Putting aside the substance of the legislation for a moment, the whole debate has been a fascinating exercise in political framing:

Using “Right to Work” as a label is a clever and strategic way to frame what the legislation is about.  If you are “for people having jobs,” how could you dare be against their “right to work”? Any critic of “right to work” laws has to try to find some other meaningful label to use for themselves that isn’t derived from the original name, but in doing so they lose some of the attention of voters.  (From what I can tell, the phrase “right to work” was introduced when a group of business owners in the southern U.S. formed the National Right to Work Committee in the 1970s to try to work against union efforts.)

The “Big Labor” bashing that happened last year across the Midwest set the stage for the “Union” label itself to be tainted to some degree in the minds of many voters (“Wait, are those unionized teachers really just trying to squeeze out every last taxpayer dollar while they sit around in luxury doing nothing? Golly!”), and so at least in part because of this association, I don’t think unions have succeeded in being the rallying point for those who oppose these proposals.

A related frame that gets invoked all the time around this legislation is “creating a pro-business climate.”  If you are for “right to work” then you are for creating an atmosphere where businesses can thrive.  If you are against “right to work,” you must hate commerce, capitalism, business and the American Dream.  Of course we know that “pro-business” doesn’t have any particular meaning; someone who traffics in human slaves can say they are “pro-business” but that doesn’t mean they’re operating in the interests of most people.  But again, critics haven’t succeeded in presenting a suitable alternative theme – being “pro-worker” or “pro-living-wage” – and so the debate is framed around whether you are for or against business, period.

Another frame that’s emerged in Indiana is the idea of Democratic state representatives who have used procedural moves to prevent a quorum for voting on this legislation as “cowards” who are “shirking” their duties and who don’t have the courage to just come and vote.  Democrats have argued back that they are trying to stand up for the interests of their constituents, but it’s so effective for Republicans to use the image of “we showed up to do the business of the people and guess who didn’t?” to beat up on Democrats as insolent children, and so they’ve used it every chance they get.

In a culture that generally celebrates “fighting back when you’re being bullied” instead of “call out the bully for the chaos and disrespect they bring,” Democrats haven’t been very effective at calling those fouls.  The closest they’ve come (as seen in e-mails I get from my state rep) is talking about how the legislation was “rushed” and “rammed through” and then about how “disappointed” they are in this “massive mistake.”  By only being against what their Republican colleagues are perpetrating and lacking a frame that everyone can be for, they end up mostly looking like sore losers.

I won’t even get into the “class warfare” against “job creators” being waged by “job killers.”  You get the point: In Indiana and elsewhere, conservative Republicans are dominating the frame game.

If we put aside the frames and labels that polarize this debate, we could see more clearly what’s happening in the statehouse.  We could see a broken system of legislating perpetuated by vindictive, reactive and politically driven agendas that don’t necessarily represent the interests or priorities of voters.  We could see politicians manipulating the fears and relative ignorance of their constituents to go for the quick win in that day’s news cycle, instead of thinking about what’s actually good for those same constituents in the long run.

Even if it passes, the “right to work” legislation has been a failure and an embarrassment for Democrats and Republicans alike.

As a resident and employer here I can say that I think the intent of the bill is unhelpful for Indiana workers and a waste of taxpayer time and dollars to pursue given other more pressing needs.  But more significant and important for me is what the process and framing being used signals about the dishonorable intentions of lawmakers and the foundering condition of governance in the Hoosier State.

The story of Google that matters for most people is how it affects their daily lives (searching, web browsing, mobile phones, mapping/navigation, email, calendaring, YouTube, news, etc.) but I appreciate that Levy’s book focuses on the personalities and processes driving the evolution of what is arguably one of the most transformative corporate and technological entities of our time.

