The folks at the Winston-Salem Journal have generously provided us with an early nominee for the title of "Best or Worst Headline in 2011." Whether you think it's bad or good depends on your tolerance for very bad puns:
Textile tycoon's death stiffs IRS a century after grandfather fought tax
Death. Stiff. Get it?
One of the things I'm more than a little tired of is the taint of hypocrisy that permeates our public discourse. The most recent example involved the reading of the Constitution in the House to kick off the first session of the 112th Congress. I guess the Republicans wanted to make a statement in their return to the majority by reading the Constitution and implying that the Democrats, okay capital "L" liberals, had veered away from a strict adherence to the Constitution and were taking our country to hell in a hand basket by taking an interpretive approach to the document that is the bedrock of our government.
Here comes the hypocrisy: the Republicans decided to read a version of the Constitution that doesn't include some of the original language that was later amended. Check this out:
Even before the reading could begin, Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., was on his feet trying to determine why the reading would not include the original language of the document. After a moment of parliamentary debate, Inslee asked Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.—who was overseeing the reading—to clarify why language was being "deleted" from the reading. Goodlatte replied that he'd consulted with the Congressional Research Service and the Library of Congress which "actually maintains a copy of the Constitution which includes those sections that have been superseded by amendment, and so we are not reading those sections that have been superseded by amendment."
Hmmm…here's the problem with that explanation:
There is only one official, canonical version of the Constitution—and most of the folks who read today, Republicans and Democrats alike, have a copy in their offices, if not their breast pockets. The suggestion that there is some other, agreed-upon, document, whose "portions [were] superseded by amendment" is simply untrue. As CBS News Capitol Hill Correspondent Bob Fuss pointed out, the "redacted" version as read this morning had no coherent logic. They skipped over the three-fifths compromise but included the constitutional clause referring to the preservation of voting rights only for males over the age of 21—a provision superseded by the 26th Amendment. They skipped the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) then read the 21st(repealing Prohibition). Andrea Stone at AOL News picked up on the fact that they "read 14 words from Article I, Section 9 about taxation. Under a strict reading of the ground rules, though, it likely should have been excised because of the later passage of the 16thAmendment that legalized the federal income tax."
Believe me, I know that this type of crap isn't unique to the Republicans, but it's an inauspicious start for leaders who want us to believe that they're going to adhere to some strict adherence to the Constitution as our Founding Fathers meant them to. Actually that's another pet peeve: people who argue for strict adherence to the Constitution and belittle those who disagree with them as taking an "interpretative" approach as if they themselves aren't interpreting the Constitution. By definition you have to interpret the Constitution, or any other document, if you are to understand it and take action based on it, and reasonable people can always interpret something differently. This stunt by the Republican leaders of the House makes that abundantly clear.
News 8 cameraman Chris Weaver had an interesting day on the job while doing a story in Davidson County:
Received via email from my Mom, using her Apple:
You know it's a great interpretation of the Nativity when it includes the line "Jesus was a huge Kenny Loggins fan." (Thanks to Lex for the link).
About 10 years ago I had the privilege of working with Anne Holland as she was starting up MarketingSherpa.com. I don't exactly remember how I met Anne, but it had to be through some activity in the premium newsletter business since that's the industry we both worked in during the 90s. She's one of the smartest people I've ever worked with and so I can recommend without hesitation, and without reviewing it myself, this free training video for newspaper execs. Anne has started a new site, Subscription Site Insider, that I'm fairly sure will become a "must-use" site for anyone in the paid content space, if it isn't already. From the page about the video:
During our research for the presentation we could not find one single example of a good newspaper paywall. Not one! Newspaper paywalls are — frankly — scary bad. They just ignore all best practices.
Why is that? My theory is that newspaper site design is really difficult – it’s a science in itself. You’re dealing with heavy text, complex navigation, and hundreds of thousands of pages… Plus, on top of making this dense content easily navigatible, you also have to deal with the demands of advertisers — get them enough clicks to keep paying while not sacrificing all your screen space.
Paywall design requires a completely different skill set. The goal is paid conversion, not free navigation. The content is focused, not comprehensive. Psychologically, the audience isn’t looking at the page because they want to be there, but because they’re forced to be there.
Other niches in the subscription site industry have been testing, researching and refining their paywalls for close to 15 years now. Audience development executives and web designers for newspapers can learn a lot from them.
If your business depends on getting people to pay for access to your "stuff" then you really should check out Anne's place. You wont' regret it.
I'm going to state up front that until Congress legislates them out of existence the incentives that governments now routinely dangle in front of businesses in an effort to locate their operations in their state/county/municipality those inducements are a necessary evil. I'm not going to sit here and say that my local/state reps are wrong for playing the incentive game because if they didn't play then we wouldn't be in the game at all. Still, I don't like the rules of the game at all and that's why when I saw this article from David Cay Johnston come across my feed reader I was most interested in reading it.
Johnston is reading a book called Investment Incentives and the Global Competition for Capital, a book that looks at what governments around the world are giving away in incentives, and he believes that the authors' estimate of $70 billion/year in giveaways by state and local governments in America is on the low side. Oh, and the Canadians and Europeans are doing a much better job minimizing the costs of these projects. From the article:
"Estimating aggregate state and local subsidies in America is a difficult proposition because of the lack of transparency at all subnational levels of government," Thomas writes.
