Posts tagged politics
CU Conference offers world affairs dialogue in its 64th year
Mar 28th
political dialogue ‘as it should be’
The University of Colorado Boulder’s annual Conference on World Affairs returns to campus for the 64th time April 9-13, with 200 events including panel discussions, performances and plenaries.
More than 100 participants from around the country and the globe will pay their own way to travel to Boulder to participate in what Roger Ebert termed “the Conference on Everything Conceivable.”
“The Conference on World Affairs is one of the few events in the country where both sides of the political spectrum can come together to have wide-ranging bipartisan discussion,” said Juli Steinhauer, CWA co-chair. “It’s dialogue as it should be.”
Mike Franc, vice president of government studies at the Heritage Foundation, echoes Steinhauer’s words, “As conferences go, the Conference on World Affairs is entirely unique. Conferences that address the major issues of the day are a dime a dozen, as are conferences that sort the like-minded into windowless hotel ballrooms or exclusive resorts to preach their shared perspectives to one another. The organizers of the CWA, in contrast, work overtime to invite participants with a variety of opinions.”
The 2012 keynote address will be delivered by Alice Rivlin, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and founding director of the independent, nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Her address “Can the Center Hold: Democracy and Governance in a Polarized America” will take place in Macky Auditorium on Monday, April 9, at 11:30 a.m. Rivlin will be introduced by CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano.
The keynote address will be preceded by the CWA’s colorful annual opening procession. Led by Rivlin and DiStefano at 11:10 a.m., the procession will advance through the avenue of international flags on display in Norlin Quad and into Macky Auditorium.
Leading Republican strategist Mark McKinnon will deliver a talk titled “The Architecture of a Successful Message” on Wednesday, April 11, at 11:30 a.m. in Macky Auditorium. McKinnon is the global vice chair of Hill+Knowlton Strategies and is the co-founder of No Labels, a political organization made up of Republicans, Democrats and independents whose mission is to address the politics of problem solving.
New York Times columnist Drew Westen will deliver a plenary talk on “How Politics Lost the American People” on Monday, April 9, at 1:30 p.m. in Macky Auditorium. Westen is a leading voice on the psychology of politics and is the author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.” He has been a political adviser for a range of candidates and organizations, from presidential and congressional campaigns to Fortune 500 companies.
“Particularly in a presidential election year, when so many issues will be bubbling to the surface, I’m really looking forward to this year’s Conference on World Affairs,” said Westen. “It will be a pleasure to be in an environment where thinkers left, right and center can have a civil conversation without all the posturing and venom that comes out in a political season.”
As always, the CWA will offer not just political sessions, but a broad range of subjects and speakers. Conference panels and performances encompass everything from music and literature to environment and science, journalism, visual arts, diplomacy, technology, film, business, medicine and human rights.
Some additional highlights from the 2012 schedule include:
–Bill Reinert, the national manager of advanced technology for Toyota who leads efforts on research, design and marketing of alternative-fueled vehicles and emerging technologies, will deliver a plenary address on the topic “Peak Oil” in Macky Auditorium on Wednesday, April 11, at 10:30 a.m.
–Chicago Sun-Times technology columnist and longtime CWA favorite Andy Ihnatko will give a plenary talk on Steve Jobs and Apple on Wednesday, April 11, at 12:30 p.m. in the University Memorial Center’s Glenn Miller Ballroom. Ihnatko also is a longtime columnist for Macworld magazine and one of the most in-demand commentators on Apple.
–Grammy-winning pianists, composers and brothers Dave and Don Grusin will close the week with a talking and piano-playing duet at Macky Auditorium on Friday, April 13, at 2:30 p.m.
Members of the public attending CWA are encouraged to use public transportation, as there will be no event parking on campus. Free parking is offered on the third level of the Macy’s parking structure at the Twenty Ninth Street shopping mall in Boulder, located at the southwest corner of 30th Street and Walnut Street, from which a free HOP bus ride is available to campus during CWA week.
The HOP will run on its normal route arriving every 7 to 10 minutes between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., Monday through Friday. The two stops nearest the Macy’s parking structure are at 29th Street and Walnut Street and 30th Street and Walnut Street.
For a complete schedule and more information visit the Conference on World Affairs website at http://www.colorado.edu/cwa.
