BillHobbs.com is a frequently updated blog of original reporting and commentary by Bill Hobbs, a longtime Nashville journalist and media relations adviser. I am currently serving as communications director for the Tennessee Republican Party, a job I began on Oct. 29, 2007.
NewsChannel5's Phil Williams exposes how the Tennessee Department of Transportation's contracting process remains ripe for corruption - and how a former TDOT employee with close ties to the Bredesen administration now lobbies for a company that seems to be winning an increasing amount of TDOT business. Do Bredesen campaign donors get preferential treatment on TDOT contracts? If so, it mirrors how the pay-to-play Bredesen administration routinely promoted Tennessee Highway Patrol officers based on their campaign contributions.
Governor Offered Millions for Toyota But Can't Cut Your Food Tax
Gov. Phil Bredesen says the state of Tennessee can not afford a $39 million reduction in the state's sales tax on food. But today's newspaper says the Bredesen administration "offered at least $200 million - and perhaps tens of millions more" to try to lure Toyota Motor Corp. to build a $1.3 billion assembly plant in Chattanooga. Toyota reported a quarterly profit of $3.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2006 - meaning the company earned $1.2 billion per month in October, November and December, almost enough cold hard cash per month to pay cash for its new assembly plant.
The state can't afford to give you a half-cent sales tax reduction on your groceries because the Bredesen administration wants to give hundreds of millions of dollars to wealthy corporations like Toyota that don't really need it. The good news is, now that Toyota has decided to go to Mississippi instead, the Bredesen administration ought to be able to find $39 million to cut the sales tax half a cent.
As the controversy over global warming doomsayer Al Gore's voracious energy-eater mansion rolls on, there's an angle I think merits deeper investigation than it is currently getting. While much of the focus has been on whether or not Gore is an environmental hypocrite, the story has raised the profile of the role of "carbon offsets" in achieving a "greener," more environmentally friendly world.
In its original story, The Tennessean reported that Gore buys "carbon offsets" to compensate for his home's use of energy from carbon-based fuels. As Wikipedia explains, a carbon offset "is a service that tries to reduce the net carbon emissions of individuals or organizations indirectly, through proxies who reduce their emissions and/or increase their absorption of greenhouse gases."
Wikipedia goes on to explain that "a wide variety of offset actions are available; tree planting is the most common. Renewable energy and energy conservation offsets are also popular, including emissions trading credits."
So far, so good. But how Gore buys his "carbon offsets," as revealed by The Tennessean raises serious questions. According to the newspaper's report, Gore's spokesperson said Gore buys his carbon offsets through Generation Investment Management:
Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe, she said...
Gore is chairman of the firm and, presumably, draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he "buys" his "carbon offsets" from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn't buy "carbon offsets" through Generation Investment Management - he buys stocks.
And it is not clear at all that Gore's stock purchases - excuse me, "carbon offsets" purchases - actually help reduce the use of carbon-based energy at all, while the gas lanterns and other carbon-based energy burners at his house continue to burn carbon-based fuels and pump carbon emissions - a/k/a/ "greenhouse gases" - into the atmosphere.
Gore's people tout his purchase of "carbon offsets" as evidence that he lives a "carbon-neutral" lifestyle, but the truth is Gore's home uses electricity that is, for the most part, derived from the burning of carbon fuels. His house gets its electricity from Nashville Electric Service, which gets its from the Tennessee Valley Authority, which produces most of its power from coal-burning power plants. Which means most of the power being consumed at the Gore mansion comes from carbon-emitting power sources.
Wikipedia again:
The intended goal of carbon offsets is to combat global warming. The appeal of becoming "carbon neutral" has contributed to the growth of voluntary offsets, which often are a more cost-effective alternative to reducing one's own fossil-fuel consumption. However, the actual amount of carbon reduction (if any) from an offset project is difficult to measure, largely unregulated, and vulnerable to misrepresentation.
Did you get that? Carbon offsets are an "alternative to reducing one's own fossil-fuel consumption" and yet "the actual amount of carbon reduction (if any) from an offset project is difficult to measure, largely unregulated, and vulnerable to misrepresentation."
One way to misrepresent things: Tell a newspaper your stock purchases are really purchases of "carbon offsets."
Meanwhile, Gore runs around the country and the world trumpeting "climate crisis" and blaming man's use of carbon-based energy - burning thousands of gallons of jet fuel as he goes. His efforts have served to put climate change at the top of the national and even global agenda, driving up the value of the stocks and companies viewed as "green" or environmentally friendly. Companies like those his investment management firm invest his own and other peoples' money in. (You can see a list of Generation Investment Management's holdings here, courtesy of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.)
As one commenter posting here and on other blogs has noted:
Hmmm. The Goracle is chairman and a founding partner of Generation Investment Management LLP, a boutique international investment firm that invests other peoples' money, for a fee, into the stocks of 'green' companies. ... So when Al beats the drum for possible future global warming, he's also drumming up business.
And profiting from hyping the "global warming" crisis.
In a nutshell, Gore consumes large amounts of carbon-based electricity while he trumpets a growing "global warming" crisis that drives up the value of "green" companies like the ones in which he buys carbon offsets invests in their stocks.
A primary rule of good investigative journalism is, "Follow the money." The media - and perhaps the SEC - ought to take a deeper look at Gore, Generation Investment Management and his carbon offset stock purchases.
Asides:
Gore's huge electric power usage at his Nashville home isn't the only example of how the prophet profit of environmental doom hasn't always lived as if he believes his message. During the eight years Gore was vice president, he voted in four national elections. Every single time, he and his entourage and security detail and accompanying media flew to Nashville on a large government jet, burning thousands of gallons of fossil fuels and pumping huge amounts of carbon emissions directly into the earth's atmosphere, and then drove in a caravan of fossil fuel-burning vehicles from Nashville International Airport east on I-40 to Carthage, Tennessee, so the local and national TV cameras could get video of him at the voting booth. And then the whole caravan headed back to Nashville for the plane ride back to DC. Traffic had to be halted on Nashville's interstates and side streets every time - sometimes during rush hour - idling thousand of vehicles that just sat there, burning fossil fuels and emitting carbon pollution, just so Gore could create a media photo-op.
