Check out my room at the Milford Plaza in NYC. You know you are jealous. Randy gets here tomorrow, should be interesting. If he snores again I am sleeping in the bath tub.
I believe in capitalism, free markets and the American dream. Capitalism is what has made this country great, it is why people from all over the world yearn to live here. We create. We innovate. We excel. Why? Because in America you can move up the ladder with hard work. You can create a better life for yourself and your children.
I spent this Halloween with people from IZEA and MindComet. I had a great time.
IZEA does Halloween from Ted Murphy on Vimeo.
Before anyone goes flying off the handle let me say that I still don’t know who I am voting for and this post is one of the reasons. I don’t feel like I can trust either candidate to tell the whole truth.
Like many people I am interested to see what each candidates tax plan would mean for me. So I went to the Obama-Biden Tax Calculator and began playing with some numbers.
I started out with middle range salary, single, saving for retirement with a 300k mortgage. Seems good enough, the calculator shows I would be saving $1300 a year under their tax plan with a tax credit for retirement.
Then I did the same thing for 100k in income.
My savings dropped, but it still showed me what I could expect. Then I went to $200k in income and $250k in income filing jointly.
What happened? Instead of seeing what this person or married couple would lose under Obama (or gain under McCain) I get a message saying “You will probably not get a tax cut under Obama-Biden”. I don’t know the actual number (that is what I was hoping to understand) but I feel this is shady at best. To say that someone filing with these numbers probably won’t get a cut is just wrong. The reality is these people will get taxed more.
I know that. I may be cool with that, I just want to understand how much. I want to be able to make an informed decision, but stuff like this really bothers me. I dug and dug and all I could find was this before I gave up and decided to leave.
I am none of the above.
I realize that this is all marketing (and damn good marketing), but I just want it straight. Cut the crap. Cut the politics. Lay it all on the line and let me see how things may effect me now and in the future.
There are things I like about both candidates, but this is the type of positioning I can stand from neither.
I am feeling pretty good after my first week of the fat kid health plan. All and all I would say I stayed on track, with a few exceptions.
The Good
I managed to exceed the goals I set for running by a sizeable amount. I ran 22.25 miles this week, my goals was to run 16 miles. My times aren’t fast by any means, but I am getting it done. I even ran on my break day! I think I will start adding time as a goal in a month or so.
- I didn’t drink any caffeine (which SUCKED). I miss you starbucks.
- I didn’t eat any fast food.
- I drank at least a gallon of water each day.
- I only had fried food on one day.
The Bad
I didn’t really think about the weekends when it came to smoothies for breakfast and salads or fish for lunch. It wasn’t really my intention to do this on the weekend, so I am going to clarify that for next week.
- I ate an entire box of mac and cheese one night.
- I had alcohol on two nights, though I didn’t have much on one of the nights. I was planning on having some drinks during the FSU game yesterday (which I did), but I didn’t plan on Tara getting a job offer on Friday. We had a glass of champagne to celebrate…. I don’t think that should count ; )
- I ate A LOT of chicken wings yesterday.
What’s next?
This week I am going to increase the miles and add in a few days at the gym. I am also going to add pushups and situps into the mix. I don’t think I have lost any weight, but I feel a hell of a lot better and have more energy (which is kinda scary).
Damn, Andy Wishes He Thought of That!
When I launched PPP two years ago I realize that we missed the mark a bit on the whole transparency and disclosure issue. I took a considerable amount of heat because we didn’t force companies and bloggers to disclose their financial relationship in a uniform manner. It was a mistake. I have openly admitted that. However, we listened to feedback from bloggers and advertisers and made some considerable changes to the way we operate, creating what I believe to be the highest standards in disclosure.
Today The Blog Council, an organization backed by Andy Sernovitz, announced a Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit – prompting every company and employee to create a “Disclosure Policy” for blogging. In one way I am happy, the more people that disclose the better. However, I feel people need to know the history of the Disclosure Policy as it relates to social media and the man behind this effort.
Anyone who knows me knows I face my critics and favor creating solutions to legitimate concerns. For the past two years I have been trying to have an open dialog with Andy Sernovitz. For the same two years Andy has dodged my calls, attacked me and my company behind my back and deceived many people. It is a sheepish cowardliness I simply can’t respect.
On October 23, 2006 I sent Andy this email:
Andy,
I am planning on releasing a press release on our approach to disclosure on Wednesday. We plan on incenting our bloggers with cash to adopt a disclosure policy, we are really making a hard push. I have talked to many of the A-List bloggers who came out strongly against us and they plan to support this movement. We all believe this is a step in the right direction.The site is here:
http://www.disclosurepolicy.org/We are still making some revisions, but it is nearly complete.
Andy’s repsonse:
I think this is surprisingly good.
Yes. That was the entire response.
Andy was president of another non-profit organization at the time. On disclosurepolicy.org we encouraged people to read his organization’s policy about ethical blogging and the FTC guidelines about disclosure. Seven days later I received an email threatening legal action if every reference to that organization wasn’t removed.
Huh? Really? You are going to sue me if I encourage people to abide by the guidelines of your organization? Guidelines designed to encourage transparency? That didn’t make sense to me at all. In the same email Andy said “once that happens, we can continue discussions about working together”. Ok, I thought and we removed the reference.
In a series of phone calls I then offered Andy and his organization ownership of disclsourepolicy.org, the concept he called “surprisingly good”. I stated that I wanted to collaborate on the effort and create a policy that everyone could adopt.
The next email I received on November 3, 2006 said “You are making a mockery of disclosure.” I was not sure how we went from surprisingly good to a mockery in one week. I found out about a month later when his organization released their own new standards. I was both baffled and frustrated. I am sure the members of the organization had no idea what was going on, but Andy sure did.
Still, we charged on… making significant changes to our policies over time. Here are some notable milestones:
- October 2006 : Created the industries industry’s first universal disclosure policy, available to all bloggers and advertisers at disclosurepolicy.org.
- October 2006 : PPP began requiring disclosure by all bloggers.
- February 2007 : PPP introduced the Disclosure Badge. The industry’s first standard for in-post disclosure.
- April 2008 : SocialSpark launches, creating the industry’s most transparent WOM platform.
– Mandatory Disclosure Badges in every post
– The only machine-readable and fully audit-able disclosure in word of mouth marketing (WOM).
– Transparent marketplace with all campaigns displayed to the public
– No-follow tags on all links
– 100% Real opinions. Advertisers cannot stipulate tone.
Was I surprised today when The Blog Council announced their Disclosure Policy? No. A little offended, but not really surprised. Still, I tried to take the high road. I went to Andy’s blog and posted a comment, once again offering up DisclosurePolicy.org for use by his new council
What happened? It was deleted. Like every single one of my posts in the past (this one lasted about 30 seconds, just long enough to get a screen shot). The man who beats the drum of transparency, disclosure and open conversation dodges phone calls, has closed meetings and deletes comments. He wouldn’t allow us to join The Blog Council, even though we are clearly one of the biggest players in the space. Why? What is he so afraid of? The truth? He wants nothing to do with anyone who challenges him—or even offers to help him. It’s not about dialogue or finding an answer.
It’s about Andy. It’s always been about Andy.
I hope the members of The Blog Council don’t let one man dictate their future. If anyone ever wants to talk about how we can work together to make things better I am all ears. Just remember that the Blog Council is FOR-PROFIT and run by Andy’s company.
UPDATE
I posted a comment to the Blog Council website. Surprise, surprise. The comment was deleted. Gotta love that transparency and conversation. At least Andy is consistent : )