Joe Stanley

jasencomstock:

JasenComstock: I’m Not Kidding

nailtipflips:

joestanley:

jasencomstock:

People to me about how to get a job on Capitol Hill:

people: how do I get a job on Capitol Hill?

me: quit your job and work for free for a campaign for a year and they will give you a job or get an internship for free through the summer the year you…

okay, so I’m feeling some kind of way about these internship discussions. The whole reason I am in DC right now is because of the internship I did 12 years ago. I interned for Jim Traficant (yes, that one) because he was good friends with my Poli Sci advisor and I was bored with podunk town in ohio where i went to school and thought DC would be a nice change of pace. I didn’t get paid. I accumulated a fair amount of debt. Did I have to do shitty work? You bet. Answering phones, stuffing envelopes, writing BS letters to constituents, giving tours of the Capitol to sweaty obnoxious tour groups, learning how to sign Jim’s name (there is a science to it), going to boring committee hearings and taking notes. But I also learned more in that 6 months than I had in my first 3 years of college. I also got to do some fucking amazing things: tour of the West Wing of the White House, I met Bill Clinton (the photo of the two of us still hangs on the wall in my house), and writing Jim’s 1 minute speeches. I will never forget the feeling of standing in our office and watching on tv as he read the very first speech I ever wrote for him. It was…amazing.

After 6 months, I was asked to become a full time staffer. I accepted. Continued writing his speeches until he was subsequently indicted, expelled from Congress and sent to jail. If I had it to do over again, I’d do it in a heart beat. It was an incredible privilege to do the work that I did, and if you want a job on the Hill then you gotta pay your dues. If you’re not willing to do that, then look for another calling.

I think the major takeaway is that the vast majority of people that I at least know could not afford to pay their dues. The opportunity cost to spend a year in D.C. not getting paid (and still having to pay to be there) is pretty enormous at that point in most young people’s lives. Some can that cost handle it marginally better than others, and those people tend to (anecdotally) be overwhelmingly white and upper-middle-class.

jasencomstock:

People to me about how to get a job on Capitol Hill:

people: how do I get a job on Capitol Hill?

me: quit your job and work for free for a campaign for a year and they will give you a job or get an internship for free through the summer the year you graduate.

people: I can’t do that I have bills and stuff.

me: well guess what you aren’t getting.

I took out 40k in loans for college, not because it cost that much to attend, but because it allowed me to not pick up a real job to pay my way through. Instead, I took campaign and congressional internships every year in RVA and DC, which is why I had a job in the industry walking out, unlike the vast majority of my graduating class. Which in turn let me get a better job when they were getting their first job in the industry, etc.

It’s either do that, or be rich enough to not have to worry about lacking a job in the first place.

squashed:

Conservatives like to hold up California’s generally progressive policies next to its high unemployment rate as a claim that conservative policies are better for jobs. A look at the unemployment rate by state reveals how absurd this argument is.

Nevada has the highest unemployment rate. (That’s right. Michigan’s been eclipsed. It is now tied for the 39th lowest unemployment with Oregon.)

The lowest unemployment rates are North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Vermont, and New Hampshire. The highest rates are Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, California, Rhode Island, and Nevada. If anything, the rate reveals that oil booms and low, largely rural populations are good for the employment and crashed housing bubbles and urban centers are bad for employment.

Texas, the conservative poster child, has an unemployment rate of 7.1%, which puts it in the middle of the pack at 22. Massachusetts, with its job-killing healthcare mandate, comes out better than Texas with a 6.9% unemployment rate. Bottom line? There is no obvious correlation between political leaning and unemployment rate.

barticles:

When the Center for Public Integrity announced that New Jersey is, by its standards, a cleaner state than Virginia, there were some good reasons to dispute the finding. But the Times-Dispatch isn’t the only one to think so!

This is from a piece in The Wall Street Journal…

These sorts of findings admit of only two explanations: Either New Jersey has gotten a bum rap in the past or something is very wrong with the State Integrity Investigation.

For starters, the study never actually defines what it means by corruption. Instead, the risk of corruption is defined by the presence or absence of certain laws—such as strict campaign-finance limits and lobbying disclosure—that good-government groups promote. But without a working definition of corruption, it is impossible to determine whether these sorts of reforms are the appropriate remedy.

Is regulation of state insurance commissions, for example, as important as lobbying disclosure as a means to combat corruption? Who knows? The study gives equal weight to both. Yet that’s like assuming aspirin is as good as a herbal supplement because some people think both can cure headaches.

All of which leads to the biggest problem with the State Integrity Investigation—the dearth of evidence demonstrating that many of the promoted reforms, such as public input into legislative redistricting and registration of lobbyists, actually prevent corruption.

Despite years of effort by proponents of strict campaign-finance laws, there’s no strong evidence that such laws affect either actual corruption or the public perception of corruption. Despite this absence of evidence, Virginia is penalized in the State Integrity Investigation because it has no campaign-finance limits (nor, it should be noted, any meaningful history of corruption).

The conclusions of the State Integrity Investigation are in conflict with other studies that have attempted to measure how well the states are governed. For example, the Pew study mentioned earlier, “Grading the States 2008,” concluded that Utah, Virginia and Washington were the best-governed states in the country. The State Integrity Investigation gives them grades of D, F and B- respectively.

The Pew study may have methodological issues of its own, but if we are given two grades for a state—one that emphasizes actual governance (such as whether states use cost-benefit analysis for regulations, or engage in responsible spending practices) and another that measures whether states have laws that somebody thinks might do something about corruption—we’ll go with the governance measure….

takingstockofwhatmattersmost:

i caught summer in a mason jar today

down by the atlantic shore

it was just passing by all nonchalantly

like it was supposed to be here

this time of year

but i’m too crafty for that nonsense

i took it home with me

and put it on a dusty shelf

reserved for my old first editions

one day next winter i will bring it down

from it’s dusty perch and reminisce

smelling the sunshine and sea

and i will smile again like i am today