We like nothing more than when our friends and co-workers succeed at their dreams, so it's always slightly bittersweet when we see our friends succeed - but their success takes them away from us.
Today, we have to wish a fond farewell to one of our editors, Deborah Corey, as some of her new responsibilities are taking a bit more of her time.
Deb's involvement with The Daily Felltoon has been good, we felt - for both her and the Daily Felltoon. Over the past year, thanks in part to Deb, our tone has changed slightly, and even improved. Because of her influence, at times, we've considered topics from angles we might not have otherwise.
This is the whole reason that each of us, individually and collectively, have always advocated discussing important topics with those people we don't always agree with.
We'll admit - having sane, civil, well-informed debates with people you call your friends doesn't always make for easy, maintenance-free friendships. It does make for solid personal relationships, and long-lasting friendships, though.
Those are the kind of friendships that often push us to even higher heights.
In the time that Deb has been on staff with us, her writing has gone from strictly freelance, to freelance plus blogging - and now to being paid for her blog. As a former staffer for the Washington Times, and a DC political media contact, her status is growing - as are the numbers of people who read her blog.
She now has enough people reading her content that she's been able to sell some advertising on her blog, which will supplement her freelance income - which we're very happy about. She's also now the blog director for the Washington, DC Young Republicans, who just launched their new website. And she's once again covering the Conservative Political Action Committee meetings in DC.
Deb's blog is a bit more conservative than her work with us - or what we know to be some of her more default positions. We don't fault her for that, however, as she's catering to a more exclusively conservative crowd . "Give 'em what they want," as the old saying goes.
She's a true conservative, as we've always noted. She's just significantly more sane than many of her colleagues in the conservative media.
We hope that Deb keeps getting more readers, and more advertising - and maybe, if they're smart, one of the many DC-based political publications will scoop her up soon, and pay her some serious money.
For now, we simply say, "Thank you," to Deb for giving us the opportunity to work with her, and to gain a little more perspective from the conservative side of the aisle.
It's made us all better, personally and professionally.
We hope that each of you is lucky enough to have friends and colleagues that do the same for you, as Deb as done for us.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Blind, Deaf - And Dangerously Dumb
There are times in life when a person - or even a group of people - hate to be right.
For our staff, today is another one of those days.
The subject we were right about is one we began sounding warnings on last year, and one that we pointed to as a key item to watch in 2011: the attempt by government, at all levels, to try and weasel out of their responsibilities by taking away funds from other parts of government.
On Wednesday, Nebraska joined a growing list of states who are cannibalizing their finances, because they've backed themselves into political and fiscal corners with rhetoric.
Nebraska's attempt at stupidity involves the claim that the state budget gap would shrink significantly - if only the state didn't have to pay for its responsibilities to aid local governments.
For example, by helping to keep property taxes low.
If politicians on the state level who vote for this idiotic measure think they're not going to be held responsible, and politically liable in the next election, for a significant increase in local property taxes if they pass this bill, we'd advise them to stop using reruns of Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck as their legal and political reference sources.
Many other states from coast to coast, have been contemplating equally stupid measures recently. To our knowledge, only one state has, so far, had the courage to do the truly fiscally responsible thing - not only cutting its budgets on both the state and local levels, but also raising taxes on those who have the money.
That state would be Illinois.
For all the hoopla raised about how corrupt Illinois politics are, at least those who run that state have done more than just give lip service to the idea that they have "considered every solution" to their state's budget problems. So far, the sky still hasn't fallen in over Illinois.
Facts are facts.
Nebraska's population isn't what it was five years ago, or ten years ago, or twenty years ago. A LARGE number of new people have moved to our state, specifically to urban areas. Regardless of whether they are temporary or permanent residents, migrant workers or college students, those designations aren't going to change the fact that more people means state government needs to provide more services than can be paid for by the amount of taxes we've currently been collecting.
The idea that Nebraska - or ANY state - can simply cut its way to a balanced budget, when it wasn't collecting enough revenue before the cutting began is not only preposterous, it's dangerous.
We imagine the state of Nebraska will find out exactly how dangerous soon enough, when the items that local cities and towns find money for in their own budgets are their own local priorities - while the priorities of the state will be left to rot.
For our staff, today is another one of those days.
The subject we were right about is one we began sounding warnings on last year, and one that we pointed to as a key item to watch in 2011: the attempt by government, at all levels, to try and weasel out of their responsibilities by taking away funds from other parts of government.
On Wednesday, Nebraska joined a growing list of states who are cannibalizing their finances, because they've backed themselves into political and fiscal corners with rhetoric.
Nebraska's attempt at stupidity involves the claim that the state budget gap would shrink significantly - if only the state didn't have to pay for its responsibilities to aid local governments.
For example, by helping to keep property taxes low.
If politicians on the state level who vote for this idiotic measure think they're not going to be held responsible, and politically liable in the next election, for a significant increase in local property taxes if they pass this bill, we'd advise them to stop using reruns of Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck as their legal and political reference sources.
Many other states from coast to coast, have been contemplating equally stupid measures recently. To our knowledge, only one state has, so far, had the courage to do the truly fiscally responsible thing - not only cutting its budgets on both the state and local levels, but also raising taxes on those who have the money.
That state would be Illinois.
For all the hoopla raised about how corrupt Illinois politics are, at least those who run that state have done more than just give lip service to the idea that they have "considered every solution" to their state's budget problems. So far, the sky still hasn't fallen in over Illinois.
Facts are facts.