He could have instead voted by mailing in an absentee ballot.
Also... Pajamas Media has photos of Gore's energy-devouring Nashville home. And while some bloggers have likened "carbon offsets" to the "indulgences" the pre-Reformation Catholic Church sold to the wealthy so they could continue to sin, ithe blogger at The Virginian says carbon offsets are more like the "sumptuary laws" of medieval times, laws that regulated and reinforced social hierarchies and morals through restrictions on clothing, food, and luxury expenditures.
In the Late Middle Ages sumptuary laws were instated as a way for the nobility to cap the conspicuous consumption of the up-and-coming bourgeoisie of medieval cities. ... The danger is that the use of "carbon offsets" will create two things that re morally monstrous: a de-facto sumptuary law and the impoverishments of the poor and powerless of this planet. The creation of an aristocratic elite that differentiates itself from the hoi polloi by its ability to buy "carbon offsets" while the rest of the planet is forced by environmental laws into a smaller and smaller carbon straightjacket is not so far fetched.
And then mosey on over to Jim Treacher's house of bloggage The Daily Gut for this:
It's great that he's using solar panels and all that, but notice he's not disputing how huge his electric bill still is. What the hell is he doing in there? Is he a Terminator from the future and requires constant recharging? (That would explain pretty much everything.)
Hat tip: Tim Blair via Ed Driscoll, both of whom have more good stuff on the Goracle's energy hoggishness.
Updates follow...
Update: The Economist - not exaclty a right-wing rag - calls Gore's response to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research's original report on his huge energy consumption "flatly silly." The piece has an excellent discussion of why "carbon offsets" are a shell game that may not actually do anything to help reduce carbon emissions.
Update: Via the blog on the website of carbon offsets marketer TerraPass I found a recent New York Times story that is skeptical of carbon offsets.
Some carbon-offset firms have begun to acknowledge that certain investments like tree-planting may be ineffective, and they are shifting their focus to what they say is reliable activity, like wind turbines, cleaner burning stoves, or buying up credits that otherwise would allow companies to pollute.
Still, as demand for greener living grows, the number of companies jumping into the game has multiplied. At least 60 companies sold offsets worth about $110 million to consumers in Europe and North America in 2006, up from only about a dozen selling offsets worth $6 million in 2004, according to Abyd Karmali of ICF International.Yet another perverse effect, say critics, is that some types of carbon-offset initiatives may actually slow the changes aimed at coping with global warming by prolonging consumers' dependence on oil, coal and gas, and encouraging them to take more short-haul flights and drive bigger cars than they would otherwise have done.
Climate Care, for example, has linked up with Land Rover, a maker of sport utility vehicles, to help the company offset its own emissions. As part of a promotional program, Climate Care also helps purchasers of new Land Rovers offset their first 45,000 miles of driving.
In that way, the program may actually help sell "larger cars with higher emissions" and thus contribute more to global warming, according to Mary Taylor, a campaigner with the energy and climate team at Friends of the Earth.
The words "snake oil" come to mind...
Too bad that $110 million that well-intentioned but gullible folks spent on "carbon offsets" couldn't have been invested in developing hydrogen fuel-cell technology closer to the point that it can replace the internal combustion engine. That's a "carbon offset" that actually would make a difference.
Update: A commenter at the TerraPass blog foresaw the Al Gore hypocrisy controversy, posting the following comment on Feb. 20, nearly a week before the Tennessee Center for Policy research put the spotlight on Gore's energy usage:
The criticism [of carbon offsets] is so persistent because everyone likes to rail against perceived hypocrisy - it's easier than engaging the merits of a policy. (The Times article tries to address the merits, in EXTREMELY ANECDOTAL fashion.)
Environmentalists and leftists are somewhat guilty of obsessing over hypocrisy, which provides some of the drumbeat behind the NYT articles. But I guarantee that coverage of carbon "indulgences" will get worse if/when Al Gore runs for President, because no-one likes to trump up pseudo-stories about liberal hypocrisy like oil industry-funded libertarian shills and the smear merchants of Fox News.
Um, actually, the environmentalists and the left rushed to defend Gore's hypocrisy, not to attack it. And it was all of the media - the liberal networks as well as Fox - which covered the Gore story.
Post Script: Just for grins I checked my own electric bills to see how many kilowatts of power I use per month on average. The answer: 2,327. At that rate, it would take me nearly eight years of electrical usage to equal what Gore used in one year. In hot August 2006, when Gore's home consumed 22,619 kilowatts of power, my home consumed 4,090. Of course, his house is thrice as large as mine, and also has a guest house and a heated pool, but, still, he used more than five times the electricity I used. And he doesn't have two little kids who generate mountains of dirty laundry...
FINAL UPDATE: A version of this post is posted at the Ecotality blog, and has been doing big business in comments and discussion. I welcome you to check it out at this link. Here at BillHobbs.com, I also have written a few additional posts subsequent to this one:
Wikinomics moves to the top of my reading list. Just flicking through the pages I spotted a section on YouTube's role in last year's Israel-Hezbollah war, and an intelligent discussion of social media's impact on traditional journalism.
"So get ready for the hyperempowered citizen. The new generation of digital citizens has the means of creation at their fingertips so that anything that involves information and culture is grist for the mill of self-organized production."
In other words, the news isn't just the news business' business any more.
Wikinomics is about much more than journalism in the digital era, and I look forward to reading the whole thing.
I shot this photo in southern Williamson County, Tennessee, a few days ago with my new cellphone. That's pretty good color and resolution for a tiny 1.3 megapixel camera.
ABC News' Jake Tapper covers the flap over Al Gore's gargantuan energy usage at his posh Nashville mansion. Gore's hypocrisy reminds me of the World Wildlife Fund environmentalist Mark Fenn, interviewed in the documentary Mine Your Own Business, who battles against a proposed mining project that was vastly improve the living conditions of the poor who live in the village of Fort Dauphin in Madagascar, the world's fourth-poorest country, claiming they are already "rich" because they smile a lot more than wealthy big-city westerners - and then shows the film's director his new $30,000 catamaran and the place on the Madagascar coast where he plans to build his own very nice beachfront home. (Excellent op-ed from the director and producer of MYOB in the Irish Mail recently. Read it here.)
