Compare a 1999 view with a fall, 2006 scene of Madison’s Overture Center:
1999
2006
Category: Culture
Meet The New Boss, Same as the Old Boss….
KAI RYSSDAL: There’ll be an all-star cast tomorrow night at a Democratic fundraiser outside Washington. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and chairmen of the ten most powerful committees in the House of Representatives are scheduled to headline the event. And even though the presidential election’s still 18 months away, corporate America is already placing its bets with well-timed donations. Commentator Jeff Birnbaum points out it’s the same story as before…just a different cast of characters.
JEFF BIRNBAUM: The asking price for access to Nancy Pelosi and all her colleagues is $28,500 a couple. That’s one of the steepest prices ever charged since new campaign finance limits were imposed five years ago.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Remember Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean railing against Republicans last year for selling access to their chairmen? The “intimate briefings” they gave to big donors was part of what Democrats derided as the GOP’s “culture of corruption.” If the Democrats ever took charge, they promised, all that would change.
Well, it hasn’t changed. Actually, it’s gotten worse. Democratic campaign committees are systematically showcasing a whole series of Democratic chairmen at fundraising receptions as a way to lure lobbyists’ money. That’s right, lobbyists are being asked to donate to the lawmakers who are in charge of the legislation that their clients care most about.
Airlines Learn to Fly on a Wing and an Apology
Airlines are getting serious about saying they’re sorry.
After a spate of nightmarish service disruptions, American Airlines, JetBlue Airways and others are sending out more apologies, hoping to head off customer complaints and quell talk of new consumer-protection regulations from Congress.
But no airline accepts blame quite like Southwest Airlines, which employs Fred Taylor Jr. in a job that could be called chief apology officer.
His formal title is senior manager of proactive customer communications. But Mr. Taylor — 37, rail thin and mildly compulsive, by his own admission — spends his 12-hour work days finding out how Southwest disappointed its customers and then firing off homespun letters of apology.
Fascinating look at Southwest Airlines’ culture. I hope they fly into Madison soon.
2 States Opt out of Real Id; Where’s Wisconsin?
Idaho opted out of Real ID today, becoming the second state to say
“no thanks,” along with Maine. And there are a lot of other states
moving in the same direction (we have a map that tracks them online
at http://www.realnightmare.org/news/105/).
Senator’s Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl supported the National ID (Real ID) legislation. Related: Nathan Cochrane on becoming an unperson. Bruce Schneier has more.
Big Profits in Small Newspapers
If there’s any good news about the businesses of newspapering these days, it can be found at the industry’s littlest papers, which are doing well even as their bigger brothers founder.
Lee Enterprises, based in Davenport, Iowa, for example, owns 56 daily papers and more than 300 small weeklies and other publications. Three of its papers have a circulation of more than 100,000 — including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch — but the rest of its dailies are much smaller, averaging about 26,000 each.
Over the past five years, the circulation gains at Lee papers have outpaced the industry average; some of the gains came from acquisitions, but much came from the growth of the group’s existing papers. Over the past two decades, the company’s stock price has likewise gone in the opposite direction of large-newspaper stock, climbing steadily from less than $10 a share in 1988 to more than $30 a share today.
“We’re largely in markets . . . that have pretty good local economies, a strong sense of place and strong newspaper readership,” said Mary E. Junck, Lee’s chairman and chief executive. Another advantage: “Many of our markets are pretty homogenous and tightknit,” she said, making it easier to pin down and target readership.
Chinese Dissident’s Wife to Sue Yahoo
Speaking with VOA’s Mandarin Service Wednesday after arriving in Washington, Yu Ling said Chinese police arrested her husband, Wang Xiaoning, partly because Yahoo’s Hong Kong office gave Chinese authorities information about his e-mail accounts.
Yu Ling said she has come to the United States to sue the company for damages and to demand an apology.
Last year, Yahoo provided the Chinese with information about Shi Tao, a journalist who emailed to Western news outlets details of China’s plans to handle the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square.
We Can’t Tell You, It’s a Secret”
At GITA, Dr. Bill Gail of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth team addressed a question as to working with highly sensititve imagery of perhaps a national security concern and whether they might be asked to black out areas on Virtual Earth. Google had been asked to do this previously for certain areas and Microsoft wanted to preempt such situations. Gail said that Microsoft has sat down with various government agencies to ask them about these potential conflict areas that they thought might be blacked out if asked to do so. Their answer was, “it’s a secret, we can’t tell you.”
Wonderful Snow Art
Garlic Does Not Lower Cholesterol in Study
Garlic may be good for a lot of things — spicing up your diet, for sure — but it seems to be no good at all at lowering your cholesterol.
After conducting one of the most elaborate studies yet on garlic’s effect on cardiovascular health, scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine said Monday that they could find no benefit in terms of reduced levels of LDL cholesterol, the “bad” form linked to heart disease.
Christopher Gardner, a Stanford assistant research professor and lead author of the six-month study, said he was disappointed by the results, describing himself as a garlic lover whose office is an hour’s drive from Gilroy, the generally acknowledged “garlic capital of the world.”
“We really thought this was going to work,” he said. “I was going to get the key to the city of Gilroy. I was going to get ‘Dr. Garlic’ license plates.”
Another balloon pops. Perhaps the garlic farmers will need a subsidy of some sort to recover?
Johnny Cash
I find it interesting the frequency with which the alt music radio stations around the country play Johnny Cash. Locally, our excellent wsum spins him up now and then, including a tune from his At San Quentin live recording.