The Candidates And Technology

With a nearly impenetrable wall of opposition from a socially irresponsible corporate media, obsessed with the ratings numbers the Trump Freak Show brings in, and with the inclination to rally around the establishment-- from MSNBC's Chris Matthews' non-stop promotion of Hillary over Bernie to the NY Times obvious willingness to bed-down with their pals at the Clinton campaign-- yesterday wasn't a great day for Bernie's campaign. No one expected wins in Florida or North Carolina, but Ohio's steep loss (56.5- 42.8%) wasn't encouraging. Almost have the delegates have been allocated now. 50.53% to go-- and, hopefully, Bernie will fight her for every last one of them.

Any TV news talk about Hillary's Theranos fundraiser hosted by the spectacularly failed company's CEO and Hillary's daughter Chelsea? None that I saw. "One of Clinton’s primary liabilities in her race against Bernie Sanders is the perception that she is overly friendly with corrupt corporate interests. So it's pretty bizarre that she has decided to have a (reportedly) corrupt corporation host her next big fund-raiser. And it’s only one of several unforced errors the campaign has made since last Friday; not on TV= never happened.

A few weeks ago Bloomberg reporter Sasha Issenberg noted that behind Bernie's political revolution there is a meticulously engineered grassroots network whose organizational roots go right back to the methods and strategies of the Howard Dean campaign... but without the fatal pitfalls.

Sunday Micah Sifry, writing for The Nation reported on how Bernie's campaign is reinventing the use of technology in politics and-- again-- it's all about grassroots organizing (rather than data). "Ever since the Bernie Sanders campaign gathered more than 100,000 supporters in 3,500 events on one night in July 2015," he wrote, "it’s been clear that the senator from Vermont was building a massive base for his upstart push for the presidency. By the end of the year, it had generated more than 2.5 million contributions to his campaign, topping the 2.1 million tallied at the same point by incumbent President Barack Obama during his re-election bid. That juggernaut has continued to expand, with another 2.5 million contributions since the beginning of 2016." Smart phones, social networking through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are helping to generate massive amounts of online engagement outside traditional campaign structures... Sanders has about 165 Facebook pages with 7.3 million likes, and nearly 200 Facebook groups with more than 358,000 members; Clinton’s numbers are roughly half that. The question for campaigns today: how to rapidly absorb and deploy the energy of volunteers as effectively as possible."

Monday, Sam Thielman reported that tech activists who analyzed each presidential candidate's platform as well as their debate stands and stump speeches see Bernie's tech-savvy campaign as the best hope in affecting citizens’ digital lives... while Trump's, predictably enough, is the most dismal.

The issues at hand are pressing: censorship, industry consolidation and mass surveillance are among policy positions Free Press opposes. The group is in favor of net neutrality, strong encryption, inexpensive internet access and local broadband competition.

Trump hasn’t weighed in at all on complex policy topics like cable provider consolidation or public programs to enable internet access, but everywhere he has offered comment, it’s been to the disappointment of Free Press analysts. He is generally against reforming the Patriot Act, in favor of censorship, opposed to Apple’s appeal of the FBI’s order to weaken iPhone security and has seemed to believe that net neutrality would "target conservative media."

But simple ignorance is a problem that crosses party lines, said Karr, and it’s an acute one in a country where net neutrality and anti-surveillance activism have crossed those lines as well. “We think that there’s a constituency out there, what we call the internet voter, that has already demonstrated his or her passion on this issue,” Karr said.

“More than 10 million people got involved protesting the Pipa [the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act] and Sopa [the Stop Online Piracy Act] legislation,” he said.

“The candidates by and large haven’t caught up with this new constituency.”

The encryption issue notwithstanding, Sanders is the major exception; Hillary Clinton got low marks on surveillance and censorship, though she is still preferable to all her Republican opponents, according to the group. “You’re going to hear all of the usual complaints, you know, freedom of speech, etc,” she is quoted as saying on the topic of censorship. “But if we truly are in a war ... we’ve got to shut off their means of communicating.”

There are scattered exceptions across the Republican spectrum: Cruz was one of just four U.S. senators to support the rollback of surveillance measures in the Patriot Act, and Rubio backed legislation to expand internet access.

But overall, Karr said, he thought the Republican refusal to break ranks on tech policy was far out of step with the electorate. “Senators Cruz and Rubio both added their names to a bill that would rescind the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality ruling, but they tend to ignore polling data that shows that net neutrality has broad bipartisan support,” Karr said. “In fact, a majority of people who identify as Republican voters say they support the principles of net neutrality.

“There’s a difference between what these politicians are saying and what their voting base believes.”

As "Big Dick" Cheney marches up Capitol Hill with his squad of enforcers, Congress needs to resist pressure for rash action. Plus other bailout fun!

[Click on all cartoons to enlarge.]

"Now, despite promises otherwise, the U.S. Treasury and the taxpayers will be in the position of bailing out speculators in the event that their risky plays in the securities business threaten the solvency of the soon-to-be-formed mega-banks."

-- Nancy Watzman and Micah L. Sifry, in an October 1999 PublicCampaign.org post following effective repeal of Glass-Steagal Act, which "for six decades has kept the banking, securities and insurance businesses separate from each other"

by Ken

Whew! So much ground to cover!

In the wake of the financial crisis, as you know, everything has changed. I already commented in my plaintive post this morning on the newly minted hopelessness of any action on infrastructure investment, no matter how desperately needed. This morning, of course, Senator Obama warned on Today that with the bailout in place, he doesn't expect to be able to do "everything that I've called for in this campaign right away."