When environmentalists like Fenn and Gore live lifestyles that they seek to deny others, that is hypocrisy.
Update: The whole Gore energy use story was kicked off by a news release from the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a non-partisan think tank that usually focuses on state policies of taxation, education and such. The Huffington Postattacks the messenger. One charge: that TCPR may have "stolen" Gore's utility bills. False. The utility bill records are public records. Another charge: TCPR is "funded by Exxon," implying the TCPR was set up specifically to counter global-warming claims. I called TCPR's founder and president, Drew Johnson, and asked him: "Are you funded by Exxon?" His answer: "I wish! We'd have a bigger budget!"
There you have it. The Left is smearing the TCPR, which used facts to question whether Gore walks it like he talks it on energy issues.
That Toyota assembly plant that The Tennessean said was going to be built either in Chattanooga or on a site just across the river from Memphis in Arkansas? It's going to Tupelo, Mississippi. Congratulations to the people of Mississippi and to Gov. Haley Barbour and the economic development folks down there who worked hard to win the plant - it will be a great thing for that city and state. Congratulations also to the taxpayers of Tennessee, who won't have to shell out a few hundred million dollars in "tax incentives" to a corporation that made a $3.6 billion profit in the last three months of 2006. Tennessee's economy will still get a boost - lots of Toyota suppliers already are in Tennessee and they'll have more work now.
The record high for Los Angeles on Feb. 25 was 92 degrees, set in 1921. The average high temperature for Feb. 25 in Los Angeles is 70 degrees. [Source]
The high temperature in Los Angeles on Sunday when Al Gore was in town to collect an Oscar for his global-warming documentary? 64 degrees - six degrees cooler than normal - in yet another manifestation of the Gore Effect.
David Hodge, an assistant professor of social work in the College of Human Services at Arizona State University, Hodge , has conducted an exhaustive meta-analysis on the effects of intercessory prayer among people with psychological or medical problems and has come to a conclusion that will not startle people of faith: prayer works. Hodge's analysis sought to answer whether "God - or some other type of transcendent entity - answer prayer for healing?"
According to Hodge's study, "A Systematic Review of the Empirical Literature on Intercessory Prayer," the answer is yes.
"There have been a number of studies on intercessory prayer, or prayer offered for the benefit of another person," says Hodge, a leading expert on spirituality and religion. "Some have found positive results for prayer. Others have found no effect. Conducting a meta-analysis takes into account the entire body of empirical research on intercessory prayer. Using this procedure, we find that prayer offered on behalf of another yields positive results."
Hodge's work will be featured in the March issue of Research on Social Work Practice, a disciplinary journal devoted to the publication of empirical research on practice outcomes. It is widely recognized as one of the most prestigious journals in the field of social work.
I didn't need academic research to validate what I already know, personally and viscerally, about the power of prayer, but it's nice to have it nonetheless.
It's National Entrepreneurship Week. Jeff Cornwall wonders why entrepreneurship doesn't get a whole month, like the bikini and the sweet vidalia onion, rather than a just a week like the pancake and the fig.
Jay Bush posted a good report from the reception Saturday in Nashville for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination. Adam Groves also has a good report.
Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen changes his story. He now says he wasn't implying that Republicans pushing for taking the sales tax off food are secretly hoping for an income tax - he says that's why Tennesseans for Fair Taxation is pushing for the food tax reduction.
In the same article linked above Gov. Bredesen claims cutting the food tax will cause future fiscal crises, portraying the food sales tax as a major part of the state's revenue. But it isn't In reality, sales taxes from the sale of food is a rather minor part of the state's overall revenues, revenue the state could easily learn to do without.
The food tax currently brings in about $450 million annually in revenue - an amount projected to grow by about 3.5 percent annually as the state's population grows. With the food tax revenues projected at approximately $465 million in the next fiscal year, reducing the food tax by just half a cent as the Republicans are proposing would reduce reduce state revenues by only $39 million in the coming fiscal year - less than 7 percent of overall sales tax revenues (projected at $6.797 billion) and less than 4.5 percent of overall tax revenues (projected at $10.656 billion).
A $39 million tax cut would require trimming Gov. Bredesen's proposed $27.5 billion state budget by just 0.14 percent. Gov. Bredesen is claiming that his budget proposal can not be trimmed by 0.14 percent - $39 million - even though almost every year the state runs a revenue surplus of between $100 million and $500 million.
The legislature certainly doesn't need to increase cigarette taxes to "pay for" reducing the sales tax on food by half a cent. Legislators merely need to trim Gov. Bredesen's budget proposal - which includes $900 million in additional spending over last year - by less than two tenths of one percent.
Republicans ought to be asking Bredesen why his $900 million spending increase can't be trimmed by just $39 million to begin phasing out the food tax. Because if Bredesen won't trim his budget by 0.14 percent to allow for a tax reduction at a time when the state is routinely running large revenue surpluses, then there is no conceivable scenario in which Bredesen would agree to any tax reduction at all.
By the way, Tennesseans for Fair Taxation proposes a faster reduction in the food tax - they want to cut it in half, by three cents right, away and I agree with them, although I disagree with their proposal to increase cigarette taxes to "pay for it." Raising cigarette taxes isn't necessary even to "pay for" TFT's proposal. Trimming the governor's proposed budget by just 1 percent would more than cover it. And that wouldn't actually be a cut in spending - it would merely trim Bredesen's proposed $900 million spending increase down to around $625
million.
And that's before next year's inevitable revenue surplus which would, inevitably, be spent too.
The bottom line: Tennessee's food tax is a minor piece of the state's total revenue and it can be slashed, quickly, even as government spending continues to rise.
Tennessean political columnist Larry Daughtrey endorses the call by Republicans in the state legislature to remove the sales tax from food, but falls for the same tired Big Government rhetoric that "No one in the legislature has figured out a way to replace the revenue it produces, short of an income tax."
