A New Era…
The Americas are on the verge of a new political revolution. Along with the United States own presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, there has been a similar spur of female presidential candidates in Latin America as well.
Last year Veronica Michelle Bachelet Jeria became the first woman to become president of Chile in Chile’s entire history. She beat her opposition, Sebastian Pinera, last year with 53.5% of the votes. She campaigned on a platform of continuing Chile’s free market policies, while increasing social benefits to help reduce the country’s gap between rich and poor. She was inaugurated on March 11, 2006.
Bachelet is not the only woman in Latin America to go for the presidency. Christina Fernandez de Kirchner is currently Argentina’s glamorous First Lady but is assured to be Argentina’s next president. Her husband, Argentina’s current president, Nestor Kirchner first became governor of a small southern province of Santa Cruz and then became president in 2003. The couple moved to the capital, Buenos Aires, and decided that Kirchner would run in 2003 instead of Fernandez since he had a better understanding of economic policy and was better suited to lead a country that was on the verge of bankruptcy like Argentina was at the time. Under Kirchner Argentina made a remarkable economic recovery and had four straight years of economic growth.
(Nestor Kirchner and Christina Fernandez)
The switching between the spouses of the presidency is claimed by Fernandez to be, “part of an effort to set an example of relinquishing power in a country that has seen too many leaders overstay their welcome at the presidential palace.” However, critics claim that this is only a elaborate scheme to bypass the constitutional ban on being in office more than two consecutive years. Interestingly enough if Hillary Clinton won the presidency next year than it will mark the ruling of the United States by two families for a quarter of a century.
With all these strong women entering the political sphere it is only a matter of time before female presidents stop being taboo and become another common aspect of our societies.
Now The Government Is Blogging Too?
Last week while trolling the blogosphere I discovered that even the government has turned to blogging as a way to connect to the population. The blog, entitled Gov Gab, mostly uses anecdotal situations from its 6 contributors to inform readers of how to navigate government bureaucracy in order to accomplish practical tasks. Recent posts tell how to change your address (go to the post office!), what paperwork you should fill out after you get married, and when the autumn leaves are at their peak in the DC area.
Overall I feel the blog is poorly designed and executed. They are only posting one entry a day despite having 6 regular contributors. The posts offer little insights that common sense or a quick Google search couldn’t tell you. If I really wanted to know where to go apple picking I wouldn’t turn to Gov Gab to find an orchard. The blog is very DC-centric which could turn people from other areas away. But the biggest con is that it is straight up boring, at least in my opinion.
The Story That Started It All
Going to Extremes
To find the heart of Maryland and Virginia, you need to start by exploring the edges. Maryland’s Panhandle, Asking for Change
By Bill Heavey
The Washington Post
Sunday, June 7, 1998
I’d been bouncing down the little dirt track that parallels Ginseng Run near the town of McHenry in westernmost Maryland for what seemed like hours when a wild turkey traipsed across the road. I slammed on the brakes, and so did the turkey. I backed up for a better look. So did the turkey, bobbing across the road it had just traversed. And suddenly there we were, a Honda Civic and America’s largest game bird, 20 feet apart and sharing a single telepathic thought: I’ve never seen one this close before.
It was half an hour later that I finally found someone to ask for directions. The guy was mowing the grass by his mobile home. He was a big, red-faced guy in an American flag rugby shirt. Another flag flew from the porch. He had rigged a second mailbox next to his real one, on a pole 15 feet high. The sign on it read “Air Mail.”
“I’m totally lost,” I said. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket, blew his nose mightily and tucked the cloth away. “Most folks are,” he observed at last. “Least you know it.”
If the folks in Baltimore who promote Maryland tourism have their say, the remote, nether reaches of Maryland will not stay lost much longer. A concerted effort by state tourism officials, given a good goosing by Maryland House of Delegates Speaker Casper R. Taylor, who represents Allegany County, has resulted in a number of events that may conspire to put Maryland’s long-neglected panhandle on the map. There’s an $87 million plan to rewater the terminus of the C & O Canal and create a park in downtown Cumberland.
There’s the plan to continue propping up the area’s historic rail tour, which runs from Cumberland to Frostburg, and feeds patrons to a little olde restaurant that the state just bought. But the crowning glory is Rocky Gap Lodge and Golf Resort, a $54 million venture designed to attract something the panhandle has long ignored: high-income business and leisure travelers. The place is basically a glorified conference center located inside a state park, hard by the heretofore entirely unknown waters of Lake Habeeb. While the location happens to be a two-hour drive from D.C., Baltimore and Pittsburgh, convention-goers alone won’t be enough to make the resort pay off. For Rocky Gap to succeed, it has to attract to Maryland’s remote panhandle people who don’t usually venture west of White Flint. Which is why they’re putting in one of the country’s few Jack Nicklaus-designed golf courses open to the public. It’s a 7,100-yard beauty with enough underground water pipes to supply a small city.
