Sterling Corporation, the former place of my employ, has jumped into the corporate ’sphere with its own blog that focuses on advertising, politics and stuff. Check it out for some good insight into the advertising world, what works, what doesn’t and, sometimes, just to point out the bizarre.

I am always the last to know.  In a major spread today in the travel section of the New York Times, including a multi-media audio slide show, celebrity chef Mario Batali is featured, raving about his summer home on the Leelenau Peninsula.  Says Batali:

“The best thing is, no one on either coast knows what is going on in this part of the country or how great it is.”

Little did I know that one of my favorite celebrity chefs summers in Michigan, so Mario moves up a couple of notches in the cooking pantheon.  Which leads me to beg.  Please, Mario, when Governor Granholm comes calling, asking you to appear in a commercial promoting the state, please don’t do it.  Please, Mario, don’t follow in the footsteps of Jeff Daniels, who exhorts me on a daily basis to give my business “the upper hand” though the state seems able to use one finger, and only sporadically.  Mario, thanks for your pizza dough recipe, and thanks for spending summers here, but please don’t do it!

I am bouncing up the comment Karen Kent left in response to Chiefspeech’s recent post. Sadly, Karen’s story is all too familiar in Michigan.

I was born and educated in Michigan but will soon be leaving to accept a teaching position in Virginia- a right to work state. I am sick of the MEA, MESSA and the stranglehold public employee unions have on the politicians in this state. They are bankrupting state and local government and the schools just as the UAW did the auto industry. Public employee unions protect mediocre work and complacency to a degree that is unheard of in other states. (Witness Michigan’s archaic teacher tenure laws and the minimal requirements to draw state pensions!)

Michigan’s economic problems are not limited to the UAW and the auto industry. Anyone who turns a blind eye to that fact will watch Michigan continue to bump along the bottom of the nation’s economic ladder for years to come. Public employee unions at all levels are among the PRIMARY contributors to Michigan’s economic woes combined with a regulatory, labor, and tax climate that is very hostile to business (see Forbes or CNBC rankings for “States Best for Business”– Virginia ranks #1; Michigan ranks #46 ).

My new classroom is in a brand new high school in a suburb in Fairfax County (approx. 50 miles from Washington DC). The school boasts SMARTBOARD technology in each classroom and laptops for every student. It will be wonderful to be involved with a district where enrollment is increasing, new schools are being built, and teachers are encouraged to be innovative through merit pay opportunities instead of listening to the constant litany of doom from Michigan’s MEA Mafia. I will no longer have MESSA but neither will I have the ridiculous MEA dues. My benefits package and salary are extremely generous and include many unexpected perks including tuition reimbursement, stipend for relocation, etc.

I am not a new teacher; I have had several years of experience. When I was hired in Virginia (accepting one of several offers received this summer), the human resources personnel and administrators that interviewed me said, “Michigan’s loss is our gain. That is why we are recruiting there.”

Those that can leave ARE leaving. If you have any doubt, simply look at the enrollment declines in any Michigan district and the number of homes for sale on every block. If the governor and the legislature do not find the political will to stand up to unions, Michigan will be left with the poorest, least educated citizens and a growing number of elderly retirees with inflated health care and legacy costs to support. Good luck with that!

Hat tip to MSNBC’s Bill Dedman for his his investigative piece, “Covering and Contributing: Some journalists quietly give to political parties, campaigns.”

Dedman scoured online public campaign finance reports and found 144 journalists who contributed to political campaigns and causes between 2004 and now. Of that number (and I know loyal LBC readers will be shocked) 125 — or a whopping 87 percent — gave to Democrat or Left-leaning causes. (Three Michigan journalists made the list; more on that later.)

The MSNBC report also found that news organizations varied greatly in their policies dealing with the activism of their staff, ranging from strict prohibition to nothing at all. When I was hacking for a living, it was made pretty clear to me by my editors that I could not: date the interns, drink at my desk, use profanity in my stories, and participate in partisan causes.

I managed to play by those rules, mostly because they were common sense. “We cover the news; we don’t make it,” is the adage I and countless others heard coming up through the ranks. I didn’t need a written policy to know I shouldn’t give my money or time to a candidate, even if a paltry amount.

Now, if journalists think it is OK for them to give to political causes, they should publicly disclose that. I wonder how readers/viewers would react if they got to the end of the story and read or heard a disclaimer that went like this: “Oh, by the way, they guy I just wrote about, I gave him a $1,000 check last month”? I am pretty certain the public would take a dim view and hold such reporting in suspect. But that’s just me.