But the sales tax on food is a rather small part of the state's overall revenues - and if the state simply restrained the annual growth of spending to the growth of the state's economy, as required by the state constitution, within a few years every dollar of sales tax revenue from food would be surplus revenue. And the Republican proposal calls for phasing the food tax out slowly - by just half a penny per year over 12 years.
The food tax currently brings in about $450 million annually in revenue - an amount projected to grow by about 3.5 percent annually as the state's population grows. Food tax revenues projected at approximately $465 million in the next fiscal year - less than 7 percent of overall sales tax revenues (projected at $6.797 billion) and less than 4.5 percent of overall tax revenues (projected at $10.656 billion).
Reducing the food tax by just half a cent next fiscal year would reduce state revenues by only $39 million in the coming fiscal year - about 0.14 percent of Gov. Bredesen's proposed $27.5 billion state budget.
Daughtrey also asserts that, "historically, sales tax increases of this size have supplied the state coffers for seven to 10 years until inflation again outruns the revenue stream."
Again, that's the Big Government Spenders' view of things - that the state's recurring "fiscal crises" and tax increases are caused by inflation driving up government's costs faster than tax revenues are growing. The reality is the exact opposite: The legislature and every governor since Lamar Alexander in 1985 have routinely increased spending faster than the state's economy, as measured by personal income growth, has grown. It is the inflation of government spending that it outstripping the economy, even after multiple tax-rate increases, that leads to recurring fiscal crises and more tax increases.
Radio Ireland interviewed the director of Mine Your Own Business, the documentary feared by the environmental movement. He explains why today's global environmentalists are modern-day colonialists. Listen to it at the film's blog, which also has a separate post linking to an American radio interview of the director and producer. For all of my posts about Mine Your Own Business, click here.
Huckabee, a candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, also appeared at a small invitation-only reception at the Nashville home of Terry Saltsman, brother of Huckabee's campaign manager Chip Saltsman, former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. The event was as well-attended as a similar gathering for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Brentwood several weeks ago. Among the elected officials and others there: state Rep. Susan Lynn, state Rep. Glen Casada, state Sen. Jack Johnson (who hosted the aforementioned Romney reception), political bloggers Adam Groves and Jay Bush, Tennessee Republican Party Executive Director Chris Devaney, Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey's chief of staff Matt King, and Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Bob Davis.
I have a couple of video clips from the reception but am having trouble getting them off my cellphone. While you await that scintillating video-bloggage, here's a video of Huckabee and Saltsman on YouTube. YouTube also has a video of Huckabee discussing blogs, and several other Huckabee clips.
Huckabee didn't talk about blogs during the Nashville reception, but he did talk - effectively, I think - about a number of issues. Having listened to him, I'm not sure why Huckabee, governor of Arkansas for more than a decade and before that a Baptist pastor and head of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, hasn't been embraced by more conservatives. He's demonstrably pro-life, and as an avid hunter he's not anti-gun - in other words, he's a good fit with two large parts of the GOP coalition. Maybe it's just too early for most people to even be thinking about the presidential race. I hope Huckabee can hang on through the early "money primary" and still be in the race when it comes time for the debates - he deserves to be heard.
From a story in the Sunday Tennessean looking at the political efforts of some anti-hunting zealots to ban hunting:
Spokeswoman Stephanie Boyles said PETA membership rose by a half-million last year. "As an animal rights group, we believe that killing an animal for 'fun' or 'recreation' is cruel and unnecessary," said Boyles, a trained wildlife biologist. "We don't believe that animals should be eaten, worn or used for entertainment or laboratory experiments."
PETA won't be happy until we're all vegans. Nevermind that the Creator authorized people to eat meat (Genesis 9:3), PETA knows better.
Jeff Jarvis has good advice for newspapers: Cover what you do best. Link to the rest. That's good advice for bloggers, too. As always with a Jeff Jarvis posting, read the whole thing.
David Oatney has some thoughts about the plans for a Bloggers' Day at the Tennessee legislature in the near future. While I praise the House Republican leadership for planning such a thing, I believe they are making a mistake by planning to invite only Republican/conservative bloggers. They should save the partisan blogger events for campaign season.
The blogosphere functions best when it's an exchange of ideas rather than an echo chamber. I have said that if it is a partisan event I won't attend, but I am going to modify that a bit: If I am able to attend - and given the realities of my life these days that is a very big if - I will do so to focus on the bloggers and the social-media aspects of the event rather than the politics, policies and politicians.
Australian blogger James Waterton reviews the documentary film Mine Your Own Business: "This movie has been billed by some as a 'right-wing' counterpart to a Michael Moore production, but it comes across as considerably less polemical - and enormously more believable - than the average output from the portly and infamous self-declared son of Flint." He continues...
It graphically displays the victims of international green politics - the world's poorest - those that the green movement purports to champion. For this alone, Mine Your Own Business is a useful production. Young people who are socialists are generally well-meaning. They want to help the poorest. Fine - help the poorest the liberal way. Help them via voluntary charity. Decouple the link between the Greens and the poor, because the poor confused Greens are inherently antipathetic towards the plight of the poor, whilst championing them. They are no good to anyone - in fact, they can be positively deadly.
Thus, it is essential that the Greens are denied the ability to become a large 'catch-all' political movement by encroaching meaningfully into the economic arena. Scarily, they have come thus far and we must aim to roll their influence back to saving sequoias and killer whales, because when it comes to economics - that is, the realm of human welfare - Greens are instinctively genocidal.
Waterton is a contributor to the British libertarian blog Samizdata.
Another recent blog review of the documentary and a discussion of the issues it raises can be found here.
For all of my posts about Mine Your Own Business, click here.
"Thanks to the Internet, and blogs in particular, disgruntled customers have more power than ever," says Travel Weekly aviation editor Andrew Compart in a report on how blogs are playing a central role in the push for Congress to pass an "airline passengers' bill of rights."
The method that angry passengers used to find each other, organize and respond after being stuck on grounded American Airlines aircraft for as long as nine hours should serve as a warning for airlines and other travel companies: Prepare to be blogged. ... Thanks to the Internet, and blogs in particular, disgruntled customers have more power than ever. The revenge of the angry consumer is nigh if it isn't here already...
