Here’s a list of some essentials. It’s by no means complete. What works for you will depend largely on your game plan and what disasters you’re most likely to encounter.
Glock 17 (Some people say the 9mm isn’t enough stopping power, but the most common ammo you’ll come across is 9mm, .22 rim fire, and 12 gauge shells. I’d rather be prepared for long-term sustainability than pick ammo that’s harder to find.) A pistol is really only useful for shooting your way to a rifle. A good carbine never hurt either, I’d recommend the CX4 Storm.
Rubber raft – the Key here isn’t surviving on this boat, rather, being able to get to a boat that might be anchored off shore. Zombies — to my knowledge — aren’t swimmers.
Good maps, books with knowledge on survival techniques if you’re not trained
How you prepare depends a lot on your game plan. Many people would plan to go to save their loved ones, family, friends. Others would stay put. Some prepare more for zombies, others prepare for nuclear wars, natural disasters, etc.
I was watching CNN this morning and saw a post about a small liberal college in Ohio that was offering free tuition to students. I was surprised, so I watched with interest.
Ohio has a ton of colleges. Vermont, technically, has the highest amount of colleges per capita — but they have around 620,000 residents, roughly 1/3 that of the greater Cleveland metro area. On a random tangent, this is why you have to know statistics and how they are calculated. Small population 23 colleges will yield greater per capita stats than a state of 11 million people. Ohio has about 108 last time I checked.
Small colleges are dotted all over my home state of Ohio: Ohio Wesleyan, Heidelberg, Kenyon, Oberlin, Denison, Wooster, Mount Union, Wittenberg, Wilberforce, Ohio Northern, Hiram, Baldwin-Wallace. The list goes on.
My father attended Ohio Wesleyan, which is a small liberal arts college in the beautiful town of Delaware, Ohio. I didn’t end up going there because I thought the whole place was too damn progressive for my tastes. My friend Joey Yost attended there and graduated still as a Republican — even though he’s a Steelers fan, which is a fault for any Cleveland native. Most of these small schools are very left leaning, most obvious among them, Oberlin. Antioch, is a different animal.
So, this CNN news report shows beautiful shots of the campus and they basically just say “this college closed, but alumni loved it so much, they donated $50+ million to its endowment so it could re-open.”
Now, I never looked at this college, but I definitely remember this college. Where did I hear about this college? We’ll get to that in a second.
Obviously, it’s unheard of for a college to offer free tuition to its all students. There is, however, an explanation for the generosity.
Antioch is crawling out of the grave. Antioch College, which was originally founded by abolitionists in 1850, shut its door in 2008 after years of decline. Terrible management decisions, among other reasons, led to the closure, but tremendous financial support from dedicated alumni, who were appalled at the closure, led to its rebirth.
“Among other reasons?” Well, what the fuck were they? Oh wait, I remember this college now. This place was full of looney toons and closed down because nobody wanted to go there. This NYT article is barely decent, but doesn’t go into terribly much detail other than to paint the school as one that happened to have some silly liberalism at it at some point in time. It seems to paint the school in an ideal light. To give credit where credit is due, Huffington Post actually hints at some of the reasons this place really closed.
Neither CNN or CBS can give its viewers a truthful, historical, news-worthy account of this school. However, you can get that from a conservative publication called The Weekly Standard.
From that 2007 Weekly Standard article (quoted throughout):
The reasons for the shutdown given by the trustees and by Tulisse Murdock, Antioch University’s chancellor since 2005, were many: years and years of incurable deficits, this year totaling $2.6 million on an annual college budget of $18 million; an extraordinarily low endowment of just $36 million (neighboring Ohio liberal arts colleges Oberlin and Kenyon boast endowments of $700 million and $167 million respectively); and a chronically low student enrollment that topped 600 only once during the preceding 25 years (compare that with Oberlin’s enrollment of nearly 2,900) and has declined precipitously since 2003. During the 2006-07 academic year, for example, only 330 full-time students were enrolled in Antioch’s bachelor-of-arts and bachelor-of-science programs–once so highly regarded that Antioch could boast that it had more graduates who went on to obtain Ph.D.’s than any other college in the country.
Right. So, Antioch closed because of economic problems. Nobody wanted to pay $40k a year to go there. Got it.
Why did nobody want to go there? Coretta Scott King and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton went there, along with a slew of other notable people and some Nobel prize winners. What happened?
