Category: Uncategorized

I’ve got Chris Dodd in my pocket, and my other hand is waving a peace sign

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Former Congressman and current Senate candidate Rob Simmons has a neat fundraiser going as part of his campaign to unseat the ethically challenged Chris Dodd in Connecticut.  For $5, the campaign will send you a “Pocket Dodd” – a small cardboard cutout of the Senator so you, like the recipients of far-too-much bailout funding, can have Chris Dodd “in your pocket.”

The low, $5 suggested contribution limit, coupled with the message and the invitation to send back pictures give this project a chance for a viral impact.  Although, Simmons and Co. might have invited some less-than-wholesome responses with their call for people to “send photos of Pocket Dodd in action!”  (I’m glad those responses aren’t going to my inbox…)

Healthcare is easy if you think of people as numbers…

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Last weekend I spoke to Students for Life, a college pro-life group, about media and public relations.  One thing we discussed is how most people don’t like to deal with the issue of abortion because it forces judgments on the beginning of life and competing rights (mother vs. child) – and that most people simply don’t want any part of it. In a post from yesterday afternoon, the Atlantic’s Daniel Indiviglio doesn’t take a stance on the debate itself, but highlights the questions public health care necessarily must face.  For instance, would more or fewer abortions help the bottom line for a public health care plan?  Is it better to have a younger, stronger populace that needs less health care, or by keeping a lid on population numbers do abortions save money in the long term?  Should women whose pre-natal babies have diseases be urged to abort children who will cause a drain on the health care system?

These are chilling questions that no one wants to even ask, let alone answer.  Pro-choice advocates who claim government has no place dictating whether a woman can terminate her baby’s development should be standing with pro-life forces who don’t want their tax dollars to fund what they feel is a violation of an individual’s right to life.  Neither side will be happy with greater regulatory involvement, which may be the first thing these camps have ever agreed upon.

Don’t stop to kick every barking dog

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

No, that isn’t a caveat for Michael Vick’s reinstatement.  It’s part of the Rules of the Public Policy Process taught by my former boss, Morton Blackwell.  Essentially, the phrase means that in politics, sometimes it’s wise to pick your battles – and that not every fight you could engage in will help you achieve your ultimate goal.

It isn’t a politically-themed example, but a real estate management company in Chicago is making this point very clearly.  The Horizon Group is suing a former tenant of one of their apartment buildings because she posted a snarky, critical comment on Twitter.  “Who says sleeping in a moldy apartment is bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay,” tweeted the disgruntled renter, Amanda Bonnen.

Horizon didn’t bother asking Bonnen to remove the tweet or push a retraction to the meager following of 20 users who track her Twitter account.  Instead, they filed a defamation lawsuit seeking $50,000 in damages.

“We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization,” explained Horizon’s Jeffrey Michael.  That may indeed prove that Horizon is right in this case, but that isn’t a very inviting comment for a prospective renter.

Social networks like Twitter offer a chance for companies to engage their customers in a dialogue, and use the conversation – including constructive criticism – to make their business better.  In some cases – and this could very well be one – a business relationship is simply irreconcilable, and the customer will give bad reviews no matter what.  At that point, any business should gauge the situation and consider their options.  I’d bet that many Chicago-area renters will steer clear of Horizon-managed properties, given their handling of this situation – far more than would have if Horizon had simply ignored Bonnen’s original tweet, which probably would have been seem by, at most, 25-50 people and forgotten by most soon after it was read.

Perhaps instead of suing first and asking questions later, Horizon’s management should have started with a question: Which is more harmful, a random Twitter post or bad PR from taking legal action against a dissatisfied customer?

The guys having the beer already agree

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

One week ago today, the Cambridge Police Department and Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates released a joint statement, with both sides admitting the professor’s arrest was a “regrettable” escalation, and that dropping the charges of disorderly conduct was a “just resolution” to all sides.  Both sides had kissed and made up when, hours later, the President accused one side of “acting stupidly” – a statement which, while apparently true, was just as apparently incomplete.

Now, someone has lost their job over it. Lee Landor, an aide to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, criticized Obama’s criticism on Facebook, stating that arresting officer James Crowley was doing his job.  In another post, she called Sharptonian racial arsonists to task be questioning the idea that all white people in positions of power are evil racists.  According to Stringer’s flack, Landor’s comments “were totally inappropriate and in direct contradiction to the views of the borough president and his office.”  I’m not sure what parts of Cambridge, Mass. fall under the jurisdiction of the Manhattan Borough President, but apparently disagreement on this local issue and the national politics surrounding it constituted an irreconcilable difference.  Landor was forced to resign today (adding one more to the unemployment rolls).

The President will invite Gates and Crowley to the White House so they can make up “officially” and look like a peacemaker.  Crowley will, if he wants it, gain a degree of notoriety as the victim of a witch hunt at the hands of Sharpton and his ilk.  And for a professor who heads a department named after a Marxist who renounced his American citizenship, a racially-tinged flap with the police is a guaranteed moneymaker – Gates could make six figures talking at campuses in the next month and never leave Massachusetts.  Hopefully, Landor can find a way cash in on her involvement in this controversy as well.

Reach out and touch a hornet’s nest

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

A simple move by AT&T to block part of a website which most of us have never seen may spark a broad debate over how we get access to the internet.

4chan is more than a home for crude images; it is also a hub of online mavens and connectors – part community, part cultural incubator.  Now-ubiquitous internet themes and memes – like the phrase “epic fail,” those “I can has cheezburger?” LOL cats, and of course, the Rickroll – all originated on 4chan’s message boards before spreading to all corners of the internet.  So when AT&T partially pulled the plug on access to some parts of 4chan for their DSL subscribers, it was only a matter of time before word was spread far and wide (digitally, at least).

