Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

The New Electoral Math: Paying Voters to Vote

Posted: October 2, 2012 in authoritative, conflict of interest, PerceptionMeasurement, politics, privacy
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In this latest Presidential race we can be sure about three things:

1) We’re about to elect a Harvard-educated and aloof technocrat more comfortable with crunching the numbers than pressing the flesh.

2) He will claim a mandate to represent all Americans in order to implement an unspecified agenda (even though he’s not on speaking terms with roughly half the country).

3) Privately neither candidate is too optimistic or delusional to believe they can reconcile their campaign rhetoric with the business of governing over a house divided on every major issue except one: let someone else (besides our soldiers) take the hit for a growing government supported by a dwindling tax base.

Pity our next President-elect. They need to suppress their better angels and the notion of a shared sacrifice, lest they’re booted from the beltway by the same people that hoisted them to victory.

Pity our citizen-voters. They missed out on the boom-boom Bush years and the hush-hush Obama-Bush sequel. There are scores to settle that make the middle class squeezes of the past feel like a hot compress in business class.

But there is a way to restore credibility to the electoral process.

There is a way to give political candidates the breathing room they’ll need in order to fix stuff, i.e. raise taxes and lower services, without being impeached by the alienated opposition.

There is a way to impose certainty on the tentative nature of change as in: “I’m certain I’ll be paying more for less and won’t insist our politicians pretend it away.” The return of animal spirits awaits the bravado of certainty in the bag. Without our reliable strut, we’re in the same rut.

Most pointedly, how do our deplorable political parties fight their way back to respectability? How do they wear their vested interests proudly? How do they dismiss bipartisanship with the straight face of tomorrow and not the smirk of today?

The check’s in the early balloting mail

They can rally support, not with platitudes and empty promises, but with cash paid out to the non-party members who matter: people who can’t decide who to vote for.

Surely this is illegal, right? Well, the 24th Amendment bans poll taxes but says nothing about direct marketing to electorates or the setting of voting prices. To liberals this may sound like another cynical ploy to kick self-interest up another discouraging notch. The death knell for the commonweal and the greater good.

But let’s think this through. The act is genuine. It’s an investment by political parties and their donors. Here’s how we speak directly to a polarized and cynical people. We channel cash to those unregistered Americans who decide elections through their indecision.

Why steal an election?

Why steal an election when you can buy one fair and square?

Paying for votes can mean a lot of stops on the low road to dysfunctional government. Is this what George W. Bush called “fuzzy math” without taking exception to the numbers in his opponent’s budget plan? Is this a basic deduction one can make around the political meme-seekers trying to rationalize the downhill momentum of Citizens v. United, voter fraud, or those impending fiscal cliffs? Is this the new normal depicted last month in Bill Clinton’s convention speech as basic arithmetic?

Paying for votes could put to rest all this talk about voter fraud and all the latest court challenges to voter ID. There won’t be any checks drawn on the accounts of the deceased once all those on-shore voters cash in on the action. Direct payments to voters will have the same impact on public apathy as robotic cars will have on the speeding ticket industry. It will obliterate negative campaigning for good. In the meantime, all those moochers, freeloaders, and deadbeats can do something constructive while biding their time for the next great wave of American prosperity to kick in.

What is the color of your skin in the game?

Whether you count yourself as a 99 percenter or a jet-setter, or the 47% on autopilot for an entitled silver spoon feeding, there’s one group that we can all set our growth beams on — that’s the unwashed and unvanquished object of those Super Pac spoils: the undecided voter. But would those undecideds be a vanishing breed if the Coche brothers and the George Soroses, and the casino kingpins could cash out directly? That’s right. They could pay directly for those votes instead of roulette-wheeling their dealings to local broadcasters in swing states.

Direct is a form of both payment and marketing. Why not a form of government? After all, our elected officials spend a good 70% of their time fetching for dollars when their only real conviction is to be re-elected. Who has the time for convictions when they may need to replace them in the interest of unexpected events or languishing sound bytes caught on tape? What’s the difference between an elected official on the take and the “takers” who vote them up or down from office? The difference is that representatives get rewarded for keeping themselves in power while their constituents get the spoils of free speech piling up on their cable screens and in-boxes.

Payouts are the new rebates

But paying  for votes is not just limited to electorates. We pay our kids to attend school. We pay farmers not to grow food. We pay food companies to market diabetic-inducing groceries for the express lane. We subsidize oil exploration so Exxon Mobil can super-size our addiction to oil. Actually We pay that one out twice before pausing to fill our tanks. That second hit happens when our taxes confront the debt our Chinese suitors assumed to underwrite our military occupations. What occupy movement is this? Those countries with high concentrations of hostility that invade our embassies, dis Israel, or worse, threaten to choke our economy.

And therein lies the choke hold. Us decided voters hold as few surprises as we do cards for deciding elections. Show me a reliable party line voter and I’ll show you an oblivious politician. Exhibit A: the 41 states without battleground status. A counted vote is as worthless to the voter as it’s money in the bank for the candidate — a blank check for spending political capital on carving out electoral districts, complicating the tax code, or even settling personal scores.

The transparency of market-based democracy

The sincerity of a bribe might smell bad to some but it’s a lot more understandable than the slippery abstractions that pass for campaign promises: putting us back to work? Change we can believe in? How about payments we can deposit? Who needs to pander when we’ve got a budget that operates below the radar of campaign ads, let alone media scrutiny? Delivering votes by channeling campaign funds to voters means that capitalism is hard at work, even if our politics are too fractured to lift a tiny compromising finger.