It can be easy to forget that behind some of the game-changing products and services produced by the company, there were real people thinking through issues of privacy, dealing with cross-cultural considerations and navigating interpersonal dynamics all while trying to make a living and find a sustainable business model.  They had/have desks, meetings, slide shows to give, families to care for, water-cooler conversations to have, and Levy does a great job capturing and re-telling those stories from the days of “two guys in a garage” all the way through the present days of life as an international corporation.  This is not always done with the most critical eye – those with concerns about Google’s operations or policies may be put off by the extent to which this book is an homage – but on the whole I think Levy is fair in calling out the moments when individual Google employees or the company as a whole screws up, and placing those in the context of Google’s good intentions.

A few themes in what Levy’s book revealed about “the Google way”:

1. “Ready, fire, aim” – Google does the bold, innovative or creative thing first, then (for better or worse) readjusts, re-calibrates, rethinks it later
2. When it comes to figuring out “what works,” studying data and using a scientific approach is more important than intuition or speculation.  Despite their many successes with this strategy, Google experienced failures when a data set wasn’t complete, e.g. when it doesn’t include the preferences, fears, doubts and hopes that are trapped in people’s heads or hearts.
3. Especially in its startup years, Google tried to only hire “A” people; engineers, researchers and thinkers who were either the best in a field of study (or headed that direction), who were driven by the excitement of discovery instead of money, and who could internalize the big picture goals of a project and then go make it a reality.  In their hiring they screened for intelligence, applicable knowledge, experience and adaptability, and as a result, they operate more like a research university than a traditional corporation.  Bureaucracy, office politics and administrative overhead seemingly emerged only with reluctant concessions to what was absolutely necessary to function at a larger scale.
4. If you want innovation in your organization, it’s important to create an environment where challenging accepted ways of doing things is not only permissible, but normal at all levels of authority and leadership.
5. It’s good to introduce questions of morality into the day-to-day operations of your organization.  At the same time, the more people you have, the harder it is to maintain integrity around living out a given set of moral values.

Google’s history is particularly of interest to me in that the company was started within a year or so of the company I co-founded, Summersault.  We were in a dorm room instead of a garage, and our goal was making great websites, not letting others search them more effectively.  There are not just a few differences between Summersault and Google today – billions and billions of dollars more in annual revenue, tens of thousands more employees, a private jet here, a self-driving car there, etc. – but I don’t think its too conceited to say that we started our company in the same spirit Google did, trying to help people make the most of the web…they just did it on a much bigger scale.

I was recruited by Google several years ago, to be a part of the team that keeps the company’s software application infrastructure up and running.  I really enjoyed my conversations with their staff about what it would mean to work there, and it was exciting to think about being a part of something so technically interesting and so global in scope.  In the end I knew that my passion and focus remained with what I’d started here in Richmond and so I declined to continue in the interview process, but In The Plex only reinforces what a great adventure that alternate path through life could have been.

It seems safe to say that most people underestimate the significance of what Google is and does.  Steven Levy’s book is a great read, and a great insight into how this one company has transformed the Internet age.

You might open a newspaper soon to see an ad like the one at right which appeared in my local paper a few days ago.  It encourages you to “Stand With Main Street” to protest “special treatment” of Amazon.com that allows them to forgo the collection of sales tax on online purchases, resulting in an unfair advantage over “every Hoosier brick and mortar retailer.”  I don’t usually see full-page ads related to Internet commerce in a market this size, so I thought I’d investigate the issues at stake.

The question of taxing e-commerce transactions is a bit complicated to be sure.  If you have a strong and concisely-worded position on it, you’re probably running for national political office, or a Libertarian, or both.

On one hand we can see the clear financial and psychological advantage that an online retailer has with customers who are weighing a purchase from a local store that charges tax against an online store that doesn’t, and maybe offers the item at a slightly lower price too. At the same time, that online retailer may be benefitting from the infrastructure that sales taxes others are collecting help pay for (setting up warehouses, trucking goods around state roads, etc.).

