ProgressOhio

Jen Nedeau wrote the post to top all posts at Change.org, It's Time to Change Our Language, about this effort to eliminate the use of the R-word. You can read about the official event, Spread the Word to the End the Word, at the Special Olympics website.

What you need to know: It’s pretty powerful to see just how misused the r-word, aka “retarded," is – see here on Twitter: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+retard+OR+retarded

This event is a national day of awareness for America to stop and think about their use of the R-word.

Ways to participate:

Blog: A post about your experience with the “R-Word” and how you feel about it or just share the info about the 3.31 event.

Facebook: Attend the End the R-Word Day event and donate your status to end the R-Word such as:

Jill pledges to end the r-word today

• Tweet to spread the word to end the R-word, and use the #rword hashtag to show your support.
• Join the Tweetchat tomorrow at 4 – 5 PM EST. Use #rword to join!
• Follow our efforts at @EndTheWord (http://twitter.com/endtheword), where you can stay posted on the progress of our efforts to end the R-word.
• A sample tweet could be:

How often do you use the word retarded? It’s time to stop. Spread the word to end the word on 3.31 - http://www.r-word.org/. #rword”

Remember how Ohio 24th district state senator Bob Spada got some equally unacceptable terms dumped from the Ohio Constitution in 2007? This is no different. There are millions of people with intellectual disabilities who find those words as well as the r-word as offensive and cruel as any other slur. That's why I'm asking you to consider participating by taking part in one of the above actions.

Many thanks to Jen for putting so much of this effort together. Please help however you can.

The Women's Media Center is a nonprofit media advocacy organization founded by Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, and Robin Morgan to make women visible and powerful in the media. The WMC is "changing the conversation" with our Progressive Women's Voices program by making sure that there are plenty of qualified, authoritative, progressive women experts available to editors, reporters, producers, and bookers. Sadly, despite the numbers of women working in education, we rarely turn on the TV and see a woman - as I'm sure you are well aware. I would love to have a conversation with you about the PWV program, to give you a bit more info and to see if you are interested in applying.

Our first four classes are a truly stellar group, with experts in economics, foreign policy, reproductive rights, environmental issues, racial justice, voting rights, the history of feminism, immigrant communities, outsider cultures, national security, and many more areas of expertise. With our training and help, our PWV women have written Op Eds in the Washington Post and The New York Times, features for Elle and New York magazine, were quoted in USA Today, Forbes, Variety, Mother Jones, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Salon, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, on the Associated Press and Reuters wires, appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, CBS Nightly News, Fox News, ABC News, CNBC, The Tyra Banks Show, PBS's "To The Contrary," Bill Moyers, on numerous NPR shows, and in hundreds of other significant media outlets. Full info is available on our program page:

http://womensmediacenter.com/progressive_womens_voices_program.html

If you're like me, you've heard and read enough from the pundits and politicians about the stimulus.  Look, when a country is where we are economically, no solution is going to be one that everyone can support because we know we don't all agree on solutions and we know we don't know what will happen - no matter who tells you otherwise.

Today, starting at 12noon, you can participate in a discussion with people like yourself and others about the stimulus.  Here's what you need to know:

What it is:

You're invited to participate in 24 Hours of Stimulus - an online bipartisan citizen discussion on the Economic Stimulus and Recovery bill, hosted by Political Voices of Women on Twitter, starting at 12n EST, Monday, February 9th. hashtags: #24stimulus and #pvow,

This schedules the tweetchat between the start of the Monday Senate session and the currently anticipated time of the stimulus vote.

It also gives everyone a chance to pop in and have their say at a time that's most convenient for them.

How to do it:

Follow the conversation: Go to summize.com or search.twitter.com and search on the #24stimulus or #pvow hashtags.  That will bring up the tweets that have been written as part of the discussion.

Participate: If you have a Twitter handle, just jump in with a comment or thought or reaction or question and be sure to add the #24stimulus hashtag to your tweet.

If you don't have a Twitter handle, get one - it's free and easy to set up at twitter.com.

