Friday, June 19, 2026

How PR is leveraged to bullshit the public

Organizations leverage public relations techniques to manage crises, often utilizing specialized language to control narratives, freeze out critical press scrutiny, and apply "swine cosmetics"—a PR term for putting a positive spin on an ugly situation. By dictating what information is released and when, organizations can obscure deeper secrets and avoid accountability. [1, 2, 3] 

The Crisis Management Lexicon 
Public relations institutes and strategic communication agencies have built a sophisticated lexicon designed to freeze out aggressive reporters and sanitize unfavorable truths.

  • Swine Cosmetics: The practice of "putting lipstick on a pig." This involves reframing a disastrous situation or deeply flawed policy using carefully selected, sterilized buzzwords to make it appear palatable to the public. 
  • Controlling the Narrative: Establishing a single, rigid version of events that dictates which facts are prioritized, steering the public's focus away from systemic failures. 
  • Strategic Ambiguity: Using vague or complex language intentionally so that an organization avoids making a definitive statement that can later be used against them in a legal or public context. 

Boilerplate Press Release Elements [4]
When a crisis hits, organizations frequently deploy pre-drafted "holding statements". While they project an image of transparency, these statements are often constructed to buy time and release as few hard facts as possible. Common boilerplate elements include:

  • Acknowledge the seriousness of the situation: Standard public relations frameworks dictate that an organization must lead with care and validate public concern, stabilizing the narrative before facts are thoroughly verified. 
  • Reaffirm core organizational values: PR strategies heavily lean on reinforcing commitments to broader concepts like health, safety, and transparency. This psychologically reassures the audience by associating the brand with positive, uncontroversial ideals, rather than the immediate incident at hand. 
  • The rationale for releasing limited information: Organizations protect ongoing investigations, legal liabilities, or core secrets by citing the need to "prevent the spread of misinformation" or stating that "it would be inappropriate to speculate while the investigation is ongoing." This effectively justifies a media freeze and allows the organization to control the timeline of future disclosures. [11, 12]  

[1] https://www.5wpr.com/new/what-is-crisis-pr-a-comprehensive-guide-to-managing-communication-during-critical-times/
[2] https://www.linkedin.com/top-content/marketing/crisis-communication-in-marketing/public-relations-strategies-in-crisis-management/
[3] https://ivypanda.com/essays/public-relations-and-their-functions/
[4] https://channelvmedia.com/blog/what-is-a-boilerplate-in-a-press-release/
[5] https://www.trizcom.com/blog/crisis-holding-statements
[6] https://elliotcommunications.com/key-steps-for-effective-pr-crisis-management/
[7] https://goelastic.com/crisis-communication-for-nonprofits/
[8] https://www.trizcom.com/blog/crisis-communication-examples
[9] https://www.trizcom.com/blog/crisis-communication-examples
[10] https://www.topofmind-pr.com/why-transparency-with-your-pr-agency-prevents-reputational-risk/
[11] https://www.prsa.org/article/trust-and-transparency-in-times-of-crisis
[12] https://www.5wpr.com/new/the-role-of-transparency-in-crisis-pr/


at

Wednesday, June 10, 2026

The History of Ford's Assembly Plant in Des Moines, Iowa

 

The Central Campus building of Des Moines Public Schools, located at 1800 Grand Avenue, is a historic six-story brick-and-masonry structure that was originally built by the Ford Motor Company in 1917–1918 as a Model T assembly plant. It was designed to serve as a massive factory, with dimensions equivalent to six football fields, and later retooled to produce aircraft engines during WWII. [1, 2, 3]

Key Historical Milestones
  • 1917-1918: Constructed by Ford Motor Company.
  • 1920-1932: Served as an assembly plant for Model T, Model A, and later models.
  • 1932-1943: Operated as a Ford sales service branch and warehouse.
  • WWII Era: Retooled for Solar aircraft engine manufacturing.
  • 1953-1986: Transformed into Des Moines Technical High School (known as "Tech High").
  • 1986-Present: Became Central Campus, a regional magnet career-technical academy serving high school students throughout central Iowa. [1, 3, 4, 5]
Educational Evolution - In 1982, the district began the transition from Technical High School to Central Campus to offer specialized high-quality courses that were not available at local high schools. Today, it functions as a "Regional Academy" for Des Moines Public Schools, housing state-of-the-art curricula ranging from automotive technology—which still uses part of the original assembly plant layout—to marine biology, animal science, and culinary arts. The facility was undergoing major, multi-phase renovations as of 2013. [1, 6, 7]



at

What's wrong with TIF?

