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Apr
7
Conservatives who espouse the value of examining political figures’ childrens’ lives must reject Giuliani as a viable candidate
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Politico has this article up about Republican Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani’s take on how he believes people should judge his personal life versus his political career:
“We all have personal lives, we all have things that go right and wrong in our personal lives,” he told me. “The real question is how does it affect how you can perform?”
“Does the fact that I may have had some problems in my personal life mean that I don’t perform my job or I can’t perform it well?” he continued. “Or does it mean that despite them, I still was able to take a city that was the crime capital of America and turn it into the safest large city in America.”
Given the fact that some conservative bloggers believe that not only does a political figure’s own behavior merit a thorough fisking before deciding they’re worthy, but that even the behavior of a political figure’s child should be interpreted as a reflection on the parenting abilities of that political figure and in turn make voters think twice about that political figure, I have to assume that there is no way on Earth that Giuliani will ever be able to have them substitute his proposed standard for theirs, so that he could pass muster with the same conservatives.
But, I could be wrong. Some people can withstand an enormous burden of cognitive dissonance and inconsistencies. I know that I have a higher tolerance in some areas than I like to acknowledge.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:19 pm April 7th, 2007 in Politics | 10 Comments
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Apr
7
The mess we call "progress": only Oklahoma outlousies Ohio in wireless 911
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See all those dark circles and more than a tiny bit dark circles? Those are all the states that are ahead of Ohio in wireless 911 service as of January 2006. You can read the GAO report about states’ efforts to provide wireless 911 service here.
I wrote about this topic yesterday and am re-posting a comment left by David Potts of Left of Ohio:
I’d just be happy to have 9-1-1 at all. I live in Monroe County (directly North of Washington County) and we have to dial a 10 digit number for the local volunteer fire department (they also have an ambulance). If they don’t have anyone on duty we then have to call another 10 digit number for another service farther away.
Last November we had to call an ambulance and it ended up being over 30 minutes between the first call we made (of two) and the time one actually arrived (at the wrong house).
This fact is thoroughly unacceptable to me and should be to all Ohioans.
Then, a little while ago, I read this in the Columbus Dispatch:
The Associated Press reported in November that up to half of the calls made to 911 centers were coming from cell phones, but only eight of Ohio?s 88 counties, including Delaware and Union counties, had the capability to pinpoint locations using satellites. Another 15 had the less-accurate tower-triangulation system. Only Oklahoma was rated worse than Ohio in its ability to track emergency cell-phone calls.
In 2005, the state legislature approved a 32-cent-per-month state tax on all wireless telephone numbers, administered through the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. That tax raised $24.8 million in 2006, said Shawn Smith, the commission?s 911 coordinator.
The phone companies and the PUCO each keep 2 percent of the money for administrative costs; the rest is disbursed to county treasurers based on the number of cell-phone accounts billed to addresses in those counties, Smith said.
Franklin County gets about $2.9 million a year, and has received $4.3 million since the tax was created in 2005, Smith said. Counties can use the money for equipment, software and training, but “they have to tie it back to wireless 911,” he said.
Sixty-six Ohio counties have received funds; the others have been delayed mainly because their local police and fire departments can?t agree on how to divvy up the money, Smith said.
The tax expires at the end of 2008, Smith said.
“If it were to be extended, the state legislature would have to do it,” Smith said. “The way it stands today, the counties would have to find other funding sources to cover their ongoing costs.”
Now, this isn’t just a question of where Franklin County or any other county is going to find nearly $3 million if and when that surcharge expires. But according to this April ’06 report from the GAO, (pg. 14-15) only four states collect lower surcharges than Ohio’s 32 cents, and 13 states, as of that report, charged more than $1.00, up to $3.00, with another nine states charging 75 cents to 90 cents for a total of nearly half the states charging at least two and a half times what Ohio, the seventh most populous state in the country, charges. Just because our state might be shrinking in size doesn’t mean the more than 11 million still here don’t need services.
Totally unacceptable. Download the report to get even more perspective on the position the Ohio legislature’s failure on this issue, from 1996 until December 2004 has placed Ohioans.
I’ll be emailing both my state rep. Josh Mandel who is the Vice Chair of the Public Utilities Committee (PUCO oversees the 911 service), and my state senator Bob Spada who is on the senate’s Energy and Public Utilities committee. How convenient, huh?