On the other hand, we know that laws around state sales taxation were created prior to the age of the Internet and that the models of online business and affiliate sales have completely changed the way the world does business, and current attempts to rewrite them in order to create short-term bandaids on ailing state economies are probably not in the best interest of business innovation, especially when they favor large retailers (online and off) and send small businesses and people who make a living as Amazon.com or eBay affiliates into a quagmire of tax collection bureaucracy.

(In my company’s work building online stores for our clients, we’ve experienced this firsthand; helping a small business calculate the city, county and state tax rates that affect what they’re selling customers and then keeping that information current can take up a lot of their time.  Services like taxcloud.net are helping make it easier.)

Some states are moving toward “origin-based sourcing” for taxation, where the tax rate is based on the county/state where the vendor selling the goods is located.  This keeps the taxation process simple (the retailer has to know their local rate and doesn’t have to worry about where the buyer lives or what the rates are there) and encourages governments to keep their tax rates competitive for businesses that might locate there.

Indiana is still a “destination” state, where the tax rate is based on where the goods are being sent.  Indiana Congressman Mike Pence, not generally known for advocating taxation, is supporting the move to make Amazon.com and others pay sales tax so that the government isn’t “picking winners and losers.”  But as others point out, the playing field of retail taxation is already off-kilter in favor of big businesses, which get tax credits, exclusions and special pricing that make it very hard for mom-and-pop shops to compete with them.

Back and forth, back and forth.

I don’t have a strong feeling about what direction we should go (hence disqualifying me from running for office), other than that all of this highlights how complex and outdated the modern system of taxation is, for online commerce and pretty much everything else.  When small businesses or people selling used exercise equipment from their basements have to hire tax law professionals just to sell online and be fully compliant, we’re doing something wrong.  I’m not sure the “Stand With Main Street” ad advances the conversation any, but it hopefully encourages more awareness about what’s at stake.

1. Build stuff people want, offer products and services people want to buy
2. Attract and retain quality talent
3. Raise capital to get fledgling ideas to the point of sustainability, create a density of “investors”
4. Create a world class culture that encourages people to stick around even when times get tough

These may not be comprehensive factors, but they could be useful metrics to view your city with.

If I had to rate my own city of Richmond, Indiana, I’d say we have plenty of room to grow in each area:

1. We have a lot of great infrastructure and a variety of desirable products/services but we’re pretty scattered on how to sell them in the global marketplace
2. We think we know a lot about what kind of talent we’re looking for, but there’s often a disconnect between that knowledge and our level of investment in actual attraction efforts
3. We don’t always make efficient use of the limited capital that’s available to us, but we have a lot of generous and heavily invested people living here
4. We’re often short-sighted when it comes to building an attractive culture, but there are pockets of people who see the big picture and are working for change

How does your city do when you look at it as a start-up company?

Perhaps the most striking point for me in Bischke’s piece is the question of leadership.  He says we need more than just strong or experienced leaders, we need people who can think like entrepreneurs:

As we roll into an election year, many cities are in a state of crisis. Budgets are a mess and job growth has been minimal for a good swath of the country. Cities in need don’t just need strong leadership, they require transformational leadership. It’s no easy feat but it’s likely that the more that mayors view their cities through an entrepreneurial lens, the better they will be able to adapt to a rapidly-changing world.

Almost any city across the country could adopt the slogan “Adapt or Die” and it wouldn’t be an understatement of the predicament they’re in and the approach needed to get out of it.  Many traditional businesses are in the same boat.  The businesses/cities that will not only just survive but flourish are the ones willing to use non-traditional methods to make ground-shaking changes in the way they operate.

The board is a volunteer group of community members who meet regularly with the paper’s editorial staff to discuss issues facing our area, and to help ensure that the viewpoints expressed by the paper are the result of careful consideration and broad consultation.  In the end, it’s the Palladium-Item staff (and not the advisory board members) who craft the resulting columns, but Dale McConnaughay and others responsible for that task rely on the input received (and strong disagreements aired) through the board’s private conversations.  They also regularly invite community leaders to meet with the board for updates and discussion about projects underway.

