#policies and ideologies... vote increases... media coverage...

[captainfairygodmother]

All I'm saying is that Reform UKKK have gained votes rather quickly following global instability, just like a certain German Party going from like 12 to 230 seats between 1929 and 1933...

All I'm saying is that the same certain German Party became a more nationally supported party rather than the local weird Munich party because a certain man got media coverage when he was arrested for a certain Munich Putsch in 1923, just like how controversies regarding Reform have made them practically the only party outside of Labour and the Tories to be reported on...

All I'm saying is that there's some similarities...

[newsservicesnews]

Understanding Political Parties and Their Role in Political News

Politics shapes the world we live in, and political parties play a pivotal role in this dynamic process. A political party is an organized group of people who share similar political ideologies and come together to influence government policies and elections. As political events unfold, political news becomes essential for keeping the public informed about the latest developments. This article explores the importance of political parties and their influence on politics and political news today.

Political Parties and Their Influence on Society

A political party is a structured group that competes in elections to represent the interests of a particular ideology or segment of society. These organizations offer citizens a choice in the political system by putting forward candidates who promise to address the public’s concerns. Their policies often shape how the country tackles issues such as healthcare, education, and taxation. The role of politics and political news is to highlight these agendas and analyze their potential impact on society.

The Role of Political News in Democracy

In a democratic society, political news serves as the essential channel through which citizens receive information about political parties and their actions. From election coverage to policy changes, news outlets provide insights into what different political parties are advocating for. These updates allow individuals to make informed decisions about which candidates and parties align with their values. Without reliable political news, the democratic process would be compromised, leaving the public uninformed and disconnected from political life.

Political Parties and Electoral Processes

During elections, political parties become the central players in the political process. They nominate candidates, craft policy platforms, and seek to win the support of the electorate. As politics and political news cover campaigns, debates, and voting results, they provide voters with the tools to evaluate candidates and make informed decisions. The media’s role in reporting on political parties during elections cannot be overstated, as it directly influences how people perceive the candidates and their platforms.

How Political News Affects Public Perception

The way political news reports on political parties can shape public opinion and influence voter behavior. Through media coverage, citizens can learn about the actions and decisions made by politicians, which directly impact their views of political parties. Whether highlighting successes or scandals, the media plays a significant role in influencing how the public feels about the candidates running for office and the political parties they represent. This makes political news a powerful force in shaping public perception.

Challenges Faced by Political Parties Today

Political parties face numerous challenges in today's complex political landscape. With the rise of social media and alternative news outlets, their messages are subject to greater scrutiny and faster dissemination. Additionally, as political polarization increases, parties must navigate an environment where their messages can easily be distorted or misinterpreted. Politics and political news continue to evolve, with new platforms and trends challenging traditional methods of campaigning and public engagement. Political parties must adapt to these changes while maintaining their core ideologies.

The Future of Political Parties in Political News

As political news continues to evolve, political parties must adapt to the changing media landscape. The rise of digital platforms and social media has altered how campaigns are run, allowing parties to engage with voters directly. Moving forward, political parties must embrace technology and innovative strategies to stay relevant and connected with their base. The future of politics and political news will likely see even greater integration of digital tools, shaping the way political parties communicate with the electorate.

Conclusion

In conclusion, political parties are central to the functioning of democratic systems, and political news plays a crucial role in keeping the public informed about their activities. To stay updated with the latest political developments and insights, visit jvpolitical.com. By following reliable sources of political news, individuals can stay engaged in the political process and better understand the impact of political parties on their society and future.

[sublimeobservationarcade]

Coalition Plays Politics Whilst Australians Struggle

The Coalition in opposition has voted against legislation designed to halt the massive increases to energy costs for Australian households due to the gas company cartel and its control of that market. The Coalition has, also, voted against the creation of a future fund designed to build 30, 000 new social housing units. Australia is in the midst of a housing and cost of living crisis with rents increasing by up to 30% in places like Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. High inflation has put up the prices of food, energy, and rents. The RBA is increasing interest rates and wants to increase unemployment in Australia to bring down inflation. Despite these facts the Australian media have not challenged leader Peter Dutton on this behaviour. How can this be? The Coalition has opposed everything without being questioned during a cost-of-living crisis. The Coalition plays politics whilst Australians struggle.

Mikhail Nilov at Pexels

Peter Dutton & Coalition Votes No On Measures To Help Australians

Could this be another example of the Australian media being controlled by corporate interests? Murdoch, the rabid right-wing owner of Fox News, and Nine Fairfax control most of our newspapers and media networks on TV and radio. This concentration of media ownership means that the voices we read and hear represent the interests of corporate Australia to the exclusion of more diversity. The ABC is an outlier in this conservative, white, mainly male echo chamber. Of course, we have social media these days to lessen the influence of this unhealthy concentration of commercial interests. Despite this the headlines are controlled by the traditional media, and they all follow the leader on this basis.

Conservative Corporate Media Gives Coalition A Free Pass

Editors and producers control the stories journalists write and film. Owners and managers of media organisations determine the direction their editorial policies follow. The youthful foot soldiers of these networks and publications are pointed in particular directions when going after stories. News Corp is blatantly unobjective in its coverage of political events, as its perspective is always conservative, white, propertied, and mostly male. Nine Fairfax is more concerned with the interests of its major advertisers when reporting news.