"One angry customer can do more damage now than he could in the past," warned Nathan Gilliatt, who has his own blog and runs Social Target, a media research and consulting company in Apex, N.C. "The difference now is that the unhappy customer can have an audience, where in the past they were an individual unhappy customer. [In the past] they probably told their friends. Now they can tell the world."
No company should be without at least a strategy in place for dealing with negative blog coverage - starting with having a staffer or outside firm monitor the blogosphere for mentions of the company, and a process for rapid response. Most companies ought to be actively engaged in the blogosphere to some degree beyond just monitor-and-response, through active blogging by company officials and employees, and an intelligent process for reaching out to bloggers the way corporate PR offices already reach out to "the media." Blogs are, after all, part of "the media" now.
(Actually, while blog-relations should be a part of a company's overall media-relations and public-relations efforts, a company should never reach out to bloggers using the same methods and approaches that corporate PR offices have long used to reach out to newspapers and broadcast media. Bloggers respond badly to the kinds of PR that still seem to work with the older media. But that's a discussion for another day.)
Compart says the blogging of the American Airlines foul-up is "instructive."
The passengers on the American flight did not exchange information while they were stuck on the grounded aircraft (although at least one of them did use a cell pone to call a television reporter to alert the news station about what was happening). Instead, Helen Anders wrote about Flight 1348 on the "Anders Meanders" travel-related blog she writes for the Austin American-Statesman.
The blog, as most are, allows readers to post comments on each entry. Several angry customers from Flight 1348, and other American flights on which passengers were stuck for more than three hours, posted comments. Passenger Kate Hanni posted her e-mail and phone number for others to contact her. From that small beginning, an angry and highly motivated Hanni began the movement - its effectiveness is still to be determined - to push for an airline passenger rights bill in Congress. Hanni became the de facto spokeswoman for the aggrieved passengers, appearing on nationally broadcast news shows. The newly formed Coalition for an Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights has started a blog and a Google group discussion board of its own to try to build up public support for its effort.
It isn't the first negative blog mention that damages a company and creates an image crisis - it is the failure to respond rapidly and effectively.
In the case of American Airlines, a bad event generated bad press and a negative mention on a newspaper's blog, which ignited a conversation that was already simmering in the blogosphere. In other cases it works just in reverse - the negative coverage starts on a blog and builds up like magma in a volcano, eventually erupting into the mainstream media.
How - and how fast - a company or organization responds is the key.
The Tennessean has a follow-up to yesterday's blogger-driven news that the state's Department of Tourism was advertising Tennessee with a photo of Alaska. Today's story reveals that back in the 1980s the state government set up a two-person state photo office "to consolidate equipment and prevent agencies from having to use contractors and free-lancers" - in other words, to save money - but neither the Tourism Department nor its outside ad agency bothered to use the state photographers or their archive of 210,000 photographs.
If the Tourism department and its Memphis ad agency weren't going to use the archive or the state's official photographers, perhaps they should have checked Flickr: I found 848 photos on Flickr searching for "Tennessee leaves", 4,534 photos by searching for "tennessee fall", and 1,380 photos by searching for "Tennessee autumn.". The picture here comes from Flickr member "Rocket City Poet."
A suggestion for the Tourism Department: For the next ad campaign, use the state's photographers and search the state's photo archives - but also make a news announcement seeking photographs from Tennessee residents. Announce what kinds of photos you are seeking, and haave a photo contest, with the winner or winners getting prizes. You'd be amazed by the quality of photos you receive.
A suggestion for the state government regarding its photo archive: Put it online and make it easily accessible to everyone in state government. You might also consider making it accessible online to the general public - which paid for and therefore owns every image in the archive. Making it easily accessible online to state employees might result in it being used more, while allowing the public easy access would do nothing but spread more images of Tennessee to a broader audience for free.
When I lived out in West Texas in the late 1980s I didn't think of the near-constant wind as a resource. I thought of it as a nuisance that made my neck hurt, peppered my face with grit and sometimes made it tough to drive a car (though the tumbling tumbleweeds added a humorous visual touch).
The colors of winter are more subtle than spring or autumn. Photographed along Highway 96, Franklin, Tennessee, Feb. 22, 2007. (Click for larger version. Also posted at Flickr.)
Environmental activists planning a day of distributed demonstrations April 14 across the country are also hoping to employ social media to multiply the impact: From WorldChanging.com:
In the spirit of the age, we've designed this be a distributed day of action - not a march on Washington (too much carbon!), but hundreds and hundreds of local actions. By the end of the day we should have reams of great pictures, still and video, from around the country. ... These actions will all be great by themselves, and have a real effect on Congress members in their districts - but we want more. We want the whole to be much greater than the sum of the parts. We want to link them together somehow. ... We want to have an end product by evening on April 14 that will give this lovely cascade of images both a home on the web and a shot at being picked up by major broadcast media. So what should we do? How do we best make use of tools like Flickr and Youtube? How do we make the evening news need to cover this?
In the spirit of the age, they're asking for an open-source solution. And I expect they'll come up with something pretty cool. Liberals, for whom "collective action" is a part of their political DNA, are ahead of conservatives - for whom rugged individualism is paramount - in the leveraging of the social media as a political tool.
The Tennessee Department of Tourism is advertising Tennessee with a picture of Alaska. Anchorage, Alaska, blogger Tim Woody spotted it first and blogged it yesterdayThe Tennessean followed up with a story today. Memo to the Tennessee Department of Tourism: Next time your ad agency can't find an appropriate photo actually taken in Tennessee, tell them to go online to Flickr.com or Pbase.com and run a search. I'm sure they'll find something - and a photographer willing to sell.
One of my favorite things to arrive regularly in my email inbox is Knowledge@Wharton, a weekly round-up of mind-expanding information from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and the latest edition is no exception. It includes a story about a new book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, which posits that online collaboration could revolutionize how business is done. From the article:
Today, Wikipedia draws a whopping seven billion page views a month, and has been translated into more than 10 languages. Although the project has received some bad publicity over incidents in which online "vandals" have deliberately posted fake information, many studies have found the accuracy of Wikipedia is similar to the established Encyclopedia Britannica, event though the Internet encyclopedia has roughly 10 times more entries.
