About TMV’s Authors
Click on an author’s name to go to their individual article pages.
Joe Gandelman (Editor-in-Chief) spent many years as a freelance writer overseas and full-time reporter on the staffs of two newspapers — and as a professional ventriloquist. Gandelman interned on The Hindustan Times in New Delhi, and wrote or worked for various newspapers including the Chicago Daily News, the Wichita Eagle-Beacon, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Christian Science Monitor. His work appeared on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and in the Argus South African Newspapers, Baltimore Sun, Miami Herald, Winnipeg (Canada) Free Press , Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), Aftenposten (Norway), and Haaretz (Israel), among others. Gandelman received a B.A in Political Science from Colgate University and a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He performs as a ventriloquist across the country and is included in the nationally-distributed The Great Ventriloquists trading cards.
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Pete Abel (Managing Editor) is a freelance writer and speaker, whose blog posts, essays and presentations tackle a range of political and social issues. Abel brings to this work nearly two decades of experience in public affairs, starting his career in 1985 as a freelance reporter, and later as a full-time staff writer, for the St. Louis County Suburban Journals, where he covered municipal politics and local businesses. From 1989 until 2003, he worked for one of the world’s largest public affairs firms, and since 2003 has served as a public affairs executive for a broadband services company. In 2007, Abel collaborated with others to help launch the Missouri Chapter of the Republican Leadership Council, although he is no longer active in this group and today considers himself an Independent, not affiliated with either major political party or associated organizations. Abel has also volunteered his time and talents to the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures and the Tourette Syndrome Association.
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Brij Khindaria is an independent media person based in Europe. He began with Reuters in London and wrote for The Financial Times and other media. Currently, he is a specialist writer for publications in Britain, the US and India. He follows most major diplomatic meetings in Europe, e.g. G8, NATO, European Union and the United Nations. His areas are peace, development and human rights. He has authored several works. He also teaches the Seed of Creative Action, which is a form of meditation derived from Indian Ayurveda (Knowledge of life). He writes mystical poetry in Hindi, English and French.
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David Schraub is currently a law student at the University of Chicago. He graduated magna cum laude from Carleton College, with distinction in Political Science. Prior to that, he was a circuit debater while attending Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland. Aside from his duties at The Moderate Voice, David writes his own blog, The Debate Link, and is a contributor to the legal scholarship blog First Movers. Outside of blogging, he has published in several outlets, including The Carleton Progressive, The Lens Magazine, and The Dartmouth Law Journal. He plans on becoming a law professor, with particular interests in Critical Race Theory, Constitutional Law, Law and Religion, and Law and Judaism. He is a Conservative Jew.
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Greg Piper is the associate managing editor of Washington Internet Daily, which covers business and regulatory news about the Internet for Warren Communications News in Washington DC. His background in tech regulation came from the Discovery Institute in Seattle, where he did communications for technology, transportation and national defense programs.
Greg earned a reputation as the “Newspaper Nazi” at Seattle Pacific University for salacious stories about campus life and unpopular policies. He started blogging as part of an alternative newspaper at SPU and continues at TMV and his personal site, The Smoking Room, which now documents his “(occasionally) thrilling life” in DC. Friends and coworkers know him as a terrible snob of coffee and beer.
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Holly Robinson AKA Holly in Cincinnati AKA Helaine K. Robinson CSI CCS CCCA SCIP is a freelance writer, editor and proofreader with more than 25 years of experience in the commercial/institutional design and construction industry. A Jewish lesbian feminist, she serves on 3 non-profit boards while engaging in political and social activism, web design, freelance do-gooding and constructive trouble-making. You may contact Holly at hollyrob19[at]gmail.com
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Michael Stickings (Assistant Editor) is a senior policy adviser, Democratic Institutions, Cabinet Office, of the Government of Ontario, Canada. He did his B.A. at Tufts University before heading to Toronto to pursue graduate studies in political science and medieval studies. He is on leave from the University of Toronto, where he is a Ph.D. candidate in political science. His academic focus is the history of political philosophy, and his dissertation research examines the political thought of Matthew Arnold within the context of modern liberalism. He occasionally describes himself as a liberal Straussian.
Michael is the founder and editor of The Reaction, a liberal group blog on politics, philosophy, science, and culture. He was a featured blogger at John Edwards One America Committee Blog and has been a guest blogger at The Carpetbagger Report. Aside from politics and blogging, his interests include writing and reading fiction, history, film, art history, Japanese culture, Pink Floyd, and fantasy sports. He loves the Montreal Canadiens and the Pittsburgh Steelers. He lives and works in Toronto and spends as much time as possible in England and Prince Edward Island.
