Higginbotham At Large

How To Get WVPBS to Promote Your Religion

2012-01-20T11:19:00.002-05:00

When I complained about gospel preaching, gospel singing and "intelligent design" programming on West Virginia PBS the Director of Programming, Craig Lanham, said the offensive programming was donated free of charge so it didn't cost taxpayers anything.

Hmmm. Does this mean that Sam Singleton , Atheist Evangelist, could get DVDs of his act on WVPBS if he donates them for free?

If Dan Barker donates CDs of his atheist tunes would Craig Lanham air those?

And what about Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs and Hindus; can they get Craig Lanham to broadcast shows that promote their religions of they donate the programs free of charge?

To offer Craig Lanham and WVPBS free DVDs that promote your religion, email Clanham@wvpubcast.org or call Craig Lanham at (304) 254-7896.

Why Won't WVPBS Meet With Me?

2012-01-19T09:26:00.000-05:00

If you've been feeling lately that WVPBS stands for West Virginia Parochial Broadcasting System, then you've seen the same gospel preaching and gospel singing shows I've seen and wondered why WVPBS is promoting a religion. Every time I see gospel sings, "intelligent design" shows and shows in which a preacher asserts that "God jammed the cross into the machinery of sin and separation from God" or "the resurrection of Jesus conquered death" I wonder why my tax money is being used to support and promote the Christian religion.

Does WVPBS plan to air atheist singing shows or Muslim singing shows? Does WVPBS plan to let Hindus or Buddhists preach on their channels?

I've been trying for some time now to get someone at WVPBS to meet with me so I can discuss these programming issues with someone in charge but, as of this writing, my emails and voice mails to Dennis Adkins, Marilyn DiVita and various board members have gone unanswered and unacknowledged.

Only Program Director, Craig Lanham, bothered to phone me. I give him kudos for that but I'm pretty sure I heard him snort when I mentioned "separation of church and state". Then he started using words like "conservative" and "liberal" - words I didn't use. I didn't come away from that phone call with a feeling that WVPBS understands my concerns so I'm still seeking a meeting.

If any of my readers have influence at WVPBS, please show them this post and help me get a meeting with someone who will listen to my concerns. Maybe we can go together. We can call the meeting "Occupy WVPBS".

Joseph Higginbotham Appointed To West Virginia Region 3 Workforce Investment Board

2012-01-13T08:39:00.000-05:00

On 5 January 2012 I was appointed to a 3-year term on West Virginia's Region 3 Workforce Investment Board so in days to come look for updates about WIB meetings, workforce development news and, of course, commentary and opinion about what West Virginia can and should do to attract more investment and equip West Virginians for 21st century jobs.

As my regular readers know, I frequently write about job search strategy but now that I'm on the WIB, I'll have more to say about what West Virginia must do to increase the supply of jobs. And I invite readers to weigh in - especially readers who are involved in any way with hiring and recruiting. I want to hear from small business owners, department heads and human resources professionals. Employers open offices and plants where the skilled labor is. What can West Virginia do to equip its workers with the skills that attract investment?

In addition, I'll be reaching out to people engaged in the kind of activity that might make West Virginia a labor market of choice. This includes (but is not limited to) STEM educators and those who work for a richer culture and a more diverse labor pool.

Add me to your mailing list. Tell me about your blog. View my profile and connect with me on Linkedin.

Post your comments on this blog or send me an email at JosephHigginbotham@Gmail.com.

Send me "snail mail" at P.O. Box 75186, Charleston, WV 25375.

Cancer For Christmas

2011-12-13T09:51:00.002-05:00

My 89-year-old mother has stage 3 cervical cancer.

We thought she was starting her radiation therapy today but, no, they just did some more imaging and will start her on the weekly chemotherapy and daily radiation in a few days. The weekly chemo and daily radiation treatments will run 5 to 7 weeks.

For privacy reasons, I won't be providing a lot of details about mom's case or prognosis but if you are a close friend or family member, reply to me privately and I'll answer questions or provide details not included here.

As for the Higginbotham At Large blog, look for announcements and changes in 2012.

Age Bias Against Older Job Applicants: I Experienced It When I "Mystery Shopped" Some Large Employers

2011-08-12T12:09:00.005-04:00

At some employers and staffing agencies, the job application process is front-loaded for age bias.

My mystery shopping experiences at several staffing companies and large employers will illustrate what I mean.

1. At 2 companies, young job applicants were led to a bank of computers where they applied for jobs online while older applicants like me were handed clipboards with paper applications. When I asked one of the 20-somethings why she led young applicants to a computer bank but handed me a paper application she actually said "Well, my parents aren't computer literate so I figured you might rather have a paper application."

2. At one employer, the 20-something worker who was handling my application started speaking to me s-l-o-w-l-y and loudly when she saw me use reading glasses. To her, if I needed reading glasses I was also deaf.

3. Two major employers, one a staffing company, the other a transportation company, literally tried to talk me out of applying for jobs at their companies. They said things like "Uh, Mr. Higginbotham, you do realize the job you're trying to apply for involves hard physical work, right?"

At some companies, the recruitment/application process is front-loaded for age bias because the 20-somethings on the front lines of that process stereotype older workers. Twentysomethings believe older workers are technophobes and Luddites. Twentysomethings think older workers can't hear because we wear reading glasses. Twentysomethings think older workers can't do physically demanding work.

Twentysomethings naturally want to stock their companies with other twentysomethings with whom they'd like to be "social".

The reason there are so many twentysomethings on the front end of the hiring process is that this initial screening role is seen as an "entry level" position that is wasted on more experienced HR people. Maybe employers need to re-think this. After all, what could be more important than getting the best people - regardless of age - into the next round of recruitment?

A twentysomething employer told me he wanted to hire "people with tight buns" who looked like "college soccer players."

If you don't have some older workers on the front end of your recruitment/application process your company may be one of the companies that discriminated against me when I went out to "mystery shop" staffing firms and other employers.

Employers need to diversify by age for the same reason they need to diversify by race and religion and gender.

Is your company's recruitment/application process front-loaded for age bias?

Have you ever hired a mystery shopper to report on your application/recruitment process?
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Would you like to serve on a "older workers task force" or would you like to recommend somebody? Call me at (304) 550-6710 or email me at JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com to learn more.

Employers: Diversify Your Recruitment Team To Access The Entire Talent Pool

2011-07-31T15:54:00.002-04:00

"If I knew where to find job applicants who can pass a drug screen and show up for work on time every day I'd hire them all right now" said the owner of a small manufacturing firm.

"I know where you can get job seekers who have been showing up for work on time and passing drug tests for 30 years" I said.

"Where?" asked the factory owner.

"The 50-somethings recently off-loaded by Corporate America" I said.

"Those people don't apply at my company" said the factory owner.

"Oh, yes, they do" I said. "You just don't know about them because the 23-year-olds on the front lines of your recruiting/screening process find a way to eliminate the 50-somethings from further consideration" I said.

Employers: The competition for talent is really a war. What if the sales rep you need is gay or the accountant you need is black or the IT guru you need is "old" or the marketing guru you need is atheist. Can you really afford to discriminate against any class of worker on the basis of age or sex or race or religion or sexual orientation? No, you can't. If you wish to compete for the entire talent pool you have to diversify your recruitment team.

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For more on "institutional ageism" see :: http://higginbothamatlarge.blogspot.com/2010/05/institutional-ageism.html
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Joseph Higginbotham has 20 year experience as a "headhunter". Joseph Higginbotham's articles about recruitment have appeared in Living Well 50 Plus, Campus Career Counselor and in Business Lexington. Higginbotham was a presenter and promoter at University of Kentucky-hosted "Career Changers and Job Seekers" events. Contact Joseph Higginbotham at (304) 550-6710 or at JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

Beside the debt ceiling, what's the hottest topic? JOBS! If James Carville were here he'd say "It's JOBS, stupid."

Does your club or organization need publicity? Have you considered providing a jobs workshop? I can show you how to publicize your jobs workshop and make it pay for itself. Call Joseph Higginbotham at (304) 550 - 6710 or email me at JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

Why A Charleston Radio Station Can Profit From "The Law Of The Category" And Give Talk Radio Fans An Alternative To Agnello

2011-07-29T12:13:00.002-04:00

West Virginia Radio exec, Mike Buxser's, recent re-hiring of serial brand-killing, conservative talk show hypocrite, Michael Agnello, gives me a chance to ask a question I've been asking radio station owners and program directors everywhere I go: why would a radio station rather be the 3rd country station or the 4th oldies station or the nobody-ever-heard-of-us rock station in a market the size of Charleston, WV when there's an unclaimed format category they could have all to themselves?

Did these radio people not read Reis and Trout's bestseller, 21 Immutable Laws of Marketing? Law #2 is "the law of the category" which says "if you can't be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in."

What is that unclaimed category Charleston, WV station owners are failing to claim for themselves? Here it is: talk radio for talk radio fans who can't stand talk radio hypocrite Michael Agnello.

No, this category doesn't exist in other markets. In other markets the new category might have to be "liberal/progressive talk radio" but here in Charleston all you have to do to create a new category is be the only talk station in town where talk radio fans don't have to listen to MIchael Agnello.

I can think of several Charleston stations that could profit from Reis and Trout's Law Of The Category by making a format change.

First, there's WIHY radio at 1110 on the AM dial. WIHY is one of the few stations in the market that isn't owned by West Virginia Radio, Bristol Broadcasting or LM Communications. WIHY is owned by Big River Radio of Blacksburg, VA. WIHY doesn't even show up in some of the ratings books I've seen so their "Classic Rock N Roll" format doesn't seem to be working very well for them in this market. Seems to me Big River Radio has 4 choices: 1. they could simply turn off the transmitter. 2. they could sell the station. 3. they could double down on a format that isn't working for them in this market and keep doing what they're doing (and probably keep getting the results they've been getting) or they could make a bold format change. I suggest they consider becoming the talk show station for talk show fans who can't stand Michael Agnello.

Then there's LM Communications which owns a cluster of stations in the Charleston area. At least two of LM's stations - at 1300 and 1410 on the AM dial - aren't showing up in the ratings so, clearly, what they're doing isn't working from an audience size standpoint. One of those stations might make money, however, because it's a listener-supported Christian station which means the content providers actually pay the station for the airtime. The content providers, in turn, ask their listeners to support their "ministry". In case you've ever wondered how a radio station with a 1% market share can survive, this is how they do it.

People who have been around St. Albans for, say, 45 years or so, may know that radio station WKLC AM at 100 Kanawha Terrace in St. Albans was LM Communications' President, Lynn Martin's, first radio station. LM Communications owns clusters in Lexington, KY - where Martin now lives - and in Charleston, SC.

I think Lynn Martin should consider profiting from Reis and Trout's Law Of The Category by reformatting 1410 as the only Charleston talk radio station that doesn't have Michael Agnello.

I even know where LM Communications' Lynn Martin and Big River Radio's Edward Baker can get their first 3PM radio show to air opposite radio talk show hypocrite and serial brand-killer, Michael Agnello. Former Huntington mayor, Bobby Nelson, is already doing a civil, thinking man's talk from the Kindred Communications studios in downtown Huntington. As a former state senator and former Congressman Ken Hechler staffer, Bobby Nelson already has a fan base in Charleston so it would make sense for an enterprising Charleston station owner to simply license the show from Kindred and simulcast it in the Charleston market. Since Huntington and Charleston are only 50 miles apart and Bobby knows as much about the local politics and news in Charleston as he does about what's going on in Huntington, Bobby could easily adapt his show to the geographical expansion.

There's a new sheriff in town at LM's Charleston, WV cluster, cluster manager, Reggie Jordan. I think this is Jordan's chance to do something bold, something that would give LM a category in which they can be #1. They can't be #1 at rock or country or any of the other categories they compete in. Their situation is tailor-made for the Reis/Trout Law of The Category.

For readers who don't know why I call Michael Agnello a "hypocrite" and a "serial brand-killer", just go to Google and find the Charleston Gazette and Charleston Daily Mail articles about Agnello's numerous arrests for assault, drunk driving and driving on a suspended license. While you're at it, look up articles about how Agnello lost his job as a Charleston pastor when he had an affair with a member of the church staff.

On a recent show, Agnello was calling on the Boone County Board of Education to fire teachers they caught using meth even though this Bible-quoting former preacher has been the recipient and beneficiary of unprecedented grace on the part of West Virginia Radio, WCHS and Mike Buxser.

Perhaps Agnello should read the story of the "Unforgiving Servant" in Matthew 18 before he goes on the air and advocates the career death penalty when he only has a radio career because of the long suffering of his employer who has forgiven him numerous times after numerous arrests.

Dave Kravetz: From "Overqualified" Pizza Delivery Man To iHigh.com Linchpin

2011-07-17T12:48:00.006-04:00

David Kravetz has a graduate degree in political science and speaks fluent Japanese but when I last wrote about him in a 2008 newspaper column he was the most overqualified pizza delivery person in Lexington, KY. Despite Dave's impressive resume, employers didn't want an "overqualified" 50-something.

I'm happy to announce that not only has Dave found an employer who looked past his age and saw his value, I'm happy to report that Dave is making us 50-somethings proud.

No, Dave didn't walk straight into a job that paid as well as the job he had at Lexmark before he became a pizza delivery man. In fact, his new job at iHigh.com, a young Lexington company with a why-didn't-I-think-of-that? business plan, paid less than half his old Lexmark salary but Dave saw the potential to grow along with the company so he worked hard and became a linchpin at iHigh.com. His bosses noticed and promoted and rewarded him accordingly. David is now the Director of Business Development at iHigh.com.

Sometimes its a part-time job, a hobby or a "passion" that makes one candidate a better fit for a job than someone else would be. Dave is succeeding at iHigh.com largely because of one his part-time jobs. You see, Dave was the webmaster and promoter for a semi-famous musician who records and performs under the name Antsy McClain and the skills Dave acquired came in very handy when he went to work for iHigh.com because managing the website and promoting the music for Antsy McClain gave Dave a chance to learn how to drive traffic to a website, a key component of how iHigh.com makes its money.

I always knew Dave's low-paid work for Antsy McClain would one day become key to Dave's self-reinvention but I just didn't know how. I thought Dave would probably start a business but, instead, Dave got in near the ground floor of a hot new start-up that's going to make its shareholders rich either in an IPO or an acquisition.

What I wrote about Dave in my 2008 newspaper column is still true of the other Daves who have recently been rightsized and downsized and offshored out of their old jobs: "Dave is on sale. There's a bull market in Dave. You can hire Dave and others like him if you'll just strike the word "over-qualified" from your vocabulary. Jump the wood rail fence and shake a job application at the raging bulls."

Experience is on sale in America. Buy and hold.

Incidentally, Dave got his great new job with help from a social co-signer who, in this case, was his wife, Julie. As my regular readers know, even a terrific employee like Dave seldom gets the job without help from an insider.

Competence gets a job seeker into a game that relationships win.
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Learn how to turn your relationships into social co-signers in my February 28 thru March 5 posts.

A Job Search Fact Job Seekers Can Use To Network Their Way To Their Next Boss

2011-07-11T00:00:00.045-04:00

Not once have I placed a candidate who the paying client couldn't have found on their own just by using their existing network of employees, colleagues, vendors, clients and other professional contacts.

Let's backward-engineer that fact. Not once have I placed a candidate with a paying client who couldn't have networked his or her way to that job on their own. In every case where I've been paid a ridiculous fee for "finding" an executive, a sales rep, a marketing guru, an architect, an engineer, a nurse, a respiratory therapist, a pharmacist or other professional, that successful candidate was already socially and professionally networked to the hiring client and could have networked themselves to the job had they simply worked their existing networks.

If you haven't been living under a rock and you have any work experience at all you probably already know somebody who can introduce you to your next boss.

I've just divulged a fact that other headhunters don't want you to know.

There are two major reasons employers pay ridiculous headhunting fees instead of just becoming their own headhunters: (1) laziness and (2) total cluelessness about how to use their existing networks of employees, clients, vendors and other professional contacts. At a recent trade show I was approached by a man I didn't know who wanted me to find him a selling branch manager in Carbondale, IL. Since I didn't know the man and perform search work by referral only, I declined the search but offered to show him how to do the search himself. I promised him that I could sit down with him and show him how to fill this job himself by using Linkedin. Free. He didn't want to do it himself and asked me again if I would do the search for him.

Invariably, when I "find" the candidate my client wants to hire, I do so by networking with people who could have introduced the client to that candidate if only the client had asked.

Most of what headhunters do is simple networking. Employers and job seekers can use that fact to become their own headhunters and network their way to solving their problem.

Read my February 28 thru March 5 posts on how to get a "social co-signer" to introduce you to your next boss.

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For more on how to network your way to your next job, read my February 28 thru March 5 posts.

Job Seeking For Recent College Grads

2011-07-09T23:15:00.002-04:00

Lately I've been hearing from recent college grads who find themselves looking for their first "real" job in a market where they feel like a stranger - their own hometowns. Their last hometown employment was five years ago and didn't provide them with the kind of professional networking opportunities they need now. It's hard to grip and grin down at the Rotary club breakfast when you're the one cooking or serving the Rotary club breakfast.

When it comes to job search, there's nothing worse than being a stranger.

Hometown strangers need to get out of the stranger category and into the friend-of-a-friend or introduced-by-a-friend category. This is going to involve doing a lot of interviewing but not the kind where you send a resume to a stranger and hope the stranger invites you in for an interview. No, the interviewing I'm talking about is the kind where you talk to every active working professional you know - people whose professional networks are current - and ask them who they know who might be in a position to hire you.

Start with your old college town. Perhaps you did an internship or some part-time work in college. Who did you meet? Get out a legal pad and make a list of the professionals you met in your college town and then start calling them asking who they know in your hometown. Those professionals belong to associations or sit on boards or do business with people in your current market. Start calling them and asking them who they know in your current market.

You can waste time playing the low-percentage game of sending resumes to strangers or you can play the high percentage game of moving out of the stranger category and into the recommended-by-a-friend or friend-of-a-friend category. It's a fact of human nature that people will not hire or do business with a stranger if a satisfactory non-stranger is available. You don't have to be the hiring manager's best buddy to get the job but you do have to move from the stranger category into the non-stranger category. Your college town contacts can do that for you. Make that list of your college town contacts, tell them where you are now, and ask them who they know in your current town.

And don't just ask them if you can "use their name". Using the name of a friend or professional contact is good but what's even better is to ask your professional contacts to send an email or make a call to someone they know in your current town.

People won't hire or do business with strangers if there is a satisfactory non-stranger available. The fact that you've sent hundreds of resumes and still don't have a job confirms my assertion that you're playing a low-percentage game. Increase your odds. Don't be a stranger. Become a non-stranger by getting somebody you already know to intervene on your behalf.

And don't assume that your hometown friends and relatives have already done all they can to help you. Interview each of them. Tell them what you did in college - both academics and employment - and ask them who they know that they'd be willing to introduce you to. Ask them to arrange a lunch meeting or coffee at Starbucks. This conversation will jog their memories and make them think of people they wouldn't have thought of as important contacts until you show up with a legal pad and started asking them who they know.

What you've been doing isn't working. Try my way.

I'd rather spend one day networking with friends of friends than a month sending resumes to strangers.

Don't be a stranger. Make the list. Conduct the interviews. Get your professional contacts from your old college town involved in your job search. Get your hometown friends and relatives to introduce you to people they know who may be able to hire you.

I'd rather spend one day interviewing friends and relatives than spend a week sending resumes to strangers. The odds of success are far greater.
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Older job seekers with years of work experience should look at my February 28 thru March 5 posts about working with headhunters, getting a "social co-signer" and more.

Job Seeker Tip: Don't Be A Stranger (And How Not To Be)

2011-07-06T11:11:00.001-04:00

As my regular readers know, a job seeker with a great resume is no match for a job seeker with the right relationships. Competence gets job seekers into a game that relationships win. Every few minutes an employer passes over better-qualified candidates to hire someone they know, someone they like, or someone who was recommended to them by a "social co-signer".

Though helpful, it's not necessary to be a friend of the employer but it is necessary to move out of the stranger category. Why? Here's a fundamental fact of human nature: people don't like to do business with strangers. Employers don't like to hire strangers.

If you are a friend of a friend, you're no longer a stranger.

My younger job seeking readers - many of them recent college grads seeking their first jobs - have a hard time understanding this fact of human nature and how to exploit it. They think that if they had the highest GPA from the most prestigious school they should get the job.

It only works that way when there's not a non-stranger in the candidate pool. Non-strangers with "B" averages get the jobs over 4.0 candidates all the time.

People won't do business with a stranger if there is a non-stranger available who can provide a reasonably good product or service.

People won't hire strangers if there is a reasonably competent non-stranger available.

Get out of the stranger category and move into the non-stranger category.

Every good salesman knows that his odds of getting the new account greatly increase if he is introduced to the decision maker by a mutual friend (the social co-signer).

Don't let your stubborn refusal to believe in the irrationality of human beings stand in the way of getting the job. Instead of sending resumes to strangers - a low-percentage game - get your social co-signers to introduce you to somebody who can hire you.

Two candidates apply for the same job. One is a stranger, the other is a non-stranger. The stranger has the stronger resume, better experience and glowing references from other strangers.

The non-stranger is introduced to the hiring manager by their mutual friend.

Hiring managers and HR managers will never tell you this but, in most cases, the non-stranger gets the job.

Stop sending resumes to strangers. Get introduced to your next boss by a social co-signer.

For more info on social co-signers, read my Feb. 28 to March 5 posts.
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Anonymous and pseudonymous comments will not be approved for publication.

Forget Your Resume, Send Your Rap Sheet To Mike Buxser At West Virginia Radio Corp

2011-07-06T09:16:00.000-04:00

Michael Agnello is returning to WCHS radio 580.

Former conservative radio talk show hosts who damaged their stations' brands by driving drunk, driving on a suspended, being arrested for assaulting their girlfriends or having affairs with women at churches they pastored should send their rap sheets to :

Mike Buxser
West Virginia Radio
1111 Virginia Street East
Charleston, WV 25301

See the story at :: http://wvgazette.com/News/201106301029

For more on returning conservative talk show hypocrite, Google search terms "Michael Agnello" plus "South Central Regional Jail", "cash-only bond", "suspended license", "revoked license", "arrested", "affair with another minister".

The Company Men: The Star-Studded Downsizing Film You'll Want To Watch With Your Unemployed Friends

2011-06-29T00:24:00.006-04:00

Despite it's star-studded cast - Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, Chris Cooper, Tommy Lee Jones, Maria Bello, Craig T. Nelson - the most honest film I've ever seen about the resetting of America's job market, was a box office flop - perhaps because its natural market (unemployed people) can no longer afford to see movies. That's too bad, because The Company Men deserves to be seen by every right-sized, downsized, unemployed and underemployed American so I hope my unemployed and underemployed readers will rent it as I did last week.

The Company Men's main character, Ben Affleck, is a $150k per year account executive at a ship-building company until he is fired along with thousands of his co-workers by CEO (Craig T. Nelson) and the HR director (Maria Bello). The Company Men realistically follows Affleck as he goes to company-paid "outplacement", sells his upscale house, sells his Porsche, moves back in with his parents, deals unsuccessfully with headhunters, loses job opening after job opening to younger MBAs willing to work for less than half what he used to make, lets his wife go back to work (she's a nurse so she can work any time she wants) and eventually takes a manual labor job carrying building supplies to the skilled laborers at his brother-in-law's (Kevin Costner) construction firm.

My regular readers will understand why I especially liked the advice Affleck got from the outplacement firm: they told him and his fellow outplaced workers to make a list of everybody they know - friends, relatives, former co-workers, former bosses, former clients - anybody who might help them find their next job.

The Company Men is honest about ageism. One of Affleck's co-workers (Chris Cooper) commits suicide when he discovers that no matter how much he amends his resume and dyes his hair, he's just too damn old to get a job. When Affleck's old company loses a major account and starts a second round of firings, workers over age 50 are fired in disproportionately high numbers but company attorneys insist they can get away with it.

