I’ve given now four versions of the lecture launching Change Congress. You can see them all (and more) at the Change Congress channel at blip.tv [change-congress.blip.tv]. Some have asked for the resources to remix (by which I take it they mean, improve on) the message. I’ve very happily now made those resources available here.
On that page you’ll find links to two directories, one related to the April 4 Harvard speech, and the other related to the April 11 UCSB speech. Each folder has a keynote file, a ppt file, an image for each slide, and a zip wrapping up all the images. The page will be fancied up soon enough. Everything is under a CC-BY license. Remix away.
From deep inside mid-USA, I came across a story mentioning Change Congress in The Nation.
I have been writing a free lance newspaper column appearing for six years in the very heart of the congressional district long owned, unchallenged, by F. James Sensenbrenner. Six months before the invasion of Iraq , my column, “The Madness Must End” was one of the few in any general readership newspapers in the country that warned it was a mistake. Congress genuflected, despite my best efforts – and the efforts of those of millions of others.
One of my relentless causes has been the one on which you are now focusing – stopping legalized bribery, ending corruption, and returning democracy to the people. The articles already published on this are linked by my URL. One you may particularly enjoy is “Paying for Elections – Low Cost and Up Front, or High Cost and Under the Table”.
This Thursday my latest column will be posted on “Hearts and Minds” and will appear in the newspaper. It focuses on the two U.S. Supreme Court cases that laid the legal groundwork that so afflicts government of, by, and for the people. Since I write for a local newspaper, it next examines the recent voting record of our state legislators on relevant bills that were introduced. And then it advocates passage of a reform measure now on the firing line in Wisconsin.
The passing of a unique and unheralded era in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin:
Because of your past interest in journalism, and in my free-lance newspaper column, published in the unlikely pages of the Ozaukee News-Graphic for an unprecedented run of six-plus years, I thought I’d better share this news with you:
My column will no longer appear in that newspaper. I’ve been fired by the Ozaukee News-Graphic, and my latest submission is just the latest that has been rejected for publication in recent months. (That column, which occasioned, or coincided with my firing, is the one to which you referred above.) It is important to note that my column had not been included in the associated on-line newspaper, for the first five and a half years of its publication, where all the other regular opinion columnists who wrote for the publisher’s newspapers had been routinely presented. It has only been since last fall that “Ozaukee Farmstead” was finally included there along with their usual stable of Limbaugh and Coulter clones. Now my column, the alternative voice to that bunch will be gone, after counter-punching them on-line for less than a year. (The next time your wrong-wing-nut brother-in-law tells you all about “the liberal media”, tell him this story.)
Here’s what the latest in the newspaper’s parade of managing editors said in the email that fired me:
“It has been decided that we no longer will use your column in the News Graphic. Thank you for your contribution over the years… We are discontinuing your column because we have decided to take the editorial page in another direction.”
It’s the end of an unheralded era, in this newspaper and in this county, where we are so afflicted by the iron grip of one-party rule, and the voters never have a choice in who “represents” us in the legislature, or in elected county offices like District Attorney, Sheriff, Coroner, and even Judge. The Party decides all that for us, and then we get to vote for their choice, or for nobody.
You should check out my latest submission which the publisher and editor decided not to run when they canceled my column. It’s posted on “Hearts and Minds”, and it goes to the core of what ails democracy and government in the USA, and right here in Ozaukee County, and it fingers the good ol’ boys who profit immensely by it’s sickness and threatened demise.
Rather than just shut up and disappear, I am running as an Independent for the 20th state Senate District in the general election this November. Please do not countenance for a second any false rumor that the newspaper canceled my column because I am running for office. I had not announced that I am running for office. I have not even filed the initial Campaign Registration statement with the Government Accountability Board, required (along with hundreds of proper nominating signatures) to qualify for inclusion on the ballot. The newspaper was not aware that I was even considering running as an Independent for elected office, or my reasons. Their firing of me, and the cancellation of my column, was explained by the email I received yesterday, as quoted above.
I wonder whether members of the local and on-line community will register disappointment with the editor and publisher that my “Ozaukee Farmstead” column has been canceled by the local newspaper, five months before the crucially important November election. You can safely bet there will be no announcement of any kind made in the paper. My writing will simply disappear from it. Will the community miss having an unprecedented alternative point of view coherently presented? And will the community object or be silent?
Hey, that’s the greastet! So with ll this brain power AWHFY?
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