New CU J-school is getting ready for the (digital) revolution
Feb 20th
“This symposium provides the CU community with an excellent opportunity to explore new political and cultural terrain opened up by digital media,” said symposium organizer Andrew Calabrese, a professor of journalism and mass communication. Among the speakers will be Columbia University Professor Todd Gitlin, who will present “Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street: Why 2011 Was Not 1968” on Feb. 27 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in room 150 of the Eaton Humanities Building. Gitlin’s upcoming e-book, “Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street,” looks at how that movement differs from the uprisings of previous eras. Mark Briggs, who coined the term “Journalism 2.0,” will talk about a new breed of ‘journopreneurs’ who are launching startups that break from traditional advertising models to find new sources of revenue for delivering news and information. Briggs is the director of digital media for KING-5 TV in Seattle and the Ford Fellow in Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Poynter Institute. His session is on Feb. 29 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in room 150 of the Eaton Humanities Building. Experts at the conference also will discuss new ways of archiving digital records and how these collections are being used in places such as libraries and museums. Librarians and archivists are looking for new ways to preserve such records, according to symposium organizers. The symposium runs in conjunction with an effort to create a new interdisciplinary school or college at CU-Boulder that may include studies in communication, technology, multimedia storytelling, commercial design and the digital arts and humanities. The effort is called the Information, Communication, Journalism, Media and Technology, or ICJMT, initiative. Journalism and Mass Communication is sponsoring the symposium in support of the ICJMT initiative, with additional support from CU’s Keller Center for the Study of the First Amendment, the Department of Political Science, the English department, the Film Studies Program, the Center for the Humanities and the Arts, CU Libraries and the Advertising A2B certificate program. For more information including speakers and event locations visit http://www.icjmtsymposium.org/.
Your Future, Your Choice! The Naked Curmudgeon by Dan Culberson.
Feb 1st
I believe a lot of time, effort, money and brainpower can be saved if you reevaluate your political-party affiliation and voting record in terms of your line of work, your personal philosophy and your de facto class in American society.
“What?” you say? “Class?” you say?
“Yes,” I say. Contrary to what many Americans believe or would like to believe, there are three distinct classes in the United States and, perhaps, in every society for purposes of discussion: upper class, middle class and lower class. Now, the difference between the class society in the U.S. and the established class societies in, say, India and medie
vval societies is that Americans don’t have to be fore
American politics have pretty much become a two-party system, and for the most part people agree that Democrats are the liberal party that supports the common, everyday working-class people and Republicans are the conservative party that supports Big Business and the uncommon, country-club set of wealthy people. Which group describes you?er restricted to the class into which they were born. All they need do is acquire a substantial amount of money, buy some new clothes and a flashy new car, move into a nicer community and perhaps get experience in the ways of the next higher class in order to become a bona fide new member of that class.
Common sense says that the majority of people are going to be in either the middle class or the lower class. Using the old “bell curve” of distribution, let us say that 25% of the people are upper class, 50% are middle class and 25% are lower class. Where are you?
Now, people tend to align themselves first with the political party that their parents support, the same as they do their parents’ religion. That is why I voted for the Democratic candidate in my first presidential election back in the Sixties, even though I didn’t much care for the man Lyndon B. Johnson or for his policies in Vietnam: both my career-soldier father and my salesclerk mother were Democrats. As I grew older, wiser and more experienced, I decided that I supported the liberal, pro-arts, anti-Big Business views of the Democrats more than I supported the conservative, anti-Big Government, pro-Big Business views of the Republicans, anyway.
Remember your schooling? “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Why doesn’t “trickle-down economics” work? Because money is power, and the people with the money don’t want to give it up, especially to the people without any money. However, they WILL give some of it to greedy politicians in an attempt to cause the politicians to pass laws that make life easier for the people with the money.
Where do you fit? People with money? People without any money? Or greedy politicians?
Let me make it easier for you. People with money tend to be Republicans. People without any money tend to be Democrats. Greedy politicians tend to drift to whichever party they believe will best support their greed.
“Wait a minute!” you say? “What about the Kennedys?” you say? “What about people without any money who vote Republican?” you say?
Well, people who are born with a lot of money can pretty much do what they want, and people who do not have any money would always like to have more. Some people are benevolent and like to help out their fellow human beings as much as possible. Other people are naturally mean and selfish and want to acquire as much money, power, more money and more power as they can.
So, forget the party of your parents. Forget the economic situation as a whole that the country is in and whom the politicians blame for it. Forget the personal life-styles of individual politicians in office.
Remember this: Republicans are conservative, tend to support people with money and try to find ways that those people can keep their money and acquire more money.
Remember this: Democrats are liberal, tend to support people without money and try to find ways that those people can live better lives and perhaps acquire a little more money.
Best of all, forget “politics” and remember that only about 30% of eligible voters can determine how your life is affected.
Are you in the 25% upper class, the 50% middle class or the 25% lower class? Did you vote in the last election? Do the politicians speak for you?
Your choice determines your own future.
I rest my case.
The Naked Curmudgeon
curmudgeon n [origin unknown] (1577) a crusty, ill-tempered, and usu. old man. naked adj 6: devoid of concealment or disguise. Attempting to cover everything that annoys me, Dan Culberson.