DailyKos actually has a pretty good timeline on what happened as well as the ongoing conversation – much of which includes calls to action against AT&T.  Lost among the various accounts is a report – mentioned in a 4chan community alert on YouTube – that AT&T may have blocked sections of the site due to child pornography.  And when AT&T finally announced the reasoning behind the shutdown, they blamed hacker attacks that appeared to be originating from a 4chan IP address.

Either way, the controversy has stirred up the debate over net neutrality – the idea that the government would make it illegal for an internet provider, like AT&T, to regulate internet traffic by prioritizing some destinations or users.  Of course, if the service provider isn’t acting as the traffic cop, someone will – which will make entities like Google and Facebook more influential in what content you see (which is a big reason companies like Google tend to love net neutrality).

The debate is, however, moot in many ways.  Very passionate members of the 4chan community – as well as their sympathizers – discussed ways to take action and make their voices heard, including the contact information of top AT&T executives.  Regardless of what federal regulations are or are not in place, nothing moves a company like dissatisfied customers.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I work for a company whose parent company has AT&T as a client.  Though I have offered strategic advice on the account, including offering my take on some of the issues discussed above, I’ve never executed any actual projects for them.)

Minimum wage means if they could pay you less, they would

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Today, the price of hiring someone got a little higher.

I’ve worked minimum wage jobs, but not since my time at the University of Massachusetts.  I’ve also hired people at minimum wage – and, more importantly, NOT hired people because of minimum wage.  Today’s $7.25/hour federal minimum wage comes nearly a decade after Massachusetts hiked their $5.25/hour rate to $5.75, then $6.25, then $6.75 over the course of a year and a half.  That sucked for me – I didn’t have work-study assistance, the program where the federal government pays two-thirds of a student’s hourly rate, so while I cost an extra $1.50/hour, others would only cost an extra $.50.  It also sucked for Chris, the guy who ran the Coolidge Snack Bar.

The Coolidge Snack Bar was a business venture undertaken by us nerds who participated in the dorm council for Coolidge Tower at UMass.  Using some seed money from what can best be called tax dollars, the snack bar provided a social space for the 550 people who lived in the building.  The initial business plan called for a manager – a glorified term for someone to work the cash register, serve the customers, and make sure things like health codes were followed.  Enter Chris.

That was the spring of 1999.  Summer came, and with it a scheduled increase in the state minimum wage.  When fall rolled around, we simply couldn’t afford to hire Chris back.  He lost his job because the Massachusetts legislature wanted to help people making minimum wage.  Good work, fellas.

A decade later,with a national economy in rough shape, we’re seeing stories which pose the question: is a minimum wage hike really the best thing for America’s workers? No one expects minimum wage earners to receive pink slips en masse tomorrow, but it may have something to do with the fact that unemployment as been rising steadily over the last few months.

I bet folks who find themselves today in the position Chris was in ten years ago might have an opinion, though.

They’ll tell you what’s “fit to print”

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Reader click-throughs have nothing to do with what stories make it to the New York Times online front page.  Much like the print edition of any newspaper, the editors determine what the most important stories of the day are and print those – which was a great model before everyone had all the information at their fingertips.  Now, the admission further diminishes the relevance of what used to be our nation’s newspaper of record.

Maybe news reporting will never be a “clear pane of glass,” showing readers the world’s events without bias, but that should be a goal.  And the decision about what to cover matters just as much as the tone of the coverage itself.  Basing the news on personal choice means less opportunity for bias to creep in.

The New York Times’s editorial decision to prioritze their news isn’t a political decision, though – it’s a business decision.  Unfortunately for them, it’s a business decision consistent with a one-way newsmedia – a concept which gets more dated every day.

Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be about health care?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

With one off-the-cuff presidential remark, the story of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates became a national debate on race.

When asked about the Harvard Professor who was arrested after refusing to show ID after breaking into his own home, the President began his reply with, “I don’t have all the facts.”  That’s where it should have ended; since each situation is different, it’s unwise to apply issues (such as racial profiling) to an incident to an incident to which it doesn’t apply.  Instead, Obama fanned flames that had been set by Al Sharpton and other racial arsonists who claim the arrest was a cut-and-dried case of police harassment  of a minority citizen.

Sgt. James Crowley, the police officer who arrested Gates, has said he’ll never apologize, and that he isn’t a racist.  As Dan Flynn points out, the fact that he attempted to give mouth-to-mouth to dying Celtics star Reggie Lewis would seem to back this up.  That’s probably one of the facts that the President wishes he had before he brought race into a situation where it doesn’t seem to apply.

Transparent as Mud

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The President fielded a question last night that revealed more about the failed expectations than any admissions that health care may not pass by August.  Obama had to duck a tough question from his hometown Chicago Tribune about the lack of transparency in the health care reform process.  It isn’t a new question, either – the President has broken promises to allow public review of pending legislation as well as struggled to maintain a website where citizens could track government spending.

The developing pattern is not good, and looks worse because the President is setting himself up with expectations which are tough to reach.  At best he looks naive; at worst corrupt.

There will be plenty of time for waiting AFTER health care “reform” passes

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

President Barack Obama takes to the airwaves tonight, hoping that because Americans like him, they will accept an overhaul of the health care system without drawn-out deliberations, debate, and research.  Surely, after the President delivers his address, Republican leaders will answer by talking about the exorbitant cost of government-run health care.

But here’s a better reason to oppose government meddling in health care: it makes health care worse.  If the goal is to make sure that as many people as possible actually get the care they need, this is the wrong way to do it.

Vlogger Steven Crowder makes just this point in a video which, while maybe a little long, is still worth watching: