Just an Average Voter

We made it through the mid-terms. Great turnout in Ohio, even if I did feel disappointed about the final outcomes. This disappointment felt different than two years ago.  Two years of thinking about elections, candidates and civic engagement. That is definitely more focus than I have ever had on politics, even if I have had some observations and commentary on it. Had some girlfriends over and we ended the night watching Schoolhouse Rock as we expressed our frustration at watching initial results fade to the results that we expected if we were being honest. (As a side note, I was shocked at how quickly my results viewing party of sophisticated ladies devolved to #RHoBH watching Nancy Pelosi acceptance speech. Blame the wine or blame the two sets of eyebrows on 80" screen or blame the robot at 5:55 here.)


Monday I was listening to Freakonomics and the topic was America's Duopoly. Let me just say that it offered me an escape from the 

WHAT CAN I DO AS AN AVERAGE VOTER 

conundrum. Why? Because it related the current situation of choosing and electing candidates to exactly the issues I had intuitively felt but couldn't define. The paper, written by Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter, doesn't just point out what we already know: gerrymandering, elitist, media bias, etc. It offers insights into root cause and suggestions for removing some of the barriers to participation and increasing engagement.  Reading and annotating has lifted my sense of purpose as I search for a way to contribute to the fixing of the system. Not going to be simple folks, but it provides a rational framework that addresses the problem as a broken market and thought American's are not known as the most effective market fixers, it is still a base to build on.

A first read through here resulted in a confirmation of what I believed in 2016 elections: An independent or third-party candidate needs to represent the AVERAGE voter. The two parties are NOT representing me in healthcare or education. C'mon Kasich, I am holding to what you shared with Trevor this week! 

"I'm an America before I'm a Republican or Democrat ." @JohnKasich does a damn fine job giving some of us hope. https://t.co/yeEX1SMyn4

— Shelly Bramer (@shellybramer) November 9, 2018

Education is the Way

Columbia University

Education is a key issue for me when it comes to government and politics. Education, along with Healthcare and Equal Rights, form the core of what inspires and motivates me personally when it comes to evaluating our local and national efforts to govern and the services our government should provide. Touring with Natalie to see Columbia University, Princeton, and Johns Hopkins was eye opening for me as while I've read and heard about the current challenges in seeking higher education, this first look at a school selection brought reality to my door. I understand supply and demand and demand for the types of private education we looked at indicates high demand. However, it reawakened the passion to understand why education in this country is not as obvious to everyone as a solution to so many travails in this nation.  We want people to WORK for social benefits, but we don't want to take on the effort to ensure they have SKILLS and EDUCATION to do work that actually contributes to our nation.

Reading through this opinion piece this morning gives an interesting perspective that wrapped up several concepts related to our education systems. If we don't provide an equally effective educational opportunity to everyone, then we should not be shocked that not everyone is able to pull themselves up to values that education brings: awareness of systemic inequality in our systems, readiness to learn by ensuring social determinants are addressed, establishing a foundational experience in elementary school that is positive and functional. Equality drive by education based on a healthy mental and physical well-being. Nicely wrapped up. 

Where are the facts for spending on a WALL?

In the pursuit of providing sources of information that can be used as an alternative to consumption of news and opinion sources, here is a great site to better understand the data associated with migration. The Mexican Migration Project is a significant set of facts and data around the issue / opportunity of migration.  Found this after listening to Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History this week. Learned from that podcast that the wall is actually keeping migrants here. (also learned that there are no published biographies of General Leonard Chapman which was disappointing.) Just spend 30 minutes looking at the results. My takeaway: over the last 8-10 years we have more than doubled the cost of a border crossing and reduced the probability of an undocumented Mexican crossing the border for the first time by 0.0135. That seems like an unwise investment.

Twitter Skew

I have never been a big fan of Twitter. I am sure that the assessment of my account would classify me as "not popular enough to have an opinion" but as usual I do. And pretty sure this post will turn into a bit of rant about the popularity of the platform in the news media versus the reality of my tribe who are simply re-tweeters of other content. Don't get me wrong. I use a "list" of sources to run through content announcements from a few who produce content that I read [Lynn Vos, Gartner, Taylor Griffin to name a few]. The tweets help me know that new content exists. And I might use that tweet to re-tweet that content AFTER I DETERMINE IT IS SHAREABLE. Oh, and I am aware of the IRONY that my blog gets shared via IFTTT automatically to Twitter.

I have been a user of all social media platforms from a long time because it impacts the technology areas I make a living with And it has provided a different lens for watching my daughter grow into an adult via preferred tools like SnapChat. But that approach, less emotional perspective for looking at the tech rather than the "likes", always left me with the opinion that Twitter fell short in several areas. From the beginning, there was a tilt towards short bursts of random opinions when you got beyond the use of the tool to share real content. The majority of early tweets, at least on my feed, were journalists and media writers. The tone of the writing, with the limit of characters, meant that the tweet contained a distilled version of a message. Concentrated. Over thought. Highly marketed to appeal. Opinions were incorporated into that distillation. It was clear that content being touted used this method to grab attention and push messaging. This has been true from the beginning. But as with all platforms, the messaging tone you picked up was overwhelmingly positive. Just not applicable to an un-curated reality. My news feed quickly filled up with self-promoting tweets driving to those individuals personal biases. So few of the users I was following provided any content that I could use to further my knowledge of Healthcare, Strategy and Models,  that I quickly figured out that it was just an advertising platform for most and a great place for comedians to try out one liners. And don't even get me going on the concept of commenting on tweets. Determined early that I got not time for that and so my personal usage of Twitter has waned over the years.

