Jon Henke Takes on "Paranoid Conspiracy Theory" Right-Wing Fringe

FYI, Jon Henke was George Allen's netroots coordinator, New Media Director for the Republican Communications Office in the U.S. Senate, Online Brand Manager for Fred Thompson's presidential campaign, and is co-founder of The Next Right. Thank goodness there's at least one person on the right who's willing to speak up, call out the lunatic fringe on his side of the aisle, and even admit that "the Republican Party has abandoned intellect." Good for Jon Henke, an honest - and brave - man!

P.S. Just for the record, I agree with Jon and strongly condemn 9/11 "truthers" on the left. Thus, while I despise Glenn Beck and greatly admire Van Jones' environmental work, I believe he made the 100% correct decision in resigning from his White House job because of his past support for "trutherism." IMHO, there's simply no place - ZERO - for that lunacy in the Democratic Party.

Thank You, Jon Henke!

Thank you, Jon Henke, for restoring my faith that there's at least someone on the right side of the political spectrum (broadly speaking) who has a brain when it comes to the issue of climate change.

What should Republicans do instead? Propose a carbon tax.

But, instead of a straight tax increase (as Democrats want), Republican should propose a carbon tax that replaces the payroll tax. That is revenue neutral, meaning there is no total tax increase.

Just one correction: many Democrats, myself included, have advocated a revenue neutral carbon tax for years now. Many of us, myself included, have specifically proposed exactly what you do here: offsetting the carbon tax with cuts to the regressive payroll tax. In other words, my friend (and former netroots adversary in the Jim Webb-George Allen race), we're on exactly the same page here.

P.S. This would also take the Republican Party away from idiotic, dangerous, self-defeating know-nothingism (as exemplified by Sarah Palin, "Joe the Plumber" and Eric Cantor) and back towards a Teddy Roosevelt Progressive party. That would make me very happy.

Jon Henke on "The Future of Journalism"

Over at Next Right, former George Allen netroots coordinator has written a fascinating post entitled, "The Future of Journalism". As he always does, Jon makes me think. Here are a few highlights, with my comments in italics.

*"The era of the printing press is ending. The era of Wordpress is beginning. We are all publishers now."

I would just add that we also all have access to cheap-and-easy-to-use-but-also-powerful video equipment, as well as a means to disseminate those videos. For more on this subject, read what filmmaker Eric Byler has to say about the democratization of communications technology.

*"I think we'll see the re-emergence of the ideological and partisan press - they're generally better at story-telling, because they have a story to tell - with fewer neutral/objective press organizations which can provide independent mediation for the competing claims of the partisan media organizations."

Exactly, and the great thing about blogs is that - unlike many newspapers, which CLAIM to be unbiased (I particularly dislike their "on the one hand, on the other hand" b.s.) but are NOT unbiased - they tell you right up front what their biases are. For instance, this blog is unabashedly Teddy Roosevelt Progressive and broadly pro-Democratic in political orientation. Which means, of course, that you should read every story on here with that in mind.

*"...the blogosphere exists, in part, because people are unsatisfied with the news, so there is room for more dynamic reporting - that is, an organization which covers a story in an almost Wikipedia-like model - updating and correcting a story as it emerges - with a team of editors and reporters collaborating (with input/feedback from the public) to create what amounts to a single "same facts" overview of a broad story."

Exactly. The news media can whine all it wants about how the blogs are killing them, but the fact is they have it completely backwards. In fact, it's the fact that people were increasingly "unsatisfied with the news" which - combined with the rise of the internet, blog software, etc. - resulted in the rise of the blogosphere. Sorry, news media, but if you're going to be mostly about triviality, opinion masquerading as fact, and "reporting" in the interest of corporations not people, what else do you honestly expect to happen?

If you think this discussion is interesting, I encourage you to read Jon's entire article here.

P.S. Jon "tweets" that "the Left is winning" the battle for the future of journalism.