelo decision which empowers state and local governments to use eminent domain to seize private property in order to give it to a private developer to redevelop, for essentially any reason the government deems necessary, some observers said post-Kelo reforms to Tennessee's eminent domain laws weren't necessary because eminent domain wasn't abused in Tennessee. But today's Nashville City Paper has a report on a Nashville man whose property was indeed seized by government and handed over to a private developer, short-circuiting the property owner's own attempt to redevelop the property himself. And the property wasn't taken for a "public use" - a new school or a road, for example - which is the nomal reason for eminent domain.

The property was seized so a private developer could build condos.

This happened in 2001, before the Kelo decision. Eminent domain WAS abused in Tennessee before Kelo. It WILL be abused more in the wake of the Kelo decision. And the legislature did virtually nothing about it in the last session.

For more BillHobbs.com postings on Kelo, click here.

Tennessean Spotlights Naifeh's Last-Minute Legislative Corruption

Tennessean reporter Trent Seibert follows up the blogosphere with a good report on the legislature's last-minute passage of a legislative pension increase and an incumbent-protection bill, and even mentions how House Speaker Jimmy Soprano Naifeh violated House rules to get the latter passed.

As the clock ticked into the final minutes of Tennessee's legislative session late Saturday, lawmakers voted on two issues that helped themselves, rather than voters: They increased their pension benefits and made it more difficult for opponents to get on the ballot.

These two pieces of legislation were among the last two voted on, lost among a blizzard of hurried votes and last-minute legislation that flew across lawmakers' desks as the deadline neared for members of the General Assembly to go home.

Some are saying that House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, who oversees the state House of Representatives, played fast and loose with the voting rules to push through the last-minute legislation.

"If it's good legislation, why do they hide it and do it at the last minute?" said Steve Gill, morning talk show host on Nashville's WWTN 99.7-FM. He said callers who had seen the actions on the House floor were appalled. "It's particularly shameful to see what amounts to a third world country dictatorship on display in the state legislature," he said.

Naifeh allowed lawmakers to push the buttons of colleagues who sit next to them in the House chamber - colleagues who were not in the chamber or who had already left because the session was wrapping up, according to Rep. Chris Clem, R-Lookout Mountain. That's normally allowed for uncontroversial votes, but Clem - noting that about 30 members were missing from the chamber - tried to get Naifeh's attention to make sure the strict voting rule was called for on the bill that toughened the candidate requirements. "He promptly ignored me," Clem said.

Clem said he does not know if he could have stopped the bill since the strict rules were adhered to, but said, "Thirty people weren't in the chamber."

Naifeh, a Democrat, did not return a call left Tuesday at his Covington home.

House Minority Leader Bill Dunn called on Gov. Phil Bredesen on Tuesday to veto the bill that he described as the "incumbent protection bill."

A call left with Bredesen's spokeswoman went unanswered Tuesday.

"It was right at the last minute," Dunn said. "This is not good government, and it gives us a bad name."

Update: The Nashville City Paper reports on the legislator pension increase, but not the incumbent protection bill.

Update: The pension increase legislation was sponsored by state Rep. Charles Sargent, R-Franklin. I live in Franklin, but not in Sargent's district. If I lived in his district I'd be considering mounting a write-in campaign against him. If his legislator pals hadn't changed the rules to make that virtually impossible.

May 30, 2006

Naifeh Corruption Confirmed

The corrupt methods by which Tennessee House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh rammed an incumbent protection bill through the House in the final hours of the legislative session Friday have now been confirmed by multiple sources, including state Rep. Chris Clem, state Rep. Stacey Campfield, and Knoxville News Sentinel reporter Tom Humphrey, who mentioned it in the Sunday edition...

Rep. Chris Clem, R-Signal Mountain, charged that "at least 10" of the yes votes were cast for members not actually in the chamber at the time and that House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh had improperly failed to invoke a rule mandating that members be in their seats to vote. A quick and tentative count by a reporter raised the possibility that six legislators voting yes did not appear to still be in the chamber about the time of the vote. Also, it appeared at least three listed as voting no were not present.

I am seeking to identify at least five lawmakers who raised their hands to call for the Rule, to prove that Naifeh brought the incumbent protection bill to a floor vote improperly.

Because the legislature adjourned sine die, it's a done deal. Except...

Now the spotlight must shift to Gov. Phil Bredesen, who can reject Naifeh's corrupt method of operating the House by vetoing the incumbent protection bill. If Bredesen doesn't veto the bill, then we know two things about the incumbent governor: 1. He doesn't care if the House Speaker breaks the rules to pass legislation. 2. He wants to make it harder for write-in challengers to get on the ballot.

UPDATE: David Oatney has a good commentary on the event.

Visit Nashville

The New York Times has a nice travel primer on Nashville. The Where to Eat section made me hungry.

Tennessee Ranks High in Public Corruption

Tennessee is one of the most politically corrupt states in the nation, according to a study, Corruption in America, by two Harvard University economists, based on the number of federal convictions of corrupt public officials. The data is pre-Operation Tennessee Waltz - so our ranking is likely to rise! The Harvard economists' study looks at the relationship between public corruption, education and income levels, and ethnic diversity.

The benefits of corruption come from government actors being able to allocate resources, including the right to bypass certain regulations, to private individuals. As such, the benefits to a political actor from being corrupt should be increasing in the size of government and in the individual's discretion over government actions. Greater numbers of regulations also increase the opportunities for helping private actors evade these regulations, therefore increasing the possibilities for bribe taking. The size of the economy can increase the returns to bypassing regulations or to corrupting the legal system.

The Harvard economists say that "ethnic heterogeneity increases corruption" because, "as voters become more diverse along ethnic or income lines, then voting will inevitably focus on redistribution rather than on the honesty of government officials."

You can read it here in a 26-page PDF file.

Immigration Non-Reform

Donna Locke of Tennesseans for Immigration Control and Reform sends along this summary of what the state legislature did - or, I should say, didn't do - to combat illegal immigration. Locke also updates progress - or lack thereof - at the national level.

The state legislative session has ended. Apparently only one immigration-related bill we supported was passed: HB 0111, the public contracts bill.

Not even the Democrats' version of the highway-patrol-immigration-enforcement bill was passed.

Toward the end of the session, some legislators tried to amend other bills in order to get some of the items we want. Those efforts failed, along party lines reportedly. In other words, the Democrats killed them. But the Republicans are not without fault in these bill failures.