Twitter has always been skewed towards tweets that encapsulate and simplify. That has not changed. But it is a just a platform? When did the media decide that the platform represented reality? Twitter does not.  It never really has for many of us. And for sure the comments that are put out there do no represent anything that mean anything. Except maybe hate. Clearly it did to those journalists, reporters, media folk who were using it to promote their views opinions news. Now I cannot find any information (I hesitate to call it news though I have done that in this post several times) about world happenings that does not include some reference to a tweet that someone involved with the story threw out into the world.

Now we are fed news stories that actually allow for a Presentation tweet to be news?  And then a small part of our US population waits for those tweets so they comment the same extreme love/hate. How did that happen? When did we as a nation, heck a world, determine that Twitter Tweets were worthy of being actual news? It just seems silly. I will assume that any real journalist who uses a reference source of a 140 character tweet in a article has to feel some twinge of wrongness, right? Just because individuals can easily espouse an opinion about Russian hacking while standing in line at Whole Foods waiting to pay for their overpriced organic Chicken Nuggets doesn't mean we should read it or like it or for goodness sake retweet it. But tagging is real news content? A source of content? What the heck??? Ok, that was a bit of a rant.

What if we, the collective we encompassing ALL true journalists and reporters and readers of that news, decided a Tweet was not news, but just a damn Tweet? Because that is ALL IT IS!

Advocating for a Choice to Leave Poverty Behind

Reading through the week's news and interesting commentaries usually leaves me fired me up on some topic and this week was no exception. My first read of the morning had to do with recent updates from the Pew Company on Public Opinion on Abortion Rights. I was was not seeking any specific information out on this particular topic today, I just happen to believe that having an informed opinion is better than an uninformed one. I support Pro-Choice for reasons we won't go into here (at least today!), but wanted to understand where the rest of country stood. Of course Trump's "punishment" gaffe made this a trending topic, and not sure how I feel about the reason for having to be more current on this topic! My takeaway from reviewing is an understanding that this polarizing issue pretty much splits most Americans, with those against abortion in most/all at 41% of the total population and 56% felt abortion should be legal in most/all cases. Interesting. Hard choices for anyone really.

Then I read on into my weekly dose of non-partisan Constitution reading (yes, I am that nerdy) and ran across an article on what would happen if the Supreme Court ratifies or rejects the view at the case of Zubik v. Burwell, representing non-profit organizations, that may have objections to contraception and want to be exempt from required health coverage for contraception for employees. That's a continuation of the lawsuits brought on by the Hobby Lobby case (representing public corporations) in case you are not up to speed on your Supreme Court docket! Of course this topic is important due to the increased spending on health of women of child-bearing age, and projects I am personally involved with that are focused on pregnant populations and improving their overall health. But that was not really what was interesting. It made me wonder whose interests these cases were really focused on? Reading the overview of who was involved and whose interests these non-profits were focused on was quite a meandering journey! [Note that if you are looking for real people that have pious beliefs, keep looking as it's really an institute known as a  powerhouse law firm, not known for their intimate stories about raising a family!]

Since I started the morning wiht the knowledge that that only 41% of the adult population currently believes that abortion should be illegal in MOST cases but only 16% believe it should illegal in ALL cases, it made sense to me that this is the population who might therefore feels that abortion could be extended to include contraception. Again, not trying to argue the belief, it is what it is even though I have a different view. If we start with only 16% of the US population potentially opposed to contraception as a type of abortion, simple math tells us that the majority of our population that is most impacted is statistically NOT against contraception. So this is a minority (16%) imposing their will on a majority (84%). Even more telling is the fact that Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services has stated that

"In fact, nearly 99 percent of women in the United States have relied on contraceptive services"

So I feel fairly confident my simple math will apply here. If we assume that most women are actually seeking contraception then who does this case really benefit? I acknowledge that these issues are complex, but it does come down to choices and who decides what what choices you have. I do feel the need to represent the stories of a few of those women in the 84% who need an advocate in their lives. These stories are real. Access to contraception is a major effort within the healthcare industry and it drives significant socioeconomic factors for these women for the most of their lives. There are young women with unfortunate circumstances and issues such as homelessness and mental illnesses who are not prepared for self-care, let alone for caring for another. Where are these stories in the push to eliminate a choice that might give them hope to live a life outside of poverty? Who is advocating for the women who just need a few choices that many of us might not need? Reducing contraceptive choices leaves women with much harder choices to make.

And furthermore, we are all aware of Trump's "shining moment" follow-up that came when he was asked whether the man who created an unwanted pregnancy should be punished, too.:

“I would say no,” Trump quickly decreed.

Therefore, in a Trump presidency, the companies who want the exemption from contraception might directly be ensuring women who end up with an unwanted pregnancy and choose to abort are punished (I don't believe this would ever happen, but it works as a great summary point here). And is that what the non-profits in the case before the Supreme Court really stand for or is it just a byproduct of imposing their minority view on a choice that helps avoid much harder choices? I know, lots of assumptions, but look at how politicizing women's choices drives women even further away from living in a world where advocacy makes a difference.

I will leave you with what I thought was the most telling stat that summarizes my whole view...