Sometimes I feel like a broken record. We need to do something like this here:

The neighborhood of Roslindale, in the City of Boston, has adopted the use of the Interra Incentive Card. Interra is designed to be a consumer rewards program that gives incentives for people to spend their money with local businesses. These incentives are in the form of discounts, and donations to local non-profit community groups. Interra meta-objective is to get people thinking about the greater impact of their purchasing decisions…

Smart Mobs: Boston Launches Small Business Incentive Card Program

From this week’s PostSecret, MySpace.

Also:

The PostSecret Blog has had over 50,000,000 visitors, in the past two years. During that time I have rejected dozens of generous offers from advertisers. I believe keeping this website ad-free is one of the reasons strangers continue to trust me/us with their most guarded secrets.

But now I need your help. Your purchase of the three PostSecret books below, for yourself or as gifts, will continue to make PostSecret a “member supported community”.

And when you make any purchase (DVDs, music, books, etc.) from the link below, Amazon will contribute 10% of the purchase price to the PostSecret Project.

Thank you, -Frank
Support PostSecret Here Via Amazon

Michael thinks Ds can get these things done. What do you think?

Election Law and Voter Access: The evidence couldn’t be any clearer – e-voting has got to go. HAVA and local-level bullshit (like Ohio House Bill 3) has got to go. Partisan control of elections at every level of government has got to go. Federal standards and independent oversight that guarantees access and the legitimacy of the vote needs to be put in place. Luckily it’s on the leadership agenda as well - how high remains to be seen. Gerrymandering is an item that requires a state-level solution, and maybe, we’ll get the chance to try that one again.

Media Ownership: I see some people have caught on, and that’s half the battle. The other half requires comprehensive ethics - and campaign finance - reform, otherwise it’s an uphill battle that very likely cannot be won, despite the fact it would be in the benefit of the Democratic majority. I believe some interesting information on the solutions (it’s fine to bitch, but it’s also fine to actually do something) is to be found here and here [PDF] once the special interests portion of the equation is removed. And if memory serves, there’s some potential in community media efforts and journalism.

Poverty and the Gulf Region: Taxation reform is a long shot. Poverty on the other hand is not. It just requires some creativity (some of which is already available) and some willpower on the part of Democrats and moderate Republicans. As Katrina peeled away the veneer on poverty, once again, it’s long past the time something of substance is begun. Speaking of Katrina, it’s now well past a year since the hurricane. I believe the people of the region have waited long enough for some serious assistance as well.

Primary and Secondary Education: There are so many items in this subject area I most likely should have written a singular post on this subject alone. I have no solutions, as I know I’m not aware of all the problems - although I can immediately think of one person who has a good grasp on many of those - but, I do have one suggestion to make…

Lots of links in this post, so click thru to DMO

De Magno Opere - Back Because Subpoena Power Just Plain Rocks

A great resource from Ed Morrison:

The New Economics Foundaiton (NEF) designed this website to provide access to information for people concerned about their local economies. Most of the information on this website builds on the knowledge contained in our two how-to handbooks, Plugging the Leaks and The Money Trail. The website offers supplementary information – case studies, PowerPoint presentations, images, document and survey templates – to assist you in your own work to improve your local economy…

NEF | Plugging the Leaks

From Ed Morrison:

(The environment in Cleveland is tough for this type of change. The business and foundation leadership suffers from stubborn (some would said arrogant) thought and behavior patterns that slows learning.

It’s only a matter of time before Cleveland reaches a tipping point, though. Powered by the Internet, the emergence of new economic development models are happening everywhere.)

EDPro Weblog: Economic Development for Today’s Professionals

From Kyle:

According to a site called StateHealthFacts.org, Ohio is has the eighth largest population of uninsured citizens with 1,343,640. Roughly 12% of our state’s population is uninsured. As a percentage of our population, we are in a 4-way tie at 34th…

The Chief Source: On Healthcare In Ohio

The quotes are a bonus:

Some wisdom from Tom Waits: “There are only two things you can throw out the window of a moving car, legally. Do you know what they are? Water. And feathers. Everything else you can get in trouble for.”

AUSTINKLEON.COM » Blog Archive » COLORBLIND HEADCOLD

I don’t know how many of you know about a Cleveland company called Telos Systems. They’re not well known outside of their industry, but they’re a big name in the world of radio broadcast equipment. Among their product lines is their Axia Audio line of industry-leading IP network audio distribution equipment.

Case Western’s student-run radio station, WRUW, has been a beta-test site for Telos’ newest control surfaces for a little over a year now. Working with them, we have continued to improve what is in my (clearly unbiased) opinion the best radio station in Ohio, if not farther afield.

