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Jul
12
Birth of a blog, or a bar mitzvah, or both
Filed Under Politics | 4 Comments
I guess really it’s a double mitzvah: I’ve started a new blog through which I can vent the kookieness that will reign through the next several months as I plan, prepare and muddle through the first of what I hope will be three b’nai mitzvot.
So, given how many items I have that I’d like to blog about here that I never get to, or have to delay or cram into one big post that some folks don’t like (you know who you are, guilting me like you do) and given that some people really dislike the uber personal stuff, I’ve kindly chosen to start The Bar Mitzvah Blog. Love it or leave it, up to you. But you won’t see an iota of politics or other topical stuff there. And, in return, I won’t put much bar mitzvah stuff here either. Think of it as an entire, “What do Jews do” blog, but only about one topic: becoming a Bar Mitzvah, which, despite all the rumors you may have heard about how obscene some of the celebrations can be, is an incredibly important and wonderful occasion – no matter how you celebrate it.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:21 pm July 12th, 2006 in Politics | 4 Comments
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Jul
12
Birth of a blog, or a bar mitzvah, or both
Filed Under Politics | Comments Off
I guess really it’s a double mitzvah: I’ve started a new blog through which I can vent the kookieness that will reign through the next several months as I plan, prepare and muddle through the first of what I hope will be three b’nai mitzvot.
So, given how many items I have that I’d like to blog about here that I never get to, or have to delay or cram into one big post that some folks don’t like (you know who you are, guilting me like you do) and given that some people really dislike the uber personal stuff, I’ve kindly chosen to start The Bar Mitzvah Blog. Love it or leave it, up to you. But you won’t see an iota of politics or other topical stuff there. And, in return, I won’t put much bar mitzvah stuff here either. Think of it as an entire, “What do Jews do” blog, but only about one topic: becoming a Bar Mitzvah, which, despite all the rumors you may have heard about how obscene some of the celebrations can be, is an incredibly important and wonderful occasion – no matter how you celebrate it.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:21 pm July 12th, 2006 in Politics | Comments Off
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Jul
12
John Corlett, Senior Fellow and Director, Public Policy and Advocacy for The Center for Community Solutions, sat in the Meet the Bloggers hotseat on June 16, 2006. Scott Piepho of Pho’s Akron Pages has a nice post here about it. John posts at the Center’s blog but it hasn’t been updated since late May and I couldn’t find a direct link to it from the Center’s main webpage. Any news on that, anyone?
I’d anticipated this session for a few reasons, not the least of which was because my father was going to be in town and I wanted him to join the event. And join he did. Oddly, either by coincidence or an act of fate, there is no audio record of this event so my dad won’t get to hear the MTB session via the podcast and feel a part of the 21st Century. However, in his ever more increasingly frequent calls about the Lieberman-Lamont primary in CT (where my parents live), he always says now, “Jill. Blogs are our future. After they destroy the mainstream media, they’ll come after you.”
Promise: I can’t make this stuff up because my mother reads these posts, prints them out and hands them to my dad. He really has said that. At least twice.
Oh. John. Yes.
He was excellent. I love these kind of guys. I’ve always wanted to work for a think tank, or an organization “which support[s] multi-disciplinary theorists and intellectuals who endeavor to produce analysis or policy recommendations.” To have your job be one that involves gathering, analyzing and then disseminating information – well, I guess that’s kind of like a blog, right? No? Whatever.
Alas, I got a job in a development office faster than in a D.C. ivory tower and went through another sliding door.
So I was very excited to meet, listen to and get to ask questions of John. Other bloggers present included Tim and Gloria Ferris, Scott Piepho (for a bit), George Nemeth and Bill Callahan. We gathered in the usual Talkies room on a sunny, late Spring day, leaves swaying, voices wafting in from the shaded, outside patio. It was lovely, really.
As I listened to John explain how he got to be at the Center and the kinds of work he’s done over the years, I thought about how far away – in a literal and figurative sense – so many people are from the issues he deals with daily – poverty, education, unemployment, urban decay, community renewal, health care, fiscal management of cities and regions. Far away from framing the issues, affecting the issues, understanding the issues, addressing the issues.
I’ve thought before about how blogging has drawn me closer to centers of activity and how, even if I still am not very active compared to others I now meet, I’m more active than I was before I started to blog. And yet, before sitting in the room with John, I hadn’t really thought about how, as I zoom in more tightly, there are still millions and millions of people – people directly affected no less – who might not even be able to understand what John is saying, even though they’re in need of assistance from a place like the Center.
