Bret Thompson's Blog

Recruiter Suicides - Another Hidden Cost of War

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:49:23 EST

Seventeen armed forces recruiters, five in the Houston battalion alone, have committed suicide since 2001. The job of recruiter is not typically a voluntary one and meeting the recruitment goals can be very stressful, particularly during an unpopular war. A colleague of one of the deceased men said,

[W]e felt like we were begging them.... We often sat in the recruiting station, sometimes really late, and talked about how we'd rather be in Iraq than recruiting.

Sen. John Cornyn has called for an investigation into the matter.

Ohioan to Celebrate Her 105th Birthday at Inauguration

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:22:49 EST

Ella Mae Johnson, a 104 year old from Cleveland, will be making the trip to DC to see Barack Obama sworn in as President.

Teddy Roosevelt was President when Mrs. Johnson was born. In 1924 she received a masters from what is now Case Western.

Sherrod Brown invited Mrs. Johnson and had this to say:

"It is fitting that she should mark her 105th birthday this January by witnessing the swearing in of our nation's first African-American president. I am honored to be part of her journey and humbled by her legacy."

Krugman Praises Strickland, Makes the Case for Economic Recovery

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:41:37 EST

ProgressOhio hosted a call today to discuss the need for an economic stimulus program focused on working families and state governments.

Paul Krugman's most recent column hits on similar points and adds greatly to the conversation. First he identifies the issue:

Think about it: is America — not state governments, but the nation as a whole — less able to afford help to troubled teens, medical care for families, or repairs to decaying roads and bridges than it was one or two years ago? Of course not. Our capacity hasn’t been diminished; our workers haven’t lost their skills; our technological know-how is intact. Why can’t we keep doing good things?
It’s true that the economy is currently shrinking. But that’s the result of a slump in private spending. It makes no sense to add to the problem by cutting public spending, too.

Krugman then goes on to cite Gov. Strickland's answer to the problem.

What can be done? Ted Strickland, the governor of Ohio, is pushing for federal aid to the states on three fronts: help for the neediest, in the form of funding for food stamps and Medicaid; federal funding of state- and local-level infrastructure projects; and federal aid to education.
That sounds right — and if the numbers Mr. Strickland proposes are huge, so is the crisis.

Please Don't Divorce Us

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 10:15:02 EST

Our California counterpart, the Courage Campaign, has a really moving slideshow of families that will be 'divorced' because of Prop 8.

OSU Prof. Develops Software to Track People via CCTV

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 20:19:21 EST

James W. Davis, an assistant professor at Ohio State, has developed software that tracks people moving from camera to camera across a closed circuit television network.

While this software clearly has non-Big Brother applications, it surely won't please privacy advocates, especially in the UK where such camera networks are prevalent.

Ouch! Ohio Likely to Lose Two Congressional Seats

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:52:12 EST

According to Election Data Services, if reapportionment was to happen right now Ohio would lose one seat in the US House, and be 20,000 people away from losing another. By 2010, when the Census is held, EDS predicts population shifts will take that seat as well, leaving Ohio with only 16 Representatives.

Pennsylvania and Michigan are among the 8 other states projected to lose seats in 2012 when the changes would take place. Texas and Arizona are big winners, looking to pick up 4 and 2 seats, respectively.

NRA Calling the Shots at the Statehouse

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:33:31 EST

Ohio legislators discovered yet another thing you can only take from the NRA's cold, dead hands- civilian administration of rabies shots.

The Dispatch provides an insider-y look at how an NRA lobbyist stopped two bills destined to pass without even stepping foot in Ohio.

But when Republican senators got word that the NRA opposed the fee, they took the unusual step of reconsidering the bill, giving them the chance to strip out the fee from the measure before passing it again in the post-midnight session. The House, which already had wrapped up its business, delayed adjourning for the year so its members could concur with the NRA-backed maneuver.

The Problem with EFCA

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 19:59:54 EST

Ezra Klein has an interesting take on winning the the Employee Free Choice Act fight: instead of educating the public about why workers need a new way to organize, the debate is bogged down in the details of the proposed EFCA legislation.

He cites the following from the AFL-CIO as a good example on how to lead the EFCA charge.

Ninety-two percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80 percent require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions; and 78 percent require that supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.
Seventy-five percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, often based on mass psychology and distorting the law. Half of employers threaten to shut down partially or totally if employees join together in a union.
In 25 percent of organizing campaigns, private-sector employers illegally fire workers because they want to form a union.
Even after workers successfully form a union, in one-third of the instances, employers do not negotiate a contract.