Amazingly enough, they love us as much as we love them. If you stroll on over to their client photos page, you can see who gets top billing. Ahead of Minnesota Public Radio, ahead of Radio Free Asia, we have pictures from WRUW-FM’s Axia installation. Local company taking pride in a local radio station, or a local radio station taking pride in a local company? Both!

Here’s an interesting post from the International Herald Tribune, reprinted from the New York Times. Link. Some excerpts:

Among the cosmopolites who live in secular enclaves, religion is automatically associated with darkness, superstition, irrationality and an antique or pre- modern cast of mind. It has long been assumed that religion is opposed to science, reason and human progress; and the death of gods is simply taken for granted as a deeply ingrained Darwinian article of faith.

…the current counterattack on religion cloaks a renewed and intense anxiety within secular society that it is not the story of religion but rather the story of the Enlightenment that may be more illusory than real.

 …Unfortunately, as a theory of history, that story has had a predictive utility of approximately zero. At the turn of the millennium it was pretty hard not to notice that the 20th century was probably the worst one yet, and that the big causes of all the death and destruction had little to do with religion…

…Instead of waging intellectual battles over the existence of god(s), those of us who live in secular society might profit by being slower to judge others …

Lots of people in this town are/should be wondering about this:

Over the next few days I will be participating in a GBN scenario workshop on the future of healthcare. I don’t expect the title question of this post to be a main focus of the workshop, but it has been on my mind lately, especially after serendipitously reading Matt Miller’s The 2% Solution right on the heels of Eric Beinhocker’s The Origin of Wealth.

Miller makes the (at first) startling statement that the US healthcare market is not innovative. But how can that be, with so much drug and gene research resulting in new breakthroughs on an almost daily basis, with new devices arriving on the market at an equally blistering pace?

It can be—and is—because the provision of healthcare is a different market from those dedicated to creating new drugs or new devices…

Tech Futures: Is Our Healthcare System Truly Innovative?

That’d be my guess. It appears Norm thinks so too:

While leaders in NEO haven’t grasped the potential of such a grass-roots infrastructure deployment, global visionaries, led by Argentine entrepreneur and philanthropist Martin Varsavsky, supported by visionary global technology luminaries like Google, Skype, Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital, have launched world-wide, from Madrid, Spain, FON - “the largest WiFi community in the world. Our members share their wireless Internet access at home and, in return, enjoy free WiFi wherever they find another Fonero’s Access Point.” Not only is FON a capitalist, money making service provider, but they are developing technology.

Wouldn’t that have been nice to make happen here. Well, we didn’t, and FON of Madrid did, and I’m exploring how we may partner with them to deploy a variation of their service here… Time to make East Cleveland a model for how this may occur in NEO.

What I am exploring now is how this scenario works in our local markets, focusing on East Cleveland, Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, and NEO region-wide. Considering, with good social promotion and local support, it would now be be easy to drive deployment of FON access throughout much of Northeast Ohio, and save residents lots of money, and make the region a global leader in information technology, it is unimaginable that many people will stand in the way. We’ll see who do, and deal with them as they come.

Extending Community Home Online - the ECHO for universal access is about to return home | REALNEO for all

From JMZ. I can’t imagine how bad the coffee was if the Folgers was better. Love the comments on this post.

Feministing

From Peter Chakerian on the Cool Cleveland blog:

Is it just me, or is he the single most quiet Mayor the City of Cleveland has had in 25 years? Correct me if I’m wrong… I’d just like to know where he is with initiatives and plans and ideas that he was offering up at his State of the Union address I went to at the City Club… not only is he quiet, but also not terribly visible in the ways that Campbell, White, Voinovich and Kucinich (for good or bad) were… I feel like I could find Waldo easier…

Cool Cleveland » “Where in the World is Carmen Sand… er, Frank Jackson?”

I’ve added Carole Cohen’s blog to my OPML. I notice she has a number of other blogs listed in her sidebar too. Comments are a great way for bloggers to find each other. If you’re a blogger and visit BFD, please leave a comment, even  if it’s just to say hello (or hello world!).

Believing In Cleveland

How will this approach scale?

Entitled Credit Yourself: The Way to Financial Fitness, the new program is designed to educate individuals and families on basic components of personal financial management to help eliminate barriers to mainstream banking and home ownership.

Key Foundation and East Akron Neighborhood Development Corporation Kick Off Financial Literacy Program

Michigan’s three research universities agree to expand collaboration.

