Voice For Liberty

Tag: Twitter

  • RightOnline in Las Vegas this week

    Later this week the RightOnline Conference takes place in Las Vegas, Nevada.

    This is the third year for this conference. It’s held at the same time — and in the same city — as the Netroots Nation. Or NutRoots, take your pick.

    The event features a lot of training and some great speakers. Michele Bachmann will headline the Friday dinner, and the Saturday general session features speakers like Andrew Napolitano, Mike Pence, Robert McDowell, Herman Cain, Erick Erickson, and John Fund.

    RightOnline is sponsored by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Click on Podcast: Erik Telford Previews the RightOnline Conference to hear an interview with AFP’s Erik Telford. To keep up on Twitter, the hasthag is #ro10.

  • Articles of Interest

    Capitalism, CFL bulbs, green indoctrination, bailout constitutionality, Facebook, Twitter

    ‘The Road to Serfdom’ revisited: Markets display uncertainty over future of capitalism itself (Scott S. Powell in the Washington Times) Discussion of how government interventionism in the economy is not helping. “President Eisenhower called it ‘creeping socialism.’ Nobel Prize winner Friedrich von Hayek called it ‘The Road to Serfdom.’”

    Do New Bulbs Save Energy if They Don’t Work? (New York Times) Many customers are not happy with compact fluorescent light bulbs. Short life for the expensive bulbs is a common irritation.

    ‘Green Hell’ Coming Soon to a Life Like Yours (Human Events) A review of a new book that merits reading. “Be prepared the next time your child comes home from school with some nice ‘green’ project or attempts to lecture you about how you ‘should’ be doing more ‘sustainable’ activities to ‘save’ the Earth. You will be ready to confront teachers, political leaders, neighbors, and annoying aunts with the astounding new book by Steve Milloy titled Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”

    Bailing Out of the Constitution (George Will in the Washington Post) Is the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 — that’s the $700 billion bailout of banks from last year — constitutional? Perhaps it isn’t, argues Will. It has to do with the Vesting Clause of Article I says, “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in” Congress.

    Is Facebook Growing Up Too Fast? (New York Times) Facebook will soon have 200 million members. All are not happy, evidence being the recent controversy over a redesign of some of its most important aspects. There’s also the “coolness” factor: can kids like a social network that their parents are now using?

    When Stars Twitter, a Ghost May Be Lurking (New York Times) “In many cases, celebrities and their handlers have turned to outside writers — ghost Twitterers, if you will — who keep fans updated on the latest twists and turns, often in the star’s own voice. Because Twitter is seen as an intimate link between celebrities and their fans, many performers are not willing to divulge the help they use to put their thoughts into cyberspace. … It is not only celebrities who are forced to look to a team to produce real-time commentary on daily activities; politicians like Ron Paul have assigned staff members to create Twitter posts and Facebook personas. Candidate Barack Obama, as well as President Obama, has a social-networking team to keep his Twitter feed tweeting.”

  • Articles of Interest

    Journalism, crime alerts, war on drugs, minimum wage, stimulus and education

    The State of the Fourth Estate (Jordan Ballor at the Acton Institute) What will happen to journalism in the digital age? The article describes its importance to a free society, with reflection from a Christian view.

    Alert system tells you when a crime occurs (Stan Finger in the Wichita Eagle) Receive email or text messages alerts concerning crime in your area by signing up at www.citizenobserver.com. Maybe criminals will start using Twitter to tweet about their escapes, making it easier for police to capture them. While email and text messages are fine, this is a good application for Twitter, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see this service expanded to include Twitter.

    From the Trenches of the Drug War: A Street Cop’s Perspective (The Future of Freedom Foundation) Speaking of crime … what is the true cost of the war on drugs? Lessons from the front.

    Raising BC’s minimum wage: Good intentions, bad policy (The Frazer Institute) As we in Kansas appear ready to raise our state’s minimum wage — with good intentions (I wonder about that sometimes) — consider the well-known unintended consequences: “The most damaging consequence of minimum wage increases is that employers respond by reducing the number of workers they employ and/or the number of hours their employees work. In other words, minimum wage increases result in higher unemployment for low-skilled workers and young people. This unpleasant reality is well documented in the research.”