There is a complete absence of our political class meeting the challenges of the cost of living/housing crisis in a non-partisan manner. Australians are living in tents on the fringes of our cities, but the Coalition plays politics over contributing to solutions. This is despite having had 10 years in power and their economic management being largely complicit in where we find ourselves today. The Robodebt scheme illegally attacking poor and vulnerable Australians, which cost the lives of some. This has cost us $1.8 billion in a settled class action against the government. The complete failure to build social housing or support the states in doing so. The unnaturally generous tax arrangements given to multinational miners and gas exploration companies. The many rorts and pork barrelling exposed by the auditor general. The waste involved in the Job Keeper subsidies paid to corporate Australia during the pandemic. The labour hire deals and consultancy outsourcing which have damaged wage growth and gutted the public service in Australia. These were all ideological attacks on the fairness and equitability of our nation. The neoliberal manipulation of the economy to favour their coterie of business insiders to the detriment of ordinary working Australians in financial terms. The Australian media has been largely silent on these gross misuses of Coalition power and position whilst in government. “Labor is now the preferred party to handle the rising cost of living and interest rates after a collapse in the proportion of Australians who believe the Coalition is best on key aspects of the economy. The result of the latest Guardian Essential poll of 1,123 voters is a warning sign for the Peter Dutton-led opposition, suggesting that voters are not angry at the Albanese government’s handling of the economy, despite the pain of 12 interest rate hikes and inflation.” - (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/13/guardian-essential-poll-mortgage-holders-interest-rate-hikes-rba-labor) Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt & Financial Freedom ©WordsForWeb

Read the full article

[96thdayofrage]

How lawmakers block progress and maintain oppressive policies

Many lawmakers, especially in the South, fought to maintain the nation’s founding principles of white supremacy.

In Alabama’s Dallas County, more than half the population was Black in 1961 but fewer than one in 100 Black citizens were registered to vote due to daunting poll taxes and other measures meant to disenfranchise Black voters. 

Across the South, registrars could selectively ask Black voters to read part of the Constitution, then decide whether the text had been read to their liking, said Carol Anderson, an African American studies professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

As such, they had enormous power to block people from voting, Anderson said.

A modest civil rights act passed in 1957 had enabled the Justice Department to sue states for voting rights violations but put the onus on people whose rights had been violated, requiring them to challenge systems designed to keep them down, Anderson said. By 1963, a federal report examining 100 counties in eight Southern states found that Blacks remained substantially underrepresented at the polls.

Selma, the seat of Dallas County, became an important battleground as tensions escalated. A local judge stifled demonstrations by declaring public gatherings of more than two people illegal, drawing a visit from Martin Luther King Jr. and thrusting Selma into the national spotlight.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Southern legislators repeatedly derailed civil rights-related proposals while chairing key committees, said David Bateman, an associate professor of government at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. 

“Their control over these committees allowed them to gate-keep the agenda,” Bateman said.

Images of officers attacking voting rights activists – including then 25-year-old activist John Lewis – on a Selma bridge with clubs and tear gas in March 1965 helped sway public support. Days after the so-called “Bloody Sunday” incident, President Lyndon Johnson pressed lawmakers to pass broad voting rights legislation. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 banned literacy tests and other discriminatory practices while requiring federal approval of proposed voting-eligibility standards before states could implement them.

Today, Bateman said, as increasing voting restrictions continue to disproportionately affect people of color, “there’s every reason to believe voter disenfranchisement campaigns will persist.”

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 reversed a key part of the landmark Voting Rights Act, allowing states to alter voting rules before obtaining federal consent. This summer, the court issued a ruling that disqualifies votes cast in the wrong precinct and only allows family members or caregivers to turn in another person’s ballot.

At least 18 states have enacted laws making voting harder this year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. In Montana, legislators abolished Election Day registration. Florida curtailed after-hours drop boxes.

Georgia shortened absentee ballot request periods, criminalized providing food and water to queued-up voters and made opening polls optional on Sundays, traditionally a day when the Black vote spikes as congregants vote after church. 

“We still have not dealt with anti-Blackness in this society,” said Anderson, of Emory University. “We’re really looking at the same pattern, the same rhymes.”

In September, Democrats introduced an elections and voting rights bill that would expand early voting options, identification requirements and access to mail-in ballots while allowing Election Day registration.

Police have long upheld racist laws, often with violence

As Blacks demanded equality during the civil rights movement, they faced hostility not just from fellow civilians but from those entrusted to protect and to serve.

In 1961, Freedom Rides occurred throughout the South as activists challenged Southern non-compliance with a Supreme Court decision ruling that declared segregated bus travel unconstitutional. The campaign met with often ugly resistance: In Birmingham, riders were attacked by a Ku Klux Klan mob, reportedly with baseball bats, iron pipes and bicycle chains.

Within the mob was an FBI informant who told the agency of the impending attack, but the agency did nothing, reluctant to expose its mole. Two decades later, a U.S. District Court judge excoriated the FBI for its inaction.

“The FBI was passively complicit,” said Diane McWhorter, author of “Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution.”

The attack occurred with the blessing of Alabama public safety commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor, who told Klan leaders that police would wait 15 minutes before stepping in.

Paul Butler, a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., said he sees the links between the police violence of Birmingham and “Bloody Sunday” and the tanks, tear gas and rubber bullets employed at today’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

“We have John Lewis and others marching on that bridge protesting police brutality, and they get attacked and beat up by police,” said Butler, author of the book “Chokehold; Policing Black Men.” “And last summer, throughout the country there were marches on police brutality – and at these marches, police attacked the people protesting police brutality. The parallels are clear.”