Although political views at Antioch might have tilted leftward even back then, the students of the 1950s and early-to-mid 1960s prided themselves on their willingness to hear out their more conservative classmates in lively all-night dorm discussions on politics and philosophy, inspired by professors who encouraged them to test all their assumptions against the evidence. “We were completely respectful of every point of view,” recalled Rick Daily, a Denver lawyer who graduated from Antioch in 1968 and is treasurer of the alumni committee that is struggling to save the college from closure. “We even had a Goldwater Republican in our graduating class,” Daily said in a telephone interview.
That was Antioch then.
You can guess what happened in the intervening years.
Antioch now might be fairly represented by a September 21 article in the student newspaper, the Record, consisting of a gloating account of the invasion by 40 gay and lesbian Antioch students (a full fifth of the current student body) of an evangelical Christian book-signing event at a Barnes & Noble store located in a mall in nearby Beavercreek, Ohio. Record reporter Marysia Walcerz described the hours-long “Gay Takeover,” whose participants wore rainbow-tinted bandannas, ostentatiously held hands and kissed, and did their best to shock both authors and customers in this socially conservative sector of Ohio, as a “success . . . for direct action executed in style.”
A July 20 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Ralph Keyes, author of the bestselling Is There Life After High School? and a 1967 graduate of Antioch who moved with his family back to Yellow Springs some 20 years ago, described similar adventures by Antioch students in the intimidation of people who do not share their views. Keyes took pains to reassure the Chronicle’s readers that he himself had been proudly “left-wing” as an Antioch student, but he also detailed a once-tolerant campus culture that had deteriorated since his student days into “insults, name-calling, and profanity.” As Keyes described it (and others connected to the campus corroborate his observations), Antioch students regularly engaged, both inside and outside their classrooms, in the practice of “calling out” (public humiliation followed by social ostracism) their classmates for even the most trivial violations of an unwritten campus code of ideological propriety. One of the called-out was a Polish exchange student who had made the mistake of using the now-taboo word “Eskimos” instead of “Inuit” in reference to Alaskan aboriginals. Another called-out student had worn Nike sneakers, verboten among the radically sensitive because they are supposedly products of Indonesian sweatshop labor (the Nike-wearer was so demoralized by his treatment that he transferred).
Remember that movie, Accepted? I loved that movie. However, if that movie were based in real life, it would have been Antioch in the early 2000′s. I’m cool with non-traditional education, whether a school is left, or right or has people of all political views.
I have friends who went to Oberlin — yes, Oberlin. Normal people actually graduated from Oberlin, hard as that may be to believe. I enjoyed my time at Saint Louis University because it had a wide variety of views from professors and students. Heck, we even had guys like this, my diametrical opposite to the millionth power. But at its demise, Antioch clearly didn’t have that “diversity.”
The Weekly Standard continues:
You might call the current sad state of Antioch College death by political correctness. The rigorous academic programs that fostered Nobel laureates such as Capecchi are no more: Antioch scrapped its 40-odd traditional majors in 1996 in favor of eight vaguely delineated interdisciplinary programs that allow the students themselves to design their courses of study…. It has been a long, slow death, and it would be unfair (although certainly tempting) to blame the current crop of students for the pending demise of their alma mater. The blame might be more fairly placed on four decades of decisions made by Antioch College faculty and administrators in the name of keeping Antioch at the forefront of “progressive” academic fashion, which led inexorably to today’s campus nearly bereft of students and treasury nearly bereft of funds.
And a random D.C.fact!! Antioch set up a law school in D.C., and it was so bad that when the school had financial troubles it was one of the first things to go. It was purchased by the University of the District of Columbia in 1986. The few people I’ve met who went to UDC for law were either crazy (Antioch influence?) or not terribly bright, though I am sure that many smart people have gone there. I wonder if Antioch alumni Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton had anything to do with the District’s bailout of Antioch?
Another D.C. fact is that James Renwick Jr., architect of the Smithsonian Castle on the mall designed Antioch’s main building. It’s DuBourg Hall, if you will.
At this point, you’re thinking Antioch got really one-sided in the early 2000′s. Filled with the kind of people who bitch and moan for diversity (meaning their type of diversity) yet cannot accept diversity of opinion — almost like a pre-cursor to Occupy Wall Street, but in collegiate format. Makes sense who nobody would want to shell out $40k a year to go there when Occupy Wall Street is free, though they don’t confer degrees.