Also this morning came word that a Bush regime goon squad headed by the biggest goon of them all, "Big Dick" Cheney, was headed for Capitol Hill to strong-arm members of Congress into giving the regime the blank check it's demanding for distribution to its friends and cronies.




(1) CONFIDENTIAL TO ALL SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES:
WHEN BIG DICK COMES A-CALLING, GET THE S.O.B. ON TAPE!

That's right, make a show of setting up a tape recorder and asking him if he minds you recording the conversation.

Think of what happened to that poor old troll Dick Armey, who has just revealed in his book that back when Big Dick was lobbying for clearance to go to war in Iraq, which Armey -- then the House majority leader-- opposed, Big Dick just plain lied to him about "secret" information in his possession which he knew would force Little Dick to vote the "right" way.




(2) JUST SAY NO TO A BAILOUT?
"I have come to the conclusion that the bailout bill cannot be
fixed and thoughtful members of Congress should simply say no"

In a post on Credo Blog, I Don't Trust Henry Paulson, Michael Kieschnick writes in part:

I have come to the conclusion that the bailout bill cannot be fixed and thoughtful members of Congress should simply say no. This is closer to the Social Security privatization fight - where only saying no until privatization was off the table - than the minimum wage increase fight, where Republicans extracted billions in tax breaks for business as the price of paying poor people a little bit more. Liberal congressional leaders are treating the bailout like the minimum wage deal. It is not. This vote is the bookend signature act of the Bush Administration to be coupled with the first vote authorizing Bush to invade Iraq. The details are not particularly relevant. Reports out of Washington say that the Bush Administration is comfortable adding in the notion of taxpayers getting an equity stake in bailed out Wall Street firms, but only if it is option, and not a requirement. And just who do you think is going to take that option? Not Henry Paulson. . . .

[I]f you are not quite sure, and think we have to act right now, just remember that this is the same Administration that explicitly evoked the certainty of nuclear weapons in Iraq - "we know where they are" in order to stampede Congress into voting a blank check for Bush. Just this morning, the word came out that Vice President Cheney is on his way to Capitol Hill to lobby. Time to adjourn. No possibly acceptable deal will be available.

(3) HAVE YOU SEEN THIS HILARIOUS FAKE-SPAM E-MAIL?
"I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business
relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude"

This post, of unknown origin, has been circulating all over the place. The Nation Washington Editor Chris Hayes posted it yesterday with the note: "I almost missed this email because it was diverted to my spam folder. But apparently Paulson is sending this around," but later had to add an update noting explicitly: "I didn't write this. It was sent to me by a friend and is making the rounds."

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

(4) TRUEMAJORITY TARGETS THURSDAY AS THE DAY WHEN --

"America Says NO Bush Bailout!"

Over at TrueMajority.org, they're trying to organize nationwide demonstrations Thursday against congressional capitulation to the Bush regime's steam-roller campaign for a bailout to benefit its friends and cronies.

Volunteers will host actions in cities and towns across the country with a simple message: "America says NO Bush Bailout!”

The events will be simple and easy to host -- we'll provide everything you need, then we'll alert hundreds of thousands of activists around the country to attend. And you can get personal assistance with a single e-mail to stopthebailout@truemajority.org. But someone has to take the first step...

Meet to say "No, No, HELL NO" to a $700 Billion giveaway to Wall Street criminals.

(5) FINALLY, IT'S NOT AS IF NOBODY FORESAW WHERE
"FREEING" OF THE "MONEY" INDUSTRIES WOULD LEAD

When it comes to early warnings of the storm that has descended on us, we don't know of any earlier than this remarkable post published on PublicCampaign.org by Nancy Watzman and Micah L. Sifry on October 27, 1999, five days after

The president at the time was of course Bill Clinton, a sobering reminder that Democrats have played a complicit role in the surrender of control of the U.S. regulatory apparatus to the surging forces of Big Money. But there's no question who's really driven the surge. The following year the Money People would rise in force to put their chosen stooge, George W. Bush, in the White House, ushering in an era of frontier lawlessness -- or worse than lawlessness. By the second term of the regime, all three branches of government would be serving as eager abettors of the reign of corporate greed and selfishness.

Here, then, is what Nancy and Micah wrote back in October 1999:

"Friday, October 22, 1999 should go down in history as the day that big money in politics won its biggest victory ever. That was the day that White House and Senate negotiators worked out a final, late-night deal engineering the repeal of a critical Depression-era law, the Glass- Steagal Act, that for six decades has kept the banking, securities and insurance businesses separate from each other.

The ramifications of this change are huge. First, insurance companies, brokerage houses, banks and credit card companies will be allowed to merge, a process that has been already taking place in dribs and drabs through regulatory waivers, but now will be vastly accelerated. Glass-Steagal had forced commercial banks out of the hyper-risky business of stock speculation and set up the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to protect individuals from bank failures. Now, despite promises otherwise, the U.S. Treasury and the taxpayers will be in the position of bailing out speculators in the event that their risky plays in the securities business threaten the solvency of the soon-to-be-formed mega-banks."

Today, by the way, Micah wrote: "I should note by the way, that neither Nancy nor I are trained economists. We just tried to pay attention to a few smart people, notably (in my life): Robert Sherrill, Tom Ferguson and Kevin Phillips. When I was a young(er) editor at the Nation, I worked a few special issues with Sherrill and believe me folks, his writing on the S&L Crisis more than stands the test of time. I've asked the Nation's editors to post some more of Sherrill's stuff on their website."

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