The Company Men is honest about what I call the "low percentage game" of sending resumes and going to interviews. If you've sent thousands of resumes and gone to dozens of interviews that didn't lead to job offers, you may be tempted to think there's something wrong with your resume or your interview skills - and there are plenty of people who are more than willing to take advantage of your insecurities and charge you hundreds of dollars to write you a killer resume or thousands of dollars to coach you how to interview. My readers know that the truth: its not better resumes or better interview skills but better relationships that will get you the job. The candidate with a great resume is no match for the candidate who is introduced to the hiring manager by a mutual friend. I call this mutual friend the "social co-signer". (Read more in my Feb 28 thru March 5 posts).

The Company Men is honest about where your next job is likely to come from: somebody you already know. Affleck finally escapes manual labor with his brother-in-law and gets back into a "more suitable" job when one of his fellow fired executives (Tommy Lee Jones) uses the profits from his stock options to start his own company and hire a few of the down-sized workers.

Kudos to John Wells for writing and directing the most honest film I've ever seen on job search in modern America. Kudos to The Weinstein Group for getting this realistic, almost instructional film out on DVD. Rent it today. Watch it with a few of your job seeking friends.
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Higginbotham At Large is not affiliated with anonymously or pseudonymously published websites - even sites that quote from or link to my blog. See my March 12 & 13 2011 posts for details.

Higginbotham At Large does not publish anonymous or pseudonymous comments.

Natalie Tennant Squanders A Chance To Actually Have A Message On The Hoppy Kercheval Show

2011-05-09T11:54:00.001-04:00

On this morning's radio show, Hoppy Kercheval gave Natalie Tennant an opportunity to make some news and say something that will get people talking about her campaign. She squandered it. Kercheval asked her an abortion-related question and instead of taking the opportunity to say the one thing she can say that no other candidate can say - that she is the only pro-choice liberal in the race - Tennant stuck with the message that isn't working and talked about Luntz-tested words like "accountability" and "transparency". She's at 17% in the polls and claims to "feel good" abut her campaign and insists that her "message" of accountability and transparency is "resonating" with voters.

I understand that elected officials like Tennant are surrounded by supporters and sycophants who won't tell her that her "message" isn't a message and that if she doesn't start saying something different she's going to keep getting the results she's getting but I don't understand how a women with a masters degree can't understand the polls. Tennant probably took no fewer than 3 or 4 statistics classes in college so she understands how polls work and she has to know that if her so-called "message" is resonating with voters she'd be polling higher than 17%.

I also understand that when all your friends are in politics it's easy to have the misconception that all voters are engaged and aware of what you stand for. They're not. Just yesterday I saw an email from a Ph. D. who was still deciding between Tennant and Thompson - two candidates who are about as dissimilar as two candidates can be.

Natalie Tennant is running a lousy campaign. She's lucky Emily's List doesn't ask for their money back.

Is there nobody in Tennant's inner circle who will tell her the truth that her so-called message isn't a message and that it's not "resonating"?

Squandering The Emily's List Endorsement: If Tennant Loses It Will Be Because She Didn't Make The Right Enemies

2011-05-08T09:26:00.006-04:00

Candidates win races the same way organizations raise money: by attracting the right enemies. if Natalie Tennant loses in a primary race where she is the only pro-choice liberal in a 5-way race against 4 DINO men, it will because because she failed to get attacked by her opponents and anti-choice activists. It will be because she squandered the Emily's List endorsement.

A HuntingtonNewsNet editorial said Natalie Tennant "sold her political career for a very cheap price" when she received funding and an endorsement from Emily's List. The editorial was wrong. Tennant may very well lose this special election primary and she may very well have squandered the best chance she'll ever have to get the democratic nomination for governor but not because she was endorsed by Emily's List. No, if Natalie Tennant loses it will be because she failed to make the right enemies and because she failed to get those enemies attacking her loudly enough to arouse her natural constituencies, women and liberals.

As I've said in previous posts, if a pro-choice female Democrat can't win the democratic nomination this year against a field of 4 Republican-lite men, then she can't win at all. Never again will the primary math favor her the way it does this year. Never again will Tennant be lucky enough to have 4 men fighting over all the conservative votes and leaving the non-conservative vote to her.

But this favorable, split-vote primary math advantage only works if Tennant can get people talking about her as the only liberal in the race. Nothing says "liberal" like being the only pro-choice candidate in the race, the only Emily's List endorsed candidate in the race.

Instead of trying to receive the endorsement under the radar, Tennant should have made that endorsement the cornerstone of her campaign. All the candidates claim to be for more jobs, more accountable government and lower taxes. The Tennant campaign can't excite and mobilize her natural constituencies - women and liberals - by sounding like one of the DINO boys.

But in a primary election where she's the only pro-choice candidate, Tennant can differentiate herself from her Republican lite opponents if she makes choice the cornerstone of her campaign and gets the boys to attack her for it.

And she's running out of time. I hope that even as I write this post Tennant is taping a new TV ad in which she trades the tomboy outfit for a business suit and replaces the DINO boy script for a clear declaration that she is the only liberal, pro-choice candidate in this race.

With any luck, one of the anti-choice DINO boys will take the bait and try to strengthen his conservative bona fides by attacking her as "too liberal for West Virginia" or failure to reflect West Virginia's values. The more Tennant can get her male opponents attacking her for her views on abortion, the better chance she has of taking advantage of this year's unusual split-field primary math.

As long as Tennant allows this race to be about Luntz-tested words like accountability, she can't take advantage of the most favorable, split vote primary election math she'll ever see.

And while it would be great if one of the DINO boy candidates would attack Tennant on abortion, the next best thing would be if some fire-breathing anti-abortion organization like The Family Foundation or The Heritage Foundation would use Tennant's position on abortion to raise funds. The point is, if Tennant loses a 5-way race in which the other 4 candidates are splitting the conservaive vote 4 ways, it won't be because she got the Emily's List endorsement, it will be because she didn't get her enemies to attack her for it. What Tennant needs is the right enemy. A loud enemy. An enemy who will make the point she has failed to make: that she is the only liberal, pro-choice candidate in this race.

THIS JUST IN: Rick Thompson, who has been running a cynical, dog whistle campaign for the evangelical vote all along, is now running a TV ad aimed at people who "carry a Bible to church on Sunday". If Tenant could just get the hymn-singing Thompson to attack her it would help her more than it would help Thompson. Yes, Thompson may very well take a few evangelical votes from frontrunner, Tomblin, but more importantly an attack on Tennant's position on abortion helps differentiate Tennant as the only pro-choice liberal in the race.
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Bray Cary Is Right About Why Natalie Tennant's Campaign Isn't Getting Traction

2011-05-06T12:45:00.000-04:00

Bray Cary of West Virginia Media is right: Natalie Tennant's campaign isn't getting "traction" because she's not giving people a reason to vote for her except that she's a nice lady. He made this observation on Hoppy Kercheval's radio show this morning. I'm sure some of you heard it.

That's why people are talking about Perdue, Thompson and Tomblin but not Tennant.

Is there not somebody in the Tennant campaign who can take her aside and tell her that if she can't win in a race where the conservative DINO vote is split 4 ways, she can't win? Is there nobody?

The primary math will never be more favorable to a Tennant win than it is right now. The question is, when will Tennant adjust her campaign strategy to exploit the favorable math?

Secretary Tennant, pull the tomboy TV ads and replace them with an ad in which you tell your natural constituencies - women and liberals - that you are the only pro-choice candidate in the governor's race.

That'll get people talking about your campaign and, more importantly, it'll give approximately half the women voters and all the liberal voters a reason to come out and vote for you.

Why Tennant Needs To Pull Her Current Tomboy Ads and Replace Them With Ads Aimed At Her Natural Constituencies

2011-05-05T11:35:00.000-04:00

Here's the bad news for Natalie Tennant: Natalie Tennant won't get any conservative votes. Tomblin, Perdue, Thompson and Kessler will get all the conservative votes. No matter how much Tennant's TV ads try to make her look like a tomboy, conservatives and the West Virginia Democratic Party establishment will vote for the boys.

Here's the good news for Natalie Tennant: Tennant can win without one conservative vote. All she has to do is win her two natural constituencies, women and liberals.

So the question is, why is Natalie Tennant's campaign wasting scarce TV money on ads that make her look like just another conservative? It simply doesn't make any sense.

I think Tennant has been hoping that her female and liberal base will do what she's failing to do, that is, reach out to her natural constituencies.

I think she's assuming that enough people know she's the only pro-choice candidate in the race that we will put her over the top with a word-of-mouth campaign.

She's wrong. Oh, we're trying. We're out here Facebooking and blogging and using Linkedin and Twitter but there simply aren't enough liberal elites in the East End of Charleston with connections to the women and liberals in the far flung counties who will only know Tennant from her TV ads that don't say how she's different from the boys.

The boys, by the way, are helping her. The frontrunner, Earl Ray Tomblin, is starting to get some grief for the corporate welfare he receives from the Greyhound breeding industry so I look for the conservatives - Tomblin, Thompson, Perdue and Kessler - to get negative and tighten the race. I think Tomblin's 30+ poll numbers will drop into the high 20s as voters start to learn who he is and Tennant can win with only about 30%.

I think she can get to 40 but not with her current campaign strategy. I think if it were generally known that Tennant is the only pro-choice candidate in the race women who go to conservative churches and sleep with conservative men will go to the polls and vote for Natalie Tennant. They'll lie about it, of course. They'll tell their pastors and their husbands they voted for Thompson or one of the other DINOs.

And I think that women who don't tell their pastor or their husband or their boyfriend the truth about how they feel about reproductive choice would go out to the polls and vote overwhelmingly for Tennant if she just tells them she's the only pro-choice candidate in the race.

And I know the liberals will. Trouble is, Secretary Tennant can't count on the progressive enclave on the East End to get the word out to the rest of the state. There's a myth that all West Virginians are only separated from each other by one or two degrees. That's false.

Tennant needs to pull her tomboy ads and go on TV dressed like the professional woman she is and tell the liberals and women of this state that she is the only pro-choice candidate in the race. If she does that, women all over the state of West Virginia will tell their husbands and their pastors they're voting for one of the boys but they'll vote overwhelmingly for Tennant. And liberals who don't know anybody on the East End and live in places where they can't identify themselves as liberals will come out in droves to vote for the only progressive in the race.

Why This Year's Math Favors Tennant But Her Strategy Doesn't

2011-05-04T08:31:00.000-04:00

"Much of what political consultants do amounts to exploiting the mathematical quirks of the plurality vote." - William Poundstone, Gaming The Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair

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Yesterday I wrote that in a year when all her opponents are male and running like Republicans, Natalie Tennant's clearest path to the Democratic gubernatorial nomination is to run like a girl. The anti-choice boys are splitting the male, conservative vote 4 ways which means that if Tennant can motivate women and liberals to come out and vote, Tennant wins. So why is she running like one of the conservative boys?

My friends and I have been swapping theories about why Tennant is running such a bad campaign. Several people have cited her inability to raise money. Others have speculated that this special election run is just a dress rehearsal for the real race a year later. Some have even suggested that she doesn't really want to be governor.

It's also just possible that Tennant thinks she doesn't have to compete for the female vote and doesn't have to play the I'm -the-only-pro-choice-candidate-in-the=race card because her women friends will get that message out leaving her free to run like one of the boys.

If that's what she thinks, she's wrong and she's getting bad advice.

West Virginia women don't like the TV ads the boys are airing. They make fun of them. Perdue has some kind of creepy obsession with telling us how "big" he is. Thompson thinks all he has to do is play gospel music and tell us about his sad childhood and we'll forget that he's otherwise indistinguishable from any Republican.

Tomblin tried to deprive us of the opportunity to vote at all.

West Virginia women want an excuse to vote for Tennant but she's not giving them one. Her phone bank scripts look as if they were lifted from the Tomblin campaign and in her TV ads she is dressed like one of the boys and she doesn't say the one thing that would mobilize the female vote against the boys: that she's the only pro-choice candidate in the race.

If Tennant were in a 2-way or 3-way race for the Democratic nomination I might understand her reluctance to bring up the controversial subject of abortion, but this year's Democratic contest has rules that favor a pro-choice woman.

Secretary Tennant, the kind of voters who would vote for anti-choice conservatives like Tomblin, Thompson, Perdue and Kessler will never vote for you so stop trying to get a slice of that demographic. Give your natural constituencies - women and liberals - an excuse to come out and vote for the only pro-choice candidate in the race.

Today's governors become tomorrow's US Senators and Presidents. Women know this and that's why Natalie Tennant can own the female vote if she just lets West Virginia women know that she's the only pro-choice candidate in the race. If Tennant brings out the female vote and the boys split the male vote, Tennant wins. If the boys split the conservative vote and Tennant brings out the liberal vote, Tennant wins.

Run like a girl, Secretary Tennant, run like a girl. Never again will the math actually favor the pro-choice woman so this could be Tennant's year to beat the boys if she'll just run like a girl.

There's Still Time For Natalie Tennant To Beat The Boys If She'll Just Run Like A Girl

2011-05-03T10:21:00.004-04:00

West Virginia Secretary of State, Natalie Tennant, is the only pro-choice candidate in the West Virginia governor race so why is she running like she's just another Republican Lite Democrat-In-Name-Only?

Why doesn't Tennant just let Kessler, Thompson, Perdue and Tomblin split the conservative, DINO vote 4 ways and aggressively brand herself as the only liberal in the race?

First, it's the only way she can win the Democratic nomination.

Second, if she runs on women's rights she can capture the lion's share of women voters and she can capture all of the liberal vote.

This strategy wouldn't work if she were in a 2-way or 3-way race for the nomination but in a race where all the other candidates are male and anti-choice, this should be Tennant's race to lose.

And yet I hear that Tennant's phone bank workers are being handed scripts that sound almost exactly like the Tomblin campaign's slogan: more jobs and lower taxes.

Tennant can't beat the DINOs by campaigning like a DINO.

This year, Tennant needs to campaign like a girl and proudly run as the only pro-choice candidate in the Democratic race.

Tennant needs to pull the blah ad she's running on TV now and replace it with a simple ad where she looks into the camera and tells the women and the liberals of West Virginia that she is the only pro-choice candidate in the entire gubernatorial race. She needs to tell West Virginia women that if they come out to vote for her, there's not a "big man" or a guitar-picking, hymn-singing or election-fighting man in the race who can prevent her from looking out for West Virginia women when she's governor.

Never again will Natalie Tennant have the opportunity to make her gender and her liberalism work for her. In any other year, running as the only pro-choice candidate in a conservative state would be a losing strategy but with the conservative vote split 4 ways this is the year when a woman can win by campaigning like a girl.

Campaign like a girl, Secretary Tennant. Run like a girl. The women of West Virginia can hand you the nomination if you'll just run like a girl. Don't run like Tomblin. Run like a girl.

Why I'm Exhausted From Defending Linkedin: An Open Letter To The Investors, Board, Management And Other Linkedin "Suits"

2011-05-01T15:35:00.002-04:00

Remember Velma Hart? She's the black lady who made national news when she stood up in a televised Town Hall Meeting that she was "exhausted" from defending Barack Obama.

I feel like the Velma Hart of Linkedin. I'm exhausted from defending Linkedin.

I just spent hours composing a message to members of the three Linkedin groups I own and manage explaining to them how the latest ham-handed "anti-spam" Linkedin technological change will adversely effect members' ability to send messages to each other unless they do so as 1st level connections or unless they do so as participants in a group discussion.

To thwart spammers, Linkedin no longer allows me to look you up and send you a message from an advanced search screen. Let's say a recruiter, HR manager, department head or other heavy LI user sets up an advanced search to find everybody in her network with a degree in accounting and let's say some of the people who show up in that search are members of some of the same groups as the searcher. The searcher no longer has a "send message" option at that screen unless the searcher and the intended recipient are 1st level connections.

This is another example of how the technological geniuses and engineers who run Linkedin don't understand the first damn thing about the humans who use their technology. The harder Linkedin makes it for people to "talk to each other" via Linkedin, the less often Linkedin account holders will log on and the less time they will spend there.

Is there NOBODY at Linkedin who understands this? If the suits who run Linkedin - Reid Hoffman, Nick Besbeas, Jeff Weiner, Deep Nishar, Skip Battle, Leslie Kilgore, Michael Moritz, David Sze, et al, don't understand this then the investors need to rise up and make them understand that people with Linkedin accounts are just giving up on Linkedin in droves.

If I didn't know better, I'd swear Linkedin is deliberately driving users into the messaging-enabled arms of Facebook where, if I can see you I can send you a message unless you have disabled that messaging in your account settings. Of course, most Facebook account holders have not disabled that function. Why would they? The whole point of "social media" is to be able to talk to people via the social media platform you're using. Facebook makes that easy. Linkedin makes that hard.

In my 01 September 2010 blog post I said that Linkedin's artificial distinction between "professional" networking and the "social networking" of Facebook is not shared by the typical Linkedin user and has not survived first contact with the enemy (Facebook). Linkedin tries to say they don't compete with Facebook and, therefore, don't care if the Facebook user experience is making Linkedin users expect Linkedin to be more like Facebook. That's like a beer maker saying he doesn't mind losing sales to wine makers because their target markets are different. People have a limited amount of time to spend on networking platforms and if they are choosing to spend it on Facebook instead of Linkedin, that's going to cost Linkedin investors money. Don't they understand that?

Doesn't Deep Nishar, VP of User Experience at Linkedin, understand that the reason Linkedin has so-called "users" who haven't logged on in a year and can't remember their passwords is because Linkedin keeps making it harder, not easier, for users to talk to each other?

Isn't there a Linkedin investor out there who understands that "the Facebook effect" has forever shaped and elevated Linkedin user expectations?

Look, Linkedin, I get it. I do. You are trying to use your technology to enforce a particular networking philosophy. I understand. In a perfect world, the best way for me to "meet" a person I don't know is for me to be introduced to that person through a mutual friend. I agree, that's best. The mutual friend serves as a kind of "social and professional co-signer". I get it. I agree with it. But your average Linkedin user doesn't know how to use the "get introduced through a connection" function.

And what's the deal with asking us for the recipient's email address before we can send a connection request to that recipient? It may be that I haven't seen the recipient since 3 jobs ago but the recipient would gladly reconnect with me. Why do you make me go find them on Facebook so I can get their email address? If I have to find them on Facebook, send them a message, get their email address and then connect with them on Linkedin, what's to prevent me from just deciding that Facebook is easier to use and facilitates rather than hinders my communication with other people?

So, just as Velma Hart is "exhausted" from defending Obama, I am exhausted from defending Linkedin. Just the other day I told one of my Friends of Linkedin group members that I hope somebody who understands people as well as engineering will buy Linkedin and fully enable messaging between Linkedin account holders.
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Read my 01 September 2010 post, "How Linkedin Must Change" at ::http://higginbothamatlarge.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-linkedin-must-change-adapting-to.html
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Higginbotham at Large no longer accepts or publishes reader comments here. if you wish to send me suggestions or hate mail, email me at JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com. If you wish to discuss current events or politics with me, meet me at LinkedLiberals on Linkedin. If you wish to discuss the future of St. Albans, WV, meet me at LinkedSt.Albans on Linkedin.

What Doesn't Work In Network Marketing Doesn't Work In Activism

2011-04-21T12:05:00.004-04:00

One of my Linkedin group members asked a good discussion question. I'll paraphrase it. She asked "Are you actually doing anything or do you just join stuff?

I've long been bothered by this question or variants of it. Nancy Lublin failed to convince me when she wrote about the virtues and value of "slacktivism" for Fast Company. Wear a button. Sign a petition. "Like" this or that on Facebook. Nothing wrong with any of that - and I especially respect people who are willing to be visibly linked to something unpopular like being a liberal or a Pitt fan in West Virginia but I think that this sort of wholesale distribution approach to activism doesn't work for changing your community or your world any more than it works for network marketing. They use different terms but too many of the well-intentioned people I know are spending way too much time sucking up to their "uplines" and trying to acquire a "downline" and not enough time selling some soap or some vitamins or some whatever to actual, retail consumers, too much time trying to become known as leaders without ever noticing that nobody's following.

if you've ever been in or knew anybody who was into network marketing you know that the guys at the top of the pyramid - the only ones who ever make any money from the scheme - lure people into their "downlines" with promises of a lot of money for very little work. At every level of the pyramid, there's a guy with a "downline" of distributors who assumes the guys below him will actually sell the skin cream or the soap or the nutritional supplements but, of course, everybody was lured into the scheme with unspoken dreams of just sitting back and getting rich off the work of others.

Trouble is, most of the people in your downline and most of the people in their downlines are spending more time trying to get a downline than they're spending actually selling something. Sooner or later, somebody has to sell some soap but almost nobody wants to do that. It looks too much like work.

And it doesn't make the person doing the work feel like a big deal.

Activism is that way. Many of the people in my world have fancy titles in orgs that don't actually do what they purport to do or hold poorly-attended meetings of the usual suspects at the Roosevelt Center or sponsor speakers that only the Already Converted want to hear. The expression "preaching to the choir" applies.

You don't change your community or your world by preaching to the converted.

Speaking of choirs, sometimes real leadership means telling the choir not to come to practice. I know a Georgetown, KY preacher who built his church by telling choir members to skip choir and do something else instead. Yes, really. Here's what happened: Georgetown became a boom town when the Toyota assembly plant opened and suddenly thousands of new people were moving into Georgetown. My preacher friend tried to visit them all and invite them all to church but there were so many of them he couldn't keep up. Every day he drove around looking for moving vans and "sold" signs and making his list of newcomers but his list got longer because he simply couldn't visit them all.

Every week my preacher friend asked for help with visitation and every week he found himself all alone on visitation night.

Then it hit him: most of the people he hoped would help him visit new residents were already at the church several nights each week for choir practice and Wednesday evening Bible study and so on so he decided to ask some people to quit choir.

"You sing off-key anyway" he told one man, "so I want you to give me Tuesday night instead of Thursday night choir practice." So, each Tuesday night, the preacher and the sour singer met at McDonalds, divided up the list and went off to sell soap, er, invite people to church.

The church started getting new visitors on Sunday morning.

Pretty soon, other members of the choir asked the preacher if he would make them the same offer he made the first guy. Before long several of the choir's worst singers were visiting Georgetown's newest residents on Tuesday nights instead of making the choir director cry on Thursday nights - and church attendance exploded.

Those of us who are politically active expend too much effort lobbying to the upline (elected officials) and not enough time actually making converts to our political views. At election time we set up phone banks to "get out the base" but we do almost nothing to actually expand the base.

I've known a lot of people in network marketing but I never knew anybody who actually made any money at it because I never knew anybody who actually sold some soap. Everybody assumed the next guy would sell some soap and that guy was looking for somebody in his downline who would sell some soap.

Just as network marketing only works if somebody sells some soap, do-gooderism only works if somebody gets their hands dirty selling the soap.

I recently joined an org whose stated mission I agree with. I looked on their website and they listed local chapters all across the nation and there was a button I could click if I wanted to start a local chapter so I clicked it. To say that my interest in forming a local chapter of their org was met with a total lack of support would be an understatement. When I looked further into the org I found that most of the "chapters" listed at the org's website don't exist. I sent emails to all of them and most of those email addresses were duds. Even do-gooders can be guilty of false advertising, fundraising by deception, and a failure to actually sell some soap and get their hands dirty at the local level.
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If A Council Or Mayoral Candidate Stammers and Gets The Deer-In-Headlights Look When You Ask This Question, Don't Vote For Him

2011-04-20T11:53:00.004-04:00

Now that St. Albans city council has denied a rezoning request that would have allowed a builder to put townhouses in an area not zoned for townhouses, I hope they will turn their attention to a long range strategy for how to get more businesses, not more residential housing, within the city limits. Real estate brokers' argument that St. Albans needs more residential housing just doesn't hold water. St. Albans dramatic population loss has created a huge inventory of empty houses all over town as anyone who walks the wards with me would soon see for themselves.

No, a city whose population has declined dramatically since I was growing up here in the 60s and 70s doesn't need more housing, it needs a plan to get St. Albans on the grow.

Unlike its neighbors - Nitro, South Charleston, Dunbar - St. Albans doesn't really have much of a business tax base. Many of the businesses with a 25177 address aren't in the city limits of St. Albans which means they aren't putting money in the city coffers. STARDA - St. Albans Regional Development Authority - was formed in April of 1990, in part, to find solutions to this problem but a succession of mayors who saw STARDA as a competitor de-funded STARDA so none of STARDA's "infill" and annexation plans have been accomplished.

