Rounding up the FTC Blog Regulation reaction.

Real quick summary: the FTC wants to keep an eye on blogs to see whether we’re trading favorable reviews of products for financial reward – which doesn’t sound so bad, until you consider that this apparently includes things like Amazon Associates links.

But they would need to think twice if, for instance, they praise parenting books they’ve just read and include links to buy them at a retailer like Amazon.com Inc.

That’s because the guidelines also would cover the broader and common practice of affiliate marketing, in which bloggers and other sites get a commission when someone clicks on a link that leads to a purchase at a retailer. In such cases, merchants also would be responsible for actions by their sales agents – including a network of bloggers.

Going down the list:

  • Ed Morrissey suspects a political aspect.  The administration’s reputation precedes them, you see.
  • James Joyner doesn’t suspect a political aspect, but he used the word ‘insane’ a lot.
  • Aaron Brazell apparently thinks that this is an appropriate extension of existing marketing rules, and that affiliate marketing is ‘borderline seditious’ anyway. Err, OK?
  • Daily Danet mentions that he’s not getting any of this sweet, sweet blogger swag. Something that popped into my head, too*.
  • And I’m guessing that this is going to be Glenn Reynold’s roundup post. Might as well link to it now.

My personal opinion?  The FTC doesn’t have to want to muck up our lives in order to successfully muck them up.  Always assume that any regulation or law that can be used inappropriately will be used inappropriately, whether or not malice was intended.

Also: buy stuff at Amazon Associates. While you still can!

Moe Lane

*I got a used copy of a book mailed to me once so that I could be up to speed for a conference call. Whoopee.

Crossposted to RedState.

PPP: Strickland/Kasich within margin of error.

Not that they noted that, really.  But there’s still been some erosion of Strickland’s support in the last several months, whether PPP’s explicit about it or not:

43% of Ohio voters approve of how Strickland is doing his job as Governor, while 42%
disapprove. A January PPP survey found the numbers at 48/35.

Strickland’s approval among Democrats has dropped from 70% to 62%, an unusually low
level of support for a Governor within his own party. He’s also seen an increasing level
of dissatisfaction with him from Republican voters, 72% of whom now say they
disapprove of what he’s doing after just 59% did earlier this year.

Matched up against likely GOP candidate John Kasich, Strickland leads 44-42. He had a
slightly wider 45-39 advantage in January. Strickland is mostly hurt by a 54-33 deficit to
Kasich among independent voters, even though those same voters prefer a Democrat for
the Senate in numbers that PPP will release on Tuesday.

See Third Base Politics for more analysis (and Ohio Politics Online, on general principles).  What I want to see is the next Quinnipac poll; both the March and the May ones were done back when there was an expectation that DeWine would be running for Governor. It’ll be interesting to see if the twenty point lead shown in both has dropped in the last two months, too.

In the meantime… as I said yesterday: Go Kasich.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

NOW chooses white antiwar activist for their President.

This is newsworthy primarily because they had an option otherwise: one, in fact, who had been endorsed by their outgoing President.  Via @AmandaCarpenter, meet the new boss:

Terry O’Neill, 56, of Maryland defeated Latifa Lyles, 33, of Washington during the organization’s national conference here. The voting took place Saturday.

Ms. O’Neill’s spokeswoman said Sunday that the vote totals were not immediately available but that it was a “close election.”

Ms. Lyles, who is black, had said she could help give the organization, with a membership that is mostly white and over 40, a new image of youth and diversity that would appeal to younger feminists. She had been enthusiastically endorsed by Kim Gandy, who is retiring on July 20 after eight years as president of the group.

Continue reading NOW chooses white antiwar activist for their President.

AoSHQ & TAP do zombie posts.

Which you all know that I can’t resist commenting on.  TAP’s Paul Waldman piece is here; Ace of Spades HQ’s Open Blog (Mætenloch) piece is here.  Let’s get this out of the way: I agree with AoSHQ that Waldman’s done his homework, but I have to take major exception with his statement:

There are no highbrow zombie movies or novels, and admitting you love them amounts to a declaration that your tastes are unrefined.

It will all depend on how you define ‘highbrow’ – but I think that The Serpent And The Rainbow would qualify, as would 28 Days Later.  Admittedly, the first is more Afro-Caribbean than the standard zombie flick, and the second breaks a lot of the conventions, so I may be on thinner ice than I like – but if Waldman can include The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in his list, then I can use these two*.  As to whether zombie films default liberal or conservative: well.  They default to satirical, in my opinion; and you don’t want to end up getting too overtly partisan there.  If you do, you end up making movies like Homecoming, which I cruelly mocked at the time (without even seeing**) as an inept attempt to use dead soldiers as mouthpieces for the antiwar movement (given that the living ones loudly declined the ‘honor’). There’s a lesson there, really.

That being said: I may pick up Revenge of the Zombies at some point.

Moe Lane

*And, of course, there’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! … which pushes the definition of ‘highbrow’ almost but not quite to the breaking point. And then there’s World War Z, which was in my opinion very sophisticated.  It’s not all that easy to do an authentic-sounding oral history book.

**Still haven’t, in fact.

Add another IG ‘retiring’ to the list.

Via RS McCain – whose post in general on the potential legs of the IG story is well worth reading all on its own – comes the third Inspector General to suddenly stop working for the government in a week:

The inspector general of Amtrak unexpectedly resigned Thursday night, becoming the third such federal official to leave prematurely since the Obama administration took office and the latest in a string of potentially controversial moves involving government watchdogs.

Fred E. Weiderhold, a 35-year veteran of the agency who was responsible for rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, is the most high-profile change among the group of senior government officials who have responsibility to conduct independent investigations of federal agencies and institutions.

[snip]

But several officials who asked not to be identified raised questions about the development, which set off alarm bells among some close Amtrak watchers.

Continue reading Add another IG ‘retiring’ to the list.

A Gov. Ted Strickland (D, OH) timeline on gambling.

2006:

Senator Bi-Partisan in Gambling Debate
Republican Sen. George Voinovich helped persuade Ted Strickland, the Democratic nominee for governor, to oppose any proposal to introduce slot machines that are similiar to casino gambling in Ohio through an issue on the November ballot. Voinovich, who thinks gambling is a powerful addiction and can be destructive to families, has opposed any expansion beyond current law since a casino issue was on the ballot in 1990.

2007:

Gov. Strickland has not only vowed to veto a proposed bill to allow electronic betting on archived races at horsetracks, he has now joined with Attorney General Marc Dann to call for a ban on cash prizes from table-top gaming devices that are appearing in bars and restaurants all over the state. Dann’s support for a ban has developed out of his frustration with his earlier efforts to enforce the existing legal distinction between outlawed games of chance and permissible games of skill.

March, 2009:

Columbus — Gov. Ted Strickland on Wednesday slammed the latest plan to bring full-scale casinos to Ohio, saying gambling supporters need to stop selling their proposal as a potential life-saver for the state’s drooping economy.

“Every proposal that has been brought forth I think has been designed to enrich the promoters and give a modest or, even in some cases, a meager share of resources to the state or individual localities,” Strickland told The Plain Dealer on Wednesday.

June, 2009:

Gov. Ted Strickland rolled out a surprise plan today that would add electronic slots at the seven Ohio horse racetracks to generate revenue designed to help fill a $3.2 billion budget hole.

Continue reading A Gov. Ted Strickland (D, OH) timeline on gambling.