Media Watch

I've asked my Iowa Assembly members Sen. Matt McCoy and Rep. Jo Oldson to help stop Iowa House Study Bill 130 and Senate Study Bill 1228 . If passed and signed by Gov. Branstad these bills would immediately create a brand new law called "Iowa Transportation Network Company Insurance Act" designed to crush taxicab competition by putting draconian burdens on rideshare drivers, ultimately resulting in fewer transportation options for Iowans and prospective Iowans, as well as tourists. We need an environment in Iowa that allows innovation and free market competition to flourish, and this is a step in the wrong direction.

Poverty exists because too many workers aren't paid equitably by corporate American capitalists for the fruits of their labor, limiting consumer spending, which hurts the economy, which kills jobs, creating high unemployment, which creates the need for a compulsory levy on other people's earnings to pay into the welfare system. The business model of corporate America is to keep labor costs as low as possible, but if small businesses on Main Street shared in that kind of greed (essentially pocketing more than their fair share of the profits, which they enjoy thanks in large measure to their labor force), they’d be run out of town. In recent years, corporate America has been able to get away with paying low wages precisely because of the high unemployment they caused in the first place; more workers competing for fewer jobs facilitates a low-wage climate. A lot of the job loss in this country is permanent because U.S. companies have been pushing production offshore, exacerb...

If having the more persuasive pitch in a competition between radio and television is considered stealing , then guilty as charged. Many people operate on the full faith and credit of bad information in perpetuity, and the conventional wisdom on Madison Avenue is no exception. Here are my top five reasons radio advertising is better than television advertising: 5) TV advertising is overpriced chiefly because it's easily disrupted by technology and a general collective attention deficit in the real world. 4) One doesn't require a study to prove that images are nearly superfluous in marketing; most people know innately that the most significant, powerful and lasting impressions in our memories are made by audio input to the brain. 3) The best marketing value in radio and social media is derived from the power of a personal recommendation from familiar, credible people; you don't need pictures for that, but sound is our most penetrating cue. 2) Without an intuitive pr...