People of color continue to be disproportionately affected by fatal police shootings, with significantly higher death rates than whites over the previous five years, researchers at Yale University in Connecticut and the University of Pennsylvania reported last year. “So it’s unclear whether change is actually occurring,” Butler said.

Critics note the police presence and brutality faced by Black Lives Matter protesters during the unrest following Floyd’s murder – the open-source database Bellingcat found more than 1,000 incidents of police violence – in contrast with the relatively unprepared force that was unable to stop hordes of mostly white Donald Trump supporters from breaching perimeter fencing and entering the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“There has never been a time when policing of public speech hasn’t been racially biased,” said Justin Hansford, executive director of Howard University’s Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center in Washington, D.C. “With the civil rights-era protests, most people understood that they were standing up for core American principles as opposed to Jan. 6, where they were trying to stop people’s votes from being counted.”

A USA TODAY analysis of arrests linked to the insurrection found that 43 of 324 people arrested were either first responders or military veterans; at least four current and three former police officers now face federal charges.

Education leaders have maneuvered to keep segregation, hide racist history

Education leaders have also at times sought to stall progress.

Two years after the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision ruling segregated schools unconstitutional, Virginia Rep. Howard Smith took the floor to address his colleagues.

There, he introduced a document signed by 82 representatives and 19 senators, all from former Confederate states. The so-called Southern Manifesto called for resisting desegregation and blasted the Brown decision as an abuse of judicial power violating states’ rights.

The gesture demonstrated how deep resistance to desegregation ran in the South. The next year, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus summoned the National Guard to prevent nine Black students from entering Little Rock’s Central High, in defiance of a federal order.

“After the ruling comes down, you have massive resistance in the South,” said Sonya Ramsey, an associate history professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “You have school boards saying they’re not going to do it. You have government officials saying they’re not going to do it. That’s a system.”

Resistance came in many forms, she said, from committees formed to study the matter in perpetuity to policies that allowed whites, but not Blacks, to transfer schools. 

Some institutional leaders did make positive strides, Ramsey noted, even if for economic reasons. While many Southern cities resisted desegregation efforts, officials in Charlotte, North Carolina, eager to promote the area as a progressive business climate, constructed a districtwide busing plan designed to have schools reflect the community with the help of Black and white families and local leaders.

But institutional ills continue, Ramsey and others say – in charter schools now struggling with diversity, in faulty school funding formulas and in ongoing debates about what students should be taught about slavery and racism. Bills limiting how educators can teach about racism have been introduced this year in at least 28 states.

A 2018 Southern Poverty Law Center study of educational standards in 15 states found none addressed slavery’s justification in white-supremacist ideology nor its integral part in the economy; furthermore, the report noted, a separate survey found just 8% of high school seniors identified slavery as the Civil War’s cause.

“It’s fear of the unknown and of disruption,” said Donnor, of William & Mary. “And seeing that the status quo is no longer acceptable. One of the major parallels is in the hostility of the pushback. If you peel back the layers, you can see the similarities.”

News media shapes how Americans view race

The news media has throughout the nation’s history helped Americans understand racial issues – for better or worse. 

In 1962, after James Meredith tested federal law to become the first Black student admitted to the formerly all-white University of Mississippi, the station manager of Jackson’s WLBT decried the decision on-air, saying states should make their own admission decisions.

Station officials strongly supported segregation, rebuffing calls for opposing views, avoiding civil rights coverage and notoriously blaming technical problems for interruption of a 1955 “Today Show” interview of attorney Thurgood Marshall. Ultimately, after repeated complaints to the Federal Communications Commission and a crucial federal court decision affirming public input in FCC hearings, the station lost its license.

“These are the stories we weren’t taught in journalism school,” said Joseph Torres, co-author of “News For All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media.” “They (civil rights groups) were saying, it’s a public airwave, and it’s not being fair to the Black community.”

Black media stepped up to offer different perspectives of mainstream narratives or provide coverage that wasn’t otherwise there. When 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in 1955 by two men who would ultimately be acquitted by an all-white jury, Jet magazine published a photo of Till’s mutilated body that helped kickstart the civil rights movement.

While some white-owned media such as Mississippi’s Delta Democrat Times and Lexington Advertiser condemned segregation and violence, others such as Jackson’s Clarion-Ledger held to the status quo. Gannett, the parent company of USA TODAY, purchased the newspaper in 1982.

“Had the Clarion-Ledger taken a leadership position denouncing atrocities going on in front of their faces, the state would be farther along in terms of getting past some of the pain,” said Mississippi Public Broadcasting executive editor Ronnie Agnew, who served as the newspaper’s executive editor until 2011.

In 1968, the landmark Kerner Commission, appointed to investigate the unrest that had exploded in national riots, faulted the media in addition to longstanding racism and economic inequalities. “The press has too long basked in a white world looking out of it, if at all, with white men's eyes and white perspective," the commission’s final report read.

“They made it absolutely clear that the white press had done a terrible job of covering civil rights,” said Craig Flournoy, a journalism professor at the University of Minnesota who has critiqued the Los Angeles Times’ “incendiary” coverage of the 1965 Watts riots, for which the newspaper won a Pulitzer.

