I’ve found the classroom of life-experience offers as much, if not more than any number of university courses ever could. For example, when going through the grocery checkout, I like to employ change. If my bill is $17.88, I hand the cashier $20.13. With puzzled expression, they invariably say, “You gave me thirteen cents.” I smile as they punch it in, before handing over my $2.25. I say, “That’s what eighteen years of education is good for- figuring how to get quarters back.”
Having said that, I did attain some useful knowledge (over a span of nearly six years, including full and part time schedules, as well as a summer session and evening courses), while attending a pair of schools for higher education in Pennsylvania- though I’ve yet to receive sheepskins for studies of History and Art, before concentrating on Psychology and English Literature. I’m still being educated/informed.

The internet and social media, in particular, have drastically altered our little orb since my collegiate years in the 1970′s- allowing today’s individual/student to be part of the global discussion, as never before. Becoming informed, whether about safety features and fuel efficiency of an automobile one may be thinking about purchasing, to what a candidate for political office truly stands for, is just seconds away.

With regards to politics and upcoming elections, being informed is key; having awareness of the issues and taking part in discussing/addressing them at the local, state and national level- before casting votes. Are you an informed voter?

Employ your change.

Robert William Gaglione
freelance journalist
investigative fusionist
poetico

Rock The Capital: Part Two
Volume 1: Issue 2
February 2012

Greetings and belated happy New Year to the Rock the Capital community. 2012 is going to be a particularly interesting year for the country and Rockthecapital.com. Obviously the years major story will be the Presidential Election. This election will be historic for the amount of money spent, the embedded use of technology as well as utilizing the new & social medias. We all will be bombarded like never before with direct and indirect messages from candidates and issue oriented Political Action Committees or PACs. We will see things like online gaming as a means of getting the publics attention.

Besides the presidential race the state and congressional elections will be contested harder than normal as the division between the Republican and Democratic Parties has grown and politics has gotten even uglier and meaner (who would have thought that possible). With so little inter-party cooperation each side needs to win a clear majority of a legislative body to get anything passed.

In today world people live in what is referred to as the ‘Bubble’. The algorithms used for searching the World Wide Web begin to learn your behavior and soon the searches are yielding content of similar points of view, Fox & MSNBC shall never meet. Candidates know how to get their message out to their respective choirs but how do you get to and influence the swing voters. Especially when that swing group is larger than ever before.

Another trend to be aware of is the proliferation of so-called expert and news sites. Quite often these sites have a paid for agenda or driven by extremist views. How often have you had somebody email you something that when you did a little research you found was untrue or incomplete? Anytime I see an article saying ’90% of’ or the ‘majority of voters’ my made up fact alarm starts beeping. Question all the information you receive even RocktheCapital’s.

As the news anchors say the big stories for 2012 will be the elections, the economy and government spending at all levels. Another item that probably won’t get the attention it deserves is the nature of the parties themselves. We have gotten used to inter party feuds but the intra party squabbles are growing exponentially. Just because a one party controls congress and the Whitehouse or the statehouse and the governors mansion no longer means the end of gridlock. Each party to some degree is battling an internal civil war for the hearts and minds of its voters. Here in Pennsylvania we will be closely watching the squeeze on schools, public colleges and infrastructure repair as the Governor continues to keep his pledge of no new taxes. Let’s all learn to take notice of the ‘fee’ word as the state tries to close the gap between revenues and expenses. Whether it is on the federal or local level Americans continue to balk at paying for the government they demand.

When I was growing up my next-door neighbor (l call him EH) was like an uncle to me. His politics were only slightly to the left of Attila the Huns. He was an airline captain, a Vietnam veteran and one of the most patriotic people I have ever known. EH unintentionally taught me a valuable political lesson. EH thought the Federal government was strictly for the purpose of National Defense and the FAA. I am exaggerating but not by much. He would rail about every cutback or budget limitation put on the FAA. The lesson I learned is everybody has a special interest they believe should be get the full resources of the United States. I learned that special interest is a third person phrase. When I deem an issue important it is a priority. When you deem it important it is a special interest.

RocktheCapital.com, 2012. Eric and I are committed to continuing the experiment of providing a thoughtful respectful for profit online news magazine. We are still way in the red but we are continuing to grow. Our FB fans, Twitter followers and site visits are all up. We are beginning to get a little revenue but we need your help. Take our online poll, click on are Ad links, consider the Living Social deals . Check out our Amazon store when we get it on the site. A little bit here and a little bit there and soon we will be able to add additional features and content.

T-shirts. As I said in the first newsletter we expected to get requests for a few hundred and we ended up with over 45,000 t-shirt requests. We have sent out over a thousand and as we get revenue we will continue to mail more shirts out. If anybody knows of a sponsorship partners please contact me. We can break requests down by state. We have requests for 3,500 in PA alone.

New! RocktheCapital.com will introduce our cross platform mobile application. We are applying for membership in the prestigious Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondence Association, entitling us to a bureau in the Capital Building. We are forming our editorial advisory board to ensure the best journalistic practices possible. RTC will have a new feature shortly called the Daily Rock that will have Nuggets of Truth back-checking the politicians and facts about how government works.

RocktheCapital is a community as much as it is a business. Keep commenting on our site and FB. Tweet and retweet our stories.

Email me with questions, critiques, suggestions and praise at support@rockthecapital.com. Eric and I look forward to serving you in 2012.

Get involved! Learn the facts! Question everything!

Most importantly Rock the Capital!

Andrew Stein

Co-Founder

RocktheCapital.com

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Yovia helps you as an individual earn from what you know and who you know. We call this sphere of influence your Social Capital and it’s worth real dollars on the web.

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