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The Importance of Campaign Yard Signs

Political yard signs are more than cardboard on a stick, they represent the very foundation of what our government is all about. Political yard signs give citizens a voice in how the country is run. They clue the voting public in that the time is here to make some important decisions about our country. When it’s this important, why leave it to chance.

Further Your Candidate’s Cause with Election Yard Signs

Election yard signs may be considered bottom-of-the-barrel marketing when compared to more flashy forms of political advertising. However, they are a favored grassroots marketing tool that has stood the test of time. Used by local political candidates and those who aspire to national offices as well, they are tried, true and effective. One might say that election yard signs are the granddaddy of all forms of political marketing.

Given how election yard signs are, their design should not be left to chance. It is an extremely important part of turning a “Nay,” into a “Yay” vote, and vice versa. Design is imperative in election yard signs because they convey a message about who the candidate is and what they stand for. And bear in mind, Americans are infused with thousands of marketing messages on any typical day. To be noticed, your message has to, at a minimum, stand out. How can you do this?

2 Crucial Design tips for Election Yard Signs

They have to see it to believe it: Many are so eager to get their candidates message across that they try to crowd everything onto one sign. This has the opposite effect, as most passersby won’t have the time, or inclination to take in the whole message. So, make your campaign lawn sign readable. This is best achieved by stick with a simple, powerful message.

Decide on Its Purpose: Campaign yard signs generally serve one of three purposes: to garner votes for a particular candidate, to encourage voters not to vote for a candidate or to heighten the awareness of a candidate. Decide which purpose you want before you set out to design your Campaign yard signs.

July 29th, 2008 Posted by Precision Signz | Politics | no comments

An Approach To Politics & Partisanship

Over and over, political activists are tackling the problem of long-term incumbents. Once someone has been elected– or worse, re-elected– they become difficult to unseat. Political observers contend that this situation leads to less effective government, and a little too much coziness between elected officials and their big donors and lobbyists.

Many state governments have therefore instituted laws that limit the length of time an official may serve. Efforts at implementing these controls in D.C., however, have uniformly failed, with the exception of the Commander-In-Chief; he/she is limited to two terms.

Political observers, however, have noted these limits are not entirely a good thing. Edmund Burke pointed out that skillful governance is a trade, a profession even; there is much to learn about running government. It takes at least two years for most elected freshmen to learn even the basics of a job. To learn enough to move into a position of real effectiveness may take 10 years or more.

Louisiana is one of the states to have chosen to limit the years that elected officials may serve. This has caused a re-shuffling of anyone and everyone with long-term experience, and a lot of our hardest working representatives have lost elections, or have simply chosen to leave public service. So it appears that the only real experience left among the elected personnel, may be the UN-elected personnel, the bureaucrats and the hired representatives of special interest groups. Not exactly an improvement, that.

Another problem is the nasty partisanship we see. The infighting has reached levels not seen for decades, to the point that effective governance has become a side-show, a secondary concern. Everyone is so busy trying to make the other guy wrong, that no one knows what is right anymore. At a point that the Soviet Union no longer divides the world, at a time that America could be leading the world in fighting oppression and suffering, we are simply fighting with each other instead.

I have an idea about how we might kill two birds with one stone: Extendible Limits. After a candidate has served the maximum years allowed by law, a vote of the governing body– by private ballot– in which he has served might allow him to stand for re-election: a simple majority would be required for the first post-limit election, and with each successive election bid an increasingly higher required majority would be required: 53%, 56%, etc.

And for the executive office, perhaps candidacy beyond the basic term limits would require those percentages of both houses.

The impact from this could be large. ‘Good old boys’ who cut self-serving deals– and who are not above cutting a few corners in the process– will quickly find themselves unable to stand for reelection. Those who choose to do the real work of democracy, cobbling together coalitions, and negotiating to identify consensus opinions, will find their influence constantly increasing.

And the politicians who prefer ugly games will find themselves out of office, but quick. They will serve their terms, and be gone.

The elected officials who have the wisdom and the patience to build our country– and our world– will see their political strength increase rapidly. And all of them, the length of their service, and the height of their influence, will correlate directly with the effort, passion, and intelligence they bring to the job.

February 16th, 2008 Posted by Josh Skandar | Politics | no comments

Opera Great Vahan Mirakian Wins Immigration Case: Returns To U.s.

I met Vahan Mirakian through a mutual friend, his attorney, almost two years ago for the first time in a small tourist town, a paradise of sorts on the Pacific near Tijuana called “San Antonio”. The town was gorgeous as was the ocean view from Vahan’s Villa patio. Vahan’s face looked old and tired, as if he had given up. I would find out later, he virtually had.

