What is President Obama thinking? The administration's recently announced
School Turnaround Grants
require school districts to take at least one of three drastic steps: firing the principal and at least half the staff of a troubled school; reopening it as a charter school; or closing the school altogether and transferring students to better schools in the district.
This get-tough plan will damage and isolate schools that need federal support, not punishment. Indeed, the President's approach lacks any hint of the important systemic change concepts he politically espouses, like vision, clarity, leadership, and collaboration.
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"As they try to reclaim the ethical high ground during a difficult stretch, House Democratic leaders are considering a dramatic move: declaring a party-wide ban on earmarks this year," the Capitol Hill newspaper
Roll Call reported on Monday.
The idea, floated by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a leadership huddle Tuesday, is for House Democrats to outflank their Republican counterparts, who have mulled and rejected such a moratorium in recent years.
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In a direct challenge to Democratic leadership, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) introduced an amendment on Thursday night that would prohibit Congress from using reconciliation to make changes to Medicare.
Framed as an effort to protect the sanctity of entitlement programs, McCain's measure would deprive Democrats of a stream of revenue for their health care bill. The party has targeted hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts and savings to the Medicare program that it would turn around and use to pay for other reforms.
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Politics are paralyzed. The minority party is motivated by a desire to have the President of the United States fail, while the squishy majority is in disarray, drawing into question its capacity to govern. Congressional leadership of both parties is inept and ineffective. The result is drift and inertia, a pathetic situation, befitting a banana republic.
Divided government need not mean gridlock. Political history from 1952-76 demonstrates that despite partisan differences and jockeying for favor, "the system worked."
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I have been in the West Bank for the past two weeks meeting with several members of the Palestinian leadership about the peace process, Palestinian state-building, and the role of the United States in moving both peace and independence forward. My conversations with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, PM Salam Fayyad, Ahmad Qurei, and Mohammad Dahlan were very illuminating.
President Abbas is taking negotiation setbacks in stride. Upon asking the president, "How are you?" he dryly replied: "Not very, very, very bad - just very bad."
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The
article in Advertising Age this week reliving some of the points that were made at the IAB Leadership conference in Carlsbad, CA, about erosion in the middle of the online advertising value chain ushers to mind the old maxim, "Advertising is sold, not bought." We'll get to that in a minute.
For now, if you believe in the virtues of audience-based media
over the virtues of place-based media, then you believe that publishers probably don't matter anymore - or matter less - to the outcome of media planning decisions because media value today, to you, is in the data, not the position. You are among many, therefore, that may have read the Ad Age piece and thought, "So what" when it came to publishers.
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If the Democrats want to win in the upcoming November elections, they need to do much more about restoring our manufacturing base and the good long term jobs the sector has always provided. That requires political leadership by President Obama and bold legislation managed by you through Congress. It's time to talk now to leaders who have new ideas like Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania (D), former Sloan Foundation President Ralph Gomory, and Warren Buffett who first offered a Plan for balanced U.S international trade that only you can bring to reality this year!
Time is running short, so I'll describe the bold Plan here to start the necessary debate on legislative action. First, where do we stand on other job creation proposals? On Dec. 3, there was a White House "Jobs Summit" to hear ideas for creating jobs to replace the 8.5 million jobs lost during the recession. But few were submitted for U.S. manufacturing and its secure long-term jobs. Instead, most proposals called for heavy deficit spending for extended unemployment compensation, repair of the infrastructure, tax credits for hiring, and aid to state governments to retain public service workers -- all worthy causes, but none answered the need for good revenue-producing, long-term jobs.
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As Congress gets set to re-consider legislation that would cut off funding for terrorism trials in federal civilian courts, key members of the Obama administration have penned a letter to House leadership in both parties, raising constitutional concerns about the move.
Writing to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Attorney General Eric Holder declared that the "exercise of prosecutorial discretion has always been and should remain an Executive branch function."
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The
IAB Annual Meeting and Leadership Conference just ended in Carlsbad, California, is now easily the most important media trade event in the country today. The American Association of Advertising Agencies's
"Transformation 2010? conference will take place next week in San Francisco and many of the issues that dominated the agenda this week in Carlsbad will re-appear on the 4A's agenda in front of important agency principals and buyers. But Interactive owns the issues, and this is the good news and bad news confronting the industry today.
Randall Rothenberg, IAB CEO, understands both aspects. He was ebullient through the event, clearly charged-up by the size of the crowds, the content-rich agenda and warm social atmosphere, sensing that Interactive is on the cusp. But his opening remarks were devoted to leadership knowing that the Interactive industry must pull together to meet a broad set of marketer requirements, inclusive of the core need to support brand advertising, which, as Randall explained, is not a fantasy object (or objective). Brands are real, as real as the people that define them through their loyalty.
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ABC News has a story up today by Devin Dwyer about how Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is facing "tough questions" about "her leadership." But the real magical feature of the piece is that ABC decided to take the opportunity to indulge in a little gay-baiting by referring to Napolitano in their headline as "Big Sis." Why? There's no substantive reason. They just want to smirk about Napolitano's sexual back story which, I guess to their minds, has some important bearing on her ability to carry out the duties of her office.
It's not just the headline, here's Dwyer's second paragraph:
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