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Paul Silver was born in 1950, is married, lives in Austin, Texas , and is a semi-retired small business owner and investor. His political interest evolved out of his business experience that the best decisions come out of an objective gathering of information and a pragmatic consideration of costs and benefits. He is interested in promoting Centrist candidates and policies. His posts are mostly about people and policies that he believes are part of the solution rather the problem.
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Jeremy Dibbell is a graduate of Union College (2004, Political Science), and is currently studying history and archives management at Simmons College in Boston. He also blogs at Charging RINO and PhiloBiblos. His main research interests are colonial/Revolutionary American history and the history of books and printing; his main blog interests include redistricting reform, fiscal sanity and good government.
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Polimom is the pseudonym for a [mumble-mumble]-year-old mom living in exurbia” a very ordinary person who could easily be your next door neighbor (and might in fact be!). She’s a genealogist, writer (for pleasure and occasional profit), and former college instructor whose academic background includes Criminal Justice, Counseling Psychology, and foreign languages. Raised by intellectually brilliant and well-educated parents” a hard left liberal and a far right conservative (some marriages are just doomed…)” she learned early that there can be validity and rationality to both sides of an argument, and ended up a Moderate in self-defense.
Since she doesn’t see politics as an intellectual exercise, she often writes in a more personalized context. Polimom is grateful every day that she took a backward approach to life; if she hadn’t played for as long as possible before getting married and having kids, she’d be story-less” completely unable to explain politics or world events to her gifted child… or to herself.
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Jack Grant (Assistant Editor) has been working in advanced research and development on new materials and processes used in semiconductor integrated circuits since 1991, but he has been blogging only since the end of January, 2003 (a date made memorable because his second blog post was on the breakup of the Space Shuttle Columbia over Texas, where he was located at the time). He began his personal weblog, Random Fate as a way of keeping family and friends updated regarding his impending expatriate assignment in France, but as the date for that relocation moved later and later, his weblog evolved into something beyond his original intent. After a 20 month sojourn as an expatriate in Grenoble, France, Jack returned to the United States in December of 2005 and in the time since has gotten married, in the process gaining two teenage children in addition to a wife, a change that has significantly affected his time available for blogging.
Jack has been granted more than eight US and twelve international patents along with co-authoring over 35 technical papers and a textbook study guide for Physical Science (all under the name of “John M. Grant”). His personal weblog Random Fate is his most significant non-technical writing and has been nominated twice for the Weblog Awards in the “Best of” category for its ranking at the time in the weblog ecosystem. He was the first co-blogger invited to contribute to The Moderate Voice.
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Swaraaj Chauhan, Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.) Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a five-decade-old business, art and culture monthly promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi. In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy. He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in the two eastern States in India —West Bengal and Orissa. Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking; and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia. Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there. He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation. And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others
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Justin Delabar is a 23 year old graduate student of International Relations, with a regional emphasis on the Middle East and South Asia, at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando. His primary areas of interest include American foreign policy, Iraqi tribal relations, the interplay between Iranian politics and economics, and international organizations. For the past year and a half Justin has aided university faculty in utilizing technology for classroom purposes, and has recently been promoted to revamp the web and print-based presence of the Office of Undergraduate Studies and its affiliated units.
Justin has blogged on foreign policy for the past two years, first at Digital Dissent and now at The Digital Diplomat and The Moderate Voice. Operating under the firm belief that national security should always trump political maneuvering, Justin is a centrist that attempts to bring non-partisan analysis to typically partisan foreign policy debates.
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Justin Gardner is the founder and editor of the centrist blog Donklephant. He lives in Kansas City, MO where he works as a writer.
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Jeb Koogler is a student at Brown University studying international relations and Middle Eastern politics. He spent 2006 in the Middle East, studying Arabic at the University of Jordan and later at a private institute in Damascus. He currently writes a blog on American foreign policy, with a particular focus on US relations with the Arab world.
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Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Dr. E), (Assistant Editor) is a Latina poet and author whose books are published in 32 languages. A post-trauma specialist in clinical practice for 38 years, she began by tending wounded vets at the VA in 1965. A military wife for 21 years, she was Governor’s appointee to Colorado State Grievance Board, 1993-2006 where she served as Chair in conjunction with the Colorado District Attorney.