Flournoy said the Times relied heavily on white police and white elected officials for material. In one particularly egregious example, he said the newspaper, having no Black reporters on staff, sent a young Black advertising staffer into Watts to dictate dispatches by payphone, but his notes were repurposed into sensational stories that exaggerated the supposed Black threat.

[politicalsci]

In future history classrooms, students will likely be told the tale of the tag-team assault on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn by the mainstream media and MPs.  It will be taught as a harbinger of what is erupting into the most pivotal crisis facing Western politics in half a century: the chasm between ordinary people and the elites.  We are seeing it with the Republican establishment’s failed efforts to derail the Trump train and the Democratic establishment’s more successful efforts to extinguish the Bern. This is an emerging contest in which the opposing sides are defined by an ever-growing wealth gap.  The two groups are now viewing each other as adversaries thanks in part to an internet and social media that exposes the disconnect between the mainstream media (MsM) narrative and what the masses feel.  

Corbyn, the self-effacing, mild-mannered veteran activist who was elected with a larger mandate than any party leader in British history, and had pleaded for a ‘kinder, gentler politics’, has become the most media-persecuted politician since George Galloway protested the Iraq War.  While the right-wing press is expected to be harsh on a Labour leader, biased coverage of Corbyn crosses traditional boundaries, infecting centre-left papers as well. The MsM’s seeming contempt for the people’s decision gives pause to anyone who values democracy, whatever one’s ideological persuasion, whether you agree with Corbyn’s policies or not. The unrelenting bullying of the ordinary Party members’ choice of leader may even represent the death-throes of a ‘politico-media complex’ in futile denial that it has lost the hearts and minds of the masses. We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of what Noam Chomsky eloquently deconstructed in his Manufacturing Consent.  

Since Jeremy’s historic victory, the MsM, seemingly in coordination with some MPs, have carried out hit and run attacks. Trawling the bottom of the barrel, they find what might otherwise be un-newsworthy statements or incidents and in unison, twist events to suit the prior agreed upon talking point: Corbyn is a bad leader. Defamation lawsuits are avoided by inserting phrases like ‘Corbyn seemed to’ or ‘appeared to’ before each outlandish accusation. Like any dishonest or poor debater, once the scurrilous claim, outright lie or flimsy argument is disproved by their opponents, they hastily move on to the next attack, creeping under the hitherto reliable darkness of public amnesia. The cynical objective of this approach is to sully the victim’s image by planting vague, amorphous negative associations in the public mind. 

A recent London School of Economics study provided academic evidence of what many of us had observed since Corbyn’s election.  It found that 74% of newspaper articles on Corbyn did not include his views, or represented his views out of context, with media coverage generally de-legitimizing him as a political actor.

These techniques have been supported from inside the Party by McCarthyist witch-hunts which provide the MsM machine with an endless stream of victims being expelled, banned and suspended for crimes you never hear the full details of, that have been presided over by internal bureaucrats who have unclear authority and less clear mandates.

The techniques have paid off to some extent, reflecting a reality of the last half century described in Manufacturing Consent. As an Australian expat, I lived in Oxford, and up and down demographically diverse London suburbs, from Hampstead to Essex, from Kensington to Kilburn. I spoke to people of all walks of life and differing party loyalties.  Almost all liked Corbyn as a human being.  The few negative comments about him pre-referendum included ‘weak leader’ or ‘incompetent’. When pressed as to why, there was usually silence. When informed of his policies on the economy, foreign policy and social issues, there was often agreement, and if not, there was at least a repeating of the concession that ‘he’s a decent guy’. While their positive views toward Corbyn were due to his policies, record or values, negative associations seemed based on nothing more than the media’s assiduously repeated talking points.

After the referendum chaos, there was something more solid to hang on the embattled man, gleefully provided by Media Inc. People said either ‘he was weak/lazy in his campaigning for Remain’ or ‘he disingenuous as he was a secret Leave supporter’. When it is offered that, in the long line of politicians upon whom to heap Brexit blame, perhaps the guy who campaigned against it should be after those who made calculated political decisions to support it, my fellow converser usually remembers that people like Nigel Farage also exist. 

On the inside, 172 MPs voted no confidence in Corbyn in a secret ballot, avoiding accountability to local party members. The puzzling arrogance and flippant dismissal of the public will was on full display when Ian Austin MP, who opposed an inquiry into the Iraq War at least three times, told Corbyn - who had protested against Saddam in the 80s when he gassed the Kurds and opposed the 2003 invasion (right side of history on both counts) - to “sit down and shut-up“ during his parliamentary apology following Chilcot. Politicians’ antipathy to Corbyn has been as consistent as JC’s record on Iraq. When he began his journey as leader New Labour stalwarts were wheeled out to express their dismay at an ‘unelectable’ being permitted to occupy such a hallowed seat.  

However, in a shocking act of impertinence, Labour members chose someone who actually held the same views as them.  Corbyn won with a thumping majority of 59.5%, annihilating his closest rivals who received 19% and 17%, with the Blairite candidate bringing up the rear with 4.5%, suggesting a repudiation of New Labour.  Who would have predicted that members of a party built on a workers’ movement would have rejected an ideology that Margaret Thatcher referred to as her greatest achievement? Labour membership swelled to vote in Corbyn as old school ‘true believers’ returned to the fold, joining hands with millennials filled with indignation nourished through a bypassing of the MsM and reliance upon the internet which had exposed to them unjustness of the present reality.  In just the final 24 hours before the deadline, the Party received over 160,000 applications to vote. There were three surges in membership in 2015: one after the election, one after Corbyn entered the leadership race and another when he became leader. 