No, with a declining population and a glut of empty houses, St. Albans won't need more residential housing until people are trying to move into St. Albans instead of away from it and for that to happen, St. Albans needs a strategic plan. That plan should include:

1. Main Street - St. Albans doesn't really have one. The newly-remodeled Alban Arts and Conference Center is a step in the right direction but that alone doesn't make St. Albans' Main Street a destination.

2. The approaches to the city - Every time there's a crime committed in "West St. Albans", Chemical City, Amandaville, Jefferson or Green Valley Drive, St. Albans' gets a black eye. We probably can't break lazy reporters from saying "St. Albans" when the meth house was really in one of the unincorporated approaches to St. Albans, so St. Albans should take a serious look at annexing these crime-ridden eyesores so we can tax the legitimate, desirable businesses, shut down the rest and clean up these filthy gateways to the city. If we can't bring business to St. Albans maybe we have to take St. Albans to the business.

In 2 years when mayoral and council candidates ask you for your vote, ask them how they plan to get more businesses within the city limits of St. Albans. Don't vote for any candidate who stutters and stammers and gets a deer-in-the-headlights look in his eyes when you ask that question. This question should be St. Albans' voters equivalent of the famous "Roger Mudd Moment" when the veteran newsman asked Senator Edward Kennedy why he wanted to be president and Kennedy's eyes glazed over as he stammered his way through the unpresidential answer that some say sealed his defeat.

Attention 20-somethings and 30-somethings: St. Albans' leadership vacuum is an opportunity for you to lead. If you have a plan, run for office. 2013 will be here before you know it.

Now that St. Albans city council has dispensed with the distraction over the townhouses, I hope the "No Rezoning" signs I see all over ward 6 will be replaced by a citywide discussion about St. Albans' future and a strategic plan to realize that future.
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You can start that discussion at LinkedSt.Albans on Linkedin.
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Higginbotham At Large doesn't accept reader comments for publication but you can email me at JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.
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How The St. Albans Peoples Party Should Differentiate Themselves From The Citizens Party

2011-04-19T12:20:00.001-04:00

In yesterday's post I said that the St. Albans Peoples Party is back from the dead.

But how will the new, resurrected St. Albans Peoples Party differentiate themselves from the incumbent Citizens Party?

I encourage the St. Albans People Party to start by being more transparent than the Callagarchy has been. Don't conduct secret executive committee meetings at which you hand pick candidates before you have considered the entire universe of possible candidates.

Yesterday I received pseudonymous hate mail from a reader who said I should run for office if I think I can do better than the Callagarchy has done. The hate mailer obviously hadn't read my blog. Had she read it, she would have known that I have consistently said St. Albans needs Gen X and Gen Y leaders who can attract and retain a younger demographic to the city. I'm a baby boomer. It would be hypocritical of me to run.

But I'll gladly and enthusiastically campaign for visionary Gen X and Gen Y candidates who want to make St. Albans city government more transparent and more accountable.

If the newly resurrected Peoples Party wants to send a clear message that they are not the Callagarchy, not the business-as-usual, private club party, they will put up a website, post the names and the contact info for their executive committee, and announce public meetings at which voters can ask questions and even offer to run for office as Peoples Party candidates.

Much of the new Peoples Party executive team has education or law enforcement ties so they will be tempted to go behind closed doors and select candidates from the law enforcement and education arenas without really considering other capable, eligible people. That would be a mistake.

The best way for the newly-alive St. Albans Peoples Party to demonstrate that they are not just Callagarchy Lite is for them to be very public and inclusive about what they do, to reach out to the entire city, beyond their own social circles and beyond their comfort zones. St. Albans is full of capable people who have never been allowed to serve, never been asked to serve. Reach out to them.

While you're at it, reach out to the many people in St. Albans whose contributions to the city have never really been acknowledged.

Don't be like the Callagarchy which, in the April St. Albans Monthly, spends several self-congratulatory pages crowing about its management of the St. Albans water company. Did they give credit to the technicians and the staff who did the work? No, but Callagarchy members Tim Sheldon, Mayor Callaway, Jerry Cogar, Ron Colby and Frank Offutt were prominently photographed.

So, Peoples Party, now that you have been born again, eschew the ways of the past and the ways of the Callagarchy. Give credit where credit is due. Be transparent. Reach out to the entire town, beyond your own friends and family.

Put up a website and fill it with the kind of information prospective voters will want. After you get the website up, don't just send the link to your friends, buy an ad in the St. Albans Monthly and tell everybody where to read about the re-born Peoples Party and how it differs from the Callagarchy. In your ad, print the names of your executives. Print email addresses and/or phone numbers and encourage potential candidates to contact you. Be accountable and transparent to the people from the start.
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Once Left For Dead By Its Own Executive Committee, Has The St. Albans Peoples Party Risen From The Grave?

2011-04-18T13:19:00.002-04:00

A 2009 news article that started with the words "St. Albans Peoples Party is in need of a few good people to run for office" went on to say that the Peoples Party didn't field candidates in several city council wards and that the Peoples Party executive committee had resigned.

Had that been the last news I received about the St. Albans Peoples Party I would have had the impression that the St. Albans Peoples Party was dead.

There's been a resurrection. The St. Albans Peoples Party is back. Sort of. They have an executive committee. They don't have a website or even a Facebook page but over the weekend I spoke to members of their executive committee and am happy to report that, on paper, St. Albans now has 2 political parties again.

This is important because, in St. Albans, you have to be a nominee of either the Citizens Party or the Peoples Party in order to run for Mayor or Council.

I know that the Peoples Party has already identified a potential mayoral candidate and I've spoken to a Peoples Party candidate who says he's running for council. That's good. If the Peoples Party hopes to become a factor in St. Albans again they need to start thinking about 2013 right now, but I am disappointed that they haven't held any public events or meetings at which voters can find out how Peoples Party candidates would differ from Citizens Party candidates.

I'm also sorry that, as far as I can tell, the Peoples Party executive committee has no Gen X or Gen Y members.

In a previous post I said that St. Albans' crime and drugs problem is an opportunity for Gen X and Gen Y to provide leadership. Let me add that the absence of Gen X and Gen Y voices in St. Albans city government is an opportunity for the St. Albans Peoples Party to reach out to generations of voters who have felt ignored and rejected by the current mayor and council.

I'll have more People Party news in future posts. Stay tuned.

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Higginbotham At Large is not a candidate for any elected office.

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Higginbotham At Large stopped publishing reader comments because nearly all comments were from "Anonymous" - and Higginbotham At Large absolutely will not publish anonymous comments but send your news, suggestions, comments and hate mail to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

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Higginbotham At Large is not affiliated with any anonymously-published websites or blogs - even the ones that have linked to or quoted from my blog.

New Words For Old Problems In St. Albans, WV: Apathariat, Apathocracy, Callagarchy, Opaqracy

2011-04-12T14:07:00.000-04:00

Here are some new words for some old problems in St. Albans, WV:

Apathariat - Those ruled by a government dependent on the apathy of the governed.

Apathocracy - The government that results from an apathetic citizenry. An apathocracy is arrogant, unaccountable, opaque and unresponsive and perpetuates itself by restricting the flow of information in the belief that the apathariat won't notice or won't care.

Callagarchy - Rule by the few St. Albans residents who agree with or fear Mayor Dick Callaway. This includes council members who think they work for Dick Callaway and not for the people.

Opaqracy - The opposite of a transparent government. In an opaqracy, such basic information as which ward you're in, who your council person is, what's going on in your ward, how to participate in your city's war on crime, where your neighborhood watch meets, audio and video (or at least minutes) of the last city council meeting, and an org chart of who does what in city government are not made available on the taxpayer supported website.
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In my weekend posts I called upon St. Albans city council members to insist that the Callagarchy upload the ward map to the city website so residents can figure out which ward they're in and who their council members is. I'm happy to report that one city council member emailed me to say he supports my "suggestion". We'll see. If he's willing to go on the record as a supporter of uploading a ward map to the city website, I'll publish his name so that voters who Google him in the next election year will find that he is a transparent government man, not an advocate of opaqracy.

Now I'm calling upon the Apathariat ( those ruled over by a government that depends on the apathy of the governed ) to call their elected leaders and tell them they want basic information like a ward map, minutes or video-audio of council meetings, an org chart of city employees and a calendar of such things as neighborhood watch meetings on the city website.

Most of my St. Albans readers don't know which ward they're in or who their council person is but here are the names and phones numbers of Mayor Callaway and your Council-At-Large:

Mayor:

Dick Callaway

722-1273 (home)

727-2971 (work)

Vice Mayor / Council At Large:

Helen Warren

727-7456 (home)

Council At Large:

John Boles, Jr.

722-3612 (home)

Council At Large:

Jerry C. Cogar

727-6785 (home)

A Website Dan Cain Doesn't Want You To See And Other Observations About St. Albans' Opaque Government

2011-04-10T12:37:00.001-04:00

In my 14 December 2010 post I said that any product is the result of a system that is designed to produce that product and that if you want to change the product you have to change the system that produced it.

If your product is opaque, incompetent, unresponsive and unaccountable government - like we have in St. Albans, WV - you have to change the system that keeps producing that undesirable political product.

But before you can re-engineer the system that keeps producing bad government you have to identify the system that is doing the producing, you have to figure out how it works. In St. Albans, WV, the system is designed to control the flow of information citizens need by restricting the flow of information. Instead of putting out information where all citizens can get it - that's called "transparent government" - our system perpetuates opacity in government and has done so for decades.

Our elected leaders get away with this opacity because the voters let them.

It's time we demand accountability, opacity and responsiveness from our council members and our mayor and if they won't accede to our demands, it's time we elect people who will.

I want to recant something I said about Mayor Callaway in a previous blog post. In my 8 April post I said that Mayor Callaway is "bad at communication". That's not true. While Mayor Callaway is very bad at "transparency", he's very good at keeping his friends close and his enemies uninformed.

Council members, too, want to deprive you of information. In a recent neighborhood watch meeting Ward 5 council member and Callaway ally, Dan Cain, stood up to ask attendees not to view an anonymous website (with a URL very similar to the city's website) that is critical of the mayor. Since I don't promote anonymous blogs or websites, I won't give you the URL here, but Dan Cain did and I hope every person in that room fired up their smart phone or went home to their computer and looked at the site Dan Cain doesn't want you to see.

By the way, I call once again upon the anonymous owner of that website to identify himself so I can promote his site. As a matter of principle, I will not reward anonymity.

"Boys club", opaque politics depends upon voter apathy for its perpetuation. Mayor Callaway was re-elected with only 829 votes. According to the 2010 census, St. Albans has about 11,000 residents. If that number is correct, Mayor Callaway was re-elected by about 8% of the electorate. Callaway and his opponent combined got fewer than 1300 votes meaning that only about 11% of St. Albans residents bothered to vote in the mayoral race.

In that same election, Xris Hess (who has since resigned) won the Ward 2 race with only 4 votes. She ran unopposed and could have been beaten by anybody who was able to get even 5 votes. If that Ward 2 race isn't emblematic of the kind of voter apathy and disengagement that keeps producing the only kind of government it can, an opaque, unresponsive, unaccountable and incompetent government, then I don't know where we'd have to look for a better emblem of a bad system producing a bad product.

I've been exchanging emails with a guy who says he's going to run against Dick Callaway in the next mayoral race. "Your opponent is not Dick Callaway", I told him, "your opponent is voter apathy, voter disengagement."

If the voters of St. Albans don't start demanding more from their government and aren't willing to go to the polls and elect a new government, then no matter who's in office we'll continue to get the only kind of government that can be produced by the apathetic, disengaged system we have in St. Albans.
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Higginbotham At Large is not a candidate for any office but if you know a Gen X or Gen Y thought leader who believes in transparent government and wants to run for office in St. Albans, put them in touch with me at JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.
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Higginbotham At Large no longer publishes reader comments. Send comments, questions and hate mail to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.
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If you live in St. Albans, do you know which ward you're in? Do you know who represents your ward in council? Shouldn't this information be on the www.stalbanswv.com website along with locations and dates of neighborhood watch meetings, minutes of city council meetings, an org chart of who does what at city government and other basic transparent government info? Your tax dollars pay for that website. Call your council member and demand that your government become more transparent. See yesterday's Higginbotham At Large for phone numbers of the mayor and all council members.

Why Don't St. Albans Council Members And Voters Demand That Mayor Callaway Post Basic Info at City Website?

2011-04-09T11:31:00.007-04:00

Attention WSAZ TV, WOWK TV, WCHS TV, Charleston Gazette, Charleston Daily Mail and St. Albans Monthly: The next time you report on drugs and crime in St. Albans, please tell us where and when St. Albans' residents can attend a neighborhood watch meeting. This information isn't posted on the City of St. Albans website.

As of this writing, Mayor Callaway still isn't posting the times and dates of neighborhood watch meetings on the City's website. He also hasn't posted a map of the city's wards so St. Albans can go to the city website and find out which ward they're in and who their council representative is.

The April issue of St. Albans Monthly contains a spring clean up schedule for each ward but no information whatsoever on how citizens can find out which ward they're in without calling the sanitation department between the hours of 8 to 4 Monday through Friday. Why not just post the ward map on the city website?

If Mayor Callaway is sincere about his war on drugs, he'll arm citizens with what they need to be foot soldiers in this war. The citizens of St. Albans need to know which ward they're in, when and where that ward's neighborhood watch is meeting and who their council representative is. Since this is the Information Age and, though many St. Albans council members want to deny it, it's natural for citizens to expect to find basic information like this at their city's website. The internet is not a fad and it's not going away so stop pretending that if you just ignore the internet it will go away.

Since the City of St. Albans already operates a rudimentary website, St. Albans will incur no additional costs of operations by simply uploading a ward map to the site.

And isn't there anybody on your staff who can extract neighborhood watch information from members of city council? Hey, I have an idea: instead of issuing council members a check, issue them a memo that says they'll get their check when they submit neighborhood watch info for publication on the City website. Remind them that we're in a war on drugs and the foot soldiers don't know where to go to get their orders.

Members of council should be INSISTING that this ward information be posted at the City website.

I recently attended the Ward 7 neighborhood watch meeting where I raised these concerns. I had to work way too hard to find out where that meeting was held and, no, I didn't find the info at the first place people expect to find it - the www.stalbanswv.com website. I found the date and half a location on the WSAZ website. I say "half a location" because Kallie Cart's story said only that the meeting would take place at "the United Methodist Church" but she didn't say which one so I had to call the only Methodist church in Ward 7 to confirm that the meeting was, in fact, at the St. Peter's United Methodist Church. Citizens shouldn't have to Google and make phone calls to find out where to go to get their orders in the drug war.

So, members of the media, since The City of St. Albans doesn't post the information its citizens need on the city website, would you start reporting this information in your news reports when there's another cop shooting or drug bust in St. Albans?

Below, find a list of St. Albans council members (from the www.stalbanswv.com website) . Call each council member and ask them about neighborhood watch meetings in their wards. Be the first to report it.

St. Albans, WV Mayor and Council

Mayor:

Dick Callaway

722-1273 (home)

727-2971 (work)

Vice Mayor / Council At Large:

Helen Warren

727-7456 (home)

Council At Large:

John Boles, Jr.

722-3612 (home)

Council At Large:

Jerry C. Cogar

727-6785 (home)

Ward 1:

Robert J. Keiffer

722-6473 (home)

Ward 2:

JD Adkins

727-0817 (home)

Ward 3:

Ronald K. Colby

727-2667 (home)

Ward 4:

Cheryl Thomas

727-8429 (home)

Ward 5:

Dan Cain, Sr.

722-2576 (home)

Ward 6:

Loretta Griffith

727-9153 (home)

Ward 7:

Desper Lemon

727-5344 (home)

Ward 8:

Kevin Pennington

727-5790 (home)

Ward 9:

Stephen Donelson

727-8690 (home)

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Higginbotham At Large is not a candidate for any elected office. I call my blog Higginbotham At Large because it is the name an editor once gave to a column I wrote for his paper.
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If you are a St. Albans resident, you believe in competent, transparent government, you believe the internet is not a fad, you are a member of Gen X or Gen Y, and you plan to run for St. Albans Council or Mayor, please send me an email.

Higginbotham At Large no longer publishes reader comments because nearly all of them were from "Anonymous" and Higginbotham At Large simply will not publish anonymous or pseudonymous comments. Send your comments, questions and hate mail to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

Why Do I Have To Explain To St. Albans' Titular Leaders Why Basic Information Should Be Posted On The City Website?

2011-04-08T09:52:00.003-04:00

Attention Generation X and Generation Y: Half your city's titular leaders go to bed every night hoping that when they awake in the morning it will be 1955 again; the other half just go about their business pretending that it's still 1955. As one 28-year-old man said to me after the meeting, "St. Albans has gone backwards."

As Albert Einstein said, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." So it's time that we elect new leadership in St. Albans. The people we have in office do not have the imagination, motivation or creativity to make St. Albans a city where people want to buy houses and start businesses.

No, I'm not running because my generation and my parents' generation have had their shot and we failed. It's time for a new generation to step up and lead and instead of running for office myself, I am looking for Gen X and Gen Y candidates I can back.

I'll confess, this is not the blog post I thought I was going to write today. As my regular readers know, after being forced to search way too hard for the time and location of the meeting because Mayor Callaway and Ward 7 Council member, Desper Lemon don't think there are enough internet savvy people in St. Albans to merit posting such info on the city website, I attended the Ward 7 Neighborhood Crime Watch meeting where St. Albans' lack of leadership was on display. Prior to the meeting, I thought I would hear a lot about what Councilman Lemon and Mayor Callaway are doing to organize and mobilize St. Albans' citizenry to fight crime. Indeed, I did hear a helpful presentation from a fellow named Tim Akers - the only bright spot in that meeting - about how to recognize the telltale signs that your neighbor is making meth.

For example, when I asked why I had to Google for 10 minutes and make a phone call to find out where the Ward 7 meeting was being held, and when I asked why the residents of St. Albans can't go to the city website to find out which ward they're in, who their council member is and where and when their neighborhood watch is meeting, there was a lot of shoulder-shrugging and a lot of council members and the mayor looking at each other. Desper Lemon finally told me that if I wanted a map of the city with ward numbers and boundaries I could go to the city building to get a piece of paper containing that information.

As one man told me after the meeting, going to city hall for information won't work for him because he's on the road to his job in another county before dawn and he's not back home until after sundown. The city building is closed weekends so he can't go to the city building for a piece of paper on the weekend.

Why isn't such basic information posted on the city website where citizens can look it up and print it out at their leisure? Since the city already operates a website posting such basic info won't add to their costs so why not post that info on the website? Do they think the internet is a passing fad and that if they just ignore it it will go away?

Frankly, I am shocked and disappointed that a mayor who used to run radio stations and has an entire radio studio in his home is so bad at communication.

I have to go now. I'm going the the city building for that piece of paper with ward numbers on it.
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For more on why St. Albans' lack of leadership is an opportunity for Gen X and Gen Y to become leaders, see my 20 March post at :: http://higginbothamatlarge.blogspot.com/2011/03/st-albans-doesnt-have-crime-problem-as.html

Put On Your Heisenberg Hats, Your Gas Masks And Your "Breaking Bad" T-Shirts, We're Headed For Ordnance Park

2011-04-07T16:20:00.005-04:00

Put on your Heisenberg hats, your gas masks and your "Breaking Bad" t-shirts, we're headed for St. Albans' Ordnance Park tonight. Yep, we're gathering at the St. Peter's United Methodist Church in Ordnance Park at 7PM to take a bite out of crime and it's nursery, citizen apathy.

By the way, I ran into the busiest man in St. Albans, Adam Bryan, today and I have an idea for him: On Free Movie Night at the Alban Arts and Conference Center, show encore presentations of the best show on TV, Breaking Bad". If you haven't seen "Breaking Bad" and its cast of award winning actors, it's about a mild-mannered high school science teacher who finds out he has only a few months to live so he starts cooking the purest, best meth in town and makes a lot of money to leave for his family when he's dead.

Yeah, I like that idea, Bryan. Thursday night showings of "Breaking Bad." Seasons one and two are on DVD now. Season three goes on sale June 7.

Tomorrow I'll report on tonight's meeting.

In the meantime, read my 20 March post, "Why St. Albans' Crime Problem Is A Leadership Opportunity For Generation X and Generation Y"

http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=6550062939430773936&postID=7391787918561017547

Why Linkedin Should Eliminate The "Open" Groups Option

2011-04-07T00:00:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I left 4 Linkedin groups because their owners made the irreversible mistake of switching from "members only" to "open". In "members only" groups, only members can post and read discussions. In "open" groups, only members can post but anybody with an internet connection can read and follow discussions.

Being in an open group is a little like installing one way glass throughout your house so that outsiders can look in but you can't see who's looking at you.

I think open groups is one of the stupidest things Linkedin has ever done. I love the power of LInkedin. There are things you can do with Linkedin that Facebook doesn't even know you need to do but sometimes I think the suits who run Linkedin have never used it themselves. If they did, they would realize that "open" groups are an attack on group member privacy and that the only people who benefit from "open" groups are the exhibitionists who try to fill the new discussions carousels of every group they belong to and update their status every 5 minutes. (By the way, I have recently removed connections who constantly update their status and I have ejected or changed the posting permissions of group members who lack the empathy, consideration and impulse control to exercise posting restraint. I warn them first, refer them to group rules, then eject them if they persist in making a nuisance of themselves.)

When Linkedin first announced that groups could switch from "members only" to "open" I announced to my groups that I would never betray them by making my Linkedin groups "open" and that my 3 Linkedin groups would only go "open" when Linkedin pried the "members only" option from my cold, dead hands. They thanked me for it. Except for the exhibitionists, Linkedin users don't like "open" groups.

I've done my part to prevent group owners from switching to "open". I've sent other group owners personal messages in which I predicted that switching from "members only" to "open" would have a chilling effect on discussion. Several group owners who already made the switch and regretted it have asked me how to switch back to "members only". As far as I can tell, the door from "members only" to "open" swings only one way; once you've gone open the only way to go back to "members only" is to delete the group and start a new one.

If you own a Linkedin group and you've already made the mistake of switching from "members only" to "open", I suggest you go ahead and bite the bullet and delete your group. It's easier if your group is small because you'll inconvenience fewer members. The group owners with a really big problem are the ones with really big groups - unless those groups are full of exhibitionists who want as many people as possible to see their mug shots and read their spammy discussions.

I don't have any data to support this but I suspect there are two reasons group owners make the mistake of switching from "members only" to "open". The first reason is laziness. I suspect that some group owners, upon discovering that there's actual work involved in owning a Linkedin group, make their groups "open" because they think they'll have to act upon fewer membership requests.

The second reason some group owners switch their groups from "members only" to "open" is lack of empathy, inability to imagine how naked and invaded and betrayed members will feel when they find out anybody with an internet connection can spy on their group discussions.

It's because of these lazy and unempathetic group owners that Linkedin should do away with the "open" groups option and switch all groups back to "members only".

Rick Thompson's People Giving Me The Love of Jeeeeezzussss Because I Criticized Their TV Ad

2011-04-06T10:42:00.004-04:00

Some of Rick Thompson's people have been giving me the love of Jeeeezzzzus because of what I said about their TV ad. One of Rick Thompson's northern WV operatives told me that unless I have ever won an elected office myself, I am not entitled to an opinion about the TV ad. The Thompson operative isn't at all concerned that a Democratic voter is turned off by the Thompson ad and there's a simple reason for that: the Thompson ad isn't aimed at Democrats - at least not at the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. No, the Thompson ad is a cynical appeal to the kind of right wing religious voters who get all their news from Fox and might be persuaded to vote for a guy who plays gospel songs in his TV ad.

The Thompson campaign doesn't know and doesn't care about the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

They would never admit it, of course, but I suspect they've heard a lot of criticism about the ad. Last night I happened to be in the home of a Democrat when the ad came on TV and my Democratic host - totally unsolicited - commented that the ad didn't contain one reason for voting for Rick Thompson.

To be fair, my Democratic Host went on to say that none of the Democratic gubernatorial candidates have given a reason to vote for them yet.