Currently: Investigatory expert in psychology of written and photographic evidences and consultant in human behavior for schools, legislators, lawyers, judges, private interests. Testifier on policy before state and federal legislatures. Latino diversity scholar. Teaches law students, medical residents, journalists re advocacy and influential tenets of storytelling in clinical, trial, and writing practice. Board member: Authors Guild, NY.; Contributing Editor, The Bloomsbury Review. Member, Hispanic Journalists Association. Former welfare mother who aimed for college. Post-doctoral diploma, certified Jungian Psychoanalyst, via charter of IAAP, Zurich. (Wikipedia).
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Gary A. Butts was born in 1952 and is an attorney / consultant residing in Irvine, CA. His Bachelor of Arts degree is from U.C.L.A. in Political Science (achieved in 2 years) and his Juris Doctorate degree is from Pepperdine University School of Law. Major clients have included Seal Beach Leisure World and Crystal Cathedral Ministries / Hour of Power where he was legal counsel for over 14 years.
Gary’s interest in politics began at the age of 14 while serving as a page in the U.S. House of Representatives. During his tenure of over a year, he worked under Gerald R. Ford, then House Minority Leader. As a young attorney, he worked for the Committee to Re-Elect President Jimmy Carter. He has continued his association with President Carter over the years and is active in Carter Center activities in Atlanta, GA.
Gary is the Founder of ModerateVoters.org, a site of news and commentary of particular interest to moderate and centrist voters.
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Angela Winters is a writer, author and diversity consultant in the D.C. Metro area. She received her B.S. in Communications from The University of Illinois and is now pursuing her JD, specializing in Media & Communications Law. Her background is in public relations, diversity consulting and leadership development. She is the national bestselling author of 15 fiction novels, her most recent title is VIEW PARK a family saga. She is also the creator of the political blog, POLITOPICS, focused on centrist political commentary from a black perspective with an occasional non-political post or two.
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Robert Stein, editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher, is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” He now publishes the blog Connecting The Dots. Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of ‘The Greatest Generation,’ just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever. We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality.” This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective. The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.
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The Talking Dog is the nom de guerre of the Brooklyn, NY based blogger who began blogging under that name in September, 2001 (before the term “blog” was in vogue) about a week after he found himself across the street from the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001 (he worked a block from WTC then, as he does now). In other bizarre historical coincidences, TTD graduated Columbia College in 1983, in the same class as Barack Obama (among other luminaries), and TTD shares a birthday with Hillary Clinton (and Pat Sajak). When not blogging, TTD is a lawyer with a responsible sounding day-job. He has also run 18 marathons in 9 different states… and counting, despite no discernible athletic talent. With his sui generis interviews of figures associated with “the war on terror”, particularly detention policy, he is one of the world’s most active journalists in that area, despite neither being a journalist nor having any writing talent. TTD considers himself “center-right” as he has for decades (having started his legal career in the Justice Department during the Reagan Administration), but as the political spectrum has changed and he and his views really haven’t, he is now considered “arch-liberal” by most others.
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Robin Koerner
is the 32 year-old British creator and publisher of www.WatchingAmerica.com, a website that reflects global opinion about the United States by aggregating and translating foreign press articles. Having lived on three continents, and traveled extensively, he moved to the U.S to establish a consulting and property investment company. His degrees, from the University of Cambridge (England), are in physics and philosophy. He is an entrepreneur who has worked as a corporate strategist, a teacher, editor and now increasingly as a commentator: a wide range of experience, the ground-breaking content on Watching America, and simply being an outsider on the inside, all inform his perspective on the United States – a country he loves.
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Tyrone Steels II is 35-year old information technology consultant and “journeyman” futurist from Gwinnett County, Georgia. Tyrone began his IT career at Fortune 500 firms and is currently providing ITIL process consulting and IT management for various small to medium businesses in the Metro Atlanta area. He is also a member of the World Future Society and is active in local and national futurist events and workshops. Politically, Tyrone describes himself a member of the Slant Wing. As he says, “I move slantways away from liberals and conservatives, yet I feel them both”.
Tyrone is “infinitely” and happily married, with three children ages 11, 10, and 6.
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William Kern was Editor-in-Chief of WatchingAmerica.com. He has been a copy editor and news designer on three continents, most recently at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. He has currently started up WorldMeets.US
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Cagle Cartoons are Daryl Cagle’s always thought-provoking, political, and social cartoons.
