It’s great when someone you admire sees merit in you too. Today, I needed an injection of inspiration for finishing up the talk I’m giving next week on @jeffpulver‘s first #140Conf event on a tour bus, and got it when Reda StCyr “fanned” me on Huffington Post. StCyr is the woman who introduced me to the #p2 hashtag and through it provided me with a ready-made mechanism for interfacing on the web with the progressive community. Following links from Huffington’s fan notification took me to an important article about the poverty tour Dr. Cornel West & Tavis Smiley undertook this summer. In it, Smiley says that when the American public pressures Washington to take action on any issue, action gets taken. He gives some examples to prove his case and suggests that we be a lot more vocal about the poor needing help.
Obama’s Positive Accomplishments
I’m an openly enthusiastic fan of Obama. If you’re one of those people thinking that our president doesn’t deserve admiration, maybe an item from the list below will change your opinion. And if you’re a fellow Obama fan, enjoy the read! (I’ll be updating this list)
A Columbia University historian says this about the 111th Congress: “This is probably the most productive session of Congress since at least the ‘60s,” said Alan Brinkley, a historian at New York’s Columbia University. “It’s all the more impressive given how polarized the Congress has been.” “See for yourself, what is only a partial list of nearly 400 pieces of legislation that became law out of the 111th Congress” FB Page: “Things Obama has done…” Major Accomplishments of Barack Obama (a @StCyrlyMe2 find.) I love this format: the list is broken up into categories and every one can be expanded to give you a brief synopsis of the type of change Obama made happen. Click on the link (or several links) supplied for each entry to see the official public information page or news article where verification of the change can be viewed. What a fabulous way of presenting this information!Obamaachievements.org
Christie Claims Budget Cuts Backpedalling As Increases
Republicans are masters of brainwashing.
Christie’s claiming $850 in “new aid” to schools but the reality is that the $850 million allocated includes $820 million Christie’s first budget draft took away from New Jersey schools. This is how Christie math works:
Christie ignored a state Supreme Court ruling from last May calling for $500 million more for the state’s neediest school districts. After restoring $820 million of funds he himself cut in his original budget proposal, Christie’s present budget added only $30 million of school aid: he must still add $470 million to comply with Supreme Court ruling.
Report on Adolescent Girls and Climate Change
Plan International’s new report,
The findings presented in the report are based on interviews with girls involved in Plan International’s programmes in Ethiopia and Bangladesh. We were particularly keen to learn from girls themselves how climate change is impacting their lives, and what they think policy makers should do differently.
One Issue Voter
I was chatting with a fascinating guy today. (Son) Ivan and I met him at a Latino culture event at Puffin‘s Teaneck location. Morty was telling Ivan that he should get into ballroom dancing instead of ballet (which Ivan has thought about trying) – said that if a workout is what he’s looking for, doing the Lindsey and throwing his partner out in spins is maybe more physicality than he’ll get in ballet. Impressive statement coming from a guy who’s 80 years old but looks and sounds like someone 20 or so years young. Morty also grows orchids. Wow!
Christie Declares War On the Poor
I can’t really add anything to this succinctly phrased statement by William Colon. He lays out for easy review, the drastic funding cuts Christie has enacted, which strike blow after blow to the most vulnerable of our state.
Christie’s War On The Poor
Written by William Colon, executive director of the Latino Institute, Inc. and a contributing writer for the Hall Institute of Public Policy.
“We had a ‘war on poverty’ once, and we lost it, and since poverty is still here, let’s eliminate the poor amongst us.”
Bad News Reporting
This is a companion piece to my post Media Outlets Serving Up REAL News. Bad news are reports that mislead, misinform and manipulate readers and viewers. I realized that it’s just as important to understand what bad news reporting is, as it is to know where to find real news. This post will also be added to over time.
Under each bad news agency you’ll find a list of articles and posts that explain why we know that these organizations don’t serve up truth to their audiences.
