Springtime in the garden

I took these photos last weekend--this weekend was too rainy. From top: Peony stalks emerging, Chinonodoxa, colombine, daffodil, probably King Alfred; tiny asparagus crowns from the plants I grew from seed last year.

2008 Tax Rally photos

The Star Tribune is reporting 1000 people there. I think that is low. Maybe 3000. It's a miracle anybody showed up at all. It was cold, windy and snowed intermittantly. A far cry from the balmy beautiful spring day we had last year. People this year were fired up though, given the massive tax increases that have passed already.

A scene from the booth. The Taxpayers League had two booths, one alongside KTLK and the MNMajority and another on one corner of the capitol grounds, in order to catch people coming and going to distribute signs. The signs were free and people tried to donate money for them but State Troopers stopped us from collecting it. Apparently only the state can collect money on capitol grounds.

Mark Giga of the Taxpayers League is shown here manning one of the two booths. Winds were high and it was COLD!



David freezing his buns off.

Meta-Meta (2)

After my long Sunday post on the reorganizing of the publishing world, reporting and news comes this interesting development. CBS News may be outsourcing it's reporting--to CNN. What will it mean if we have multiple networks all using the same source? The wry blogger says big deal, different brand, same bias. I've always thought of CBS as the old guard Democrat's channel. Here locally, WCCO runs PSAs for the unions 24/7, even during March Madness when you think they'd be able to sell the time. CNN is more of a new left BBC wanna-be, trying to turn us all into citizens of the world, incensed about climate change, George Bush's parochialism and warmongering. Still, in the eclipsing of CBS, it can't help but look like more concentration of where the news comes from.

Meta--Meta

Last Thursday, quite a few Twin Cities bloggers came back to Keegan’s on the occasion of the Night writer’s birthday. John Stewart occupies a important place in the local blogosphere—he’s a keen observer of politics and news and a great witness to his Christian faith. He’s the guy (if he’ll forgive me for quoting a Catholic Cardinal) John Henry Newman was referring to when he described “a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons, an angel of peace and a preacher of truth … while not intending it …by simply keeping the commandments.” A Minnesota winter, busy lives and and possibly the winter of discontent for Conservatives have made the once obligatory blogger Thursday attendance at Keegans slack off some in recent months. Hopefully better weather will bring people out more.

There have been a number of interesting developments in the past few weeks in the world of publishing, blogging and related fields. Although most of us don’t think of ourselves as authors, many of us actually are, and if we aren’t we’re all consumers, of words and ideas. The developments are, in rough order:

1. WSJ op ed reflects on the tripling of internet users (registration required)
2. Harper Collins says it’s new imprint will not give author advances. (WSJ story here)
3. Amazon buys Publisher on demand Booksurge. Demands that all POD authors it sells use their brand
4. Borders bookstore in trouble, may sell out to Barnes and Noble.
5. The print media continues to suffer financial reverses

What do these developments mean for bloggers?

1. In today’s Wall Street Journal Michael Malone, who does the Silicon Valley Insider Column for ABCnews.com reviewing Tom Hayes new book Jump Point paints a picture of tremendous growth in the internet via the wireless cell phone. It’s poised to grow another billion users by 2011, tripling from what it was just a few years ago. We are familiar with the first billion users. We were among them--educated, first world consumers. The second billion were our neighbors, the somewhat educated and less well off classes in the first world and in poorer countries. For them, e-bay, Myspace and online games were the attraction. The third billion about to make their entrance to the internet bazaar is more mysterious according to Malone (and Hayes)

The third billion, mostly illiterate and geographically isolated, is the most
mysterious group of all. A generation ago this group included some of the
world's poorest people. Beyond this, we know almost nothing about them – they
are the folks buying cell phone time by the minute from a cardboard hut on the
streets of Lusaka, or an Amazon village. They may spend only a few dollars a
year right now, but that figure will grow – and they alone may soon represent a
trillion-dollar market . . . for whoever can get to them.