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Joerg Wolf is founder and editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Review, a blog on transatlantic relations sponsored by the German Fulbright Alumni Association. He currently works as head of research of the Atlantic Community, a new online magazine of the Atlantic Initiative in Berlin. Joerg studied political science at the Free University of Berlin and worked as a research associate for the international Risk Policy project at the Free University’s Center for Transatlantic Foreign and Security Policy. He has been a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Washington DC and has worked for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Cairo and in Berlin.
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Mark Daniels has been an ordained Lutheran minister since 1984 and is pastor of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. He graduated from The Ohio State University in 1975. Immediately following his undergraduate years, Daniels was volunteer coordinator for a congressional campaign, a fund raiser at United Way, and supervisor of pages at the Ohio House of Representatives. Through his high school, college, and seminary years, he worked as everything from a janitor to fast food cook. Daniels’ writing has appeared in a number of dead-tree and online magazines. Before a recent relocation, he served as president of the Corporate Board of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Clermont County and on the county Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. In 2004, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Ohio House of Representatives. Daniels and his wife have been married since 1974. They have two grown children. Daniels has a Bachelor of Science degree in Social Studies Education from Ohio State and a Master of Divinity from Trinity Lutheran Seminary. His two favorite parting benedictions are, “Go Buckeyes!” and “God bless you!”
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Michael Grant is a journalist, educator and author living in La Mesa, CA, a suburb of San Diego. He is a native of Abilene, Texas, a graduate of Stanford University, and an Army veteran. In journalism since 1969, he has been a reporter, a sports writer, an editor, a feature writer, and a columnist. He was at The San Diego Union for 20 years and in 1990 began teaching journalism and media communications at Grossmont Community College near San Diego. He is the author of five books (including a cookbook), the latest being “Warbirds – How They Played the Game,” published in 2004. In September, 2007, he and his wife, Karen, founded The Write Outsource, an online writing services company. He also maintains his own blog at www.michaelgrant.com/blog.
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Jill Miller Zimon is an award-winning freelance writer, editor and political blogger. She participates as a regional roundtable panelist for Cleveland public radio and television. She provides commentary and presentations to groups on the intersection of blogging, new media, journalism and politics. She was one of four Ohio bloggers in the now defunct Plain Dealer/cleveland.com blog experiment, Wide Open (blog.cleveland.com/wideopen). Zimon’s blog, Writes Like She Talks (www.writeslikeshetalks.com), has consistently ranked in the top 10 of all Ohio political blogs. Zimon also writes a bi-monthly column for Cleveland Family magazine. Her features, op-eds and essays have been published in The Plain Dealer, Sun News papers, Writer’s Digest, Quill, and other print and online markets. 2004-06, she covered Euclid High School’s transition into six small schools for KnowledgeWorks Foundation, an implementing agency for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s education reform programs.
For eight years prior to her journalism career, Zimon used her joint degree in law and social work (Case Western Reserve University) at a large children and family mental health agency. Zimon is a New England native and has a joint bachelors degree in government and sociology from Georgetown University. Other experiences of which Zimon is most proud include her work in the U.S. Department of Justice, an internship on Capitol Hill, living and traveling alone overseas, working in an Ivy League college’s development office and performing clinical assessment for juvenile court cases. She has lived in Northern Ohio for nearly 20 years.
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Damozel is the internet handle for a lady of a certain age who stumbled onto the path of political blogging while planning to do something else entirely. She has a background in philosophy and law, with quite a lot of literature and history thrown in, guaranteeing that she would have no choice when she finished her education except to become a university teacher.
As a small child growing up in a South Carolina milltown during the early Sixties, she was secretly politicized by the African-American women her parents engaged to help “raise” her. For this reason she is a Democrat, though a moderate and reasonable one. Some of her best friends are Republicans.
Damozel blogs regularly at Buck Naked Politics, which she co-founded with some colleagues.
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Bridget Magnus has lived many places and done many things, but she is now a Realtor in Fabulous Las Vegas. This was almost inevitable, as her family has been in property management for four generations. She holds degrees in Music Composition from Texas Wesleyan University and Southern Methodist University, where she trained as a researcher and discovered a love of finding information. Since 2003, her writings on such topics as politics, economics, business, and education have been posted regularly at ShortWoman.com (musings on real estate are at her eponymous site). Bridget speaks 3 languages (English, French, and Japanese); her current hobbies include reading and book collecting, study of Japan and Japanese culture, cooking and baking, Shaolin Kempo (Purple Belt) and Video Gaming. Her favorite charities are Child’s Play, Safe Nest, and Candlelighters.
