Hegemon

Internet Used to Govern

2007-06-19T14:42:00.000-04:00

I was honored to be a guest blogger on Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet's (IPDI) blog. The following post was my contribution.

Since its creation, governments have claimed to use the internet as a communication tool. In reality the vast majority of this communication was really dictation. Governments at all levels created websites to distribute information, but rarely have I seen a government seek public opinion via the internet. This one way conversation has apparently ended. Tennessee's state wide newspaper, the Tennessean, reports that a the municipal government of Spring Hill, a small city in Southern middle Tennessee, used an online poll to decide policy. The decision was rather or not to consolidate postal zip codes... not a decision that many would describe as paramount but the idea that this city was forward thinking enough to even consider using an online poll to get public input is impressive. Spring Hill had 2450 people participate in the online poll. As governments seek similar input from their constituents, there are some questions that need to be addressed but none of greater importance than security. How does a government insure no one votes more than once? How does a government guarantee the participants are actually constituents? How does a government prevent anyone from being paid for their participation? and others...

These questions may seem foolish given the issue at hand, but if the internet is going to be used by governments as a true communication tool, these questions must be answered.

PAC Client

2007-06-11T13:52:00.000-04:00

My main client currently is a Political Action Committee (PAC) named Franklin Citizens for Balanced Government. The site is in its infancy but check it out.

Teacher...and Friends

2007-06-11T11:52:00.000-04:00

I ran across a remarkable example of poetry/political speech/social commentary/public speaking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsOVK4syxU

I googled him and found his web site.

http://www.taylormali.com/

I thought of a college roommate and dear friend, Austin Whitver. Austin in his own words:

"I am a graduate student, working towards my PhD in Renaissance Literature in, of all places, Tuscaloosa AL. Life can certainly throw some odd situations at you. I am an unrepentant Anglophile. Most of my life is occupied by reading, teaching and grading, with the remainder spent drinking inordinate amounts of coffee and/or squeezing in the occasional board game."

I am lucky enough to be one of his opponents on occasion. Every once in a while, I miss the college days when Austin, David Cybulski, and I could spend hours... okay days playing games. But then again, playing with my little daughter or laughing with my wife is hard to beat.

Nuclear Plant Attacked

2006-08-22T09:05:00.000-04:00

Armed Men infiltrate nuclear Plant

The Australian is reporting that a "special paramilitary force" is responding to the report that two armed men have entered a nuclear plant in India.

If the India's guard their nuclear facilities like we do, it is going to take a lot more than two men to cause a serious problem. Also these are new plants "which went into operation between 1993 and 1995". I am sure they have hundreds of safe guards, and I doubt that anything will come of this.

I do not have the answers... do you?

2006-08-17T14:11:00.000-04:00

A very wise person that I respect challenged my previous two postings do to the lack of commentary. I assume that this is because I did not take time to articulate what relevance I think these stories have.

First, I am not sure of the validity of the "Baby Bottle Bomb" story. Why post a link then? Because I have read about the story and wander if it is true or not. I was not being rhetorical when I asked why is the media not talking about this story. The answer may be, because it is not true.

The article about the cell phone arrests is interesting because it points to possible terrorist activity here in America. Is this a trend in terrorism? If so, will it effect American society? How?

A fellow GSPM Grad believes greatly in the power of mobile technology but I do not think that this is what she had in mind.

And finally, the Russian killing of Japanese fisherman. This story is an example of 1) a country that is serious about its border. 2) Russia's continued, but often forgotten, role in the area. 3) the never ending struggle for recourses.

We as Americans, as Westerners, and as Humans must address the fact that the resources upon which we depend are limited. A time will come when the price of oil, iron, aluminum, coal, and even water will be prohibitive. Russia have proven that they will kill to protect there border and resources, and therefore their way of life. Are we? Should we be? Is our way of life worth protecting? Should we try and change our lifestyle in order to prevent struggles over resources?

I do not know Maybe you have an opinion.

Bottle Bombs and Cell Phones...NOT news

2006-08-17T07:35:00.000-04:00

Why is the Main Stream Media not reporting about this...

Bottle and baby used as bomb

I know that the details are not clear yet but it is still a story. Here is another story that the Americans are not hearing about very often.

A SUDDEN FANCY FOR UNTRACEABLE CELL PHONES

Russia and Illegal Immigration

2006-08-16T07:50:00.000-04:00

Why Russia Does Not Have A Bad Illegal Immigration Problem

Power of Faith

2005-10-29T10:01:00.000-04:00

While doing research for a Class I found a paper, Fighting Anti-Semetism with Faith, written by Joseph Loconte of the Heritage Foundation. It is an inspiring paper. The following quote struck me as very convicting.

