One Party Rule and Where It Gets You

When you hear pundits and politicians berating the ‘other side’ as the cause of all this country’s problems, consider that we’ve had one party rule of the three branches of our government for some time now.

Ask yourself, where has it gotten us? One party in power. The other with no capacity to contribute but scream from the peanut gallery. There’s no accountability, no oversight.

Our governmental system works best with checks and balances.

One party rule, for as long as we’ve had it, has left us in a state that serves only to re-elect those already in office, and for them to gather more power as a matter of course.

There’s no question that this is the most corrupt Congress ever. It serves only to rubber stamp anything the Administration puts its way.

That’s not the way the founders of this country intended it. And it needs to stop now.

I’m voting straight Democrat on Tuesday. That’s not something I typically would endorse. But we live in a time where our government no longer answers to its people. That has to change.

While I’m not one to throw around conspiracy theories, there’s a good deal of early evidence that would lead one to expect plenty of voting problems on Tuesday. It’s going to be up to all of us to keep an eye out and and spread word when or if that happens.

Relaxing before a night of meeting the neighbors

Emma had a great first Halloween. The weather was perfect and we had around twenty or so trick-or-treaters come by. A few families had even minivanned in to our area. Towards the end, Emma, Richelle and me took a stroll to chat with our neighbors. Emma loves people so she had a lot of fun. It was literally a story book experience. We didn’t grow up with a Halloween tradition, nor lived in neighborhoods where it was safe to have one, and I think I experienced Halloween for the first time last night. Now I can relate better to why my brother Dante got so excited with his children. Can’t wait till next year 🙂

The Sad Irony of Layoffs at the Inquirer and Daily News

Last week a prime example of the utility and the need, for news organizations like those in our newspapers, played out in the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer as it reported on mismanagement in Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services.

Mismanagement that has led to up to five children deaths in 2006.

In the report’s wake, two officials have been ousted and workers are left up in arms and in disarray, organizing a huge protest last Friday.

Contract negotiations are taking place at the Inquirer and Daily News, in the midst of huge shifts in the newspaper marketplace. Shifts that have been taking place for sometime now, shifts that force the issue – newspaper companies must change their business models or die.

Knight Ridder papers responded to changing marketplace, the past six years, with ever shrinking budgets, ever tightening belts, and consolidation of resources and empowerment in the hands of the few. The culmination of which was the fire sale that took place over the past year.

In Philadelphia a sense of optimism sprung as it was a group of local business leaders that purchased the papers. They talked of investment, and a recognition that further cuts were almost impossible to make.

So you gotta give the Daily News’s Will Bunch a pass for the bleak tone in his latest piece on the situation at the papers and the industry at large. I’m reflecting his irony here. This post being an echo of his in a sense.

How could he not feel that way with the memo him and other Philadelphia Media Holdings employees received Friday? A memo that sounded, I bet to his ears, all too familiar.

While saving the paper isn’t about saving jobs – it is about investment. Bold bets. A look towards the future. That’s hard to do with less and less resources, with folks busy just trying to keep up.

There is massive opportunity for the papers to reinvent their business models. And there are folks at the papers with the knowledge and wherewithal to do it (read all of Will’s post). But time is running out.

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More at PJNet by Leonard Witt.

Condolences

To Susie Madrak, who said goodbye her father last weekend. Read her tribute to him. If you don’t know her, you are missing out on knowing a special, passionate soul. Her part in running the Norgs unconference was central to it being a success, in every way.

And to my friend Lynne, who lost her grandson this weekend.

My heart goes out to you.