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20 August 2010
Have Democrats Lost The Narrative?
By Zach Friend & Spencer Critchley, at Huffington Post: Time after predictable time, Republicans roll out a new set of bogus talking points. And time after time, Democrats argue the facts — and lose. That’s got to change. Here’s how the script goes: Republican: I’d like to begin by making an outrageous assertion. It’s obviously [...]
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1 August 2010
Obama’s Credit Gap – Why the President’s Victories Go Unnoticed
By Zach Friend & Spencer Critchley, at Huffington Post: We knew this was coming. The media have finally noticed the gap between Barack Obama’s extraordinary achievements — health care reform, financial reform and preventing a depression, to name a very few — and his seeming inability to win credit for them. “Why can’t Obama get [...]
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7 April 2010
Op-Ed: Local think tank forming to take on sustainability
By now it’s clear that the future of the economy is a sustainable one, as global investment trends attest. As the cost of cleaner technologies falls ever lower, sustainability is becoming a question not of limits, but of opportunities.
Imagine, then, the possibilities for a region that combined these assets: world-class academic and defense institutions, excellent infrastructure, a coastal California/Pacific Rim location, some of the most fertile land in the world, a culture of innovation, and a quality of life that attracts talent from all over the planet.
There is such a region: We live in it.
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4 January 2010
Obama promised, and is delivering, “a more perfect union”
Originally posted at Personal Democracy Forum / TechPresident, in reply to a post by Micah Sifry called “The Obama Disconnect: What Happens When Myth Meets Reality”, which claims that Barack Obama has never really been committed to the grassroots. A thoughtful post, Micah, but I disagree with the assumptions it’s based on, in particular what [...]
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24 December 2009
Why TV commercials are so loud
With Rep. Anna Eshoo’s bill to turn down TV ads in the news (Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation, or CALM, Act), here again is my explanation of why ads sound so loud when broadcasters claim they hit the same levels as the rest of the programming: People have complained about loud TV commercials for years. The [...]
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22 November 2009
Local Government 2.0
Government 2.0 is a big interest of mine – just like at the national level, I think we can make local government more open, participatory and productive by using technology intelligently. Although there’s been talk about this for a while, it’s still early days – e.g. see the new discussion, “What Is Government 2.0?” at [...]
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22 November 2009
Obama: Advancing Civil Liberties in the Face of Difficult Constraints
My opening statement for the debate at the ACLU Santa Cruz Annual Dinner, Nov 18, 2009:
…Let’s begin by recognizing the magnitude of President Obama’s first civil liberties achievement: getting elected.
In hindsight, the success of the Obama campaign can look inevitable. But at the outset, the only thing that looked inevitable to most observers was that it would not succeed, that it was at best a dry run for the future. Well, facing incredibly steep odds, Barack Obama brought the future into the present.
He had some great talent helping him. But I can tell you that there was never any question who was running things, and that was Barack Obama himself…
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16 November 2009
ACLU Debate: Defending Obama’s Civil Liberties Record
I’ll be arguing the position “Obama: Advancing Civil Liberties in the Face of Difficult Constraints” at the ACLU Santa Cruz chapter’s annual meeting Wednesday, Nov 18, 2009, starting at 7:00 pm. From the ACLU: “Each speaker will have opportunities to stake out their positions, to rebut their opponent’s statements, and to offer a final conclusion. [...]
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31 October 2009
Top Drupal Gotchas: “Access Denied” and Permissions Problems
Cross-posted at O’Reilly Broadcast.
The Drupal Content Management System keeps getting better and better. But the learning curve is still steep and the interface is still tricky – even after working with it for several years, some gotchas keep tripping me up. That tells me it’s worth jotting them down, hopefully to spare a few other Drupallers falling into the traps I’ve fallen into enough times for all of us.
This time: Mysterious problems logging in or accessing content.
These are fairly common and can have a variety of causes. The ones I’ve found most often…
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28 October 2009
Politicians’ Web town halls boost their approval ratings – Nextgov
Lawmakers’ Internet-based town hall meetings increase constituents’ approval ratings for the politician, enhance citizen engagement in politics and ultimately impact the probability of participants voting for that member of Congress, according to a new Congressional Management Foundation report. CMF Executive Director Beverley Bell said online meetings offer lawmakers a flexible tool for communication in addition [...]