What if we put our votes on the auction block? The true undecideds and even us softer core fence-sitters? How would this all work then? And what would that do to the Australian ballot? That’s our right to vote without personalizing the transaction. Why would the major parties want to invest in the American voter when we’re protected against needing to account for our ballot choices? Here’s how that could play out:

1) Voter puts opening bid up on their social media page

2) Voter bundles bid with other undecideds in their districts

3) Voting brokers increase buying power of these undecided blocs (and takes a cut of the buy-off)

4) Parties examine registration history and make their pitch to the aggregator (READ: Google, FaceBook, Twitter, etal.)

5) Bloc members vote to accept winning bid from said party and sign contract binding them legally to (a) vote; and (b) reflect the endorsed party positions and candidates

What’s a little pressure among peers?

Does that mean we still vote by secret ballot? Absolutely.

Want to spell the difference between the uncertainty of polling data and the final vote count? It’s the sound of that pay-for-vote check being cashed at the corner ATM. That’s when the party can enforce the voters’ contractual obligations. It’s the line crossed once the volume of accepted bids eclipses the margin of error from the last election cycle.

Baring an onslaught of legalized immigrants, the entrenched turnouts of both parties will shine in glaring relief the tendencies of those bankrolled voters to stick or stray. If the backed party candidate loses, is it because the opposition lured in more voters? Doesn’t matter.

My brilliant strategist buddy Canuck surmises that future payments will freeze up should this doubt persist. Someone on the losing side didn’t pull his lever weight. They ruined it. For everybody.

Jeez, talk about disenfranchisement.

Commander in Speech

Posted: January 22, 2012 in conflict of interest, misinformation, NewsMedia, parse-snips, PerceptionMeasurement, politics
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When I was working for a political consulting – slash – polling boutique in the late eighties a pre-maturing graybeard named Ed Reilly took me out to dinner. The gesture was a sign of thanks for ceding my personal life to the firm and forbearance for the blank checks yet to underwrite battles yet to be waged. (A personal life would claim me before I spent away a career in politics). The son of a Boston firefighter Reilly managed to straddle the line between a rip-snorting unionist and a pedigree kingmaker, spoiling for both fights and the spoils from winning them. Like so many pre-Aaron Sorkin era politicos, Reilly would ride the painstaking obscurity of his polling outfit to fabulous wealth through the Gucci-laced corridors of K Street.

As I remember the dinner was not about feasting on the vanity and self-importance of trade associations but about the eternal flame that draws all young operatives to the heart of the Beltway, world capital of the influence industry. By then Reilly had little appetite for progressive platforms or blue sky agendas. Most of his client-candidates were moderate or split-the-middle Democrats who appealed more to independents than liberals.

It was late ’88 and Ed was still smarting over the Lee Atwater-architected trouncing of sensible Michael Dukakis by pumped-up Poppy Bush 41. “Our party just doesn’t get it,” fumed Riley. “We invite the press into the backs of our campaign planes and buses because we care what they think and say. Then they go hunting for stories that don’t exist.” The Republicans care about one thing and that’s controlling the message: “They don’t give a rat’s ass what the media thinks — no invites, no complications.”

I’m reliving Reilly’s frustration at the insinuation by Newt of the “Grandiose Old Party” that the non-Fox news media are apologists for Obama’s failings. The fact the charge packs as much punch now says what?

* That our discourse has barely evolved — even backslid over the last generation of elections
* That Gingrich is hot, callous, and ravenous — three helpings that land far and wide of Obama’s plate
* That the messengers are shot down before they can squeeze off their debating points

I’ll be wondering about the messenger piece as Obama enters through the Congressional Chamber doors for his State of the Union speech on Tuesday. He will be staring openly into the very real perception of playing the co-star on the national political stage. However, in terms of his efforts to yank the spotlight most of those energies will be channeled on his path to the podium. It may seem like the sideshow lies in the fist-bumps, flesh-presses, and cordial waves ‘n winks as Obama makes his way to the center of the hall. But actually, most of his energies will be channeled towards that tightrope walk through the superficial entanglements of the pageantry. The fact he’ll arrive nearly depleted once he reaches the podium is not the story here.

The address itself will be a slam-dunk. He’ll nail the talk down. No flaps in these gusty political headwinds. Even the melody of his speech will be encoded automatically. Energy-wise Obama will give this address in his sleep and even his fiercest adversaries will know he’s in prescient control: the commander in speech. In fact he won’t just float over the hall — he’ll have his batteries recharging at the same time. But will that electrify his base anywhere as much as his tentative hold on power unifies the opposition? Obama may be a conciliator-pragmatist-moderate. But in his heart of hearts there is a fierce and uncritical belief that his detractors will do the right thing for the country in spite of their hostilities. That unyielding and romantic calculation has cost the country more than the benefit of a second Obama term.

Raising the Debt Ceiling on Inner Drive

In the book The Obamas we confirm the credible assertion that Barack lives in the same town as Michelle and the girls. And even though he can’t take the dog for walks he can share the same dinner table at least 5 out of every 7 evenings (baring crises and mid-terms). But the aspiration of family man is one with the sincerity of Barack the soloist:

* The guy whose much more comfortable debating the merits of Constitutional Law than the glad-hander

* The guy more tuned to schools of thought than to the schools that his adversaries’ kids just got into

* The guy oblivious to whose dates on what calendar were coming up when the time’s ripe to cash in on minting his next round of political capital

We were told by author Jodi Kantor of former Super Bowl parties where guests were invited to crunch pretzels and brewskies. We were told that Barack sat in his assigned chair for the game and never let the affairs of his super bowl party state interfere with the play-by-play or the halftime updates. The President of the United States was on the periphery of a room that he did not work and the evidence is this:

People who would otherwise stab him in the back are now entering through the front. There is no echoing chamber. Even in his own conflict averse party there are no minions, lieutenants, or defenders of the faith. Want to get Joe Biden to shuddup? Make him your veep and you shan’t hear a peep. We’ve gone from the Priceline-like bid-ups on the Lincoln bedroom during the Clinton occupancy to the mothballing of the mattresses and couches. Such is where strange bedfellows come to make exceptions to their unyielding public stances.

