Podcasts – Ray Steele Radio

Listen to Ray’s interview with Kenneth Dau-Schmidt, Professor of Labor and Employment Law at IU’s Maurer School of Law:
https://raysteele.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/kenneth-dau-schmidt-raw-2-18.mp3

Great talk with the William and Margaret Carr Professor of Labor and Employment Law at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University (deep breath!). Frankly, he doesn’t know exactly what is going to happen, because there isn’t much case law for anyone to use as a precedent.

An expert on labor law says because of a lack of precedent, there’s no way to know whether federal regulators will allow college athletes to organize a union.

The National Labor Relations Board is holding hearings on whether the National College Players Association can organize. The effort is being backed by the United Steelworkers and is led by former Northwestern University quarterback Kain Colter. While union representation ostensibly would establish an employer-employee relationship between athletes and colleges, Colter’s criticism has mostly been aimed at the NCAA, which he referred to as “a dictatorship.”

Whether college athletes could be considered employees is a primary question. Teaching assistants and residential assistants are not employees, with courts ruling that those jobs are part of the education experience. “It’s not clear, however, that being a student athlete is part of your educational program in the same way,” said Kenneth Dau-Schmidt, Professor of Labor and Employment Law at I-U’s Maurer School of Law.

Athletes who are recruited to play sports believe they should be considered employees because they receive scholarship money, and they have to adhere to strict schedules, unlike most ordinary students. “We don’t have a lot of case law. They are permitted to work. They are directed, and they do receive some kind of compensation for it. So under a very broad definition of employee, they might be employees, but that isn’t how we traditionally think about them,” Dau-Schmidt said.

There also could be different rules for private universities like Northwestern and public schools like IU and Purdue. Private schools, Dau-Schmidt said, would be governed by federal labor law. State-supported universities would be governed by state law, and in Indiana, most public employees are not allowed to collectively bargain. “They would be back under the old common law, which was if they bargained with an agency that had authority to set their terms and conditions of employment, then that contract would be enforceable, even though collective bargaining wasn’t authorized.”

Listen: My WIBC report on my visit to a UIndy marketing class to get their take on the new state tourism slogan
https://raysteele.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ext-college-students-on-slogan-021814.mp3

Dear Indiana Office of Tourism Development,

Don’t misunderstand. I am not trying to play dog-pile on the wabbit. However, you can’t ignore the criticism of the “Honest To Goodness Indiana” slogan you chose. I had a hypothesis; that you didn’t talk to very many young people as part of your research (Tongue in cheek addendum: Statehouse interns don’t count. They like politics – virtually every other young person does not, therefore the interns are outside the norm).

So, at a cost of $0 as opposed to $100,000 that you spent on the research to come up with your slogan, I thought I’d spend time with some college students to see what they could come up in 30-45 minutes, as opposed to the several months it took to generate “Honest To Goodness.”

I owe everything in this report to the Consumer Behavior class of Dr. Deirdre Pettinga, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Indianapolis. She allowed me to take up the entirety of one of her classes to put this piece together. The students were outstanding, as you will hear, and please do not be offended by their repeated “old people” references. Besides, that was one of the biggest criticisms I heard from many people just after the slogan was released.

To be sure, any slogan you chose would be criticized by someone, somewhere, and only time will tell whether your slogan decision will reap long term benefits.

One thing I did learn. If you wish to have young people get your news, the way to do that is NOT to scheduled a big honkin’ press event or send out press releases to traditional media. Not a single student in a marketing class at one of the area’s prominent universities could tell me what the new slogan was. This was TWO DAYS after you announced it. Young people don’t watch TV news, listen to radio news or read newspapers. Frankly, about 90-percent of the time, neither do I – and I am 42 years old and working in the dang industry.

Listen to Ray’s interview with Frank Ferrante, star of An Evening With Groucho:
https://raysteele.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/frank-ferrante-podcasts.mp3

Doggone it, I love me some Groucho. Don’t scoff at Frank Ferrante if you haven’t seen his show on public TV or on YouTube. He loves Groucho and the Marx Brothers and has spent years perfecting this show.

The thing about Groucho is that 80 or more years later, the movies are still funny. The same comedy routines we have seen over and over again are still hilarious. The ridiculous greasepaint moustache is still so ridiculous that anyone could put one on today, decades after Groucho passed away, and most anyone would know it’s Groucho. Shoot, I just bought a Groucho glasses and moustache combo not long ago from Veach’s toy store in Richmond, Indiana – a bad arse place, if you haven’t been there.