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Dennis Sanders, an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), was born in Flint, Michigan in 1969. A 1991 graduate from Michigan State University with a degree in journalism, he received his Master of Divinity from Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn. Pastor of Community of Grace Christian Church, a church he helped start in Minneapolis from 2004-07, he currently works as a Media Specialist/Web Master for the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area, and as a regular, supply preaching throughout Minneapolis/St. Paul. Dennis has been involved in politics since his teens, and jokes that his New Deal Democratic parents gave birth to an Eisenhower Republican. He’s been involved in several Centrist Republican groups including a stint as State Coordinator for Republicans for Enviromental Protection and State President of Log Cabin Republicans of Minnesota, basically being the black, gay poster boy of moderate Republicanism.
Involved with blogging since 2002 when he started the Moderate Republican; that blog was retired 2006 to make way for NeoMugwump where he blogs about all things political. On his other blog, Oscar the Pastor, he muses on religious and spiritual issues. Dennis lives with his partner Daniel in Minneapolis, and is the faithful servant to his two cats.
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Michael Silverstein is a novelist, poet, and satirical commentator. Over the years he has published a dozen books of prose on a variety of serious and not-so-serious topics ranging from politics, to the environment, to alternative energy, to the evils of excess parking ticketing. His poetry was regularly featured on National Public Radio¹s ³Marketplace Morning Report² and published in two books of satirical verse. His political commentary has run in scores of high profile publications including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Atlanta Constitution, Chicago Tribune, et. al. Silverstein honed has knowledge of financial markets as a senior editor with Bloomberg Financial News in Princeton. He currently resides in Philadelphia with painter and First Friday TV video producer Kay Wood.
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Jazz Shaw is an Internet marketing professional, author of unseen technical manuals, US Navy veteran and former member of the Republican Party from 1976 until 2005, now a registered independent. A veteran of several political campaigns in New York, he now pursues his avocational interests as a pundit wherever his singing will earn him a supper. Jazz Shaw can be reached at jazzshaw@gmail.com.
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Joe Windish is an accomplished video and web producer. His independent work has been seen on local and national television, and on one of the earliest commercial webcast channels. He was the director of a community television center for twelve years, launched an early community Internet service, and later was a producer at Mediapolis, a Manhattan-based web engineering and design firm. In 2003, after 28 years of living and working in New York City, Joe moved to rural Georgia so his life-partner could become a professor at a public liberal arts college. There he manages the campus computer labs and does technology planning for the university. Joe says, “the biggest lesson I’ve learned from moving to the South is how much we have to learn from our differences, and how wrong our assumptions can be. A curious and questioning left-leaning contrarian by nature, I try to practice a willingness to open and change my mind, and start from a place that doesn’t already know the answer. The New Yorker in me finds that very hard to do!”
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Dorian de Wind is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and aerospace/defense executive who enjoys writing and teaching. Originally an author of technical textbooks and articles, Dorian now contributes opinion, travel and personal experience articles to newspapers, and is a prolific letters-to-the-editor writer. He also translates Dutch and Spanish press articles for Watchingamerica.com. A native of Ecuador, Dorian was educated in The Netherlands and in the U.S. (Texas A&M, University, Math/Physics, Summa Cum Laude; Univ. of Southern Mississippi, MS Telecommunications; doctoral work in Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma). He has taught undergraduate and graduate computer science courses at City Colleges of Chicago, Oklahoma State University and at U.S. Military institutions. His proudest award and achievement are the Freedoms Foundation George Washington Honor Medal and having been responsible for the reception, welfare and resettlement of over 400 South Vietnamese refugees at the end of the Vietnam War. He has resided and worked extensively abroad (Ecuador, The Netherlands, Germany, England, Belgium and Saudi Arabia) but is now happily settled in the beautiful USA.
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Tony Campbell is Adjunct Professor (Department of Political Science), Towson University teaching American National Government and Political Theory. He is also National Politics Examiner, at Examiner.com. Living in Maryland since 1986, he is the oldest son of Pastor Tommy Campbell and District Missionary Winnie Campbell (Church Of God In Christ). Campbell has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh and a Masters of Science Degree (MS) in Social Science from Towson University. He is a former Congressional Staff member – Congressmen Ron Klink and Mike Doyle (PA). U.S Senate internship with U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski (MD), as well as a Political Appointee of President George W. Bush at the Social Security Administration.