The concept was not entirely new, however. The most influential open-source project may still be the Linux computer operating system, which was developed collaboratively by computer scientists beginning in the early 1990s. Today it is used not just by millions of people, but by corporations such as Motorola and BMW. Williams noted that the rise of Wikipedia, Linux -- and other user-generated platforms from online marketplace eBay to MIT's increasingly popular online curriculum -- is no accident, but part of what he calls a "perfect storm" in the growth of the Internet.
The key ingredients in that storm, he said, are the technological advances -- often referred to as "Web 2.0" -- that make online collaboration and communication easier to transact, as well as the arrival of a generation of Internet users that has been born since 1980 and that insists on taking a more active role in creating or editing the online content that it uses.
Williams noted that one of the interviewees for Wikinomics, freelance film editor Josh Peterson, told him that the rapid changes in the Internet reminded him of the history of filmmaking. "He said, 'In the early days of filmmaking, the technology had turned to a point where you didn't actually have to be a technician to make a film, and it was at that point that the torch of creativity passed down from technicians to story tellers. I think you would agree that we have much better films today as a result.'"
I'm looking forward to reading the book. Also, I've been wondering if might be a useful way to combine a wiki with what I do here at BillHobbs.com.
BillHobbs.com is now available on your cellphone browser - just point it to http://winksite.com/billhobbs/blog. The feed is text-only with no hyperlinks.
The Nashville City Paper says in an editorial that the Republican proposal to reduce and eventually eliminate Tennessee's sales tax on food "has merit" and says Gov. Phil Bredesen "has unfortunately gone on the offensive" against the Republican effort to phase out the food tax over the next decade. "It is an idea that has real merit and could positively impact the wallet of some of Tennessee's neediest families," says the City Paper, bemoaning that, "right out of the gate, the administration is against any kind of tax cut despite whopping surpluses and ahead of schedule revenues for several years in a row." Bredesen's opposition to cutting the food tax "is the wrong approach," the paper says. "We urge the administration to give the concept of a tax cut on food serious thought."
Thanks to a link from Instapundit, my post yesterday about the University of Tennessee making a commitment to "go green" is suddenly getting a lot of reader comments. Click here to join the conversation. (No comments here, please, let's keep it all on one thread.)
With jetBlue making all sorts of news lately for its abysmal performance over the last several days - canceled flights, thousands of passengers stranded on runways and such - and its promise yesterday to live by a new "passengers' bill of rights," I thought I would comment on my trip to Philadephia over the weekend. I flew on Southwest Airlines. We departed an hour late on Thursday morning - and when the flight was delayed nobody came to the gate to tell the waiting passengers. I learned about it from the airline's website and spread the news to the passengers, many of whom were already lined up to board the flight that was supposed to leave in about 15 minutes. Southwest usually is much better at customer service than that. But at least the flight was smooth, and the bags all made it.
Toyota made a $3.6 billion profit in the last three months of 2006. Remember that as you read more and more stories about how the Bredesen administration is preparing to give Toyota millions of tax dollars to entice it to build its next assembly plant in Chattanoooga rather than just across the Mississippi River from Memphis in Marion, Ark. - but won't cut the food sales tax because it would "cost" the state an estimated $3.6 billion over the next 12 years.
Gov. Phil Bredesen so badly doesn't want to cut the sales tax on groceries that he's now claiming the Republican proposal is a ploy to get a state income tax. That's absurd of course - it is the party that Bredesen leads which supports a state income tax and very nearly voted one into existence several years ago. Republicans, mostly, stood against the income tax, and since the Income Tax Wars of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Republican House and Senate caucuses have become more anti-income tax with the retirement or defeat of pro-income tax legislators and the election of more anti-income tax legislators.
The claim that Tennessee would face a fiscal crisis if it didn't tax food is also absurd - the food tax generates a minor part of state revenues - it generated less than $500 million last year for a budget above $25 billion. (The governor's proposed budget for fiscal year 2007-08 is $27.5 billion.)
The Legislature's Fiscal Review Committee has estimated that ending the sales tax on food would reduce revenue collections by $3.6 billion over the next 12 years - $300 million per year. I think that's high given the Republican proposal is to slowly phase out the 6-cent tax by half a cent per year. Still, $3.2 billion is an interesting figure as, if the legislature and governors of both parties had merely restrained the annual growth of the state budget to the level set in the state constitution's "Copeland Cap," rather than routinely busting the cap, the state today would have an annual revenue surplus above $3.4 billion. In other words, if the state would merely live within the constitutional cap on spending going forward, the sales tax on food would rapidly become wholly unnecessary.
Meanwhile, there is one bigtime elected official in Tennessee who is saying that he believes Tennessee eventually will have to have a state income tax. That elected official is Gov. Phil Bredesen. Check out the last 10 seconds of this video of his meeting recently with the Chattanooga Times-Free Press editorial board...
And that's all I'm going to say about that.
Blogosphere reaction: Adam Groves (with choice words from state Sen. Mae Beavers).
More Media Links: Knoxville News Sentinel story here
Wes Comer has posted an illustrated step-by-step guide to the state legislature's newly improved website. Check it out here. It has never been easier for the average citizen - or citizen-journalist - to find out what's going on at Legislative Plaza than it is right now. Except, that is, if you call the Department of Revenue.
A new poll shows that a majority of Americans want the United States to win in Iraq, putting them on a different page with the Democratic Party's push in Congress to "slow bleed" America into defeat. Continue on to read a press release I just received on a new national survey by Alexandria, VA-based Public Opinion Strategies.
(Alexandria, VA) February 20 -- In the wake of the U.S. House of Representatives passing a resolution that amounts to a vote of no confidence in the Bush administration's policies in Iraq, a new national survey by Alexandria, VA-based Public Opinion Strategies (POS) shows the American people may have some different ideas from their elected leaders on this issue.
The survey was conducted nationwide February 5-7 among a bi-partisan, cross-section of 800 registered voters. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent. The survey was commissioned by The Moriah Group, a Chattanooga-based strategic communications and public affairs firm.