Educate the public about these problems, then present EFCA as the solution.

Year in Photos

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:35:53 EST

The Boston Globe has a gorgeous round-up of the photos that defined 2008 online.

Part 1 and part 2 are available now and part three will be up tomorrow.

U.S. soldiers search for weapons on an Afghan man, who works for a private security firm escorting truck convoys, after they found illegal weapons in his vehicle, in a village near Kandahar, Afghanistan in this April 27, 2008 photo. Forty countries are now contributing to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) which has around 47,000 troops. the United States also contributing some 14,000 troops serving in a separate force.

ProgressOhio's Complaint Husted Residency Revived

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:40:35 EST

Outgoing Ohio House Speaker John Husted (R-Columbus) is facing renewed controversy over his illegal living arrangements.

Husted will appear Jan. 7th before the Montgomery County Board of Elections to answer allegations that he does not live in Kettering, where he is registered to vote and represents in Ohio's legislature.

ProgressOhio's original complaint is available online.

The Husteds have already been forced by Franklin County Auditor Joe Testa, a Republican, to pay back taxes owed after it was discovered they were taking an illegal tax exemption, relating to the housing shell game they've been playing.

ProgressOhio's previous coverage of the story is available here and here.

De-Desertification: New, Amazing Product?

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 09:18:47 EST

A new product that helps trees take root in the desert is garnering some attention in environmental circles.

The Waterboxx is a plastic device which surrounds a sapling. It traps moisture and then parcels it out to the tree over time. The inventor claims a 90% success rate using the Waterboxx to grow trees in the Sahara during the summer and recently took home a 10,000 EU prize.

I would caution against taking his claim at the end of the article literally, as 2 billion hectares of desert would mean reforesting every inch of an area twice the size of the US.

Reminder: Wealthiest 400 People in Country Pay 18.2% in Income Tax

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:41:29 EST

See here and here.

Sign of the Times (and the Press and the Daily News)

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:40:19 EST

Home delivery is going to be cut to three days a week at both of Detroit's newspapers.

While there will be new content on the website and print editions available at news stands, only the Thursday, Friday and Sunday papers will be included in a subscription.

The Detroit Free Press's Sunday edition has the 6th largest circulation of any paper in the country.

Will this trend hit Ohio? Benjamin Marrison, editor of the Columbus Dispatch, ~~tackled~~ evaded this very topic in his Sunday column, deferring for 11 paragraphs to a 55 year old insurance company advertisement. Guess, we'll wait and see.

Harvard Prof : "Very lucky if we reach the bottom in 2009"

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 11:05:09 EST

This quote-heavy, doom-laden article in Bloomberg aggregates a lot of expert opinions to form a brief overview on where our economy is at, where it is headed and what the damages could be.

Here are a half-dozen highlights, all direct quotes from different financial heavyweights:

the economy "suffered a cardiac arrest"
“There’s no more Wall Street”
"The financial markets have frozen up entirely"
"[S]ince Lehman, everybody has been bailed out, everybody has been saved or merged out of existence with taxpayer help"
“You could almost hear the soundtrack of screeching violins during televised financial news, and this time it was your assets that were going down the drain,”
“We’re facing a once-in-a-century problem”

Diebold Strikes Again: Votes Lost in Montgomery Co.

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 09:34:12 EST

Jennifer Brunner's audit hits pay-dirt, revealing that Diebold's machines failed to count all of the votes cast in last month's election.

Only five lost votes have so far been discovered, but I ask you, when was the last time your ATM accidently gave you five extra 20s?

Montgomery County officials discovered that although the five votes were recorded to a memory card inside the voting machine, the votes weren't counted by the tabulation software when the memory card was uploaded to the tabulation server. Premier's Global Election Management System (or GEMS) is the tabulation software that counts votes from memory cards.

Democratic Counties 50% Wealthier, Better Educated

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:35:01 EST

The authors of the book The Big Sort note that in the last election those counties where Democrats performed the best are substantially wealthier and better educated than their Republican counterparts.

Lots of caveats about this, and even the authors say, "We don't pretend to understand the full meaning of how this country is dividing."