I just thought I’d share that paradox – irony? Both?
As Pho mentions, after listening to John talk about the Tax and Expenditure Limitation, or TEL amendment that Ken Blackwell championed to ballot status, only to finagle its withdrawal from the November ballot in exchange for a statutory TEL, I asked, if we agree that limiting spending, as a general proposition, is something pretty much everyone desires, what would a meaningful constitutional limit measure look like? What other measures can be constructed that wouldn’t be as onerous and disliked and restrictive and oligarchical? The implication being, why wouldn’t people choose to do something that would garner more support than Blackwell’s TEL, which wouldn’t be hard to do, even though Blackwell’s TEL got enough signatures to get it on the ballot.
John’s response was that the line item veto available to the governor, along with the balanced budget requirement, when used, can accomplish the same thing as the TEL. However, John concluded that, generally speaking, the TEL is a political issue and promise, not a matter of necessary, sound fiscal policy.
But, Ohio, we’re stuck with it – at least for now. Thank goodness we’re also “stuck” with people like John Corlett who can help us make sense and, hopefully, correct ourselves.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 5:44 pm July 12th, 2006 in Politics | 1 Comment
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Jul
12
John Corlett, Senior Fellow and Director, Public Policy and Advocacy for The Center for Community Solutions, sat in the Meet the Bloggers hotseat on June 16, 2006. Scott Piepho of Pho’s Akron Pages has a nice post here about it. John posts at the Center’s blog but it hasn’t been updated since late May and I couldn’t find a direct link to it from the Center’s main webpage. Any news on that, anyone?
I’d anticipated this session for a few reasons, not the least of which was because my father was going to be in town and I wanted him to join the event. And join he did. Oddly, either by coincidence or an act of fate, there is no audio record of this event so my dad won’t get to hear the MTB session via the podcast and feel a part of the 21st Century. However, in his ever more increasingly frequent calls about the Lieberman-Lamont primary in CT (where my parents live), he always says now, “Jill. Blogs are our future. After they destroy the mainstream media, they’ll come after you.”
Promise: I can’t make this stuff up because my mother reads these posts, prints them out and hands them to my dad. He really has said that. At least twice.
Oh. John. Yes.
He was excellent. I love these kind of guys. I’ve always wanted to work for a think tank, or an organization “which support[s] multi-disciplinary theorists and intellectuals who endeavor to produce analysis or policy recommendations.” To have your job be one that involves gathering, analyzing and then disseminating information – well, I guess that’s kind of like a blog, right? No? Whatever.
Alas, I got a job in a development office faster than in a D.C. ivory tower and went through another sliding door.
So I was very excited to meet, listen to and get to ask questions of John. Other bloggers present included Tim and Gloria Ferris, Scott Piepho (for a bit), George Nemeth and Bill Callahan. We gathered in the usual Talkies room on a sunny, late Spring day, leaves swaying, voices wafting in from the shaded, outside patio. It was lovely, really.
As I listened to John explain how he got to be at the Center and the kinds of work he’s done over the years, I thought about how far away – in a literal and figurative sense – so many people are from the issues he deals with daily – poverty, education, unemployment, urban decay, community renewal, health care, fiscal management of cities and regions. Far away from framing the issues, affecting the issues, understanding the issues, addressing the issues.
I’ve thought before about how blogging has drawn me closer to centers of activity and how, even if I still am not very active compared to others I now meet, I’m more active than I was before I started to blog. And yet, before sitting in the room with John, I hadn’t really thought about how, as I zoom in more tightly, there are still millions and millions of people – people directly affected no less – who might not even be able to understand what John is saying, even though they’re in need of assistance from a place like the Center.
I just thought I’d share that paradox – irony? Both?
As Pho mentions, after listening to John talk about the Tax and Expenditure Limitation, or TEL amendment that Ken Blackwell championed to ballot status, only to finagle its withdrawal from the November ballot in exchange for a statutory TEL, I asked, if we agree that limiting spending, as a general proposition, is something pretty much everyone desires, what would a meaningful constitutional limit measure look like? What other measures can be constructed that wouldn’t be as onerous and disliked and restrictive and oligarchical? The implication being, why wouldn’t people choose to do something that would garner more support than Blackwell’s TEL, which wouldn’t be hard to do, even though Blackwell’s TEL got enough signatures to get it on the ballot.