Moments later, "Big John Perdue'" ad came on TV causing my host and I to wonder aloud which ad was more insulting to us, the Thompson ad in which Thompson sings "I Saw The Light" or the Perdue ad with it's almost tourettic repetition of the word "big".

My voting strategy is simple: I vote for the most progressive, electable candidate in any race. So far, West Virginia's Democratic gubernatorial primary is giving candidates who are electable but none who are progressive as far as I can tell so in the interest of full disclosure, Higginbotham At Large isn't endorsing any candidate at the moment.

There are, however, Democratic gubernatorial candidates who definitely won't get my vote or my volunteering efforts.

I can't vote for Earl Ray Tomblin because he's a conservative and he tried to deprive West Virginians of the opportunity to elect a new governor.

I can't vote for "Big John Perdue" because his obsession with the word "big" reminds me too much of Mr. Wilder's 12th grade psychology class. Yeah, I'm sure Mr. Wilder would have a field day with the Perdue ad.

I can't vote for Rick Thompson because his TV ad makes it clear that he's trying to appeal to the same demographic and psychographic group conservatives will be trying to reach in the General Election.

What Rick Thompson's TV Ad Says About The Effectiveness Of West Virginia's Liberal Elite

2011-04-05T09:48:00.001-04:00

Rick Thompson's first TV ad of his gubernatorial campaign is a testament to the utter failure of West Virginia's liberals and progressives to influence Democratic politics in any way. So indifferent is Thompson to what Howard Dean called "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" that Thompson feels free to skip the primaries altogether and just go ahead and run a general election campaign now.

For the sake of West Virginia's liberal enclave on Charleston's East End, I'll describe Thompson's TV ad so they won't have to admit that they watch TV to know what's in it. Thompson's ad opens with him clawing at a red acoustic guitar singing "I Saw The Light" while a narrator tells us that Thompson was raised by his grandparents in a house without running water. Later, the narrator tells us, Thompson used his first Army paycheck to buy his grandparents their first telephone. The Thompson ad is all conservative dog whistles. Perhaps for his follow up ad he'll hire Delaware's unsuccessful Tea Party Senate candidate, Christine O'Donnell, to look into the camera and say "Rick Thompson's not one of those East End Unitarians, atheists or Chris Hedges Protestants, he's you."

If Rick Thompson had already won the Democratic nomination and were running against liberals in the general election, nobody would think much of it, but the fact that Thompson is running against us in April and that none of the so-called Democrats are courting us means only one thing: it means that what West Virginia's liberal elite have been doing isn't working. Yeah, it turns out that just as a "network marketing" company doesn't make money unless somebody actually meets a customer and sells some soap, liberals can't win any elections by adding other liberals to their "downline".

West Virginia liberals aren't even very good at inviting other lefties to their "rallies", "protests" and boring meetings. West Virginia liberals are good at starting "organizations" that don't actually do anything but nobody's selling any soap.

When Dr. Clotaire Rapaille (The Culture Code) wants to "decode" a culture, he imagines what an impartial "little green man" might conclude about Earthlings from the rites, ceremonies and customs of human beings. What conclusions would an impartial little green man draw about the effectiveness of West Virginia's liberal leadership and liberal organizations when he sees Democratic candidates running general election campaigns in April?

Why St. Albans' Crime Problem Is A Leadership Opportunity For Generation X and Generation Y

2011-03-20T14:46:00.013-04:00

There aren't enough humane officers or police officers in St. Albans to stamp out all of the drug activity and cruelty to animals unless neighbors once again start acting like neighbors and citizens begin exhibiting good citizenship.

A few days ago, a warrant was issued for the arrest of a Georges Drive woman who had starved a rabbit and some dogs. It turns out, there were people in that neighborhood who knew this abuse was occurring but did not notify the police or the humane association.

More humane officers or police officers on the street would not have saved those animals.

More police officers in uniform or undercover cannot purge the drug problem from St. Albans unless citizens and neighbors take some responsibility for what they allow to go unreported in their neighborhoods.

Do you see a tethered dog baking in the sun or shivering in the cold without water, food or shelter? Kanawha County now has a law against that. If you aren't sure who else to call, call the police. Call the Kanawha-Charleston Humane Association. Call the Kanawha County Sheriff. If you don't know who to call, call your neighbor and see if they know who to call. Call somebody.

Do you see yellow smoke billowing from a house in your neighborhood? Smell funny smells? Do you see what seems to be odd traffic patterns at a house in your neighborhood? It may be nothing but call the police anyway.

There isn't enough tax money to protect our neighborhoods from abuse to animals or the manufacture of methamphetamine until the residents of St. Albans engage.

St. Albans doesn't need more police. St. Albans needs more good citizenship, more neighbors looking out for neighbors, more eyes and ears paying attention to what's going on in their neighborhoods and reporting what they see and hear.

Mayor Richard Callaway cannot clean up St. Albans. City Councilman, Desper Lemon, cannot rid Ordnance Park of meth labs no matter how much he talks to reporters or talks on his HAM radio about it. New Police Chief, Brent Coates, cannot hire enough new cops to run the meth labs out of town unless the citizens of St. Albans start paying attention to what's happening in their neighborhoods and reporting what they see to police.

And the Kanawha Charleston Humane Association can't possibly know about cases of cruelty to animals unless you report it.

A reader told me it does no good to report drug activity or abuse to animals because the police and the humane officers won't do anything. if the police or the humane association fail to do their jobs, call the Charleston Gazette, the Charleston Daily Mail, WOWK, WCHS TV, WSAZ and any other news source you can think of. Embarrass somebody. Make the police chief, the mayor, and the humane association explain to a TV viewing audience why they won't do their jobs.

Are Desper Lemon and Mayor Callaway the only people in St. Albans who know how to call the news media? Call Ashley Craig at the Daily Mail or Aran Jenkins at the Charleston Gazette or Anna Baxter at WSAZ.

If you don't think St. Albans' titular leaders are leading, then step up and be a leader. You don't have to hold elected office to be a leader. Maybe you think your city council member should be walking his ward, knocking on doors and asking citizens to act like citizens. If he won't go, you go. Don't want to go alone? Call me, I'll go with you. Don't want to be associated with me? Fine. Call a neighbor and say "Let's go knock on some doors".

For the same reason shoplifting can be reduced when clerks actually pay attention to patrons, the mere act of going door to door will discourage a great deal of illegal activities of all kinds. When the bad guys see their neighbors talking to each other and knocking on doors and paying attention, they'll look for a new place to set up shop.

Don't wait for Mayor Callaway to ask you to serve on a committee. You don't need his permission or his blessing to be a leader and if he hasn't asked for your help by now he's not going to.

If you are a member of Generation X or Generation Y and you think your parent's generation and your grandparents' generation are not leading, then you stand up and lead. Don't ask their permission and don't wait for them to put you on a committee.

As my regular readers know, all outcomes are the result of systems. Systems produce what they are designed to produce. Every time. If your city government or your city "partnership" don't produce anything then it's because they are designed not to produce anything and because the people who designed and maintain the system don't want it to produce anything.

Design a new system, one that is intended to produce something.

Let me get biblical: Don't try to put new wine into old wineskins. (Matthew chapter 9, Mark chapter 2, Luke chapter 5). In other words, don't try to reform the old wineskins. They can't hold the new wine. You have to put new wine into new wineskins. Make new wineskins.

Right now, St. Albans gives criminals exactly what they need to survive and thrive: a citizenry that doesn't want to get involved.

St. Albans doesn't have a crime problem as much as it has an apathy problem and apathy is fertile soil for crime.

Higginbotham At Large is tired of explaining to readers that this blog publishes no anonymous or pseudonymous content including reader comments. Send all comments, questions and hate mail to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com or, discuss this and other St. Albans topics at LinkedSt.AlbansLinkedin. This post has been submitted for discussion at LinkedSt.Albans on Linkedin.

St. Albans' Anonymous Website Owner Phones Higginbotham At Large

2011-03-13T13:18:00.002-04:00

In yesterday's post I said I didn't know the identity of the person or persons behind the anonymously published website that quotes from and links to my blog. That is no longer true.

Yesterday I got a phone call from a man identifying himself as the owner of the web address of the site that calls St. Albans a meth-making "badlands" and publishes photos and news stories that are unflattering to St. Albans and its elected leaders. The man apologized for using my blog without my permission and offered to remove the quotes and the links. I told him he could continue to quote and link to my blog if he would simply put a disclaimer on his site explaining that Joseph Higginbotham and HIgginbotham At Large are not affiliated with his site.

The anonymous website owner told me he is not alone in posting stories and photos to the site.

When I urged him to publish under his own name instead of anonymously he told me that a lot of people in St. Albans already know his identity and then he explained why he prefers not to publish his name on the site he owns.

If ever there was a town that needs to have a citywide conversation about its drug problem, it's tiny business tax base, its geriatricity, its declining population, its citizen apathy and its utter failure to engage the people with a stake in St. Albans' future (young people) this is the town so I really hope St. Albans' "badlands" website owner will publicly identify himself and make his site the place where this citywide conversation might start. In my opinion, people are more likely to read and trust a site whose ownership and management are known. I, for example, don't trust any business that doesn't publish the names of owners and management on their website.

When I was explaining to the anonymous website owner why I think his site has a greater chance of starting the citywide conversation St. Albans needs to have about its problems and its future, I took the opportunity to explain to him that I chose Linkedin as the platform for my LinkedSt.Albans discussion group precisely because Linkedin groups afford me the opportunity to verify the identity of every participant. There are no pseudonyms, CB handles, nicknames or screen names at LinkedSt.Albans. Every member of LinkedSt.Albans is what the Linkedin terms of use call a "natural person" with visible connections who can verify their identity.

LinkedSt.Albans does not accept members whose account names violate the Linkedin terms of use. I will accept no members who attempt to hide behind organization names such as "St. Albans Partnership" or company names such as "JP's Daily Grind" but if Jesse Post is welcome to join LinkedSt.Albans under his real name.

If you are among the 80 million people with a Linkedin account, just point your browser to www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=2053370 or go to your "groups" field and type "LinkedSt.Albans" to join. LinkedSt.Albans is a "members only" Linkedin group which means your comments can only be seen by other LinkedSt.Albans members.

Get your free Linkedin account at www.linkedin.com then point your browser to www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=2053370 or go to your "groups" field and type "LinkedSt.Albans" to join LinkedSt.Albans.

Higginbotham At Large no longer publishes reader comments. Send comments, questions and hate mail to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com. Higginbotham At Large has no interest in the opinions of readers whose identities cannot be verified.

Higginbotham At Large Is Not Affiliated In Any Way With Anonymously or Pseudonymously Published Sites

2011-03-12T11:37:00.003-05:00

Last night I got an email from a print media publisher who mistakenly thought me to be the publisher of a website that prints unflattering photos and news stories about St. Albans and its elected leaders. This was the first I had heard of the site so I Googled it and found that this anonymously published site prominently features a quote from one of my blog posts and links to my blog in at least two ways. I was never asked for permission to quote from my blog or to link to it nor would I have ever granted permission for any unaccountable, anonymous publisher to link to or quote from my blog.

Let me be clear: I, Joseph Higginbotham, have no connection whatsoever to any pseudonymously or anonymously published site, have not granted permission to quote from my blog and do not know the identity of the person or persons responsible for the aforementioned site that portrays St. Albans as a meth-making "badlands".

This is not to say that I disagree with everything the anonymous site says. The difference is that when I have something unflattering to say about St. Albans or its titular leaders I say it under my own name where I can be held accountable for what I say. Three of my July 2009 posts dealt with bad leadership and one of them seems to have provided some inspiration for the anonymous site.

The difference between me and the anonymous website publisher is that when I have something unflattering to say about St. Albans or its titular leaders I am accountable for what I say.

I hope the anonymous web publisher doesn't fancy himself (or herself) some kind of modern day Thomas Paine or his website a kind of 21st Century Common Sense just because Paine's tract was first published anonymously. Paine was committing treason against England and might very well have been arrested and killed for what he wrote. I doubt that Mayor Callaway would order the St. Albans police to shoot the anonymous website publisher on sight if he were to disclose his identity.

I, for one, would have greater respect for him (or her) if he/she boldly published his name.

Nor do I disagree with the anonymous website's determination to provide an online forum where St. Albans residents can interact with one another and become better engaged with their elected leaders and their neighbors. In fact, I've met with Mayor Callaway and with members of Council and asked them why the mayor's office has not provided this leadership and this online forum.

But I strongly disapprove of any online forum that allows anonymous posts.

If you want to tell the police about the meth lab next door, you can already do so anonymously but if you wish to get St. Albans talking about its crime problems and its rising median age and its declining population and its lack of citizen engagement, you need to do that publicly. That's why my LinkedSt.Albans group is on Linkedin, a site that is all about accountability and real IDs.

In fact, let me put in a plug for the only St. Albans discussion forum with which I am affiliated, LinkedSt.ALbans. I started LinkedSt.Albans in hope that it would kickstart some citizen engagement in a town where 4 votes will get you a seat on city council because nobody else bothers to run.

If you would like to join LinkedSt.Albans just go to :: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=2053370.

Higginbotham At Large does not publish reader comments but if you identify yourself I'll read your email and even reply if necessary. Send all comments, questions or hate me to me at JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

Why Free Market Forces Haven't Rid West Virginia Of The Dog Killing, Money Losing Dog Racing Industry

2011-03-11T11:59:00.004-05:00

Until last night, I thought the reason the Tri-State Greyhound Park in Cross Lanes/Nitro continues to operate is because dog racing makes a lot of money.

It doesn't.

Until last night, I thought that if a business was doing something cruel and barbaric, good decent people could simply boycott that business and force them to change.

Last night I found out you've already boycotted dog racing at the Tri-State Greyhound Park and that you continue to boycott it and that sometimes there are more dogs on the track than spectators in the stands for the races so while boycotting may work when an online book retailer sells pedophile instructional books it doesn't work against the dog racing industry because dog racing isn't kept alive by spectators who buy tickets it's kept alive by lobbyists who buy legislators.

At last night's Drinking Liberally meeting Jennifer Krebs, VP at Grey2KUSA.org, explained to us that dog racing is a dying business kept artificially alive by lobbyists who represent dog breeders. Krebs explained to us that. to keep the demand for racing dogs high, breeders' lobbyists have persuaded legislators to pass laws that require casinos to maintain live animal racing. Krebs explained that in states where casino gambling has been de-coupled from live animal racing, live animal racing dies because there's no money in it. Live animal racing is a "loss leader". Very few of you, it seems, actually enjoy watching greyhounds crash into each other and take bone breaking, "career" ending tumbles so if free market forces were allowed to work, casinos like the one at Cross Lanes wouldn't continue to operate dog racing tracks.

Here's who makes money from dog racing: dog breeders, the breeders' lobbyists and the legislators who are wined and dined by the breeders' lobbyists.

Free market forces alone won't rid the state of West Virginia from this cruel, money-losing industry. Only legislation will get the job done. And the good news is that we don't even need legislation to outlaw dog racing, all we need is legislation that de-couples live animal racing from casino gambling.

By the way, I also learned last night that one of the big breeders in the state of West Virginia is acting-as-if-he-were-the-governor-Tomblin's mother, Freda.

For more on how human activity keeps animal populations artificially high and animal suffering unnecessarily frequent, see my July 1, 2009 post at ::http://higginbothamatlarge.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-to-reduce-animal-suffering-by-doing.html

Higginbotham At Large no longer publishes reader comments. Send your hate mail, suggestions and questions directly to me at JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

Why Most Job Search Workshops Omit The Most Important Job Search Info

2011-03-05T12:22:00.002-05:00

The guy who was leading the job search workshop started by triaging the audience.

"Hold up your hand if you send out hundreds of resume but don't get any interviews" he said. When people raised their hands he told them their resumes were no good and told them to cluster together on the left side of the room.

"By show of hands, how many of you get a first interview but then don't get second interviews" said the workshop leader. When people raised their hands he told them their interview skills were no good and asked them to cluster at the center of the room.

"How many of you get lots of interviews but no offers?" asked the workshop leader. When people raised their hands he told them their resumes were good and their interview skills were good but there was something wrong in their backgrounds or with their references that was preventing them from getting offers.

After he triaged the attendees by deficiency - bad resume, bad interview skills and bad background or references - he worked with each group on their specific job search weakness.

This was good work as far as it went but it (a) didn't go far enough and (b) started in the wrong place and (c) omitted the most important thing a job seeker needs to learn.

If you've been reading my previous posts about why your job search needs "co-signers" and how to get "co-signers" then you already know where I'm going. This workshop leader's advice to job seekers would have been terrific if the best way to hunt for a job is to send resumes to strangers, then interview with those strangers, then hope for an offer from those strangers. But, as the readers of my previous 7 posts already know, a job search workshop that only covers resumes, interviews and background problems is like a "How To Get Published" class that doesn't teach you about how to get an agent or where and how to sell your writing. Job search workshops that don't teach you how to get "co-signers" for your job search only pretend to prepare job seekers for their job search. So why are there no job seeker workshops that teach job seekers how to really find a job? It's simple. There's no money in it. Let me explain:

If you take a look at who's sponsoring or renting booth space at these job search workshops you'll see staffing companies like Adecco, Express, Randstad, Kelly and Manpower. You may even see some technical staffing firms like Aerotek. You'll see some companies that offer to write you a killer resume for about $100 - 500 bucks. You'll see companies that offer to make you a killer video resume. You'll even see vendors who offer to completely manage every aspect of your job search for about 5 thousand dollars.

You won't see any vendors or sponsors who teach you how to leverage your existing network of the hundreds or even thousands of people you already know to get that next job - even though all these vendors and sponsors know that's how most professionals get hired.

There are two reasons the people who pretend to teach you how to get a job don't tell you the whole truth, the most important truth: (1) They can't figure out how to monetize the whole truth and (2) they know that humans prefer silver bullets, myths, fairy tales and urban legends to the truth. People want to believe that there's a "secret" to weight loss that doesn't involve the proven math of burning more calories than they consume. People want to believe that if they just send $100 to the TV evangelist God will send them $1,000. My octogenarian interlocutor wants to believe there's a way to increase your chances of winning the Powerball that doesn't involve "odds" or statistics. People want to believe in snake oil so I understand how tempting it is to believe that if I just pay this woman $500 to do my resume or if I just pay this company $5k to make me a video resume and set me up with job "leads" then I'll get a job.

The truth, as readers of my previous 7 posts know, is that there are two ways to look for a job. There's the low-percentage game of sending resumes to strangers, interviewing with strangers and hoping for job offers from strangers. Then there's the high-percentage game of leveraging the professional network you already have to get you out of the stranger category and into the friend or friend of a friend category where you may get a job without even writing a resume until after you have the offer.

The truth, as readers of my "How To Get A Co-Signer" post know, looks like a lot of work but is far and away more likely to get you a new job faster. And I'm telling you the truth for free.

I don't want you to spend another day playing that low percentage game of uploading resumes to strangers who don't even know how to understand your work experience and completing online tests and tweaking your resume and sweating through window-dressing interviews. The truth is, while you wait in line for the opportunity to go to 5 interviews only to be rejected, the candidate who will get the job you interviewed for 5 times is across the street at Starbucks being introduced to his next boss by their mutual friend. That's how professional jobs are really filled about 90% of the time. HR departments spend an enormous amount of time and energy trying to perpetuate the myth that their hiring processes are meritocratic but here's the truth: no matter how much they spend maintaining the illusion of a "fair" and meritocratic hiring process when the hiring manager walks into the HR office and introduces the guy he was just introduced to at Starbucks by their mutual friend, HR doesn't say "Gee, I'm sorry, Mr. Department Head, you can't hire this guy because we didn't get the chance to misunderstand and then lose his resume and then jack him around through 4 or 5 interviews."

Higginbotham At Large no longer accepts or publishes reader comments. You may send questions, comments and hate mail to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

"What Are Headhunters Looking For?"

2011-03-04T13:54:00.001-05:00

I'm often asked what headhunters are looking for.

Headhunters are looking for their next check. Headhunters are mercenaries. Headhunters don't represent the candidate, they represent the employer.

Yes, I know, when you ask what headhunters want you mean what do they want in a candidate.

See first answer. A headhunter is looking for his next check so he presents candidates that he thinks can lead to that next check. If the headhunter believes his client will only hire someone with a Ph.D. then he's looking for a Ph. D. If the headhunter knows his client is ageist and homophobic and racist he won't bring that client a gay, black, 60-year-old no matter how well-qualified that person may be. Why? Because the headhunter is looking for his next check.

"How do I get the attention of headhunters?" people sometimes ask me.

First, refer to my previous post about why headhunters prefer "passive" candidates and why you shouldn't send your resume to headhunters unsolicited and unbidden.

Second, be good at your job. Headhunters network til they find what they need. That means that if somebody mentions your name to a headhunter, you just got on his radar and he will call you if he can find contact info. Make sure headhunters can find your contact info in case people are mentioning your name. if you look at my previous post about passive candidates and how I found Bob Maynard and collected a handsome payment for bringing him to my client, then you will understand how headhunters find candidates. Headhunters network until they find what they need. After a half dozen people told me Bob Maynard was the oxygen king of the Florida panhandle, I knew he was what I needed. That's very typical of how to get on a headhunter's radar. Be good at your job like Bob Maynard then make sure people who are looking for you can find you.

Is there contact info on your Linkedin profile? Are you sure? Only about 3 or 4% of the Linkedin profiles I see have any contact info on them so go look at your profile and ask yourself if you can be reached.

But don't wait for a headhunter to hear your name. Get your friends and colleagues and former co-workers and former bosses and every professional contact you've ever had to say your name to employers. Getting a great new job through a headhunter is good. Bob Maynard has thanked me two or three times for not giving up on him and for persisting until he agreed to meet my client. BUt don't wait for a headhunter. Read my posts about "professional co-signers" and start getting your professional contacts to say your name to people who can hire you. Do it now. Don't waste another day sending resumes to strangers. Yes, there's a chance you may get a job that way but play the high percentage game, not the low percentage game.

Higginbotham At Large no longer accepts or publishes reader comments. You may send questions, comments and hate mail to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

Why Headhunters Prefer "Passive" Candidates

2011-03-04T10:16:00.002-05:00

The job search discussion we're having in my Linked Liberals group on Linkedin reveals some misconceptions about headhunters and how to work with them.

Many job seekers think they increase their odds of getting the attention of a headhunter if they send out their resume -unsolicited - to as many headhunters as they can. Wrong. Don't send resumes to headhunters. When you send an unsolicited resume to a headhunter he knows you've also sent it to every other headhunter and employer and that you have wallpapered Corporate America with resumes. The headhunter who receives your unsolicited resume sees you as a lightweight. The headhunter who receives your unsolicited resume would rather work with a "passive" candidate, not an active candidate.

What is a passive candidate? Instead of just giving you a lifeless definition, let me draw you a picture of an actual passive candidate I recruited for a client way back in the early 90s.

My largest client needed a GM for one of their offices in the South. I knew that qualified managers in that market would likely be under non-compete contracts so I focused my attention on markets that were a commute away in hopes of finding someone who would either relocate or commute the adjacent market. Back in those days we didn't have Linkedin and Google so we had to identify good candidates the old-fashioned way. I started with my Rolodex - remember those? - and started calling everybody I knew in the markets surrounding the market in which my client needed the GM. One name kept coming up: Bob Maynard.

"The guy you need for this job is Bob Maynard", they'd say. "I don't know if Bob is looking, but he's great."

Not only was Bob not looking, Bob wouldn't talk to me at first. Bob had a steady job with a company that didn't appreciate him. Bob was underpaid and he probably knew it but, emotionally, he was at a place in his career where he was willing to swap job security for the chance to make more money and get on a track to career advancement. My client offered all that and I knew that if I could just get Bob to talk to me I could get him to meet my client and that when he met them he'd leave his old employer and come to work for my client. I was right. Bob started as a GM and worked his way up to a VP job. He stayed with my client for 15 years and had what we call "a good run".

Incidentally, while it was a headhunter who got Bob to come in and talk, he was not unknown to my client. People in the organization knew who he was. His reputation had preceded him. All I did was get him to the table but Bob really earned the job by being a great center manager for a competitor.