Feel free to contact your representatives to find out if they’re going to renew the surcharge that will otherwise expire in August of this year and plunge Ohio’s increading number of cell phone users into a “can you hear me now” black hole.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 7:48 pm April 7th, 2007 in Politics | Comments Off
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Apr
7
Conservatives who espouse the value of examining political figures’ childrens’ lives must reject Giuliani as a viable candidate
Filed Under Politics | 10 Comments
Politico has this article up about Republican Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani’s take on how he believes people should judge his personal life versus his political career:
“We all have personal lives, we all have things that go right and wrong in our personal lives,” he told me. “The real question is how does it affect how you can perform?”
“Does the fact that I may have had some problems in my personal life mean that I don’t perform my job or I can’t perform it well?” he continued. “Or does it mean that despite them, I still was able to take a city that was the crime capital of America and turn it into the safest large city in America.”
Given the fact that some conservative bloggers believe that not only does a political figure’s own behavior merit a thorough fisking before deciding they’re worthy, but that even the behavior of a political figure’s child should be interpreted as a reflection on the parenting abilities of that political figure and in turn make voters think twice about that political figure, I have to assume that there is no way on Earth that Giuliani will ever be able to have them substitute his proposed standard for theirs, so that he could pass muster with the same conservatives.
But, I could be wrong. Some people can withstand an enormous burden of cognitive dissonance and inconsistencies. I know that I have a higher tolerance in some areas than I like to acknowledge.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 5:19 pm April 7th, 2007 in Politics | 10 Comments
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Apr
7
This post on the blog, Reasoned Audacity, prompted me to ask that question and pose it in a comment to the blog authors there. I’ve not found them to be all that responsive to the comments people leave on their blog, and the slant of their posts closely reflects Charmaine Yoest’s affiliation with the Family Research Council, a group with the stated role of “Combining a solid commitment and dedication to the God-ordained institutions of marriage and family, the organization has established itself as one of the premiere conservative social policy organizations in the nation.”
BUT…from what I’ve read about Charmaine Yoest, I’m guessing that she is an experienced intellectual and engaged in the real world, even if she sees it rather differently than I do. To someone like me, that means, there’s always hope for engaging in a discussion or debate, and that’s a good thing. FWIW, Charmaine Yoest’s mother, Janice Crouse, is also an experienced advocate for the same end of the ideological spectrum (see here for a 2005 interview on PBS, conducted by David Brancaccio, where he introduces Janice Crouse as follows: “Janice Crouse is a senior fellow at the Beverly Lahaye Institute [yes, the same as Tim LaHaye etc.] think tank for Concerned Women for America, one of several Christian right groups pressuring the President to tilt global AIDS prevention efforts emphatically from condoms to sexual abstinence until marriage.”). [links added by me]
So, in fact, I’ve left a few comments there and I’ve sent an email or two, though not in a while and I don’t believe I’ve gotten any responses. I prefer debate to silence, but that’s just me.
Like a good blog post, the one I reference provoked me in a thoughtful way and this is the comment I left:
I would have left this comment on the 4/05 post re: Easter sunrise but I couldn’t find a “comment” button!
I don’t know if either of you have ever been to Israel or the Mt. Sinai, but I would urge you to go sometime. Your description of waking up at 3am to go to the sunrise service parallels the experience many people of many faiths, and probably a good number of those with no faith that has a name we’d recognize, have at Mt. Sinai.
Mine occurred in December 1984. My younger brother was visiting me for two weeks in Israel (I was there on a volunteer program I learned about at Georgetown – Sherut La’am) and the Sinai was still part of Israel (it became Egypt in the summer of 85 I believe).
We went on a tiyul into the Sinai, I think it was a three or four day thing, sleeping in Bedouin tents and so on. And it included ascending by foot to the top of Mt. Sinai before sunrise. You can see pictures from that morning here.
Now – there was no service, it wasn’t a particular holiday (secular new years and Chanuka excluded) but it was a religious experience for me just the same.
Should the service you attended on the Grand Canyone be allowed? I have no problem with it – but I would only want to be sure that anyone and everyone who wants the same would also get the permit. Are national parks in the habit of not allowing such things? I’m not familiar with that, but I see church and other kinds of picnics in our municipally run parks all over NE Ohio. So long as there is equal access, I fail to see that as government endorsement of religion – so long as there isn’t selective exclusion.
If there are such cases, I hope you’ll point to them – I’m often called naive.
Have a lovely holiday – we have several inches of snow here – no community Easter Egg Hunt – outdoors anyway.
Ironically, the smell of the simmering matzah balls I’m making is permeating my workspace as I type this!
