The story surrounding "i.e.*" continues to draw laughs.

"i.e.*" is the Great Richmond Chamber of Commerce's latest, three-year-long promotional campaign that supposedly will make our town "the Capital of Creativity" in the words of promoter-in-chief Thomas A. Silvestri, the publisher of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and past chairman of the chamber.

About 200 people shelled out $125 a head for a pep talk a couple of weeks ago on "innovation" at La Difference furniture store downtown. The idea is to get so-called "provocateurs" and other cool folk to talk about just how great their ideas are to the world beyond the James River and the Henrico County line. The chamber's idea of such people include a belly dancer, the owner of a shoe store and a bright young girl. From what I can tell, the Martin Agency and others are supposed to let the globe know that such talent is here as we wait for the "paradigm" to "shift."

At least that's the idea of a promoter named Andy Stefanovich who apparently wants to be on the "flash dial" list of every economic development official in the country along with pop urbanist Richard Florida and journalist Thomas Friedman of "The World Is Flat" fame.

As the murky concept of "i.e.*" started to sink in, a number of people have had questions about it. I did in a previous blog post. My Style Weekly colleague Don Harrison did in this issues Back Page. Carolyn Troiano wrote her doubts in a letter to the editor of the TD on July 6.

Here are some of the responses from our Fearless Leadership. Silvestri ran a full page of breathless praise for the program on July 3's Commentary section in the TD. One of his points: "Preschoolers dressed in business attire demonstrating why they're already leaders."

That really confused me. Does dressing up four-year-olds transform them? Why didn't he say: "Preschoolers dressed up like Stalin demonstrating why they're already dictators?" It makes about as much sense.

The "i.e.*" issue is apparently so touchy for the Silvestri-controlled TD that the editorial page editors trotted out Kim Scheeler, chamber president, to respond to Ms. Troiano's letter in print. This is part of his response: "These companies are looking for places where creativity annd innovation are part of the fabric as that environment fosters more innovation in the workplace."

Here's my suggestion. If Richmond's power elite really wants to put out the idea that we're all so terribly creative, leave Silvestri and Scheeler out of it. Silvestri can't type a line without insulting his readers'intelligence. Scheeler's prose can't get beyond consultant-speak gobbledygook. If Richmond is going to get competent leaders, maybe they should start by finding articulate people. It could also be that the "i.e.*" is so obtuse that no one can explain it.

Not to worry. The TD apparently hasn't posted Troiano's letter online so the world at large won't know of her skepticism about our new Capital of Creativity. One problem solved!

Peter Galuszka

For the perfect illustration of the sloppy and wishful thinking that plagues Greater Richmond, check out this morning's front page of the business section of the Times Dispatch.

There's one article shamelessly promoting the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce's new "initiative" with the cute name of "i.e.*" which purports to tell the world just how creative people in the city are.

Right next to it is a story telling us that Richmond's showcase example of "innovation," the Virginia BioTechnology Research Park "is doing well" but otherwise is in such dire financial straits that it is raising its parking fees and "voluntary" assessments of tenants. They've just lost one promising tenant to Denver and they're banking on the state government to come up with monetary support since North Carolina and Maryland support their research parks with state funds. Lots of luck there. The state has never paid a dime for the park which has produced only three actual incubated and gone-public companies. Two moved away and the other is bankrupt.

Therein lies the rub. Money. Venture capital and angel financing are lame in Richmond. Plus, the area does not have a Tier One university to anchor efforts for incubating start-up research companies. Go to North Carolina's Research Triangle Park and you have Duke, North Carolina State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Maryland has Johns Hopkins, the No. 1 medical research school, proximity to the National Institutes of Health and a serious biotech corridor stretching from Bethesda to Gaithersburg.

Here in Richmond we have the University of Richmond, a good liberal art school that does little research, and Virginia Commonwealth University which has some research but seems more stuck on the problems of its president Michael Rao who will finally be "inaugurated" next fall more than two years after he arrived. VCU is not in the same league as the Tar Heel and Terrapin schools, unfortunately. The biotech park here does have a big Philip Morris USA lab but it is notoriously secretive and company products help kill 400,000 Americans every year.