Whether these plans to turn Western Maryland into a key vacation area work out or not, there is plenty of pretty country, historic clutter and nice walking out there right now. And you won’t need golf spikes and a platinum credit card to enjoy them. At Swallow Falls State Park, you step out of your car into a grove of 300-year-old hemlock trees, then walk a quarter-mile to 63-foot-high Muddy Creek Falls, the state’s highest. There’s world-class whitewater rafting on the upper part of the Youghiogheny River, and tamer water for tubing on the lower part. And don’t overlook the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad just because tax dollars subsidize its operation. It’s a bargain at $16 for a three-hour, 32-mile round-trip down a mile-long gorge, over an iron truss bridge and through the 914-foot Brush Tunnel. PBS found it worthy of inclusion in its “Great Scenic Railway Journeys” TV show.
But the great affair out here is the ramble, to see what’s over the next hill, to poke your nose into places you haven’t been invited.
full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/travel/index/stories/heavey06071998.htm
The Corporatization of Media
Jonathan Landay paid a visit to Dr. William Gentile’s Foreign Correspondence class on October 8th, 2007 to talk to the professor’s students about “Foreign Correspondence and The Future of Public Media.” The topic? Whether the field of foreign correspondence would soon become obsolete in the face of an ever-reaching internet and the mounting risks and costs in sending reporters overseas.
There’s a visible (visibly sad) trend in media today. Newspapers are cutting jobs. Foreign bureaus are being closed. Media outlets are being consolidated, or torn apart. Increasingly, publishers are compelling editors and journalists to focus inward, to report local news, arguing that Americans are tired of news abroad, arguing that local news sells… better. More and more, the media world is feeling the pressure of stockholders, entrepeneurs, and businessmen to rake in the cash at any cost, even at the cost of thorough and objective journalism.
An example of this? The company Knight Ridder, Landay’s former employer, was previously the second-largest newspaper publisher in the United States. It used to have thirty-two newspapers in twenty-nine markets under its jurisdiction. Shareholders forced the company to put itself up for sale in 2005 at a time when the company was making an annual 19% very year. Prior to that they demanded that president Tony Ridder cut staff and budgets to achieve profit margin of more than 20%.
This at a time when we are in the midst of two wars. This at a time when the ‘Fourth Estate’ is needed more than ever.
Landay argues that the value of having foreign correspondents overseas is to tell the unfiltered, unofficial version of stories. In his experience covering Afghanistan, he’s witnessed the Pentagon manipulating facts- after the fact- to cover its own tracks whenever a mistake was made. He was in a small town in Afghanistan when word reached him that the US had targeted, in a neighboring Afghani town, a school which was in fact a refuge for Ex- and Anti-Taliban supporters. There were over 40 Afghanistani casualties. The military quickly tried to cover up its mistake, handing out crisp new $100 bills to the relatives of those who’d been killed. The Pentagon also did not hesitate to propogate the story that ‘gunmen’ in the town had ‘fired first,’ which according to several eyewitness accounts was blatantly and logically just not true.
Landay, one of the few journalists who questioned the validity of the Bush Administration’s reasoning for going into Iraq PRIOR to the 2003 invasion, demonstrated the importance of having journalists on the ground to sift through the information and procure the truth. Because he was there, he felt no hesitation in confronting Donald Rumsfeld about the incident at an ensuing press conference.
The future of foreign correspendence, of media as a field in general, is uncertain to be sure. But the demand for honest, well-informed, and accurate journalism is still thankfully out there. Especially at a time when governments, and politicians, and authority figures can’t be trusted.
As far as Mr. Landay’s concerned, if there’s one thing he could get across to all the businessmen who have a stranglehold on the news business today, it’s that by cutting staff, their undermining their investment: Journalism.
Gaining Teen Support
It has been brought to my attention that the Democratic candidates are presently seeking the votes of high schoolers in Iowa. In the last election, roughly 65% of the voters were 50 or over; now candidates want the support of a younger crowd, who they see to be very influential on other teens. Chris Elsenbast, a 17-year-old high school senior from Iowa started a political club at his high school and since he’ll be 18 by the time the election comes, he plans to vote for Obama, who is very popular amongst younger crowds. The candidates are seeking to find students who have a lot of influence over other students… since everyone knows, that majority rules in high school and most of the student body will typically conform to what the crowd is doing. If there is a strong leader with a lot of support from other students, he/she will be able to gain tremendous support for that candidate just by provoking candidate and political awareness. “The key for us is building an organization that can harness that enthusiasm and turn it into support,” said spokesman Tommy Vietor. There are many campaigns aimed at teens to try and get more younger voters to the polls (think Rock the Vote on MTV) and although the campaign might seem successful; the number of ballots doesn’t always relate. Based on timing, amount of support, and actual participation from students, candidates really have to focus on ideals that will really help to gain the support from teens in order to increase their amount of young votes and get teens from the ballots. The demographics of this election could change tremendously if the candidates succeed in winning votes from the younger generations and new voters…if more teens and students our age became actively involved with the campaigns and candidates, the Presidential elections could shift drastically in their focus and support.
