Yearly Archives: 2007

Parenting in a Nutshell

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Want to know what parenting is all about?  Read this.

"Baby, can you hear me now?"

He looks up, nods. His hair is sweaty and ruffled at his temples, and I want to smooth it but I don’t.

"We will do this together. TOGETHER. I need you to trust me. I am on your side. If there is a way on earth, I will find it. Do you understand?"

He
holds my gaze for a few seconds, then nods and drops his eyes. Behind
him through the back windshield, I see another man come out of a side
door, another woman guiding him with a hand at his elbow.

"I love you."

"I love you, too, Mommy." Defeated. Deflated. Asea.

He does not look at me again.

See Ya Sports Machine

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When I was in high school WRC Channel 4 (NBC) in DC hired a guy named George Michael to be their sports anchor.  Up to that point I thought the only REAL sports guy in town was Glenn Brenner, and although Brenner was always my favorite until he died suddenly of a brain tumor in the early 90s, I did enjoy Michael’s schtick.

What I’ll always remember Michael for is his Sports Machine which he started in DC and then syndicated nationally in ’84.  That coincided nicely with my freshman year of college when I was in Seward, Nebraska.  I was very homesick and watching the Sports Machine in the student lounge was a nice dose of home cooking for me.

Michael’s run is coming to an end at WRC and although I haven’t watched him in over two years I’m going to kind of miss the guy.

Silver Tunas

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Recently I offered the Winston-Salem Journal some free advice (remember, it’s worth what you paid for it) and while I hope it was constructive, much of it was criticism.  So I’d like to take this opportunity to highlight what I think is a good blog post for a newspaper.

Managing Editor Ken Otterbourg has been hosting a blog for the Journal for a while now and I think it’s beginning to show.  His post today, How to bag an auto plant, is a great example of bringing a personal voice to his blog while staying on topic in regards to his blog’s mission and informing his readers beyond the pages of the "paper."  Here’s an excerpt to help me explain what I mean:

When it comes to car factories, North Carolina appears to be a
perennial bridesmaid. As we noted today, Toyota chose Tupelo, Miss.
(yes, it’s the whole Elvis thing) over a bunch of other places,
including a site in Davidson County.

Despite Detroit’s problems, car factories are still silver tunas, especially Toyota plants. One of my favorite sites, the Rural Blog,
which is run out of the University of Kentucky journalism school has an
interesting piece on the role the newspaper in Northeast Mississippi
played in the recruitment effort. The paper is called the Northeast
Mississippi Daily Journal, and it’s goal for the past 50 years has been
to tie that corner of the state together into a viable region for
growth…

The news pages of newspapers (as opposed to the opinion pages) have
always done a balancing act when it comes to being a part of economic
recruitment. I look at the Journal’s coverage of Dell’s move here, or
more recently, The Charlotte Observer’s reporting on the Google
incentives. We certainly understand that growth means—or has the
potential to mean—more readers and the like, but being a cheerleader is
a difficult role for many of us.

What I really like about this post is that Ken isn’t afraid to share his opinion, he shares a little background re. his favorite blog, he writes about something he’s obviously very interested in (the role of newspapers in the community and the future of newspapers), and he ties it to events that are of interest to his audience (economic development in the region).  On top of all that he gives me a great title to this post, although when I think of "silver tunas" I get this disturbing image of a silver plated statue of Bill "The Big Tuna" Parcells in "The Thinker" pose.  WAY too much coffee today.

Trickle Down and the Sticky Leg

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I had a professor in college (this is during the Reagan years) who hated the whole trickle-down economic theory and to express his distaste would say that "all trickle down economics is going to get us is a sticky leg."  At the time I had the distinct impression that a lot of the prevailing economic theory involved the rich getting richer and then the rest of us benefiting from the drippings they left in their wake.  Some people said a rising tide raises all boats, but since a lot of us didn’t own boats (those damn things are expensive) I didn’t find that statement particularly encouraging.  It seemed to me that while theoretically trickle down economics should benefit everyone it seemed to benefit the wealthy most. That made my perception of trickle down economics to be a scheme by the rich and powerful to line their pockets with extra dollars while keeping the rest of us happy with extra nickels.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been reading about the history of the US tax system, and what I read discouraged me a great deal and reminded me of the feelings I earlier had about trickle down economics.  Despite what you might expect I wasn’t that discouraged by the favorable tax treatment that the super-wealthy get relative to the middle class.  Rather I was discouraged by the argument made by supporters of that treatment, and the fact that many of us actually accept it.  Essentially what the supporters say is that the super-wealthy, while making up some miniscule percentage of the overall population, contribute a larger percentage of overall taxes.  Well pardon me, but that argument’s a load of horseshit.  What matters is the percentage of their wealth that they pay in taxes compared to the percentage of our wealth that the rest of us pay.  By that measure the super-wealthy are essentially paying the same or less in taxes than the Average Joe. (See David Kay Johnston’s book for details).