Vahan had reason not to be smiling. He had been through a living hell. And it was not getting better. His case seemed more complicated all the time, and he had the best representation available. Still, things did not look good. Even paradise, to Vahan, looked like a lifetime sentence. He would be away from the United States and the love of his life, Marika A.

Vahan had, a year ago, been arrested at LAX at age 70, handcuffed, dragged through the airport, made to sign papers he did not understand, detained, and then deported, and not allowed to return on a technical violation.

I can only imagine after 9-11, that most immigration officers at airports in their zeal to keep us safe, tended to be more aggressive if a violation was found, than not. But Vahan was hardly a threat to anyone. This man was a world famous opera tenor, in fact one of the top five anywhere, and a former resident at the Bolshoi, not to mention having been scheduled to play Carnegie Hall.

Though he did not understand my English (even a lot of Americans don’t as I was raised in Mississippi, and I did not understand his Armenian, we understood each other and developed a great affection. Whatever words we did not understand were quickly interpreted by our mutual friends.

Several months later, I returned to Los Angeles to visit our mutual attorney friend, and we drove again to Mexico to visit Vahan Mirakian. He was more sad than I had seen him before (if this was possible) , and his complicated case was not looking good. His fiance Marika, a television producer and talk show host at Armenian TV in Glendale, had to commute every weekend she could to be with Vahan. The strain was beginning to wear on the relationship.

This time it was my 53rd birthday, and we went to a small restaurant called La Fonda’s, really more or less a dive with an American pop band and very good Mexican food. At the break, I mentioned to the manager that one of the world’s top opera stars was at our table and asked if he could sing accompanied by the band. “Of course,” said the manager. I had not even asked Vahan yet but he gladly agreed. He had not sung at any venue in over a year and music was and is his life.

As it turned out, most the band opted out but the saxophone player was keen on doing a duo. When they started O Solo Mia, you could hear a pin drop in this packed establishment. It was surreal, like something out of a Salvador Dali painting. Nobody could believe their ears and kept yelling for an encore when it was over.

What a surprise when this man dedicated O Solo Mia to me. Here was a talent who played the top venues of the world, and was enabling me to have the best birthday of my life. I will never forget it.

Today, nearly another year later, I received an email from our mutual attorney friend that his case cleared. He is a free citizen again in the U.S. and living in Los Angeles. He plans a nationwide and possibly a world tour at age 71. His voice is as clear as ever and I can hear the well-known masters every time he opens his mouth.

The Vahan Mirakian Foundation helps disadvantaged Armenian youth find their voice in music. It does wonders for those who would never have a chance otherwise. I salute this man for hanging in there and putting up a fight for his justice. I salute the American system for allowing him another chance to make it in this great country.

America rarely lets me down, and it proved today, that it truly lives up to what is on the base of the Statue Of Liberty and in our Constitution. May Vahan live and sing to be 120.

January 6th, 2008 Posted by Rick London | Politics | no comments

Do Liberals Dominate Higher Education?

First of all, a disclaimer: I tend toward the liberal more often than the conservative. Having said that, I don’t generally read liberal commentators, but almost always read George F. Will, a highly-respected conservative editorialist.

My reasons for reading Will are simple: George usually gives good reasons for his arguments. Agree or not, I can see a logic to his conclusion.

Overshadowing that, however, Mr. Will may be conservative, but he is not an automaton. He regularly disagrees with other conservatives, and conservative elected officials. Critical thinking is, well, critical: if someone always toes the party line, then it seems unlikely that she is thinking for herself.

However, I disagree with a current topic that George has taken up. He contends that higher education is dominated by liberals, and improperly so.

As a way of contrasting and comparing, consider that the US Military is the best-funded branch of government. If you add the Veterans Administration to that, Military funding increases significantly. Well, the men and women of the Armed Services, and the many businesses that support the Military, are conservative– by a wide margin. So we need to ask why that political disparity isn’t a concern.

Large corporate interests now influence our private time, by constantly advertising their services and products to us. Most of the entertainment and news outlets are now also owned by large business, and critics constantly decry the loss of independence in news. Big businesses are run and staffed by people who, not surprisingly, are almost all conservative. So here is an enormous educational counterbalance to our colleges, and one that influences us from cradle to grave, not just for 4 years. But there is no outcry about that.

And our Churches, which ostensibly are our moral guides, are increasingly moving to the right. Evangelical churches, the fastest growing part of Christendom, overwhelmingly vote with conservative candidates. But Will doesn’t worry about those.

So my first question is, does George F. Will fret that some critical aspect of our country is too partisan? Or is his concern simply that it isn’t his party?