Gridlock We Can Count On

If the firework could be choreographed on the percentages then we’d have some positive correlation between unemployment numbers and favorability ratings. Then we’d have an Obama-Romney crash test that the operatives can rationalize. Gingrich is not waiting in the wings. He is fanning the flames of a sunburst as clarifying as a biker weekend tailgating down on a Federal Reserve meeting. See what the 99% elites think of that! What the right-skewing public seeks is the bloodbath that vanquishes the calculation and cleanses the resentments of a white America whose time is past — except perhaps when it comes to settling American elections.

Obama’s been called as many names as he’s learned to ignore since the bully-bigots of Indonesia threw rocks at him on his way to school. But the one name he can’t ignore is the scorched path between entrance and podium that gets gussied up as Big Gov versus Big Biz. Little Guy versus Small Biz. Taxes on the rich versus sacrifice for all. So long as Obama answers to the name of introvert we’re stuck in false choices. It’s sealing a deal he never signed up for and is no more prepared to make now than as a school boy in the streets of Jakarta.

So in the end how does Obama justify his second term? America can’t forgive temptation neutral technocrats. He could reprise his dress-down of Chief Justice Roberts over Citizen v. United in 2010: The single biggest reason for the side-show status of this season’s State of the Union. But as any populist-turned aristocrat like Reilly will tell you: We voters warm even less to knew-all-alongs than know-it-alls.

If the status quo was in friendlier territory, Obama could defend healthcare as a right with the same zeal that Bush 41 got elected attacking abortion and flag-burning. So why does one approach sound like a hail Mary with no time on the clock while the other runs the same clock out by sitting on the same ball? Picking a fight with George Stephanopoulas might keep the drive going. But the best way in is to beat the messenger to the punch of a quiz show called “medical bill in the mail.” The answer for us in Massachusetts is that we can pay them off without the help of venture capitalists or loan sharks.

From the front of the envelope to the back of the plane: Thank you, Governor Romney and Chairman Riley.

Self-Reliance and Its Many Dissenters

Posted: January 5, 2012 in authoritative, ConsumerResearch, Learning, misinformation, politics, SocialCrit, SourceConjugation
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It’s hard to fathom an hour clad and out of bed better spent than last Thursday’s OnPoint from WBUR. A spirited forum led host, guests, and callers to philosophize between pragmatism and our perfect worlds.

I’ll take my inspirations from internal quandaries over debating public policies and handicapping horse races any day. Inside, looking out, and taking in a crisp and resonating distance. The broader business of our daily practices and how they present in our public American discourse is much more interesting than arriving at these meanings through the mundane abstractions of our fetishistic tax laws, per capita pollution levels, “good” cholesterol counts, and aggregations buried in the algorithms of Google and Facebook. That’s what OnPoint listeners witnessed in a zeitgeist-popping and enigmatic question of Too much self-reliance?

For the panel, host Tom Ashbrook snagged literary critic Benjamin Anastas. Ashbrook was justifiably smitten with Anastas’s New York Time Magazine essay, The Foul Reign of Emerson’s ‘Self-Reliance’, which raked Ralph Waldo over the “looking-out-for-#1″ coals in the December 4th issue.

To Emerson’s defenders, self-reliance was never a vehicle for piety or privilege but a reaction to conformity. Professor Alex Zakaris of the University of Vermont described Emerson’s rejection of his fellow New Englanders and their casual materialism as a loophole into “moral thoughtlessness.” He cited the travesty of obeying the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 by returning these inventory turnovers to their receipt-bearing masters.

Emerson did not write blank checks to the future from unquestioning urge “to speak what you think now in hard words.” His approach was to purge the unreflective gratifications, clear the head. His humility divined this critical self-scrutiny to be arduous work without deadlines to meet: Specifically, the act of learning how to detect our own thoughts free of social conditioning. that’s nearly has hard to fathom for some of us as human inventories. We’re more anxious being offline than subjected to the zealotry of our now permanent campaigns.

Back to Emerson now — the pay-off of self-reflection was quite the windfall:

* Dividends of inner peace

* Triumphal, universalist connection of cosmic-like romance: “every heart vibrates to a reservoir of divinely ordained goodwill.”

* Did we mention self-reliance as a throw-in?

This is the note he sounds of a consciousness that regulates what comes into our hearts.

But hearts being what they are can clench themselves into thick, over-sized muscles. In the naval-gazing myopic absorptions of our day, we recoil at the stiff price on believing in ourselves at all costs:

* The little CPA in my soul tells me that the one percent are hoarders whose craven capitalism arranged for the decapitation of the middle class.

* The Paul Revere replica in my driveway is revving to defy any law that expands the rolls to make health care a civil right (and a social responsibility).

* I will deny the existence of global warming sooner than I’ll acknowledge the disappearance of the North Pole.