Some would argue that it doesn’t matter if the super wealthy pay the same effective tax rate as the middle class because in the end they are still contributing significantly more dollars than the middle class.  The problem is that the effective tax rate the super wealthy pay is partly due to fancy tax schemes and shelters concocted by their professional tax advisers and which are not realistically available to the rest of us.  And a lot of those schemes and shelters exist in the tax code thanks to lobbying by the super wealthy and their corporate counterparts.  Even if it’s fair, it looks and feels shady.

I’m bringing all this up because of a letter to the editor I read in the Winston-Salem Journal the other day.  The writer was opining against those folks who think the Bushies have done a bad job (war, Katrina, immigration, job losses) and he uses the following argument to bolster his stance that things are just rosy right now: the stock market is doing great and unemployment is historically low.   To me his argument rings hollow for the same reasons that trickle down economics does; it sounds like something the wealthy/powerful want us to believe to keep us in line while they walk off with the big bucks.  Sure unemployment is low, but how many of those jobs are paying people below the poverty level?  The stock market?  That’s a risky thing to lean on as regards to arguing prosperity, and I’d venture that the writer’s perspective might be a little different right now than it was 48 hours ago (see this story about the tumble of markets worldwide).  Of course the markets could rebound in another 48 hours, but the point is that whether or not the market rises or falls most people in this country don’t perceive that they get a direct benefit from the market’s rise.  Maybe their employers do, and maybe that keeps their jobs around for another paycheck, but their perception is that the market is for the wealthy’s benefit.  That’s their perception so that’s their reality.

And the author of the letter disregards other pieces of the economic puzzle.  Savings rates are at historic lows, debt levels at historic highs and the Average Joe is leveraged to the eyeballs (just like Stanley Johnson).  Whatever gains we might get in our 401K or IRA accounts is effectively offset by our outrageous credit card balances/interest and our lack of rainy-day funds when things go wrong. I’m not saying it’s anyone’s fault but those who have built up their debt, but it helps explain the Average Joe’s perspective.

To put this in a nutshell, even if trickle down economics works and even if the stock market is doing great and unemployment rates are low, I don’t think the Average Joe sees it as directly beneficial to himself.  His perception is that the wealthy are winning the game by riding his back and I have to wonder how long it will be until the Average Joe starts to rebel.  If we don’t want some sort of socialist-democratic system foisted upon us (think France, or God forbid, teachers unions) then we need to clean things up so that the Average Joe doesn’t feel screwed.  I’m not saying that we need to de-wealthy the rich, or that we need to subsidize the middle class, I’m just saying that we need to make sure we’re all playing under the same rules.    If we don’t we’re gonna have a lot of people who think their legs are sticky.

Jobs is Right About Teachers Unions

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Steve Jobs recently blasted teachers unions, and at least some people agree with him.  Here’s what the Apple CEO (or as I like to call him, PodBoy) had to say:

Jobs compared schools to businesses with principals serving as CEOs.

"What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you
told them that when they came in they couldn’t get rid of people that
they thought weren’t any good?" he asked to loud applause during an
education reform conference.

"Not really great ones because if you’re really smart you go, ‘I can’t win.’"

In a rare joint appearance, Jobs shared the stage with competitor
Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Inc. Both spoke to the gathering
about the potential for bringing technological advances to classrooms.

"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is
that they have become unionized in the worst possible way," Jobs said.

"This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."

I have to agree with Jobs, but Don Dodge, the guy that heads Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team, hit the nail on the head when he wrote that Jobs was only half right.  The other problem with teachers’ unions is that they don’t reward high achievers:

My take? Steve got it half right. I agree that You can’t fire the bad ones. The other half of the problem is that you can’t reward the good ones.
That is what all unions do…protect the incompetent ones. Unions
eliminate "pay for performance" and instead "pay by seniority". How do
they get this seniority? Just breathe…because they can’t be fired.
About the only way a teacher can be fired is for sexual misconduct,
some other crime, or obvious malfeasance. Perhaps worse, unions don’t
allow rewards for excellent individual performance. Where is the
incentive for teachers, or any union member, to work harder, take
risks, and excel?