John’s response was that the line item veto available to the governor, along with the balanced budget requirement, when used, can accomplish the same thing as the TEL. However, John concluded that, generally speaking, the TEL is a political issue and promise, not a matter of necessary, sound fiscal policy.
But, Ohio, we’re stuck with it – at least for now. Thank goodness we’re also “stuck” with people like John Corlett who can help us make sense and, hopefully, correct ourselves.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:44 pm July 12th, 2006 in Politics | 1 Comment
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Jul
12
Targeting potential petition signers: how is it not worse than voter suppression?
Filed Under Politics | 6 Comments
I’ve been reading accounts in the blogs and newspapers about interactions between people who are paid to get signatures in order to qualify ballot initiatives for the November elections and people whom this first group wants to get to sign the petitions. A certain number of signatures is required to get a proposal on the ballot.
Here is a very specific sample from Gloria Ferris, who posted this information in this comment on Brewed Fresh Daily:
I am sorry to say that although your petioners may be informed as to what to say when asking someone to sign the petition for Ohio Learn and Earn. I have been approached five times by your petitioners in and around the West Side Market and never ONCE have they said that the Ohio Learn And Earn Scholarships will be funded by GAMBLING. When I ask how these Scholarships will be funded they hem and they haw saying revenues. When asked what kind of revenues they then say gambling revenues. Also three of them did not say that it is a constitutional amendment issue. Also many of them are also asking people to sign the minimum wage petition at the same time. Flipping it over, back and forth. Not a good idea for petition signers. When I had two petitions to be signed I have always carried to clip boards. With a bumper sticker or something that indicates which petition is attached to which clipboard. Less confusion on all sides.
After I read Gloria’s comment, the first thing that occurred to me was, I keep noting how I’m never approached, anywhere. And then I thought about where I go versus where Gloria and others who’ve commented about being approached go. And then I thought, well, duh. The folks hoping to get signatures are only going to go to places that have the highest density of possible signators.
I live in Pepper Pike. No secret. I’ve not seen a single petition at any of the places I go: Eton Collection, Legacy Village, Beachwood Place, LaPlace, Golden Gate, Eastgate, Pavillion Mall, BJs, and Chagrin Falls center of town.
Then, when I hear about how Gloria is approached, the questions she asks and how long it takes to get a precise answer to the questions, I start to wonder even more than I already am about the entire petition process.
1. How is how the petition drive to get casinos in Ohio (and, ostensibly, raise millions for higher education) being carried out any more acceptable than the allegedly acts or omissions that lead to voter suppression in an election?
2. Only certain people are hearing about the petition face to face, and when they do, they’re not getting all the information.
3. Is there an assumption that people who live where I do and frequent the places I do either a) won’t sign because they know better or b) aren’t going to vote in favor if the issue makes it on the ballot anyway so why bother?
I mean, there seem to be some very insidious thoughts that must go into targeting your density for getting signatures:
-can people read it for themselves?
-are you getting to people who can’t pay for higher education but want to better themselves and their kids?
-are you getting people who’ll probably be okay with gambling anyway?
-are you getting people who are so busy they won’t ask questions?
These observations may be old hat to people who have followed this stuff closely all the time. But that’s no excuse for not more closely examining the tactics involved.
I’m getting an awful lot of cases of the heebie geebies lately.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:24 am July 12th, 2006 in Politics | 6 Comments
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Jul
12
John Corlett Meets the Bloggers
Filed Under Politics | Comments Off
John Corlett, Senior Fellow and Director, Public Policy and Advocacy for The Center for Community Solutions, sat in the Meet the Bloggers hotseat on June 16, 2006. Scott Piepho of Pho’s Akron Pages has a nice post here about it. John posts at the Center’s blog but it hasn’t been updated since late May and I couldn’t find a direct link to it from the Center’s main webpage. Any news on that, anyone?
I’d anticipated this session for a few reasons, not the least of which was because my father was going to be in town and I wanted him to join the event. And join he did. Oddly, either by coincidence or an act of fate, there is no audio record of this event so my dad won’t get to hear the MTB session via the podcast and feel a part of the 21st Century. However, in his ever more increasingly frequent calls about the Lieberman-Lamont primary in CT (where my parents live), he always says now, “Jill. Blogs are our future. After they destroy the mainstream media, they’ll come after you.”