I'm told that if you go to Tweetchat.com, you can enter the room with either hashtag and follow the tweets and contribute to the discussion there.

Looking forward to it.

Gov. Ted Strickland said Tuesday afternoon that Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher is the "best qualified" Democrat among those considering a run for U.S. Senate in 2010.

Brunner won't publicly discuss her thinking just yet and didn't respond to a call Monday. She is seeking the support of her close friend and political mentor, Sen. Sherrod Brown. Their relationship makes the whole scenario more delicious because Brown is also a close friend of Strickland's. Strickland said he had talked only briefly to Brown about the upcoming Senate opening.

The New Organizing Institute wants to help progressives be organizers, or better ones than they already may be.  And NOI will be in Ohio in less than a week - check it out. (Although one of the deadlines has passed and the other is approaching, I've got the number and e-mail of the person to contact if you're interested in attending - just e-mail me or leave a comment and I'll e-mail you.)

Here's more:

The New Organizing Institute is a unique grassroots program that trains young, technology-enabled political organizers to work for progressive campaigns and organizations. The Institute was created by experienced online organizers to fill an urgent need in progressive politics.

The mission of the NOI is:

   To train and support a new generation of technology-enabled campaigners.
  To consolidate and disseminate knowledge gained in the field of political technology and online organizing.
  To conduct new research and post-campaign investigations that employ results-focused, systems thinking to make progressive campaigns and organizations more efficient.

We are seeking to fill an urgent need among progressive campaigns and organizations. Right now, they're hitting a brick wall when trying to fill new online organizer or Internet director positions. A network of talented, sophisticated and experienced operatives simply does not exist in the field of online organizing the way it does in the established areas of field organizing, fundraising or campaign management.

The organization has done trainings in Michigan, DC, Oregon, and Colorado.  Now, the group is comint to Ohio, and subsequently, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, among other locales they hope to visit.  Here's the lowdown from the original announcement:

Just in case people can't come up with enough reasons on their own why John McCain is not the choice for women, ABC News reports on how one Texas oilman, Clayton Williams, who is a McCain supporter slipped up:

ABC's Rick Klein reports: Sen. John McCain on Friday abruptly cancelled a Monday fundraiser that had been scheduled at the home of a Texas oilman, after ABC News contacted the campaign inquiring about a verbal blunder the Texan made during an unsuccessful 1990 campaign for governor. Clayton Williams stirred controversy during his 1990 campaign for governor of Texas with a botched attempt at humor in which he compared rape to weather. Within earshot of a reporter, Williams said: “As long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

McCain's campaign is on the record for nixing the event due to those comments:

McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers said the Monday event was being cancelled, given the offensive comments. He said he could not yet say what McCain would do with donations brought into the campaign by Williams. "These were obviously incredibly offensive remarks that the campaign was unaware of at the time this event was scheduled," Rogers said. He added that Williams apologized for the comments back in 1990, but he said that does not excuse them.

But, there's one more thing, from the ABC item:

Williams told the Midland Reporter-Telegram recently that he had already raised more than $300,000 for McCain and the fundraiser to be held at his home in Midland. Williams said that he needed to help McCain raise money to stop an Obama campaign that would enact “socialist” policies if elected to office.

Really now? Tracy Russo of Rural Votes has this suggestion:

It’s not enough that Senator McCain cancels an event because the media got wind of it. It’s not enough. Senator McCain should publicly reject and denounce this man. He should donate every single dirty dollar that this man has raised for him - all $300,000 - to an organization working to combat rape in our society - like RAINN or RVA. And he should apologize immediately and completely to his female supporters for daring to entertain the thought of keeping company with this despicable, disgusting individual. Rape isn’t something that’s funny, it’s tragic. It’s a blight on all of society. Women should be able to trust Senator McCain to recognize that, and to do the right thing.

I completely agree. Cross-posted at Writes Like She Talks and The Moderate Voice.