100,000 people joined the Labour Party in the days after the coup was launched, most of them to support Jeremy.  Within hours’ notice, 10,000 people turned up to a pro-Corbyn Momentum rally next to the very Parliament inside which their deepest beliefs now seemed to occupy such low regard; a massive display of passion and sacrifice by people who can’t afford to take time off work, have families to look after and most likely live nowhere near Westminster.  Membership is set to reach 600,000, making British Labour the biggest social democratic party in the Western world.  This is what democracy looks like.

It’s not only Party members whose views are being studiously ignored by the MsM.  The actual electorate’s opinions are also seemingly irrelevant to media assessments of Corbyn’s electability.  In Jeremy’s tenure, Labour has won all four by-elections, including with increased majorities, performed better in local elections than under predecessor Ed Miliband and won the London and Bristol mayoralties.  Overall, polls show Labour trailing the Conservatives by a smaller margin, 4%, pre and post-referendum under Corbyn’s leadership than in the final months of Miliband’s tenure where it trailed by between 6 and 14%.

Additionally, Corbyn’s monumental popularity amongst Labour members and the explosion of membership numbers provides a key advantage in a country without compulsory voting: an enormous, enthusiastic army of volunteers to execute the all-important ground-game that carried Obama to victory twice. With the poor being underrepresented in voter turnout in Britain, this presents a significant electoral opportunity that can be tapped not through centrist pragmatism but via passionate supporters.  People, more than advertising, can convince people to get out and vote. And as the referendum’s colossal turnout proved, when they’re mad at the establishment, they’ll turn out in droves.

Given this and the example set by Bernie Sanders, you could only honestly describe Corbyn as definitively unelectable if you’d stumbled into the Large Hadron Collider and entered a parallel universe which combines Orwell’s 1984 and Seinfeld’s Bizzaro World. That or you obtain all your ‘news’ from the mainstream media, which has created its own Orwellian bubble.  Black is white, up is down. Victims of racism, and veterans sporting battle scars from a lifetime of fighting racism, are labelled bigots. Supporters of the elected leader are castigated for dividing the Party.  Politicians most in touch with the current popular anti-establishment mood are lampooned as relics of the past.

The MsM, reassured within its echo-chamber, has mistakenly continued to assume each one of us believes that all our neighbours buy this, that everyone else supports the officially sanctioned line and you’d be a tinfoil-hat-crackpot not to.  Instead, a thing called the internet and its social media component have empowered ordinary people to, at least to some extent, see what their fellow citizens really think and connect with them. 

When thousands of indignant ordinary people launch criticisms of MsM and political elites on social media, they are dismissed as bullying trolls.  Those nakedly conspiring to destroy Corbyn maintain such a self-entitled mentality that they seem to expect him to drop to his knees and apologise to them for every tiny scratch they incur in the course of jamming knives into his back.

Like Bernie, Jeremy is an outsider in both policy and style: genuine, slightly scruffy, even being castigated to “put on a proper suit” during Prime Minister’s Questions.  He abjures the ruthless, focus-group talking points-led tactics of more polished operators; his mere existence enraging some because it shines light on their own vacuity.  He speaks openly about big issues that impact people’s daily lives. Corbyn’s rise signifies that the game has changed, that values and principles are now political capital, not political baggage. The baby-boomer almost stands out as a festering indictment of some of his colleagues who, through no fault of their own, came of political age in the post-historical 1990s when careerism filled the void left by idealism.

Like with Bernie in America and across the Western world, the people are not fighting for one man.  They are fighting for themselves, for each other and for those overseas who have even less say in the policies that may impact them most.  They are fighting for change.  Defaming, bullying, interrogating and tearing asunder the humble, elderly Jeremy Corbyn amounts to spitting in the face of the alienated masses he represents.  The manufacturing of consent is no longer consensual.  Now, what you do to Corbyn, you do to them. 

[FULL ARTICLE LINK]

[blackfreethinkers]

Former President Jimmy Carter has bluntly described what Americans euphemistically call “campaign finance” as a system of legalized bribery. Transparency International (TI) ranks the U.S. 22nd on its political corruption index, identifying it as more corrupt than any other wealthy, developed country.

Without a mass movement continually pushing and prodding for real change and holding politicians accountable—for their policies as well as their words—our neoliberal rulers assume that they can safely ignore the concerns and interests of ordinary people as they make the critical decisions that shape the world we live in. As Frederick Douglass observed in 1857, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will.”

Millions of Americans have internalized the myth of  the “American dream,” believing they have exceptional chances for social and economic mobility compared with their peers in other countries. If they aren’t successful, it must be their own fault—either they’re not smart enough or they don’t work hard enough.

The American Dream is not just elusive—it’s a complete fantasy. In reality, the U.S. has the greatest income inequality of any wealthy, developed country. Of the 39 developed countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), only South Africa and Costa Rica exceed the U.S.’s 18% poverty rate. The United States is an anomaly: a very wealthy country suffering from exceptional poverty. To make matters worse, children born into poor families in the U.S. are more likely to remain poor as adults than poor children in other wealthy countries. But the American dream ideology keeps people struggling and competing to improve their lives on a strictly individual basis, instead of demanding a fairer society and the healthcare, education and public services we all need and deserve.

