Obama Wants Your Email Address & More in Chad’s Steaming Pile

Here are just a few things in Chad’s Pile that you will hear on Lubbock’s First News this morning. Give Chad your feedback on the steaming topics.

1. Email and Obama (link)

The Obama campaign is asking supporters to submit email addresses of their Republican friends.  The email that went out sounds innocent enough, but is it really?

The effort could help the Obama campaign build a database that would enable it to target Republican voters during the general election campaign. But, more perniciously, it could also become part of an Democratic effort to influence Republican primary voters to select a candidate Democrats think Obama could most easily defeat.

The Democratic National Committee last month released a video that seemed designed to damage Mitt Romney, the GOP candidate feared most by the Obama campaign.

The Obama information collection effort is cast under the mischievous guise of asking Obama supporters to “have a little fun at the expense of a Republican in your life” by signing them up to get an email from the Obama campaign ribbing them for having “inspired” the Obama supporter to donate.

The result, however, is that the Obama campaign gets a new trove of Republican email addresses that it could never have collected through voluntary submissions.

Unfortunately, there will be Democrats out there that go through with the Obama campaign request. That means you will start getting unsolicited emails from the DNC. Way to go Dems.

2. Marriage (link)

Is Marriage starting to become a thing of the past?

For many of us who sat through parental divorce in the 80s and were raised by single parents who stressed career first in the 90s, the elaborate circus wedding is no longer the ideal. In fact, Pew research from March indicates that 44 percent of millennials — people born after 1980 — believe marriage is becoming obsolete, compared with 43 percent of Gen Xers and 35 percent of Baby Boomers.

What do you think? Is marriage becoming a thing of the past? It generated a lot of discussion on Twitter yesterday, and I look forward to hearing what you and the listeners will say.

3. Gifts for teachers (link)

Do you give your child's teacher a Christmas gift? If you are in Alabama, you better not.

Many states and some individual schools ask that parents and teachers respect certain gift-giving guidelines, but Alabama’s law is far tougher than most. A teacher who is caught in violation could receive jail time and a fine of up to $6000.

According to an Associated Press story the Alabama Ethics Commission said teachers should have to abide by the same conflict-of-interest laws as lobbyists because “The suggestion that it is harmless for a school child to give a Christmas gift to their teacher ignores the potential for abuse.”

Certainly, schools sometimes witness competitive gift-giving by parents, with lavish presents that can sometimes be inappropriate. But how do teachers perceive them?

What about where you are from? Do you give the teacher a gift?

These and many more topics coming up on Thursday’s edition of Lubbock’s First News with Chad Hasty. Tune in mornings 6-9am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App.