Thomas estimates American state and local government giveaways to business have grown to $70 billion per year. I am confident that his estimate is on the low side, for reasons that will become apparent.
While competition to give money to companies is a worldwide problem, the problem is much worse in the United States, Thomas shows. He estimates that American state and local subsidies to relocate existing businesses are six times the location subsidies in the 15 original EU members.
And here's Johnston's take on what's going on here in America:
But what takes the breath away is the increasing size of the welfare given big businesses as governments compete to shower gifts on companies with capital to invest, even when it means hardly any new jobs.
Back in 1967 I got onto the front page of my local weekly with my first exposé, which dealt with tens of thousands of dollars going to a building contractor that had bid low and charged high for a new county courthouse. Thomas showed that today's state and local welfare for businesses requires mechanized shovels to scoop up the cash, compared with spoons for the giveaway I wrote about 44 years ago.
Many investment incentives cover 30 to 45 percent of a factory's cost, Thomas showed. He said that the biggest recent American incentive had a net present cost of $734.3 million. That paid a fifth of the cost of a ThyssenKrupp steel mill that opened this year near Mobile, Ala. It turns out stainless and high carbon steel.
He gives our fair state of North Carolina a little attention in his pillorying of server farm deals which he points out generate very few jobs:
Then there are the North Carolina subsidy deals for Dell and Google, whose motto is "Don't be evil." Tar Heel state officials will not say what the total cost is, nor will the companies. They claim that letting loose the electricity discount figures would involve proprietary secrets.
Oh, please. Anyone in the server farm business can just look at the dimensions of the building and come up with a rough calculation of how much power it will use. Are North Carolinians dumber than Forrest Gump, or will they demand a full accounting?
It is curious how the government collects and discloses finely detailed data on how much tax money goes to the disabled, the poor, and the elderly, and to educate the young, but when it comes to welfare for big business, it just cannot seem to find the resources to gather and analyze the costs.
Strange, too, that many of these obscured, but gigantic gifts come through the good offices of politicians who pose as champions of the taxpayer and enemies of welfare, or at least of welfare for those who actually need it.
Here's the coup de grace for those of us who thought that perhaps Dell closed the 4-year old Winston-Salem plant because of a decline in the popularity of desktops:
Thomas tells how Dell moved a factory from Ireland to Poland in 2009 and then months later closed a four-year-old factory built in large part with North Carolina tax dollars. The Irish taxpayers gave €53.5 million to Dell, while North Carolina gave as much as $242 million. But when the Poles offered €54 million more, it was enough to get Dell to move about 1,900 jobs to Lodz.
There's no mention of the claw back provisions that led to the city getting back a bunch of dollars (not all of them mind you), but it's still informative to see how we might be getting played.
Last point: I think the reason that NC appears so often in the article is that our state is being quite aggressive in pursuing businesses in an effort to replace the hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs its traditional manufacturing base has bled over the last 20 years. And as I said at the beginning I think this is a necessary evil in the current environment, but that doesn't make it a smart way to govern in the long haul.
Bob Leak writes at the Winston-Salem Business Inc. blog:
With good reason, the Caterpillar advanced manufacturing project in Winston-Salem has drawn much attention. The facility is under construction and the expected boost to local employment and the area economy is certainly the development story of the year here. However, the real impact is yet to come.
Let’s call it the “Cat” effect. It’s the wave of activity and interest in Winston-Salem created by such a major global manufacturer having shined a spotlight on what the area has to offer. Cat’s exhaustive process of selecting Winston-Salem allows site consultants and business leaders to see more clearly the advantages and unique qualities that make the area ideal…
Where does the “Cat” effect lead? With the Cat facility groundbreaking complete, there’s still a long way to go. And in this economy, there are few, if any, certainties. But, Winston-Salem is certainly looking good in the spotlight.
Guerrilla art on Christmas Eve, 2010. Who said crocheting couldn't be exciting?
OLEK AND THE CHARGING BULL ON WALL STREET from olek on Vimeo.
Slacktivist reads The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness and base on his post I'm ready to read it myself. My favorite quote from the post isn't really about his take on the book, rather it's his take on the Republicans in the house kicking off the 112th Congress by reading the entire US Constitution:
I'm a big fan of the Constitution and I'm all for reading it — publicly or privately, silently or aloud. If almost anyone else were proposing this stunt, I'd say it couldn't hurt. But I pay attention, and after years of seeing this lot disrespecting national symbols and institutions by reducing them to tribalist slogans and playground taunts I don't relish the idea of these idiots doing the same to the Constitution. I don't want to see it distorted and disrespected the way the John Birchers of the tea party movement treat the American flag, the national anthem, the names and memories of the founders and every other symbol they can usurp for use as a culture-war weapon while failing utterly to comprehend its meaning.
I'm also worried that some member of the GOP's growing Bircher contingent — Michelle Bachmann, maybe — will come away from this reading convinced that President Obama should be impeached because he only counts as three-fifths of a person.
What I'm most interested in watching for during this stunt, however, is to see if any of the more theocratically minded members of Congress notice what the Constitution does not say. Unlike these pious politicians, the Constitution never mentions God. At all.
Sadly I think he could be right to worry about Bachmann. Every time I think she's maxed out the crazyspeak-ometer she goes out and tops herself.
Befuddled 