Robert Scoble agrees with me, while Dan Farber says the problem starts with teacher salaries.

Most of us work for businesses without unions, and most of us do
just fine without the "protection" of a union. In fact, we enjoy "pay
for performance" and work hard to earn promotions and
bonuses. Yes, there are some large businesses that protect incompetent
workers and refuse to fire them. But at least they don’t hold back the
star performers and do reward them for their efforts.

Later in his post Dodge points to some interesting numbers about teacher pay.  Here’s another excerpt:

The Hoover Institute published a paper
on teachers salaries, citing the American Federation of Teachers effort
to compare teachers wages to other professions. The Hoover report
responded;

"Where,
one wonders, are the comparisons with journalists, registered nurses,
assistant district attorneys, FBI agents, military officers, and other
not-so-highly compensated professionals and public-sector employees? Shouldn’t the average pay of a high-school English teacher be compared with that of writers and editors?
One could make a case that the salaries of high-school physics or
calculus teachers should bear some resemblance to those of computer
system analysts, but does the AFT believe that the appropriate
compensation benchmarks for 3rd-grade teachers are the salaries of
engineers or attorneys?"

Teachers only work about 180 days per year,
so on an hourly basis they are making a very good wage. The rest of us
work about 240 days per year, or about 33% more. Doesn’t it make sense
that teachers should be paid 33% less than the average worker with
similar responsibility? Take a look at this chart from the Hoover Institute that compares average hourly wages of many different professions.
Teachers make a higher average hourly wage than accountants, computer
programmers, auditors, and even more than architects and engineers who
work in State and Local governments.

Steve Jobs said that putting more technology into schools will not
significantly improve the results. This is a bold statement for the
Apple CEO to make after decades of subsidizing the purchase of Apple
computers for use in public schools. But once again, I think Steve Jobs
is right. Until we solve the problem of how to reward great teachers
and remove poor teachers we will not see significantly better results.

The problem is not money. Schools already get more
than 50% of the local budgets in most cities and towns. Health care is
the same deal. We spend more per capita on health care than any country
in the world. The problems with education and health care are not lack
of funding. The problem is lack of incentive.

I can’t tell you how glad I was to read Jobs’ comments and Dodge’s post.  Dodge in particular articulated my own point of view in regards to teachers much better than I ever have.  In particular I’ve always felt that teachers screwed themselves over by unionizing.  I truly believe that teaching is an immensely important job and if the teachers had formed a professional society (think doctors and lawyers) they’d be treated with the respect they deserve.  Instead they’ve bought in to the group-think of unionization and accepted the numbingingly bureaucratic public education system as is.

Good teachers should be paid as well as anyone in this country, but unfortunately for them they’re paid the same as the clock puncher one classroom over.  Real education reform will only begin when we stop trying to throw from money, buildings and materials at the problem and address the most critical component to a good educational system: the teachers.  As I wrote when our local school system asked for a new bond to build more schools, I’d rather send my kid to class in a trailer with a smaller class size and a good teacher than in a beautiful new brick building with a class of 35 being taught by some semi-educated dolt.  Unfortunately we parents don’t have a lobbying group to offset the work of the teachers union in the legislature, so the chances of this kind of reform happening are smaller than finding an honest politician in Raleigh.

Run a Print Media Operation? You Should Read This

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Colin Crawford of b-to-b media company IDG has an interesting post on his blog that is really a must-read for anyone in print media.  Here’s a taste:

In the US, our online revenue now accounts for over 35% of our total
US publishing revenues. Next year, for many brands online revenues will
be greater than print revenues, if fact they already are at some of our
key brands and by 2009 – approximately 50% of IDG’s US revenues will
come from online.

To drive this change and to focus on online revenue we’ve changed
the business mission of our organization away from print. Going forward
IDG Communications will define itself as a web centric information
company complemented by expos, events and print publications.

The brutal reality that we’re facing today is the costly process of
dismantling and replacing legacy operations and cultures and business
models with ones with new and yet to be fully proven business models.
However, we face greater risks if we don’t transform our organization
and take some chances…

Figuring out the transformation from print to online is only the start.
The information we produce, facilitate and aggregate increasingly will
be viewed on a number of screens – the Computer, the TV, the smart
mobile phone, the iPod and other portable entertainment devices. Many
of these screens are more suited to video and audio than text. Even
more new skills for our organization to master! (Emphasis mine).