Multiple Ohio blogs have posted entries in a foreign language today:

• American Pink Collar (French)
• Bad American (Polish)
• bitter-girl :: musings (German)
• Blogesque (Korean)
• Blue Bexley (Dutch)
• Blue Ohioan (Korean)
• Bring Ohio Home (Czech)
• Bring Ohio Home (German)
• Buckeye State Blog (Italian)
• Glass City Jungle (Hungarian)
• Gloria Ferris (Spanish)
• Ohio Daily Blog (Croatian)
• Pho's Akron Pages (Vietnamese)
• Plunderbund (Redneck)
• Rowsey Blog (Spanish)
• The Chief Source (Spanish) at The Point
• The Daily Bellwether (French)
• Tim Ferris (French)
• Writes Like She Talks (Portuguese)

And it's been noted that maybe, to some people, surfing from blog to blog and being unable to understand most of the posts (until you go here for the translation of each one) proves the point that Ohio and maybe even the United States should standardize, through legislation, the language most of us use and which is already being used by the state and federal goverment: English.

Why would we want our governments to do that?

Because everything we try to read otherwise is pretty incomprehensible and that's exactly what we want to avoid. It's torture to stare at something and not have any idea whatsoever as to what it says, what it argues, what it tells you to do, what it tells you not to do.

Sounds logical, right?

Wrong.

Why? Why is that logic wrong?

Because those of us reading this blog and those blog posts are primarily native English speakers. Of course blog posts in Polish, German, Croatian, Korean and so on look like gobbledyguck to us.

So what's the point of this little demonstration?

To non-native English speakers, blogs - and so many other forms of communication that native English speakers take for granted - look like nonsense. How does it feel, going to the most familiar places you know on the Internet to gather information about the day, about issues and policy that matter, about breaking news and urgent messages, and find that the shoe is on the other foot: you can't understand a word, you can't glean even the essense of what's being communicated?

What kind of humans would legislate torturing literally hundreds of thousands of fellow Ohioans that way?

Here's a list of the Ohio state senators on the State and Local Government and Veteran Affairs Committee, which appears to be the one that has HB 477 right now. Please contact them and let them know how you feel about HB 477.

Gary Cates (R)
Chair

Teresa Fedor (D)
Ranking Minority Member

Democrats:

John Boccier

Tom Roberts

Republicans: 

John Carey

Robert Schuler  

Bill Seitz  

Mark Wagoner  

I was so four-letter word nervous that I had to sit on my hands!! See where writing letters to the editor, op-eds AND BLOGGING can get you!? Thanks to everyone who has encouraged me along the way, and that includes several folks at Progress Ohio - not the least of which are Dave Harding and Brian Rothenberg who have been very supportive (and toughened me up!).

I've written about The White House Project for over a year now. It's a group that:

aims to advance women’s leadership in all communities and sectors, up to the U.S. presidency. By filling the leadership pipeline with a richly diverse, critical mass of women, we make American institutions, businesses and government truly representative. Through multi-platform programs, The White House Project creates a culture where America’s most valuable untapped resource—women—can succeed in all realms.

And now its signature training program, Go Run, is coming to Ohio.

What Go Run is:

Go Run is a weekend long training dedicated to equipping you, the future candidate, with the skills to run and win. The training aims to demystify the political process and inspire a richly diverse group of women in to the leadership pipeline. Go Run provides the nuts and bolts of running for political office by focusing on areas like communications, fundraising, and campaigning - skills you can use in your work and in your community up to the day you decide to run!

When: The weekend of June 6-8, 2008

Where: The Riffe Center and the Hyatt in Columbus

Link to application is here.

Have questions? E-mail me, leave a comment or contact Faith Winter at fwinter@thewhitehouseproject.org or call 303-871-6779.

But most importantly, if you're a woman, think about applying yourself, or asking or convincing other women to apply.

Enormous props to the group of Ohio women and White House Project folks whom I've gotten to know over the last few months in the effort to get this training here.

No less than Ellen Goodman and the time, money and effort of the Shorenstein Fellowships at Harvard have examined the "new gender gap in news media and the Internet." Why? Because people often ask about why there seem to be more male political bloggers than female.