Can our swollen egos, bruised by the bumps of social conditioning, fit snugly inside these principles? That we can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the self and its final say on these earthly arguments?

The compromises that manifest in partisanship happens on the group level. You know the groupings. You mean you weren’t invited to the shotgun wedding where the bride was given away for the unholy price of a Faustian bargain? We can’t pass a normal news cycle without the co-opting of the public interest by parties beholden to interest, or rather the self-interest of groups. Would Emerson say that corporations are people too? What is a more sincere expression of democracy than that?

I can think of one. That’s the passions harbored in the festering disaffections of tea parties and occupiers. We’re all on the authentic side of the majorities in our distrustful minds. The hypocrisies of autonomous libertarians queue on the receiving end of our reliable beltway punching bags and petty tyrannies: Big Government? Out of my tiny entitlements.

And you can have the FEMA trailer back, honest.

But it’s not about the money either. There’s another corruption summoned from the death of God — specifically the departure of the sacred from public life and the language of a higher calling that is not merely mutual but universal. Our essayist Mr. Anastas pushes back, brandishing Sarah Palin’s brew of “mavericky charisma.” The irony here is that these women and men of God use their direct channels into gated kingdoms, emerging with an endorsement, a charter franchise of “the chosen,” and new priorities and roles: now, Gods of women and men.

So many of these internal compasses point vehemently towards righteousness and away from “volumes of evidence” and “stubborn facts.” Is that Emerson talking, or the political discourse growling in the belly of our appetites for cable news?

Heart news is fair and balanced!

In guts we trust, and, gut the basis for trusting others.

When does rugged, two-fisted self-reliance decay into a defrauding of the Treasury? The pulpits of the heart are certainly authentic. But is that the stuff of the integrity envisioned by Emerson? If not, the bedrock of the American spirit may just be begging for a quake-induced fracking. What spills into our streets and leeches into our water tables would change us from the outside in.

That’s when climate change may arrive at our better selves. And we’ll take credit for a hotter sun coming up in the mornings of tomorrow.

Theme Parks of Future: The Food Museum

Posted: December 8, 2011 in ConsumerResearch, implement, politics, recipe, TradeShow
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Copyright All rights reserved by JennaU

I recently caught up with a winter hibernation guide to imbibing in the stylized aura of shimmering Mad Men cocktails. It reminded me of the lingerings of respectable grown-ups drinking with impunity. They maintain their own obliviousness when the tumbler is shaken by the vaunted fictions of the camera. And what of their children? Are we still smarting from their own pungent tipsiness?

What characters sense and taste in memories and cinema is the ultimate stirring. It is an enterprise bursting to infect the communications pathways of entire marketing planets. Ladies and gents: from our gaping doors to your devouring eyes we bring you the Museum of Food.

That’s the taste we smell through our sights — the entrees and spirits captured in the evocative restaurants of film and the eat-in kitchens of classic sitcoms. The Food Network, the literal version of eye candy, has spawned a foodie offspring on most of its rivaling channels. The contents of those 2D sauce pans and table settings jettison chefs into a select crowd of scientific entertainers. Imagine when you swap out the kitchen help for the celebrated dining scenes, staffed by fully established franchises of fame. Who needs to reheat yesterday’s leftovers when you’re rolling out the specials on today’s menu?

Knowing one’s audience is to understand its taste for celebrity appetites. The campaign is zipless in its execution. No introductions are necessary. The script writes itself. The credit goes to that recipe — the one insisted on by the audience. Which audience? Do you need to ask, dear? We’re all on a first name basis here.

The familiar ingredients free us to portion control our connections to food events (formerly known as meals). They situate us in places (formerly known as physical locations). These seasonings could only be conjured up by our shared emotional histories with the actors we park under our cultural limelights.

So what does this have to do with more posts about museums and food?

A food museum would be the showcase for the re-enactment of celebrity meal scenes. From a tourism angle the concept is eminently franchisable. Each licensed property answers to the expectation of aromatic exhibitionism. The gift shop is the cafeteria. The advertising and the photo gallery are one in the same. Each chapter would festoon their cultural watersheds, local flavors, and neighborhoods of community food rituals. In effect, the first food chain set to endless variation. That’s the pull of culinary sensuality in the food court of public opinion.

How could this play out theme-by-theme among the planet’s food enthusiasts in the great dining halls of any Cosmo city of our vast global village?

  • Science wing: Food as medicine, nutritional supplements (friend or faux), organics v. industrial farming …
  • Sports arena: Ticketed bake-offs between master chefs, gaming concessions since the Romans …
  • Spiritual chapel: Biblical scenes and customary rituals …
  • Fashion runway: Dinner jackets, cocktail dresses, bulking up of American XXL …
  • Design pavilion: Interiors of watering holes from neighborhood taverns to western saloons, and Irish pubs …
  • Philanthropy: A percent of the proceeds go to local food pantries …

Apart from the charitable donations I haven’t landed a single loaded insinuation on the inflammatory minefields of food policy. Sure I’m letting obesity suit up as its own fashion statement. But do you hear me leafleting here for animal rights? How about the subsidizing of empty, cheap, diabetic-inducing calories? We’re going to have to take that fight outside our 501c3 status, food museum goers!

We’re going to have to stock those future flame wars in the freezer section and score brownie points on what we know. That would not be hunger but appetites — especially the gurgling bellies of stars from stage, screen, tables and bar stools. Hey bub — I can still see their mugs on the wall while I’m waiting for my own table to clear.

