{"id":31,"date":"2009-10-06T16:31:17","date_gmt":"2009-10-06T21:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mayor.davidmcrampton.com\/?p=31"},"modified":"2021-03-18T22:38:42","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T02:38:42","slug":"relevance-of-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/?p=31","title":{"rendered":"Relevance of Bias"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Virg Bernero or Carol Wood.\u00a0 Hard times make it difficult for an incumbent, and we are definitely in hard times.\u00a0 I&#8217;m the first to admit that I&#8217;m not the biggest Bernero fan &#8211; I voted for Benavides &#8211; but I&#8217;m definitely not a fan of Carol Wood.\u00a0 I, like everyone else, like you, have preconceptions and biases that will play a large part in how I vote.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, it&#8217;d be more noble to approach the election as a blank slate, but I think it&#8217;d be less wise, not to mention damn near impossible.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s important to consider a candidate&#8217;s past actions, even if things have changed in recent years.\u00a0 It&#8217;s relevant to consider what&#8217;s relevant to you and why.\u00a0 These biases should then be thoughtfully compared.\u00a0 What, in the long term, will be the candidate&#8217;s effect on you, your family, and your city?\u00a0 On our city?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never met Virg Bernero in person, but I&#8217;ve heard about his temper.\u00a0 According to my ex-wife, he blew up while giving a presentation to her class at LCC.\u00a0 I remember the City Pulse reporting about expletive-filled voice mails left to a City Council member.\u00a0 He&#8217;s known to be volatile.\u00a0 Has that taken a toll on his ability to do his job?\u00a0 It&#8217;s certainly put a dampener on his relationship with the City Council.\u00a0 It&#8217;s put him at odds with other strong personalities.\u00a0 Did it push Carol Wood to run against him?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve only been to a few City Council meetings over the years.\u00a0 The regular speakers, addressing whimsical and often nonsensical concerns to the governing body, only provide so much entertainment.\u00a0 I got bogged down with the hours of worthless referendums and acknowledgement ceremonies.\u00a0 Every time that I attended, though, Carol Wood stuck in my mind.\u00a0 The impression that I got was one of micro-management, of a need to control at every level, and to apply too much makeup.<\/p>\n<p>Something bothers me about her, and while I&#8217;m hoping not to find out what she&#8217;ll be like as Mayor, I&#8217;ve got reservations about Virg as well.\u00a0 I&#8217;m going to be devoting some serious thought to this, as it might make or break Lansing&#8217;s recovery from Michigan&#8217;s sinking economic trend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virg Bernero or Carol Wood.\u00a0 Hard times make it difficult for an incumbent, and we are definitely in hard times.\u00a0 I&#8217;m the first to admit that I&#8217;m not the biggest Bernero fan &#8211; I voted for Benavides &#8211; but I&#8217;m &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/?p=31\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[42],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paQnES-v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7798,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions\/7798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}