This is a bit of an odd pairing, to be sure.  In the past I’ve not been shy in this space about pointing out some of the ways in which I think the paper could improve in its journalistic role in Richmond, and sometimes I’ve just plain disagreed with their editorial positions or the framing of their news stories.  I’m sure that there will be editorials written while I’m a board member that don’t represent my personal views.

But I’ve also found that the Palladium-Item and its staff have not only been willing to fully engage the constructive criticism it receives from me and others, they remain one of the most central spaces in our community for the exchange of information, ideas and conversation about the place we live.  One of my personal goals is to help raise the quality of public discourse in Richmond, Indiana, and so I’m honored by this invitation and look forward to serving.

Recently I went looking for a more sustainable way to shave, so that I didn’t have to throw away as many of those ridiculously expensive blade cartridges.

At some points in life I’ve used an electric razor, which had fewer parts that needed regular replacing.  I suppose you could try to make the case that a really well-engineered electric razor with a long-lasting battery could end up being lower resource usage than the manual razor with cartridges, but as electric razors got more crazy in their design (“buy this special gel-pack that only fits this one model of razor so it can automatically douse your face with soothing chemicals at just the right time!”) it felt simpler – and, okay, a little more manly – to just drag a blade across my face by hand.

But my cheap side cringes every time I walk into a drug store and pay $22 for 10 blades.  My cynical, paranoid side fumes as I see the razor manufacturers invent new models of razor blades that require a different model of razor handle and cost even MORE to buy, while also suspecting that the production quality is only decreasing over time so that the blade cartridges don’t last as long.

And let’s not forget the “disposable” animals that some razor and shaving cream manufacturers use to test their products on.  This is an issue that’s gotten more attention over the years, but there are still companies that perform toxicity testing experiments on rabbits and other animals.  (I recently wrote a letter to Gillette’s parent company Proctor & Gamble that in part asked them to make a more firm and permanent commitment not to test on animals.  I got a generic letter in response that said “Thanks for writing, Chris!  This is feedback I was hoping for…I can’t wait to share it with my team!” – sigh.)  You can find more products on mainstream shelves these days with “no animal testing” labels, if you want.

But back to the razor itself.

I found GFD, a German company that makes a diamond-tipped tungsten carbide razor blade that is supposed to stay sharp 1,000 times longer than regular steel blades, so that’s a great choice to use after you go for a swim in your large vat of gold coins.  (Okay, they’re only $150-$200 per blade, but try getting that to mass market.)

I briefly contemplated not shaving at all, and then looked at some pictures of myself experimenting with growing out facial hair in college, and remembered why that is not going to work.

And then I found what has so far been a magical piece of information in my search for a more sustainable shave:

It turns out that the quality of the shave with a particular disposable cartridge isn’t decreasing over time because the blade is getting roughed up by the shaving process itself – it’s steel, it can probably handle itself okay against hair and skin.  Rather, it’s when water sits on the blade after washing it that you start to see corrosion, causing tiny bits of the blade to flake off over time.  As you can imagine, when the bits that flake off are the blade edge, your shave suffers.

How do you prevent this corrosion?

Dry your blades really well after each use.  Some folks are using blow dryers, some folks just blot them with a towel.  I’ve been using the towel method for a few months and I have indeed seen incredibly extended life from the blades I’m using.  YAY!  Shaving is a little less dependent on disposable things now, and a little cheaper.

I was at a drugstore this week and looked at the packaging surrounding razor blades and handles being sold, and none of them have any instructions about preserving or extending the life of the blades.  Of course, they don’t have instructions of any sort, so maybe this is one of those things that’s supposed to be passed down from generation to generation.  (Or maybe razor manufacturers don’t mind too much if customers buy blades more often than they might otherwise need to.)