What to do? Well, if you are Thomas A. Silvestri, publisher of the Times-Dispatch and outgoing chairman of the chamber of commerce, you pretend, sort of like the kids in "Peter Pan.""We have to start believing we are the capital of creativity," he says.

That's where this marketing plan called "i.e.*" comes in. This week, for $125 a head, the "who's who of Richmond's creative scene" got together at the "secret" meeting place at La Difference furniture store for the launch. The three-year program is supposed to highlight "world class" creative talent here in Richmond. But if you look at the Chamber's Website, you find examples such as a young girl who regards "teal" as her favorite color and another individual who started a shoe store in Carytown. Sounds very creative.

The Martin Agency, the leading advertising shop that is an authentic Richmond claim-to-fame, is a big player in "i.e.*." Too bad advertising is just what it is — presenting an image someone wants you to believe, such as making people think that geckos are really savvy insurance executives with New Zealand accents.

What's missing here? Money, a top-flight university and competent local leadership.

Peter Galuszka

It might seem like a simple question: Is it hard to quit smoking tobacco?

For Philip Morris, past and present, it depends on what kind of barriers your corporate lawyers have erected.

To Louis C. Camilleri, CEO of Philip Morris International, now conveniently based in Switzerland, the answer is no. While smoking is addictive, he admitted, "it is not that hard to quit." Camilleri made the statement at PMI's annual meeting in New York.

Meanwhile, down in Richmond, at its annual meeting, Michael E. Szymancyk, CEO of Philip Morris USA, said that yes to both questions.

"Because tobacco use is addictive and can be very difficult to quit, our tobacco companies help connect adult tobacco consumers who have decided to quit with cesssation information from public health authorities," he told shareholders at Richmond's convention center.

Confused by this Alice in Wonderland doubletalk from what was once the world's greatest cigarette maker? It's just one of many contradictions.

The two Philip Morris' were split apart by corporate fiat and an army of corporate lawyers a few years back. The reason? The U.S. branch, now headquartered in Richmond, still makes cigarettes but tells you not to smoke them, yet it still makes a tidy profit by doing so. Last year, sales were $16.8 billion with net income of $3.8 billion.

Philip Morris International, which sells tobacco products everywhere but the U.S, rakes in even more dough: $27 billion in sales and $7 billion in profit last year.

The company split up was arranged to help block the U.S. version of Philip Morris from health-related lawsuits and for the American version to promote tobacco regulation by the Food and Drug Administration on terms favorable PM USA, in other words, in ways that lock in the dominant market share of its best-selling product, Marlboro brand cigarettes.

While PM USA, now wonderfully separate, fights a holding action on U.S. soil, its one-time sister can hop scotch the rest of the world selling even deadlier products. PMI has been testing a series of new -- some more potent -- tobacco products around the world.

One is Marlboro Intense that was test-marketed in Turkey. A shorter version of the flagship smoke, Marlboro Intense has tobacco packed more densely so a smoker can get a quicker nicotine kick when time is of the essence -- say, eating out at a smoking-restricted restaurant or working in a smoke-free building. Another product, fatter cigarettes called Marlboro Wides, was test-marketed in Portugal in 2006. The following year, the company introduced Marlboro Mix 9, a high tar and nicotine cigarette, in Indonesia, where more than half of all males smoke daily.

So, then, is it any surprise that Louis Camilleri, head of PMI, is going to say that it isn't that hard to quit smoking while Szymanczyk says (oh, moan) that it is?

The two companies are rich, well-run and deep-pocketed. Altria, owner of PM USA, buys favor by making major contributions to education, the arts, sports and culture. In Richmond, for instance, the decline or departure of a number of important companies has meant that just about two, electric utility Dominion and Altria, bankroll just about every community activity. And when the Virginia BioTechnology Research Park was floundering a few years back because it had little to show among its very large field of competing parks, newly-arrived Altria plopped down $350 million for a new research lab. Of course, they're not about to tell you what goes on inside those lab walls.