And we won’t, meaning the USA if we continue on the path to greater regulation, taxes and limiting free trade. Now more than ever, the arguments and the political battles for these principles need to be won, if we are going to be part of this brave new world. In addition, There’s going to be some serious money to be made sorting out this Babel and blogs are going to be there at the revolution. The only question is will they simply dissolve into a giant puddle of individuals’ self expression or will they evolve into a serious “new media.” Meta services like Kithbridge (started by The Truth Laid Bear’s Rob Nepell) are already promoting themselves on this basis—helping businesses with custom rss feeds and the like.

2. The book publishing Industry is currently undergoing a shakeup similar to the mainstream media. (More about the MSM later). This past week there was a story circulating about Harper Collins founding a new imprint, which seems to be a hybrid of traditional publishing and Print on Demand. (WSJ subscription required) For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, Print on Demand, is what used to be known as “vanity publishing.” Somebody fancies themselves a poet or novelist or wants to write their autobiography and lines up a company that will print it for them, usually for a fee or for purchasing a guaranteed number of books. The exchange was simple. The publisher got a guaranteed return and the writer got to call themselves “published” even if most of the copies ended up in his or her garage. POD has changed quite a bit since the internet was added to the equation. Now authors can market themselves more easily and reach their customers directly, if they are willing to invest the time and the money.

As the producer for a weekly radio program, I can tell you firsthand that even some of the most successful authors who publish with traditional presses have decided that leaving marketing and selling up to the presses themselves just isn’t enough. They hire their own publicists and plan their own marketing campaigns aside from whatever the publisher is doing for them. And sometimes it isn’t much beyond using their connections to make sure that your book gets shelf space. Sometimes, as in the recent case of Jonah Goldberg’s bestseller Liberal Fascism, it isn’t even that. Harper Collins’ new imprint seems to be offering a bigger share of the profits in exchange for the author going it alone with bookstores, doing their own PR.

Harper Collins’ move, to shift some of the risk (of a book flopping) to the authors rather than the publisher is a smart business move for them but it’s also following a trend in the industry which may open it up to more authors. The flip side is that although it may be easier to get a book published, each book that does get published will represent more work for the authors, a less secure income stream and probably less profit per book, the exception being if you happen to hit the jackpot and become the next Stephen King or JK Rowling. Unless the lottery mentality takes hold, this incentive structure would seem to lead to a lower number of books being published, perhaps after some initial enthusiasm for the new publishing medium.

3. Within the Publishing on Demand industry there has been some concentration. Over the past few weeks a controversy has been brewing about Amazon.com’s quietly telling POD publishers that it would only sell books printed by it’s new POD subsidiary, Booksurge. Evil monopoly that will eventually be blocked or undercut by somebody else or roadblock in the way of the free flow of ideas? We will have to see.

4. Borders is in financial difficulty and may sell out to rival Barnes and Noble. For me, this news is particularly bittersweet, since I was a frequent visitor to the original Borders back in Ann Arbor, MI, while in college at the University of Michigan. I was never a big fan of independent bookstores. The ones I have visited, with few exceptions, seemed like elitist places pushing mind-numbing academic left-wingery If you weren’t “a regular” you weren’t really welcome. That kind of snobby business practice did a lot of the hole in the wall places in, or turned them into what they were all along-- non-profits and co-ops. If you want to make a profit, you’ve got to attract new customers and make sales. In the current environment this is especially true because people just aren’t buying books anymore. Or they aren’t buying the paper and cardboard brick that the stores are selling, they are downloading them onto laptops kindles and ipods directly from amazon, audible, itunes or some other source. The Costcos and Sams Club’s are also bringing the discount directly to the consumer. These are all great developments if they conduce to more information, fewer “gatekeepers” and more consumer choice and lower cost. If they don’t, it will be a tough time for people selling new or different ideas to get their books into bookstores for anything that won’t make it onto the Oprah book club list.

5. Finally—there’s the recurrent story about the decline of the mainstream media, especially newspapers. Hugh Hewitt’s book Blog, published 3 years ago now seems like ancient history. In it he made the argument that blogs were, like Martin Luther, nailing the 99 theses on the door of the mainstream media. They “took down” Dan Rather, when CBS tried to promote a false story about President Bush’s Vietnam war service. Hugh focused on a number of Minnesota Bloggers: Ed Morrissey, The Powerline guys as well as other blogs whose names are also household names today—Little Green Footballs and Instapundit.