But we haven’t even gotten to the fun part! Which gives me the license to cite another one of my favorite college movies, PCU.
This, in my expert opinion as a PCU buff, accurate description from Wikipedia goes as follows:
Besides Balls and Shaft, the other great nemeses of The Pit are a radical feminist group on campus known as the Womynists, and the college president, Ms. Garcia-Thompson (Jessica Walter), who is obsessed with enforcing “sensitivity awareness” and multiculturalism to the point where she proposes that Bisexual Asian Studies should have its own building (ousting either mathematics or hockey). The Womynists’ entire world view revolves around a paranoia about rape culture and all things phallic, and they are known to hold protests at parties chanting “hey hey, ho ho, this penis party’s got to go!” Ms. Garcia-Thompson conspires with Balls and Shaft to get The Pit, their mutual nemesis, kicked off campus, giving Rand control of the house.
The Pit responds by throwing a party to raise funds to pay off their debts and keep their house. The Womynists take offense to The Pit’s flyers advertising the party, and hold a protest outside. The party at first appears to be a failure. However, a series of unlikely events results in George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic performing at the party. Students begin streaming in and the party successfully raises the funds to keep the house.
Insert Antioch in the early 1990′s:
The widely-publicized date-rape policy that catapulted Antioch onto Saturday Night Live and into nationwide ridicule in 1993 was a kind of object lesson in what can happen when demographic implosion (reducing the student body to its most radical core) unites with a laissez-faire administration philosophy that consists of giving even the most extreme factions everything they want. The extremists in this case consisted of a group of student feminists who called themselves “Womyn of Antioch” (a title that might have sent up a red flag to administrators elsewhere) and claimed to be reacting to two incidents of date rape on the Yellow Springs campus in 1991, which they said the administration had ignored. No Antioch students were ever charged with those offenses either formally or informally, much less found by a college tribunal to have committed them, much less prosecuted for any crime by outside authorities. Antioch’s archivist Sanders said that the alleged rapes might have been more a matter of “perception” than reality. Nonetheless, when the Womyn “stormed” (the word comes from Antioch’s website) an Antioch community meeting and insisted on pushing through the policy they had drafted regardless of parliamentary niceties, the administrators and faculty who were supposed to be on at least an equal footing with the students at those meetings, if not their superiors on the basis of maturity and experience, said, oh, okay.
The Womyn-drafted sexual-offense policy read: “Verbal consent should be obtained with each new level of physical and/or sexual contact/conduct in any given interaction, regardless of who initiates it. Asking ‘Do you want to have sex with me?’ is not enough. The request for consent must be specific to each act.” The penalty for even being accused of failing to obtain consent for one of the “levels” was immediate expulsion without a hearing or any other rights. Not surprisingly, when word leaked out (it took a while) that Antioch’s board of trustees had actually approved the policy and made it official, the reaction of the non-Antioch general public was . . . laughter all around. One wag estimated that Antioch required a student seeking a home run in the baseball game of sex to ask for the consent of his beloved a total of 150 times. A few years later, after much media mockery and several threatened legal challenges over the lack of due process, Antioch modified the policy to bring it into line with other colleges’ procedures for handling accusations of date rape and related sexual offenses.
Maybe PCU was based on Antioch college. It’s so similar, it is eerie. Now, the crescendo of bat shit craziness that was the cherry on the top for Antioch was inviting former Black Panther (and convicted murderer!) Mumia Abu-Jamal to be their commencement speaker. The college also invited 9/11 firebrand Ward Churchill in 2005, but the school’s administrators disinvited him in a rare feat of sanity.
Antioch had a new President, Steven Lawry. From the accounts I’ve read, he seemed like a stand up guy. He busted kids for pot on campus, disciplined students that wrote him vulgar emails, and put a stop to those putting lewd classifieds in the school rag. And, he understood that money is the lifeblood of a school. Who knew? Endowments, lewd jokes aside, are only useful when they are big — or “how you use it” some might say. Somehow this crazy place managed to get a sane captain, but could he fix things?
It’s easy to predict how this ends. A realistic guy trying to turn around an island of misfit toys? Ousted. Not every story has a happy ending like Moneyball. Lawry, according to the Chronicle for Higher Education, was pushed out by the radicals at Antioch. The author of that article wrote one my University’s President on a topic I have some involvement in, and I tend to think that the author, Scott Jaschick, is a fair reporter.