A number of Republican state lawmakers and a few Democratic lawmakers worked hard to get some of these bills passed. Those who worked hardest by sponsoring and talking up the bills we want are:

Rep. Donna Rowland - R, Rep. Tom DuBois - R, Sen. Mark Norris - R, Sen. Bill Ketron - R, Rep. Curry Todd - R, Rep. Dolores Gresham - R, Rep. Gary Moore - D, Sen. Joe Haynes - D, Rep. Frank Buck - D, Rep. Debra Young Maggart - R, Sen. Doug Jackson - D, Sen. Don McLeary - R

They had some backup, but they were the primary sponsors of the hard-hitting immigration-related state bills.

On the federal level, don't be fooled by Sen. Lamar Alexander's vote against the bad Senate bill, S. 2611.

Lamar Alexander actually supports the bad stuff in the bill. He's made that clear for some time. He found something to quibble about and voted against the final bill, but he has sided with the amnesty/guest-worker/increased-immigration folks for a long time. That's why he has a D grade from Americans for Better Immigration. Alexander voted to invoke cloture on the bill before he voted against the final bill. Invoking cloture cuts off debate on the bill.

As one of the folks in the movement put it:

"If you've expressed gratitude to your senators for voting NO on S. 2611, you may have missed a sneaky trick they pulled along with my Senator Jon Kyl (AZ).

Check how they voted on cloture of 2611 -- they voted YES to bring the bill to a Senate floor vote rather than filibuster it and let it die. The 10 senators who voted YES on cloture and then 'flip-flopped' to vote NO on S. 2611 (as Alexander did -- D.L.) knew that the bill would pass a Senate floor vote. So if they were REALLY opposed to amnesty, why didn't they vote NO on cloture as real patriots did -- Jeff Sessions, Ernest Inhofe, Byron Dorgan, Robert Byrd and the rest.

These 10 senators voted to let it go for a floor vote because they really wanted S. 2611 to pass -- there's just no other explanation! Then they played good cop, bad cop and tried to recover their 'anti' image by voting NO on passage, well aware that their NO vote was just symbolic.

If you really oppose a bill that is expected to pass, you'll do anything possible to prevent a floor vote, and cloture would have been the obvious way."

On the state and federal levels, our cause would be best served by voting out as many Democrats as possible -- unless the person is a Democrat truly committed to our cause -- and voting into office real Republicans. The "real" part is the catch.

It's a good bill.

But it's the only thing the legislature did about illegal immigration this year, and it's not nearly enough.

I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't be best served by simply voting out every incumbent in every local, state and federal office every few years, regardless of party. On the illegal immigration issue, it's become painfully obvious that the current crop of politicians isn't going to do the right thing, and that, if we picked 100 senators at random by grabbing two ordinary American adults out of line at a Wal-Mart in each state, we'd be more likely to get a secure border and illegal immigration under control.

May 29, 2006

One Final Day of Naifeh's Corruption

State Rep. Chris Clem, R-Lookout Mountain, who is not seeking re-election to his House District 27 seat, reflects on his last day in the state legislature - a day that saw House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh violate chamber rules and use corrupt methods to ram through two bills, one greatly raising legislators' pensions and the other making it more difficult for challengers to unseat incumbents.

This "Incumbent Protection Bill" was the final bill. We debated it for hours. The Democrats did not have the votes to pass it in either chamber. Finally, around 8 p.m. they were able to pass this bill in the Senate. They moved it to the House. I attempted to call for "the Rule." "The Rule" simply requires all members to sit in their chair and not push the vote button for anyone else. In other words, only members sitting in their chair should vote while under "the Rule."

I realized that 10 members were not in the chamber. Six of them had gone home and were no longer in Nashville. Democrat Speaker Jimmy Naifeh refused to recognize me and allow me to call for "the Rule." Republicans then objected to calling for a vote. We raised the required five hands. Naifeh claimed he saw no hands. He then allowed the vote.

In order to pass there must be 50 votes. The bill received 58 votes. Ten of the members who voted for the Incumbent Protection Bill were not even in the chamber when someone voted for them. Six of the 10 were not even in Nashville. Ironically, if I had been allowed to call for "the Rule" then the Incumbent Protection Bill would have fallen two votes short of passage.

That is how the legislature spent most of the final day. We had passed the budget on Friday. We came back an extra day in order to give us more money and prevent write-in candidates from qualifying against us. I will miss fighting against such corruption.

Naifeh is a blight on the people of Tennessee.

Neither the legislator pension increase nor the incumbent protection bill become law if Gov. Bredesen were to veto them. Given they were passed improperly, he should veto them. I doubt he will.

May 28, 2006

Wilder Days Ahead

The good news: State Sen. John Wilder, D-Mason, probably won't be lieutenant governor and Speaker of the state senate much longer. The bad news: there's a plausible scenario by which he's replaced by a quasi-Republican who gets the job by colluding with Democrats.

Your Tax Dollars at Dinner

In today's Tennessean, Trent Seibert reveals the extent to which lobbyists still wine, dine state legislature.

Surprised? You shouldn't be. Because the Tennessee legislature, in crafting its "ethics reform" legislation, made sure that it continued to be okay for lobbyists representing special interests to wine and dine legislators. Because the legislature likes to be wined and dined for free by lobbyists representing special interests.

The ethics law requires the lobbyist to invite all 132 members of the legislature, not just one or a handful. That particular requirement actually gives special-interest groups an advantage over Joe Citizen because the special interest groups are more likely able to afford steak and drinks for 132 legislators than is Joe Citizen.

That's "ethics reform" as brought to you by the Tennessee General Assembly: more steak and wine for them, less influence for you.

And worst of all, as The Tennessean reveals, some of the special interest groups wining and dining legislators are "groups that are funded by taxpayer dollars, including one state agency, and the state School Boards Association, which receives funds and dues from county school systems."

Think about that for a second. Your tax dollars are funding government agencies to lobby the legislature for more of your tax dollars, while the 132-or-none rule prevents you from buying a cheeseburger for your state legislator while you ask him or her to please return some of the state's huge tax revenue surplus to you in the form of a reduced sales tax on your own groceries.

It's enough to make you lose your lunch.

May 27, 2006

Open and Shut

Tennessee's laws regarding open public meetings and public records are badly in need of modernizing. Everyone knows this. Still, the legislature couldn't come up with enough support to do so. Instead they created a study committee in order to delay doing the right thing. Then they went ended the session and went home. But not before passing legislation designed to make it harder for challengers to get on the ballot.

$52 Million Pickup

Wow. Just wow.

An assembly of news organizations banded together yesterday to give $52 million to the Newseum, the museum dedicated to the news business. Charles L. Overby, chairman and CEO of the Freedom Forum and the Newseum, said the gift was one of the largest combined media gifts in history.

At a news conference in the unfinished building on Pennsylvania Avenue, the eight donors were introduced as the founding partners of the enterprise. Spaces throughout the $435 million, 250,000-square-foot museum will be named for the organizations and media families.