WFCR Responds to Vocal Valley

Posted: November 5, 2011 in ConsumerResearch, EventTriggers, Pioneer Valley, politics
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Since online discussion threads appeared like those from the offline wakeup call there are signs of a signal shift — both in terms of local station policies and their infrastructures. While I don’t believe in once-in-a-hundred-years prophesies or the “perfection” of storms, I do believe a change is in the air and may well land “on” the air before the next perfect storm appears.  Here’s a response from Helen Barrington of local NPR affiliate WFCR that Marcia Yudkin shared through the Hidden.tech list:

++++++++++++++++++++

We, at New England Public Radio, sadly, have learned much from this storm and are actively updating and revising our approach to be ready for the next event. This was the “perfect storm,” and has challenged every service from the media to utility companies.

Sunday, we lost power at the studios on the UMass campus. WFCR’s transmitter is on Mt. Lincoln in Pelham. When the power fails (which it did), it’s often because Route 202 is impassable (with trees down), as is the road to the transmitter site itself. We have not been able to purchase a generator due to concerns about fuel storage at the site and access to that remote area where the transmitter is, in bad weather. But, we’re working on those problems…quickly and actively.

Now that we own WNNZ, we hope to purchase a generator for it (which is also thousands of dollars, a major capital expense), to become our primary broadcast source when WFCR is off. It, too, was the victim until this Wednesday afternoon, of a commercial power failure in Westfield. We’re again trying to see if we can get some grants or do some quick fundraising to get generators for both stations (though, once obtained, the weather may impede installing them until spring, but we’ll see).

And on top of that, due to the constraints of our budget, we have a small staff trying to cover this immense region. If we could have gone live all day Sunday, we would have, and we will find a way to do this in the future. We will be prepared to go live locally for as long as is necessary, to get critical information out. We will provide better service in the next storm(s), as we know there will be one or many this fall/winter.

We were trying to reach everyone we could with the web and phone info, realizing that some people may not have been able to access either (I live in Belchertown and only had cell service restored Tuesday night, as well as no landline; I still have no power). The size of the region makes this piece very complex, figuring out the best way to get info to people. But we now know – more than ever before – that the radio is the thing just about everyone can access in such situations.

All of the above led to a great many frustrations and impeded our ability to adequately serve the public. We are working on solutions.

Thanks so much for your comment and for listening.

Helen Barrington
Executive Director for Programming and Content
New England Public Radio/nepr.net
Phone: 413-577-0541
Please note my new email address: hbarrington@nepr.net

Learning how to Learn

Posted: October 10, 2011 in ConsumerResearch, InfoLit, Knowledge-ABLE, Learning, politics, SocialCrit, SocialMedia
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All rights reserved by The Whistling Monkey

Last week I drove two-thirds of the way through Massachusetts and back in the middle of a work week. My mission was for my son and me to take a non-credit workshop offered by Greenfield Community College. The topic was about using Facebook as a genealogical  tool — certainly not what Facebook’s forebears had in mind. Apparently that oversight was shared by the rest of the Greenfield community. Not only were we the only ones to sign up but no one informed us that the class was cancelled until we got to campus. In tough economic times we cling to the bedrock of family and to our own frugal resources. What could be a better match than social media for ancestors?

The gap between this proposition and the follow-through reminds me all too well of my own marketing efforts to teach Internet research tools and techniques — something we all, few do well, and nearly all of us do alone. You know you’ve got a major rebranding effort on your hands when there’s a gaping hole between an information surplus and a knowledge deficit. I say rebranding because the chasm represents both a black hole and a golden opportunity. When that deficit has a clear direction the answer can be engineered into a customizable package. In fact any binary problem is reducible to an “applification-in-progress.”

The biggest riddle is not about the closest pizzeria for vegans or the cheapest flight out-of-town next weekend. It’s about the trappings — which data supplier dancing on whose interface and how to carve up the winnings at the close of each transaction. That’s the information supplier tail wagging the market demand dog. It is a short tail and the dog needn’t learn new tricks.

Wasn’t it Steve Jobs who said: “It’s not the consumers’ job to figure out what they want.”

That’s certainly true when it comes to designing and perfecting elegant gadgets. We’re no likelier to build the next killer smartphone than the market research rationale for keeping Apple one step ahead of a jittery market. We’re consumers. As such our participation is limited to parting with our assets or squirreling them away.  When will the future arrive and what will it look like?

1. Dunno.

2. I’ll know it when I see it.

Problem is … the market has only half-spoken.

Social Problems without Business Models

Now what happens when a question runs on more dimensions than zeroes and ones — an objectified and reproducible set of truths and falsehoods?The engineering math is less persuasive when responding to half-truths: What’s the consequence if it is true? The severity if it’s not? These are two-step problems that require a higher form of reasoning than shadowing a users’ intention in a search bar. These questions are no less pressing if they don’t map to the still-life webcams that play on beneath the skin of Facebook.

It requires that the user exists for more than click patterns and one-sided transactions involving word choice. But what if the model was reversed? What if those knowledge deficits were answered by an online republic of producers (who also happened to consume)? And they would use information — not simply be used by it in the quest to plant a suggestion or prompt a purchase.

There is no obvious business model for solving abstractions that can’t end up in actual inventories and find their way to literal doorsteps. Does the consumer still benefit from a passive acceptance of supplier-sided engineering?  Before the costs were driven out there was a direct line between higher consumer spending and a tighter labor market. There was originality to the questions forming before user curiosity was placated by Google Suggest. Nowadays shopping is feeling a lot less patriotic than in the wake of 9-11. There is no Peoria play here. The American middle-class has lost its credit line faster than you can see the swelling ranks of independent voters. Where is the next breadbasket of packaged fare? That’s a supply problem (and it’s a sack of rice).