"The survey shows Americans want to win in Iraq, and that they understand Iraq is the central point in the war against terrorism and they can support a U.S. strategy aimed at achieving victory," said Neil Newhouse, a partner in POS. "The idea of pulling back from Iraq is not where the majority of Americans are."
By a 53 percent - 46 percent margin, respondents surveyed said that "Democrats are going too far, too fast in pressing the President to withdraw troops from Iraq.
By identical 57 percent - 41 percent margins, voters agreed with these two statements: "I support finishing the job in Iraq, that is, keeping the troops there until the Iraqi government can maintain control and provide security" and "the Iraqi war is a key part of the global war on terrorism."
Also, by a 56 percent - 43 percent margin, voters agreed that "even if they have concerns about his war policies, Americans should stand behind the President in Iraq because we are at war."
While the survey shows voters believe (60 percent- 34 percent) that Iraq will never become a stable democracy, they still disagree that victory in Iraq ("creating a young, but stable democracy and reducing the threat of terrorism at home") is no longer possible. Fifty-three percent say it's still possible, while 43 percent disagree.
By a wide 74 percent - 25 percent margin, voters disagree with the notion that "I don't really care what happens in Iraq after the U.S. leaves, I just want the troops brought home."
"How Americans view the war does not line up with the partisan messages or actions coming out of Washington," said Davis Lundy, president of The Moriah Group. "There are still a majority of Americans out there who want to support the President and a focused effort to define and achieve victory."
While the Bush administration may find some comfort and support in these poll results, their efforts to increasingly tie the war to Iran do not seem to be working. By a 63 percent-32 percent margin, poll respondents say the US should hold direct talks with Iran about the situation in Iraq and they narrowly reject (49 percent-47 percent) the statement "a stable Iraq is the best way to protect America from the nuclear threat of Iran."
Voters also say they are more concerned about the War in Iraq (53 percent) than the growing influence of Iran (35 percent). Finally, when asked which statement best describes their position on the Iraq War, voters are evenly divided (50 percent - 49 percent) between positions of "doing whatever it takes to restore order until the Iraqis can govern and provide security to their country," and positions that call for immediate withdrawal or a strict timetable.
27 percent said "the Iraq war is the front line in the battle against terrorism and our troops should stay there and do whatever it takes to restore order until the Iraqis can govern and provide security to their country."
23 percent said "while I don't agree that the U.S. should be in the war, our troops should stay there and do whatever it takes to restore order until the Iraqis can govern and provide security to their country."
32 percent said "whether Iraq is stable or not, the U.S. should set and hold to a strict timetable for withdrawing troops."
17 percent said "the U.S. should immediately withdraw its troops from Iraq."
The survey also found that voters thought it would hurt American prestige more to pull out of Iraq immediately(59 percent) than it would to stay there for the long term (35 percent).
"The key group driving public opinion here are what we call the "nose-holders", said Newhouse. "They don't believe we should have gone to war or should still be there, but they believe we should stay and do whatever it takes to restore order until the Iraqis can govern and provide security for their own country."
The poll resonates with what I've heard from my largely Republican circle of friends - we are unhappy with President Bush over the war not because we're in Iraq or that things haven't gone well in Iraq, but because of the sense that America has been fighting a politically-correct war with one hand tied behind our back. The sooner the president takes the gloves off - and he's done that with the "surge," - the sooner his poll numbers will rise among Republicans. Ironically, among the defeatist Democrats in Congress who are trying to orchestrate our defeat in Iraq, winning in Iraq will only make them more opposed to the war.
Cooper is the prime sponsor of several pieces of legislation designed to expand the sale of alcoholic beverages, including Senate Bill 1223, which would allow certain non-profit organizations to sell wine; Senate Bill 1224, which would allow wine retailers and wineries to offer free samples of wine to consumers on the premises; and Senate Bills 0829 and 1219, which would allow certain resorts to sell alcoholic beverages.
Cooper also is facing federal fraud charges in a land deal case.
Trent Seibert, last seen rocking the state capital with his investigative political reports for The Tennessean and then WKRN Channel 2, just joined the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. I guess the folks over at the Tennessee Department of Revenue - and the rest of state government - are going to have to take TCPR seriously now. A.C. Kleinheider had the scoop. NashvillePost.com has a story if you've got money.
The University of Tennessee is the first and so far the only Tennessee college or university to sign the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, which the Chronicle of Higher Educationdescribed as "a new effort by academia to cut college carbon emissions to zero." So far, some 74 universities nationwide have signed on.
It's not just an environmental pledge - it also commits the university to "integrating sustainability into the curriculum and making it part of the educational experience."
I was unable to find a UT press release announcing its promise to go green, though signatories to the pledge also promise to make the related "action plan, inventory and progress reports publicly available."
Update: Maryland blogger Brian Griffiths notes that when public universities sign up for the green promise, it's going to cost taxpayers.
Nashville mayoral candidate David Briley had lunch and an on-the-record chat with a group of Nashville-area politically-interested bloggers Monday. The Kleinheider has the looooong report complete with navel-gazing and links to others bloggers' reports. I was invited and decided not to go because I don't live in Nashville and won't be blogging here about the mayoral race.
Nashville City Paperendorses the proposal to move Tennessee's 2008 presidential primary a week earlier, to Feb. 5, which will put Tennessee in a growing pack of numerous states with Feb. 5 primaries where it will be lost in the crowd.
A prediction: By the time the case of the Nashville cabbie who tried to run over his customers goes to trial, the cabbie's lawyers will claim he was incited by "hate speech" from his passengers. ... In unrelated taxicab-related news, columnist Leonard Pitts weighs in on the refusal of Muslim cabbies in Minneapolis-St. Paul to transport passengers carrying alcohol or traveling with a dog. Also see Judicial Watch for a recent update on the Minneapolis situation.
Ever since he won re-election after running a flood of ads touting his promises to get tough on illegal immigration, Gov. Bredesen hasn't said much about the subject, but The Tennesseanreports that Bredesen does plan to undo one of the worse mistakes of his first term - the granting of driving privileges to illegals.
Former Republican state senator and gubernatorial candidate Jim Bryson has started blogging. That's nothing but good news - Bryson has the advantage of an insider's perspective and the freedom to blog now as an outsider.