Nebraska's population isn't what it was five years ago, or ten years ago, or twenty years ago. A LARGE number of new people have moved to our state, specifically to urban areas. Regardless of whether they are temporary or permanent residents, migrant workers or college students, those designations aren't going to change the fact that more people means state government needs to provide more services than can be paid for by the amount of taxes we've currently been collecting.
The idea that Nebraska - or ANY state - can simply cut its way to a balanced budget, when it wasn't collecting enough revenue before the cutting began is not only preposterous, it's dangerous.
We imagine the state of Nebraska will find out exactly how dangerous soon enough, when the items that local cities and towns find money for in their own budgets are their own local priorities - while the priorities of the state will be left to rot.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
The Absence Of News - Sorry To Disappoint You
With a headline like ours today, you may think that there's nothing to talk about - when that is actually the furthest thing from our minds.
In fact, there are such a huge number of topics we'd like to discuss, we're not sure where to start.
For starters, congrats go out to multiple media people we know - including one of our editors, Deb. She is now the Blog Director for the Washington, DC Young Republicans and their new website 'GOProckstars.com'. We also have to give congratulations to Mr. Keith Olbermann and many of his staff members, who will be moving soon to CurrentTV for a new and improved version of Keith's show.
Unfortunately, all we can link to is preliminary announcements about these two items, since neither website actually exists at this time.
We'd thought about writing a commentary on the slow but steady rise in the price of gasoline in the U.S. and the fact that no one is talking about it. However, we couldn't find much serious recent journalism on the subject other than this stub article from the LA Times - simultaneously proving our point, while giving us not much to address on that subject. That being said, today's Daily Felltoon pretty much says all that needs to be said about that topic.
We could discuss how much American families and businesses are paying in taxes - except that, for the third year in a row, Americans are paying less in federal taxes than they did under the Bush administration. In fact, as a share of the nation's economy, this is the lowest proportional tax rate for most Americans in over sixty years.
In theory, we could alter that idea slightly and talk about changes in tax rates, and eliminating loopholes, like the President proposed during the State of the Union Address. Those changes could help grow our economy and would actually mean more money in Federal coffers, even though Americans would be paying lower actual rates. However, we hit on that subject yesterday, when we covered the President's Monday address to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. As he said then, the solution to getting out of this economic hole is simple: American businesses must hire Americans and invest in America to grow the nation's economy.
We could even discuss some of the responses that we received from you, commenting on Tuesday's Daily Felltoon edition, regarding unions and corporations working together. Unfortunately, more than one response kept attempting to equate hearsay with facts - which are two entirely different things.
With many of the topics we thought about writing on today, there simply aren't enough legitimate sources for us to link to - or there are too many sources that discuss topics in a jargon inaccessible to most people.
Every once in a while, we have to remind our readers of the difference between speculation, rumor, hearsay, and opinion - and well-supported, fact-based, commentary.
We provide the latter here, in both written and visual form.
We could provide you with an absence of substantive, meaningful content, and just use our pixels to give you hearsay or crude drawings with no deeper meaning - but you can get that from plenty of other media sources, both print and electronic.
Tomorrow, we'll go back to doing what we always do: providing direct, thought provoking, fact-based, well-written and drawn content. For those who may not have enjoyed our exercise in irony today, we're sorry if we disappointed you.
In fact, there are such a huge number of topics we'd like to discuss, we're not sure where to start.
For starters, congrats go out to multiple media people we know - including one of our editors, Deb. She is now the Blog Director for the Washington, DC Young Republicans and their new website 'GOProckstars.com'. We also have to give congratulations to Mr. Keith Olbermann and many of his staff members, who will be moving soon to CurrentTV for a new and improved version of Keith's show.
Unfortunately, all we can link to is preliminary announcements about these two items, since neither website actually exists at this time.
We'd thought about writing a commentary on the slow but steady rise in the price of gasoline in the U.S. and the fact that no one is talking about it. However, we couldn't find much serious recent journalism on the subject other than this stub article from the LA Times - simultaneously proving our point, while giving us not much to address on that subject. That being said, today's Daily Felltoon pretty much says all that needs to be said about that topic.
We could discuss how much American families and businesses are paying in taxes - except that, for the third year in a row, Americans are paying less in federal taxes than they did under the Bush administration. In fact, as a share of the nation's economy, this is the lowest proportional tax rate for most Americans in over sixty years.
In theory, we could alter that idea slightly and talk about changes in tax rates, and eliminating loopholes, like the President proposed during the State of the Union Address. Those changes could help grow our economy and would actually mean more money in Federal coffers, even though Americans would be paying lower actual rates. However, we hit on that subject yesterday, when we covered the President's Monday address to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. As he said then, the solution to getting out of this economic hole is simple: American businesses must hire Americans and invest in America to grow the nation's economy.
We could even discuss some of the responses that we received from you, commenting on Tuesday's Daily Felltoon edition, regarding unions and corporations working together. Unfortunately, more than one response kept attempting to equate hearsay with facts - which are two entirely different things.
With many of the topics we thought about writing on today, there simply aren't enough legitimate sources for us to link to - or there are too many sources that discuss topics in a jargon inaccessible to most people.
Every once in a while, we have to remind our readers of the difference between speculation, rumor, hearsay, and opinion - and well-supported, fact-based, commentary.
We provide the latter here, in both written and visual form.
We could provide you with an absence of substantive, meaningful content, and just use our pixels to give you hearsay or crude drawings with no deeper meaning - but you can get that from plenty of other media sources, both print and electronic.
Tomorrow, we'll go back to doing what we always do: providing direct, thought provoking, fact-based, well-written and drawn content. For those who may not have enjoyed our exercise in irony today, we're sorry if we disappointed you.
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