The demand problem is that we need to teach folks how to looks after their own interests. That’s the only way to dial back the simmering resentments which spark disenfranchisees in search of a franchise and a bargaining chip called name-your-price. In the Arab Spring it was political freedom. In the Bank of America fall the tipping point is ATM fees. But whether it evolves to a substantive movement or a meandering bitch list, one demand side factor is unequivocal: the power is ceded to noisy minorities. There is increasingly scarce upside to continuing along in the role of unquestioning consumers. That’s the future nearly here where a once silent majority is on the receiving end of the predator drones released by Google | Facebook | Amazon | Apple: the four horsemen of the holy platform grail.

Can you guess the predators from the drones? Once you do I have a course I’d like to sell you. It’s called self-education and it’s being taught by the experience of doing your own homework. Otherwise I’m sure there’s a search engine that will sell you the answers — the ones which work for them.

Two Diplomas

Posted: August 14, 2011 in JobSearch, Learning, politics, SpecialNeeds
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Not like father...

Two diplomas collided with my in-box on an early fall in late summer Friday afternoon. The first was inspired by a background checking third-party.

Actually “third” is probably too intimate a term for the degrees separating the four alien parties who picked up my case and blindly resubmitted the same craven information collection request:

“Despite many attempts, we have not been able to verify your degree/attendance at George Washington University.  We are contacting you to ask that you send support documentation such as a transcript or copy of your diploma to verify your education there.”

In round one I responded with a 2002 email request for my Graduate School to produce an academic transcript when I flirted with a library of science degree. The punch-line that year was that the school had lost a good chunk of its earliest academic histories when the files were U-Hauled from East 18th Street in lower Manhattan. That was in 1991 when the school relocated from CUNY (“City University of New York”)  to George Washington University. Librarian degree or no degree, no sane archivist is going to hang onto 9 year-old memoranda detailed a lost transcript.

But Friday after I got the second boilerplate of verify emptor I shifted out of email search and broke my nine-year silence with the school. After all, the 4th party background checkers didn’t need my GPA — they just wanted to know that I wasn’t inventing a graduate degree in electing people to office. Could the aggravation be worth the excavation? Imagine what I learned in a class room impacting what I do for a living? “Nothing farfetched about that” I can almost fathom Neil Fabricant saying.

Fabricant was the school’s founder. In 1986 he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to drum up interest in a graduate program for political consultants — the equivalent to the MBA for management consultants. He framed his pitch with a tag line I’ll never forget:

“Politics is a good thing.”

Fabricant was channeling Center of Politics Director Larry Sabato. He was trying to say that the art of the deal deserved a Master of Deal Arts. Hard to believe but it sounded as unfashionable in 1987 in the era of Lee Atwater as it does in the post debt ceiling recriminations of today. Then again who would start a political consulting school in NYC instead of DC? Maybe those obliterated records were supposed to remove any hint of this fundamental miscue. Back then the Shuttle was $49 so flying Mark Mellman, Doug Bailey, Celinda Lake et al. in weekly might have been plausible for one or two board meetings at best.

I remember another memorable tagline made by the school’s first head of admissions, financial aid, and registrar named Christine Solomon who told me the school wanted its students to be “needs blind.” This meant that we could gather up the courage to be the inaugural lab rats. Such gumption would release us from fretting over trivialities like student loans. At the time I was confused. Was she was trying to outfit my billfold with a blindfold or hold my blindside with a jello mold?

To others in the program this loan is blind first impression was prescient and they refused to pay their balances without qualifying first for the Neil Fabri-card. Years later something preordained in the unhappiness of those first class campers rubbed off on the crates of records in the U-HAUL on moving day. Since then, we specimens have been chasing down a credential I stopped using long before the age of the permanent campaign arrived.

On Friday the curse of the Fabricard, the jello mold, and Lee Atwater’s tormented spirit all lifted. I reached three GSPM employees in a row who were all patient, resourceful, and ultimately effective in helping me produce the long delayed official degree conferred through the dazzle of scanned diplomas basking eternal in PDF splendor. The bureaucracy of the background checkers could now recede into a dormant state of permanent dimmer.

One Diploma, Two Graduations

No sooner had I thrown down the lights on my career in political degree recapture I got an attached PDF of my son’s high school degree from the Seton Home Study program. Jerry finished his studies a month or two ago but the big momentous certificate arrived last week. He wasn’t shouting or jumping up and down but “was very happy to have it” as is his accustomed state of graduated adulation. His mom held back the tears — most of them anyhow.

But like son…

I’m glad that mom stayed on top of the situation. I’m grateful for her sacrifices as a home school educator. I’m glad that she stayed on top of the paperwork. I’m glad that our son won’t be asking Seton administrators in 2034 to search on all the Jerry Solomons in their “early two thousands” archives. I can’t possibly know what it’s like to bring that diploma to life.

But I am perhaps most ultimately grateful that Jerry knows what it’s like to don the graduation gown and hat and walk with the Greenfield High School class of 2011 – something no virtual degree will ever confer. The fact his high school experience bears the certifiable and the ceremonious is a tribute to Jerry.

Loud and clear.

When the interim director of student affairs ran my name against her screen records last Friday, there were three Marc Solomons who appeared — none of them related to Christine Solomon or myself.

The Exceptionalism of One-Termers

Posted: July 11, 2011 in PerceptionMeasurement, politics, SocialCrit
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Luck is dumb. Exceptionalism is noble (and deserved).