The New York Times and Ochs Sulzberger family, and News Corp., the empire of Rupert Murdoch, each gave $10 million. Other donors are the family of H.M. "Hank" Greenspun, late founder of the Las Vegas Sun, $7 million; NBC Universal, $5 million; Time Warner, $5 million; Hearst Corp., $5 million; ABC News/Walt Disney Co., $5 million; and the Pulliam family, descendants of Eugene C. Pulliam, whose publishing empire included the Indianapolis Star and Arizona Republic, $5 million.

I never got to visit the first Newseum when it was open, though I got a tour of it after it closed - but before it was dismantled - thanks to Mr. Overby, who I'm pleased to say happens to be my father-in-law. The new $435 million Newseum promises to be spectacular.

The Newseum gift will go toward a $100 million capital campaign, said Overby, and the remainder of the $435 million will come from the Freedom Forum foundation. The forum, founded in 1991 by Gannett chief Allen Neuharth, operated the first Newseum in Rosslyn. That closed in 2002 in preparation for the new facility. It had about 2.25 million visitors in five years.

The new seven-level building, to open in fall 2007, will have three times as much exhibition space. The Pennsylvania Avenue side is basically glass, a metaphor for the belief that the press is a "window on the world." A byproduct promises to be postcard-perfect views of the Capitol.

A huge 74-foot-high tablet, made from 50 tons of Tennessee marble, will be carved with the 45 words of the First Amendment.

"Someone suggested that members of Congress will have to see it whether they want to or not," said Newseum President Peter Prichard.

Odd Thing

It was an odd thing that happened to me this morning. I was standing on my driveway at about 11:30 a.m. Suddenly, a shower of pebbles of glass sprayed on and around me. The rear driver's side window on my car had shattered, exploding outward. Nothing hit the window. Repeat, nothing hit the window. No neighborhood kid smashed it with a baseball, nothing fell from the sky and hit it, nobody's Toro kicked up a stone. The window of a ten-year-old car just shattered outward, as if there was too much pressure inside the car.

Very odd.

Update: I've been told that excessive heat build-up inside a car can build up pressure that shatters a window. It was in the 80s when it happened, but the sun was shining directly on the window that exploded - and it was very hot inside the car.

GlassDoctor: $205.64 plus tax.

Newspapers Seek Remedies for Dying Business Model

American Journalism Review looks at all the different ways that newspaper companies are trying to stem the precipitous decline in circulation.

As the Internet gains popularity, analysts suggest it's unlikely that many of those students will eventually take up the newspaper habit. Indeed, with PDAs and cell phones offering news, it seems more reasonable to conclude that the trend away from newspapers will continue. A Scarborough report released in April refers to this as the gathering momentum of the "integrated newspaper audience" - a new metric that measures the combined audience of a newspaper's print and Web readers.

The web is changing some papers' views of what goes on the front page, too...

While there's no concerted effort to reduce the "yesterday" leads, the Internet has accelerated the Times' efforts to make page one fresher, [New York Times Assistant Managing Editor for News Richard] Berke says. "We haven't settled on the perfect formula yet because we don't know what it is," he says. "We want to be current and fresh and distinctive but don't want to overreact when we still sell over a million copies of the newspaper every day."

[New York Times] Executive Editor [Bill] Keller addressed the issues in an online chat in April. The Times, he said, thinks that "stories about how we live often outweigh stories about what happened yesterday. We think it's okay to include in our front-page portfolio something that is fun, human, or just wonderfully written. It's part science, part art, with a little serendipity."

He continued: "The notion of a Page 1 story, in fact, has evolved over the years, partly in response to the influence of other media. When a news event has been on the Internet and TV and news radio all day long, do we want to put that news on our front page the next morning? Maybe we do, if we feel our reporting and telling of it goes deeper than what has been available elsewhere. But if the factual outline - the raw information - is widely available, sometimes we choose to offer something else that plays to our journalistic advantages: a smart analysis of the events, a vivid piece of color from the scene, a profile of one of the central figures, or a gripping photograph that captures the impact of an event, instead of a just-the-facts news story."

"Newspapers" just need to remember that they're in the news business rather than the paper business. One day they won't print the news on paper at all. Some because they're out of business, others because they embraced the digitally converged online future.

May 26, 2006

State Senate Fails the People On Eminent Domain Reform

Joe Lance of TennesseeTicket.com has written an excellent essay on how the state legislature decided not to give the people of Tennessee any real protection against governmental abuse of its eminent domain power in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's Kelo decision. Kelo essentially empowers governments to seize private property for any reason. You can read Lance's essay at both TennesseeTicket.com and Chattanooga Pulse. The sad truth is not one member of the state Senate had the courage to stand up for private property rights over governmental power. Not one.

You can read everything I've written about the Kelo decision here.

Franklin Skyline

The steeple of the Franklin Cumberland Presbyterian Church that was blown off in a storm in 1908 was replaced yesterday. For 98 years it looked like this.

A Year Later, Two Still Dance

Ford, Newton, Crutchfield, Bowers

A year after the Tennessee Waltz arrests of four state legislators for allegedly accepting bribes, two of these four legislators - state Sen. Ward Crutchfield, D-Chattanooga, and state Sen. Kathryn Bowers, D-Memphis - are still in office. The only Republican legislator indicted, former state Rep. Chris Newton, R-Cleveland, resigned and is the only one of the four so far who has admitted guilt. Former state Sen. John Ford, D-Memphis, resigned but claims he's not guilty, although released video tape shows him accepting bribes.

The Tennessean has a nice look back today at the arrests and their ongoing impact on the legislature and state politics.

Good News From Nashville

Just two days ago while my family and I were eating at a Texas Roadhouse restaurant, I lamented that Texana Grille had closed ... seven years ago. I look in the digital paper this morning and it has reopened, seven years later, in the same location. With the same owner, management and menu. Excellent.

Er, apparently I'd have known Texana Grill was returning a month ago if I read The Rage.

Politician Launches Fresh Attack on Blogs

U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, is an enemy of free speech. Allen is launching a new attack on political bloggers with the renewed threat of regulation under the Stifle Free Speech Act Campaign Finance Reform act even after the Federal Election Commission rightly exempted blogs from regulation under that law. That's just one nugget in a long report on the growing role of blogs in political campaigns, from the Lakeland, Fla., Ledger. More here from the National Journal's Beltway Blogroll and RedState.org.

May 25, 2006

Alphabet Song, The Abridged Version

More fun with digital audio

Legislature Passes Tax Relief Over Governor's Objection

Tenneseee taxpayers would get two "sales tax holidays" in the next year, under budget plans nearing final approval in the state legislature, reports the Tennessean:

Tennesseans would have not one but two sales tax "holidays" on items such as clothes, school supplies and computers in a $26 billion state budget headed to the House today for approval. The holidays would allow purchase of the items free of sales tax during the first weekend in August and a yet-to-be determined weekend next spring.