 

Tax Increment Financing (TIF) presents several primary drawbacks, including the diversion of funds from essential public services (such as schools and parks), reduced budget transparency, inequitable distribution of wealth, and the risk of placing an unfair tax burden on property owners outside the designated TIF districts. [1, 2]

Drawbacks of Tax Increment Financing (TIF)
  • Diversion from Public Services: TIF freezes the baseline property taxes available to overlapping taxing bodies. Consequently, entities like local school districts, libraries, and public safety departments lose out on growing tax revenues that would typically fund their operations.
  • Budget Strain: Because TIF districts isolate increments for specific development projects, general city budgets can shrink. This reduction in unrestricted funds sometimes forces municipalities to raise tax rates on properties outside the TIF district to maintain community-wide services.
  • Lack of Transparency: TIF funds can operate outside the normal civic budgeting process. This can result in limited public oversight, making it easier for funds to be misallocated to politically favored projects rather than areas with the greatest public need.
  • Gentrification & Displacement: Subsidies used in TIF districts often accelerate rising property values and rents, forcing long-term residents and local, small-scale businesses out of the area.
  • Overstated Returns on Investment: TIFs are intended for developments that would not occur "but for" the subsidy. However, municipalities frequently use them on projects that would have occurred naturally, resulting in a waste of public funds.
  • Financial Risk: If a development fails to generate the anticipated property or sales tax revenue, municipalities are often left to cover the municipal bonds or debt issued to fund the initial infrastructure. [2, 9]


at

Monday, June 8, 2026

Essay: How and why police officers never learn the fundamentals of constitutional law

 

Police training in the United States averages roughly 21 weeks (about 5 to 6 months), with only a fraction of those hours allocated to constitutional law. Once in the field, new officers rely heavily on the informal "occupational culture" of veteran trainers, resulting in the propagation of flawed legal knowledge, which is only corrected through liability-driven lawsuits and remedial training. [1, 2, 3]

The systemic issues mentioned reflect a documented cycle of inadequate legal instruction and informal learning in law enforcement:

1. The Short Academy and the Legal Void
  • Low Time Allocation: The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) highlights that the average length of basic training for state and local academies is roughly 806 hours, and foundational legal instruction is often limited to a few specific topic areas. Academies typically prioritize operational skills like firearms proficiency, defensive tactics, and vehicle operations over complex legal theory.
  • Surface-Level Constitutional Law: Instruction on the First Amendment (speech, assembly) and Fourth Amendment (search and seizure, probable cause) is often taught only as it pertains to absolute basics, such as reading an individual their Miranda rights or securing a warrant. Cadets are rarely taught to navigate the nuanced, real-time gray areas of lawful detainment, preventing recording devices, or stopping individuals in public spaces. [8, 9, 10, 11]
2. The "Apprenticeship" Model and Dissemination of Misinformation
  • Informal Training: Following the academy, officers transition to Field Training Programs, where they are partnered with older, veteran officers. During this phase, new recruits learn the "real" job, which frequently involves the transmission of habits, shortcuts, and legal myths.
  • Generational Telephone Game: Because many veterans learned the job through similarly flawed or outdated training, procedural and legal myths are passed down. This results in the institutionalization of misinformation across generations of a department.
3. Poor Supervision and Ineffective Oversight
  • The Normalization of Deviance: When poor supervision allows bad habits or unconstitutional practices to go unchecked, the agency implicitly endorses those actions. A lack of regular legal audits or strict oversight means that officers operate in a bubble where improper conduct becomes the accepted departmental standard.
  • Lack of Ongoing Education: Following basic certification, the average officer typically receives very little continuous training on evolving constitutional case law, such as Supreme Court rulings that directly impact how an officer may conduct a traffic stop or respond to a citizen filming them.
4. Corrective Action Through Litigation and Remedial Training
  • Catalysts for Change: Because internal oversight often fails to catch unconstitutional practices, departments are routinely forced to educate their ranks through the lens of litigation. Encounters that result in civil rights lawsuits, high-profile public misconduct, or Department of Justice (DOJ) consent decrees often serve as the primary catalyst for department-wide reform.
  • Court-Mandated Overhauls: It is common for agencies to overhaul their policies and institute mandatory remedial training—such as de-escalation programs or updated First/Fourth Amendment directives—only after severe public scrutiny or heavy financial payouts force the municipality's hand. [13, 14, 15]


at

Saturday, March 28, 2026

A few bad policy decisions of the 1900s

 

