We citizens have one small chit in our Democracy--the vote. But without a robust and truly free news media, our vote is worth nothing. Knowledge is power, and in an age of moneyed interests—interests that control the media itself—it is the only power, as exercised through our vote, we citizens have a hope of possessing. Advance The Dialog is a tool for the public. It asks the media to follow common sense Rules designed to elicit factual data, Calls Them Out when they do not, and holds them accountable in the performance of their duty as The Fourth Pillar of Democracy.

So Welcome to ATD. I hope you will join me by commenting on my blogs and adding Your Input by Calling Them Out when they break The Rules!

Featured Video! (bottom): FOX News Reports on Carbon Dividend Act (and no one else does!)

For the second Presidential Debate, which will be in a Town Hall format, half the Questions will come from the public. You can still get yours in by submitting them to this site. I’ve included mine below. Some are from my previous blog since they were not asked in the first debate.

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Environment

Background: Renewable energies have become more cost effective than fossil fuels in price per mega-watt hour, with wind & solar thin film at $55 & $43/MWH, vs. gas & coal at $65 & $108/MWH, respectively.
Question: How much will you invest in renewables, and how many … read more »

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The topics chosen for tonight’s first Presidential Debate include: America’s Direction, Achieving Prosperity, and Securing America. Here are some of the Questions I want to see Asked.

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America’s Direction This is one of those non-specific categories tailored for generic, boiler plate answers. I’m not crazy about the topic, but here goes…

ATQ:  In order of priority, what are the 3 biggest problems negatively impacting the direction America is currently taking and, briefly, what would you do to change direction for each?

ATQ:  If “investing in the future” is key to setting and maintaining a positive direction for … read more »

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I recently came across another story—the third in a few months—on economic turn around of disadvantaged who live in cities. Rather than add it to the other two in my , I decided it deserved its own.

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The NYT opinion piece is about the successful Houston nonprofit Neighborhood Centers, and its ‘bottom up’ approach to helping people lift themselves out of poverty. The author, David L. Kirp, writes that Neighborhood Centers “has enabled hundreds of thousands of poor residents, many of them immigrants, to move up the ladder of economic and educational opportunity each year. It’s a strategy that can … read more »

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There is nothing more exasperating than seeing a news report on an important but esoteric subject that includes controversy and competing facts, and having no better sense at the end of it, what the truth is. Such describes the media coverage of vaccine safety which was recently elevated in the news after California made vaccination mandatory for children attending public or private schools.

I am not an expert in medicine, economics, the environment, or any other such field, any more than I am a journalist, and I can’t take time to become any of these just to prove that the … read more »

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This blog is a follow-on to the previous one. The two, together, form a pair of bookends that give a ‘big picture’ clarity to how policies contribute to the deadly confrontations between blacks and the police, and the peril of underreporting them.

The Minneapolis Miracle blog covered the media’s failure to report on solutions to the underlying issues of economic inequality and concentrated poverty, solutions that could, at least in part, preempt crises that lead to police confrontations. This blog covers the equally underreported subject of programs aimed at containing the fallout from those crises once they’ve hit.

Anticipating civil … read more »

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