I’ve always been a little wary of the MSM bashing. Not the ridiculous and unchecked bias of puffed up anchormen like Rather and the late Peter Jennings—they had their day and it’s over, thank goodness. And it’s not coming back no matter how many times the big networks try to reinvent it. No, the complication arises when, as a blogger, you realize how dependent you are on MSM reporting. Journalists regard bloggers as parasites on their work and they aren’t half wrong. Even if the carcass is rotten, once it’s gone (or substantially diminished—with fewer outlets, less reporting, or more concentrated in certain areas) it’s not there to feed on.

If you only blog on national politics you may not see this problem for a long time, if ever. There are still thousands of media organizations reporting on the latest utterings of Obama and Clinton. The press planes are still full and sometimes even bloggers are joining them, blurring the lines between blogging and reporting. The problem comes in with reporting on events closer to home. I can give you an example from my own experience. I blog on crime in Minneapolis. When the Pioneer Press decided for economic reasons that it was going to stay on its side of the river, that meant that we could only look to the Star Tribune as a daily source of crime info. (Let’s leave the community mags, neighborhood newspapers and TV out of it for the moment.) As we all know, the Star Tribune is not thriving. If it decides that it needs only one reporter to cover crime, instead of 2, a city reporter and courts reporter, suddenly, I’ve got a lot less to comment on. Even in the current environment, The Minneapolis Police Department isn’t letting the grass grow under its feet. They decided in their wisdom awhile back to beef up their PR department. For a fee, you can even get the daily police blotter emailed to you. If less “reporting” is going on, it’s going to be more likely that unadulterated spin makes it into the “news.” If you trust the cops to give you the crime news, that may be just fine. If you don’t, like a number of the commenters on my blog don’t, or consider yourself a healthy skeptic, that’s bad news. Not only will you not know what’s going on, you won’t even know what questions to ask.

As for bloggers stepping into the vacuum of local reporting, that is already happening with regard to political reporting. We’ve had some great blogger reporting at True North on recent developments regarding party endorsements and town hall meetings. It doesn’t get more local that that. The problem is keeping up a consistent level of effort, among the “Army of Davids” to quote Glenn Reynolds, a group of motivated and talented part-timers whose reward, with a few exceptions, is not going to be economic.

Recently, there has been some concentration of news sources from the Minnesota state Capitol. Back in the day, I remember visiting the capitol press corps down in the basement of the capitol, on many occasions, trailing David as he visited with the reporters. It was hardly a glamour spot—more like a decrepit dorm at a third rate college. Reporters were jammed together like freshmen in triples and quad rooms but the place was a hub of activity. Today, the print media has slashed its capitol reporting staffs. Filling this vacuum will be Dolan Media’s new initiative, which will headed by the former Politics in Minnesota owner Sarah Janacek. Dolan started out in this area with the venerable old bi-weekly St. Paul Legal Ledger. The Ledger was a cash cow, given its status as the legal gazette for official notices. It always employed a small staff of reporters to note goings on at the capitol and it also took in a few op eds from legislators, ex-legislators and local policy wonks. It also ran a few syndicated national columns. They even had a feature that reprinted posts from blogs. (I remember how surprised I was one day when none other than Eric Escola the dean of capitol reporters complimented me on something I had written on a blog that turned up there.) Now having bought out PIM and brought Sarah on board, Dolan is poised to become THE news source for the capitol, while the other medias’ fortunes continue to decline and they reallocate their scarce resources elsewhere.
It will be interesting to see what kind of editorial personality Sarah brings to the newly revamped Ledger. The predecessor, PIM, was kind of lobbyists’ news service and Dolan’s approach in other markets doesn’t seem too far from that, although with a broader outlook and with the syndication power of it’s own news service. It’s a different model of news, literally a kind of “news you can use” if you are concerned about government regulation’s affect on your business or would like a special tax break or subsidy. With the other media vacating the field, you can expect to see more quoting of the Ledger as a source of news.

