By Jonathan Miller, on Mon Mar 18, 2013 at 12:30 PM ET
Click here to display printable NCAA Brackets
Time is running out to sign up for “No Bracket, No Pay II” — The Recovering Politician’s second annual contest for college hoops forecasting mastery.
Last year was a spectacular success — not only did 75 people compete, but my favorite team, the University of Kentucky Wildcats, won the national championship. Better yet, several months later, “No Budget, No Pay” — the hallmark policy proposal of our co-sponsor, No Labels — passed through Congress and became law. All because of our hoops competition! (OK, maybe the cause and effect was a little tenuous.)
Anyway, you are invited to join us in No Bracket, No Pay II. Simply click here to signup, and fill out your brackets today!
By Jonathan Miller, on Sun Mar 17, 2013 at 2:22 PM ET
Click here to display printable NCAA Brackets
We are back at it for year two of “No Bracket, No Pay” — The Recovering Politician’s contest for college hoops forecasting mastery.
Last year was a spectacular success — not only did 75 people compete, but my favorite team, the University of Kentucky Wildcats, won the national championship. Better yet, several months later, “No Budget, No Pay” — the hallmark policy proposal of our co-sponsor, No Labels — passed through Congress and became law. All because of our hoops competition! (OK, maybe the cause and effect was a little tenuous.)
Anyway, you are invited to join us in No Bracket, No Pay II. Simply click here to signup, and fill our your brackets before Tuesday.
By Lisa Borders, on Mon Mar 11, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
Wow, that happened faster than I ever imagined.
Our problem solvers group has been growing by leaps and bounds. And now we’ve hit an unbelievable milestone – we added our 50th member of Congress!
You read that right. No Labels has brought 50 members of Congress to the table, ready to put their differences aside and build trust across the aisle.Finally, our leaders have a place to work together, face-to-face.
In this age of political dysfunction, that’s no small feat. But this is how our democracy is supposed to look.This is how we fix Washington and build a brighter future for our country.
By joining the group, these lawmakers are putting their country ahead of their party and we need to support our problem solvers and thank them for their commitment.
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Mar 1, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
The conventional wisdom is that as you age (into your middle years) you first become mellower but as you age beyond, shall we say, the middle years midpoint, you become less patient and more irritable (some might charitably call it more assertive).
So, is that all true?
I have decided only partially. I like a good deal of the impatient “assertiveness” (aka irritability) comes from realizing the backlog of years and years of not being assertive enough—-and trying to catch up and clean the slate before we run out of time.
And maybe even get in the last word. With that rude sales clerk, or call center “relationship manager” or waiter who always seems to give us short shrift.
And who, if we had an 18 year old’s body and a 70 year old’s temperament, would try to stare them down before inviting them outside.
But since we have a 49 year old’s temperament and 49 year old’s body, resort to much subtler passive-aggressive tactics, albeit still tougher than ever before. And tip them only 13%. Instead of the standard 15%.
I can’t wait to see them again when I’m 55 –and even more “assertive.” That petulant boy is only getting 11% tip when age 55 rolls around!See More
If politics is just like show business, Ashley Judd’s possible run for senate could be a success. What does it take to make the transition and will we take her seriously?
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Feb 15, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Saying “no” when it is necessary is important. How you say no can be even more important.
As Mark Twain once quipped the difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightening and a lightening bug.
His point was well taken as a maxim for literary precision.
But a similar emphasis should be placed on the manner or tone or context with which one delivers messages to others, especially messages with a negative impact. Like conveying that the answer to a request or proposal or simple question is “no.”
Simply saying the word no, may seem to be adequate for message purposes but is hardly ever sufficient for full communication purposes. It is only a partial response that ignores acknowledging the time, resources, preparation and hopefulness invested in the endeavor awaiting a final reply. And deserves more work on the responding end than a mere thumbs down.
Think of Mary Poppins; advice that a “Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” Good life advice with multiple applications.
The next time you say “no” to someone think of your role as being more akin to giving a eulogy to the deceased than serving as the executioner.
Unless, of course, you are in to that sort of thing. Some people secretly relish delivering harsh rejections– with an almost mild sadistic delight, But be ready to be haunted by the ghosts of bad news being explained badly (or sensitive news being explained insensitively).
The consequences of good and bad bedside manner is seen in every type of office everywhere….not just the ones inhabited by doctors and the medical profession.
So think of it this way. If good bedside manner is what distinguishes to a large degree great doctors from merely good technical doctors, couldn’t that be true in other professions too.
Good bedside manner is not something that requires a knowledge of medicine or other technical expertise. It merely requires a basic level of respect for the person or client or patron you are talking to. And the extra time to craft a sentence or two that uses both the word no and conveys the message thank you.
By Lisa Borders, on Wed Feb 13, 2013 at 11:00 AM ET
Wow – I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I can honestly say, I’ve never seen anything like this.
Last night, Twitter was blowing up. News outlets across the country were highlighting the success of our grassroots movement. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger and Eva Longoria were talking about No Labels:
Here’s the bottom line: When the president walked into the chamber last night, he had 45 No Labels problem solvers there to greet him. This was a truly unprecedented effort and the world took notice.
We broke through the noise and got noticed across the social media sphere.
We’ve turned a corner and with your help, there is no limit to what we can do.
Please join our growing army of hundreds of thousands of Democrats, Republicans and Independents, by clicking here.
Karl Rove has been spectacularly right about one big thing in his far-flung career: his calculation that Republicans in the late nineties and early 2000s needed to be rebranded as problem solvers, who had a formula to compete on Democratic terrain like education and health-care, outflanked Clintonian centrism when it was on the verge of realigning American politics. Rove was just as spectacularly wrong on another front, his blind spot on the risks of conservatism “going corporate” and turning into just another patchwork of special interests and powerbrokers.
It’s worth keeping the dual nature of Rove’s Bush era legacy in mind as he plots an ambitious effort to intervene in primary fights on behalf of Republicans who are…well, that part remains vague, but excludes at least candidates with a history of dabbling in witchcraft or who have a penchant for philosophizing on gynecology.
If Rove’s version of influence merely takes the form of injecting one more source of shadowy cash into races, then he has already misread recent campaign cycles. Deep-pocketed front-runners from Charlie Crist to Bill Bolling never made it past the starting gate, and it is the insurgents who have cleaned up in GOP state primaries who have been chronically under-funded. The missing element for the losers in these fights has not been a lack of cash to sustain ads or phone banks, but an inability to mobilize rank and file primary voters with either a policy vision or a rhetorical message beyond inside baseball about electability.
In an era where the activists who dominate party primaries award no extra points based on time served in office, or chits from funneling checks to local party committees, the populist, anti-establishment wing of the party has filled a void. In blunt terms, their fears are not getting outflanked with swing voters, but getting trammeled by a government that serves every agenda but theirs. They distrust “reform” as a code for more mandates. They are corrosively suspicious of political power because it seems too subject to being rented or bought by corporate power. And many of them have adopted a Manichaen view of politics that genuinely considers constitutional liberty and fiscal stability to be in some degree of jeopardy.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: The House that Rove Built