Bob is the perfect example of a passive candidate. He was a great manager who didn't have a current resume and wasn't looking for a job but deserved a better job than he had. That's a passive candidate. Headhunters love passive candidates.

Had Bob been sending his resume to everybody I could have invested a lot of time in him and lost him to another employer.

I was once an "expert panelist" at a career night event. Someone in the audience asked me how to find headhunters. I said, "You don't find the headhunter, the headhunter finds you - if you're good."

As I've said in previous posts, headhunters network until they find what they need.

But it's still better to be introduced to an employer by your professional co-signer than it is to be introduced by a headhunter. I'll tell you why in tomorrow's post.

Higginbotham At Large no longer accepts or publishes reader comments. You may send questions, comments and hate mail to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

To Get The Job, Get Out Of The "Stranger" Category

2011-03-04T09:34:00.002-05:00

A Fortune 400 company advertised a position in their government affairs office. According to the published ad, the successful candidate would be someone who spoke an Asian language fluently, had lived in Asia, and had worked for a government agency.

The person who got the job had never worked in government, never lived in Asia and couldn't speak a foreign language of any kind, Asian or otherwise. The successful but unqualified candidate had some the qualified candidates didn't: she had a relationship, a professional co-signer, whose intervention made all those pesky "minimum qualifications" requirements melt away.

Having a professional co-signer can launch less qualified candidates past better qualified candidates. It happens every day. It happens in large Fortune 400 companies like the one above and it happens in the small mom and pops.

Until my Linked Liberals group on Linkedin started having a big discussion about job search, I had no idea that so few professionals in their 40s and 50s have somehow failed to notice that the hiring process is not "fair" and that the best candidates don't get the jobs unless they have professional co-signers who vouch for them.

The sooner you realize that life isn't fair and that the hiring process isn't meritocratic the sooner you'll spend your time looking for a professional co-signer instead of spending your time playing the low percentage game of sending resumes to strangers.

I've said this in my previous few blog posts but I haven't fully defined what I mean by the word "stranger".

Harry Beckwith has correctly observed that people don't like to do business with strangers if there is a non-stranger available. So what is a stranger? A stranger is someone who is both unknown to you and unknown to anyone you know. In other words, a stranger is 3 degrees from you. To get the job, you don't have to be the hiring manager's best buddy, you just have to get out of the 3 degrees away category and get to the 2 degrees away category. That happens when a mutual friend or colleague - this is your professional co-signer - introduces you to the hiring manager. The hiring manager immediately warms to you when your professional co-signer introduces you to him.

In my next post, I'll address some misconceptions about working with headhunters.

Higginbotham At Large no longer accepts or publishes reader comments. You may send questions, comments and hate mail to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

Answers To Questions About Working With Headhunters

2011-03-03T00:09:00.004-05:00

Lately, I've been getting some questions about headhunting and headhunters. How to "hire" a headhunter to find you a job. How to attract headhunters.

Since I'm not interested in writing about boring, "inside baseball" stuff and since I'm not interested in starting a war with headhunters whose methods I dislike, I'm going to use the question of how to work with a headhunter as an excuse to show readers how to exploit this arcane information in your job search whether or not you ever talk to a headhunter.

First of all, headhunters don't usually "find" candidates that were previously unknown to their clients nor do headhunters usually bring their clients candidates they couldn't have "found" for themselves. This was true in 1993 when I first started "finding" talent for a a few clients and, in the age of Linkedin and Google, it's even more true today. Over the years I have placed nurses, respiratory therapists, sales reps, managers, engineers, architects, marketing gurus, pharmacists, etc., with clients only to find that my client either (a) already knew the person they had just paid me to find or (b) my client could have easily found this candidate for themselves by leveraging their existing network of professional contacts. After I have arranged a meeting between the client and the successful candidate, we learn that Bob in accounting knows the new hire from a previous job or Sally from R&D knows the candidate from a civic group or the hiring manager actually knows the candidate from church or because their kids go to the same school.

On a few occasions, clients have actually provided me with the names of people they wanted me to recruit.

"Why" you may be wondering, "would an employer pay a headhunter to "find" someone he has already found?" There are several reasons: A lot of employers are like insecure high school boys who won't ask the pretty cheerleader to the dance until he knows for sure the answer is "yes". Also, employers don't want to lose the upper hand in salary and benefits negotiations so they don't want the desired candidate to know he or she is on the short list of preferred candidates. If the headhunter fee is less than the salary, perks and benefits advantage the candidate would gain by knowing how badly the employer wants him, it makes sense to pay the headhunter, not the candidate.

Notice that if the hiring manager wants to talk to you about a job but he doesn't want to appear too eager, it really doesn't matter if you're brought to him by a headhunter or by Karen in marketing who knows you from a previous job.

Knowing that employers are so bad at leveraging their own networks that they will actually pay headhunters to bring them candidates they could have "found" and hired without the headhunter provides you, the job seeker, with a great opportunity to exploit their ignorance or laziness. How? Networking is a 2-way street. If the boss is too lazy or too networking-challenged to use the network that connects the two of you together, then you can use the network the boss is ignoring.

Remember the list I told you how to make 2 posts ago? Perhaps Karen in marketing is on that list and perhaps the hiring manager wants to talk to you but he'd rather somebody brought you to him. You need a job, right? is Karen from marketing on the list? Call Karen and ask her to be your professional co-signer.

Second, make yourself easy to find and contact. Headhunters and enlightened employers use Linkedin. to identify people with the right degree or the right experience so make sure your Linkedin profile has actual contact info on it and make sure it's replete with all the appropriate buzzwords that show off your SKEs - skills, knowledge and experience. When using Linkedin to identify prospective candidates, a headhunter may type "P&L" instead of "profit and loss" so put both in your profile.

About 97% of the Linkedin profiles I see contain no contact info. Make sure either your phone number or your email address or both are on your profile. If you don't know where to put it, look at my profile.

Join Linkedin groups that connect you to the kind of people who might want to hire you and to the people you may have worked with in a previous job.

This piece of advice may seem counter-intuitive but don't send your resume to headhunters.

Headhunters prefer "passive" candidates, not "active candidates". I'm not saying you should play hard to get but I am saying that desperation gives off a bad smell that repels everybody. I could write an entire blog post on that last point - and perhaps one day I will - but for now, just know this: there is no reason to send your resume to a headhunter unless he asks for it and has a specific job opening in mind. Sometimes I don't ask for a resume until I've already arranged the meeting between client and candidate. Sometimes I don't even send the client a resume, just my own notes on what I know about the candidate.

Finally - and this may be the most important thing I can tell you about working with headhunters - it wouldn't have been necessary for the employer to secure the services of a headhunter had the employer's existing network brought employer and candidate together so work proactively to network yourself to the employer whether or not there's a job opening that you know about. If Bob in accounting or Sally in R&D are on that legal pad list I told you how to make two posts ago, call them and get yourself recommended to your next boss.

Higginbotham At Large no longer accepts or publishes reader comments. You may send questions, comments and hate mail to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

Age Discrimination Revisited

2011-03-02T12:25:00.001-05:00

My previous two posts have generated a lot of questions about age discrimination. Despite the fact that I recently served on a task force whose aim was to identify employers who are eager to hire so-called "older workers" and despite the fact that I have written on this topic many times before both in this blog and in publications like Business Lexington and Living Well 50 Plus, a few of my readers seem to think I don't believe bias against older workers is real. They misunderstood my last two posts and completely missed my point that issues like your age and your unexplained employment gaps only matter if you are wasting your time playing what I call the "low percentage game" of sending resumes to strangers, assuming that the hiring process is meritocratic and fair. You shouldn't, it isn't.

The hiring game is not a fair fight. The people who get the jobs are the people who have an unfair advantage over the competition. The people who get the jobs are the people who have a relationship the other candidates don't have. If you have such a relationship, your age and your employment gaps won't matter because you and the hiring manager have a mutual, trusted colleague or friend who is "co-signing" for you, assuring the hiring manager that you are the person for the job.

My point is not that age bias and employment gaps won't hurt you in a fair fight against younger candidates with better resumes: my point is that you shouldn't be in a fair fight because it's not the people who fight fair who get the jobs. Let me invoke John Steinbeck who said "If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck."

Employers work very hard at obscuring the fact that you aren't in a fair fight. They post jobs that are already filled. They make candidates interview for the job 4, 5, 10 times as if this is a meritocratic process.

What they don't tell you is that a better-connected candidate - employment gaps, age spots and all - can skip the line at any time and win the job over younger, more qualified candidates.

Instead of spending 8 hours a day filling out online applications, uploading resumes to strangers and taking online tests only to end up at the end of the week with no callbacks and no interviews, do what I told you to do in yesterday's post: get out the legal pad, make the list I told you how to make and start contacting people you already know. One of them knows your next boss and will lead you past the long line where people who think job search is fair are waiting obediently in line and introduce you to the boss. This is how 90% of professional jobs are really filled.

If you still don't understand my point that I want you to stop playing the low percentage game and start playing the high percentage game, let me ask you how you choose a plumber if you don't already know one or how you choose a CPA if you don't already know one. Chances are, you are paralyzed with indecision until a colleague or friend or vendor or customer recommends a CPA or a plumber. The same thing is true of hiring. Hiring managers can comb through stacks of great resumes and interview dozens of highly qualified people and still fail to make a hiring decision then one day someone's professional co-signer cuts the line and ushers his friend into the hiring manager's heart and mind.

That is the correct order, by the way - first heart and then mind. Even though we humans have these big brains the way we make important decisions is really embarrassing. We "decide" with our hearts and then we "alibi" or "rationalize" with our big brains.

There is no heart in filling out online applications. There is no emotional element in the filling out of online applications and the taking of online tests. These bottlenecks exist to perpetuate the myth that hiring is dispassionate and fair and meritocratic but the reality is that when your old pal from Excess Capacity Corp. hand delivers your resume to his friend over at Meritocracy Corp. that hiring manager feels the cockles of his heart strangely warmed and the job is now yours to lose even if you never applied for it.

Everybody else waits in line for the call that will never come.

Oh, the guy who hires you has a big brain and, if anybody asks, he will use that big brain to rationalize his decision to hire you.

Your gray hair won't matter.

Your employment gaps won't matter.

HR won't matter.

Stop playing the low percentage game of spending all your time sending resumes to strangers. Don't be a stranger. Find the connection between you and your next boss.

Re-read my previous 2 posts and then do what I said. This is how 90% of professional jobs are really filled.

But if you still want to play the low percentage game and you just can't let the subject of ageism go see my 2 May 2010 post called "Institutional Ageism" :: http://higginbothamatlarge.blogspot.com/2010/05/institutional-ageism.html

After you've read it, abandon your time-wasting, low-percentage game of sending resumes to strangers and start networking your way to a new job. Someone you already know knows your next boss.

Higginbotham At Large no longer accepts or publishes reader comments. You may send questions, comments and hate mail to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

How To Get A "Co-Signer" For Your Job Search

2011-03-01T15:36:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I told you why all these worries about how to hide your age, how to explain employment gaps or how to explain why you're currently unemployed or underemployed will melt away if you have a "professional co-signer". I told you that a job seeker with a great resume is no match for a candidate with the right relationship. I told you that employers receive resumes from great candidates and still don't hire because they're waiting for a professional co-signer. I told you that if you have a professional co-signer you can skip the low percentage game of sending resumes and sitting for interviews leapfrogging over terrific candidates who answered ads, sent resumes and sweated through through interviews. I told you that, chances are, you're no more than two degrees from your next job; somebody you already know knows somebody who will give you your next job. In other words, somebody you already know is probably the professional co-signer you need.

Today I'll tell you how to get the edge that leapfrogs you over and past better-qualified candidates who lacked a professional co-signer.

And I'll tell you something else that may surprise you: the person who becomes your professional co-signer and helps you get your next job is probably not a close friend or relative. No, the person who co-signs for you is likely to be someone you don't actually know all that well. It may even be someone you aren't sure will help you. Why? It's simple math. If you're like most people you only have a handful of close friends or relatives who are rubbing elbows with employers but you might know hundreds of people casually so the person who ends up helping you get your next job is likely to be someone you don't really know all that well.

I want you to get a legal pad (you're going to be surprised at how much paper you'll need for this exercise) and write down one of your past jobs as the heading. Now, write down the names of every boss you had at that job, every co-worker you can remember at that job, every vendor you can remember at that job, every client or customer you can remember at that job and write down the names of anybody you can ever remember meeting when you worked there. If you knew the guy who owned the bakery across the street, write him down. My guess is you've already filled up a page.

Do this for each job you've held.

Now, write down the name of a professional association you belong to or a board you serve on or a charity you volunteer for. Write down the names of everybody you've met through each of these orgs.

Draw a little map of your immediate neighborhood. Would the couple next door like you you to lose your house and stink up the housing values on your block? Probably not - and if you're a good neighbor, your neighbors would rather take their chances with you than with some new neighbor who may play his music too loud so write down the names of the couple next door and the couple across the street and the couple at the mouth of the cul de sac who throw the block Christmas party every year. Where do these people work? What do they do? Who do they know?

By now, you have dozens of pages and hundreds of names.

Somebody on this list is going to say your name to your next boss.

But you have to help them remember to say your name.

Using every means at your disposal - Linkedin, Google, Facebook, even the old-fashioned phone book - start looking these people up and telling them you're looking for a job.

Only your pride will stand in the way of doing this. Don't be ashamed. Don't be embarrassed. You're not alone.

Even if you formed a consulting company with no clients and your Linkedin profile says you're the President at "XYZ & Associates" or "The ABC Group" make the call and tell the truth.

"Hey, Sarah, I hope you remember me, we worked together at Excess Capacity until we were laid off. I was the manager of the _______ department and since then I've done _________ and I'm looking for a job doing _______."

If your pride makes the first call hard, it'll get easier. After you've made a few of these calls and heard your old customers' and co-workers' stories you'll realize that a lot of good people are underemployed or unemployed just like you.

And when you make these calls, don't assume that the people you're talking to know what you did or what you'd like to do. Job titles sometimes don't help much. Start thinking about how to explain "Business Analyst" to someone who doesn't know what a "Business Analyst" is. Start thinking of how to describe the stuff you did since you last saw Sarah at Excess Capacity 10 years ago. Sometimes the reason old Sarah hasn't already dropped your name to a potential employer is because Sarah really doesn't understand what you do. We don't just work in boxes and cubicles, we work in "black boxes" where only a handful of people really know what we do. Start talking to the people on your list about what you did when you knew them, what you've done since and what you hope to do in your next job. be as specific as you can.

I got my first management job without submitting a resume because two guys were having a beer together at a hotel 200 miles away and one guy mentioned my name to the other guy. The guy who hired me had already received resumes from far better candidates than me but when his beer companion mentioned my name, the job was mine to lose.

I never interviewed for the job. I never submitted a resume but I got the job.

What a consultant once told me about the secret of success in the consulting business is just as true of job search: "Get people to say your name. Getting people to say your name is the Holy Grail."

A guy once gave me $26k in consulting business just because a guy I'd never met said my name.

Don't settle for "leads". Getting a lead for a job is almost no help at all unless the person giving you the lead also "co-signs" for you. Here are some of the ways one of those hundreds of people on your list can co-sign for you:

1. The co-signer hand delivers your resume to a hiring manager. I once got a job because a very good friend hand delivered my resume to the person doing the hiring.

2. The co-signer arranges a meeting between you and the hiring manager. This meeting could take the form of a Starbucks before work, a weekend cookout, a business lunch, a jog after work or any other means of making the introduction.

3. The co-signer sends the hiring manager an email introduction. This is not as good as a personal, face-to-face introduction but it's a thousand times better than a mere lead.

4. The co-signer makes a phone call to a hiring manager for you. This is better than an email but not as good as a face-to-face.

5. The co-signer sends your Linkedin profile to a hiring manager. The co-signer should replace the generic message with a personal message.

Remember what I said yesterday: there are hiring managers out there right now who are sitting on stacks of resumes from great candidates who haven't been offered the job because they don't have professional co-signers.

The candidate with a great resume is no match for the candidate with a relationship.

I told you how to make a list of your relationships. Somebody on that list knows your next boss. Ask him to co-sign.

People who have recently changed geographies (like Steve in Hampton Roads) or industries are at a disadvantage relationship-wise because all their potential co-signers might live in another state or work in another industry but you're still most likely to get your next job because you have a relationship the other candidates didn't have so start networking like crazy.

Somebody you already know knows your next boss. Start working that list and I wouldn't be surprised if you have a new job in 24 hours.

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Why Your Job Search Needs A "Co-SIgner"

2011-02-28T16:56:00.003-05:00

I recently received some questions about how to deal with (1) Employment gaps and with (2) age discrimination.

Both of these issues melt away and become non-issues if you have one thing on your side that other applicants and candidates don't have. I'm going to tell you what that thing is and I'm going to tell you how to get it but before I do, please take note that I have no reason to mislead you or lie to you because I am not trying to sell you anything. I don't want to charge you money to write you a better resume or to provide you with "leads" or improve your interview skills. And by the way, you don't need any of that , either, if you have one thing on your side that other candidates don't have.

I'm talking about what I call a "social or professional co-signer".

As I've said in my blog and in my speeches about job search, a candidate with a great resume is no match for a candidate with the right relationship.

And you don't need to figure out how to deal with gaps in your employment history, current unemployment or even your age if you have a social or professional co-signer - a person who says your name to the hiring manager.

If a social or professional co-signer says your name to a hiring manager, the job becomes yours to lose. Without ever submitting a resume, you move to the top of the pile. Without ever interviewing for the job, you move to the top of the short list.

Let me share some "inside baseball" that will make my point. Clients have paid me crazy money to bring them candidates they already knew and could have hired without running employment ads and without securing the services of a headhunter. In one recent flurry of activity I was paid $12k for "finding" a marketing director my client already knew, $14k for finding a partner track architect my client already knew and $18k for a senior PE (professional engineer) my client already knew. Throughout my consulting career, I have collected sums like this for "finding" candidates my clients already knew. In the vast majority of cases, I am being paid ridiculous sums of money for "finding" candidates that my clients already knew. In the case of the senior PE, my client wasted $thousands on newspaper ads and internet ads, wasted 6 months on reading resumes and interviewing candidates and being paralyzed with indecision before he asked for my help. Right now, any headhunter who might read this is HOPING I don't tell you what I'm about to tell you but I'm going to do it. I'm going to tell you stuff HR managers, hiring managers and headhunters don't want you to know.

During those 6 months while my client was wasting precious time and money running ads, reading resumes and interviewing candidates, the job didn't remain open because he didn't know any qualified candidates. He did. The job didn't remain open because he didn't receive resumes from people who could do the job. He did. The job didn't remain open because he didn't interview any good candidates. He did. Let me stop right there to make a point. The chances are good that at some time in your career you have interviewed with an employer who was paralyzed with indecision and didn't know why. He or she described the situation by saying he couldn't find anybody good for the job but that wasn't really true. The fact was, the hiring manager had a stack of resumes from qualified candidates and had even interviewed people who would have been great in the job yet he or she kept saying he couldn't find anyone for the job.

The problem wasn't that he didn't find somebody, the problem was that he was paralyzed with indecision because he was waiting for something he didn't even know he was waiting for. He was waiting for a social/professional co-signer to recommend someone.

And if you were a candidate who played the low percentage game of sending resumes and waiting for interviews there's a good chance that the person who ended up getting the job did so without a resume or an interview because he or she had something you didn't: a social/professional co-signer.

Get yourself some social/professional co-signers.

I didn't say "job leads". You don't want a colleague telling you about job openings, you want a colleague picking up the phone and mentioning your name to a hiring manager. You want a referral, not a lead.

Better yet, you want a colleague to arrange a coffee or lunch meeting between you and a hiring manager. When that happens, you moved to the top of the short list, the top of the pile and you leapfrogged over other candidates who answered ads, submitted resumes and waited to be interviewed.

The best jobs I ever got in my life I got without ever submitting a resume. Why? Because I had a social/professional co-signer who ended the indecision paralysis of the employer by mentioning my name and leapfrogging me past candidates who submitted resumes and sat for interviews.

I said this to the president of a job club who later told me he thought I was wrong until he sat down and made a list of every job he'd ever had and found that, in every case, he had a relationship somewhere that caused him to get the job offer.

Now, you're supposed to ask me how to get these social and professional co-signers. And I will. And I'll do it for free.

And the answer is so obvious you're going to feel stupid when I tell you what you need to do.

And you know I'm telling you the truth because I'm not trying to sell you anything.

Read my next post to learn how to get professional co-signers.

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St. Albans Barber Shop And Public Policy Think Tank Finds Brooks McCabe and Obama In Biblical Prophecy

2011-02-17T00:21:00.005-05:00

is Senator Brooks McCabe a tool of the Anti-Christ? Would merged city-county government help usher in One World Government and the reign of The Anti-Christ as prophesied in The Book of Revelation? Yes and yes according to the patrons of the St. Albans barber shop where I got a haircut this past Friday.

I live in a town where The Mark of The Beast, The Anti-Christ and One World Government are never far from the minds and the lips of many of its residents and can pop up in day-to-day conversation at almost any time if certain precipitating conditions are present. For example, when the cashier at the St. Albans Kroger asks a shopper for his or her Kroger Plus card it's not unusual for this innocent request to get employees and customers talking about a "cashless society" and how we're all being softened up for a mark on our foreheads or our hands without which we can neither buy nor sell. A software engineer routinely sends me updates about how close we are to being surgically fitted with government mandated RFID devices.

The mere sight or mention of President Obama is another precipitating condition that gets people talking and speculating about "End Times". To many of the people in St. Albans, figuring out if Obama is The Anti-Christ or what part he plays in the fulfillment of prophetic Scripture is better than Sudoku.

On the day when the barber shop in which I was waiting for a haircut erupted in speculation that Brooks McCabe might be in league with Satan and that merged city-county government might have an ignominious and nefarious place in biblical prophecy, there were at least three precipitating conditions present: (1) The guy in the barber chair was complaining about government abuse. (2) Much of the brown-skinned, Muslim world was in revolt against their governments. (3) President Obama was on TV making a speech about the fall of Egypt's Mubarak.

The mere sight of President Obama was making the guy who came in after me visibly twitchy. Every once in a while he groaned or muttered curse words in a stage whisper.

"Merged government just moves us one step closer to One World Government" said the guy in the barber chair.

The guy who came in behind me nodded his head in agreement.

"So by your reasoning" I said, "we also moved one step closer to One World Government when the 13 colonies merged to become the United States."

The guy who came in behind me grunted but never looked at me. Had he been Egyptian he would have removed a shoe and held it in the air like the Egyptian revolutionaries did to show their contempt for Mubarak.

The guy in the barber chair got a familiar far away look in his eye that told me he was experiencing cognitive dissonance - he was trying to reconcile two contradictory, mutually exclusive thoughts. On one hand, the guy in the barber chair believed Peter Marshall, David Manuel, Glenn Beck and David Barton, that God Almighty guided Christopher Columbus, The Pilgrims and the Puritans to the New World where He also led them to form the nation that would become the beacon of light to the world. Never mind that the US was formed 150 years later, not by Puritans and Pilgrims but by Deists and skeptics.

On the other hand, the guy in the barber chair also believed that government - especially Big Government - is of the Devil. So Big Government is bad - except when it's the US government which was a work of God but is now led by a man who may be a candidate for Anti-Christ.

Anyway, that's how a barber shop think tank decided that Brooks McCabe may be a tool of Satan and merged government may help usher in One World, Anti-Christ led government.

Corporal Punishment Teaches The Wrong Lessons To Students

2011-02-16T15:51:00.000-05:00

My octogenarian interlocutor says West Virginia's troubles started when corporal punishment was banned from public schools in 1994 and likes delegate Brian Savilla's (R-Putnam) bill that would reinstate paddling.

I was a product of Kanawha County public schools prior to the 1994 ban and I can attest to the following: (1) West Virginia had problems even when teachers were free to hit their students. (2) Being physically assaulted by a teacher only teaches kids that adults are hypocrites who resolve conflicts through violence but will spank kids who try to resolve their conflicts through violence. (3) West Virginia teachers aren't wise enough or smart enough to control their classrooms without resorting to violence.