What does this all mean? Heck if I know. A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes said Mark Twain. That may still be true but with high bandwidth Internet speed, a 24/7 news cycle and billions of eyeballs and thousands of blogging sites, it doesn’t negate the need to distinguish lies from the truth, rather, it increases the imperative to sort it out among more and more of us.

One size fits all

Speed Gibson has a great post today about the stakes in the current health care debate in the state legislature. If you follow our movements closely here at Our House, you probably know that last week's show focused mainly on that topic as well. Speedy's post argued that the new system that the House and Senate being foisted on state workers and all Minnesota children is similar the early HMO, with rationing, price controls and more bureaucracy.

How will they save money? By making you healthier so that you won't use so darn much healthcare! Yes, siree, the state of MN, through it's bureaucratic representatives will be deciding the best way to make YOU hit THEIR targets for YOUR health.

The primary target that seems to be in focus is weight and there is one stat you are going to be hearing a lot about. The BMI, or Body Mass Index. It came on to the scene after repeated criticism of other "target weight methods" were found to be too rigid. You can calculate what your ideal weight should be and how far you are currently from it on any number of calculators on the web. Once you calculate the BMI for your weight and height, these criteria apply:

Underweight = <18.5 weight
18.5-24.9 overweight
25-29.9" obesity

According to this, for my height, I should weight somewhere between 100 and 127 pounds. In college, I weighed about 120 pounds (closer to the high end) except for the term when I studied in Spain caught dysentery and weighed 114. My first year or so in Minnesota, I also fell to about 114 or 115 pounds, mostly because I had no car and walked everywhere (which was probably good). I even walked 8 blocks to the grocery store so I had what you could call the "eat only what you can carry home" diet. Here's the problem: I WAS SICK ALL THE TIME. Yes folks, I caught every bug that came my way. I was on antibiotics for months to the point where I developed reactions to a few of them. I WAS NOT HEALTHY. But using my BMI as an indicator, I was doing great. I understand that weight may not have been the only factor here, since I was in a new environment, with new germs, etc. There was probably new job stress. The fact is that the only two times in my life that I was supposedly at my most perfect weight, I was sick with viruses that either kept me from eating or kept me from keeping anything down.


Here's the thing--although BMI indicates a range of weight that might be healthy for a person, it isn't a perfect indicator of what's good for an individual. If you are way off it, I'm sure you have a problem one way or the other, but what if you are sort of off it? I am 5'1 but I am not what you call "petite." If you look at my wrists and ring size, they compare with someone a lot bigger than me. [Insert standard South Park joke about being "big boned" here.] From my experience, I would say that 130 is a good, healthy weight for me. It's not an easy weight for me to maintain either but I think it's a reasonable goal. According to the BMI, 130 is overweight for me.

Right now, that's a discussion I can have with my doctor. My insurance company is more worried about people substantially fatter than me. Under this new health care plan, if I worked for the state, the government would start harassing me about meeting these guidlines, which as I've said, I don't think apply very well in my case. There are other people for whom the BMI doesn't work very well--athletes (who are heavier due to muscle mass) and the elderly who don't have much muscle mass and so may actually be overweight when the chart says they are fine.

There is another whole category for whom the stats won't work. People who have other health problems that contribute to their weight, such as insulin resistance and other endocrine gland dysfunctions. These people usually need medication but from what I've seen, the medication doesn't solve the problem completely. Maintaining a healthy weight is a lifetime challenge for them. Telling them to stop eating fatty foods and exercise more and they will lose weight is an insult to these people. There is no quick fix for them and ratcheting up the pressure is likely to make them do something drastic and unhealthy. It's not like smoking. People either smoke or they don't. Some people have a hard time quitting, others not so much but you are either smoking or you are not. You can't stop eating unless you want to kill yourself.

Target statistics are what bureaucrats use when they really don't have the knowledge to help them make sophisticated decisions. That may be OK when you are talking about widgets but we are talking about the government's ability to force you to live a certain way to meet their guidelines. The feminists better change that slogan "get your laws off my body" because with the government controlling everybody's healthcare, that's going to change.