Dissident Media in our modern world…
Historically speaking dissident journalists have always received ill treatment from mainstream media outlets, take any variety of examples such as; Emma Goldman, Ida B Wells, William Lloyd Garrison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and many others. All of these famous dissident journalists were harassed and criminalized by mainstream media and society in general. However, the life of a journalist has been getting more and more difficult in other areas of the world aside from the United States.
Only recently a reporter in Tijuana named Jesus Blancornelas was shot and seriously injured by gunmen. Blancornelas is well known for his investigative reporting that uncovered a political assassination and a variety of drug trafficking incidents. This makes his enemy lists very long, but what is important is the type of true journalism that people like Blancornelas do every day.
In this sense, even in our modern day world journalists are in danger of assassination either because of their investigation or their oath to report their findings. This is comparative to the ‘near’ tarring and feathering of Garrison. The political and criminal corruption that has spread through parts of Latin America has left activists and journalist alike either out of a job or dead for doing it. This is a crisis that needs to be solved in Latin America because without honest and accurate journalism the public has little way to understand and interact with what is going on around them.
I’m Rich Enough to be President!
Shameless plug for James Kotecki on Politico
Cumberland as a real estate investment
Investor Hot Spots
by Kenneth R. Harney
RealtyTimes August 7, 2006
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Forget the splashy high-profile, big markets if you’re tracking where home real estate investors are putting their money these days. Forget Miami, Naples, Vegas, San Diego and LA. Start thinking about lower-key places like South Bend, Indiana; Pocatello and Boise, Idaho; and the northern Maryland panhandle. According to a new analysis of mortgage data for the first quarter of 2006 nationwide, investors in those four local housing markets accounted for higher percentages of total purchases than anywhere else in the country: More than one out of five purchases in each went to investors. The study was done by Loan Performance LLC, a subsidiary of First American Real Estate Solutions. Loan Performance has access to a vast database comprised of millions of active, ongoing mortgages, through cooperative agreements with virtually all major lenders and Wall Street investment banks. That huge database allows it to essentially look inside the mortgage market in real-time, observing emerging trends in delinquencies, types of loans being originated, loan to value ratios, credit scores and many other characteristics on a market-by-market basis. In its latest analysis, covering new mortgages originated for home purchases between January 1 and March 31 of this year, Loan Performance found a stunning 25.8 percent of all mortgages financing home real estate purchases in the Cumberland, MD-eastern West Virginia market went to people who identified themselves as investors, not primary owner-occupants. In South Bend, Indiana, investors accounted for 23 percent of all new purchasers. In Boise, Idaho it was 20.8 percent and Pocatello 20.2 percent. By contrast, Miami and Naples, Florida, where investor purchases of condo units and preconstruction contracts were all the rage during the peak boom years of 2003-mid 2005, investors accounted for just one out of six new purchases during the first quarter of this year. Although Loan Performance offered no theories about current investor patterns, the top several hot spots — at least as percentage shares of the total local market — appear to share some common characteristics. Real estate prices in all of them are moderate by national norms, and rental properties tend to cash flow better than, say, Miami condos, which come with high price tags and negative cash flows for investors. Also real estate appreciation in places like Boise, the northern Maryland panhandle and West Virginia never went off the charts during the boom years, but maintained steady, moderate growth. Second home purchases may also have played a role in the Idaho, Maryland and West Virginia markets. Loan Performance also looked at the markets with the highest percentages of higher-risk negative amortization and interest-only mortgages during the first quarter of 2006. West Virginia topped the neg-am list with more than half of all new home loans — 51.4 percent — carrying negative amortization options. In Wyoming 26.2 percent of all new purchase loans were neg-am, as were 22.5 percent in Nevada, 21 percent in California and 15.6 percent in Florida. Neg-am loans allow home buyers to make monthly payments that are less than the amounts needed to amortize or pay off the debt over the stated term of the loan. Typically neg-am loans either require balloon payments at some point during the term, or in the case of popular payment-option loans, to “reset” at some point to a payment level sufficient to pay off the debt within the stated term of the mortgage. By depressing monthly payments, neg-am loans allow purchasers to acquire properties that they might not otherwise be able to afford using a traditional mortgage. For that reason they are popular with buyers and investors in many markets, but also carry elevated risks of default should borrowers be unable to make payments after the “reset” date, refinance into affordable replacement loans, or make balloon payments. |
The Web is Winning Races?
I found an article on CNN.com that I thought was a topic which was somewhat of a “no brain-er” but in the same sense it made me think, “God what would elections be without the Internet?!” I would like to think that our blog could possibly make a difference in politics and the upcoming election, but we won’t really know that right now. However it is crazy to think that just a few elections ago, the Internet barely played any role. It is already obvious to see the impact that the Internet has in campaigns and what not by just looking at all the media posted on our blog; YouTube videos, pictures, political cartoons, ect. Unfortunately in some cases, the Internet is the “make it” or “break it” factor in some campaigns and it will be interesting to see, as the election gets closer, the impact that Internet sources such as YouTube and blogs (hopefully ours) will play.
M. Appeal (Mass Appeal) 