In Norway, all seven bishops of the Norwegian Lutheran Church resigned to publicly protest the treatment of Jews under Minister-President Vidkun Quisling (a name already synonymous with betrayal). "The Church has God's call and full authority to proclaim God's law and God's Gospel," they wrote. "Therefore, it cannot remain silent when God's commandments are being trampled underfoot."

These men were not afraid to do what was right no matter the repercussions. They gave up earthly power because keeping it would have made them betray God.

They also were not afraid to comment on and take action against governmental action that they saw as “God’s commandments…being trampled underfoot”.

Miers Withdraws as Supreme Court Nominee

2005-10-27T09:53:00.000-04:00

Bravo to Harriet Miers! She has removed herself from the Nomination for Supreme Court. Now Bush can appoint a nominee that conservatives can get excited about.

NPR’s story

Washington Post’s story

See More Related Stories

Frist and Immigration Reform

2005-10-26T09:14:00.000-04:00

As I have stated before, Immigration will be one of (if not the) deciding issues in the 2008 elections. Now it seems that Immigration may become a deciding issue in the 2006 elections. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist announced on his blog that he will be bringing a bill to the Senate Floor in February that will spark “real conversation about how to fix our immigration system”. He promises “meaningful reform”.

This “real conversation” may be just what Republicans need to get away from their failings of late and focus on what America is thinking about. The party that wins on immigration will be the party in control for a while in DC.

Iraq Approves Constitution

2005-10-25T10:08:00.000-04:00

Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative, Muslim or Christian, Iraqi or American. Iraq having a democratically approved constitution is one of the best things that has happened in a while.

We should all celebrate a little today.

What Good News???

2005-10-22T10:52:00.000-04:00

At a time when the President and Congress are stumbling (Miers’ nomination, Valerie Plame, DeLay arrest, Frist’s SEC investigation, and FEMA mishaps) there is a little good news out there. The US is able to its colossal resources to help people in real need. The work we are doing in Pakistan may lay a foundation upon which can be built trust, mutual respect, and maybe…just maybe… friendship. All should pray this happens.

Campus Terrorism

2005-10-11T08:46:00.000-04:00

This is a great article from Sarah Gentryof TeamGOP.

Terrorist incidents on college campuses?

Is every thing Partisan?

2005-09-09T12:10:00.000-04:00

Issues like gun control, immigration, and taxes are complicated, but due to the two party system, complicated issues are all too often over simplified into a two sided debate. This is unfortunate but necessary, until this system is changed by the collapse of the Republicans or Democrats or the rise of a powerful third party.

This oversimplification does not stop at political issues. A telling example of this partisan behavior has been the discussion of the government response to Hurricane Katrina. If you are Republican you defend it; if you are a Democrat you attack it. This is just sad. The United States would be best served by

Helping people (that want to be helped) find a safe, clean place to live.
Provide or help find basic services: health, education, mail, telephone, employment, etc.
Help people become self sufficient.
Decide how much rebuilding is to be done.
Plan for rebuilding.
Evaluate how the plans, procedures, and practices used worked.
Change any plans, procedures, and practices that can be modified to improve future response to such a situation.

This situation should not be taken advantage of as an opportunity to score political points.

There are Republicans and Democrats that are guilty of this. There is no one right way to deal with a situation as massive as a city being destroyed by a Category Four Hurricane. This is an extremely complex system that we may never be able to deal with in an efficient way.

Will this trend to partisan-ize everything continue? Will there be GOP soap? DEM ice cream? If this trend continues, people will find it harder to socialize with people of differing political beliefs.

More on Oil

2005-08-30T11:46:00.000-04:00

Upon reviewing my last posting I realized that I did a poor job at directly making a few points. I shall try to remedy this:

1. When thinking about the cost of petroleum, and therefore gasoline, Americans tend to think on a micro-level not a macro-level, i.e. how much will it cost to fill up my car not will it affect the Global Economy.

2. An economy based on complex interdependence on a global scale may not be as stable as we think.

3. Is the system too complex to prevent unintended consequences?

4. Should mankind be doing more to free itself from dependence on petroleum?

The price of tea, or was that oil?