I know most of you read this blog solely for my personal hygiene tips, so I hope you get some mileage out of that one.  Next time I’ll cover how to make your own prescription contact lenses using plastic wrap, steel wool and duct tape.

I think straight party ticket ballots generally only do a disservice to Indiana voters.

At best, it enables a kind of impulsive loyalty to a vague label that can mean very different things to different people.

At worst, it facilitates voter ignorance, allowing good candidates to be glossed over while other candidates are voted in based on affiliation instead of qualification.  (I was surprised in my own limited experience as a candidate how many people in Richmond said they thought I was probably a better person for the job than some of those running in their own party, but wouldn’t vote for me because of my party affiliation on the ballot.)  And as Doug mentions, political parties aren’t a concept that the state or federal Constitutions help us navigate very well, so baking them into our electoral process doesn’t seem quite right.

If someone wants to vote only for candidates of a particular political party, that’s fine, but let it be because they’ve researched who those candidates are and what they stand for, and then made their choices well in advance of election day.  And if this change to election law hurts Democrats because Democrats were winning on party loyalty alone, then so be it; that’s a problem for the party and its candidates to take up with voters.

For the moment, let’s put aside the horrifying fact that such a bill was even earnestly discussed or advanced in Congress, or that indefinite detention without a trial of anyone is something we’re willing to entertain as acceptable.  Let’s put aside the disturbing practice of folding fundamental changes to U.S. military and legal policy into what are essentially administrative budgeting conversations.  And let’s pretend that the president didn’t sign such a groundbreaking bill on a holiday, a Saturday when most of the country was known to be preoccupied with celebrating the particulars of the Gregorian calendar.

All those things aside, President Obama still signed a bill that he says he disagrees with.   That’s fine if the bill says that unicorns might exist or that the White House will be painted green; sign it, put it in a file somewhere, work out the details later.  But a bill that authorizes the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial seems like it deserves a lot more than the “I don’t like it but I guess it’s what we have to do” treatment.

President Obama tried to reassure us by saying that his administration won’t actually USE these new powers, and that he’ll work tirelessly to change the parts that concern him.  ”My Administration will interpret and implement the provisions described below in a manner that best preserves the flexibility on which our safety depends and upholds the values on which this country was founded.”

I don’t know about you, but the times we’ve left the questions of “interpretation” and “implementation” to the preferences of individual leaders seem like the times where we’ve done the most damage to civil liberties or to a national sense of security about the aspects of “American life” that are core to our identity.  In this case, the starting point is that the reckless and dangerous provisions of the Patriot Act from ten years ago have been expanded and then made permanent.  Even if Mr. Obama faithfully steers the entire federal government and military-industrial complex to resist taking advantage of these new powers, what happens when the next president decides it’s not such a problem to lock up a few people — FOREVER — without a trial?

I think the president had on obligation to veto this particular bill.

It was the one option on the table that would have forced revisiting of the discussion about this ground-shaking change with the urgency and attention it deserved.  Now that it’s law, we’re left with incremental attempts to clarify the language of the bill to hopefully do less harm and court challenges that could take years to get to a Supreme Court that isn’t known for its civil libertarian leanings.

Some will say that this is an unsurprising move in a broken political system that already facilitates the amassing of power by a few to the detriment of the ordinary citizen.  Others will say that it’s not such a big deal and that surely in the end it will mostly be used to legitimately and necessarily fight terrorism.  Both of those may be true in some regard.

But for me, it’s a new low for the promise that was the Barack Obama presidency.  For a man who campaigned on such clear ideals when it came to civil liberties and the role of the U.S. Government in protecting and maintaining them, the signing of the NDAA represents a true lack of integrity that no signing statement or philosophizing about “this is the way the world works” can explain away.  There are a lot of wonderful things about the Obama presidency, and there’s a lot of good that’s been done on his watch.  But I can’t begin to imagine how, with decisions like this one, the president will make the case to progressive Americans for his re-election.