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Patrick Edaburn is an attorney with a practice focusing on bankruptcy and estate planning. A resident of Northern California since he was 4 years old he currently lives in the Stockton/Lodi area. He has been active in politics since childhood and has served as a countywide official with the Republican Party. He hopes someday to run for public office, although at this point he feels too liberal to run as a Republican and too conservative to run as a Democrat.
In addition to his work on The Moderate Voice he is currently at work on his first novel, although at this point he remains uncertain as to who might publish it.
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Elyas Bakhtiari is a writer and editor living in Boston, Massachusetts. He covers the healthcare industry for HealthLeaders Media and blogs about politics and policy at Ablogistan. Before moving to Boston he lived in San Antonio, Texas, where he studied Sociology and Political Science at Trinity University and worked briefly for the San Antonio Current covering local and state politics. Although politically left-of-center, he has lived in some of the most conservative and the most liberal areas of the United States and values moderate, reasoned discourse. With a father who immigrated from Afghanistan and a mother born in blue-collar Indiana, his unique upbringing in rural Tennessee has given him a one-of-a-kind perspective on politics and world affairs, particularly in the last few years.
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Jerry K. Remmers is a veteran of 26 years in the newspaper business in addition to owning his own business as a landscape contractor. A graduate of the University of California at Davis majoring in political science, he worked for newspapers in Klamath Falls, Ore. and in California at the Tustin News, Orange Daily News, Santa Ana Register and Evening Tribune in San Diego. In 23 years at The Trib, he was a general assignment reporter, assistant city editor, county editor and politics editor. Remmers’ political perspective is moderate left on social issues and center-right on fiscal matters. A registered Democrat. he is retired, residing in Temecula, Calif.
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Scott Payne is a 32 year old eight year veteran of the Canadian not-for-profit scene whose political awakening came at the ripe old age of 18 when he started dating a political activist as a business student. Love does strange things to a man and Scott was literally opened up to a whole new world of care, compassion, and outrage through that relationship. A former and, in all likelihood, future philosophy student, Scott become directly involve in politics by becoming involved in his local students’ union, eventually running for a position with a national post-secondary education lobby group for students. Scott’s values have spanned the political spectrum over the last 15 years and currently lay strewn in a mess for all to see. Scott started blogging in January of 2007 by posting a note on Facebook about his support for Barack Obama and now blogs regularly as a way of connecting with a broad cross-section of different people and a means of trying to fashion some kind of inclusive and intelligent worldview out loud.
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David Adesnik is a defense analyst in Washington DC. He is a contributor to Doublethink magazine and its blog, Conventional Folly. David worked full-time on the foreign policy staff of John McCain’s presidential campaign from April through November of 2008. Before joining the campaign staff, he spent four months in Iraq as a civilian analyst with the Coalition’s counter-IED task force. David received his doctorate in international relations from Oxford, writing his dissertation on democracy promotion in the Reagan era. Beginning in 2002, David was a contributor and later editor-in-chief of OxBlog, on behalf of which he covered the GOP convention in 2004. David has published articles in The Weekly Standard, The Washington Quarterly and Foreign Policy and provided commentary for NPR and the BBC.
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Marc Pascal obtained his undergraduate and graduate degrees in music, business and law (BA, JD & MBA) over 15 years ago after attending various universities including Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He also studied classical piano for over 20 years including all through college but he has not performed publicly in over 25 years. He lived, traveled and studied numerous times in Europe where his family has roots, gaining a high level of proficiency in French and Italian.
Between 1986 and 1998, Mr. Pascal served for several years in succession as the in-house counsel for 2 large corporations, and he also periodically practiced business law in Cleveland in various loose partnerships with a few other attorneys. Between 1991 and 2006, he started and managed 4 different new business ventures based in Chicago or Cleveland with various friends, all of which were a lot more fun. He is particularly interested in joint public-private ventures in urban redevelopment, mass transit and high speed rail. In 2006, Mr. Pascal moved to Arizona with his spouse and their young son. For the past 3 years, he has been an independent management and business consultant serving various private enterprises in the Phoenix area.
Past Contributors
Andrew Quinn
Marc Schulman
Michael van der Galien
Jason Steck
Jonathan Singer
Shaun Mullen
