Posts Tagged ‘hard news’

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By @anarchyroll

No thing quite says the Republican party of the United States of America like a tax cut.

Did you notice how quickly and easily Congress was able to push through a tax cut for the wealthy? Almost every other piece of legislation (except for military spending increases) that has been attempted to be passed over the past decade has been a textbook example of two-party democratic government not working. If 1980s Dominos Pizza was delivering this tax cut, the oligarchs would get it piping hot and received no discount..

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Every aspect of this Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 is a big, bright, and bold example of how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in America. Follow the money is an age old expression. Congressional gridlock shows just how true that is. Because the only bills that have moved quickly through Congress have been military spending increases and this tax cut. The military industrial complex (who own he Democratic Party like violent pimps) and the oligarchs. King Kong ain’t got shit on them.

This bill is less about the Republican Party and more about who they represent and who they work for. Is it half of the American population? Is it a loud minority? A silent majority? Follow the money, who does this tax cut benefit?

Passing legislation has come to a halt in America since the last two years of the George W Bush administration. There was that one big exception, but almost every other bill has been stuck in legislative gridlock hell that is the United States Congress. Healthcare reform, immigration reform, financial regulation, digital privacy protection, et al have moved at painfully slow speeds if at all. Even common sense, bipartisan bills have had a hard time even seeing the light of day on the floor of either house of Congress.

But a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans? A 500 page bill involving one of the largest transfers of wealth in the history of the country? Less than a month is more than enough time. How does that happen? Why does that happen? Is that not why we fled England in the first place? I guess no taxation without representation only applies to taxes going up and not taxes going down, on less than two percent of the population.

Is this a tax cut to benefit people making less than one hundred thousand dollars per year? Less than fifty? Less than thirty?  Many might snicker and say those making so little don’t pay taxes anyway. That is the problem isn’t it? There are vastly more people in the current society who will benefit more in the day to day lives from taxes collected on the wealthy (social safety nets, community services) than by a one time, minor at best, windfall from a tax cut/credit.

The tax bill moved so fast through both houses that they have needed double, if not triple the amount of time to take the bills into conference committees to negotiate and fix the numerous, egregious math and budgeting errors. Drafting and finalizing a compromise bill behind closed doors has taken the place of proper on the floor debate as a result of this Congress moving at lightning speed to pass a bill that no one had time to read, let alone make logical decisions based upon critical thinking.

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Congress rushed through this bill like a college kid rushing to finish a final paper or cramming at the last-minute for a midterm. There are two key differences there and that is that when a college kid waits until the last-minute to do their deep work it only affects them and their roommates. The legislative branch of the United States of America however, effects just slightly more people than a dormitorium.

Greed and corruption like this used to have the cover of a lack of transparency. In the era of telephones and television and newspapers and radios and telegraphs it was much easier for politicians to say X, do Y, and say the result is Z. The age of the smartphone makes it easier to be shady, but much harder to keep it a secret. The wave of careers being ended by sexual misconduct allegations from Hollywood to Washington is evidence of this.

What is also apparent when held up to the light of day is the fact that this bill is amoral. Ethics, budgets, math do not apply to this trillion dollar wealth transfer. Negotiated in secret, passed before it could be read, full of so many errors that both the House and Senate versions needed to be negotiated so much they were both essentially rewritten. How does the urgency of this compare to the passing of hurricane relief to Puerto Rico?

The tax cut of 2017 that has been instituted by the Republican party has been called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 by some and the #TaxScamBill by others. Terms of endearment or damnation depending on which side of the political aisle and socioeconomic spectrum one falls on. What are facts and not opinions however are that this bill was so rushed it wasn’t read or proofread by the people who wrote it. That there were so many earmarks in there in such short order that many proved to be illegible when held up to the light of day or a camera

This tax cut is like putting your coat down at a bar, turning your back for a minute, then turning back to find someone going through the pockets and them playing dumb about it. They know what they’re doing, but are hoping to use ignorance as a guise for willful immorality.