Investigative Journalism Suppressed During Bush Era
As I often say, the challenge to people becoming aware that major media outlets have become co-opted representatives of major corporate interests is that most people get their news from them. As a fellow #rootstriker pointed out recently, major media executives have absolutely no incentive to talk truth to themselves or to report against their own corporate interests. That’s why many people eventually want to know, “If I truly can’t find real news through major media outlets, how can I find it? To answer that question, I put together a brief list of Media Outlets Serving Up REAL News, and I’ll add to it over time.
Media Outlets Serving Up REAL, accurate News
Please also take a look at companion piece on which organizations are serving up bad news, and what it is about their news that makes it bad.
Campaign for America’s FutureThe Campaign for America’s Future is the strategy center for the progressive movement. Our goal is to forge the enduring progressive majority needed to realize the America of shared prosperity and equal opportunity that our country was meant to be.
Businesses Now Immigration Police?
In today’s column, Miguel Perez criticizes the Supreme Court for blurring the lines between federal and local government with its recent ruling to uphold the Legal Arizona Workers Act. Perez says, “Mind you, this is not the most infamous Arizona law — the one that would institutionalize racial profiling against all immigrants by allowing police to question anyone’s immigration status. This one empowers local authorities to shut down any business that knowingly hires an undocumented immigrant.”
Jorge and Chris get scholarships!
My son, Jorge Ivan, received a Hamm Family Scholarship at Bergen Community College this week. Thanks, Hamm Family!
And our friend Yulie’s boyfriend, Chris McCourt, received a different scholarship. In all, about 200 meritorious and deserving students received scholarships from various organizations at the ceremony.
FCC forms net-neutrality committee
by Sara Jerome / 04/27/11 03:01 PM ET
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published a note in the Federal Register last week announcing that it plans to form a net-neutrality committee.
The “Open Internet Advisory Committee” is charged with tracking the effects of the net-neutrality rules, passed in December, and with providing recommendations to the agency as it enforces the rules.
The committee will reportedly include phone and cable companies, consumer groups, engineering experts, investors, Internet companies and device manufacturers.
Must I sign my doctor’s HIPAA policy receipt form?
My son and I share a doctor who recently declined to treat my son, and said she would need to bill me directly for past services, because we each refused to sign the form acknowledging her office’s HIPAA policy. Doc said that by not signing the acknowledgement form Jorge Ivan and I made it impossible for her office to bill our insurance provider. I said, “I’ve been told that you need to ask for my signature on this form, but that I am not obliged to sign it.” Eventually, Doc and I agreed that I would do some research to prove my case, and if I couldn’t prove it – and still refused to sign the form – that I would agree to pay for her services directly.
Only one sentence space in digital documents!
People, we should be using only a single space between sentences in electronic documents. Many of us still use two!
On the topic of this practice, Slate says,
Can I let you in on a secret? Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong.
And the Chicago Manual of Style agrees:
But introducing two spaces after the period causes problems: (1) it is inefficient, requiring an extra keystroke for every sentence; (2) even if a program is set to automatically put an extra space after a period, such automation is never foolproof; (3) there is no proof that an extra space actually improves readability—as your comment suggests, it’s probably just a matter of familiarity (Who knows? perhaps it’s actually more efficient to read with less regard for sentences as individual units of thought—many centuries ago, for example in ancient Greece, there were no spaces even between words, and no punctuation); (4) two spaces are harder to control for than one in electronic documents (I find that the earmark of a document that imposes a two-space rule is a smattering of instances of both three spaces and one space after a period, and two spaces in the middle of sentences); and (5) two spaces can cause problems with line breaks in certain programs.
Chaos? Blame It On Retrograde Mercury
Every once in a while I’ll have a series of failures occur that couldn’t have been predicted and which weren’t logical at all. Logically, they should never have happened. Like the time that my computer, our DVD player and my car, all failed one after the other in a couple day timeframe. Even odder: for a few days we used a spare DVD player that was so noisy it drove my family crazy and took all the pleasure out of watching movies. I told my sons we should plug back in our old DVD player because if it was going to have reset itself that would have happened already and sure thing, the player which had been completely, brick dead a few days prior worked perfectly once again, and has ever since. My car had to be repaired though, and my computer needed to receive massive massaging to finally get it back on line.