If I had to point to one traditional print company that has really taken off in terms of their online efforts it would be The Washington Post.  Blogs out the wazoo, tons of video and reporters that shoot and edit their own video (my cousin found that out first hand) show the Post’s willingness to throw effort and resources into the online realm.  And why not?  If you could take the millions you spend on ink, paper and presses and spend it instead on resources that actually create more content for consumers and further your advantage over other information providers wouldn’t it make more sense than cutting down more trees?  And as information consumption patterns continue to trend towards digital (PDAs, smart phones, etc.) wouldn’t it be crazy to not follow the eyeballs?  Just one more reason I think the print operations that don’t experiment while they still hold a monopolistic status are killing their future business.

A Keyboard I Can Covet

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Royaltypewriter
When I was in 10th grade I transferred to this little (85 students) Lutheran high school.  My junior year my mother insisted that I take typing because she predicted that by the time I got to the working world people wouldn’t have secretaries but they would have computers.  Fairly prescient for 1982 I’d say.  Anyway, the typewriters at our school were donated manual typewriters.  You know, the kind where you’d have to remember to pull the lever to return to the left side of the paper.  They also required users to strike keys at something like 500 PSI just to get them to work, and erasing mistakes was so difficult that it was definitely better to learn to type accurately before you learned to type fast.  Needless to say I miss my old Royal.

CoolkeyboardThat’s why I’d love to either follow the instructions for making my own Steampunk keyboard (pictured at left) or find someone that will sell me one for less than an arm and a leg.  That thing is way cool in a DYI-retro fashion.

Found via Boing Boing.

You Can Put Lipstick on a Pig, but…

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I had to go up to the DC area for a meeting with a client earlier this week and I stayed at what is now called the Old Town Hotel in Alexandria, VA.  Until the property was recently purchased by Kimpton the Old Town was a Holiday Inn and its location in the heart of Old Town Alexandria made it a hot-spot for tourists.  To say it’s threadbare would be an understatement.

To Kimpton’s credit they’re refurbishing the property, which I noticed as I checked in at the temporary registration desk just outside the elevators on the second floor, but until they’re done this is still one ugly hotel.  They’ve put nice little No Smoking plaques on all the doors, but there’s no mistaking the odor of decades of cigarette smoke permeating the carpet, wallpaper and curtains. There’s also no mistaking that distinctive 80s-era decor in the rooms, but you can tell change is afoot by looking at the sundries.  Lots of Aveda soap, shampoo, creams, etc. are provided.  They’ve also installed cool looking shower heads and funky shower curtains.

The other thing Kimpton has done is drop the room rate back below $200 a night.  I heard from my brother who’s had business associates stay there when they’re in town that right before the sale the Holiday Inn was charging $280-ish a night.  Imagine trying to convince your boss that you really stayed in a Holiday Inn for $280!

All told it’s not a bad deal for Old Town, and if they keep the rates reasonable after the renovations it should be a great place to stay.

The Education Lottery

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Here in North Carolina we finally got ourselves a lottery last year.  After years of trying the powers-that-be finally got it through by calling it an "Education Lottery" and saying that proceeds would go to funding public education.  The lottery is a reality now and it will probably be so for many years.

Personally I don’t care whether or not we have a lottery.  I’ve never played the NC lottery, but I used to play scratch-off games in Virginia every once in a while on a lark.  Some folks call lotteries a regressive tax on the poor, but I don’t buy the argument that it’s a tax since you don’t have to play it.  What I will mind is if the legislature decides to divert the money to something besides education, because then they’ll have pulled a bait and switch on the fine citizens of North Carolina.

That’s why I read with great interest this post about lotteries at  Freakonomics.  Even more interesting are some of the comments, especially the one about Montana that says that the education system used to be the beneficiary of the lottery but is no longer.  Honestly does anyone think it’s really a question of if, not when, the state legislature will eventually divert lottery money to the general fund?

North Carolina’s lottery has been marked with scandal from the beginning, which was nicely outlined in this Washington Post article. In fact a lot of what happened with the lottery led to the recent resignation of our soon-to-be-convicted-felon former House Speaker Jim Black.  Despite the attention all of this has brought to the lottery it will only be a matter of time, probably a couple of years, before North Carolina’s crooked-as-an-elbow leadership figures we’re not paying attention and diverts the money to something like tobacco subsidies or hog farm enrichment programs. The money that the lottery generates is just too big a cookie jar for our leaders to resist dipping into it.  It’s happened elsewhere already and it’s going to happen here.