I haven’t much time to research the troubles in publicly funded parks related to this issue but I did find this post on the site, AtheistActivist.org. The position taken by that group is far beyond what I believe in – I don’t think I could support such eviction of observation, so long as everyone was afforded the same opportunity and there was no endorsement or exclusion being done by the park and the groups involved respected the public nature of the location.
But, as I indicated at the Yoest’s post, I’ve just not ever read about this issue before and would be interested in reading more about the problems, alleged and real.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 3:38 pm April 7th, 2007 in Politics | 2 Comments
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Apr
7
Conservatives who espouse the value of examining political figures’ childrens’ lives must reject Giuliani as a viable candidate
Filed Under Politics | 10 Comments
Politico has this article up about Republican Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani’s take on how he believes people should judge his personal life versus his political career:
“We all have personal lives, we all have things that go right and wrong in our personal lives,” he told me. “The real question is how does it affect how you can perform?”
“Does the fact that I may have had some problems in my personal life mean that I don’t perform my job or I can’t perform it well?” he continued. “Or does it mean that despite them, I still was able to take a city that was the crime capital of America and turn it into the safest large city in America.”
Given the fact that some conservative bloggers believe that not only does a political figure’s own behavior merit a thorough fisking before deciding they’re worthy, but that even the behavior of a political figure’s child should be interpreted as a reflection on the parenting abilities of that political figure and in turn make voters think twice about that political figure, I have to assume that there is no way on Earth that Giuliani will ever be able to have them substitute his proposed standard for theirs, so that he could pass muster with the same conservatives.
But, I could be wrong. Some people can withstand an enormous burden of cognitive dissonance and inconsistencies. I know that I have a higher tolerance in some areas than I like to acknowledge.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 2:19 pm April 7th, 2007 in Politics | 10 Comments
Print This Post
Apr
7
This post on the blog, Reasoned Audacity, prompted me to ask that question and pose it in a comment to the blog authors there. I’ve not found them to be all that responsive to the comments people leave on their blog, and the slant of their posts closely reflects Charmaine Yoest’s affiliation with the Family Research Council, a group with the stated role of “Combining a solid commitment and dedication to the God-ordained institutions of marriage and family, the organization has established itself as one of the premiere conservative social policy organizations in the nation.”
BUT…from what I’ve read about Charmaine Yoest, I’m guessing that she is an experienced intellectual and engaged in the real world, even if she sees it rather differently than I do. To someone like me, that means, there’s always hope for engaging in a discussion or debate, and that’s a good thing. FWIW, Charmaine Yoest’s mother, Janice Crouse, is also an experienced advocate for the same end of the ideological spectrum (see here for a 2005 interview on PBS, conducted by David Brancaccio, where he introduces Janice Crouse as follows: “Janice Crouse is a senior fellow at the Beverly Lahaye Institute [yes, the same as Tim LaHaye etc.] think tank for Concerned Women for America, one of several Christian right groups pressuring the President to tilt global AIDS prevention efforts emphatically from condoms to sexual abstinence until marriage.”). [links added by me]
So, in fact, I’ve left a few comments there and I’ve sent an email or two, though not in a while and I don’t believe I’ve gotten any responses. I prefer debate to silence, but that’s just me.
Like a good blog post, the one I reference provoked me in a thoughtful way and this is the comment I left:
I would have left this comment on the 4/05 post re: Easter sunrise but I couldn’t find a “comment” button!
I don’t know if either of you have ever been to Israel or the Mt. Sinai, but I would urge you to go sometime. Your description of waking up at 3am to go to the sunrise service parallels the experience many people of many faiths, and probably a good number of those with no faith that has a name we’d recognize, have at Mt. Sinai.
Mine occurred in December 1984. My younger brother was visiting me for two weeks in Israel (I was there on a volunteer program I learned about at Georgetown – Sherut La’am) and the Sinai was still part of Israel (it became Egypt in the summer of 85 I believe).
We went on a tiyul into the Sinai, I think it was a three or four day thing, sleeping in Bedouin tents and so on. And it included ascending by foot to the top of Mt. Sinai before sunrise. You can see pictures from that morning here.
Now – there was no service, it wasn’t a particular holiday (secular new years and Chanuka excluded) but it was a religious experience for me just the same.
Should the service you attended on the Grand Canyone be allowed? I have no problem with it – but I would only want to be sure that anyone and everyone who wants the same would also get the permit. Are national parks in the habit of not allowing such things? I’m not familiar with that, but I see church and other kinds of picnics in our municipally run parks all over NE Ohio. So long as there is equal access, I fail to see that as government endorsement of religion – so long as there isn’t selective exclusion.
If there are such cases, I hope you’ll point to them – I’m often called naive.