What's still overdue, however, is a reckoning. The handwriting is on the wall for tobacco products, unless you are dealing with Third World-types who live in smoking cultures and haven't been elevated to the level of caring or understanding about health warnings. In this country, cigarette smoking is on the decline. U.S. tobacco farmers started going to through a major downsizing two decades ago. The days of making deadly products and then telling customers not to use them can't last forever. Even smokeless tobacco has been shown to be dangerous as sales disappoint its makers.

It is "Oh So Richmond", that the city (and the state) still bets on a losing horse. Not the first time, though. Look at 1861.

If there is anything that I can take from my class is that promises are often empty, and rhetoric as sturdy as the air it fills. The saying holds true, actions are louder than words...even if not immediately self-evident.

In class we spent a good deal of time talking about why many people supported the National Socialists, then how they were forced to support them, and eventually why everything broke apart. Let me assure you, it was NOT because of Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt, they're assholes.

In the past few days I've written a good deal on the gap between their policy, their goals, and reality. Laws they passed were generally reflective of the mind of Hitler himself, and if the desired outcome was not met, new laws were passed and material was re-written and words construed to ensure that his state at least appeared to know what was up.

But memories are short and governments well-funded, and as time progressed people became caught in the media that surrounded them. As Himmler spoke of "male-comradeship" in the SS, he oversaw the systematic "breeding" of their children to multiple women "scientifically" deemed worthy of bearing a new little Fuhrer. As Hitler praised the "pure blood of the countryside" Germans moved en masse to cities for more pay, and the farms became worked on by imported Poles and Slavs captured from "impure" land. As Berlin fell the radio announced that, "Hitler was found dead after fighting the Bolsheviks!" And even in defeat his institutions carried on his deceit.

And I inevitably wonder about who we are now. Obama is CERTAINLY not a Nazi, and neither is Gingrich. But how often has their speech met our world? I think that although our intentions are generally good, and our atrocities more benign than in the past, we must always be critical and never faithful.

I think Organizing for America is a great idea, using the internet to give people a means and direction in trying to volunteer locally. But why is it on my.barackobama.com? The bottom says it is funded by the DNC and endorses no candidates but then why is his face everywhere? Isn't the point of political parties to elect people, anyway? Will it continue while he is out office? Don't Republicans want "stronger" communities too?

On TV now there's constantly ads from Republicans urging people to fight against GOVERNMENT-RUN EVIL STALIN DEAD BABIES health care, but why? Shouldn't the GOP want health care for ALL Americans? Instead of telling us"their plan is bad," why not ensure to us that your fears don't come true, but still work until all are covered and doctors well-paid and drugs cheap?

It does not take a genius to understand that Organizing for America is only left-wing media bull-honkey, making people think they are getting involved. Likewise, its not a secret that politicians who oppose social health care must be getting pounded by someone who received free Viagra from Pfizer.

What I got from this class is to always be critical, and my advice is to never become individualized, that having reasons for not doing what the herd wants always deserves attention; that questioning the world around us is often more productive than seeking answers...for anyone who claims to have them all must have gotten their ideas from someone else.

At first glance, it appears to this reader that the Times-Dispatch editorial pages are, at the least, uninformed. Often, the articles show an alarming lack of research. When mistakes on issues are made, they are simply ignored unless a reader draws attention to them. At other times the writing is inane.

Perhaps the pressure of working in such an atmosphere is telling in the writing. Every other area of the paper has shrunk; perhaps the editorial writers are watching the writing appear on the walls.

Whatever the reason, the editorial pages are terrible. They read as though the writers are all thoughtful pre-teens from 1955.

This writer is not aware of the pay scales extant in a newspaper, but it seems that editorial writers have achieved some status, and should expect higher pay levels.

Perhaps the paper should reduce its editorial pages staff, and reduce the editorial pages to a pair of columns, rather than fire experienced local reporters.

The question remains: will the readers still support a local paper with terrible local reporting and just AP news from better national news desks?  Or will they drop their subscriptions to a poor local paper in favor of better national news in another locally-available major newspaper, like the Washington Post or the New York Times?

I'm going for the Post.