Other bloggers, including well-known female political bloggers like Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, don't see the disparity:

There's plenty of sexism in the blogosphere, don't get me wrong, with a strong dose coming from the right wing and an even stronger dose coming from the "why don't you link to me" crowd on the left. But this "there are no women in the blogosphere" whinge is deeply sexist and insulting to those of us with two X chromosomes who work all day at this and what we've managed to achieve. And none of these articles have included the perspective of any of the women listed above, or those of other successful female bloggers like Digby, Pandagon, TalkLeft or Taylor Marsh.

Today, Catherine Morgan of Informed Voter posted a list of more than 100 women political bloggers and blogs. It's completely nonpartisan (I'm there, Lisa Renee's Liberal Common Sense is there, and so is Mary Katherine Ham of Townhall and Michelle Malkin) and includes many new to me. Big kudos to Morgan for putting this list together. I don't think I've ever seen one like it before.

Dipping deeper into the sea of blogs? This list is another good place to test out the temperature.

Cross-posted at Wide Open and Writes Like She Talks.

 For Immediate Release
August 23, 2007
Contact:  Councilman Zachary Reed
216-410-5734 or gregoryd100@hotmail.com


TAX REFERENDUM GROUP ANNOUNCES DRIVE-THRU PETITION
SIGNING
LAST CHANCE TO SIGN PETITIONS

Your last chance to put the sales tax issue on the
ballot by signing a petition will be Saturday, August
25, 2007 from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm.

Come join the putitontheballot.com volunteers at the
following drive-thru locations:

•       Main Cleveland Post Office, 2400 Orange Avenue,
Cleveland, 44101

•       Lakewood Post Office, 1475 Warren Road, Lakewood
44107

•       Cleveland Heights Post Office, 3 Severance Circle,
Cleveland Heights 44118

•       Cuyahoga County Administration Building, 1219
Ontario Street, Cleveland 44113

On July 26, a .25% sales tax increase was passed for
Cuyahoga County. The tax goes into effect October 1st
(for 20 years) unless 46,000 signatures of registered
Cuyahoga County voters are submitted by 4:30 pm
Saturday, August 25, 2007.

If the citizens of Cuyahoga County want to vote on
this issue they must turn out and sign the petition.

Tim and Gloria Ferris
Put It On The Ballot Team

Jill Miller Zimon: Ok. Casinos.

Ted Strickland: Do you want me to go first, Bryan?

Bryan Flannery: I can go, if you want.

Tim Russo: Nobody wants to touch that one!

Ted Strickland: It is a question that I get frequently. I don’t believe that casino gambling represents the future economic… Ohio’s economic future. I approach this matter, not from a moralistic point of view. You know some people see gambling as sinful or not sinful. I am fairly libertarian in the way adults can choose to spend their recreational dollars, but I am also aware of the detrimental effects that casino gambling brings to a community or to a state. So I am not a candidate for Governor who is enthusiastic about casino gambling.

Tim Russo: Would you support legalized casino gambling in this state in any way?

Ted Strickland: I would not be an advocate for it. If it appeared on the ballot and the people voted for it, I wouldn’t have the capacity to veto that. So I believe that’s the only way that casino gambling could become a reality in Ohio, if I were Governor, for the people to say we want it through an initiative.

Gov. Strickland's current moves are completely and totally consistent with that stance. And anyone who wants to spin the current moves, will do so. But those of us who were there, who care about and respect the record of what was said at the debate and have followed what Gov. Strickland has done, and not done, on this issue, know:

Gov. Strickland made a politically savvy and internally consistent statement about his feelings on the issue of gambling. That statement represents the major league cognitive dissonance that arises from being the leader of a state whose people may want something different than what the leader wants. And the leader can take this way out, for those who choose to see it that way - him included - if he wants.

But he's never not defined that way out before.

This is the psychology of Ted Strickland's campaign, of his win and of his governorship. And in today's climate, with the way most people feel torn about issues - social, economic, personal, legal, environmental - this psychology plays to each of us. Forget how the MSM repeats over and over that people are more polarized than ever. That's wrong. People who do PR and marketing and construct messages - whether political or otherwise - want to force us to label, they want us to think we're looking at a polarized population. And, I'll admit, quickly clinging to a label that seems to make sense is quick and easy.