That’s what the last intellectual in the White House learned about exhorting the electorate to live within its means. It sounds reasoned and centrist. But it fires up a base like cold water on a jobless recovery. This is not a winning re-election strategy no matter how consoling the fireside sweater or how cool the poise maintained in the spotlight glare.

I was reminded of this in a recent essay by legal scholar Stephen L. Carter called Lost in Afghanistan:

“We expect to win them all (wars). When we don’t we look for someone to blame.”

Mr. Carter was responding to Obama’s decision to resist labeling America’s longest war as a victory. He was taking the “W” out of the win column on the premise that such conflicts defy traditional notions of won and lost military conflicts. This was the opening foray into the coming campaign season launched by Mitt Romney, well before the current recovery lost its mojo.

Because he couldn’t be labeled as weak, incompetent, corrupt, or born in Kenya, I found it an interesting choice that Obama’s inclusive and relativist view of mutually assured superiority was the new foreign invasion — threatening to push our “shining city upon a hill” off the map. Said Obama:

“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

What’s more curious? The rap that Obama’s governing style contradicts the very notion of his historic election — living proof of American exceptionalism.

It would be one thing if this was boilerplate jingoism. But exceptionalism is so much more than a war strategy. Who’s going to be offered their job back after the acquisition goes through? Me of course. Who’s going to defeat death for all but the most infirmed or my name isn’t Medicare?  I’ve got my ticket punched and my number’s ripe for the the Powerball picking.

On a personal level exceptionalism is as good for individual ambition and self-initiative as it’s a detriment to personal sacrifice for the greater good — a notion that reverberates within the defenders of our freedom — not us actual civilian freedom dwellers.

Could there even be the idea of an America devoid of exceptionalism? A level-headed approach and a temperate demeanor  works well in certain social laboratories like court rooms, lecture halls, and board rooms. But in the cauldron of a contested election the qualities are perceived as aloof, and recast as defeatist. That narrative for a sensible, shining city has yet to be spoken for.

The Smiley Face-ification of Social Media

Posted: June 6, 2011 in authoritative, conflict of interest, ConsumerResearch, Google, misinformation, PerceptionMeasurement, politics, privacy, SocialCrit, SocialMedia
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All thumbs all the time

“Thumbs can tilt at many angles.” – Terrence Patrick Canade

I posted a recent entry in the AIIM blogger community about the compromised state of social media to deliver on many of the essential building blocks of information quality such as transparency, integrity, credibility, and authenticity. This is typified best by the toggle that flips us on / off through the planet’s most awesome wall switch — the “I like” button on Facebook.

The dumb-downed thumbs-up is the only vestige of personal judgement passing for an experience worth repeating beyond our own browser boundaries. All of the preceding attributes are measurable in a world where information once cost something to obtain. However, that calculation is no longer valid in the land of content too cheap to meter.

How do we yank us back into a world of standards? Do we offload our suspended disbeliefs to the algorithmic chefs slaving in the kitchens of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, etal.? Is it naive even to believe in standards where all experience is unique — subjected to the limitations of our direct Internet experience. These are our own private showrooms expressed in search logs, site histories, and browser settings? Uhhh … no. (They are private, right?)

The failure to develop universal information standards ignores our universal claims on social media. It’s not about organizing people. As a business model the “social” tag papers over the shopping model so that social media consultants can collect their rent checks. But it was never about that. Information quality in a social media world is something more primal and self-centered. It’s about organizing ourselves. We need to tap a containable set of information within a set period of time in the service of certain favorable outcomes. We express these as our priorities, our deal-breakers, and our worthiness as self-taught nodes in this network of smiley faces and closely-guarded ranking formulas.

Hardly Containing Ourselves

One way to close ranks is to treat the world’s information supply like a resource instead of a raw content sewage pipe bleeding into the digital landfill of unlimited capacity. But ours is a supply-based business model. It’s according to who-wants-in — not according to why-do-you-need to-find-out. Demand could be manufactured without ever needing to contain this need-to-know why. No explanations necessary. All Google holds are the word patterns which most deftly intervene in a user forming a question. It is in every party’s interest to play their role correctly. Unfortunately for most users that means little regard that the terms Google is throwing them are deceptively simple:

The moment you aspire to confide in a search engine you are being shown an exit of someone else’s choosing.

These magically inventive search suggestions? They are ads. Let me say it again, only more to the point. Suggestions don’t only answer to us. They answer to advertisers. We are purchasing Ad Words by clicking on the Google set of suggestion terms. Yes, Google has pioneered the art of click-free commerce. You drop down to their dropdown and you’ve ordered from right off the menu!  The inventory is not a catalog. Don’t touch the merchandise — even if we are the demand side of the equation.

I’m not arguing on moral or even legal grounds that a change of policy is in order. Yes, its brilliance cascades across the sky. But we don’t pay Google for use of their search engine. Google gets paid by monetizing our usage of their service. Anyone who loses sight of that is at risk of being used in ways by Google that are not communicated to Google users — namely, that your attention has been preemptively purchased by one or several Adwords sponsors: “And now that I’m inside your head I can always see myself out without an escort…”

No matter how many gadgets reference our schedules, the number of hours in a day has not increased. Cognitively speaking, our personal attention spans are fixed on a lunar cycle. Anyone with more attention to spend than the claims on their calendar is either incapable of self-direction, independently wealthy, living without a smart phone or auditioning for the next post crash pilot episode of Survivor, the prequel.