"There's some people that felt strongly because the state is having a good year we should give some of that money back to taxpayers," state Finance Commissioner Dave Goetz said.

The best part of the Tennessean story: They got the facts right about the state's large revenue surplus. Instead of repeating the Bredesen administration's misleadling rhetoric about the state having a surplus of between $37 million and $88 million, the Tennessean reported:

The state is expecting approximately $300 million in revenue surplus over budget projections this fiscal year, which ends June 30.

UPDATE: The Nashville City Paper puts the amount of excess tax revenues at "roughly $400 million.", which may be a little high but still is much closer to the truth than the Bredesen administration's deceptive use of the $37 million to $88 million figure.

AP Gets Blog-Friendly

The Associated Press has done a deal with Technorati, the blog-search service. AP stories that appear on the websites of the 440 AP members that subscribe to the AP's Hosted Custom News Web product will show a module featuring the "Top Five Most Blogged About" articles. Readers can click on a story and see a Technorati.com search page listing blogs that are writing about the story.

"Blogger voices will now be heard in several hundred local online news organizations," said Technorati's chairman, Peter Hirshberg. "I believe that this is a deep validation of the power of citizen media."

Cross-posted from the Mesh Media Strategies blog.

May 24, 2006

Storm of Lies

Most everything the media told you about Hurricane Katrina was wrong. But of course, the media's intention wasn't to get the story right. It was to slam President Bush. More here, here, and here.

At least bloggers got the bus story right.

Socialized Entrepreneurship

Dr. Jeff Cornwall is writing a lot these days about "socialized entrepreneurship," - essentially, government using public funds to seed entrepreneurial ventures. His first post, about Chile's foray in socialized entrepreneurship, drew a comment from the Chilean coordinator of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor program. Follow-up posts look at Ireland, and even the U.S., where 44 state governments are trying to become venture capitalists. That last post cites a report from the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds, which "surveyed every state in the nation to identify state venture capital programs." The report doesn't mention Tennessee as being among the 44 states that are taking tax dollars and investing them in business start-ups. The report does say this:

"The states believe their programs are working."

No government bureaucrat in charge of handing out money to fund new businesses to generate jobs and economic growth is going to say it isn't working, lest the program be axed and he lose his very fun job. But, as Cornwall says, "Studies have clearly shown that governmental efforts to guide investment have little long-term economic impact. Markets create sustainable economic growth, not bureaucrats."

Fun With Digital Audio

Here's a little something to brighten your day, from my little boy.

On the Verizon

A few days ago I mentioned here that I was having trouble getting decent web-surfing speed on the new Wireless AirCard from Cingular that I'd installed on my laptop PC. Here's an update: It's still slow. So, today, in a local Circuit City hunting something else, I stopped by the Verizon kiosk and asked about the speed of their wireless broadband cards. I wasn't planning on getting one right away - after all, I still have the Cingular card, which cost $200 (with a $100 mail-in rebate) and I signed up for two years of unlimited-access service at $59.99 a month, although I can return it in the first 30 days and get my money back and cancel the service agreement.

Because I don't have Verizon cell phone service I wouldn't qualify for Verizon's $59.99 monthly service rate on the Internet card and would have to pay $79.99 a month.

Except ... after hearing about the slow Cingular card, the Verizon rep offered me one of Verizon's wireless cards and the $59.99 monthly rate. Oh, and he gave me the wireless card. For free. And, as per Verizon's standard agreements, I can cancel the deal within 14 days if I don't like the service.

I do like the service. Although the Cingular rep said Cingular's card was faster than Verizon's, my experience is that the Verizon card is faster, at least around Williamson County, TN. And while the Cingular rep was unable to tell me when Cingular would be rolling out their faster wireless data network to the Nashville market, the Verizon guy was able to tell me that Verizon's Nashville-area data network would be upgraded to a much higher speed in September.

So, for no money, I got the card and 14 days to check out the Verizon service. I also got great customer service. I'm pretty sure the Cingular wireless "AirCard" is going back.

Now, if Verizon just offered "rollover" minutes, I'd be looking to ditch my Cingular phone service as well...

May 23, 2006

Oh, Burn

If, God forbid, your home should catch on fire one day, do you want your local firefighters to be on strike? Of course not. So if you live in Tennessee call your state representative and state senator and urge them to vote against the Professional Fire Department Employees Negotiation Act, a piece of legislation that, quite literally, puts your life and property at increased risk.

The Nashville City Paper reports today that a number of state senators of both parties are moving to exempt their counties from the legislation which, if it passed, would allow fire fighters to unionize. While public-employee unions are in many cases forbidden to go on strike, that doens't mean they don't do it. Remember the air traffic controllers?

The Professional Fire Department Employees Negotiation Act would also "make it unlawful" for a firefighters union in Tennessee to "engage in a strike," but when you read the rest of the legislation you realize the prohibition is nearly toothless:

If a strike occurs, the municipality may ask the chancery court to enjoin the strike. The municipality may dismiss or take other disciplinary action against employees who have participated in a strike, upon a finding by the chancery court that a strike has occurred. The imposition of a penalty because of a strike would never be a negotiable topic for the organization and municipality.

It's bad legislation with potentially disastrously dangerous consequences.

Incidentally, state Sen. Doug Henry, D-Nashville, voted in favor of allowing fire fighters to unionize. He's facing a Democratic primary challenge this year from a union guy. If Sen. Henry survives that challenge, voters of District 21 will still have a chance to oust him in favor of someone who, I'm told, opposes allowing firefighters to unionize - if Bob Krumm wins the GOP nomination.

How Big Is Tennessee's Surplus, Really?

Blogger and future state Sen. Bob Krumm has it figured out and nails the Bredesen administration for its misleading rhetoric. Please donate some money to Krumm's campaign today...

UPDATE: Tennessean reporter Trent Siebert informs me he tried to clear up the confusion over the true size of the surplus but it didn't make it into the edited version of the story in today's paper, headlined Legislators weigh uses for revenue windfall.

The true size of the surplus, by the way, is $226.7 million, with fully three months of revenue collections to go - NOT the "$37 to $88 million" figure the Bredesen administration is misleading the public with. The total revenue surplus for the year - the amount collected over the original budgeted estimate - is likely to top $300 million. Details here.

Voters Won't Vote for Higher Taxes, Will They?

