Citizens experiencing a true emergency phone 911 to talk to a dispatcher. By quickly determining the situation and location, a 911 dispatcher is able to communicate the necessary information to fire fighters, police officers or other emergency response technicians. Becoming a 911 dispatcher involves a lengthy application process followed by a three to six month training program. Continuing education is a necessary...

One of the crazy things about Romney is that there’s really so little to say about him. It looks as though we’re stuck with the guy for at least another seven-eight months. Geez. This blogger, absent the revelation that Mitt Romney wasn’t born in America or even on this planet!, anticipates at least half a year of unrelieved Free Cell games. Are the rest of you opinionated people out...

Home Alone: The Trend, Not The Movie by Danny Tyree Paradox of the week: if you live alone, you’re not alone. According to “Going Solo: The Extraordinary And Surprising Appeal of Living Alone,” by Eric Klineberg, PhD, more than 50 percent of American adults are single (up from 22 percent in 1950), and one in seven adults lives alone. Granted, the statistics are muddied by the fact that some...

Will the most raucous Republican presidential primary race in living memory result in better policies on the Republican side? Given the shocking political bloodletting, this editorial from Japan’s San-in Chuo Shimpo Shimbun expresses the hope that it won’t all be for naught. The San-in Chuo Shimpo Shimbun editorial says in part: Previous victorious U.S. presidential candidates have been those who...

The US economy is growing stronger every month. GDP, total employment, and the stock market index are all rising while the unemployment rate is finally coming down. Still, despite the good news, there seems to be a notable lack of excitement and exuberance. This good news has been too long coming and the pace of economic growth remains lackluster compared to previous economic recoveries. In addition, many...

On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln spoke for two minutes at a Pennsylvania cemetery of a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Tuesday night, a would-be president, after losing a primary in Lincoln’s state by a “crushing” margin, came there to ramble on cable news with his divisive message of pitting “work clothes” Americans against the...

by WALTER BRASCH (part 3 of 3) The history of energy exploration, mining, and delivery is best understood in a range from benevolent exploitation to worker and public oppression. A company comes into an area, leases land in rural and agricultural areas for mineral rights, increases employment, usually in a depressed economy, strips the land of its resources, creates health problems for its workers and those...

How right-wing is today’s Republican Party when compared to other right-wing parties around the world? In an effort to explain the matter to French voters who are also in the midst of a presidential campaign pitting “right” and against “left,” Le Figaro columnist Pierre-Yves Dugua admonishes his readers not to even put the French and American right in the same category –...

The man has a gift for divisiveness. After a disastrous loss in Puerto Rico, helped along by his English-as-a-first-language gaffe, the not-Romney candidate is in Illinois stirring another class warfare pot. Santorum is telling crowds to “look at the map of the United States. Blue being the Democrats, red being the Republicans–it’s almost all red. Except around the big cities. And yet when you look...

WASHINGTON — Thus far, the 2012 presidential campaign has been unfocused, dispiriting and largely irrelevant. By the time Election Day comes, a weary nation will be at the point of pulling the covers over its head and screaming, “Somebody, please, make it stop.” What’s that? You say we’re there already? “Both sides are to blame” is usually a cop-out, but...

I’m thrilled to be a part of the Civic Commons, a social media organization based in Cleveland that works for the civic good. [My project is the EfficientGovNetwork. Charting the Future of Fracking, is one reason why. Take a look at how much has been discussed just since it opened at 8:30am this morning. If you want to get the feel for how extensive the issues and emotions are on this topic, there’s...

WASHINGTON — A crisis of capitalism is supposed to create an opening for the political left. But in Europe, the place where the concept of left and right was born, political conservatives have won the bulk of the elections held since economic catastrophe struck in 2008. Is this about to change? The conservative victory most noted in the U.S. was the rise to power of David Cameron, the British prime...

Vice President Joe Biden recently traveled to Mexico, which is another country in the midst of a heated presidential campaign. In an effort not to show favoritism toward the ruling party candidate, Mr. Biden met briefly with each of the candidates. In the event, political analyst Víctor Beltri, in this article from Mexico’s Excelsior, which amounts to a direct appeal to the vice president, pleads with...

At one point threatening to secede from the US, Rick Perry has decried the profligacy of the federal government for years. He doesn’t like federal money, he doesn’t like federal rules and regulations, he hated the stimulus bill, and he campaigned against all of these horrors during his very embarrassing and unfortunate weeks as a prospective Republican presidential candidate. Perry boasted about...

Saving California by Michael Reagan In less than 50 years they ruined my home state. They over-taxed it, over-regulated it and bankrupted it. They strangled its vibrant economy, destroyed its education system and let its infrastructure crumble. Who are these people who’ve turned the Golden State into Greece? Not Big Business. Not the rich. Not the poor. Not millions of immigrants from Des Moines or Juarez. “They”...

One year after one of the most devastating catastrophes in living memory, there seems to be no end to Japan’s inner turmoil. According to this editorial from Japan’s Too Nippo Shimbun, recently released transcripts from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission not only demonstrate America’s proactive attitude in a crisis, they expose a deep-seated tendency among Japanese decision-makers to underestimate...

And Sometimes Managers Directed The Behavior Update 3. Last month, the DOJ and 49 State Attorneys General proposed a $25 billion settlement with Bank of America, CitiMortgage, JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., Wells Fargo Bank and Ally Financial after allegations that these “national mortgage servicers were engaged in widespread questionable foreclosure practices involving the use of foreclosure ‘mills’...

China Versus the United States: Economic and Fair Play by Robert Coutinho Recently, I tried to comment on an article concerning the capacity of the U. S. worker to compete with foreign counterparts. The comment was too long. When I mentioned this to Joe Gandelman he suggested I write a Guest Voice column. I will post what I had been trying to say: You are under the delusion that the playing field is even....

How wealthy is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney? This graphic from www.onlinembaprograms.org puts it into perspective: Created by: OnlineMBAPrograms.org

No one believes the White House (or all of government, for that matter) controls what happens to the economy and certainly not on a short-term basis, but weekly unemployment figures from now until November could help re-elect Barack Obama—-or defeat him. The Caucus rightly concludes: “The biggest test for Mr. Obama and his Republican adversaries in the months to come may be how agile they are in responding...