Congratulations to Leslie Tisdale, one of our interns, for being elected University Democrats Spring 2012 Vice President – successor to current UDems VP, Cameron Miculka, also one of our interns.
We are so proud of you both!
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We at GNI just cast our votes in the 2011 Proposition Election. Join us by voting by 7PM today.
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As hopefully most of you know, today is Election Day. For a primer on what the national media is watching, I strongly recommend Washington Post’s The Fix blog. Though the attention will be on Kentucky, Virginia, Ohio and others, I’m watching a few other races:
1. The big one in Texas, Proposition 8, which will do much to preserve Texas’ dwindling water supply. Proposed by State Senator (and GNI client) Kirk Watson, I think Prop 8 goes up big. Here’s the Senator’s description. My prediction: Passes big.
2. The much-publicized Mississippi Proposition 26, which would define personhood at conception. Besides the obvious assault on women’s freedoms, Prop. 26 brings up an interesting slew of legal questions. For example, if a State can define personhood, why can’t they define it more broadly than the time it begins? For example, can a State say chimpanzees are people? Or that African-Americans aren’t? My prediction: Passes big, immediately enjoined by the Federal courts.
3. For the election law geek in me, I’m following Maine’s Proposition 1 (not to be confused with 2009′s Prop 1, which banned gay marriage there). Until this summer, Maine was one of nine states plus the District of Columbia that allowed voters to register to vote on Election Day. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, same day registration boosts turnout 5-7%, especially among low-propensity voting groups like low-income, young, and racial minorities. In June, Republicans inthe Legislature repealed same day registration, citing voter fraud. This is the same set up scare tactics that have led to election law changes in Indiana, Arizona, Texas, and more. Now supporters of same day registration (and, IMHO, fair elections), have put Prop 1 on the ballot to reinstate it. Anecdotally, I was in Maine last week and every street corner was covered in pro- and anti-Prop 1 signs. My prediction: Passes small.
[For those following the other big news of the day, Activision/Infinity Ward's release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, my initial reaction is that it's as fun as MW2, but not so much different that I'm really floored. I would have liked more improvement.]
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First, let me say that I am not an economics expert. I did not excel at economics in college (though I did better than Rick Perry) but have tried to learn as much as I can since. With that caveat, I’ve noticed a number of recent proposals that don’t make a lot of sense to me: tax incentives to hire the unemployed. Let me be very clear, I strongly support tax incentives to encourage hiring. Government action is the only way we can turn around the economy. But I don’t understand the value of hiring an unemployed worker, as opposed to a worker who already has a job.
[Buried in this article from NPR is a reference to the newest of these hire-the-unemployed proposals, in this case targeted at unemployed vets. Here's the IRS article about two other similar tax credits.]
Here’s my problem. Let’s say GNI Strategies is looking to hire a new staffer. GNI has the choice between applicant A, who is unemployed, and applicant B, who is currently employed at company X but looking for a change. With these tax credits, assuming the two applicants are of similar quality, GNI will naturally hire applicant A. Without these tax credits, let’s assume GNI chooses to hire applicant B instead. Well company X now has an opening and will hire someone (possibly applicant A) to fill B’s position. Either way, one more unemployed person now has a job (which, I assume, is the goal of the tax credit in the first place – to encourage hiring). Why should GNI get a tax credit in the first example but not in the second? Either way, they’re creating one new job.
Am I missing something?
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For over a year, I have worked tirelessly to persuade Republican Judge Larry Meyers to become the first statewide Republican to switch parties. I was so convinced he would run against Presiding Judge Sharon Keller as a Democrat, I decided to run in an open seat to ensure we had a Democratic candidate in each race. But after weeks of meetings at Texas Democratic Party offices, it recently became clear that Judge Meyers would remain a Republican. Under these circumstances, I have decided to run against the incumbent most deserving a challenger, Presiding Judge Keller.
As a Democrat who cares about justice, you are likely familiar with Judge Keller: she is the judge who shut the courthouse doors promptly at 5PM to a death-sentenced inmate and agreed that poor people aren’t entitled to lawyers who remain awake during trial. My candidacy is a stark contrast to her governance. But I now urgently need your help.
I thank each of you who has worked to collect signatures. I must now collect those same signatures more quickly than ever to be on the ballot for Place 1 against Judge Keller. In my efforts to switch a Republican-to-Democrat I lost weeks of time, leaving me only 60 days to file the petitions necessary for me to be the only Democrat on the ballot for a statwide judicial race. Please sign up now to help collect petitions.
I thank you again for helping my campaign for this judicial office, and I thank you for caring about the state of justice in Texas. It matters.
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This evening, GNI Strategies cofounder and former partner Matt Glazer appeared on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton to discuss Governor Rick Perry’s defense of a controversial proposed Texas license plate displaying the Confederate flag. Glazer is now the Executive Director of Progress Texas.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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Dinner and social media presentations (that you can’t see in this photo) happening at GNI.
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I just discovered this new product from Google, What do you love? Found at www.wdyl.com, it is an aggregator of all of Google’s tools. As Mashable put it, “It’s a simple search box, similar to the one on Google’s homepage, but it returns results from more than 20 different Google services, including Google Translate, Trends, YouTube, Maps and Groups.” I don’t see any actual practical value of the service, but – like so many of Google’s products – it’s just so cool! Here’s the first page of what I got when I searched for the Red Sox (something that I love):
Full search results after the jump.
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Gowalla announced earlier this week that the company’s geo-social app is being revamped to function as a social travel guide for over 60 cities worldwide. The location-based social network’s newest version will do away with “check-ins” and aims to include travel-oriented recommendations unique to each user as well as more user-generated content curated by a mixture of friends, locals and experts.
The app will allow users to create “stories” around their travel experiences with other users interacting at the same location.
Although Gowalla CEO Josh Williams insists that the Austin-based company has always been about sharing high-level experiences and much less about the transactional check-ins, the new move to reinvent its product seems like an attempt to give rival startup Foursquare compatible competition and expand Gowalla’s scope beyond simply check-ins.
Gowalla is partnering up with big names, such as Disney, National Geographic and the Austin American-Statesman, as well as a number of universities, including the University of Texas, to offer additional place guides.
Gowalla plans to revamp both its desktop site and mobile application, but has not yet announced the launch date for the new app.
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