With that, we need to consider analytical thinking, critical to America, but also to the doctrine of Free Will. If teenagers and young adults only experience conservative concepts then have we circumvented their Free Will? If our students are not exposed to liberal ideas, have we extinguished the student’s ability to think objectively, in order to serve contemporary (and possibly transitory) political ideas?

Consider the implications. If as I have contended, the bulk of private life is dominated by conservative corporate messages, when will young adults have the opportunity to hear other viewpoints? If we believe that our young people need to consider all viewpoints– and we do, in our deepest American and religious convictions– if our universities don’t play Devil’s Advocate, who will?

George Will cannot argue that we should deny students the same democratic freedoms, and the same religious freedoms, that he exercises.

This arrangement certainly seems to work well in the real world. Our students go through “liberal” colleges, but then elect representatives from either party, from both wings. Liberals may dominate the college, but they have not extended that dominance to our political life. The citizen thinks for herself; perhaps precisely because she has an understanding of diverse viewpoints.

Last, we need to consider what a university is for. If, as the name suggests, conservatives ‘conserve’– i.e., defend the traditional– then obviously, our universities need to be liberal. Our universities are our primary institutions of research, which means that one of their primary missions is precisely to question the traditional, to examine what is currently believed. If progress is a matter of constantly questioning the accepted and the obvious, then to be effective, our universities will always place themselves in opposition to conserved ideas.

And so, to be effective, our universities must be liberal.

So with all due respect to Mr. Will, I would hope that he stops criticizing our universities for being liberal. If they were not liberal, they– and we– would not be doing our jobs.

January 6th, 2008 Posted by Joseph N. Abraham, M.D. | Politics | no comments

Your Introduction To The Global Warming Debate

You can’t swing a dead cat without hearing about “global warming” these days. There’s no shortage of people like you and me and celebrities getting plenty excited about it. Experts offering proofs and disproofs abound. What the heck is it? What exactly is global warming? With so many pressing problems in our world, are we wasting our time by getting involved in what many claim to be media hype a media hoax? Why do so many seem to be “debating” the issue? Arethere actually clear-cut dangers lurking in our future?

Scientifically, global warming refers to the process of the earth’s temperatures rising at rates that exceed what can reasonably be expected. In plain language: our days getting hotter and hotter, sooner and faster. Greenhouse gasses, by consensus, are the culprits behind such rising temperatures. In turn, pollution-breeding industries are the culprits behind greenhouse gases.

Slight temperature rises may not appear to be cause for worry, but the implication is that these temperature rises are unbound. That they will continue to grow over a short period of time with nothing to stop them and thus wreak havoc with the world as we know it. Temperatures up: hotter temperatures on the ground. Temperatures up: the melting of large ice masses. Melting of the ice masses: flooding all over the world. Flooding all over the world: coastline towns, villages and cities underwater, with millions upon millions displaced or dead as a result of such catastrophes. Picture if you will, huge portions of California, Florida, Texas, New York, England and many many other countries going underwater. Those are the threats that global warming brings to the discussion table.

Are we already suffering from global warming? Many believe we are, citing the growing unpredictability of weather conditions and higher temperatures recorded worldwide. Many believe we aren’t, attributing these changes to other known or unknown factors– and often failing to provide scientific evidence to support toheir disclaims. The stakes are high. Our children and grandchildren risk being devastated by the decisions we make today.

The global warming debate is mostly populated by politicians, scientists and celebrities. Do we dare destroy our economy by taking actions against pollution and calamitous events that may not come to pass? Do we dare stand by and do nothing, ruining any hopes for a better tomorrow? Will we spend money foolishly to combat what might possibly be? Do we take the initiative and endeavor to protect our children’s and grandchildren’s futures?

There are two key tactics in debating global warming. Proponents frequently rely on the “think about what we are doing to our children” approach. They paint shocking word pictures of a Mad Max kind of a world our legacy to our own flesh and blood. Opponents, especially those who do not provide proof or facts, often dabble in the “attack the messenger” practice, spending much of their rhetoric in punishing the credibility of global warming advocates. Former vice-president Al Gore, responsible for bringing global warming to the forefront of public consciousness, bears the brunt of these attacks.

Keep in mind as we discuss and evaluate global warming that the human race is not the sole species which will suffer from global warming and greenouse gases and pollution. Animals that look to the waters an coral reefs for habitat and survival will be deeply impacted as well. Many already are, slain by the insufferable amount of toxins that we release into the oceans as a matter of daily life.

Take a stand on global warming, please. The future is at stake. But think. Do not allow yourself to be persuaded by emotional rhetoric. Ask for the facts, ma’am, just the facts. Beware of pseudo-scientists in sheep’s clothing disguising opinions as facts!

December 27th, 2007 Posted by Randolph Lindquist | Politics | no comments