An open letter to Advocate readers
Feb. 26, 2009
Dear Readers:
This is not the letter I hoped to be posting four months after starting the Advocate, but if an online news service is going to yell 'transparency' at every turn, it had better be willing to play by it's own rules.
Put plainly, as a business venture, the Advocate is failing.
Our business model has four indexes to track growth and predict success of the venture: Readership, community involvement, classified use and, of course, paid advertising. I am sad to report that we are faltering badly on three of those.
While readership numbers have climbed steadily since it's inception, now topping 3000 total page hits, and over 300 readers a week, the sparse use of the 'Classifieds' section, and almost no interest in paid advertising has failed to instill lender confidence, thus denying us access to funding needed to expand the staff, or to go to print with a weekly paper.
These are failures that I blame on my own lack of salesmanship and failure to factor in funding for advertising, believing that word-of-mouth and easy internet linking would be sufficient to get the word out.
Community involvement has to be graded as mediocre. Institutions such as the local colleges, government offices and law enforcement, realizing that every information outlet has value, have been willing contributors.
But surprisingly, organizations like ISD boards, economic development agencies and even chambers of commerce have been less than cooperative, many failing even to return messages or respond to letters of introduction.
In short, the shoe-string budget we were operating on is gone, and the need to pay personal bills now has to override both desire to publish and belief in the need for a service like this for Upshur County.
The site will stay open, but article postings won't be daily events.
In closing, I would like to thank everyone who is providing information and news releases, and the readers who return daily looking for timely and topical news of interest to Upshur County and the surrounding area.
Sincerely,
DeWayne Spell
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"Please bear in mind that the Federal Reserve is only one arrow in the quiver that can be deployed to restore the nation's economic vitality. The power to stimulate activity through taxing and spending the American people's money lies with the Congress of the United States.
"All eyes have been on the stimulus package recently passed by the House and Senate and signed by President Obama. This was no easy task, and it was accomplished with unusual alacrity. Only time will tell if the stimulus will give our economic engine an activating short-term jolt without encumbering or disincentivizing the entrepreneurial dynamic that has made for the long-term economic miracle that is America.
"Next, our political leaders must agree to the funding, if any, of the Treasury's proposals for the resolution of the banking crisis so as to make the system more stable and viable—a resolution, as Thomas Friedman reminds us in Sunday's New York Times, that needs to be done in a manner that encourages winners rather than 'bailing out losers.'
"And, on top of all that, they must begin, now, to dig us out of the very deep hole they themselves have dug in incurring unfunded liabilities of retirement and health care obligations—programs that are already on the books but have not yet been paid for—that Pete Peterson's foundation calculates at $56 trillion and we at the Dallas Fed believe total over $99 trillion.
"If you do the numbers, you will find that some 85 percent of those unfunded liabilities is due to Medicare; a budgetary Heimlich maneuver is urgently needed to keep Medicare from choking off our economic prosperity." -- Richard W. Fisher, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Feb. 23, 2009
Italics ours.
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Empower Texan's writer comments on state representatives telling Washington what should be obvious
By:HumbleTravis
Empower Texan's Website
Texas has become the latest state to introduce a resolution regarding the 10th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. House Concurrent Resolution 50 simply recognizes that the individual states can claim sovereignty on all matters that are not specifically granted to the federal government. It is not a "secessionist" resolution, as has been falsely reported elsewhere.
It is a shame that it took the stimulus package for something like this to be introduced, but there have been moments when our legislature stood up for Texas in recent years. In 2007, the state House and Senate both passed legislation that would've investigated whether or not Texas law was being negatively affected by international entities and arrangements including NAFTA and the United Nations. That bill was vetoed by Rick Perry. The sovereignty resolution acknowledges that "a number of proposals from previous administrations and some now pending from the present administration and from congress may further violate the Constitution."
HCR 50 includes a strongly worded message to the federal government:
RESOLVED, That this serve as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That all compulsory federal legislation that directs states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding be prohibited or repealed;
The resolution was authored by Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe), Leo Berman (R-Tyler) and Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola). A similar resolution (HJR 1003) was recently passed in the Oklahoma State House of Representatives.
Reprinted by permission.
Empower Texan's Article
Empower Texan's Website
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