Promise: I can’t make this stuff up because my mother reads these posts, prints them out and hands them to my dad. He really has said that. At least twice.
Oh. John. Yes.
He was excellent. I love these kind of guys. I’ve always wanted to work for a think tank, or an organization “which support[s] multi-disciplinary theorists and intellectuals who endeavor to produce analysis or policy recommendations.” To have your job be one that involves gathering, analyzing and then disseminating information – well, I guess that’s kind of like a blog, right? No? Whatever.
Alas, I got a job in a development office faster than in a D.C. ivory tower and went through another sliding door.
So I was very excited to meet, listen to and get to ask questions of John. Other bloggers present included Tim and Gloria Ferris, Scott Piepho (for a bit), George Nemeth and Bill Callahan. We gathered in the usual Talkies room on a sunny, late Spring day, leaves swaying, voices wafting in from the shaded, outside patio. It was lovely, really.
As I listened to John explain how he got to be at the Center and the kinds of work he’s done over the years, I thought about how far away – in a literal and figurative sense – so many people are from the issues he deals with daily – poverty, education, unemployment, urban decay, community renewal, health care, fiscal management of cities and regions. Far away from framing the issues, affecting the issues, understanding the issues, addressing the issues.
I’ve thought before about how blogging has drawn me closer to centers of activity and how, even if I still am not very active compared to others I now meet, I’m more active than I was before I started to blog. And yet, before sitting in the room with John, I hadn’t really thought about how, as I zoom in more tightly, there are still millions and millions of people – people directly affected no less – who might not even be able to understand what John is saying, even though they’re in need of assistance from a place like the Center.
I just thought I’d share that paradox – irony? Both?
As Pho mentions, after listening to John talk about the Tax and Expenditure Limitation, or TEL amendment that Ken Blackwell championed to ballot status, only to finagle its withdrawal from the November ballot in exchange for a statutory TEL, I asked, if we agree that limiting spending, as a general proposition, is something pretty much everyone desires, what would a meaningful constitutional limit measure look like? What other measures can be constructed that wouldn’t be as onerous and disliked and restrictive and oligarchical? The implication being, why wouldn’t people choose to do something that would garner more support than Blackwell’s TEL, which wouldn’t be hard to do, even though Blackwell’s TEL got enough signatures to get it on the ballot.
John’s response was that the line item veto available to the governor, along with the balanced budget requirement, when used, can accomplish the same thing as the TEL. However, John concluded that, generally speaking, the TEL is a political issue and promise, not a matter of necessary, sound fiscal policy.
But, Ohio, we’re stuck with it – at least for now. Thank goodness we’re also “stuck” with people like John Corlett who can help us make sense and, hopefully, correct ourselves.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:44 am July 12th, 2006 in Politics | Comments Off
Print This Post
Jul
12
Targeting potential petition signers: how is it not worse than voter suppression?
Filed Under Politics | 6 Comments
I’ve been reading accounts in the blogs and newspapers about interactions between people who are paid to get signatures in order to qualify ballot initiatives for the November elections and people whom this first group wants to get to sign the petitions. A certain number of signatures is required to get a proposal on the ballot.
Here is a very specific sample from Gloria Ferris, who posted this information in this comment on Brewed Fresh Daily:
I am sorry to say that although your petioners may be informed as to what to say when asking someone to sign the petition for Ohio Learn and Earn. I have been approached five times by your petitioners in and around the West Side Market and never ONCE have they said that the Ohio Learn And Earn Scholarships will be funded by GAMBLING. When I ask how these Scholarships will be funded they hem and they haw saying revenues. When asked what kind of revenues they then say gambling revenues. Also three of them did not say that it is a constitutional amendment issue. Also many of them are also asking people to sign the minimum wage petition at the same time. Flipping it over, back and forth. Not a good idea for petition signers. When I had two petitions to be signed I have always carried to clip boards. With a bumper sticker or something that indicates which petition is attached to which clipboard. Less confusion on all sides.
After I read Gloria’s comment, the first thing that occurred to me was, I keep noting how I’m never approached, anywhere. And then I thought about where I go versus where Gloria and others who’ve commented about being approached go. And then I thought, well, duh. The folks hoping to get signatures are only going to go to places that have the highest density of possible signators.
