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[Cross-posted at The Electoral Map]

Tom Brokaw recently penned a column in the New York Times suggesting that this recession is an opportunity to press the reset button and that one aspect we should focus on reforming is the efficiency of government. Specifically, Brokaw suggests that state governments could save billions by consolidating municipal governments in the way that Miami-Dade, Nashville-Davidson or Jacksonville-Duval have merged services.

He points to a New York State study from a few years ago that concluded that “New Yorkers could save more than a billion dollars a year by consolidating and sharing local government responsibilities like public security, health, roads and education.” Brokaw also suggests that North and South Dakota, which are home to 17 state universities combined, could get “a bigger bang for their higher education buck if they consolidated their smaller institutions… with satellite campuses but a common administration and shared standards.”

I like Brokaw’s reasoning.

But the folks at the rural blog Daily Yonder bring up some good counterpoints. They suggest that big government is not always more helpful or efficient (true) and that the cost of administration rises when geography expands. West Virginia, for example, spent millions closing small schools and consolidating education systems, but now faces the burden of busing some students over an hour to their schools and hiring more officials to deal will the challenges of massive school districts.

“Small towns aren’t big spenders,” notes Daily Yonder blogger Bill Bishop. He notes that North Dakota has about the same amount of counties as California, but that North Dakota is running a surplus while California has a 13.6% budget gap. Message: While consolidation might streamline the big government bureaucracies of the Empire State, it’d be solving a problem that doesn’t exist in small town America.

I think both Brokaw and Bishop have good points, and I actually think that the real solution lies somewhere in the middle. Let me give you two examples. I went to school at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. The city of Schenectady runs an independent municipal government within the county of Schenectady. Both are fraught with crime, corruption and unemployment, although the problem is particularly pronounced in the city of Schenectady, which is a classic Rust Belt collapsed town.

There’s been talk of consolidating the two, which would likely save millions on police and eduction. But county officials don’t want the city’s problems, and city officials don’t want to relinquish power to the county. And so the community decays.

Now, move your attention 400 miles down the coast to Arlington, Virginia, where I live. Arlington is a geographically small county nestled between the District and booming Fairfax County. Arlington has its own schools and police independent of Fairfax and is doing just fine. In fact, it’s doing great. It’s been named the most educated community in the nation and was rated “one of the best places to [ride] out the recession.” It has its own cultural identity independent of the District and Fairfax. It would make no sense to merge.

So here’s the solution: Struggling governments, such as New York State and some in the Rust Belt, ought to merge in the same way that General Motors is streamlining. I don’t mean to hold up GM as a model of efficiency, but the motor company used to have seven brands with seven networks of dealerships, and is now consolidating. Schenectady city and county should combine. Maybe Baltimore city and county should consider it, too.

Communities that are prospering, such as Arlington, or even running a positive balance sheet, such as North Dakota, should probably keep serving their citizens and business the way they are now. Don’t shutter the local courthouse and throw a wet towel on hometown pride, and don’t force two happy and independent entities into an awkward marriage.

Of course, the big problem here is that all politics is local. If powerbrokers aren’t interested in surrendering their lifeblood, they’re probably going to do everything they can to stop it. But if that hurdle can be overcome, consolidation is an interesting choice for more efficient government.

Many bloggers hope that their site can attract sufficient traffic so that they can sell ads and make some income on the side.  For the best of the best, this business model works. Kos, for example, has hauled in a pretty penny from ads.  But I bet that if you were to peek at his tax form today, you’d see that most of his income comes from gigs that he’s landed thanks to his blog.  The book deal and speaking engagements surely pay more than the Google Adsense ads touting Gillibrand for Senate.

And that’s the model that bloggers should be looking toward.  Instead of focusing on building up enough traffic to post ads that clutter the page, compromise the site’s aesthetic and bring in enough money to cover Friday night’s bar tab, bloggers should rather use their site as one big advertisement for themselves.  Use it as a place to demonstrate your savvy, skill and experience in a way that will attract the magazine editors, consulting companies and TV producers with the fat checkbooks.

Consider the case of Jeff Jarvis, author of BuzzMachine.com.  In a post last year, he explained that BuzzMachine has generated “$9,315 from two blog ad networks, $1,866 from ads on RSS feeds, and $2,674 from Google ads, for a total of $13,855.”  Not a bad haul.  But he’s also parlayed the blog into speaking gigs, consulting jobs and a book deal. “The only reason I get those gigs is because companies read the ideas I discuss at Buzzmachine,” Jarvis wrote.  “If I add that all up over the past five years and five to come, to me the blog is worth a few million.”

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Can’t wait to see how Campbell takes this…

I made this slideshow with some of my favorite maps from the 2008 election cycle, and I think it tells the story of the campaign pretty well. Hope you enjoy, whether you’re happy with the outcome or not. [Cross-posted at my blog, The Electoral Map]

Tip: Open up it up to a full screen.

Street View is the latest product from Google that both amazes and alarms us. By taking millions of photos from the back of a Chevy Cobalt, Google has brought the images of far-flung neighborhoods to the comforts of our own laptops. It’s also caught some pretty funny scenes on film, including …

• A Cleveland kid crashing his bike on W 90th Street;
• Two dorks on Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh role-playing D&D; or…
• The Google Colbalt pummeling Bambi in Rush, NY.

But perhaps the best use I’ve gotten out of this new feature is the ability to walk through congressional districts. I stumbled upon this application when I was writing profiles about Virginia state legislators for a group I’m working with and wanted to learn more about their districts.

One of the legislators I was researching was Del. Delores McQuinn from Richmond’s East End. I found out she was an associate minister at Mt. Olivet Baptist Church on 25th Street [click any of the links for streetview] and that her primary election was held at 31st Street Baptist Church. Wow, I thought, her election was at a Baptist church only six blocks away from the Baptist church where she preaches.