They had a social-media conference at Kennesaw State University recently similar to the BlogNashville conference of May 2005, and the Atlanta media ignored it. Just like the mastadons ignored that increasing chill in the air. (Hat tip: Ben. C.)
"State Government Should Crack Open Like a Pinata..."
The Nashville City Paperrips into Tennessee Department of Revenue Commissioner Reagan Farr in one of the best editorials about government openness, and bureaucrats who try to avoid it, that I have ever read. The paper first recaps the details, which the paper reported last week, of how the Revenue Department deliberatly refused a public information request from the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, based on a dislike of TCPR's political agenda:
Revenue department staff refused to respond to the TCPR staff, deeming them not a legitimate group that apparently didn't deserve a response from state bureaucrats in exchange for their tax dollars as residents of Tennessee. Still fairly new Revenue Commissioner Reagan Farr stood behind the revenue staff, saying TCPR did not pursue the information they requested through the correct channels. The TCPR disputes this, noting they originally called the department's public information officer for information - the person Farr said should have been contacted.
A direct quote from the department's public information officer's e-mail to other revenue staffers: "The Tennessee Center for Policy Research has called several people in the department, including me, re: unauthorized substances tax. As you know, this is Drew Johnson's group. We are not responding to the calls."
The key words here are, "including me." Clearly, the protocol under which the TCPR was denied the information as stated by Farr was actually followed.
Anyone who reads the email at the center of the story knows the TCPR attempted to get the information through what Farr called "proper channels," and was denied it, despite Farr's attempt to claim otherwise. The City Paper continues:
It is true; the TCPR is not a group without an agenda. They are interested in low taxes, smaller government and government accountability. Ironically, that sounds a great deal like many of the values Gov. Phil Bredesen has campaigned on successfully during both of his re-election bids.
Quite frankly, it should not really matter how far off the mainstream any group is when dealing with state government. Whether it is a blogger in their pajamas, a special interest group or just Joe Citizen, state government should crack open like a pinata when asked for otherwise public information.
Farr's attempt to mislead the City Paper and the public about what really transpired is troubling, but not as troubling as his apparent belief that the state's open records laws permit a state agency to refuse info requests from people or groups the agency dislikes.
Update: Monday morning I emailed Gov. Phil Bredesen's spokesperson, Lydia Lenker, seeking a statement from the administration regarding the Department of Revenue's refusal to answer TCPR's public-information request, and Commissioner Reagan Farr's subsequent dishonesty about what really happened. By late Monday there was no response.
Mark Steyn examines the state of things in Iraq, and how Democrats in Congress are trying to orchestrate America's defeat. Says Steyn "The Murtha plan is to deny the president the possibility of victory while making sure Democrats don't have to share the blame for the defeat. But of course he's a great American! He's a patriot! He supports the troops! He doesn't support them in the mission, but he'd like them to continue failing at it for a couple more years."
This pre-Revolutionary War structure stands near the corner of Route 252 and Rose Tree Road in Delaware County, Pa.. I don't know much about its history other than that.
State Agency Deliberately Ignores Public-Info Request
Nashville City Paper's got a must-read story today for anyone who cares about government being accountable to the people...
The state's Department of Revenue is refusing to respond to inquiries from a conservative watchdog organization over a controversial tax, labeling them "not a legitimate group."
The Tennessee Center for Policy Research (TCPR), who bills themselves as an "independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research and educational institute," made the inquiries to different employees of the Department of Revenue in early January regarding the unauthorized substances tax's budget.
A City Paper public records request revealed inner-department e-mails about the decision not to respond to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research or its executive director, Drew Johnson.
I learned about this situation in mid-January when an employee of the Department of Revenue provided me a copy of Revenue spokesperson Emily Richards' email. I passed the information along to Drew Johnson so he would know that the Revenue department was being deliberatly unresponsive to a request for what is supposed to be public information. I'm pleased to see it surface in the mainstream media.
In the City Paper story, new Revenue commissioner Reagan Farr attempts to defend Richards' actions:
Farr said TCPR did not follow "the proper channels" by not directing all of their inquiries to Richard, the department's spokeswoman. He said TCPR representatives were calling different employees of the Department of Revenue and not specifically working through Richard.
But Richards' own emails undermine Farr's spin:
"The Tennessee Center for Policy Research has called several people in the department, including me, re: unauthorized substances tax. As you know, this is Drew Johnson's group. We are not responding to the calls," Richard's e-mail to Corney and Lassiter read.
So, TCPR in fact did attempt to go through proper channels - Richards - but a decision was made by Richards to ignore a legitimate public-info request from a citizen, and to advise the employees of the Department of Revenue also to ignore the information request. The decision was based on TCPR's reputation as a critic of the administration. And Richards' actions were accepted and now endorsed by the top officials in the administration.
That is just wrong.
Also writing about this story today: A.C. Kleinheider slams the Revenue Department for "elementary school shenanigans" in deciding to only answer info requests from non-critics.
Ben Cunningham asks, "Should government be allowed to be this arrogant to us?"
Bob Krumm gives government secret-holders some advice: "If you want to make sure that the information you don't want released ends up on the front page, just refuse to release it."
Kay Brooks nails it: "You want proof that TCPR is a legitimate watchdog group? Here you have it. They've uncovered a group of people who have forgotten that they're supposed to be serving the public. The next question is what else does the Department of Revenue not want us to know?"
Blog post accumulation here at BillHobbs.com is expected to be light the rest of the day as I'm traveling to snow-blanketed Philadelphia to visit relatives including my mom who, with the help of God working through some good doctors is currently kicking cancer's tail for the second time.
Update: Flying in Philly is problematic these days given the cold, icy, snowy weather - for which I blame global warming. My flight is delayed an hour, so I decided to plug in the laptop and ... the entire gate area has just two outlets, and the one I've plugged into has no power. Nashville International Airport is in the midst of a $40 million renovation and, trust me, it needs it.
NewsChannel5's Phil Williams 
Huckabee, a candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, also appeared at a small invitation-only reception at the Nashville home of Terry Saltsman, brother of Huckabee's campaign manager Chip Saltsman, former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. The event was as well-attended as 
Thanks to a 