    Spec. Ed. Stimulus Money Raising Cautions (Education Week) Managing the use of stimulus money may be tricky: “Within the next few weeks, though, the federal tap will open up, releasing an extra $6.1 billion for districts to use for special education, with another $6.1 billion to come later this year. … Though grateful for the largess, school leaders face restrictions with that money. The rules governing the use of federal special education money mean that it’s unwise for districts to use the added funding to start new programs or hire new teachers. If they were to do so, districts would have to continue to pay for those costs in two years, when the federal infusion goes away, under a provision in the IDEA that requires districts to avoid making large cuts in programs from year to year.” What should the money be spent on? Professional development is one recommendation mentioned.

  • Pew Internet and American Life Project Redesign

    The Pew Internet & American Life Project has redesigned their website. This organization has been a valuable source of information about the Internet and how people are using it.

    As an example, here are some of their recent research reports:

    Twitter and status updating: “As of December 2008, 11% of online American adults said they used a service like Twitter or another service that allowed them to share updates about themselves or to see the updates of others.”

    Adults and Social Network Websites: “The share of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years — from 8% in 2005 to 35% at the end of 2008.”

    When Technology Fails: “Half (48%) of tech users need help from others in getting new devices and services to work, and many experience tech outages when there is a glitch with their home internet connection, computer, or cell phone.”

  • Articles of Interest

    Subsidizing Bad Ideas What are some of the things wrong with the president’s plan to solve the mortgage crisis? Howie Rich of Americans For Limited Government explains: “First, the plan is emblematic of America’s new “dependence mentality,” which is advanced by politicians like Obama who rhetorically extol the virtues that once made this country great while they systematically remove brick-by-brick the incentives needed to make it great once again. Second, it’s more of the same smoke-and-mirrors Washington politicians employ to hide the true coming-and-goings of your tax dollars in our nation’s capital. Third, it rewards many of the same financial institutions whose mistakes have helped bring this nation to the brink of fiscal ruin – and incentivizes them to make those same mistakes all over again.”

    Judging Obama John Stossel explains some of the problems in judging the success of failure of President Obama’s economic interventions, and who should get the credit or blame.

    Obama Gives Failing Schools a Pass: The day of reckoning has arrived — except for teachers’ unions (Chester E. Finn Jr. & Michael J. Petrilli in National Review). “This is classic Obama, straddling the Democratic divide on education, just as he did so deftly during the campaign, striving to placate both the reformers within the party and the union bosses. … It’s no accident that our schools aren’t producing enough well-educated graduates; that’s because the system has been designed to place the needs of adults over the needs of kids. But saying any of that would put him at odds with the education establishment, which he doesn’t appear to want to cross.” More indication that President Obama will not implement any meaningful education reform.

    Zoomdweebie’s builds success on Twitter (Wichita Eagle). A Wichita business uses social media like Twitter to boost business.

    The Government’s War on Recession. Lew Rockwell explains some of the problems and dangers with the way the Obama administration is attacking the problems with the economy: “The economics of stimulus are not as complicated. They amount to taking from some and giving to others. There is no wealth creation at all. There is no magic ‘multiplier’ to turn stones into bread. The economics of stimulus is value-destroying, because property is pried loose from owners who are putting it to socially useful purposes, and given to government so it can pass it out to friends. This process is costly to overall wealth production — and most of those costs are unseen. We will never know what kind of real stimulus could have taken place had the property been left in private hands. What jobs might have been created, what investments might have been made, what kind of business expansions might have taken place? We will never know.”

  • Kansas Jackass spotted at Kansas days

    Through several methods, including excessive tweeting and plain old gumshoe work, the identity of the anonymous blogger Kansas Jackass was deduced. One tweet by the Jackass told me that the blogger would be entering the event hall at Kansas Days in a few minutes. I waited by the door and had a conversation with the Jackass.

  • Maggie Twitters

    My friend Maggie Thurber from Toledo explains a bit about Twitter and tweets. See Do you Twitter? from her blog Thurber’s Thoughts.

