CBS CEO Leslie Moonves put two groups on notice Tuesday that they will be paying the network more in the future than they have in the past.

Advertisers will pay more in the form of higher prices for commercials. And the network’s local TV affiliates will pay more too, in the form of substantial portions of the retransmission consent fees they receive from cable operators-or they will risk losing their network affiliations.

News release prepared by: Nellie Ryan, 785-532-6415, media@k-state.edu

Friday, March 12, 2010

K-STATE JOURNALISM EXPERT SAYS INTERNET CHANGING NEWS, NEWSPAPERS

MANHATTAN — News is changing in several ways and innovation is taking place at record-breaking speed, according to Angela Powers, director of the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Kansas State University.

Powers researches influences on news content, media leadership and ethics, and media convergence.

“Some newspapers in the U.S. are laying off people, closing their doors,” she said. “Yet, other newspapers have an enthusiasm for new methods and techniques for gathering news and information that is completely changing the way they’re doing business.”

Part of that transformation has to do with the Internet, which has created massive interconnectedness, Powers said.

“Journalists are now routinely producing original content for the Internet and determining which medium is most appropriate, rather than simply covering a story for print or electronic media,” she said. (more…)

The “Diversity Lane” Series by Zack Rawsthorne is re-published with permission.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin adores the company’s social network called Google Buzz. We know this because an engineer working five feet from Brin used Google Buzz to say so. “I just finished eating dinner with Sergey and four other Buzz engineers in one of Google’s cafes,” engineer John Costigan wrote a day after the Twitter-and-Facebook-esque service was announced. “He was particularly impressed with the smooth launch and the great media response it generated.”

Link.

WHEN: Saturday, May 15th, 2010
WHERE: Cook Center at Mid America Nazarene University, Olathe, KS
WHAT TIME: Registration starts at 9am, Walk starts promptly at 10am!
PRICE: Registration is $35 per adult (age 10+) and $150 for a family of 5+ adults. Each registered walker gets a t-shirt!

Please plan to join us at this family friendly event as we walk to benefit the Light House! Whether you’re an individual, family, youth group, classroom, or just a group of friends - if you want to make a difference, save lives, and get a little exercise while you’re at it, this is the event for you.

So lace up your walking shoes and tell your friends and family - we hope to see you there!

Two Records Set in 2008: Most Nonpayers and Highest-Earning Nonpayers

Nonpaying status used to be a sure sign of poverty or near-poverty, but Congress and the President have changed the tax laws to pull much of the middle class into the growing pool of nonpayers. The income level at which a typical family of four will owe no income taxes has risen rapidly, now topping $51,000.

As a result, recently released IRS data for the 2008 tax year show that a record 51.6 million filers had no income tax obligation.[1] That means more than 36 percent of all Americans who filed a tax return for 2008 were nonpayers, raising serious doubts about the ability of the income tax system to continue funding the federal government’s ballooning expenditures.

The Growth of the Nonpaying Population
Since it was enacted in 1913, the income tax code has contained provisions that exempt low-income workers or greatly reduce their income tax burden. These provisions include the standard deduction, personal exemption, dependent exemption, and the earned income tax credit (EITC). Between 1950 and 1990, the percentage of tax filers whose entire tax liability was wiped out by these provisions averaged 21 percent.

Since the early 1990s, however, lawmakers have increasingly used the tax code instead of government spending programs to funnel money to groups of people they want to reward. Credits have been enacted to subsidize families with children, college students, and purchasers of hybrid cars, just to name a few of the most well known. In terms of tax revenue, the most significant of these socially targeted credits was the $500 per-child tax credit enacted in 1997. The 2001 and 2003 tax bills doubled the value of the credit to $1,000 and added a refundable component.

Wow.  Big news.  After years of pork-barrel spending, the House GOP has decided to finally enact a unilateral moratorium on earmarks this year.

Here are some reactions:

REP. JEFF FLAKE: “This is a great day.  We’ve taken a big step toward fiscal responsibility. We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re headed in the right direction.  We now need to encourage the Democrats follow our lead.”

ROLL CALL: “Surprising his colleagues in announcing his support for the ban was Appropriations ranking member Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), a longtime opponent of such a moratorium. Lewis told reporters during a break in the meeting that the move was only temporary.”

Casey B. Mulligan is an economics professor at the University of Chicago.

As I’ve discussed before, national trends suggest that the sharp fall in part-time work during the last five months of 2009 can be largely attributed to last summer’s federal minimum-wage increase. A look at job changes in individual states seems to confirm this conclusion.

Two months ago, I noted how national, seasonally adjusted part-time employment increased almost 2.5 million during this recession, but then it peaked in July 2009 and headed sharply downward. I thought that it was no coincidence that the federal minimum hourly wage was raised, on July 24, 2009, from $6.55 to $7.25 - especially since the inflation-adjusted federal minimum wage had already gotten pretty high.