The Tennessean has an editorial today opposing the idea of giving Nashville voters the right to vote on all property tax increases. Acknowledging that the people have the right to amend the city charter with that provision via a petition drive to put the charter change on the November general election ballot, the paper encourages opponents of property tax referendums to prepare to fight the proposal with arguments about "the impact the amendment could have on the police department, fire and ambulance service, garbage pickup, the library system, water services, Metro parks, social services and the courts." The paper's editorial board also worries about "the possibility that Metro voters would never - or only in the face of a dire emergency - approve a property tax increase."

The editorial writers needn't worry about that. And Monday morning I emailed reporter Lee Ann O'Neal, who wrote the paper's two Sunday stories [main, sidebar] about the petition drive, and provided the paper with the facts about the largest ongoing test of whether people will vote for higher taxes and more government spending if given the opportunity. Here is the text of that email:

Lee Ann,

I wrote about your Sunday story about the property tax referendum petition drive, and included some information that you might use in a follow-up about whether people will ever vote to raise their own taxes if given the opportunity.

LINK

Colorado's constitution gives voters there the right to vote on ALL tax increases at the local and county level. They also vote on any proposed increase in government debt, and on spending surplus tax revenue.

As I explained in this research paper published three years ago and extensively updated in September 2005, from November 1993 through November 2004 Colorado voters at the local and county level have faced more than a thousand ballot questions asking their approval for tax increases, debt increases, new taxes and permission to let the government keep and spend surplus revenue.

Anyone who thinks requiring voter approval on tax increases and higher government spending automatically means a "no" vote every time is .. uninformed. In more than a thousand such referenda, Colorado voters said "yes" to higher taxes and more spending more than half of the time.

According to the Colorado Municipal League, voters approved 248 of 459 ballot questions to allow tax increases or new taxes, and rejected 211, a 54 percent approval rate for higher taxes. They also approved debt increases (bond issues) 68 percent of the time, and approved allowing government to spend surplus tax revenue, rather than rebate it to taxpayers, 88 percent of the time.

Yes, giving voters the right to vote on property taxes is a shift from representative democracy to direct democracy on that issue. But it also is a shift toward more participation in government by the people.

If the proposed Nashville charter change is approved by voters and then survives legal challenges, then property tax increases in the future would be proposed by the Metro Council but have to be approved by voters. This would force the Council and the backers of the tax increase to make their case to the people as to why more money was needed.

In the early 1990s, when Colorado voters were considering whether to amend their state constitution to require voter approval of tax increases at the local level, the Rocky Mountain News editorialized against the amendment. But seven years later the paper surveyed the results and changed its mind, saying the provision "strengthens the political process rather than destroys it." The paper continued:

"Shifting responsibility for taxes from politicians to the public hasn't resulted in automatic rejection of every spending plan. But while [the provision] hasn't straitjacketed government, it has accomplished a number of good things. It has heightened interest in elections and government policy; it has given public officials mandates they otherwise would have lacked; it has shrunk voters' sense of helplessness over the use of their hard-earned taxes; and last, but hardly least, it has strengthened the fiscal responsibility of state and local government."

May 22, 2006

Support Campfield

State Rep. Stacey Campfield, the blogging conservative state legislator from Knoxville, is seeking campaign donations from ordinary folk. He very much deserves your support. Do the people of Tennessee a favor and go drop $25 or $50 or $250 in his PayPal campaign tip jar.

Legislators Meet In Secret To Discuss Spending Your Tax Dollars

Legislative leaders from the Tennessee House and Senate met in secret Monday in the office of House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh to discuss the state budget. The Bredesen administration also participated in the secret meeting, which was held after the public meeting of the House Finance Budget Subcommittee. According to the report from the Associated Press, "Deputy Revenue Commissioner Reagan Farr also attended the meeting, even though Gov. Phil Bredesen told reporters Friday that he didn't want anyone from his administration attending a secret meeting."

Why Are They Misleading Media on True Size of Surplus?

NASHVILLE - State officials are continuing to mislead the public via news reports about the true size of the state's tax revenue surplus. In a story in today's Tennessean by Trent Siebert headlined Ideas abound on spending surplus, I found the following:

New state estimates place this year's surplus at around $88 million. That's the rosiest picture. But even the low estimate for the surplus the state will collect by June 30 is $37 million, officials said.

On May 9, the Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration reported that, nine months into the current fiscal year, Tennessee state government already has a revenue surplus of $226.7 million - with yet three more months of revenue collections to go. The F&A press release on May 9 stated:

The revised estimates presented in the new budget document assume an $86 million surplus in sales tax collections, a surplus of $61.6 million in franchise and excise taxes, and a general fund surplus of $177.4 million.

Could it have something to do with the Bredesen administration's opposition to reducing the sales tax on groceries?

Could it have something to do with the Bredesen administration's opposition to Senate Joint Resolution 629, a proposed constitutional amendment that would make it harder for the legislature to break the constitution's cap on the annual growth of state spending?

Or could it be that the Bredesen administration wants the freedom to spend the "unbudgeted dollars" free of legislative oversight when the legislature is out of session?

History suggests the answer is all of the above.

Meanwhile, as today's Nashville City Paper reports, lawmakers are seeking to blow the state's surplus on pet projects and pork. It's worth noting that most of the lawmakers mentioned in the pork-spending story are Democrats, including state Rep. Mike Turner of Old Hickory," who told the City Paper, "We haven't done a lot of good things so far to help people. I hope we can do that with leftover money in the governor's budget."

You can, Rep. Turner. You can vote to use the whole surplus to reduce the sales tax on groceries. There is not one single Tennessee resident whom that would not help.

Spending Cap on Finance Committee Agenda TODAY

UPDATE: The legislation discussed below is essentially dead for the year as its sponsor "took it off notice" today. As you'll understand when you read the rest of this post, that means state Sen. Doug Henry could not be convinced to vote for it. Sen. Henry's likely general-election opponent this year, Bob Krumm, would have voted for it. Do yourself a favor - do the taxpayers of Tennessee a favor - and, after you read this post, go visit BobKrumm.com and donate to his campaign. That's why it also is more important than ever to elect state Sen. Jim Bryson governor this fall. Do yourself a favor - do the taxpayers of Tennessee a favor - and, after you read this post, go visit the Bryson For Governor website and donate to his campaign. Donate liberally, for true fiscal conservatism.

Now, the earlier post...

Senate Joint Resolution 629, which is State Sen. Jim Bryson's proposed constitutional amendment to fix the flaw in the state constitution's cap on the rate of growth of the state budget, is on the agenda of today's meeting of the state Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee. It has been repeatedly deferred.

The bill has 17 Senate sponsors, a majority of the members of the Senate. It has been referred to the Senate Finance, Ways and Means committee. Five of the 11 members of the Finance committee are co-sponsors of Bryson's amendment. It needs six votes. The chairman of the committee is Sen. Doug Henry. It will be interesting to see how he handles SJR 629 now that he is facing real opposition for his re-election.