 

 


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By @anarchyroll

Do social media platforms or the people running them have a responsibility to the public or to the republic? Is it in the nature of the services to spread modern-day propaganda which has been repackaged as fake news? Are these mediums a cause for negative events or are they simply mirrors and microphones? Are they bringing the worst out of people and society? Or are they just the biggest magnifying glass in the history of the species?

Are these services really that much different from the mediums that came before them? Radio and television have the exact same purpose as social media services…..to sell ads and the information about the people who consume them.

There is no moral compass at play with Facebook, with Twitter, especially with Google or Instagram or Snapchat. They are capitalist enterprises with one reason for existing, to make money. So if one or all of the companies get offered a lot of money from a foreign country to run political ads during a presidential campaign, why wouldn’t they take the money and put the content on their platform?

Oh, the information was blatantly false? It was straight up propaganda from a foreign government? Yeah okay but, they paid up front. Money talks. In America the Supreme Court has literally said money equals speech.

If anyone thinks Facebook or Google has a moral compass or conscious, try and find out exactly what they’re doing with all that personal metadata they mine from everyone who uses their services and/or apps.

It is not just a little too late to have the “ so social media companies have a responsibility” argument. That ship sailed once the collective population decided we didn’t want our phones to be phones anymore. Once the companies realized they were able to tap into our collective dopamine addictions by turning what used to be a portable audio communicator into a slot machine that can fit into a skinny jeans pocket, responsibility went right out the window.

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Do casinos have a responsibility to their guests other than making them enjoy losing their wages? Of course not, the whole business model is built around taking money out of people’s pockets and into the casino safe. Well social media is the casino and our attention and personal information is the cash.

On top of all that, Facebook (which owns Instagram), Twitter, and Snapchat are publicly traded companies. So quite literally, their only responsibility is to maximize profits for their shareholders. Their collective interest in the health of democracy only goes as far as the stock market opening and closing on time.

Americans love social media. We also love seeing powerful people get yelled at in public by elected officials. Dogs and ponies are adorable, who wouldn’t want to see a whole show of them? Well we got the best of both worlds last week when lawyers representing the big social media players went to capitol hill and got a verbal spanking from some very angry public officials.

It was modern American politics personified. Verbal spankings, non answers, legislation proposed but not supported, visual aide charts, legal jargon, and pledges to do better in the future. The vitriol directed at social media is just a reflection of our collective anger at ourselves. We’re angry for thinking social media would be a tool for good and not just a tool to make money.

We’re angry at ourselves for being so readily fooled by fake news that we’re all to easily manipulated into believing are the real thing. We’re angry at ourselves because we thought the internet, and the web 2.0 that social media represents would make us more informed and more united. Instead it’s deepened our divide and by putting our preexisting confirmation biases on technological steroids.

Our elected officials can yell at high-priced lawyers all they want. Public berating is much easier than putting regulations into place. It’s easier for Facebook and Twitter to higher more lobbyists than more moderators to discern what is being put on their platforms, by whom, and for what purpose. It’s easier to apologize later than to do the right thing in the moments of choice. We know this. That’s why we’re not angry at social media for what happened during the 2016 election season, we’re angry at ourselves.

 

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By @anarchyroll

With legislative gridlock being the norm in America nowadays, the courts are being left to decide political issues more and more. Partisan gerrymandering however is an issue that has been destined to be decided by the Supreme Court for decades.

Perhaps that is why the Republican Party has spent generations putting time, money, and resources into getting conservative leaning judges into as many judicial openings as possible at the local, state, and federal level.

A case like partisan gerrymandering is where the states meet the feds, where the courts meet the congresses. It appears very dry and boring on the surface but has all the makings of an Oscar nominated political thriller. The Supreme Court hears many cases but this case could be the most important not just of the year, but of the decade and the century. How? Ramifications.

The ramifications of a SCOTUS ruling on partisan gerrymandering has the potential to effect literally every election in the country that comes after. From national, to state, to local. From voting for president to voting on referendums. The way that voting districts are drawn up impacts every kind of election that takes place in America.