This virtual research corridor represents a shared vision among the three schools’ presidents and provides for a more formal mechanism for collaboration among the faculty…

Michigan’s Big Three public research universities’ vision of a new University Research Corridor designed to stimulate the state’s economy through collaborative research is a decent first step that could be improved through further practical strategies and by looking at what works elsewhere.

MSU, U-M, Wayne State creating research corridor

I’m sitting here in Lorain at a citizen session to define the strategic issues and initiatives for Lorain County Community College. I’m watching a master at work.

President Roy Church is guiding our session, four hours smartly managed into conversation, work exercises and electronic voting. (”You have ten seconds to give us your top three priorities on the list!”)

President Church is clearly an expert in “strategic doing”.

He understands and applies an appreciative inquiry. He adopts an abundance mindset. He focuses on core issues. He articulates links and uncovers the meaning embedded in the group discussions. Supported by a small team from the College, he neatly summarizes these insights and quckly moves on. In sum, he has mastered the civic skills of promoting open discussion with leadership direction.

(LCCC has used this process in a number of different contexts, including developing their action plan for early college high schools. Tonight, LCCC is using keypad technology from a company in Youngstown. Turning Technologies . Cost about $2,000, according to Jeff Sherman, Director of the Spitzer Conference Center.)

At the end of the evening, he will deliver a written report of the evening’s events. I’ve been all over the country paticipating (and leading) regional forums. The team at Lorain County Community College is the best I’ve seen.

Jack’s reading “The Renaissance Soul” by Margaret Lobenstine:

The renaissance souls I know are as interested and fluent in politics and technology as they are in food, the arts, and friendships. A nap on any given day can be as good use of time as running fast in the blogsphere. They are unrestricted in their interests and varied in their passions. They define focus in the eastern way of broad awareness rather than in the western way of narrow focus…

It’s people like that who will change Northeast Ohio for the better.

jack/zen » Blog Archive » More on Renaisance souls

Bazaar Bizarre, the indie/DIY craft fair extraordinaire, takes place this Saturday at 1300 Gallery from noon to 9:00 p.m. There’s be coffee for George, and plenty of unusual handmade items for all the other stockings on your mantel from 25+ artists. This year we’re sponsored by CRAFT magazine and ReadyMade, so come early & grab some free copies.

Cleveland is one of 4 Bazaar Bizarre cities nationwide (the others are Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco), and this is our third year at 1300. Sadly, 1300 closes this month, leaving a large hole in the local arts scene. (Also, please note that the link above is the correct one for Bazaar Bizarre — the Free Times printed a link to Bizarre Bazaar, a NSFW Los Angeles show that is in no way related to this one).

What else is happening this weekend if you want to avoid the mall at all costs? The ArtCraft Building Holiday Sale is both Saturday and Sunday, which should give you ample time to get all your shopping done.

And then you can sit back with a cup of that coffee, no?

Over @ Hypothetically Speaking:

And, here are a few particular tea leaves that Fisher left in his cup for observeers to pick through. Sure, some of its rhetoric, but actually some of phrasing he uses are more or less code words that are meant to signal to experts where they intend to go:

Every state has its own unique, natural strengths. We will inventory those strengths and invest in those strengths. And make Ohio first in areas where we can attract the best and brightest talent and the best and brightest companies and workers from around the world and the country.

. . .

You cannot separate out primary and second and higher education from economic development and growth. So obviously we have a strong interest in making sure that every child in Ohio graduates not just with a certificate of graduation but with a certificate of skills that helps them succeed in the global market place, and helps them get the best possible job, preferably in Ohio, where they can raise a family and live here for the rest of their lives.

. . .

Gov. Strickland and I talked about creating an economic growth scorecard by which we can measure our progress and you can measure our progress.

I’m hoping Fisher will do a Meet.The.Bloggers* interview soon…

Hypothetically Speaking: More on Strickland/Fisher and economic development

Just heard from Adele. She isn’t feeling up to doing the interview tomorrow, so I’ve postoned it. Will be providing updated info ASAP.
Upcoming.org: POSTPONED: Meet.The.Bloggers Interview with Adele Eisner at Tower Press Building Suite 109 (Friday, December 1, 2006)

From Scott Suttell:

Tom Sudow, executive director of the Beachwood Chamber of Commerce, is one of the experts quoted in a New York Times story about how entrepreneurs and many small business owners struggle with the high cost of health insurance.

“The cost of buying health insurance, experts say, is increasingly rattling start-ups that never anticipated the escalating price tag, and in some cases the expense keeps would-be entrepreneurs on the sidelines, especially those with pre-existing medical conditions,” according to The Times…

Something to talk about with Tom at Midtown Mornings tomorrow morning.

Crain’s Cleveland Business