There are a lot of different strategies out there and each person has to find what works best for them.  Here are a few queries that might help you think about how well your strategy is working for you:

1. Are you able to work through your e-mail inbox in a reasonable amount of time every day, respond to or delegate time-sensitive questions/comments, convert messages into to-do items, or otherwise file them away on the first pass through?
2. Do you make good use of e-mail filters available in your mail reading program to highlight/tag/sort messages in ways that make you more productive?
3. Are there mailing lists or other regular notifications that you could unsubscribe from or have re-routed, to minimize the e-mail that you just delete or file on a regular basis?
4. Do you have a system for filing email that allows you to quickly and intuitively retrieve messages (sent and received) that you need to review without a lot of searching or jumping around to different folders?
5. Are you purging or archiving old messages in a way that makes sense for your role and your use of email?
6. Are your auto-”check for new mail” settings calibrated to (or turned off for) being productive? (i.e. Do you really need to know about a new message the instant it comes in, or would it be okay to review new messages once an hour?  A few times per day?!?)

If you’re not employing any particular email management strategy, may I recommend the “Inbox Zero” series of articles from 43 Folders?  There’s a great video of a presentation about this approach to get you started.

What other tips or strategies do you use to keep email useful to you as a tool, instead of getting overwhelmed by it?

There’s just enough time between the Christmas holiday and New Year’s Eve for people to get bored, but it’s not a good time to launch new TV shows or announce new political initiatives, so we have to have something to keep us entertained.

(As a kid this meant me listening to countdowns of the top one billion songs on the charts for that year, and somehow a Celine Dion or Aaron Neville song always made it into the top five…this was painful, but perhaps reflects more poorly on me and the particular genre of music station I was listening to than it does on all of the music produced in those years.)

But it’s been an unusually full year for me, so I thought I’d take a moment to reflect back on what that has included:

• Started the year newly engaged to be married to Kelly, a decision we made together on New Year’s Eve Day 2010
• Filed as a candidate for Richmond’s City Council, campaigned, debated, interviewed, door-to-doored, won in the primary election, didn’t win in the general election, and had an amazing experience along the way
• Planned a wedding, got married in May surrounded by the amazing support of friends and family, spent some time relaxing on the beaches of Sanibel Island to celebrate
• Traveled alongside Kelly as she experienced the life-changing symptoms of, and was later diagnosed with, Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), and supported her as she continues to navigate the Western medical system, seeks paths to recovery, and adjusts to the new realities of her day-to-day life
• Lived in Portland, Oregon for a month during the summer, had some amazing adventures in the Northwest, got to participate in a vibrant and progressive city scene, caught up with some dear old friends and made some new ones
• Drove across the country and back, saw some beautiful landscapes and places including Mount Rushmore, Grand Teton and Yellowstone Park, and lived through a hailstorm in the badlands of South Dakota
• Welcomed three great new staff members to my technology company Summersault
• Adopted a wonderful labrador retriever named Chloe
• Read a bunch of books, watched a lot of movies

And those are just the highlights.  Whatever joys and challenges I’ve experienced this year, I clearly live a privileged life with many things to be thankful for.  At the center of it in 2011 has been the amazing experience of deepening in my love for and commitment to my partner Kelly; I don’t know what a “normal” engagement and beginning of a marriage looks like, but we’ve certainly had a lot of unusual adventures together this year, and I celebrate them all.

That said, I’m ready for 2012 to be here, artificial as that milestone might be.  I hope for more, faster progress in recovering Kelly’s health, continued clarity about ways I can make a real and lasting impact in my community and beyond, simplification of my possessions and personal property ownership, and enjoyment of some upcoming opportunities to have some fun.

What has 2011 been like for you?  What hopes or possibilities does the new year hold?  (Or if that’s too much to consider, which Celine Dion song is going to top the charts this year?)