Blogging

Hasn't been updated in a while, but an interesting idea:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/robots.txt

Austin Bloggers News and Announcements: Zero Tolerance:

In the past week, I've removed six real estate blogs from the portal for violating the guidelines of this site. I intend to remove on sight any real estate blog (or, for that matter, any non-personal blog) that violates the guidelines.

I was wondering when this was going to happen. As the housing market has gotten tighter, real estate agents are obviously trying to squeeze all of the exposure they can out of every possible medium. Unfortunately, they've been pushing it too far on Austin Bloggers lately - in many cases using the aggregator as a free listing site. Austin Bloggers usage guidelines prohibit commercial/promotional posting.

Well, I just got home from the second day of the Defending the American Dream Summit (see previous post).

Yesterday's session wrapped up with up with a speech from Barry Goldwater, Jr. and a keynote address from Robert "The Prince of Darkness" Novak. Novak was hilarious. He had a few clear messages for disillusioned Republicans and Ron Paul holdouts:

First, to those worried about the 2008 election or resigned to an Obama win - don't be so sure - and you should really be worried about 2010 anyway. That's when Democrats will get a big chance to change the rules of the game through redistricting. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

To those still holding out for a dark horse candidate to come in at the convention to replace McCain: forget it. The convention is just an "informercial" and holding on to your McCain hate is just helping the left.

And for the Ron Paul fans in attendence, "Now don't applause -- I really like Ron Paul..." (prompting wild applause of course from a few tables) "...where he is." Heh.

Day 2 of the conference featured a general session with speakers including former Maryland Lt. Governor and GOPAC Chairman Michael Steele, author and economist Grover Norquist, John Fund and Steve Moore of The Wall Street Journal, Congressman John Carter, RedState's Erick Erickson, Texas Railroad Commission Chairman Michael Williams (who was awesome by the way -- look for this guy running for congress or senate some day), author/blogger Michelle Malkin of HotAir.com and others.

The breakout sessions turned the focus of the conference to specific issues and actions attendees can take online to make a difference. Panel sessions included topics such taxes and government funding, government spending, education reform, global warming hysteria, taxpayer rights, new media vs. old media and more.

I had to duck out a little early, but I was able to attend a panel session with Steve Moore, Galveston Tax-Assessor Collector Cheryl Johnson, David Hartman of the Lone Star Foundation and Scott Hodge of the Tax Foundation on taxes, government funding and monetary policy. The session was only an hour long, but information dense. Some of the highlights:

• Texas is now the #1 state for corporate headquarters in the nation. This is due to our favorable business taxation and regulation climate (although we still have work to do - i.e. the business margins tax).
• Switching to an acquisition-value based property tax appraisal system as advocated by Cheryl Johnson could save millions and keep property taxes low at the same time.
• Countries all over the world are lowering their corporate taxes to be more competitive while politicians in the US call for raisign them (Barack Obama being one prominent).
• The US has the 2nd highest corporate tax rate in the world amng industrialized nations just behind Japana - which, along with most others, is considering lowering theirs.
• All 50 US states impose higher corporate taxes than France.
• Ireland's economic success (the "Celtic Tiger") is directly tied to lowering their corporate tax rate.

I took about three pages of notes in this session alone. By the time it was over, I think I was getting a little information overload, but overall I learned a lot at the conference, met quite a few great people and fellow center/right bloggers, but most important, I got inspired to take action. Significant developments are already in progress that I'm really excited to be a part of.

The next Defending the Dream summit will be held in Washington, DC on October 10-11. Daphne and I had such a great time last night and today, we're considering a trip to DC.

Update: Travis at Voice in the Wilderness has been liveblogging the whole conference with pretty detailed notes from the sessions.

I had a great time today at the Defending the American Dream Summit. This online activism and new media conference sponsored by Americans for Prosperity is a smaller, less noisy counter to the liberal Netroots Nation event being held downtown here in Austin.

It was great to spend time with fellow Austin bloggers Robbie Cooper of UrbanGrounds and Travis Fell of Voice in the Wilderness as well as several bloggers from around Texas and other states. I also got a chance to meet some prominent national bloggers including Danny Glover (formerly of the Beltway Blogroll), Matt Sheffield of RatherBiased and NewsBusters fame and Eric Erickson of RedState.

It’s no secret that conservatives and libertarians are behind the curve when it comes to online activism and organization. While conservatives and liberals are on the net in nearly equal numbers, liberal/progressive organizations and Democratic campaigns regularly outpace their conservative or Republican counterparts.

So why is this? Aside from the obvious answer – conservatives tend to have jobs (sorry couldn’t resist) – there are a variety of factors. A big part of the conference today was to explore some of these factors and to teach would-be online conservative activists how to take advantage of the internet and new media to shift the balance.

Online liberals have a number of advantages in their favor. Age and demographics is one. Liberals skew younger and younger people are highly active on the internet and take advantage of social networks and other emerging technologies more so than conservatives who tend to skew a little older. To close the gap, conservatives have to leverage all of the tools the internet has to offer for connecting, organizing and taking action.

Group-think is another factor. Liberals love to cast conservatives as mindless automatons waiting for Rush Limbaugh to tell them what to think, but the reality is that there is a wide range of ideological diversity on the right. Conservatives often find themselves fighting each other as much or more than they’re fighting the left. Progressives certainly have their disagreements, but overall, they are much more unified in their desire to win (sometimes apparently at all costs, but I digress…). Conservatives need to focus more online energy on the issues they can agree on (smaller government, lower taxes, etc.).

Liberals also have an advantage in unity when it comes to group-blogging. RedState’s Eric Erickson asserts that there are actually more individual conservative and libertarian blogs than liberal/progressive blogs, but liberals have larger and more influential group-blogs. Conservatives’ strong individualism may be a strength in life, but online it fragments the movement and dilutes its influence. This squares with a conclusion I came to myself some months ago.

Liberals also exhibit an intense emotional attachment to their political causes. Emily Zanotti of the Sam Adams Alliance referred to this as a “weird emotional instability” related to political wins (or losses). During the 2004 presidential election campaign, people like Alec Baldwin claimed he would leave the country if Bush won (we’re still waiting). Obama supporters today make similar and even more extreme declarations in regard to the results of the 2008 election (go read a Digg or Reddit for examples of this). This intensity actually works in their favor in terms of online activism. Conservatives just don’t think this way. We have families, careers – lives. We’ll be fine whoever wins in November (or at least despite whoever wins in November).

It was also suggested that maybe conservatives’ natural tendency toward civility may actually be a disadvantage compared to the foul language and obscene tirades that are de rigueur for liberal blogs. Spend a little time on some popular liberal group-blogs (if you can stand it) and you’ll quickly learn just how nasty and vicious liberal bloggers can be. Another take on this is that conservative and libertarian bloggers should stick with their strengths in civil, reasoned debate and not sink to the level of these sites. Whatever the balance is, conservatives aren’t going to take what liberals dish out lying down.

[this post also appears on my diary at RedState]

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