Fixed Scale Attention Settings

One time-tested way to channel attention on a meaningful focus is to set attention to a fixed scale. That enables the virtual voter to carve out her own sets of priorities without any heed for what her peers or elites have insisted she hold to the exclusion of everything else. Instead she can focus on multiple concerns and address those concerns as a percentage of her “total concerns.”

Let’s pretend that the tax debate is run like a popular election with 6-8 political parties instead of the 1-2 parties operating here. Let’s take a system where a vested member of a non-elite group, (say U.S. taxpayer?) could express their policy preferences by directing their tax dollars in percentage form. This flies in the face of our current fight-or-flight two-headed party predicament. We could make it more competitive to thicken the cable gumbo news soup. Let’s say the host would send the losers home who don’t coalesce around the top five tally-getters. That lops off the long, scraggly tail of marginal, overlapping services programs, right?

The tea party would love it because slicing up the treasury into line items would finally acquaint the sleepy and disaffected with the freak out show they seem to have missed the last ten years — how 43% of our voting rights revert to the Chinese before we even begin to dole things out. Corporate lobbies would climb on-board because it lights up their board like no two-party election campaign ever will.

Defense contractors will reacquaint us with the fact that while much of our assembly work has gone overseas we are still the world beater in fear manufacturing. Just to make sure that social services can’t defeat the Military / Medicare complex we can have defense contractors using their Citizens v. United speech-making write-offs to tell America why:

  • A vote for HUD, Headstart, CHIPS or AmeriCorps is a vote against keeping America the biggest, baddest, gunslinger in the global neighborhood.

The pharma giants could out-suggest any keyword campaign with a massive spending rationale that …

  • Doing away with Medicare means losing the all-expense paid trip to an elective nursing home that we have today.

What’s going to happen when our wet suits begin to wet themselves? That’s the foreign invader the health care lobby will implant into our national discussion.

Perhaps the most popular feature of a percentage-based ratings system is that every 10 millionth taxpayer would win a reprieve — that’s right. Tax forgiveness for an entire payment cycle! No lottery could ever hold a candle to shaking Uncle Sam down before he fumbles for our own pockets, right?

That’s how information standards emerge. Carve up the beast and then let’s compare recipes.

Payments accepted.

Higher Edification

Posted: December 30, 2010 in ConsumerResearch, Learning, PerceptionMeasurement, politics, SocialCrit
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Fear is terrific for meeting deadlines, demonizing adversaries, and filling us with inertia. Freedom as Jon Stewart pointed out is not the best tonic for creative output. But the fear contagion squeezes those last drips of inspiration from the creativity juicer. There they go. Down the drain of risk aversion. Hence a climate of uncertainty is all corporate America needs to sits on its hands — or in the case of Haliburton move to Dubai so taxes can be treated with the respect a balance sheet treats pure profit — a revenue-gusher harpooned from the veiny arms of the U.S. Treasury.

And what happens when Government 2.0 takes matters into its own hands? It trips over its own unfunded regulations or runs into corruption on highway projects that overbill taxpayers with the same confidence that our officials voice when campaigning to fix our crumbling infrastructure.

These are the familiar invective-laced villains that managed to escape economic gravity up until the end-of-life care for the American middle-class (remember when that was an actual voting bloc? I don’t either). But there’s a whole section of the economy that’s escaped the wrath of every cable diatribunal. It’s even escaped the sights of the most vehement members of the tea party freshman class. In fact a March showdown over the debt ceiling is likelier to see the chandeliers crashing on well-heeled Medicare recipients than any fingers wagging in the direction of this most elitist and blameworthy of our domestic cartels.

American higher education is the envy of the world. But it is in the unenviable position of being out of the reach of most Americans. According to Jonathan Alter America’s college graduation rates have plummeted from #2 to #16 over the last generation. And how much of the swelling amenities lining the tax exempt pockets of American Universities gone to enriching the commonweal for which that privilege was first extended? And why the free ride? Harvard doesn’t have to move to Dubai to evade taxes. (That’s where the action is for American Universities as they tap out of the elites over here).

Here in New England (formerly American Higher Education headquarters) 40% of Boston proper is off Mayor Menino’s tax map for this reason. But does that policy foster good collegial neighbors or a trust for sheltering the otherwise taxable excesses of former HBS grads who never counted a dollar they couldn’t depreciate (or compete on)?

Harvard’s trustees weren’t sure just how far the sky had fallen by the time its endowments had shriveled in the wake of the financial meltdown. It also served as the reason that major capital works in surrounding Allston were suspended — even though that justification has since subsided. But hey, the future’s still an iffy proposition, right? Especially for an asset pile as high, precious, and potentially imperiled as the Harvard endowment.

It’s interesting how unquestioning the media is. Is a college degree worth getting? The question’s no more open than bargaining for the size of one’s tuition bill. In fact it’s a rigorous debate compared to performance-based degree programs. Can you imagine basing student tuition debts on the actual career benefits the degree advances? No skin in that game.

Still, it’s good for the higher ed business if we accept the long-held premise that college grads earn a good deal more than the rest of us. In last week’s New York Times Brigham & Young Economist Eric Eide reasoned that the costs of college are not going up any “faster than the returns of graduating from an elite private university.” In other words the cost of an ivy league degree is commensurate with competing for jobs in the 21st century — either you’re in or you’re out.

That may be true. But until the surrounding community is completely out of their ivy league the national debt should be no less abstract to economists like Mr. Eide than the institutions that keep cranking out those economists, tax lawyers, robber-barons, and Oval Office holders.

Letting the Market Speak for Itself
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