How Writing An Article About Bar Code Technology Helped Make Me A Liberal

2011-02-11T12:08:00.000-05:00

Sometimes when conservatives ask me how I became a liberal I tell them that some of the seeds of liberalism were planted in me when I wrote an article about bar code technology for Rx HomeCare magazine nearly 30 years ago.

Why was it taking so long for bar code technology to "catch on"? Why wasn't bar code technology becoming affordable faster? Why was the technology that was transforming the retail industry not catching on in other industries?

These were the questions managing editor, Dana Bigman, wanted me to answer in the article she asked me to write.

I thought I was writing a boring technology article. I was wrong. As I began to interview the developers, manufacturers and prospective customers of bar code technology I expected to hear a lot of tech talk but what I heard instead was a lot of talk about economics and human behavior and how waiting for free market forces and Adam Smith's "invisible hand" to show up were costing businesses billions of dollars and even costing human lives.

Yes, the lack of bar code usage in hospitals was literally killing people. Patients died because they were administered the wrong drugs or given the wrong surgeries. The technology existed to information about meds, nutrition, etc., on bar coded patient bracelets. Nurses and doctors could then scan these bracelets and find out everything they needed to know to prevent deadly mistakes. But hospitals weren't investing in the technology. What were they waiting for?

Here's what I found out: competition wasn't driving the price of bar code technology down the way conservatives tell us it always does, competition was actually preventing bar code technology from becoming cheaper because there were, at the time, 17 different bar code standards and since potential buyers didn't know which of the 17 competing standards would survive, they simply waited for that "invisible hand" of free market forces to select winners and losers.

Remember when you had to choose between VHS and Beta?

Perhaps you're trying to decide between e-readers. You're paralyzed with indecision about a $100 purchase - and nobody will fire you if you buy the wrong product.

30 years ago businesses were paralyzed with indecision about which bar code standard would eventually be adopted by enough other buyers that it would become the obvious and affordable choice.

Remember when your small business lost untold time and money while you delayed the purchase of a computer system because you didn't know if you should go with OS2, Mac or DOS?

As I interviewed hospital administrators, distribution executives and electronics developers I kept wondering why instead of sitting idly by and doing nothing while lives were lost and businesses sustained untold billions in lost opportunity, governments didn't get all the developers and patent holders together and figure out a way to hasten the adoption of a universally-accepted bar code system.

30 years later, I know the answer: conservatives and businesses - the very people who stand to profit most when new technologies make business more efficient - would call such a government role "socialism" or even "tyranny".

The "invisible hand" of free market forces doesn't always choose the best products, either. VHS won the compact videocassette race but Sony's Beta provided the best picture quality in a smaller cassette.

Since I wrote that article about bar code technology for Rx HomeCare nearly 30 years ago I haven't kept up on which bar code standards survived so I have no idea whether the better technologies won or lost, but I do know that America's self-defeating and irrational fear of a government role in helping new technologies succeed will delay the deployment of important new products and cost conservative Republican businessmen billions of dollars in financial sacrifices to the "invisible hand" they worship.

But Did You Put Actual Contact Information On Your Linkedin Profile?

2011-01-20T14:39:00.002-05:00

Do you have actual contact information on your Linkedin profile?

Don't be like the consultant who appeared on a Charleston, WV radio show and invited listeners to get in touch with her through Linkedin. There was no contact info on her Linkedin page so the only listeners who could actually contact her were the people who were already 1st-level connections in Linkedin or members the same LInkedin groups of which she was a member.

I looked her up in the phone book and sent her a note telling her she should put actual contact info in her profile. I suggested she put it in the "SUMMARY" section of her profile where it will show up in Google searches.

Still, she insisted that "all her info was public". No, it wasn't. Linkedin has your email address but it only shows up on your profile to people with whom you are already connected in some way - either through direct, first-level connection or through a group, primarily.

If you want your phone number and/or email to show up on your profile you have to put it there.

Yesterday I noticed that a member of one of my Linkedin groups was looking for a job. On his Linkedin profile he said recruiters and headhunters should contact him by email but his email address appeared nowhere on his profile. When I brought the omission to his attention he thanked me and expressed embarrassment.

Have you looked at your profile? Does it contain actual contact information?

I ask because I spend about an hour or two each day inviting new members to my 3 Linkedin groups and I'd say that only about 3 or 4% of the profiles I see contain any contact info which means I may have tried to invite you to join one of my groups but didn't have a way to contact you.

Have you Googled yourself to see what non-Linkedin users see in your public Linkedin profile (which is different than the profile your direct connections see).

Make your Linkedin account work harder for you. Put actual contact information in your Linkedin profile.

I have actual contact info - phone number and email address - 2 places on my profile: under "contact settings" and, more importantly, in the "Summary" section which shows up in Google searches on my public profile.

Don't make prospective clients or employers work so hard to contact you. Put actual contact information on your Linkedin profile. Make your Linkedin account work harder, don't make potential contacts work harder.

Oh, and if you are logging on to your Linkedin account every day - as you should - and checking your "inbox" and looking at "who's viewed your profile" you may have noticed that a lot of people you know or want to know have viewed your profile but didn't contact you. Is it because you didn't put actual contact information on your profile?

Don't make your prospective contacts work harder, make your Linkedin account work harder. Put contact information on your Linkedin profile.

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Big Love Or Big Tent? Will Southern Evangelicals Vote For Mitt Romney?

2011-01-07T12:52:00.004-05:00

Higginbotham At Large no longer publishes comments.
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In season 4 of HBO's "Big Love" (now available on DVD) TV's best-known polygamist businessman-turned-politician, Bill Hendrickson, thinks The Religious Right still won't vote for Mormons. A lot of my real-life Mormon friends agree so if Mitt Romney doesn't get the Republican Presidential nomination they'll say it's because Mormonism still has a Southern Evangelical problem. I think "Big Love's" Bill Hendrickson and my real-life Mormon friends have greatly overestimated their evangelical fellow Republicans.

Over 30 years ago when I was studying The Pearl of Great Price, The Book Of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants in a college "Major Cults" class, I would have agreed. The evangelicals of my youth and young adulthood read their Bibles - even the gospels - so they knew that True Christians were promised persecution, not earthly power and that they would always be a minority witness and never a Moral Majority. Many of my evangelical friends eschewed politics altogether. Jesus didn't try to change the world by running for office or influencing the powerful, they reasoned - and they could quote you chapter and verse that Jesus' kingdom is "not of this world".

But that was before Christian Reconstruction, Glenn Beck and what I call CACACA (Casual Anonymous Church Among Consenting Adults) - the evangelical church version of "don't ask, don't tell."

A lot of the experts say it was the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 that signaled evangelical willingness to trade their witness for a mess of political pottage (this Biblical imagery will be lost on most 21st Century Christians) but it was in 1990 that I saw just how willing evangelicals were to compromise their theology for more of their new found political power. A strict Calvinist missionary came to my office and excitedly told me how his "scholarly" branch of the church was forming a coalition with the "charismatics and Pentecostals" - the little yellow bus of this new Christian army that was rolling into Washington.

"We have all the scholarship, the Pentecostals and charismatics have all the money" my missionary friend said. "It's time we get together. With our brains and their TV and radio stations we can elect Christians to Congress and the White House. They're be no stopping us."

This marriage of monetary and political convenience between the pseudo-intellectual wing and suspicious of the intellect wing of evangelicalism was just one of many compromises evangelicals would make to gain and keep political power.

Fast forward to 2010. Mormonism's most famous broadcaster, Glenn Beck, has millions of evangelical listeners and viewers and rallies tens of thousands of evangelicals to his "Restoring Honor" rally in DC. Evangelicalism's embrace of Mormonism as just another Christian denomination is due in no small part to frequent TV appearances by Christian History revisionist, David Barton, who was present at the creation of the Christian Reconstruction movement that valued political influence over doctrinal purity and winning elections over winning souls.

If evangelicals don't hand the Republican nomination to Mitt Romney, perhaps the second most famous Mormon in America (behind Glenn Beck) it won't be because of his religion; it will be because he has not sufficiently validated them and because a few of them remember his political flip-flops and the Obamacare-esque healthcare plan he signed into law when he was governor of Massachusetts.

Ask any political strategist what motivates voters and they will tell you voters need an enemy. To modern evangelicals who no longer read their Bibles and know less about the Bible than atheists, "the enemy" is no longer biblical stuff like false doctrine, sin or The Devil, but the same stuff they would hate no matter what religion they belong to: full citizenship for all Americans, science, cultural diversity. If I were one of Mitt Romney's advisers I'd tell him to take a page from Karl Rove and learn to name those enemies - and I'd tell him to do it on the Glenn Beck show.

Higginbotham At Large no longer publishes comments. Readers who wish to send comments to me should send them to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com. Pseudonymous emails will not be read or answered.

How To Really Change Organizations And Companies

2010-12-14T15:12:00.000-05:00

When the companies you work for, the organizations you belong to and support with your financial gifts don't accomplish the things they say they want to accomplish, 2 things are true: (1) The system is working as designed and (2) Somebody wants it that way. Systems do what they are designed to do. They can do nothing else. If you wish to get a different outcome or a different product you have to actually make changes to the system. If you don't change the system, you can't change the product of that system.

All outcomes are the result of a system that produced them. A system that is designed to make widgets will not make cars or parkas unless the system is reconfigured to produce cars or parkas. A system that is designed to shut down puppy mills will not cause more puppy mills to open.

Some of my church-going readers belong to churches that say they exist to "make disciples" or "win souls to Christ" and yet these churches aren't making disciples or winning souls. To my church-going friends I say don't write a check to drop in the offering plate, write a letter explaining that you will not be providing further financial support until the system that doesn't make disciples or win souls is redesigned so that it does make disciples or win souls.

If you have been donating money to an organization that is supposed to help so-called "older workers" find employment, I strongly advise you to ask that org for proof of the efficacy of their work on behalf of "older workers". If they cannot prove that your financial support hasn't been squandered, instead of sending more money send a letter explaining why you won't be sending more money. That organization already knows it's squandering your donations and it will continue to do so until donors withhold funds and demand change to the system.

Until recently I was involved with a "task force" made up of representatives of various orgs that have received taxpayer and private funds to encourage companies to hire so-called older workers yet none of these task force members could name a local company they had teamed with to employ these older workers. These "older worker" programs are jobs programs, alright, but not for older workers. These programs have systems that are designed to produce jobs for overpaid bureaucrats and they will never produce jobs for so-called older workers until the systems are redesigned to produce employment opportunities for older workers, not bureaucrats.

Most religious, membership and non-profit orgs really exist to provide jobs for the people at the top. If you are sending money to such an organization, withhold your funding immediately and tell them why.

More importantly, tell your friends not to send money to organizations that don't do what they claim they want to do. Systems produce what they are designed to produce and they will never produce anything but what they are designed to produce unless the system itself is changed.

Let's say you are a city government and you have outsourced job creation to some membership organization that can't prove it has produced even one job with the money you've paid them. Cut them off. Tell them they can't have any more taxpayer dollars until they have a system that produces jobs instead of excuses.

Do you send money to an organization that doesn't accomplish what it says it wants to accomplish? If so, don't send a check, send a letter telling them you will resume your financial support when they make the systemic changes needed to produce a different outcome.

Do you own or are you managing a company that isn't getting the desired results? You will not get improvements in quality, sales, profits or innovation until you are willing to make changes to the systems that are failing to produce the desired results.

A system that produces jobs for overpaid executives will not suddenly or accidentally start producing jobs for laid-off plant workers. A system that produces widgets might produce widgets of varying quality and might occasionally produce defective widgets that cannot be sold, but a system that produces widgets will never produce iPads or blue jeans unless the system is reconfigured to produce iPads or blue jeans.

If you are a donor, don't just demand change, demand change to the system.

If you are a company owner, it does no good to fire your management and hire new managers unless your new managers are systems thinkers who will make changes to the system that is producing the disappointing results.
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For more on how systems produce what they are designed to produce, see my
21 JULY, 2010 post in the blog archives.

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Due to reader complaints and inability / unwillingness to understand my "no pseudonymous or anonymous comments" policy, Higginbotham At Large no longer publishes any reader comments at all. I was simply spending too much time moderating reader comments and I had to either allow comments to be published without moderation or I had to disallow comments altogether. I chose to disallow comments. Send your hate mail directly to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com. Pseudonymous emails will be given the attention they deserve: they will not be read.

Why Higginbotham At Large Will No Longer Publish Reader Comments

2010-12-11T19:14:00.000-05:00

I'm making way too many people mad with my requirement that they provide a real name - not a pseudonym or a CB handle - and some actual contact info so a few minutes ago I went into my Blogger settings and made a major change: only "members" of this blog may post comments to it. Since I am the only member, that means I am, in effect, no longer publishing comments.

Not only am I making way too many people mad at me because I have been enforcing a "no anonymous or pseudonymous comments" policy but I'm spending way too much time explaining and defending this unpopular policy so the easiest thing for me to do is to simply stop publishing reader comments.

Most of the time my "no pseudonymous" comments wasn't much of an issue because most of my blog posts didn't seem to engender much reader comment. I think there were only three times in the history of Higginbotham At Large when my blog attracted much attention. The first time was about 18 months ago when I wrote a post in defense of gay marriage. The next time was during the run-up to the recent special election for Robert C Byrd's US Senate seat when the Mountain Partiers were sending my a lot of profanity-laced anonymous and pseudonymous comments because I said their candidate, Jesse Johnson, should drop out of the race and tell his supporters to hold their noses and vote for Dino Joe so Florida wouldn't have three US Senators with the election of John Raese.

Right now I'm getting a lot of pseudonymous comments from members of a Yahoo atheist group who object to my 9 December post about what I called "hillbilly religion" and West Virginia PBS's gospel music programming. I had no idea that atheists like gospel music so much, but apparently they do. And for some reason they don't understand the meaning of the word "pseudonymous" and I'm just spending way too much time explaining the meaning of pseudonymity.

Where did people get the idea that anybody cares about the opinions of people who won't sign their names to their hate mail? People who hide behind pseudonymity are attempting to escape accountability and consequences for their words and actions. If you've ever sent a letter to your local newspaper you know that newspapers don't print letters that are unaccompanied by a real name and some contact info.

Anyway, Higginbotham At Large apologizes to the Yahoo atheists. Send your hate mail to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com - but sign your name or I won't read it.

Open Letter To West Virginia Public Broadcasting

2010-12-09T14:18:00.000-05:00

I’m shocked, puzzled, offended and even embarrassed at how much gospel music programming WVPBS has been airing lately.

Isn’t WVPB still under authority of EBA? And what, exactly, is the educational value of Bill Gaither and a bunch of his gospel music friends or the Statler Brothers ?

And even though some of WVPB receives private donations from viewers and listeners, doesn’t most of WVPB’s operating revenue still come from taxpayers?

Not only does gospel music programming appeal to and promote just one religion, gospel music programming of this sort promotes and appeals to a subset within that one Christian religion while it offends and alienates and disenfranchises everyone not of that subset of the Christian religion.

And finally, I am embarrassed at what visitors to our state must think when, after a long day of travel or work they turn on the hotel TV, tune to a PBS station hoping to find NOVA or Frontline or one of PBS’s fine shows only to find the most public of public airwaves being used to promote hillbilly religion while offending and disenfranchising taxpayers who are not practitioners of that hillbilly religion.

Don't Try To Eat Your Bellacino's Grinder Or Advertise Your 6th Avenue Grill During AMC's Walking Dead

2010-12-01T12:39:00.000-05:00

When I lived near a Mancino’s franchise owned and operated by Theresa Hager in Lexington, KY, Sunday night TV meant spot-welding the TV tuner to AMC and settling in with a bottle of pop and a steak and cheese grinder from Mancino’s. I was a regular customer of Ms. Hager’s Leestown Rd Mancino’s and I hung with her even after she allowed her 15-year-old employee to attack me and call Barack Obama a “socialist” on election day 2008 when I entered Mancino’s wearing my “I voted” sticker and was asked for whom I voted. When I said “Obama” all hell broke loose in the restaurant where the TV which was usually tuned to Fox News regularly tormented me.

Incidentally, I recently found a pretty good but not great grinder at Bellacino’s in Barboursville where I was tormented by country music that was too loud and, well, too country. More on Bellacino’s later.

Anyway, Sunday night TV is no longer best enjoyed with a great sandwich – or food of any kind, for that matter. At least not this season. Not until Breaking Bad comes back this spring. You see, AMC’s current Sunday night show, Walking Dead, will ruin your appetite so even if I could find a good grinder in The Kanawha Valley I couldn’t eat it while watching AMC on Sunday night because I Walking Dead is just too gross.

And it’s been done. It’s derivative of Will Smith’s gross zombie movie, I Am Legend.

Walking Dead is the second recent AMC programming mistake; the other one was the cancellation of Rubicon after just one season.

Now, back to my search for a great grinder. When I found out that members of the same family that started Mancino’s founded the Bellacino’s franchise, I went in search of a grinder worthy of being enjoyed on Sunday night while watching Breaking Bad. I almost found it. I say “almost” because the grinders I bought at Bellacino’s in Barboursville and Kanawha City were much better than the grinders I found at Larobi’s and Husson’s but not as good as the grinders I used to get at Mancino’s in Lexington.

I have a suggestion for Todd Forney, Suzanne Stevens and Shawn Stevens, owners of the Bellacino’s franchises in Kanawha City and Barboursville: take a drive down to Lexington, KY and get a steak and cheese grinder from Mancino’s on Leestown Rd. Forney used to work in Lexington so he should have no trouble finding the place.

By the way, I had lunch at 6^th Avenue Grill in St. Albans yesterday and I offer owners Guy and Robin Turturice and John and Amy Sowards the same advice I offer Forney, Stevens and Stevens: take a drive down to Lexington, KY, and order a Mancino’s grinder. Figure out how they make it. Bring it to St. Albans. It’ll be a hit.

Oh, and if you own a food business, don’t even think about buying ad time during AMC’s Walking Dead. Believe me, unless you are in the janitorial business or some other business where your job is to clean up messes, you don’t want your brand anywhere near the Walking Dead brand.

Win Or Lose, Joe Manchin Will Still Have A Political Career: Jesse Johnson May Not

2010-10-25T16:45:00.000-04:00

Win or lose, when this US Senate race is over, Joe Manchin will still have a political career.

Jesse Johnson may not.

I know, I know, it's heady stuff for a relatively young third party candidate to be in a position to drain off perhaps 5% of what would otherwise be Democrat votes and assure a Republican victory in a US Senate race but, Jesse if you do it your political career may be as good as over. And that would be a shame because you could be a rising star but if you persist in your role as West Virginia's Ralph Nader, you'll make more enemies than friends and you will always be remembered as the selfish egoist who enabled Senator John Raese to desecrate the Robert Byrd Senate seat.

There is a better way for the nation, the state and for you, Jesse Johnson: drop out of the race. Endorse Joe Manchin, campaign for him. Campaign with him. If you help Joe Manchin keep John Raese out of the sacred Robert Byrd senate seat you be a hero to Centrists and Lefties all over West Virginia. Joe Manchin will owe you. You'll be able to run for and win the Democratic nomination for elected office.

Win or lose, when this Senate race is over, Joe Manchin still has a political career. Jesse Johnson may not. You've seen the polls. You know you can't win. You can serve only one purpose in this race: you can hand the sacred Robert Byrd Senate seat to John Raese thus incurring the wrath of Centrists and Lefties or you can hand the seat to Joe Manchin, placing him in your debt.

Jesse, live up to your followers' praise by proving that you love your country more than you love the spotlight. Take the high road, Jesse. If you do, both you and Joe Manchin will have a political future no matter who wins this Senate race.

Higginbotham At Large will publish no obscene or anonymous comments. Comments unaccompanied by a verifiable , full name and contact info will be rejected.

The Religious Conversation Juan Williams Almost Started (And Journalists Have Obscured)

2010-10-24T16:00:00.003-04:00

By devoting so much ink and airtime to the least interesting, least important part of the story about how NPR fired Juan Williams for remarks he made on Fox’s The OReilly Factor, journalists and pundits have robbed us of the exegesis and the important national discussion Williams might have started had NPR not fired him and had commentators not obsessed about how Williams feels when he sees Muslims. Below is the text of the paragraph all the nervous, overpaid journalists and could-I-be-next-commentators are wringing their hands about with the important words – the religious conversation Williams almost started - italicized and colored red:

“'Look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.'”

Notice that what makes Williams “worried” and “nervous” is not that people are Muslims but that “they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims”.

In other words, Williams has noticed the unavoidable and inevitable tension that will always exist in a society where church and state are distinct and where people are free to pledge their allegiance first and foremost to their religion, not to their nation.

Though members of the majority religion may not realize it, Williams’ nervousness and worry would have been no less valid and the potential for conflict between religion and nation no less real had he said “When I see people who are identifying themselves first and foremost as conservative, Calvinistic, Presbyterians, I get worried. I get nervous.”

I know. In my callow youth I was bitten by the conservative, Calvinistic theological bug and, for a time, fell in with a small, conservative sect of Presbyterians who followed the theonomist, RJ Rushdoony, and who wanted to impose Old Testament law on modern day Americans. And by “Old Testament Law” I don’t just mean the parts we all like such as “Thou shalt not murder” but the parts most people don’t even know are in the Bible like this one: “If a man lies with a woman during her sickness and uncovers her nakedness, he has exposed her flow, and she has uncovered the flow of her blood. Both of them shall be cut off from their people.” (Leviticus 20:18)

Don’t laugh. The Bible is full of laws you’ll never hear mentioned in a sermon down at the First Baptist Church or the Maranatha Fellowship and, for a time, I “sat under the ministry”, as we put it, of a man who, publicly, gingerly tested the extent of his flock’s tolerance for such verses but privately, behind the scenes, had an inner circle of Young Theonomists who swapped audiotapes and books by their favorite theonomists.

One of my denomination’s most infamous preachers carried his obedience to Old Testament law to its logical conclusion and made national news when he murdered an abortion doctor. If the more moderate members of my Presbyterian church waited for my pastor’s unequivocal denunciation of that act, they were disappointed as I knew they would be because, in theonomy world, what this minister did was perfectly logical and biblical.

Their reasoning – some would say casuistry – went like this: (1) The taking of an innocent human life is murder and it is always morally right to defend the defenseless innocents from being murdered. (2) An unborn fetus in its mother’s womb is an innocent and defenseless human life. (3) Therefore, protecting the unborn fetus - by lethal force if necessary – is biblical, moral and the duty of the obedient Christian.

Theonomists also preached that parents of stubborn and disobedient children should hand over such children to the elders who were to then stone them to death making an example of them so other stubborn and disobedient children would get the message that we won’t be reading any James Dobson books, we’ll be nipping the problem in the bud. (Deuteronomy 21:18-21).

And, no, churches that preach such things are not meeting secretly in store fronts in the warehouse district of town or in David Koresh-style compounds; many of their churches meet in steepled, churchy-looking buildings. Some of them are even borderline megachurches.

And if Juan Williams sat on an airplane next to a guy who was reading R J Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law he would have had just as much reason to feel “nervous” and “worried” as he would feel next to a guy in “Muslim garb” because within religion itself are always the seeds of conflict with earthly governments, societies and cultures.

Let me be clear: it is only because most people do not take their religions seriously enough to consistently live by them and to obey even the goofy and evil parts of their holy books that we are able to enjoy any peace in this free nation of ours.

Higginbotham At Large only publishes comments by identifiable, accountable people with verifiable IDs.

What Are Democrats Prepared To Do To Win Back Liberals Who Defected To The Tea Party?

2010-10-24T00:15:00.006-04:00

I consider myself a liberal first and a Democrat second so when I recently said on Hoppy Kercheval's radio show and in my blog that good fellow liberals should vote for Joe Manchin rather than hand the Robert Byrd seat to John Raese by voting for Jesse Johnson, I was in uncomfortable territory.

Now I have something uncomfortable to say to my Democratic Party: now that it's become abundantly clear that you don't have the votes to elect Joe Manchin to the US Senate unless former Democrats who defected to the Mountain Party can be persuaded to vote strategically instead of sincerely*, what are you prepared to do to bring your own Tea Party back into the Democratic fold?