But it's not enough. Labels rarely are. We are in the age of nuance, no matter how deep you have to look to find it (that just means people have been intimidated into burying it, ask any moderate anything - as in, Republican or Muslim or Jew for that matter - about that) and this governor knows that. (It's also why Ken Blackwell lost miserably.) And it's why his approval ratings are so high.

Wisely, Ted Strickland and those around him have aligned his beliefs and abilities with voters' sentiments. And they've done a damn good job. Spinners can spin all they want, but believe me now and hear me later: it doesn't make a bit of difference to many voters in Ohio because for every issue about which they feel conflicted, someone - either Strickland or someone on his staff - has read that conflict and is putting it into the equation that results in how Strickland responds.

So far - that formula has responded with the flexibility necessary to keep Ohioans happy. What it really needs to do, at least within the next 9-18 months, is show tangible results in our economy and education system if it wants to 1) help elect a Democratic president and 2) stick around beyond one term.

Cross-posted at Writes Like She Talks.

The Iran divestiture bill, sponsored by state Reps. Josh Mandel, R-Lyndhurst and Shannon Jones, R-Springboro, has received intense scrutiny in recent weeks following revelations that many of the most prominent international companies that employ thousands of Ohioans were on a list of firms marked as having financial ties to terrorist-supporting states like Iran.

Mandel said the bill has been narrowed to requiring the pension funds to divest from specific energy sector industries such as gas, oil, and mining, but broadened to now include the Sudan.

I must insert here that, the bolding of "revelation" is mine. As a writer, I know that revelation has an extremely specific meaning and implication for the one using it: he or she is most definitely hoping that the reader will make a very specific inference: didn't know it before, wasn't told before, is now being disclosed, when, before, it hadn't been.

Let's continue:

Mandel said the number of international companies was whittled from more than 170 to 19 currently conducting business in Iran.

He said he did not know how many companies doing business with the Sudan would be on the list, but those firms are not limited to the energy sector.

Read the news story here (as opposed to the splog accounts) from the Cleveland Jewish News.

A few points that elected officials who favor school choice never seem to address in these crowd-drawing, media-ready, splog-perfect occasions that highlight, legitimately, the successes in charter school experimentation:

1. There's a name for it, for what ALL charters need to do and should be, but aren't and are therefore the ire of Ohio taxpayers. But neither the news report nor the splogs indicate that this name was uttered, urged or emphasized by State Rep. Josh Mandel or House Speaker Jon Husted.

Can you spell a-c-c-o-u-n-t-a-b-i-l-i-t-y?

Maybe they did mention it - maybe they didn't. I wasn't there and I couldn't find any other news reports of the rally beside the CJN's and this one in the Plain Dealer. But they should be making sure that they do mention it and that that mention makes it into news reports. Because otherwise, they are being disingenuous as to how Mom and Dad's school choice money is actually being spent, and planned on being spent by the Ohio legislature to which they were elected.

2. The CJN writes this:

Mandel echoed Husted’s sentiments and explained that he believes in school choice because “education is a key component to bringing back the Cleveland area, Northeast Ohio, and Ohio as a state.” 

  He added that during his campaigning days, he heard from parents afraid to send their children to schools such as Glenville. “It rings loud that the decision should be in the hands of Mom and Dad, not a politician or bureaucrat,” he told the cheering crowd.

The authorization for Title V abstinence-education grants expires at the end of June, and those on both sides of the sex-education debate agree that the $50 million-a-year mandatory-spending program — which draws an additional $37.5 million match from the states — stands little chance of winning an extension from a Democratic-controlled Congress.

Not necessarily a smoking gun, but it is amazing how little I can find about this failure of our state to address an issue that's been known to be up and coming for more than a decade.  Again cross-posted from WLST, the GAO report, which you can read for yourself here, says it all, in graphics and words. 

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.