The corporate media keeps Americans uninformed and docile

The U.S.’s corporate media system is also unique, both in its consolidated corporate ownership and in its limited news coverage, endlessly downsized newsrooms and narrow range of viewpoints. Its economics reporting reflects the interests of its corporate owners and advertisers; its domestic reporting and debate is strictly framed and limited by the prevailing rhetoric of Democratic and Republican leaders; its anemic foreign policy coverage is editorially dictated by the State Department and Pentagon.

This closed media system wraps the public in a cocoon of myths, euphemisms and propaganda to leave us exceptionally ignorant about our own country and the world we live in. Reporters Without Borders ranks the U.S. 48th out of 180 countries on its Press Freedom Index, once again making the U.S. an exceptional outlier among wealthy countries.

It’s true people can search for their own truth on social media to counter the corporate babble, but social media is itself a distraction. People spend countless hours on facebook, twitter, instagram and other platforms venting their anger and frustration without getting up off the couch to actually do something—except perhaps sign a petition. “Clicktivism” will not change the world.

Add to this the endless distractions of Hollywood, video games, sports and consumerism, and the exhaustion that comes with working several jobs to make ends meet. The resulting political passivity of Americans is not some strange accident of American culture but the intended product of a mutually reinforcing web of economic, political and media systems that keep the American public confused, distracted and convinced of our own powerlessness.

The political docility of the American public does not mean that Americans are happy with the way things are, and the unique challenges this induced docility poses for American political activists and organizers surely cannot be more daunting than the life-threatening repression faced by activists in Chile, Haiti or Iraq.

So how can we liberate ourselves from our assigned roles as passive spectators and mindless cheerleaders for a venal ruling class that is laughing all the way to the bank and through the halls of power as it grabs ever more concentrated wealth and power at our expense?

"How can we liberate ourselves from our assigned roles as passive spectators and mindless cheerleaders for a venal ruling class that is laughing all the way to the bank and through the halls of power as it grabs ever more concentrated wealth and power at our expense?"

Few expected a year ago that 2019 would be a year of global uprising against the neoliberal economic and political system that has dominated the world for forty years. Few predicted new revolutions in Chile or Iraq or Algeria. But popular uprisings have a way of confounding conventional wisdom.

The catalysts for each of these uprisings have also been surprising. The protests in Chile began over an increase in subway fares. In Lebanon, the spark was a proposed tax on WhatsApp and other social media accounts. Hikes in fuel tax triggered the yellow vest protests in France, while the ending of fuel subsidies was a catalyst in both Ecuador and Sudan.

The common factor in all these movements is the outrage of ordinary people at systems and laws that reward corruption, oligarchy and plutocracy at the expense of their own quality of life. In each country, these catalysts were the final straws that broke the camel’s back, but once people were in the street, protests quickly turned into more general uprisings demanding the resignation of leaders and governments.

They have the guns but we have the numbers

State repression and violence have only fueled greater popular demands for more fundamental change, and millions of protesters in country after country have remained committed to non-violence and peaceful protest - in stark contrast to the rampant violence of the right-wing coup in Bolivia

While these uprisings seem spontaneous, in every country where ordinary people have risen up in 2019, activists have been working for years to build the movements that eventually brought large numbers of people onto the streets and into the headlines.Sanders’ wildly successful first presidential campaign in 2016 pushed a new generation of American politicians to commit to real policy solutions to real problems instead of the vague promises and applause lines that serve as smokescreens for the corrupt agendas of neoliberal politicians like Trump and Biden.

Erica Chenoweth’s research on the history of nonviolent protest movements found that whenever at least 3.5% of a population have taken to the streets to demand political change, governments have been unable to resist their demands. Here in the U.S., Transparency International found that the number of Americans who see “direct action,” including street protests, as the antidote to our corrupt political system has risen from 17% to 25% since Trump took office, far more than Chenoweth’s 3.5%. Only 28% still see simply “voting for a clean candidate” as the answer. So maybe we are just waiting for the right catalyst to strike a chord with the American public.

In fact, the work of progressive activists in the U.S. is already upsetting the neoliberal status quo. Without the movement-building work of thousands of Americans, Bernie Sanders would still be a little-known Senator from Vermont, largely ignored by the corporate media and the Democratic Party. Sanders’ wildly successful first presidential campaign in 2016 pushed a new generation of American politicians to commit to real policy solutions to real problems instead of the vague promises and applause lines that serve as smokescreens for the corrupt agendas of neoliberal politicians like Trump and Biden.  

We can’t predict exactly what catalyst will trigger a mass movement in the U.S. like the ones we are seeing overseas, but with more and more Americans, especially young people, demanding an alternative to a system that doesn’t serve their needs, the tinder for a revolutionary movement is everywhere. We just have to keep kicking up sparks until one catches fire.

[canchewread]

Editor’s note: Originally, I was going to save this quote until Bernie Sanders declared he was running for President in 2020, but I think there’s enough evidence that he’ll eventually declare now to confidently proceed with this write up - if he chickens out, I guess I’ll just have to deal with this post being thrown in my face for a while.

Today’s quotation comes from Matt Taibbi’s 2016 US Presidential election campaign book, “Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus” - a volume that mostly consists of essays Taibbi released over the course of the entire campaign (Primaries and General Election) with some glue in the introduction and concluding portions of the book, to tie the whole thing together.