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Technology has changed the art of drawing up political districts into a science. Computer programs can set in place political districts that will lean towards one political party for decades to come. This has nothing to do with right versus left and everything to do with right versus wrong. It is one thing to be a liberal city in a conservative county or a conservative county in a liberal state. It is quite another to have voting districts carved up so that only one party has a pragmatic chance of winning elections and ballot measures. Thanks to modern technology being applied to centuries old rules, regulations, and practices that is now a reality.

Voting districts being drawn up with algorithmic precision has the potential to make election results permanent. Tipping the scale to the political party who gets to draw them in the favor from the war time paradigm of to the victor goes the spoils. Ronald Regan once called this practice “antidemocratic and un-American”. But as we have seen over and over again the modern day Republican party only likes name dropping Regan and talking the talk rather than walking the walk on how Regan served.

Permanent political power is literally the opposite of what America was founded on. Political affiliation doesn’t matter. No political party in America should ever be allowed to make their reign of power in a democratic government a permanent one. If the founding fathers wanted this, they never would have left England.

It is easy to beat up on the Republican party these days considering the state of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. But political gerrymandering is not more or less wrong because the Republican party is at the heart of this case. The Democratic party in Illinois has been doing this for generations. Being liberal or conservative, Republican or Democratic has nothing to do with the fact that gerrymandering on technological steroids is an affront to democracy in America.

The Supreme Court won’t be able to banish partisan gerrymandering, that’s not what the case they’re hearing is about. It is about setting a new standard and precedent for an age old practice that thanks to modern technology has been abused by those in power to maintain it. That seems to be going around these days like the flu.

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Previous AJC articles on Syria can be found here.

By @anarchyroll

The most powerful man in the free world.

That label is just as much a gift as it is a curse. Its like being born genetically blessed. Yes it has its advantages, that open doors others can only live vicariously through works of fiction. But the hate and judgement that comes with it is at a level that morphs the blessings into curses through the eyes of what becomes a scarred mind.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

To have the power to solve any, one, individual problem is a blessing. To have that power in a world of 7 billion and a country of 300 million where the majority publicly expound their expectations of the use of that power in the most malicious echo chamber known to mankind, is quite the head weight.

Military intervention in the Middle East, after the last thirty years, tends to fall on deaf ears to the majority of people outside of the Military Industrial Complex, justifiably so. After both Gulf Wars, who can honestly be blamed for being completely apathetic towards anything and everything in the Middle East?

Syria distinguished its case for US military intervention in the way most important…body count.

I proudly voted for Barack Obama twice. His voluntary attachment to the word hope has been as much a detriment to his legacy as it was to his ascendance. He stepped into the expectation of the largest, most diverse, and most demanding populace in the history of the world.

Economic depression, gender inequality, student loan debt, global warming,  clean up from two wars, racial injustice, the subprime mortgage crisis, the potential collapse of the American auto industry. That’s all before tackling the healthcare industry. Few presidents before have had so many pressing issues that were pressing the red button at the time of initial inauguration.

Many people think he should have used the leverage and power of the bully pulpit for causes other than what his administration chose to put their focus one during his two terms. Syria’s body count separates it from other issues such as equal pay, net neutrality, redistricting, and marijuana legalization.

The military industrial complex being up and running and forever open for business also seemed to dictate that action in Syria be taken drastically sooner than it inevitably was. Fuck, Syria is so messed up that it is the one issue that Russia and the US seem to agree on even with the shady Russian arms sales connection to the region.

Anyone who has been paying attention to the Syrian Civil War for any length of time is happy to hear that President Obama admits feeling responsibility for the ongoing girth in body county in the conflict. He should. The unchecked, unbalanced, rubber stamped budgeted, defense department dictates to any sitting president that; any issue or conflict that would involve or require the military, have action taken as if it were an urgent priority not because it’s a priority but because of the automatically alloted resources that the MIT has at its disposal at all times, for all time, until the end of time.