    You can follow me on Twitter by clicking here.

  • Follow Me on Twitter. I’ll follow you.

    Some people have asked if I’m on Twitter, and the answer is yes. Here’s a link to my Twitter profile, from where you can choose to follow me.

    I don’t use Twitter as much as a lot of people do. I don’t have a mobile device like a Blackberry. I have a regular old-fashioned cell phone. (Isn’t is funny to think of a plain cellular telephone as old-fashioned, even quaint?) So I just update from my computer.

    What I mostly do on Twitter is to post titles and urls to new blog posts. There’s a problem, though. Often the title of the post plus the post’s url are over 140 characters long, the limit for Twitter. But, Twitter reduces long urls to short ones using tinyurl, and usually the title plus the short url are well within the 140 character limit. But, Twitter doesn’t know that, so it won’t accept the post. I’ve reported this to Twitter, and they’re thinking about it. Such are the issues of software engineering and programming.

    Update: Why didn’t I think of his on my own? Just use tinyurl.com to create your own short urls. Even simpler, the Firefox addin “TinyURL Creator” makes this process quite simple.

  • Defending the American Dream, or RightOnline in Austin 2008

    I just returned from Austin, Texas, attending a conference put on by Americans For Prosperity partnering with Sam Adams Alliance, Heritage Foundation, Leadership Institute, and Media Research Center. Thank you to my friend Erik Telford for inviting me to this conference.

    We had some great speakers. Robert Novak is a favorite person of mine. I devoured his autobiography The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington last year. He told us that he believes the Republicans will lose seats in both houses of Congress, but the presidency can be won. Also: “I like Ron Paul (cheers)…but not for President” (Thanks, Nic Hall, for reminding me of this.)

    I always like listening to Tim Phillips, president of Americans For Prosperity. He told us it’s important to let the few “good guys” in government know that we stand behind them, and conferences like this are one way to do that.

    Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal told us, and it is reported today in the opinion piece Their Fair Share that Americans with income above the median paid 97.1% of all income taxes. Barack Obama doesn’t think that’s enough. This reminded me that we have two classes of people in America: tax payers, and tax consumers. Regarding the death tax: “No taxation without respiration.”

    Steve Lonegan of AFP in New Jersey has an inspiring life story about overcoming blindness as a young adult. The state wanted him to become a client and go to vocational training (to be a basket weaver, he said), but instead he earned an MBA degree.

    Grover Norquist: “The left are not friends. The are a band of competing parasites.” Also: “Republicans who raise taxes are rat heads in Coke bottles.”

    Michelle Malkin is an inspiration to me. Did you know, I believe she said, that Gen. Wesley Clark whines about the “right wing freak machine”?

    Bob Barr, the Libertarian party candidate for president, spoke at a reception. One of his topics? How he introduced the articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton. This is inspiring? Although he did say “Libertarianism lies in the heart of every American.”

    It’s always interesting to me to see how these speakers are different in person from when they’re on television. My friend Maggie Thurber at Thurber’s Thoughts has some more good remarks on the speakers.

    A few things that I learned:

    It takes a long time to drive from Wichita to Austin! And, at a time when some are urging a return to the 55 mph speed limit, I saw little observation of the current 70 mph speed limit. Even when I drove for a while at 75 mph, people passed me like I was standing still.

    Why is the term changing from “global warming” to “climate change”?

    Ask readers to take action on your blog. Then, after taking action — maybe making a telephone call or writing an email — have readers write a comment about it so others can learn what happened.

    I learned more about media bias and how to spot it.

    One speaker said that the combined circulation of small newspapers is equal to the circulation of large newspapers.

    Personally, I reconnected with some blogger friends that I first met at Samsphere in Chicago earlier this year, a friend I had met at Mises University last year, plus some Facebook “friends” who I had never met in person.

    I also got a glimpse at the power of Twitter combined with a mobile device like a Blackberry. I may have to get one.

    I had thought I would be able to produce an abbreviated Kansas Blog Roundup on Friday, but with all the activity, I didn’t have time.