1913 – Implementation of individual taxes led to a bloated government, incentivized 85% of tax lobbyists to represent corporate interests, enabling overburdening of the workforce and the general marketplace, and giving business interests motivation to loot newly created government revenue on the backs of the tax-paying public.

1953 – Military conflicts debt-financed, not tax-funded, leading to enormous growth of national debt. Much of the fruits of our labor (treasure) go to military defense contractors.

1870-1970 – End of century-long trade surplus, leading to diminishing domestic wealth creation, dismantling of US manufacturing, urban decay, violent crime, and the drug war.

1971 – Nixon Shock, causing deep & broad economic instability, and individual wealth & income shrinkage, furthering blight.

1973 – Nixon’s HMO Act, incentivized for-profit speculative trading in medical care providers and pharma. Public medicine further gave-way to market-managed hospital care, pharma and related insurance throughout the 80s & 90s.

1981-1988 – Reagan deregulation led to broad corporate consolidation, destruction of the Fairness Doctrine, escalation of national partisan resentment, furthering corporate favoritism above public interest.

1996 – Telecom bill, enabled massive media consolidation, further diminishing local ownership of media enterprises.
at

Sunday, December 21, 2025

The Great Liquidation: Picking at the Carcass of America

The storefronts are empty, the pension funds are hollow, and the ticker tape continues to roll. To the casual observer, the American economy is a marvel of modern resilience. To the autopsy surgeon, however, it is a body being systematically harvested for its parts. We are no longer living in a period of growth; we are witnessing a global fire sale of the remaining assets of a once-prosperous civilization.

The tragedy of Sears—once the heartbeat of American retail—is not merely a story of bad management. It is a microcosm of the national condition. A venerable institution was stripped of its real estate, its brands were sold off, and its workforce was discarded, all while a few financial engineers extracted billions. This isn't "creative destruction"; it is the liquidation of the American foundation.

The Great Uncoupling (1971–Present)

The dismantling began in earnest a generation after 1972. When we severed the link between the dollar and gold, we didn’t just change a monetary policy; we abandoned a moral constraint. By shifting to a pure fiat system, we enabled a debt-fueled hallucination that masked the systematic destruction of our productive capacity.

Since then, the playbook has been consistent:

  • Export Production: We traded our factories for "service economy" promises, sending our middle-class lifeblood to cheaper shores.

  • Import Labor: We suppressed domestic wages by importing a cheap workforce, fracturing the social contract that once guaranteed a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

  • Deregulate & Strip: Under the guise of "efficiency," we stripped away the guardrails that prevented systemic looting.

Sovereignty for Sale

The political apparatus in Washington is no longer a check on this decline; it is a facilitator. Both major parties have been effectively overtaken by global profiteers. We maintain the "slight of hand" of a functioning democracy—the debates, the elections, the pageantry—but the policy output remains remarkably consistent: the protection of the financier at the expense of the citizen.

When production is exported, sovereignty follows. A nation that cannot feed, clothe, and arm itself through its own industry is not a sovereign power; it is a client state. We have traded the hard power of industrial surplus for the soft illusion of cheap consumer goods.

The Debt as an Autopsy Report

If you want to see the truth of our national failure, look at the National Debt. It is not just a number on a screen; it is a looking glass revealing the melting away of American sovereignty.

The soaring debt is the final stage of the fire sale. We are borrowing against the labor of unborn generations to pay for the "liquidation dividends" of the present. Every trillion added to that tally represents a further erosion of our ability to dictate our own destiny.

The Final Assessment

The global private equity movement is the clean-up crew of history. They are not builders; they are the specialists who arrive when a firm—or a nation—is worth more dead than alive. By picking at the carcass of the United States, they are merely fulfilling the logic of the system we allowed to take root.