Just more than 600 counties (of more than 3,100 nationally) voted Republican more heavily in this year's presidential contest than in 2004. The average per capita yearly income in those counties was about $18,800....
By contrast, those living in the 500-plus counties that voted more heavily Democratic this year than in 2004 had average personal incomes of $28,000—nearly 50 percent higher than the communities trending Republican.
In landslide Democratic counties, 32.7 percent of the adult population had a bachelor's degree or better. In Republican counties where McCain won by 20 points or better, 20.4 percent of adults had finished college or graduate school.

More Coverage of Ohio '08 Campaign Finance

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 10:31:19 EST

The big story is that Dems running for the Statehouse more than tripled what they raised last cycle. Even so, Republicans outspent them by $2.5 million. This did not however stop the Democrats from picking up enough seats to gain a majority.

GOP State Senate outraised their Dem counterparts 8 to 1 and while the Supreme Court numbers are finalized yet, they Republican candidates probably did at least as well.

The Internets Are Upset over Obama/Bush House Slight

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:59:08 EST

The NY Times blog has a brief-ish post about Obama's team asking if he could move into the house where the President-Elect traditionally lives for five days before inauguration, slightly sooner, so his children could start school on time.

Team Bush said no, it was booked by unnamed parties and were emphatic that this is not a story.

Team Obama said ok, we understand and will make other arrangements.

And the internet erupted, spewing out over 850 comments on the original post, since yesterday afternoon.

Some portion of it must have been inspired by this Townhall.com-esque chin-scratcher that kicked things off:

For a guy who wants to stick to history and use his middle name “Hussein”, now he wants to change history and move in before his “official lease” begins? - Manas

35 pages of comments, dominated by nonsense follow.

Hundreds of people, apparently failed to have read and comprehended the 17 sentence story they are commenting on. Pulled at random, but typical, is this complaint:

As much as I support the Obamas, they should not have asked. It would be very uncomfortable for the President-elect to be living in the White House the same time as the incumbent President.

I would think it would be, which is why the phrase Blair House appears 8 different times in the article to describe the place where presidents elect stay before inauguration. Also note the pretty picture before the post even begins which has a picture of the Blair House, which looks nothing like the White House, and is captioned, "A view of Blair House, which is situated across the street from the White House."

Payday Lobby Blew $19,024,906 on Issue 5

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:54:27 EST

From COHHIO, who lead the Yes on Five fight:

The payday lending industry spent $19,024,906 in its failed attempt to guide Ohioans to vote no on Issue 5, the rate cap referendum. In contrast, the prevailing Yes on Issue 5 Committee spent $445,792. Final election campaign budgets were revealed in campaign finance reports filed today with the Secretary of State.

"The payday lending industry spent a fortune on its bid to continue charging 391 percent annual interest," said Bill Faith, executive director of COHHIO. "Especially in these tough economic times it's hard to accept that the fortune spent by the industry was made off the backs of people who struggle each day just to get by. It's clear how valuable these borrowers were to their bottom line and how far the industry would go to keep them trapped in debt."

By a margin of nearly two to one, Ohioans voted Yes on Issue 5 to preserve the 28 percent annualized interest rate cap that was at the heart of House Bill 545, the payday lending reform law passed in May. The campaign, coined a David vs. Goliath battle because of the mismatch in funding, was considered by many to be the most deceptive in recent years. It was littered with unfair and dishonest strategies used by the industry, including deceptive advertising and questionable petition signature gathering tactics.

"Against all odds, Issue 5 passed overwhelmingly," said Faith. "Our victory was the result of our strong bipartisan coalition and our grassroots advocacy efforts. We're proud of Ohio voters who saw through the deception and put an end to 13 years of unfettered predatory payday lending."

EFCA Forum Next Tuesday in Cleveland

Bret Thompson, ProgressOhio — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:43:35 EST

The North Shore AFL-CIO is hosting a meeting on what is sure to be one of the biggest legislative issues of next year, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

Among the speakers will be:

Stuart Acuff from the National AFL-CIO
Matthew Etlinger, Center for American Progress
Amy Hanauer, Policy Matters Ohio
John Ryan, from Sen. Sherrod Brown's office

This meeting is open to the public and you can RSVP online here.

WHEN: Tuesday December 16th, 2008, 1:00-3:00 p.m.

WHERE: The Gallery at Trinity Cathedral 2021 E. 22nd St. Cleveland, OH 44115

Free Parking, Enter off Prospect

The Employee Free Choice Act will allow workers to form a union through majority sign-up and card checks, and strengthen penalties for those employers who are in violation. The choice to organize should be left up to workers and workers alone. It should be their free choice.”
- Barack Obama, Senate Press Release, June 20, 2007