Democrats, you have alienated your liberal wing. You can't win big races without liberals. What are you prepared to do to bring liberals back to the Democratic fold?

* I'm borrowing game theory terms here

Rush Limbaugh Misrepresents Liberal Position On Separation of Church And State

2010-10-23T00:01:00.083-04:00

On a recent broadcast, Rush Limbaugh said that this is how liberals interpret separation of church and state and the First Amendment: According to Rush, liberals think the First Amendment proscribes people like Pat Robertson or other religious people from running for office.

Rush may not have finished college but he knows full well that liberals don't think separation of church and state means religious people can't run for office.

What liberals believe vis a vis separation of church and state is that religious people shouldn't be able to use government to impose their religion on people who don't share their religion.

Some "issues" would vanish if religious people stopped trying to use government to impose their religion on the rest of us. Take same sex marriage, for instance.

The idea that marriage can only be "between one man and one women" is a religious idea. Without this religious definition of what a marriage is, there would be no basis for denying two men to marry each other or two women to marry each other. If same sex marriage were being opposed on grounds other than religious grounds, there would be no violation of the doctrine of separation of church and state and liberals would be open to hearing that argument but when opponents of same sex marriage oppose same sex marriage by using a religious definition of marriage, yes, of course liberals oppose that argument. We're OBLIGATED to oppose arguments that depend on a religious concept of marriage. The only way opponents of same sex marriage can deny tax-paying fellow citizens the right to marry the person of their choice is by using a religious definition of marriage and liberals, indeed all of us who understand separation of church and state, are obligated to oppose such religion-dependent, dare I say, "respecting an establishment of religion", arguments against fellow citizens.

Rush was probably throwing spit wads and daydreaming about football in Civics class, but even he knows that liberals don't believe separation of church and state means religious people can't run for office. What liberals think about separation of church and state is that religious people shouldn't use government to impose religion on others.

The recent flap over the proposed Islamic Cultural Center near ground zero and the flap over whether or not Barack Obama is a Muslim would not exist if our nation were serious about separation of church and state and if political candidates like Christine O'Donnell knew the 1st Amendment.

What Joe Manchin Must Do To Win

2010-10-22T00:01:00.022-04:00

Yesterday I wrote that if Mountain Partiers love America more than they hate Joe Manchin, they need to ask their leader, Jesse Johnson, to drop out of the Senate race and endorse Manchin.

Today I want to tell Manchin 2 things he needs to do if he wants to win this Senate race.

First, Joe Manchin needs to take to the airwaves and run an ad that says "A vote for Jesse Johnson is a vote for John Raese."

Second, Joe Manchin needs to meet with Jesse Johnson and ask him for his endorsement.

Joe Manchin, you're campaigning like John Raese Lite and you've alienated liberals but you can't win this race without liberals and Mountain Party voters who don't want to turn on MSNBC one day to see Senator John Raese casting the 60th vote against Obama legislation or casting a key vote against an Obama court appointment. Joe, do what you have to do to keep Raese out of the Senate. Make peace with the Mountain Party. Give Jesse Johnson a job if you have to but get him out of the race.

Whether Manchin wins or loses this Senate race, The West Virginia Democratic Party will have learned a hard lesson: Democrats can't win without liberals. Win or lose, Democrats need to mend fences with liberals - both the Mountain Partiers and the disenfranchised liberals who just stay home on election day because one party doesn't give them a candidate who can win while the other denies them a voice.

The Race For Robert Byrd's Senate Seat Has Become A Test Of Mountain Party's Love Of Country

2010-10-21T13:18:00.000-04:00

Does The Mountain Party love their country more than they hate Joe Manchin? That's the question I asked on Hoppy Kercheval's radio show today and I want to publicly thank Mr. Kercheval, a Raese employee and a Raese supporter, for giving me plenty of time to make my case for why it's time for The Mountain Party to work hard to block John Raese's attempt to take Robert Byrd's Senate seat by supporting Joe Manchin.

This Senate race has become a test of Jesse Johnson and The Mountain Party's love of country because if one day we turn on our TVs to see Senator John Raese voting against President Obama's court appointees and legislation, it will be The Mountain Party's fault.

As I told Hoppy Kercheval, I cast my protest vote for a solid liberal, Ken Hechler, in the primary because everybody knew Manchin was going to be the Democratic nominee so I used my vote to make a point, but with Raese up by roughly the percentage of people who say they'll vote for Jesse Johnson, liberals don't have the luxury of voting for a pure liberal. It's time to cast a defensive, strategic, pragmatic vote that blocks the worst of two evils from desecrating the Robert Byrd seat in the US Senate. It's time for liberals to hold their noses and vote for DINO Joe Manchin and it's time for Jesse Johnson and his Mountain Party to show some responsibility and grow up.

And then when Joe Manchin wins in a squeaker and he knows he couldn't have done it without The Mountain Party, he'll owe you.

Why It's Time For Jesse Johnson's Supporters To Ask Him To Endorse Joe Manchin

2010-10-21T10:47:00.000-04:00

If Mountain Party Senate candidate, Jesse Johnson, loves America he will suspend his race and tell his followers to hold their noses and vote for DINO Joe Manchin.

And if Johnson's supporters love America they'll insist that Johnson quit the race and endorse Manchin immediately.

If Joe Manchin were running away with the Senate race as many thought he would, it would be OK for Mountain Partiers to cast their protest votes against DINO Joe Manchin and I'd tell them to have their fun. But this isn't funny anymore. We could all wake up one morning to see Senator John Raese casting the 60th vote against important Obama legislation or to see Senator John Raese voting against an Obama Supreme Court nominee so if Jesse Johnson loves his country he should quit the race and tell his followers to vote against Raese by holding their noses and voting for Joe Manchin and if Johnson doesn't do this willingly his followers should insist on it.

Linkedin Tips: How To Make Your Linkedin Profile Work Harder For You

2010-10-20T11:42:00.002-04:00

Are you making people work way too hard to get in touch with you? Are you making your Linkedin profile work hard enough for you? If you don't have actual contact information in your Linkedin profile then you're using Linkedin to tease people, not to meet new people and, as my friend, Grover Mollineaux, says, "Nothing good happens until you meet somebody." If you don't have actual contact information on your LInkedin profile, you're like a pretty girl who won't give out her phone number or email address and then wonders why she doesn't get dates.

Do you have actual contact information on your Linkedin profile or is your profile just a tease?

On her Linkedin profile, a recent graduate of West Virginia Junior College wrote a passionate pitch for a job in her field of study but her Linkedin profile provided no contact information whatsoever. Oh, and she didn’t belong to any Linkedin groups. I’ll say more about Linkedin groups in a moment.

One Kanawha Valley Linkedin use wrote on his Linkedin profile “the best way to get in touch with me is email” but he failed to put his email address on his Linkedin profile.

A friend of a friend of mine recently paid a lot of money to be on the radio. During her radio appearance she mentioned that she needed people to refer math tutors to her for business reasons. Well, I did what I always do: I looked her up in Linkedin and, wouldn’t you know it, there was no phone number and no email address on her Linkedin profile. Well, after I did some Googling I found her email address and her phone number and emailed that info to my friend, Charles Pique, who is a math tutor. Then I emailed the person on the radio to tell her she made me work way too hard to help her and asked why she doesn’t have actual contact info on her Linkedin profile. She wrote back and said she had “made it all public” and she didn’t know why I couldn’t find her contact info.

From that comment it was obvious to me that she hasn’t actually looked at her own profile or she would see what others see: that she is not making her Linkedin profile work hard enough for her and she is making other professionals work too hard to find contact info. I don’t know, maybe she already has all the business she needs but if you’re like most Linkedin users, you need clients so make it easy for clients to find you.

I have my email address in the “summary” field right beneath my name and then it appears again under “contact settings”. Most Linkedin users have no actual contact information under “contact settings”. I’ll never understand why not.

Now, let’s talk about Linkedin groups. Linkedin groups are a powerful way to instantly make yourself easy to reach by other Linkedin users. There are geographic groups, professional groups, hobby groups, all kinds of groups. Let’s say you want to do more business with the people who live in your town. Go to the “groups” field and type the name of your city or state and see if there’s a group by that name then join it. Or, let’s say you want to meet other people who share your interests or hobbies. In the “groups” field simply type “coin collecting” or “gardening” or whatever and look at the available groups and join some.

When you sign up for a group, you’ll be asked if you wish for other group members to be able to contact you via Linkedin. Check the box that enables that function. If your group has 10,000 members you’ve just become accessible to 10,000 people.

Make your Linkedin profile work harder for you. Make people who look at your profile work less. Put some actual contact info in your Linkedin profile and join some groups.

What The Mountain Party And The Tea Party Have In Common

2010-10-14T13:02:00.001-04:00

The race for Robert Byrd’s senate seat is a statistical dead heat so, if John Raese wins, he may have West Virginia’s Mountain Party to thank for his victory.

The Mountain Party on The Left and the Tea Party movement on The Right have a lot in common: they want to send a message to a major party more than they want to defeat candidates who are their ideological opposites.

Third party candidates have always been spoilers. People forget that it was a strong third party bid by Ross Perot that made Bill Clinton’s 1992 upset of incumbent, George H W Bush possible. And though he denies it, Ralph Nader’s presence on a ballot hurts Democrats more than it hurts Republicans. Imagine America under a Gore administration. Take Nader off the 2000 Florida ballot and that’s the America we would have had.

If Mountain Partiers cost Joe Manchin the senate race, I hope West Virginia Democrats will realize they can’t beat Repubicans if they lose The Left. I hope if John Raese wins with the help of Mountain Partiers the Democratic Party in West Virginia will do some soul-searching and ask themselves what they can and should do to reach out to The Left and bring them back into the Democratic Party. As a Lefty myself, there's a part of me that almost hopes Jesse Johnson and his Mountain Party do cost West Virginia's Democratic Party a few big elections so West Virginia's DINOs will be forced to ask themselves why they deserve to win elections of they are indistinguishable from Republicans.

Why Do Businesses Hire So-Called "Salespeople" Who Don't Use Linkedin, Twitter And Blogs To Build Business And Relationships?

2010-10-11T12:12:00.005-04:00

I’ll never understand why people who make their livings by “prospecting” and selling – like car salespeople and realtors and financial services people – aren’t using the awesome power of Linkedin to build their networks of prospects and referral sources.

I don’t know why their bosses don’t require it.

I don’t know why their bosses don’t provide them with training on how to use Linkedin.

I don’t know why their bosses aren’t modeling the behavior.

Take car dealers, for instance. If there’s a business that needs to use every tool at their disposal to sell their product in this weak economy, it’s car dealers. I just did a Linkedin search on what may be the largest automobile empire in my market and found only 5 people from that company with Linkedin accounts.

I performed a search on another auto empire in my market and found only one employee from that empire with a Linkedin account.

I know this: if I were the sales manager or GM at any car dealer I wouldn’t hire a so-called sales or marketing person who doesn’t have a Linkedin account or isn’t using it every day to start and strengthen relationships.

As my regular readers know, back in December of ’09 (see blog archive) I wrote a short series of three posts on “business development” that got me a nice plug on the SMPS.org site (Society for Marketing Professional Services). New readers – especially readers who don’t know how to use Linkedin - may want to look in my blog archives and read those December ’09 posts and any other posts that mention Linkedin.

As far as I can tell, most car salespeople, realtors and others who make their livings by knowing people, seem to think it’s the boss’s job to bring prospects to them through expensive advertising.

Picture this: it’s a cold January or February night. There’s snow and ice on the ground and the car lot is full of cars that nobody’s looking at. Car “salesmen” are in the showroom telling jokes and watching TV and flirting with the cute new website sales manager and nobody’s doing anything to bring customers into the showroom.

Does the dealership have Wi-Fi? Do the sales reps carry smart phones? If the answers are yes and yes, why aren’t the sales reps using their laptops and their smart phones to go to Linkedin and see what they can do to scare up a customer? Why does the dealer have to buy expensive ads to attract customers?

And why don’t these car “salespeople” have blogs about cars, trucks, financing, and other things of interest to car buyers?

Why are car dealers hiring people who aren’t using every tool at their disposal to sell cars?

Why do real estate brokers hire realtors who don’t have contact info on their Linkedin page, don’t have a real estate blog, don’t have a Facebook page and don’t know how to Tweet in a way that connects them to people without annoying them?

Why don't people whose business depends on knowing people - and that's most of us - join Linkedin groups? In my area there are several groups business people should join if they want to have instant access to other Linkedin users. For example, I own a group named LinkedSt.Albans.

What's that? You don't know how to join a Linkedin group? Give me a call. I'll help you out. Free.

What's that? You have a Linkedin account but you have no idea what to do with it. If you're in the Charleston-St.Albans area just call me and I'll come to your business and give you a tutorial that will show you how to unlock the awesome power of Linkedin.

A friend of mine wants to syndicate her internet radio show to radio stations. I performed a simple Linkedin search on the words "radio syndication" and found over 2,000 people in my network who can help her syndicate her show. That's the power you're not using if you don't use Linkedin to build your business.

Come to think of it, my new readers may want to go to my archive and look at my instructional posts on Linkedin and Twitter.

Mad Men Starts Firing Chekhov's Guns But Rubicon May Be This Season's Best Show

2010-10-10T10:53:00.010-04:00

In my 11 October 2009 post I wrote “At the very least, Mad Men writers have forgotten “Chekhov’s Gun”, the principle that "a pistol on the wall in the first act must be fired by the last act." Well, in tonight’s episode Mad Men’s writers fired the pistol on the wall marked “what happens if the agency loses their biggest account?” Layoffs. Internal squabbles among the partners. A partner (Cooper) leaves the firm in a huff because he doesn’t approve of a “Hail Mary” play Draper makes to save the company.

I’m glad Mad Men is also firing the pistol on the wall marked “Don Draper’s kids and ex-wife.” For seasons now the Mad Men writers have been showing us way too much of Draper’s immature, snobby wife (Betty) and his daughter (Sally) in ways that add nothing to the show. Well, now the writers have taken those family pistols off the wall, placed them in the hands of a child psychiatrist and started firing. Finally, the writers have noticed what viewers knew all along: that Betty is a bad mother and Sally is a normal, smart little girl who is crying out for love, guidance and attention from the selfish adults in her life.

Oh, and in tonight’s episode, Don Draper didn’t commit adultery. That doesn’t happen very often so it’s worth mentioning.

Now to what’s fast becoming my favorite TV show, Rubicon. In tonight’s episode we learned the meaning of the title Rubicon but we haven’t yet learned the significance of the four leaf clovers although we have some clues about why if you find one in your morning paper you’re likely to die.

In tonight’s episode, Rubicon’s writers took a lot of pistols off the wall and started shooting. The blue-eyed, New Jersey-born convert to radical jihad finally struck by sinking an oil tanker in Galveston Bay in an effort to choke off ¼ of the US oil supply. Will Travers and his team actually figured out what the blue-eyed terrorist was going to do but not in time to stop him.

And API chief, Truxton Spangler, who is up to his eyeballs in treason, corruption and dead bodies, finds out that several members of his team including Kale Ingram (Will’s boss) are working against him and have discovered at least some of his (Spangler’s) involvement in the blue-eyed terrorist’s strike.

I think what I appreciate about AMC’s 3 great dramas : Breaking Bad (new season starts soon) , Rubicon and Mad Men – is that they all assume the viewer is intelligent. The plots are complicated and if you step out of the room to get a coke and miss something they make no apology and don’t help you catch up by spelling anything out for you. You have to pay attention. You have to pay attention to every piece of dialogue and every peek into a character’s past or state of mind or you won’t understand that character.

If you haven’t yet seen Rubicon, you’re missing this season’s best new show.

Attention Employers And Staffing Companies: Sometimes The Talent You Seek Comes In A Package You Don't Expect

2010-10-08T16:37:00.003-04:00

A Parkersburg, WV -based staffing company with an office in Charleston recently scored a public relations coup by getting one of those you-can't-buy-this-kind-of-publicity stories written by Eric Eyre (http://wvgazette.com/News/201009241072).

The thrust of the story was that staffing agencies actually have jobs they can't fill - even in this jobless recovery.

According to marketing executive, Christian Kager, companies are "having a hard time finding qualified individuals willing to work."

I wonder if Kager has considered another reason why open jobs may be going unfilled: so-called staffing coordinators who don't know how to staff and recruiters who don't know how to recruit and front-line HR people who don't realize - or don't care - that sometimes the talent they need is literally looking them in the eye but comes in a package they didn't expect or aren't willing to advance to the next level of the employment process.

As some of my close friends and clients know, I have earned some ridiculous fees finding and recruiting talent and here's what I have observed: qualified people apply for the job but can't get past the HR gatekeeper because he or she is too black, too fat, too old or too gay or too (insert your prejudice here). I have collected 5-figure headhunting fees for "finding" candidates that my clients actually had a chance to hire but had rejected. I know a prestigious law firm that instructed its HR Director not to hire anybody who is "fat, black or ugly."

Take older workers , for example. Workers in their 50s remind front-line staffing coordinators and entry-level HR people of their parents. These twenty-something gatekeepers - let's say it like it is - use their jobs to stock their company with the kind of people they want to socialize with so when the talent they need comes to them in a package that looks like their parents, well, the hiring manager never knows about these older applicants because the twenty-something gatekeeper finds some way to disqualify them.

What's the solution? Simple: get some older workers in the gatekeeping positions. And while you're at it, get some black people and some gay people and some physically challenged people into gatekeeping positions.

If all your staffing coordinators and first-level interviewers are young and white you're going to have a hard time "finding" talent that isn't young and white.

And while you're at it, hire some staffing coordinators and some first-screeners who know how to evaluate candidates who have executive backgrounds, scientific backgrounds and technical backgrounds.

For more on this subject see my "There's No Whining In Recruiting" which first appeared in Business Lexington and later in this blog. Click here to read "There's No Whining In Recruiting". :: http://higginbothamatlarge.blogspot.com/2009/10/theres-no-whining-in-recruiting.html

Rubicon, Breaking Bad and Mad Men

2010-10-07T00:17:00.000-04:00

I love AMC's "Rubicon" so much that after it airs at 9PM on Sunday night I stay up and watch 2 hours of "Mad men" (the new episode and its encore) so I can see the "Rubicon" encore. I simply can't get enough "Rubicon". AMC's motto is "Story matters here" and Rubicon is proof that a TV show doesn't need any well-known actors to make raving fans out of viewers if the story is strong.

"Rubicon" started with a bang, figuratively and literally. While his family frolicks on the lawn a guy finds a four-leaf clover in his morning paper and takes out a pistol and blows out his brains. On "Rubicon", people who see four leaf clovers either commit suicide or get death threats and electronic bugs in their homes.

"Rubicon's" main character, Will Travers, played by James Badge Dale, works for something called API - American Poiicy Institute. API is a contractor to every branch of the US military and all the US spy agencies and has access to every secret and top secret database. When they're not spying on their bosses and co-workers or being spied on by their bosses and co-workers, Will Travers' team of analysts are tracking terrorists and trying to figure out what they're up to before there's another 9/11.

I can't stop watching. I'm hopelessly hooked.

I'm hooked on three AMC shows. The other two I've mentioned in this bog before: "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad". "Mad Men" is nearing season's end and "Breaking Bad" will soon return to the screen with a new season. I'll watch every new episode and I'll stay up late and watch the encore presentations. And when AMC has those marathons when they re-play every episode of "Breaking Bad" or "Rubicon", I'll watch them again. I simply have to find out why it's called "Rubicon" and why when those four-leaf clovers show up people either commit suicide or get caught up in a spynet.

And if you'd told me a few years ago that on Sunday nights I'd stay up late to watch a show about a high school science teacher who becomes the biggest meth cooker in Albuquerque and then The Southwest, I'd have said you were the one with the meth habit but, like AMC says, the story matters and as long as AMC keeps giving me strong stories, I'm going to take a pizza or a bag of potato chips and a dip to bed with me and spend as many hours with AMC's shows as AMC is willing to give me. I hope the other networks are paying attention to what's going on at AMC. If AMC's shows were part of the basic cable package across the nation, AMC would have more viewers on Sunday nights than all the other networks combined.

Why Your Online Branding Strategy Backfires

2010-09-24T11:14:00.006-04:00

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. re: his 1961 Mother Night character, Howard Campbell, who survived WWII by helping the Nazis and pretending to be a Nazi.

There are two kinds of people I don’t trust: I don’t trust people who, in this “reputation economy”, have no online footprint. As some of you know, I own a Linked group called “Linking Liberally”. About a week ago I received a membership request from someone whose values and beliefs were impossible to discern from her Linkedin profile so I did a Google search. Nothing. I used her email address to search for her Facebook account. There was no Facebook account associated with the email address associated with the applicant’s Linkedin account. So I started sending Linkedin messages to my considerable liberal network in her area – even at her place of employment. Nobody had heard of her. Before I rejected her membership request I gave her a chance to send me some evidence of her liberalism; the name of a person who could vouch for her liberalism, for instance. She couldn’t. If people who work where she works do not know she’s a liberal, I’m not convinced she’s a liberal - or even that she gave her real name. And it's not just that people she supposedly works with had heard of her, it's that she left no online footprint at all. In this age of Google and Bing and social media, how do you not have some online identity unless you're using a fake name?

I also don’t trust people who have a carefully-crafted “online brand” – especially the ones who want me to pay them to show me how to have a carefully-crafted online brand. Unlike many of the so-called marketing gurus who are trying to revive or extend their marketing careers by pretending to be “social media experts”, I have actually read dozens of books on branding and I understand what a brand is and that’s why I don’t trust people who want to use a “social” medium or a “relationship-based medium” as if it’s TV. The whole point of social media and relationship-based networking is that people should know who you are and what you stand for and what you believe in and who your associations are and either resonate with your or not based on those values, beliefs and associations.

And while I’m on the subject of trying to create an online persona or brand, let me say this to people who have drunk the Kool Aid that you can be one person on Facebook and another on Linkedin. Headhunters and recruiters and others who have a need to know who you are will look at everything – your blog, your Tweets, your Facebook, your LInkedin. Everything. I never cease to be amazed at the people I encounter online who keep their Linkedin profile “strictly professional”, scrubbed of all evidence of their interests and values but whose Facebook page is a disturbing look into their immaturities, prejudices and shady associations.

People who think they can get headhunters to look only at their Linkedin profiles remind me of the idiots who say “We have to fight ‘em over there or we’ll have to fight ‘em over here”. You have no control over where terrorists or headhunters go. They go everywhere. Just as you can’t keep terrorists from fighting us here by offering them the shiny object of a war in the Middle East, you can’t stop a headhunter from looking at your Facebook page and your Tweets by offering him the shiny object of a Linkedin profile. Headhunters and terrorists go everywhere, they look at everything.

For the record, I have no “online strategy” or “online brand”. This blog is not part of any “online strategy” to mislead you about who I am. I am the same in my blog as I am on Linkedin or Facebook. You don’t need one of those so-called “social media experts” to help you be yourself unless you don’t know who you are.

How Linkedin Must Change: Adapting To The Facebook Effect

2010-09-01T08:27:00.001-04:00

Linkedin’s battle plan has not survived first contact with the enemy. It was a good plan and it would have worked except for one thing they didn’t anticipate: The Facebook Effect. No, not the book by David Kirkpatrick – though I recommend it.

Linkedin didn’t anticipate that Facebook, a social networking platform Linkedin didn’t see as a direct competitor, would so change the expectations of Linkedin account holders that Linkedin’s distinctions as a more relationship-based, professional networking site would actually become liabilities as Linkedin users discovered that they liked – even if they shouldn’t – using Facebook as an everything site – social and professional. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way, but it has. In a world with no Facebook, Linkedin’s attempt to legislate proper, professional networking through technology and functionality that keeps people apart unless they are properly introduced through a mutual connection or unless they “meet” in the same Linkedin group, might very well have worked, but that’s not the world we live in so Linkedin’s battle plan didn’t survive contact with Facebook and it’s time Linkedin acknowledges that the Facebook effect has so changed user expectations that Linkedin must make some changes. Linkedin’s plan to avoid direct competition with the site that started in a college dorm as a way to facilitate “hooking up” or taking classes with cute girls hasn’t worked. Linkedin’s plan to occupy a different, more purely business/professional space hasn’t survived in a world where Facebook users like Facebook so much that they use it for every kind of networking – social and professional.