2005-08-29T16:39:00.000-04:00

Unlike here in the United States, the price of gas in many countries is controlled by their governments. The prices per gallon range from $5.64 in the UK to $0.16 in Venezuela. The Chinese government sets the price of gas through the state owned oil companies Sinopec and China National Petroleum (PetroChina). The Chinese government is keeping the price of gas artificially low, in order to avoid inflation, causing shortages.
Now although some Americans do not like to think about it and some Republicans may deny it, the earth has a limited amount of oil. Whether it is in 25 years, 50 years, or 200 years, the supply of oil is going to be depleted. This fact has many implications, but one has caught my attention.
Stay with me here. Why are clothes cheaper to make in China? Why are plastic toys? Radios? Lots of things? There are lots of factors, but the most prominent one is the low cost of labor. Labor costs are impacted by many factors: cost of living, healthcare costs, standard of living, demand for labor, government price fixing, etc.
One thing made it practical to build a product where the labor costs were low and then sell it where a large profit could be made: cheap, reliably quick transportation. This came about only through harnessing oil. Ocean liners, freight trains, tractor trailers, and cargo planes (all fueled by petroleum products) make transporting goods around the world easy.
So what would happen if the cost of transportation was dramatically increased? As the cost of transport increase the benefits of low labor cost are canceled out. Eventually this Global Economy, which is based on cheap, reliable quick transportation, will start to be affected.
Many politicians are hoping technology saves the Global Economy through alternative energy sources. I am not sure, but think what will happen if mankind fails to perfect any of the alternatives to oil. Large numbers of people live great distances from the resources upon which they depend. What happens as the cost of transporting those resources increase? What happens to the Global Economy when shipping merchandise around the world becomes cost prohibitive? Am I being to apocalyptic about this?

I am still alive.

2005-08-14T22:48:00.000-04:00

After a brief hiatus from blogging, I am back. This time it will not be for class so it will be less focused and probably less frequent. My goal is to foster conversation that allows me to understand the views of others while challenging and developing my own views.

The Truth about Jakob Nielsen

2005-07-19T12:27:00.000-04:00

Listen closely because I may never say this again…

Jakob Nielsen is my hero.

There I said it. Ok, he looks goofy and has way too many pictures of himself on his site, but he also says something in his article, Accessible Design for Users With Disabilities, about disabled internet users that I have been trying to get people to understand for years.

Nielsen says, “In general, it is often the case that design rules that may have been intended to help users with disabilities end up being of benefit to all users.”

I am not blind, actually I have 20/20 vision. Yet I use a screen reader every day. I use it for online news, email, class work, websites, everything. I have even found a website that has a professional voice actor reading the Bible.

I can adjust the speed of the text reader in order to cover material faster than I can read it by myself. This is exactly what Nielsen is talking about.

The internet is changing the way people expect to get information. Politicians and campaigns must acknowledge this. The days of telling people what you want them to hear, how you want them to hear it, and when you want them to hear it have past.

Embrace this change and embrace giving people the choice of what information they want or risk being left behind when the train of progress leaves the station.

JibJab vs. IPDI

2005-07-19T11:46:00.000-04:00

Peter C's argument that the Institute for Democracy, Politics, and the Internet (IPDI) should be voted Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics is compelling, but has the IPDI ever used animated satires set to music. JibJab has made viral spread of their message nothing special. Their ability to be equal parts offensive and correct has made them beloved by all political circles.

JibJab has taken the rich history of political cartoons to the next level, on demand animation. I remember the first time I got an email saying “You have to see this”.

It would be possible to teach an entire class on the analysis of the JibJab political animations. In my humble opinion, This Land is a work of art, but be warned it has some language that may not be appropriate for you younger readers. In a report written by the IPDI, Under the Radar and Over the Top: Online Political Videos in the 2004 Election, it is stated that This Land was viewed 50 million times. I don’t care if it was drunken fraternity guys watching it over and over, that’s a lot of viewings. The report also states that, “Only the two videos produced by
JibJab.com skewered both candidates equally.”

Don’t miss understand me, the long, dense academic reports produced by the IPDI are a great resource, but how many of them have gone viral. In today’s political atmosphere of self-importance and personal attack, I like the idea of that JibJab is out there writing something to point out how humorous politics really is sometime.

The IPDI’s report states “Karen Jagoda, president and founder of the E-Voter Institute called “This Land” a “watershed moment.” She said, “TV-obsessed ad strategists don’t get the fundamental shift JibJab portends for political programming. This change means that a couple hundred thousand dollars spent wisely online could translate into a windfall for candidates equal to a TV buy in the millions. That is, if you do it right.”

All political consultants should be ready to defend against this or use it to spread a message.

I just hope that Bush, Kerry, and other featured characters of JibJab’s work can take a step back and laugh at themselves when viewed through the prism of political cartooning at its best. And who knows maybe they will understand the other side’s point-of-view better because of it.