The current cap allows the legislature to increase spending at the rate of growth of personal income in Tennessee, but also allows them to bust the cap by a simple majority vote. As this research paper shows, the Democratic-led legislature, and governors of both parties - including the current governor - routinely exceed the cap.

Exceeding the cap pushes the budget to a level that is unsustainable in economic downturns without a tax increase. Sen. Bryson's amendment proposes to require the legislature approve breaking the cap by a two-thirds majority, and to otherwise retain surpluses in the state's rainy day fund to be available to offset tax revenue shortfalls in lean economic times - shortfalls that might otherwise cause the legislature to approve "temporary" tax increases that, somehow, never get repealed. Gov. Bredesen is on record opposing spending cap reform.

Incidentally, when Bryson's opponents say his proposal for reforming the constitution's "Copeland Cap" restricting the growth of the state budget to the rate of growth of the state's economy is unworkable, remind them that the Tennessee Tax Structure Study Commission's sixth recommendation said this:

The size of State tax-funded State government should be limited to a percentage of the State's overall economy.

The Commission also said excess revenue should be rebated to taxpayers or deposited in the state's Rainy Day Fund.

Bryson's proposed constitutional amendment would reform the state constitution's existing spending growth cap to require a two-thirds majority vote in the legislature to exceed the cap, which is based on the growth of personal income in the state, a standard measure of economic growth. Excess revenue under Bryson's proposal also would be placed in the reserve fund, and some excess revenue also would be used to reduce and eventually eliminate the sales tax on groceries.

Bryson's proposed amendment recognizes what the Commission fails to admit: that overspending is what leads to budget crises. The Commission's final report said this:

Between 1999 and 2002, Tennessee suffered from significant revenue shortfalls due to the recession that came in the wake of the downturn in the economy.

The truth is this: Between 1999 and 2002, Tennessee suffered from significant revenue shortfalls due to overspending in previous fiscal years in which governors of both parties - including the incumbent - in collusion with the legislature evaded the constitutional cap on the annual year-over-year growth of spending, costing Tennessee taxpayers billions of dollars in current and future taxes.

If the Sundquist administration had lived within the Copeland Cap limits, rather than exceeding it by a combined $1.096 billion, there would have been no revenue shortfall and no need to pass a billion-dollar sales tax increase.

Overspending, not the recession, caused the 1999-2002 state budget fiscal crisis.

Bryson's proposed amendment would fix that flaw. The Tennessee Tax Structure Study Commission endorsed Bryson's basic concept, even though it won't admit the real problem.

There's much more information about SJR 629 here.

May 21, 2006

Good Question

Is Randy Neal, the blogger formerly known as "South Knox Bubba" who know runs KnoxViews.com, pulling a fast one on the readers of today's Knoxville News Sentinel? An inquiring reader wants to know, emailing me the following today:

Is it disingenuous to tout the fact that you are a small business owner supporting the state minimum wage law if you don't employ anyone else except your spouse? You should ask Randy N. He seems quite proud of his op-ed piece in the Knoxville News-Sentinel today

Neal runs some kind of banking software company. He once posted on his blog a picture of his very large house located in one of Knoxville's upscale 'burbs. I doubt very much that Neal pays his wife minimum wage. So his op-ed argues for the government to force other businesses to pay a higher minimum wage that he doesn't pay.

Our Friends, the Saudis

The House of Saud is the home of our enemy.

Voters Buss Nagin's Reelection Bid

The mayor responsible for this scene and therefore responsible for this awful scene has been re-elected.

It seems Katrina is still doing damage to the city of New Orleans.

A Glass Half Phil

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen's approval rating has dropped to 51 percent, according to Survey USA. Gov. Bredesen is often portrayed by the media as a political giant, but four years ago he defeated a weak Republican candidate by a very slim margin. Four years later, he's the head of a scandal-plagued, ethically-challenged administration, he can't seem to find a way to cut the sales tax on groceries despite a large revenue surplus, and he slashed 190,000 old, sick, disabled and poor folks from the state's healthcare rolls instead of keeping his campaign promise to fix TennCare...

Nashville Voters May Get More Control Over Property Tax Increases

The Tennessean profiles the effort by Tennessee Tax Revolt to amend Nashville's city charter to require referendums on property tax increases. The paper also includes audio of Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Nashville resident, opposing the proposed charter change. Gov. Bredesen raised Nashville's property taxes three times while serving as mayor of Nashville. Gov. Bredesen also opposes Senate Joint Resolution 629, state Sen. Jim Bryson's proposal to make it tougher for the state legislature to exceed the state constitution's cap on the annual growth of the state budget. Gov. Bredesen wants to continue the spending spree. SJR 629 is on the agenda of the Senate Finance, Ways & Means committe on Monday. It has been deferred several times.

In a sidebar to the Tennessean's story, some public and officials fret that, if given the right to vote on property tax increases, voters will never say "yes" to higher taxes, but other public policy officials disagree.

Tennessee State University public policy professor Rodney Stanley said voter distaste for "taxation of any kind" would keep tax rates flat even as public needs grow.

But Vanderbilt University's James W. Guthrie said putting property tax increases to the people doesn't reduce or increase spending for schools. Guthrie is director of the Center for Education Policy at Peabody College of Vanderbilt.

"We can't find that it does anything bad or good for education funding. If the issue is, 'Will it reduce the amount of money, or increase the amount of money,' our experience in other states doesn't display that it does either," Guthrie said. "New York citizens in effect approve the budget and pass a tax rate, and New York's one of the highest-spending states there is."

The key to passing tax increases is linking them to popular programs, said California researcher John Matsusaka, who added they tend to like local programs over state programs and parks over welfare.

Matsusaka is president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California.

"People sometimes think if voters have this right, they'll never approve taxes for anything, and that's not true. Voters are willing to pay for things they like, like schools, like police, like a park."

Colorado's constitution gives voters there the right to vote on ALL tax increases at the local and county level. They also vote on any proposed increase in government debt, and on spending surplus tax revenue.

As I explained in this research paper published three years ago and extensively updated in September 2005, from November 1993 through November 2004 Colorado voters at the local and county level have faced more than a thousand ballot questions asking their approval for tax increases, debt increases, new taxes and permission to let the government keep and spend surplus revenue. Anyone who thinks requring voter approval on tax increases and higher government spending automatically means a "no" vote every time is .. uninformed. In more than a thousand such referenda, Colorado voters said "yes" to higher taxes and more spending more than half of the time.

According to the Colorado Municipal League, voters approved 248 of 459 ballot questions to allow tax increases or new taxes, and rejected 211, a 54 percent approval rate for higher taxes. They also approved debt increases (bond issues) 68 percent of the time, and approved allowing government to spend surplus tax revenue, rather than rebate it to taxpayers, 88 percent of the time.