The appearance of a functioning government is the last thing to go. But as the debt climbs and the last of the productive assets are shipped out or sold off, the "looking glass" becomes impossible to ignore. We are watching the sunset of a superpower, one leveraged buyout at a time.

at

Friday, October 31, 2025

Sam Harris on The Daily Show in 2010

 

Sam Harris on his book, The Moral Landscape; How Science Can Determine Human Values.

Appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

October 4, 2010


The challenge we’re faced with is to create a global civilization based on shared values, economic, political and social goals. We have to begin giving similar answers to the most important questions in human life. We have to talk about morality and human values in the context of our growing scientific understanding of ourselves in the world.


There is an intellectual and moral emergency. The only people in the world who think they have the right answers to moral questions are religious demagogues who think the universe is 6,000 years old. Everyone else thinks there’s something suspect about the concept of their moral truth.


Morality and values clearly relate to human and animal well-being. Our well-being emerges out of the laws of nature. It’s fantastically complex. Genetics, neurobiology, psychology, sociology and economics and everything that can influence the states of the human brain. All of these domains fall within the purview of science.


There’s a gulf between religious-based morality and the facts we’ve learned. In the best case, religion gives us bad reasons to be good where good reasons are actually available. In the worst case, it separates moral thinking from the actual details of human and animal suffering.


You have an institution like the Catholic church, which, based on its doctrine and actions in the world, is more concerned about preventing contraception than preventing child rape. It’s more concerned about preventing gay marriage than genocide.


Scripture is a real mixed bag. If you want to talk about getting wisdom from scripture, the God of Abraham gets slavery wrong. Slavery is probably the easiest moral questions we’ve ever had to face. If this book was written by an omniscient deity, the true source of moral wisdom in the universe, it should at least get the question of whether it’s right to own people and treat them like farm equipment right. The God of Abraham clearly expects us to keep slaves.


Anyone in this room could improve on the ten commandments in five seconds.


Most people in science believe there’s no place in science to say it’s wrong to oppress women. There’s an intuition that something has happened in the last 200 years of intellectual progress which has made it difficult to say that the Taliban is really wrong in their treatment of women. The moment you realize that the only way to ask whether it’s good for women to be forced to wear burkas is to wonder whether it’s good for human flourishing on any level. Does it make more compassionate men or confident women; does it improve relationships between men and women. We know at this moment in human history that the answer to that question is no. To doubt this scientifically is to pretend that we know nothing about human well-being.


There are so many ways to bring order that are objectively terrible, that make people suffer needlessly. We can understand this at the level of the brain, at the level of society. This is not a no-go area for science. Science of the human mind will understand how to make communities flourish and it’s a myth that we can’t get there through science.

at

Sunday, June 30, 2024

John Deere cut more than $1,300 jobs in Iowa so far this year

I feel for the loyal workers at John Deere, who for decades created wealth for the billionaires, and doing so at great cost to themselves, both physically and mentally. I’m sad for the 1,104 Iowa plants workers that have lost their jobs this year alone.

I think it’s safe to say the jury’s no longer out; the supply-side promise was and remains a failure for the economy at large. The wealth never trickled down and the lower tiers of society, which are on an accelerating decline, and that’s caused all kinds of societal dysfunction (decay, crime, illness, homelessness).

It's a fundamental fact that commerce relies on robust economic activity – a balance between cost of living and living wages – but no one’s explaining how the growing working-poor sector is going to keep Iowa business afloat. Sub-living (& lost) wages for Iowans is cutting into business’ ability to remain a going concern in our state.

Slashing payroll to fund stock dividends and $845 million in buybacks per quarter takes a giant dump on the American dream and the patriotic spirit that grew this country into the world's most prolific maker of goods and creator of wealth.

What's happening now should scare the hell out of every stockholder and corporate executive across the Midwest.

Waterloo          549
Davenport         230
Ankeny         166
Dubuque         100
Urbandale             59

     1,104

 

at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

How PR is leveraged to bullshit the public

Organizations leverage public relations techniques to manage crises, often utilizing specialized language to control narratives, freeze out ...

  • More than just "early adopters" Podcasting
    This is clearly not a small thing. Podcasting has unquestionably hit the maintream -- repeatedly. And they're not just 2-5 minute '...
  • Pawlenty in Iowa
    Former Minnesota Governor and possible 2012 GOP Presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty was a guest on WHO Radio's Jan Mickelson Friday, Apr...