There are three performances of An Evening With Groucho at the Studio Theatre at the Center For The Performing Arts in Carmel this weekend.

UPDATE: The Senate passed HJR-3, but with no ban on civil unions – Delph did not offer his amendment after a meeting of the Republican caucus. The resolution passed 32-to-17, with Delph keeping his promise to vote no. Four other Republicans voted no. Senator Richard Young was the only Democrat in either the House or Senate to vote yes. Since this version differs from the one passed in 2011, it will not be on the ballot this November.

wibc.com isn’t feeling well right now, probably tired of all the bleepin’ snow. Or our website is taking President’s Day off. So, I will post this here. This is my story of Mike Delph’s press conference from this morning, plus the audio of it unedited, at least until another reporter’s microphone fell from the podium and accidentally shut my recorder off.

Listen to the first few seconds of Delph, and you will understand why the mic fell off the podium – hint, see many of us holding our mics instead of them being placed on the podium. Me holding my mic also explains the picture I took with my iPhone above, in which it appears Senator Delph is about to regenerate – I have it on good authority that some of the female members of the press corps were hoping for Matt Smith.

Listen to Mike Delph’s press conference from the Statehouse:
https://raysteele.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/delph.mp3

Later in the press conference, you will hear Curt Smith, president of the Indiana Family Institute.

A final note; I did not record the end of the press conference where some reporters decided it would be a grand idea to ask Senator Delph about his relationship with his gay brother. This isn’t the Oprah Winfrey Show, and that is not relevant to the story. However, I do take issue with the Senator’s response to a question from Dan Carden of the Times of Northwest Indiana. Dan asked Senator Delph whether he had been drinking alcohol or using drugs at the time of his Tweets. Delph first said that the question was “asinine” and that he would not dignify it with a response, with audible gasps and groans from some of Delph’s supporters who were standing behind me and Dan. After the press conference, Delph told Dan face-to-face that he had not been drinking or using drugs, with others continuing to criticize Dan for asking the question. Given the extraordinary length of time the Senator devoted to Tweets last week, Dan’s question was fair and would have been asked of any politician in a similar situation.

My story:

Republican Senator Mike Delph hasn’t given up on reinserting a ban on civil unions to the proposed constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage, nor will he apologize for anything he said on Twitter last week.

Delph, with Indiana Family Institute president Curt Smith by his side, said he would ask to amend the bill known as HJR-3 with a sentence that would outlaw institutions that are similar to marriage for same sex couples before the Senate takes a final vote. If a majority of senators oppose it, Delph said he would not vote for HJR-3. “Passing this amendment in its watered down form with minimal legal protection is a political vote, and I think we are better than that and we should be honest and candid with the public,” Delph said.

The senator spent roughly the first ten minutes of a Statehouse press conference providing an brief history of bringing issues favorable to Christians back to state government, such as Christian prayer to open sessions of the state Senate. Delph says passing the marriage amendment with the civil unions ban, as it passed in 2011, should have been easy with Republican super majorities in both the House and Senate and with “the most marriage-amendment friendly governor we could have.” But the House removed the 2nd sentence of HJR-3, and Delph accused other Republicans of intentional moves to see that the civil unions ban was taken out. “I believe the outcome for the marriage amendment was determined long ago by leadership, especially in the Senate. By in so doing, these leaders have turned their backs in the name of political correctness and inclusion on the core conservative base of the Republican Party.”

Delph also had no qualms about sending out roughly 200 Tweets in less than a day after his efforts to reinsert the civil union ban failed last week. “There were no secrets. It’s all out there for the public to consume, digest and, yes, in some cases regurgitate. For some reason, we fear...

LISTEN: Louis Erwin, a survivor of the attack on the USS Indianapolis:
https://raysteele.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/louis-erwin-raw.mp3

When I first met Louis Erwin, it was almost like old home day. Erwin, 88, is a native of East Ridge, Tennessee, right next door to the place of my birth, Chattanooga. Erwin is also one of 38 remaining survivors of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis by a Japanese torpedo in the closing months of World War II; he was one of only 15 or so attending the latest reunion of the survivors at the Indiana War Memorial earlier this year.

I called Mr. Erwin when I heard that a new movie is being made about the Indianapolis and the ordeal of the 317 men who survived the sinking – and the almost 1,200 who didn’t (300 who went down with the ship, 880 who died while stranded in the water). I cherish every conversation with one of our World War II veterans. Our accomplishments seem so small compared to what they did seven decades ago.