House Democrats, in a bid to rehabilitate the image of a committee long mired in ethical mishaps, announced the Appropriations panel would not approve earmarks for for-profit corporations - a move that could cut about 10 percent of all earmarks from spending bills and marks one of the strongest efforts yet by Congress to curb the politically combustible practice of earmarking.

But within hours of the announcement, other members of the Democratic Caucus began bemoaning the changes. Several members said they were not briefed on the matter before it was announced. And some appropriators, who have long wielded outsize power in the House because of their outsize ability to earmark, said the move cedes too much power to the executive branch.

Link.

At this time of high unemployment, one group of professionals has no shortage of job security: bad teachers. Few public school principals in the country are able to dismiss an incompetent teacher without a protracted, expensive struggle, and therefore firings rarely happen. Yet researchers agree that hiring good teachers, and ditching bad ones, is the best way to improve education.

Nationwide, 2% or fewer teachers are ever fired or fail to have their contracts renewed because of poor performance. Among tenured teachers - those who get job security, typically after two or three years of satisfactory performance - there are often no dismissals at all, according to the U.S. Education Department.

The other, more thought-provoking one, is whether jobless benefits, because of multiple extensions approved by Congress, have morphed into an entitlement.

The Depression-era program was originally intended as a temporary bridge to help the jobless until a recovery put them back to work - though nearly two-thirds of unemployed workers do not qualify. During a more normal downturn in the economy, states help people who have been laid off with jobless benefits lasting 26 weeks. But now, in some of the hardest-hit states, the long-term unemployed have been able to collect benefits for as long as 99 weeks - almost two years.

Just as most believe President Obama’s popularity is tied to a large extent by the economic outlook, there’s a clear correlation between governors’ approval ratings and their state’s unemployment rates. Using public polling available recently in 33 of the 50 states, we note the following trends:

The average unemployment rate of governors with a 50 percent or higher approval rating is 7.4, compared to 9.5 for governors under the 50 percent mark.
In the nine states were governors had approval ratings higher than 60 percent, the average unemployment rate was 6.9 percent. In the 10 states where governors’ approval ratings were lower than 40 percent, the average unemployment rate was 10.6 percent.
Of the states with unemployment rates of 7 percent or less, all but one governor had an approval rating above 50.
There are, of course, some outliers, and in several cases other factors are at play to explain a governor’s political weakness. For instance, Iowa’s unemployment rate is among the lowest in the nation, and yet Gov. Chet Culver (D) had an approval rating of just 41 percent in a February Rasmussen poll.

Rove says Tea Party activists, who want to limit taxes and government’s reach, could expand their clout if they emulate the 1960s civil rights movement, the gun rights movement and abortion opponents. Those groups grew “from the bottom up” and found “a raggedly unified voice,” he said in an interview with USA TODAY about his memoirs Courage and Consequence: My Life As a Conservative in the Fight, out Tuesday.

Published with permission.

News release prepared by: Katie Mayes, 785-532-6415, kmayes@k-state.edu

K-STATE’S ELEMENTARY EDUCATION PROGRAM RECEIVES NATIONAL HONOR

MANHATTAN — Kansas State University’s bachelor’s degree program in elementary education is being honored with the 2010 Distinguished Program in Teacher Education Award from the Association of Teacher Educators.

The honor recognizes high-quality teacher education programs featuring exemplary collaboration between local education agencies and institutions of higher education in program development and administration. (more…)

March 9, 2010
Dear Kansas Supporter,

As you know, the federal government has been trying to force states to
create a national ID card. This National ID is dangerous because it would
give the federal government your finger prints and digital photos that can
be run through facial recognition software. Privacy advocates have noted
“Real ID is a ‘real nightmare’ for America that will only lead to a national
identity card system that violates personal privacy, bigger bureaucratic
messes, longer lines, increased identity theft and higher fees.”

In order to stop this federal power grab, we need to pass legislation to
keep Kansas bureaucrats from trying to implement it. (more…)

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Kansas will be going for the 2,000th win in school history Thursday when it plays Texas Tech in the Big 12 Tournament. KU would become the third program to hit the 2,000 mark, following Kentucky and North Carolina, both of which reached the milestone earlier this season.

Link.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Kansas City school board narrowly approved a plan Wednesday night to close nearly half of the district’s schools in a desperate bid to avoid a potential bankruptcy.

HB 2411 will make it illegal to buy, sell or possess the chemicals, sold commercially under the brand name K2. The substance is made in a lab; when smoked it acts on the brain in a similar manner to marijuana.

There’s a lively debate going on in the blogosphere and the press about whether Democrats would be better off passing or not passing a health care bill.

Some liberals claim that Democrats would be better off passing a bill, any bill, even if it’s unpopular with the general electorate. The idea is to energize the Democratic base, currently demoralized by the prospects of failure. Current polls show Democrats far less enthusiastic and far less likely to vote — passing a law might change that.

Link.

Authorities say that on Monday, 39-year-old Jeffery Haywood led police on a chase through Kansas City.
The chase began when Haywood, who was wanted for felony warrants in both Kansas and Missouri, fled from police along with a female passenger.