May 19, 2006

Rather Dubious

Leslie Cauley, the reporter who wrote the now much-disputed story alleging - using "anonymous sources" - that three major U.S. telecom firms were assisting the National Security Agency in building a database to more easily track any communications by potential terrorists, has been revealed to be a Democratic donor. Meanwhile, two of the three phone companies mentioned in the story say the story is false. NewsBusters has the details.

This has the potential to be Rather embarrassing for USA Today.

The Night of Broken Glass

This is scary stuff. Anyone who thinks Iran isn't taking the world to a very dark and dangerous place isn't paying attention. How do you say "Kristallnacht" in Iran?

Kay Brooks Update

NashvilleIsTalking.com has a pretty good round-up on the Kay Brooks story, including links to various blogs and the news articles in The Tennessean and the Nashville City Paper. It's not central to the debate, but I've noticed something a bit interesting in the news coverage about Kay Brooks' election to fill a vacant seat on the Nashville school board. The Tennessean hasn't mentioned Brooks' blog, where she writes extensively about education issues. The City Paper today describes Brooks as "an Internet blogger on education issues," but fails to give readers the name of or a link to her blog. It's http://kaybrooks.blogspot.com/.

I can't for the life of me figure out why The Tennessean isn't telling readers about Brooks' blog, and how to find it. If it's because the reporter simply doesn't know about the blog, that's pathetic - and would suggest the paper doesn't pay much attention to the city's rather active and informed political blogosphere.

On the other hand, if the reporter knows about Brooks' blog but is choosing to leave it out of the story, that is a serious error in journalistic judgement. Newspapers are supposed to help readers be fully informed, especially about policy and government issues. Brooks has just been appointed to fill the unexpired term of a school board member who resigned early. She has written a blog focused on education issues since April 2005, which seems to be a relevant fact in and of itself.

The content of her blog is also relevant. Readers who want to know more about Brooks as they decide whether or not to vote for her in August would be well-served by reading her blog. Readers - and the voters of Brooks district - can not be fully informed without knowledge of her blog.

If I was the education reporter or editor at The Tennessean or the Nashville City Paper, I'd be reading all of her blog, starting with the April 2005 archive, and preparing a follow-up story.

Golden Opportunity

A message from Tennessee Tax Revolt:

Please act TODAY and Click HERE to EMAIL Governor Bredesen, Speaker Naifeh, Speaker Wilder, Senator Ramsey and Representative McMillan to tell them this is a Golden Opportunity to reduce the sales tax on groceries.

Urgent: PLEASE Email Governor Bredesen with the link below. Governor Bredesen and the Tennessee General Assembly will decide next week how to spend an unexpected $266.5 million surplus (Tennessee Taxpayer Overpayment). A very small part of this surplus can be used to make a huge difference by reducing the sales tax on groceries.

There are several ways to use the surplus to reduce and eventually eliminate this tax. Senator Mae Beavers and Rep. Phillip Johnson have proposed a bill to gradually eliminate the food sales tax by using a very small part of the surplus. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research has recently proposed a two month grocery sales tax holiday during November and December of this year.

Please act TODAY and Click HERE to EMAIL Governor Bredesen, Speaker Naifeh, Speaker Wilder, Senator Ramsey and Representative McMillan to tell them this is a Golden opportunity to reduce the Sales Tax on Groceries

Gov. Bredesen's political record as mayor of Nashville was one of raising taxes, not cutting them. He left a legacy alright - one the city's taxpayers are still paying for.

And second-term governors always think about their legacies.

The View From Here Is Incredible

Photographed a few days ago at Bethlehem United Methodist Church, Franklin, TN. Click image for larger version. See more of my photos at Flickr.

Back Bob

If you missed state Senate candidate Bob Krumm's 40th birthday celebration/$40 campaign fundraiser Thursday night, like I did, you can still donate to his campaign, like I did, here. Go now and do likewise.

Help!

My wife's Motorola V557 phone from Cingular got wet and shorted out. She's due a new phone from Cingular in three months near the end of our two-year service agreement. They'll only give us a discount on a new phone now if we agree to a two-year extension of our existing contract.

I've heard you can buy a used Cingular/Motorola phone, plug in your Cingular account's SIM card, and it'll work just fine. Anybody know the details? Anybody have a spare Cingular Motorola phone?

P.S. I just added a Sierra Wireless AirCard from Cingular to my laptop, to access the Internet via Cingular's wireless network. Cingular promised high-speed web access, and the Sierra AirCard gets very good reviews, but it's slow as Christmas most of the time. Thoughts? Suggestions? I've got about 21 days left in the 30-day period before I can't return it without paying a hefty early termination fee.

May 18, 2006

Blogs as PR Tools

I'll be speaking this afternoon at the Tennessee College Public Relations Association Spring Conference, hosted by Volunteer State Community College, on a panel discussion on "Higher Ed Blogs, Podcasting, RSS and Web Video."

I'll be discussing how blogs can be successfully used as part of an integrated media relations strategy. I might also get in a plug for this. Also on the panel: Melanie Moran, assistant director of web communications with Vanderbilt University News Service, who will discuss podcasting; Kenyatta Lovett, webmaster with Volunteer State Community College, speaking on RSS feeds; and Steve Wilson, web designer with Austin Peay State University, speaking on web video

The panel will be moderated by Dr. Sybril Bennett, Executive Director of the Belmont University New Century Journalism Program.

Announcing...

Announcing... Mesh Media Strategies and the forthcoming Mesh Media Strategies blog.

Oil and Water

What if, one day in the not-to-distant future, the oil sheiks of the Middle East suddenly found themselves floating on a sea of oil that nobody wanted? And what if the oil-rich terrorist-funding regimes of that parched desert region one day woke up and learned the fuel of the future was ... water.

This news report from Fox 26 News in Clearwater, Fla., may turn out to be the most significant and amazing story of the 21st century. (Video requires Windows Media Player)

Click Play Button to start

UPDATE: It has been pointed out to me in comments, emails and even a phone call from my mechanical-engineer dad that the process described in the story takes electricity, which of course is produced in electric power plants, which often run on ... fossil fuel.

True. But, then, it always takes energy in some form to produce energy in another. All matter is just another form of energy. E=MC2 and all that, right?

It takes energy to cut down trees to burn wood to heat a cabin. It takes energy to pump oil out from below the sands of Arabia or the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico or the frozen North Slope of Alaska. It takes energy to produce solar cells.