It always has been and always will be the body count that draws and keeps my attention about Syria. I suppose if I was older I would have the same attachment to Rwanda, AIDS, Vietnam, Auschwitz, and so on. I suppose if I were older I would have expected more from Clinton, Carter, Kennedy, and so on.

President Obama made healthcare his number one priority in office, for better and for worse, because of the issue’s direct ability to effect life and death.

One can be the most anti Obamacare person in the world, take away all the economic implications and political allegiance, and any human being can empathize with a person in power leveraging that power to help directly save lives.

At the end of the day, at the end of the issue, is the value of human life.

It is hard to make the case every life is precious when the global population exceeds 7,000,000,000. The body count of the Syrian Civil War greatly exceeds and overshadows the body count that die in America due to lack of health insurance. But what is the value of human life? Are we a global village? Or do Americans come first?

When one wins the right to be called the most powerful man in the free world, the greatest of all power comes with the greatest of all responsibility. After years and years and hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of casualties in the Syrian Civil War that have all occurred during the Presidency of Barack Obama; the man, the myth, the legend finally admitted in public his feeling of responsibility on the issue.

The death, destruction, desolation, and dehumanization that has taken place over the past half decade makes Syria either a turning point, a sticking point, a flash point, or a new normal for global society. Will we stand up for hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children being shot, tortured, gassed, and butchered or will we use our own personal drama as an excuse to stay silently complacent in mass executions and mass graves?

Barack Obama has publicly admitted his responsibility, will we ever admit ours?

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By @anarchyroll

What is journalism? What does it mean to be a journalist in 2016?

What is journalism in the era of media conglomeration? Has media conglomeration turned journalism as it was known in the 20th century into public relations for the 1%?

Is journalism;

  • What we see on local evening news? Sensationalized reporting of gun violence amongst those on the low-end of the economic ladder between sports, traffic, and weather.
  • What we read in newspapers and magazines between the advertisements, crossword
  • What we see on national news and cable news? Human interest pieces, celebrity gossip, and opinions given about politics, sports, and Hollywood all looped and edited to elicit emotion rather than thought or discourse.

Is journalism meant to report facts and information that affects large numbers of people based on the political, economic, and/or environmental the information will impact? Or is it just people writing/broadcasting what newspaper owners and trending topics dictate?

Journalism is about facts and information. It’s about exposing injustice to the public. It is about shining the light of truth into the dark corners of conspiracy and deceit.

Just because a small group of billionaires has bought all major news outlets (media conglomeration), doesn’t mean they have bought the facts and information that qualifies as news. Just because political parties receive large donations and cater to these media conglomerates, doesn’t mean they are immune from the facts and information they wish to keep secret from being reported to the public.

As was shown in the DNC Leaks, MSNBC was in direct contact with the Democratic National Committee about what to say and what not to say about Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. If MSNBC is a news station, and they are conspiring to turn the news into specifically crafted public relations, do they not deserve to have this conspiracy reported on? Is that not a news story?

When the news is owned by the people the news used to report on, so they don’t get reported on anymore, then the nature of gathering facts and information as well as reporting them must change. If the 1% would divest all holdings in all news reporting outlets, and all journalism was once again independently financed, what purpose would Wikileaks serve?

In a post print media conglomerate landscape, hactivism has evolved into journalism.

How much content have credible news outlets turned the DNC Leaks into? How many articles, pictures, videos, sound bites, polls, tweets, vines, snaps, and stories have been created because of what Wikileaks has done? The only ones who seem to think it’s wrong, are the people who have been exposed and their allies.

Mainstream media using the information provided by Wikileaks makes them complacent which makes what Wikileaks does with their hacking no longer any different from what a beat reporter did with their pen, paper, and access to newswires in the 20th century. Ten years ago Wikileaks may have been an underground, illegal, immoral, criminal, hacking networks of deviants, anarchists, and outsiders. In 2016, they are just another credible source alongside the Associated Press and Reuters. In 2016, Wikileaks is journalism.