With the exception of Reid Hoffman and other investors and shareholders who stand to make $million$ from a Linkedin IPO, few people have promoted and defended Linkedin more than I have. I’ve promoted Linkedin in my blog. I’ve privately tutored Linkedin novices and newbies. I wear the Linkedin lapel pin. I often point out to people who haven’t logged on to Linkedin for so long that they can’t remember their Linkedin password that some of Linkedin’s business-friendly features are far superior to Facebook’s features. For example, when I recruit a new Linkedin user who is willing to sit down with me at a wi-fi hot spot and let me show them how to use Linkedin, I point out that if, for example, I want to open an office in Poughkeepsie and I need a realtor, a sales rep and a ops manager in Poughkeepsie, Linkedin allows me to find all the realtors, sales reps and managers in Poughkeepsie who are part of my network. Pretty neat. You can’t do that in Facebook.

There’s just one problem: Linkedin’s business-friendly features aren’t enough to make most users spend less time with Facebook and more time with Linkedin and, since Linkedin’s value as an acquisition or IPO will largely be determined by its ability to get people to log on and stay on the site for hours instead of minutes, everyday instead of once a week, Linkedin’s plan to avoid direct competition with Facebook has simply not survived the reality on the ground.

Here are a few of the reasons people with Linkedin accounts spend most of their online networking time on Facebook:

In Facebook, you can pretty much message anybody you can see. In Linkedin, the only people you can message with the free account are people with whom you are directly connected and people with whom you share a group. What I’m about to say should embarrass the hell out of Reid Hoffman and others who stand to make a pile of cash when LInkedin is purchased by Rupert Murdoch or when it goes public: When I want to invite Linkedin users to my Linking Liberally group, I sometimes can’t find a way to message them in Likedin so I resort to finding and messaging them in Facebook. Yeah, that’s right: I am using Facebook to invite people to my Linkedin group because I can’t get to them through Linkedin.

Here’s another thing that makes people spend more time on Facebook than on Linkedin: In Facebook, there’s no punishment or penalty for trying to network with people you don’t know very well. In Linkedin, if I invite somebody to connect and they forget that they met me at a trade show last week and click “I don’t know this person”, Linkedin might punish me by making me provide an email address each time I invite someone to connect. Yes, I understand the theory behind Linkedin’s attempt to legislate proper networking but this Linkedin plan for proper networking simply hasn’t survived contact with a competitor they didn’t even see as a competitor.

It’s time for Linkedin to acknowledge that their battle plan hasn’t survived the Facebook effect. Here are two changes Linkedin should make immediately:

First, Linkedin needs to facilitate, not impede or regulate, communication between Linkedin account holders. Enable messaging between all Linkedin users. Let account holders opt out of such promiscuous messaging if they wish, but let the rest of us communicate.

Second, Linkedin needs to stop punishing people for trying to connect with people they don’t know.

Your plan to subdivide the online networking space into separate “professional” and “social” sectors simply hasn’t survived the Facebook effect. It was a good plan but it’s time to adapt to reality on the ground.

What I Wish President Obama Would Say About Religion

2010-08-21T08:02:00.001-04:00

I don't think President Obama is a Muslim. In fact, despite his insistence that he's a Christian, I suspect he's an atheist and that he's not the first atheist to occupy the White House. And, because I paid attention in 9th grade Civics and in Doug Miller's Poli Sci class at "State", I believe in separation of church and state and that nowhere in the US constitution does it say that that US Presidents must be Christians or even theists.

What they must be, however, is Validator-In-Chief. No, not because the constitution says so but because the US electorate is narcissistic and wants to see its own reflection in its presidents.

I like President Obama but I'd like him a lot more if instead of pandering to the majority religion like previous presidents have done he would tell us all that a president's religion is none of our business and that if we don't like it we can all just kiss his half-black ass.

I'm saying all this, of course, in response to recent polls that reveal that large numbers of Americans - especially on the right - think President Obama is a Muslim. If you spend a large part of your day watching or listening to the various news/talk sources as I do, you know that everybody's buzzing about Pew and Time polls that suggest many Americans still don't believe that President Obama is an American citizen and that many believe he is a Muslim.

First of all, people lie to pollsters and use them to make political points. When, for example, a pollster asks a racist conservative about President Obama's religion, the answer given by the racist conservative is not a reflection of what the racist conservative really believes, it's what game theorists call a "strategic" answer rather than a "sincere answer". "Strategic" because racist conservatives know that convincing Americans that President Obama is not like them will hurt his re-election bid. Convincing the narcissistic electorate of a candidate's "otherness" is key to defeating him or her. That's why US presidential candidates always exaggerate their Christian-ness. After a brutal campaign in which his Catholicism was an issue, John F. Kennedy, the president whose opponents tried to beat by suggesting that, if elected, Kennedy would be taking orders from The Pope, famously said that one of the inconveniences he would now have to suffer as a result of winning was that he'd have to start attending church regularly. Even if a majority of Americans aren't regular church attenders, Americans want to see their presidents attending church.

Another thing about polls: respondents use polls to answer questions the respondent wishes the pollster had asked but didn't so when a pollster asks an Obama hater if he thinks the President is a Muslim, he or she may answer "yes" simply to express his or her general dislike for the president because charging The President with being a Muslim in a country that thinks its presidents should be Christians is approximately the same thing as saying you hate the SOB.

I squirmed and felt almost as uncomfortable as President Obama apparently did as I watched a brief clip of Obama reading from his notes and affirming his faith in Jesus Christ as his redeemer and Substitute. I didn't catch where The President was when he read this carefully-worded statement that, I suspect, had some input from evangelical advisers, but instead of saying something that I don't think he believes I wish President Obama had torn up his notes, looked into the camera and told a narcissistic, misinformed, bigoted American electorate that a deity who cannot or will not forgive sinners unless someone dies is not a deity worthy of worship. I wish President Obama had said that he's real sorry that so many Americans apparently flunked 9th grade Civics and have been misled and deceived by their preachers and by Fox TV and by Rush Limbaugh but America was not founded by evangelical Christians in the 1600s but by Deists and freethinkers in the late 1700s - non-evangelicals who disobeyed the book of Romans by committing treason against an earthly government that, according to Paul, was a minister of God and a threat only to wrongdoers. This nation's founders, it seems, were either unaware or were in disagreement with the Bible on this point, it seems, and I wish President Obama had pointed this out.

I wish President Obama had said that what America needs is not a Validator-In-Chief or a religious test for presidential candidates but for the American people to take a refresher course in 9th grade Civics.

Thank God For Religious Hypocrites

2010-08-18T13:08:00.001-04:00

I'm glad Christians and Muslims practice a sort of diluted version of their religions for it is only by practicing something less than a pure Christianity or Islam that members of those religions can peacefully co-exist with American Democracy and our separation of church and state. If Jesus actually said "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's" then he clearly implied that, there are things that do not belong to Caesar and that if the two realms ever have a conflict of interest, the religious man serves God, not Caesar. Christians who take seriously the words "My kingdom is not of this world, if my kingdom were of this world then would my servants fight" refuse to fight in earthly military wars for earthly masters. Imagine if all Jesus' servants refused to fight for earthly masters? Who would go to war to fight the unnecessary and senseless wars of old men who send young men and women off to war without even a declaration of war by Congress?

Islam, practiced in its purity, demands death to non-Muslims and war on people who don't submit to Islamic rule. Thanks to Charleston Gazette editor, James Haught, I can refer readers to a web page that documents Islam's war on rivals of all kinds including countries that try to separate church and state. (see http://www.wvinter.net/~haught/Koran.html)

In other times and places, integration of church and state was the norm. It still is in many nations. There's a reason for this: Running a country where citizens and voters and even elected office holders may practice any or no religion complicates things. Running a country is much easier when there is a state religion and when government law and religious law are one in the same. It's simpler.

It is only by subordinating the kingdom of heaven to the kingdoms of this world that Christians and Muslims can ever live in peace with one another. So every time you meet a so-called "moderate Muslim" who hasn't declared jihad on you, be thankful for compromisers and hypocrites. If not for hypocrites and compromisers who practice a diluted form of their religion so they can acquire material goods here on Earth rather than stockpile rewards in the next life, you couldn't get to work in the morning because of all the car bombs and exploding jihadists.

And since everybody else has weighed in on this, allow me: President Obama had to defend the Muslims' right to build a community center near ground zero because, as much as it may annoy members (and panderers) of the majority religion, this nation does not have a state religion and only those who disagree with its founding principles or flunked 9th grade Civics think it's OK to discriminate against people who practice unpopular religions - even religions that, if practiced in purity, are a threat to America.

Thank God for the smorgasbord believers who don't practice all that jihad or all that Old Testament smiting and slaughter of unbelievers and infidels. Imagine what a mess America would be in if religious people actually practiced what their holy books tell them to practice.

My Online Strategy: Deeper, Not Broader

2010-08-16T12:35:00.000-04:00

When the self-described "marketing geniuses" and "social media gurus" say you need an "online strategy" what they usually mean is that you need to spam and annoy as many people as possible through as many social media platforms as possible. While they may have degrees in communications or marketing, they have managed to do so without gaining any empathy for other humans. There's nothing "social" about a strategy like that. It is, in fact, decidedly antisocial and even misanthropic.

My "online strategy" is to put the "social" in social media. I am using online media to identify and start a conversation with the people who share my beliefs, values and interests. These are the people with whom I am most likely to have actual friendships. People who share my beliefs, interests and values are the people most likely to read my blog, refer business to me, recommend me and introduce me to their friends.

As my friends and regular readers know, I belong to a lot of Linkedin groups and I use these groups to "take the pulse" of other users of social media. Many of my blog topics come from Linkedin groups discussions. I recently quit a lot of large Linkedin groups and went in search of groups whose members share my values, beliefs and interests. I even quit a Linkedin group called "Relationship Networking" - which I originally joined precisely because of its name - because the people I was meeting there didn't seem to have the foggiest idea what "relationship networking" means. I quit all groups whose members have little in common other than geography. Charleston Area Alliance. Generation Charleston. Create WV. Create Huntington. I quit some huge groups - groups with several hundred thousand members like "Linked:HR" and "Executive Suite" because, for the most part, members of those groups seemed to have scrubbed their profiles of all but the kind of information people put on their resumes.

I joined smaller beliefs-based and values-based groups. I formed such a group (see my August 15 post on "How To Join Linking Liberally") and I am in negotiations to become the group owner of another beliefs-based group.

The self-described marketing geniuses and social media gurus don't seem to know that their strategy of annoying as many people as possible as often as possible through as many social media platforms as possible would be a great way to sell the maximum number of cold beers on a hot day but isn't the best way to sell the kinds of services that most social media users are selling: professional services of one sort or another. Selling more Pepsi than Coke is largely a function of displaying Pepsi on the most end caps, getting Pepsi on the most shelf space, getting Pepsi in more vending machines and getting Pepsi syrup into more restaurants. When you're thirsty and you order a cold drink you aren't forming a relationship with the drink or the people who sell you the drink, you're simply quenching your thirst. You may never again see the waitress who brought you the drink, you may never meet the driver who delivered the syrup and you may never know the salesman who sold the account. At the "retail" level where thirsty customers order a drink, selling the drink isn't about relationships at all. But lawyers, architects, virtual assistants, website designers and even marketing gurus need to establish positive online relationships and positive online brands in order to use social media to build revenue and most of the social media marketers don't seem to understand that you don't sell a professional service or create an online brand the same way you sell cold drinks.

Make no mistake about it, when you need to hire a website designer, architect, lawyer, virtual assistant or marketing dude you are entering into a relationship and you have to like, respect and resonate with the person you hire. I don't resonate with, like or respect people whose social media strategy betrays an insensitivity and a lack of understanding of and empathy for other people. I don't want to be associated with them. I sure don't want them near my clients or friends.

And I'm not interested in having more shallow, superficial relationships. My online strategy is to use social media to identify and start a conversation with people with whom I am most likely to have a meaningful relationship, to get closer to the people who share my values and beliefs.

How To Join Linking Liberally on Linkedin

2010-08-15T14:18:00.004-04:00

Creating Linking Liberally on Linkedin is consistent with my belief that I should do what I can to get all liberals to “come out”, let their liberalism show and be easily found by other liberals who want to network with them. Creating Linking Liberally reflects my “online strategy”. See my August 14 post.

First, be recognizably liberal. As the only owner, moderator and manager of Linking Liberally, I personally approve each new member and if I don’t know you and cannot detect your liberalism on your Linkedin profile, I will either reject your membership request or ask you for some liberal bona fides.

Joining Linking Liberally is easy if (1) you and I are first-level direct Linkedin connections or if (2) You send me your email address.

If I do not have your email address and we are not direct, first-level connections you can still join Linking Liberally on Linkedin by going to your “groups” field and typing “Linking Liberally” and clicking on Linking Liberally.

Richard Florida's "The Great Reset" And Other Books Briefly Reviewed

2010-08-07T08:33:00.000-04:00

My friends and blog readers expect me to tell them what I’m reading so here’s another in my occasional series of brief book reviews.

Books I Just Finished:

Let me start with a book I hope leaders everywhere are reading, The Great Reset by Richard Florida. Florida explains why this “recession” is not really a recession at all, but a “reset” – a fundamental change in the basic elements or components of our economy. Certain industries are vanishing. Certain jobs are going away and never coming back. Jobs with familiar-sounding titles aren’t what they used to be. According to Florida, this “reset” should be compared to “The Long Depression of 1873”, not the “Great Depression” of the 1930s. Elected officials, educators, executives and other leaders who are going to have to spearhead the appropriate responses to this economic and social reset would be wise to read and recommend The Great Reset. I said “spearhead the appropriate responses” to this great reset because Reset is not all doom and gloom and low-wage jobs, reduced home values and spent retirement accounts. According to Florida, such resets have occurred before and are followed by periods of great innovation. Florida has advice for mayors, city planners, educators, lenders, financiers, investors and others who will be part of the changes that are coming.

Game Change by John Heilemann & Mark Halperin and The Politician by Andrew Young. When I read these two books I violated my rule against reading books about political campaigns but I’m so glad I did. I couldn’t put them down. Game Change is an insightful account of the 2008 race for the presidency and the nomination races that preceded it. The Politician is top John Edwards aid, Andrew Young’s account of the rise and fall of his former boss who infamously carried on a reckless affair with Reille Hunter during his 2007-2008 quest for the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

Those of you who are Elizabeth Edwards admirers may dislike her more than you dislike John Edwards after you read Politician and Game Change. Neither John nor Elizabeth Edwards were ever what they appeared to be, it seems.

I also recently read Peter Singer’s One World, Susan Jacoby’s Freethinkers, Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Sam Harris’ Letter To A Christian Nation and may comment on them in a future post if readers ask me to.

Books I’m Still Reading:

T. R Reid’s The Healing of America, David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect, Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s Switch and Rahm Emanuel’s The Plan.

My Phone Conversation With Dr. Ken Hechler, Candidate For "The Robert Byrd Senate Seat"

2010-08-05T10:56:00.003-04:00

A few days ago I sent a letter to Dr. Ken Hechler asking him where I could buy some "Hechler For Senate" bumper stickers. I wanted to pass them around at the next meeting of Living Liberally where many of our members said they'd rather elect a 95-year-old Democrat than a much younger man who will probably switch parties (from Democrat to Republican) if we elect him to "the Byrd Senate Seat". Yesterday I got a call from Dr. Hechler who informed me that his campaign doesn't have bumper stickers. He encouraged me and the Living Liberally tribe to feel free to print our own "Hechler For Senate" stickers.

I asked him if he could send me the Hechler campaign's official bumper sticker artwork or the official Hechler campaign logo.

Dr. Hechler informed me that his campaign doesn't have an official logo or artwork.

The Hechler campaign also doesn't seem to have a website.

Let's review: While the Hechler "campaign" has a legendary former Congressman and WV Secretary of State as a candidate, the Hechler "campaign" doesn't seem to really have a campaign.

Dr. Hechler, if, as the media says, you're only "running" to draw attention to the issue of mountain top removal, then just keep winking and nodding and smiling and letting others define you, marginalizing you because of your age, but if you are serious about giving West Virginia Democrats a choice between Republican Light and a real Democrat, then hire a campaign manager, start raising money, put up a website and challenge Joe Manchin to a series of debates - which you'll win.

If Joe Manchin won't debate you, hold the debate anyway with an empty chair where the empty suit would be sitting if he weren't afraid to get his DINO butt kicked by a 95-year-old man.

Emery Eugene Higginbotham, January 21 1922 - July 27 2010

2010-07-27T11:41:00.036-04:00

If you're old enough to remember when a Charleston musician and "recitationist" named Buddy Starcher had a locally produced TV show on WCHS TV, then there's a good chance you saw my dad on TV. He was Buddy Starcher's guitar player before Starcher recorded a gold album and left Charleston for a larger TV market.

If you listened to WBES FM radio in the 80s and remember the catchy Boll Medical jingle that played in all Boll Medical radio ads back then, you heard one of my dad's best melodies. Boll Medical's GM, Chris Miller, had just fired their ad agency and placed me in charge of Boll Medical's advertising. Boll didn't have a jingle so I gave my dad a few simple phrases I wanted him to work into a jingle and hired him to write it. We sent his simple vocal and acoustic guitar "demo tape" to a guy at WBEZ in Chicago who added keyboards, percussion and a female vocal and made "donut", end sing, open sing and full sing versions of it. Boll's customers and referral sources told us they found themselves singing along with it. That's jingle gold.

If you learned to play guitar in St. Albans during or immediately after "the British invasion", there's a good chance you took guitar lessons from my dad. I still remember how dad's tiny after school guitar teaching business exploded in the 60s when simply every St. Albans boy (and a few of the girls) started bringing 45 RPM Beatles records and sheet music to my dad and asking him how to play stuff my dad didn't even consider music.

But I'll never forget when my dad's opinion of The Beatles changed forever. Someone brought him "Yesterday" and my dad dutifully starting learning it.

"I hate to admit it" he said, "but those boys can write some music,” he told me. "I even had to learn a new chord".

Dad reacted similarly to "Penny Lane" and to other Beatles hits that his students brought him.

During the "British invasion" years dad's little home-based guitar lessons business outgrew our house so dad rented a space on Grant Avenue next to old Doctor Brooks' dental practice and then spilled over into a third floor space on Main Street.

A few years later students started bringing dad stuff that really challenged his open-mindedness. I remember one day when I heard dad playing and re-playing the same Van Halen tape. When I went back to dad's "music room" I found him slumped over his guitar trying to figure out how Eddie Van Halen was playing a particularly unorthodox lick. Dad figured out the "hammer on/pull off/tapping" thing Van Halen made famous but dad didn't like the "alternative tunings" employed by Van Halen and other rockers. As far as dad was concerned, there was only one right way to tune a guitar and anything else was just guitar heresy and cheating. He felt the same way about capos.

"Real guitar players don't have to use capos,” my dad said every time he saw a capo. "Real guitar players learn how to play the same chord three to five different ways anywhere on the neck and don't need to use a capo."

Easy for dad to say since he could play just about anything with strings and frets. In addition to being a pretty good guitar player my dad played mandolin and banjo.

If the Charleston Gazette uses the old photo I sent them along with his obituary, you'll see him playing the double-necked Carvin he toted from gig to gig throughout much of my childhood. The bottom neck was a guitar; the top neck was a mandolin. Back in those days dad was playing with the Jules Micheaux Combo, which played pretty much everything - and dad liked to be versatile.

Twice in dad's guitar-teaching career he taught guitar atop other music-related businesses. he taught at Herbert Music Company on Main Street in St. albans for a while and then, after he retired from the Post Office, he taught in a space above The Fret and Fiddle, a used musical instrument store on Pennsylvania Ave. in St. Albans.

Dad didn't have any formal musical training but he could sight read pretty good and managed to write quite a few songs that got published by small music publishing companies. Throughout most of my childhood years dad worked for the Post Office by day and played music on the weekends. He played all the "animal clubs" - The Eagles Club, The Moose Lodge, The Elks Lodge, etc. - and he played for weddings and parties and political fundraisers. I remember once when my dad - a lifelong Democrat - played a Republican fundraiser and I basically accused him of hypocrisy.

"Republican money spends as good as Democrat money" said my dad "and the more money they give to me the less they have to beat Democrats with at the polls".

Dad would also want me to mention the time he went to Nashville and recorded a few of his original songs. I was only about 12 at the time, I think, but I remember that I liked a tune he called "Dark Clouds". It was kind of bluesy and almost hit the top 40 - in Australia. Had his record broken the top 40 anywhere he would have had a decision to make: keep working at the Post Office and let his record career fend for itself or quit his "day job" and hit the road to promote the record.

Some of my dad's friends and acquaintances may also remember that dad was a regular contributor to the Metro West supplement to the Charleston Newspapers for several years. His "remembrances" of growing up in the coalfields and going to war and playing music appeared on a regular basis next to his photo. People dad hadn't talked to since childhood found him as a result of those articles and he got a bang out of it. For him, his articles worked in the 90s like Facebook works for my generation.

About a year before dad died he nearly lost an eye to an aggressive, disfiguring cancer on his and then a few months after that he was hospitalized with congestive heart failure for about a month so when he succumbed to apparent heart failure early Tuesday morning July 27, 2010, "his death was not unexpected", to quote my mom. Years before his death he made arrangements to have his body donated to science so when he died in the emergency room at Thomas Memorial Hospital, the folks from Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine at Marshall University came to take his body. After med students have used my dad's body to learn human anatomy, his remains will be buried next to his sister's as he requested.

Emery Eugene Higginbotham is survived by his wife, Hester, by his brother, Troy, and by me, his only child.

Why We Expect Our President To Be Validator-In-Chief

2010-07-26T10:47:00.017-04:00

My Kentucky Baptist correspondent, Darrell Cruse, says – and note the deliberate double negative – “A person can not not tell his story”.

If you like to listen to people as I do you’ll soon notice that most peoples’ “stories” can be summed up this way: “I’m not appreciated enough, I don’t get the credit I deserve, I don’t get any respect.”

Everywhere I go I hear people telling their stories and what they’re all saying if you listen closely is that they want to be validated. They want somebody to tell them how important they are, how smart they are, how right they are and how good they are.

We even expect politicians to validate us by not seeming to be too superior to us or too “other”. Even with his patrician pedigree and his Ivy League degrees, George W Bush made millions of plebeians feel validated. Rednecks everywhere wanted to have a beer with “W”. By contrast, our current president isn’t a very convincing Validator-In-Chief. He’s too black, too smart and too “other”. A redneck can’t imagine Obama having a beer with a redneck – but he can watch him having a beer on the White House lawn with Henry Louis Gates under circumstances that reinforce Obama’s “otherness”.

Had Obama been running against George W Bush, he couldn’t have won the 2008 election. We expect our presidents to validate us, to make us feel OK about our bigotries, our ignorance of the US Constitution and our closed-mindedness.

On one recent hot afternoon I overheard three conversations that support my thesis that what everybody is saying is “validate me”.

At the St. Albans Public Library I overheard a math tutor telling his friend he was even more qualified to teach Algebra than some smartass college professor who is certified in calculus, trigonometry and physics.

“Validate me. I count, too,” he was saying.

Later that day I heard an old woman telling stories to a friend. In every story she told, she was the heroin.

“Validate me, will somebody please validate me!” she seemed to be screaming.

At the Town Center mall I overheard a woman telling her friend how her volunteer work had gone unnoticed and unappreciated.

“Validate me!”

My Kentucky Baptist correspondent, Darrell, may remember a joke that Baptist preachers used to tell. They used to say you could offend the organ player by praising the piano player and you could offend the person who brought the petunias by forgetting to thank the person who brought the roses.

Those aren’t flowers on the dais. Those are invoices demanding payment for services rendered.

“Validate me!”

Armed with this insight into human nature, I face each day and each conversation with a choice. I can either offend the people I meet by not validating them or I can go ahead and offer them the validation they seek. It saves time and, if you’re running for office, it’ll help you get elected.

Higginbotham At Large

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Why We Expect Our President To Be Validator-In-Chief