Antioch took some time off for a few years. Kind of like the Cleveland Browns did. Now they’re back, and all we’re seeing on the news is “How to get a $106,000 college education for free“ No mention of its radical history, its absolutely crazy students who ran the place like an insane asylum. None of that. These headlines are as unbelievable as those stupid advertisements that read “Obama wants moms to go back to school” with the bearded guy in the ad.
And you wonder why people don’t trust the news media these days. This is a great example because rather than report a story, they just say “Look! Free college for everyone who gets accepted!” No mention of why the school shut down, since apparently “among other reasons” suffices, and more importantly NO REPORTING ON WHETHER THE SCHOOLS IS STILL FILLED WITH FUCKING CRAZY PEOPLE.
This former editorial writer isn’t outraged, but rather, just not surprised. Providing folks with the real story doesn’t have to revolve entirely around the past and why the college closed. However, they should cite why Antioch closed with some real reasons. They should be telling viewers whether or not the place is still haunted with the ghosts of the insane. A viewing audience shouldn’t be lured in by the fact that it’s free, but rather, should be told the facts and the history so they can make an informed decision about whether or not getting a degree (free or not) from Antioch College is in their best interest.
That, in my opinion, is what journalism should be about.
Feel free to sound off in the comments or the new facebook comment system.
The author is an Ohioan who currently works as a contracted researcher but is not a reporter or a writer. He has no ties to CNN/CBS/NYT/Weekly Standard. These views are solely those of the author’s and not that of any employer past, present, or future.
I think those apps are all fine and good, but I have some of my own suggestions for you:
The bomble app — yes, you can read my blog on the go. (Cost: Free)
Wolfrom Alpha — This is the swiss army knife of smart phone apps. It will give you answers and amazing analysis. They call it the “world’s definitive source for instant expert knowledge and computation.” They are right. (Cost: $2.99)
ESPN Score Center – Wanna know the score on the go? This is your app. (Cost: Free)
Any Google App — I have them all.
Juice Defender – Has saved my battery tons of juice. I started with the free version and upgraded. It was a great decision. (Costs)
I’m writing brief blog posts on these 8 guideposts for economic thinking.
1. The use of scarce resources is costly; trade-offs must always be made.
2. Individuals choose purposefully — they try to get the most from their limited resources.
3. Incentives matter — choice is influenced in a predictable way by changes in incentives.
4. Individuals make decisions at the margin.
5. Although information can help us make better choices, its acquisition is costly.
6. Beware of secondary effects: economic actions often generate indirect as well as direct effects.
7. The value of a good or service is subjective.
8. The test of a theory is its ability to predict.
This third tenet is a simple one: Incentives matter — choice is influenced in a predictable way by changes in incentives.
However, this is also one of the tenets that also is one of the most bastardized economic principles, but we’ll get to that later. Suffice to say, there is a vast difference between intrinsic incentives and artificial incentives.
When I walked out of work last night, I made a conscious decision — do I walk up hill into the wind to a metro station that is closest or do I walk a little bit further to another metro station that is down hill with the wind at my back and near a tasty McDonald’s? (I chose the latter.)
I made a choice: walk a little longer with less wind in my face and McDonald’s goodness. For me the incentive was McDonald’s and less wind in my face. For others, the incentive might be that they like wind in their face and a more strenuous walk after a day of work. Incentives can vary based on an individual’s preferences. However, most times, these are somewhat predictable.
Whatever the issue, if a choice yields more and more benefits, one becomes more likely to pick that option. With very few exceptions, there are always substitutes.
Longer Walk:
Pros: Downhill, no wind in my face, delicious burgers
Cons: Longer
Shorter Walk:
Pros: Shorter
Cons: Uphill, wind in my face, no delicious burgers.
If you had to walk through an Occupy Wall Street encampment, WTO protest, or something you found objectionable to get there, the disincentives start mounting and things change. Similarly, the opposite of what we just examined is true: As costs associated with your decision yield less benefits, you will be less likely to make such a decision.
Now this is where politics comes in, and frankly just messes things up. Incentives and disincentives exist naturally. They do not have to be created. The people who you vote for want to create incentives and disincentives to win votes and be re-elected.