I live in Pepper Pike. No secret. I’ve not seen a single petition at any of the places I go: Eton Collection, Legacy Village, Beachwood Place, LaPlace, Golden Gate, Eastgate, Pavillion Mall, BJs, and Chagrin Falls center of town.
Then, when I hear about how Gloria is approached, the questions she asks and how long it takes to get a precise answer to the questions, I start to wonder even more than I already am about the entire petition process.
1. How is how the petition drive to get casinos in Ohio (and, ostensibly, raise millions for higher education) being carried out any more acceptable than the allegedly acts or omissions that lead to voter suppression in an election?
2. Only certain people are hearing about the petition face to face, and when they do, they’re not getting all the information.
3. Is there an assumption that people who live where I do and frequent the places I do either a) won’t sign because they know better or b) aren’t going to vote in favor if the issue makes it on the ballot anyway so why bother?
I mean, there seem to be some very insidious thoughts that must go into targeting your density for getting signatures:
-can people read it for themselves?
-are you getting to people who can’t pay for higher education but want to better themselves and their kids?
-are you getting people who’ll probably be okay with gambling anyway?
-are you getting people who are so busy they won’t ask questions?
These observations may be old hat to people who have followed this stuff closely all the time. But that’s no excuse for not more closely examining the tactics involved.
I’m getting an awful lot of cases of the heebie geebies lately.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 7:24 am July 12th, 2006 in Politics | 6 Comments
Print This Post
Jul
12
Targeting potential petition signers: how is it not worse than voter suppression?
Filed Under Politics | Comments Off
I’ve been reading accounts in the blogs and newspapers about interactions between people who are paid to get signatures in order to qualify ballot initiatives for the November elections and people whom this first group wants to get to sign the petitions. A certain number of signatures is required to get a proposal on the ballot.
Here is a very specific sample from Gloria Ferris, who posted this information in this comment on Brewed Fresh Daily:
I am sorry to say that although your petioners may be informed as to what to say when asking someone to sign the petition for Ohio Learn and Earn. I have been approached five times by your petitioners in and around the West Side Market and never ONCE have they said that the Ohio Learn And Earn Scholarships will be funded by GAMBLING. When I ask how these Scholarships will be funded they hem and they haw saying revenues. When asked what kind of revenues they then say gambling revenues. Also three of them did not say that it is a constitutional amendment issue. Also many of them are also asking people to sign the minimum wage petition at the same time. Flipping it over, back and forth. Not a good idea for petition signers. When I had two petitions to be signed I have always carried to clip boards. With a bumper sticker or something that indicates which petition is attached to which clipboard. Less confusion on all sides.
After I read Gloria’s comment, the first thing that occurred to me was, I keep noting how I’m never approached, anywhere. And then I thought about where I go versus where Gloria and others who’ve commented about being approached go. And then I thought, well, duh. The folks hoping to get signatures are only going to go to places that have the highest density of possible signators.
I live in Pepper Pike. No secret. I’ve not seen a single petition at any of the places I go: Eton Collection, Legacy Village, Beachwood Place, LaPlace, Golden Gate, Eastgate, Pavillion Mall, BJs, and Chagrin Falls center of town.
Then, when I hear about how Gloria is approached, the questions she asks and how long it takes to get a precise answer to the questions, I start to wonder even more than I already am about the entire petition process.
1. How is how the petition drive to get casinos in Ohio (and, ostensibly, raise millions for higher education) being carried out any more acceptable than the allegedly acts or omissions that lead to voter suppression in an election?
2. Only certain people are hearing about the petition face to face, and when they do, they’re not getting all the information.
3. Is there an assumption that people who live where I do and frequent the places I do either a) won’t sign because they know better or b) aren’t going to vote in favor if the issue makes it on the ballot anyway so why bother?
I mean, there seem to be some very insidious thoughts that must go into targeting your density for getting signatures:
-can people read it for themselves?
-are you getting to people who can’t pay for higher education but want to better themselves and their kids?
-are you getting people who’ll probably be okay with gambling anyway?
-are you getting people who are so busy they won’t ask questions?
These observations may be old hat to people who have followed this stuff closely all the time. But that’s no excuse for not more closely examining the tactics involved.
I’m getting an awful lot of cases of the heebie geebies lately.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 4:24 am July 12th, 2006 in Politics | Comments Off
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