Using electricity to convert H2O - water - into HHO, which then is burned as a fuel, giving off only water as its byproduct - takes energy. The trick to making the process a world-changing leap forward in energy technology will, of course, be to reduce the cost of producing the electricity needed for the conversion process to an acceptable level. In other words, efficiency.

Chopping down trees to burn in a wood stove to heat a house gets the job down for one house, if you have time to spend all day chopping up trees, but it is not an efficient way to power a city, or power vehicles.

Pumping oil out of Saudi Arabia has for years been a cost-efficient energy source, but the cost of oil is now soaring.

Perhaps, years from now, we'll be driving cars equipped with highly efficient solar panels that produce the electricity needed to turn a bottle of Evian into fuel for hundreds of miles of car travel. That's the possibility - not the certainty - of the story out of Clearwater.

Kay Brooks Update

The Tennessean covers the "controversy" over the selection of home-schooling mom Kay Brooks to fill a seat on the Nashville school board left vacant by a resignation. The controversy is this: the public school education establishment wanted someone from within its ranks to fill the seat, but Brooks has home-schooled all four of her children. The public school establishment wanted one of its own because it doesn't want to be challenged by people who think differently about education. The paper calls Brooks "outspoken," but fails to tell readers of her blog or her new website focused on the school board. Brooks, by the way, wrote a handful of posts as a guest writer here at BillHobbs.com back in November. You can find them here.

May 17, 2006

Blogging Home-Schooler Mom Elected to Nashville School Board

Congratulations to Kay Brooks are in order. And the Metro public school system will be better for her being on the school board.

One commenter on the Nashville City Paper website wrote, "People who send their kids to private schools and homeschool their kids have NO BUSINESS on a public school board! "

Hogwash. The public schools are public, which means they are funded by the public, which means any and all of the members of that public have a vested interested in how they are run, even if certain members of that public don't have children in the system.

Blogback Mountain

Interesting column from Nashville City Paper editor Clint Brewer on the role blogs are playing in the U.S. Senate race in Tennessee, focusing on two Brokeback Mountain parodies making the rounds in the Tennessee political blogosphere. For my money, none of the candidates has used blogs effectively.

May 16, 2006

Ripley's Believe It Or Not

Amazing but true:

Think back to September 12, 2001. Imagine that an omniscient seer had told you then that four-and-a-half years later, the U.K. and Spain would have experienced al Qaeda attacks in their own countries; France's appeasement-oriented government would have been rocked by Islamic riots in Paris and other cities, Denmark would have had its citizens and embassies targeted for Islamic terror attacks on account of political cartoons portraying Muhammed; Russia would have endured a deadly hostage siege by Islamic terrorists at a school full of children; and in all that time, the United States would not have experienced a single additional terror attack on its own soil. Imagine the seer had told you further that the United States would, in the same period of time, wage and win two wars in the middle east, overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan and midwifing the formation of a parliamentary democracy there, then driving Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and bringing that destitute country to the verge of its first parliamentary government, elected by nation-wide vote and backed by a western-trained police force and a non-Baathist army, while Saddam himself sat in the dock awaiting the verdict of his trial for crimes against humanity. Imagine he had told you that American combat deaths in these two wars over three years time would not have exceeded 5,000. Imagine that he also told you the American economy would have fully recovered from the 9/11 attack in this timeframe, returning to employment, interest, inflation, and growth rates rivalling if not exceeding those of the Clinton years, despite wartime budget deficits and huge increases in gasoline prices caused by the inevitable uncertainties in the middle east, while the socialist economies of Europe stagnated or shrank. Then imagine that he told you George W. Bush's approval rating just six months after his reelection would stand at 29 percent.

The recipe for restoring his popularity to above 50 percent is simple: Bush must screw the Left every chance he gets.

Example: Immigration
Liberals want open borders, amnesty, and quickie citizenship for all the illegals who are here, and millions more who cross the border tomorrow, next week and next year. Why? To add to the government dependency rolls and the Democratic Party voter rolls. But even if Bush gave them that, they'd never be for Bush or vote Republican.
Solution: Give the Left exactly what they don't want: troops on the border, and then construction crews building a wall. And no amnesty-lite guest-worker program. Yeah, some GOP moderates and business types won't like that last part. So what? They're not going to switch over and vote for tax-raising, regulation-loving Democrats. And if a few stay home, well, they'll be more than offset by a surge in support from conservatives. And from the thousands of newly-employed construction workers working on that wall. Just make sure no illegals are doing the work.

Example: Spending
A Republican president can not spend enough to make Teddy Kennedy and his ilk happy. A Republican president can not spend enough to make Democrats vote for Republicans. Yet that's what GWB has tried to do. However, you can spend enough to make conservatives lose faith in you. Or you can restrain spending enough to attract "Reagan Democrats" - moderate Democrats who lean conservative.
Solution: Slash spending. Now. Propose wholesale cuts to everything but defense. Propose a balanced budget no matter what you have to cut, other than defense - and make the Democrats defend deficit spending.

Example: Oil
Oil is now a national security issue, what with us needing so much of it and so much of it coming from the same part of the world that breeds terrorists bent on killing us, and with it being so important to the continued health of the U.S. economy.
Solution: Issue a national security presidential directive declaring it to be in the national security interest of the United States to begin immediate oil exploration and production in the coastal plain of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. And along the coasts. The environmentalists and the dog whose tail they wag - the Democratic Party - will howl. But so what. They aren't for Bush and never were. Adults who drive cars will support it. So will the thousands of new and well-paid oil field workers.

Example: War on Terror
The Left never really supported the war on terror - to the Left, terrorism is a criminal act rather than an act of war, and terrorists need to be "understood" and the "root causes" addressed, and by "root causes" they mean "American foreign policy," not "Islamofacist wacko-ism." A majority of Americans understand that Islamofacist terrorism must be defeated.
Solution: Up the ante. More troops killing more terrorists. And get more confrontational with Iran, the root cause of most Islamic terrorism in the world today.

Example: Everything Else
More moderates lean conservative than lean liberal. Figure out what the Left wants, then do the opposite.

If You Love The First Amendment...

... then you just have to hate what the Boulder, Colorado, city council is considering doing.

Covering For the Taxpayers

Republicans in the state Senate, led by gubernatorial candidate state Sen. Jim Bryson, are continuing to try to protect taxpayers in the event that Gov. Bredesen's new "Cover Tennessee" healthcare entitlement program turns out to be another fiscal disaster like TennCare. The Nashville City Paper reports here:

With the strength of a Republican majority, Bryson was successful in adding an amendment that would make contractors - not the state - assume all insurance risk for benefit coverage provided in the Cover Tennessee plan to provide health insurance for the working poor.

Here's what you need to know: Bredesen's proposal for the "state" to bear the risk really means for Tennessee taxpayers to bear the risk. Insurance companies live and