Examples:
Artificial Incentives: Tax credits for having children, buying school supplies, production of certain types of energy, donating to charity, subsidizing certain companies, activities or industries.
Artificial Disincentives: Excise taxes on cigarettes, alcohol. Taxing individuals for using a tanning bed, not having health insurance, putting tariffs, duties or import limitations on foreign made goods.
This list could go on for a very long time. But, if you assume there are natural incentives and disincentives, it’s easy to see why politics bastardizes economics.
“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” -Thomas Sowell
Let’s just examine one artificial incentive and one artificial disincentive.
WRITING OFF CHARITABLE DONATIONS — Naturally, this has its own incentive — namely doing good. You could make the argument that another incentive is feeling good about doing good, or buying good feelings.
But why does our tax code allow individuals to write off something charitable? Isn’t charity its own intrinsic reward? Sure it is. However, up to a certain point that varies from individual to individual, one cannot write off their charitable donations. Would people be charitable absent this write off? Sure. Do some people donate just to get tax benefits? Of course.
Politicians created this to please charities and people who like donating money. It’s a win win for that reason, and why this deduction is rarely ever brought up for suggested changes or elimination. Popular as it may be, it’s artificial.
SIN TAXES — Does consumption of alcohol or tobacco have incentives? Definitely — alcohol is delicious and can lead to fun times. Disincentives? Sure. Cirrhosis of the liver, cancer, premature death, ruined marriage/career/life. Without doing anything, these items have natural incentives and disincentives.
Insert politicians. Federal politicians increased taxes on tobacco products just a little over a week into President Obama’s term in office. There are state taxes, and even sometimes local taxes on these products. Mostly (in theory) these tax revenues go to fund health-care. They are regressive, in that they hurt poor people more than rich people, and higher taxes can lead to fewer purchases and less taxes for health-care.
Reasonable people will disagree on the role of tax expenditures and artificial incentives. Some argue they have merit, others argue they distort markets and are inefficient. I am in the latter group.
We cannot subsidize everything. The best way to subsidize everything is to subsidize nothing.
Take energy as a quick example. Coal gets special tax benefits, even though intrinsically it is cheaper and more efficient than many other forms of energy. Of course, that comes with the natural disincentive to it being a pollutant. Wind has a natural incentive of being cleaner than many forms of energy, but it has natural disincentives of being really expensive and inefficient. We subsidize that too. Why provide subsidies for either?
Or use steel as another example. Politicians protected Cleveland and the rust belt’s steel industry with tariffs and import quotas. Jobs were saved in the short term, but it interfered with the market and made steel more expensive for domestic producers. The unintended consequence of which was job loss in other industries.
Every time Congress artificially creates an incentive or disincentive, unintended consequences rear their ugly heads. However, these are rarely talked about by the politicians or advocates. More focus needs to spent on unintended consequences.
Few can argue that our labyrinth of federal incentives and disincentives is the best we can do in terms of an efficient, fair tax system that raises the funds necessary for funding government and nothing else.
Politicians of both parties are guilty of legislating through the tax code — whether it’s folks like Rick Santorum calling for more robust child tax credits or President Obama calling for countervailing duties on things like Chinese tires.
I plan to write more about fundamental tax reform and the challenges I think we’re facing in getting there. I’ve just gotta finish this 8-part series first.
A friend of mine complained there were too many political posts on facebook (in general) and not enough things involving Washing Machines. Fine. Here. Enjoy.
Fun game to play with strangers: Approach them with this dialogue (only works for men, sorry ladies.)
Ned: Phil? Hey, Phil? Phil! Phil Connors? Phil Connors, I thought that was you!
Phil: Hi, how you doing? Thanks for watching.
[Starts to walk away]
Ned: Hey, hey! Now, don’t you tell me you don’t remember me because I sure as heckfire remember you.
Phil: Not a chance.
Ned: Ned… Ryerson. “Needlenose Ned”? “Ned the Head”? C’mon, buddy. Case Western High. Ned Ryerson: I did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing! Ned Ryerson: got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn’t graduate? Bing, again. Ned Ryerson: I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple times until you told me not to anymore? Well?
Phil: Ned Ryerson?
Ned: Bing!
Phil: Bing.
Deep Twitter Thoughts by Jim Swift: The #Browns don’t have cheerleaders because all of the women willing to wear Orange skimpy outfits already work at Hooters.