Have a lovely holiday – we have several inches of snow here – no community Easter Egg Hunt – outdoors anyway.
Ironically, the smell of the simmering matzah balls I’m making is permeating my workspace as I type this!
I haven’t much time to research the troubles in publicly funded parks related to this issue but I did find this post on the site, AtheistActivist.org. The position taken by that group is far beyond what I believe in – I don’t think I could support such eviction of observation, so long as everyone was afforded the same opportunity and there was no endorsement or exclusion being done by the park and the groups involved respected the public nature of the location.
But, as I indicated at the Yoest’s post, I’ve just not ever read about this issue before and would be interested in reading more about the problems, alleged and real.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:38 am April 7th, 2007 in Politics | 2 Comments
Print This Post
Apr
7
This post on the blog, Reasoned Audacity, prompted me to ask that question and pose it in a comment to the blog authors there. I’ve not found them to be all that responsive to the comments people leave on their blog, and the slant of their posts closely reflects Charmaine Yoest’s affiliation with the Family Research Council, a group with the stated role of “Combining a solid commitment and dedication to the God-ordained institutions of marriage and family, the organization has established itself as one of the premiere conservative social policy organizations in the nation.”
BUT…from what I’ve read about Charmaine Yoest, I’m guessing that she is an experienced intellectual and engaged in the real world, even if she sees it rather differently than I do. To someone like me, that means, there’s always hope for engaging in a discussion or debate, and that’s a good thing. FWIW, Charmaine Yoest’s mother, Janice Crouse, is also an experienced advocate for the same end of the ideological spectrum (see here for a 2005 interview on PBS, conducted by David Brancaccio, where he introduces Janice Crouse as follows: “Janice Crouse is a senior fellow at the Beverly Lahaye Institute [yes, the same as Tim LaHaye etc.] think tank for Concerned Women for America, one of several Christian right groups pressuring the President to tilt global AIDS prevention efforts emphatically from condoms to sexual abstinence until marriage.”). [links added by me]
So, in fact, I’ve left a few comments there and I’ve sent an email or two, though not in a while and I don’t believe I’ve gotten any responses. I prefer debate to silence, but that’s just me.
Like a good blog post, the one I reference provoked me in a thoughtful way and this is the comment I left:
I would have left this comment on the 4/05 post re: Easter sunrise but I couldn’t find a “comment” button!
I don’t know if either of you have ever been to Israel or the Mt. Sinai, but I would urge you to go sometime. Your description of waking up at 3am to go to the sunrise service parallels the experience many people of many faiths, and probably a good number of those with no faith that has a name we’d recognize, have at Mt. Sinai.
Mine occurred in December 1984. My younger brother was visiting me for two weeks in Israel (I was there on a volunteer program I learned about at Georgetown – Sherut La’am) and the Sinai was still part of Israel (it became Egypt in the summer of 85 I believe).
We went on a tiyul into the Sinai, I think it was a three or four day thing, sleeping in Bedouin tents and so on. And it included ascending by foot to the top of Mt. Sinai before sunrise. You can see pictures from that morning here.
Now – there was no service, it wasn’t a particular holiday (secular new years and Chanuka excluded) but it was a religious experience for me just the same.
Should the service you attended on the Grand Canyone be allowed? I have no problem with it – but I would only want to be sure that anyone and everyone who wants the same would also get the permit. Are national parks in the habit of not allowing such things? I’m not familiar with that, but I see church and other kinds of picnics in our municipally run parks all over NE Ohio. So long as there is equal access, I fail to see that as government endorsement of religion – so long as there isn’t selective exclusion.
If there are such cases, I hope you’ll point to them – I’m often called naive.
Have a lovely holiday – we have several inches of snow here – no community Easter Egg Hunt – outdoors anyway.
Ironically, the smell of the simmering matzah balls I’m making is permeating my workspace as I type this!
I haven’t much time to research the troubles in publicly funded parks related to this issue but I did find this post on the site, AtheistActivist.org. The position taken by that group is far beyond what I believe in – I don’t think I could support such eviction of observation, so long as everyone was afforded the same opportunity and there was no endorsement or exclusion being done by the park and the groups involved respected the public nature of the location.
But, as I indicated at the Yoest’s post, I’ve just not ever read about this issue before and would be interested in reading more about the problems, alleged and real.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:38 am April 7th, 2007 in Politics | 2 Comments
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Apr
7
Bloggapalooza 2.0: 7/28/07 Beachland Ballroom
Filed Under Politics | 2 Comments
It has its own website and everything.