Now I realize that I, by using one of those long, dense academic reports produced by the IPDI to defend my position that they should not be named Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics, seem a little hypocritical. Ok, I guess I will delete the Online Politics cookie and vote twice, once for JibJab and once for the IPDI.

Don’t you love the New Media.

Pandora’s Box

2005-07-19T09:50:00.000-04:00

But will the established content production and distribution moguls — in publishing, media, and entertainment — simply allow the little guys to push them to the margins? How will this transformation play out, and how will it impact political fundraising?

Those are some pretty difficult questions to answer, but I will give my opinion. The “big guys” will probably struggle to preserve the statues quo, but once they realize that this is impossible they will embrace change or be replaced as the “big guys”.

This very principle can be seen in politics. Lobbyists are one of the “big guys”, but the very principle of lobbyists goes something like this:

Since it is impossible for individuals of a constituency, small businesses for example, to keep track of relevant legislation, identify pro-business candidates, and take direct action, or give directly, to affect the desired outcome, a lobbing organization, the National Federation of independent businesses (NFIB), must do this for them.

This logic held up until the last couple of years. The internet, with its informative blogs, news on demand, and campaign websites, has began removing the very obstacles that made Lobbyists necessary. All you lobbyists out there don’t be to frightened. An industry that has this much money and influence will not just disappear. It will, only after losing its battle to resist change, embrace change and retain its power though possibly changing its role.

Although very soon any American will have the resources to research candidates and legislation in order to decide who and what to support, most will not take advantage of this. The new role for Lobbyists may be familiar to them.

But only through learning how to use the new technologies of the internet will traditional institutions be able to continue prospering.

The possibility for an outsider using an internet fundraising campaign to run an otherwise not viable campaign is definitely out there, and when one person does it with some level of success, Pandora’s Box will be opened.

More on Immigration

2005-07-18T23:36:00.000-04:00

Check out this posting about Immigration on the TeamGOP blog, the author must be a very intelligent guy. He’s probably hansom, too.

The FEC’s debate over Blogging.

2005-07-12T11:35:00.000-04:00

Today’s Washington Post has an article about the debate over regulating blogging. FEC Hears Bloggers' Bid to Share Media Exemption By Brian Faler does a good job of giving an overview of the issue.

I only wish the paper would do a better job of explaining Carol Darr’s opinion. She contributed to Putting Online Influentials to Work for Your Campaign.

As we study using the “New Media” as a political tool, I think it is important to remember that this media is so “New” that it will probable change significantly in the next five to ten years.

These Bloggers are by definition Influentials. Should it matter that they are just congregating in one place to discuss their political views?

This is like saying a coffee house that is frequented by liberal thinkers is actually supporting the liberal agenda. This is too large a intellectual leap for even the Right Wing Conservative Conspiracy to make. Well, maybe…

But before anyone starts attacking my position, let me say that I have not been able to study this enough yet. I welcome input from everyone out there. Please help educate me on this issue.

NASA sued?

2005-07-12T09:48:00.000-04:00

It is nice to see that America is not alone in having to deal with crazy lawsuits. Now Russia has a lawyer greedy enough to file this suit
A RUSSIAN astrologer is suing Nasa after claiming their recent
experiment to study comet Tempel 1 has altered her horoscope.

Wow!

Bloging Tips

2005-07-11T15:48:00.000-04:00

I found some great general advice for blogs by Jon Stahl. I thought of posting this as a comment to some conservative blogs but the ones that need it the most don’t allow comments.

Online “Influentials”

2005-07-11T07:09:00.000-04:00

Some are familiar with the concept of “Influentials”, people who are opinion leaders. An excellent paper on the subject of using the internet in a political campaign is Putting Online Influentials to Work for Your Campaign prepared by the Institute for Democracy, Politics, and the Internet.

The concept that the internet has a much higher concentration of “Influentials” than the real world is completely believable.

If a political campaign accepts this as being true, it makes sense for it to use an internet presence to recruit and mobilize “Influentials”. This is because, if a campaign successfully accomplishes this, the “Influentials” will become macro campaigns, working to influence those around them.

This issue is interesting, and I am still thinking about this paper. The first question that came to mind was concerning the distribution of the “Influentials”. I think it is possible that the internet “Influentials” are not evenly distributed, maybe concentrated in urban areas or regions of the nation.

The D.C. area has to have more than its fair share of “Influentials”.

If this is the case, it may be worth targeting a campaign’s internet presence toward the over represented population.

More on “Influentials” to come…