As those of you who regularly read my work here on Can’t You Read are no doubt already aware, I’m a big fan of Matt Taibbi’s writing - both in terms of style and the value of the content he provides. While nobody who can effectively work in mainstream media for over a decade should be trusted completely, I think it’s fair to say that Taibbi is, by the comparatively poor standards of his industry, an honest, rational observer of an institution (U.S. politics) that is anything but honest and rational. He is also, despite the numerous attempts to smear him, a fundamentally decent human being and that still matters a little bit in the world of American politics - although, maybe not as much as it should.

As for the book itself - Insane Clown President is ultimately a frustrating collection of writing; while two thirds of the book represents Taibbi at the absolutely height of his powers and easily ranks among his best work, the remaining third feels like a bunch of social media posts and fan mail cobbled into something resembling a narrative, then inserted into the book to fill out the page count. For example, while hashing out the rules of the GOP debate drinking game and conducting unofficial primary polls was probably a lot of fun for Taibbi’s followers on Twitter, it simply doesn’t translate into an enjoyable experience when transported onto the written page - the effect is actually quite jarring and somehow manages to detract from the rest of the extremely high-quality analysis Matt brings to the table.

The upshot here, are of course passages like the one quoted above, from a chapter appropriately and presciently titled - “June 9th, 2016: Democrats Will Learn All the Wrong Lessons from Their Brush with Bernie.” It is in moments like these that Taibbi seems to have his finger directly on the pulse of the class conflict between the voting public and the political elite (of which the mainstream media is effectively a public relations arm) in the United States. Unfortunately, despite Matt’s incisive analysis of the problems that would eventually define the entire 2016 election, the author’s (somewhat myopic) attachment to a liberalized ideal of previous editions of the Democratic Party, ultimately prevents him from drawing the obvious conclusion his own writing exposes throughout the book - that Trump is going to win, because American politics and its political media, are both fundamentally broken.

Despite these issues however, Insane Clown President’s most important contribution to understanding the current US political environment is Taibbi’s ability to recognize both swine emperor Trump and Bernie Sanders as symptoms of a populist insurgency waged not against internal factions within the normal framework of U.S. politics, but in opposition to the entire elite American ruling class and its institutions - our “establishment” if you will.

Before I go any further into what this means for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination race however, I’d like to talk a little bit about the false media narrative that the left wing populist movement behind Bernie Sanders is somehow “the same” as the revanchist, reactionary right wing movement that propelled Herr Donald to the White House in 2016 - a narrative which is, in a word, bullsh*t. While both political phenomenon are motivated to some degree by a mistrust of, alienation from and even outright loathing of the U.S. establishment and its institutions, the reasons for that mistrust, the overall end goals and the origin point of these respective insurgencies are totally different.

The far right “populist��� movement that Trump was able to usurp during the 2016 Republican primaries, has its roots in Paleoconservatism and the largely AstroTurf, billionaire-funded conservative “Tea Party movement.” It is a fundamentally reactionary movement, created by the rich to blame America’s ills not on deregulated capitalism and an absurdly greedy ruling class, but instead on the proverbial “other” - brown-skinned immigrants, Muslims, the gay and transgender community, women, African Americans, the Jewish left, political correctness, big government and most of all, the dreaded “socialists, communists and liberals.” At its core, what we now call “Trumpism” is a revanchist Frankenstein’s Monster; the result of decades of weaponized and fetishistic worship of American exceptionalism, white supremacy and the absolute rule of capital - the only problem for the architects of this movement is that Trump managed to hack the code and establish his own mini-cult of personality by being more explicitly fascist and hateful than they were.

The movement propelling Sanders to the forefront of American politics by contrast is a genuine, grass roots endeavor. Although it’s easy enough to make the argument that the anti-globalization movement, Occupy Wall Street, anti-fracking activists, and the Black Lives Matter protests have all provided inspiration and ideological underpinnings for this democratic socialist wave, the fact is that there is no unseen hand at work here; no billionaire backers, no guerrilla marketing wunderkinds, and no AstroTurf corporate media campaigns can claim responsibility for the phenomenon Sanders has helped embody in American politics. I say helped, because this too represents a key difference between the DemSoc wave and Trumpism; as a policy-focused movement, this new American left isn’t just about Bernie Sanders and already we’ve seen inspiring young leaders like Lee Carter, Rashida Tlaib, and especially Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez step to the front with their own democratic socialist message.

Finally, unlike Trumpism, this Sanders-inspired DemSoc insurgency is a movement whose policy proposals match their rhetoric; striving for economic equality, environmental protections, universal health coverage, increased educational opportunities for all, a restoration of democratic rights, better jobs with improved working conditions, the right to collectively bargain, affordable housing, ending mass incarceration, women’s rights, civil rights, and yes, despite what you’ve heard in corporate media owned by rich white people - ending racism and injustice against all marginalized people. Indeed, particularly on the issues of supporting Palestinians living under Israeli apartheid and ending American imperialism abroad, the movement Sanders helped to inspire appears to be driving him further to the left on the political spectrum; although not as much as some, myself included, would like.

In short, if Trumpism is about dragging the country back to a more explicitly white supremacist era, the movement Sanders helps represent is about establishing a fairer, more compassionate and more democratic America than the world has ever known - even under FDR.