So, this guy I went to college with is running for Mayor of Orlando. Orlando is a run by Buddy Dyer, a guy who had to step down while he was investigated for election fraud. He was cleared of the charges (he’s a Democrat) and is now the Mayor again. (Wait, you mean Democrats allegedly engage in voter fraud?)
If you live in Orlando, I can tell you that Mike Cantone is a nice person. He’s a very nice person. He is actually somebody I am not facebook friends with, hard as that may be to believe.
Orlando residents – should you vote for Mike Cantone? No. But if you’re 100% in disagreement with things I have blogged about, well, maybe Michael is your guy.
Why? Cantone was part of a group of SLU college Democrats who were loyal followers of the now-disgraced Jeff Smith. Jeff Smith had views too out of touch for St. Louis, and Michael Cantone has views too crazy for Orlando. I have other friends who volunteered for Smith who I stay in touch with. It’s just that Cantone was way to the left of Smith.
Now, Jeff is a nice guy who made a ton of mistakes. He went to jail and served his time, and his political views are not any bit close to mine. I would have a beer with Jeff Smith, just as I would Michael. They’re both perfectly nice people. While I do not believe that Michael Cantone is a corrupt or evil individual, I do think he just has political views that are multiple deviations outside of what that electorate wants. Especially for Orlando. I’d even posit that Jeff Smith was more of a moderate than Michael Cantone.
Even if legally acquired from their opponent’s headquarters, which is doubtful, this just exhibits judgement. Really. Bad. Judgement. People do stuff like this all of the time on both sides, and that doesn’t make stealing signs right (or even legal) but really? Getting photographed like this? Total lack of foresight.
Or, since he is a HUGE union advocate, accusing anyone and everyone of being anti-labor in a right to work state? That will win an election!
Remember how Rep. Bachmann got (rightly) mocked for not looking at the camera? Watch this.
Yeah, that’s a way to win a campaign or make a difference. Not. Is this a winning strategy? No. It’s suicide.
The idea of running in a campaign, well, is to win them. Picking a left-leaning city in a very conservative state can sometime yield results, ask Alan Grayson. I will admit that I respect that he is running a one in a million campaign. That takes guts. However, he has a better chance of winning Mega-Millions or Powerball than he does winning this primary.
I know two other people from my college years who have run for elected office. Another was a gal who ran for mayor of a town in Florida as a Republican. Her views weren’t as outside the mainstream as Michael’s, but her chances were equally as unlikely. It was a waste of her time.
Another is Stephen Webber, a college friend and former Senate colleague who won a Missouri House race. Even though he’s a Democrat, I have donated to his campaign and would advise friends that he is an acceptable candidate to vote for. In his case, it wasn’t that the stars aligned for him — he was a hard worker who shared the views of the majority of voters in his district. Relatively simple formula, really.
I guess my point to my political friends/acquaintances from college is this: Running for office when you have no chance takes balls. Nobody disagrees with that. Can you get lucky? Sure. But that’s the thing — most people don’t get lucky. I ran for student body president under similar circumstances. However, four years from now we’ll be at our 10 year college reunion talking about that crazy campaign you ran for whatever. We’ll think it was stupid and crazy.
Until you get to the point where you have a reasonable shot at winning, futile attempts just look crazy in the grand scheme of things. Plus, we can’t all be as awesome as Stephen Webber.
Sowell: The Republican establishment is smearing Gingrich (I respect Sowell, he’s one of my favorites. I think Gingrich has blurred the truth a ton of times, and now acts all hurt when he gets hit with the same tactic. This doesn’t make that intentional blurring of the truth right. It’s wrong. Negative campaigning ≠ blurring, and vice versa. Negative campaigning is more useful to voters than puff pieces because we just get more information that way. There is “good” negative campaigning and “bad.” Gingrich has engaged in and has been the victim of both.)
Random thought: Given the fallout over the gaffe Gov. Romney made challenging Gov. Perry to a $10k bet, does his staff really think that he should “double down” on the gambling rhetoric by telling voters he’s here “to collect” on Obama?’ This is a mistake.
Random thought: It is blatantly misleading to count Super PAC money as spending by candidates when saying “Candidate X outspent candidate Y.” In that scenario, you can only honestly use direct campaign spending since that is all that is controlled by a candidate.
