Ni5: Perspectives

This is where we offer some of our thoughts and perspectives to you. We won't promise they're better than anyone else's. Or even right. But we'll at least provide interesting ways of looking at things.

Combined with the information we provide in the other parts of this site, we hope to encourage interesting and meaningful conversations about things that affect you.

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Don't give up

Date: 2014-Feb-20 Author: Barry Shatzman

So... show of hand... who watches C-Span? Yeah... the hand raised is mine. If your hand isn't raised, i suggest you give it a fair try. Think of it as a cross between elevator music and a reality TV show that actually affects you.

But i get it. It's hard to understand what's going on. And it doesn't help when you encounter something like * this *.

I lost count of how many times i looked at the bill thinking that someone must have made a mistake somewhere. I even logged onto C-Span's web site to watch a rebroadcast of the discussion - and kept thinking either i went too far back because the bill being discussed is about some air traffic control tower being renamed, or i went too far forward because the discussion was about the debt limit.

No wonder people get discouraged when they try to understand issues!

That's just one example of why it can take so much time to put together even some of the simplest stories that Lobby99 reports on. But because of the hours we put in, you can understand what's going on in just a few minutes, without having to put your hands up to surrender.