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Alexander Ovechkin might be the best hockey player in the world, but learning to use Twitter was a challenge for the face of the Washington Capitals.

Ovie had no idea what the microblogging platform was a month ago.  He was too busy bruising Sydney Crosby, lighting up Tim Thomas and leading the Caps to what is shaping up to be the best record in franchise history.  But as the All-Star Game approached in late January, the NHL and the Capitals thought they would try a innovative way to promote the league’s top player by having him connect with fans.

NHL Director of Communications Mike DiLorenzo hatched the idea for Ovechkin to set up a Twitter account for All-Star weekend as a way of giving fans updates of what he was doing and provide insider insights about what kind of tricks he had up his sleave for the Skills Contest.  DiLorenzo called Caps Director of Media Relations Nate Ewell to share his idea, and the Caps, already a tech-savvy organization under the leadership of owner Ted Leonsis, immediately jumped at the idea.

@Ovi8 was born.

Alexander the Great himself was unfamiliar with Twitter but loved the concept of sending personal updates to his fans.  Despite his superstar status, Ovie is relatively low-key – he lives in a townhouse in Ballston, often walks to the Caps practice facility, and doesn’t carry a Blackberry.  His means of a communication is a cell phone with Cyrillic keys.

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[Published in The Examiner]

Did you catch the score of that recent Oklahoma-Texas Tech game? It was about as close as the Obama-McCain matchup in Oklahoma. If you missed the game, Oklahoma was up 42-7 at half and eventually won by a crushing 65-21 margin.

The presidential contest in the Sooner State wasn’t much closer — McCain swept all 77 counties and won 66% of the total vote there, making it his strongest state. He even outperformed George W. Bush in all but a handful of counties.

The neighboring states of Texas and Kansas, which also host Big 12 teams, weren’t far behind in supporting the GOP candidate. This got me thinking, “The Big 12 is a pretty red conference.”

I checked the map, and sure enough, McCain won five out of the seven Big 12 states: Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri. He lost Iowa and Colorado (but you could argue that the University of Colorado at Boulder’s hippie culture doesn’t really fit in with the Big 12’s aggie lifestyle anyway).

But the Big 12 wasn’t even McCain’s strongest conference — the Southeastern Conference (SEC) was. He won eight out of the nine states in the SEC, taking Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and South Carolina.

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[Posted at New Geography]

North Carolina is the state where NASCAR meets the NASDAQ. The state’s largest city, Charlotte, is the hub of stock car racing but is also the nation’s No. 2 banking center behind New York. These two pillars of cultural and economic conservatism might not appear to present the best backdrop for a Democratic takeaway, but with less than 72 hours to go, Barack Obama is closing in on the checkered flag in North Carolina.

This notable change in voter preference is because North Carolina, perhaps more than any other state, has felt the severe pain of the financial crises. It’s a state where Sun Belt foreclosure problems have been compounded by Wall Street bank crashes, and some of North Carolina’s largest employers and home-grown institutions, like Wachovia, have gone belly-up.

As financial uncertainty grips North Carolina, Obama has made repeated trips there, armed with a steady message aimed at calming the unsteady nerves of the state’s investor class. It’s an investment that has paid dividends for him. As Obama’s national numbers rise as fast as the Dow has fallen, the Illinois senator’s popularity in North Carolina has skyrocketed since the market collapse.

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[Published in The Examiner]

John McCain has been known to take unpopular stands in Washington, but his boldest move of all may be scheduling his acceptance speech on the same night that the Redskins kickoff their 2008 season.

The Arizona senator will accept the GOP nomination in Minneapolis-St. Paul at the same time that the Skins take the field at the Meadowlands to challenge the defending Super Bowl champion New York Giants.

This could be an issue for McCain. Even though D.C. is mostly Democratic, his TV ratings inside the Beltway could dip lower than Heath Shuler’s passer ratings. And in a year where Virginia is more “purple” than ever, McCain doesn’t want to turn the Commonwealth’s voters against him. Even Democratic Governor Tim Kaine’s legandary eyebrows would rise in anger.

McCain’s best hope is that voters outside the Beltway follow NASCAR Dad Joe Gibb’s lead and focus on something other than the burgundy-and-gold. The venerable Joe Gibbs may actually remind some of McCain.

Both are veterans of their respective craft, both are known leaders, and both are often considered old-fashioned. Republicans and Redskins fans are hopeful, however, that McCain does not share one of Coach Gibbs’ most criticized qualities — poor time management. Read more

[Published in The Politico]

If you listen to most armchair pundits, you probably expect Virginia to be a pivotal swing state this November. But the truth is that while Virginia is purpling, John McCain has advantages in the Old Dominion that few other candidates would have.

To be sure, Virginia Democrats do have reason to be optimistic: They won the Executive Mansion in 2005, took a Republican U.S. Senate seat in 2006 and reclaimed the state Senate in 2007. But in 2004, George W. Bush walked to an 8-point victory in the commonwealth, which actually was a higher margin than the one by which he lost to John F. Kerry in the reliably blue state of New Jersey. Three and a half years later, Virginia will be more competitive, but Barack Obama — and the national media — shouldn’t underestimate how well-suited McCain is to win the state’s 13 electoral votes.

McCain starts with a strong base of military personnel, has solid support in Virginia’s key swing constituency of moderate Republicans and has a significant leg up over Obama in Appalachia. Hampton Roads alone is home to the Navy’s Atlantic fleet, NATO’s command center and hundreds of thousands of military personnel and veterans; Northern Virginia is home to the Pentagon, Quantico and Fort Belvoir. As a former POW and the son and grandson of admirals, McCain could boost turnout among this voting bloc.

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