Now, back to the three Michigan hacks who ponied up…they are (Click here for complete list and lamo responses from 144 the journalists):

Susan Hall-Balduf, a Detroit Free Press copy editor, gave $300 to John Kerry in July 2004. Now editing news copy, she gave when she was in features. Here’s what she said:

“I was scolded,” Hall-Balduf said. “We did a story on how easy it was to look up these records on the Internet, and they were not happy to find a couple of our own people on the list. But I made the point that I worked only in features, and I never edited any stories that have to do the election. I was told not to do it again. I wouldn’t do it again. But at the time my job was focused on the doings of Britney Spears.”

Joel Thurtell, a Detroit Free Press reporter, gave $500 to the Michigan Democratic State Central Committee in September 2004. Here’s what he said:

“Whatever the Free Press policy is,” Thurtell said, “I actually have my own policy about that: I’m a citizen of the United States. I have a right to support whatever candidate I like.”

Thurtell said his political views don’t influence his reporting, as demonstrated by his role as a reporter on the stories disclosing the ways that Democratic Rep. John Conyers used his congressional staff to run personal errands and do campaign business.

“I got tons of e-mail from liberal-type people who likened me to Karl Rove. I have tried to be as honest as I possibly can as a reporter.”

Terry Judd, reporter and chief of the newspaper’s Grand Haven bureau for the Muskegon Chronicle, gave $1,900 to the Democratic National Committee in six contributions from 2004 through 2006; and $2,000 to John Kerry in March 2004. Judd let his editor do most of the talking:

“You caught me,” Judd said. “I guess I was just doing it on the side.”

The paper’s metropolitan editor, John Stephenson, said appearances of a conflict do matter. “We run letters all the time from people who say we’re right-wing this or left-wing that.” He checked with the paper’s senior editor and found that the paper has no written policy on donations, but he said it will consider one now.

“This information makes us want to think further and more deeply about what we encourage and discourage in reporters,” Stephenson said. “We have always historically said, ‘You guys can have any political beliefs you want, just don’t wear your hearts on your sleeve, or your bumper. Truthfully, this sort of thing may be the new bumper.’ Ten years ago, you may have to have waded through a mountain of paper to find this stuff. We are rethinking. It’s OK to do something if our readers don’t know it? Is it all about appearances, or is there more principle here? It’s an interesting question.”

Technorati Tags: Media, MSNBC, Media+Bias, Politics, Liberal+Media, Journalism

I am not sure…still checking this out…but I think the Marquette County GOP is the first in Michigan, if not the nation, to use Skype to hold a video conference as part of its regularly scheduled meeting. Kudos to chairman Joel Westrom and the Marquette County GOP team for stepping up and embracing Web 2.0 as part of their efforts to stay connected. Here’s a couple screen captures. MI GOP State Chairman Saul Anuzis participated in the meeting from the state headquarters in Lansing.

And you know you are in the UP when you start seeing Green Bay colors. GO PACKERS!

Technorati Tags: Michigan, GOP, Upper+Peninsula, Republican, Web2.0, Skype

Anya Elizabeth Nowling was born at 12:10 pm on Monday, March 12. I have it on independent authority that she is adorable.

LBC, Jr. finally realized that he is no longer the center of the universe and his price for peace was high: one Thomas the Train set.

So, I’ve not been bloggin’ and pestering Democrats as much as I should lately. I hope you understand.

LBC got some props in today’s edition of the Livingston Daily Press & Argus. Check it out.

We’ve all gotten the spam before…”Act now” “For sale cheap” come the online barkers seeking to sell us our own domain name, or one similar to it at a price much higher than it would cost you to renew it. It’s called domain registry scam and it sucks.

These third-party registrar compaies use unscrupulous practices to obtain the rights to our dot-com. They send us expiration notices, but either give us the wrong date or don’t bother to let us know when it is. So we miss the renewal window and then they jam us with an outrageous fee to renew it. If you have invested a lot of time and money in your dot-com, you are forced to pay the extortion price.

The FTC settled a similar case with Network Solutions as few years back, but other companies are back at the practice.

ICANN wants congress to allow it to increase registraton fees about 7 percent over six years to help raise funds to protect domain registrations and go after offenders. Now normally, I am not a proponent of increasing fees or regulations, but this one has a direct benefit to the online community, especially for many of us who offer online services and consulting as a profession.

You can click here or go to MyDomainPain.com to share any domain horror stories you might have and to contact your US senator and congressman or congresswoman and ask them to support stronger protection for domain name registraton.