Better start working on my raffle basket…
By Jill Miller Zimon at 3:20 am April 7th, 2007 in Politics | 2 Comments
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Apr
7
Ohio’s 911 service for cell users at country’s bottom, Ohio GA couldn’t get act together
Filed Under Politics | 4 Comments
Gee, who do you suppose got us into this fine mess this time, Ollie? From the Plain Dealer:
Dial 9-1-1 on a cell phone in Northeast Ohio and most other areas of the state, and the dispatcher probably will need help locating you.
Ohio lags far behind the rest of the nation in implementing the technology to pinpoint the location of distressed cell-phone callers.
Only 10 states offer worse coverage, according to a report by the National Emergency Number Association.
Only 14 of Ohio’s 88 counties — about 16 percent — can identify where a cell-phone call originates. The national average is 60 percent.
Hmmm…according to the Plain Dealer article:
Ohio waited longer than most states to figure out a revenue source, leading to implementation delays, said Patrick Halley, the government affairs director for the National Emergency Number Association.
When did they realize that they needed to help Ohio’s 911 dispatchers and what did all their deep-thinking, waiting and caution produce? From the PD:
Money from a 32-cent surcharge that the state added to cell-phone bills two years ago fueled the advance. The dimes and pennies collected through the fee added up, generating the millions of dollars now paying for costly new equipment at call centers.
But guess how long the Ohio General Assembly has been ruminating? From WTAP, Parkersburg, W. Va:
Washington County 911 Coordinator Mike Cullums says, “In some of the larger counties in Ohio there is a serious concern because they’re losing wire-land surcharge fees rapidly to cell phones.”
Cullums says there is concern for all Ohio counties in the future, because come next August, the surcharge fee on cell phones might not even exist.
“It took seven years for the Ohio General Assembly to approve the 32 cent fee and it has a three year sunset provision in it. So that’s our biggest concern in Ohio, is trying to make sure it stays in place.”
Cullums says Ohio’s surcharge fees only cover equipment and software. Law enforcement agencies foot the bill for labor.
[My emphasis]
Can you say “term limits”? Come on, those who know better than me – chime in. I tried to find the bill/law on the legislature’s site but had no luck.
Here’s a list of the PUCO’s Ohio 9-1-1 Council and Wireless 9-1-1 Advisory Board (the latter is a small subset of the former).
Bill. Callahan. What’s the scoop? I’m off to search your blog, among other things.
Finally, anyone have anything on what the Republican-led Ohio GA was doing for seven years before it approved the surcharge and while the rest of the country, for a change, got ahead of Ohio, for a change? Here’s a bit that I’ve found:
The law was passed in December 2004, just after the 2004 elections. This Journal News article (full article for fee only) wrote, in June, 2005:
Ohio has lagged woefully behind in the implementation of a 911 service for cell phone users. But progress is on its way with the implementation in August of a 32-cent monthly charge to cell phone customers. For eight years, counties in Ohio tried to pry an emergency network for cellular phones out of the Legislature. Finally, last December, a deal was reached to sunset the fee increase put in place to pay for the system. The additional charge will end on Dec. 31, 2008.
And still, now, in April 2007, we still lag woefully behind.
Does no one else get outraged at how little has changed, and that the money will cease to be collected without action, from what I can glean? Funny how an article written a two months before the law took effect and two years before today, calls the eight year battle to get the thing passed “progress.” Looking back, I guess Ohioans just have a very tortured idea of what progress is.
For now, here’s how one county advises its residents:
Washington County is now working to implement Wireless E9-1-1, which will make it possible to locate 9-1-1 callers using cell phones. In August 2005, the Ohio General Assembly enacted a 32-cent per month cell phone surcharge, which brings to Washington County $102,200 each of the next three years to fund implementation of Wireless 9-1-1. Washington County is working with our bordering counties and the various cellular service providers to implement this service, which should be available in 2007.
It is important to understand that even after Wireless 9-1-1 is in place, a cell phone call to 9-1-1 may route to a different city or county than where you are located. After all, these devices we know as “cell phones” are actually radios, and there is no technology to select which cell tower your phone’s radio signal may hit. For example, if you call 911 on a cell phone in Washington County, Ohio, the signal may hit a tower in Wood County, West.Virginia, or vice versa. Be prepared to describe your location to dispatchers to assist them in getting help to you.
I’m going into cynical mode and guess that this might be one of those things that isn’t going to get much attention until an Ohio legislator suffers because of Ohio’s lag in wireless 911 service.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 2:14 am April 7th, 2007 in Politics | 4 Comments
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