There is however, one potential analogue between these two insurgencies and this is where I think the above quote from Taibbi’s book comes in; while there are no real similarities between Trumpism and the Sanders movement, there are a great deal of similarities between the ways both established U.S. political factions and their media minions have responded to an insurgent voter’s revolt.

In 2012, and fresh off the heels of a traumatizing insurgent Tea Party revolt within the party, the Republican establishment put all its chips down on making Barrack Obama a one term president. Expending what would turn out to be the last of their political capital, the GOP establishment managed to force through the Butcher of Bain Capital, “center-right” candidate Mitt Romney during the GOP primary process - a choice distinctly divorced from the anti-elite sentiment (if not reality) of a Tea-Party base now openly indulging in Birtherism and starting to warm up to, you guessed it, Donald Trump. It was the type of calculated bet the party elite would only have been prepared to make if they were sure Romney would win the 2012 presidential election, because they were essentially gambling that deposing the hated Obama would quell the rage their reactionary base felt at being betrayed by the GOP elite, embodied in the form of Romney.

In retrospect, it seems obvious now that when (despite all of Karl Rove’s rosy projections) Romney went down in flames, the GOP establishment was fatally fractured; having demonized Obama as literally an enemy of the American people, when the Republican brain trust failed to deliver his head on a platter that morning in 2012, they effectively lost the revanchist right who’d powered their surge back to political relevance only two years before.

From the outside however, this was not immediately apparent; the Republican leadership quickly announced an election autopsy and soon enough the same people who’d failed Republican voters in 2012 were offering their prescriptions for how to win the next one in 2016. Putting their mighty heads together, these elite GOP power brokers came back with arguably the only candidate more Republican establishment than Romney, Jeb Bush.

It was as we now know, a drastic miscalculation but one that should have been recognized long before Trump won the GOP nomination. When Party leaders lacked the ability to preemptively weed a wild and opportunistic seventeen candidate Republican nomination field, including, incredibly, a credible “center-right” candidate from anointed establishment GOP champion Jeb Bush’s *own* state - the writing was already on the wall for a party leadership group that was only keeping up appearances after exiting 2012 essentially politically bankrupt and broken.

Moving the timeline forward four years, it’s extremely difficult not to see strong parallels on the Democratic side of the ledger. Here too we see a party that barely staved off a radical insurgency by expending an enormous amount of political capital to ram through a highly-unpopular candidate, all the while dismissing the growing outrage from the left wing portion of their base as irrelevant because Hillary Clinton would definitely be the next President of the United States. After losing the 2016 election, the Democratic establishment quickly conducted an autopsy, made some vague platitudes about listening to the angry left-wingers that backed Bernie Sanders and ultimately decided to keep doing the same things they’ve always done before; just like the Republican Party in 2012. Yet, as the 2020 Democratic Party race opens, it is clear that the liberal establishment no longer has enough control over the party to weed the field, and prevent more than a dozen nearly-identical centrist candidates from splitting a vote that would otherwise be united under one candidate, preordained to fight off Bernie Sanders once again.

Can a broken, politically bankrupt Democratic Party hold off Sanders a second time doing essentially the exact same things that failed to hold off Trumpism on the GOP side of aisle?

I wouldn’t bet on it - as beloved American author Samuel Clemens is often (and perhaps falsely) reputed to have said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

- nina illingworth

[youroriginalstudentkojodans-blog]

How does the society perceive the media today? Is it any different from the old times when the black American and the white tag of war was immense? Or is it even worse than those times? Would a person who concludes that the media is an evil arena where social inequality and injustice be given the gaze look? The media has been perceived by many as the system where knowledge, wisdom, and power are reproduced and helps in maintaining supremacy over others. Unfortunately, what was intended to be useful and constructive has turned out to be destructive, a platform for societal ills. Many are the times when ethnicity, racial, gender, political religious and class division creep in and take over the media and promote a series of negative impacts in the society’s health. This paper will address how the press contributes to retaining inequality, the existence of divisions in the society, some of the lessons learned and the application of the oppositional gaze to the topic area.

The media works against social norms and values by promoting inequality. Immensely high and rising inequality relates to a lower welfare state, poverty, and a poor system of leadership. The media influences the beliefs and the preferences of the ordinary people as a way to manipulate social events. An oppositional black gaze was the immediate response to developing any independent media mainstreams that would charter any political movements that would work towards racial equality (Hooks, 2001, p. 249).  According to Noam (2013), the higher levels of inequality in the society correlates with the high incentives for the wealthy classed groups in the society that have a high capacity to manipulate the voter's choices and able to use the power of the media for non-social welfare raising propaganda. The existence of ignorance and uncertainty about some of the significant influences of societal illness permits the press to maintain inequality within society. It is from such ideology that Hooks talks of high working classes being racially segregated. It, therefore, is from the ignorance and tendency of the media to have a better part of the society in political and social issues that continue to lower equality.  It is a consequence of the press on beliefs of people in the much-skewed information world that promotes the exploitation of others in society.

The media plays a vital role in the national segment. It is from this role that comes to a great responsibility to promote major aspects of societal health. These include racism, gender discrimination and imbalance, social class division, political issues, and related religious conflicts. The society consists of people and the different organized institutions, belief and culture. The monarchy, upper class, and wealthy class get a positive affirmation from the media as celebrities deserving the honored and privileged positions (Lee, 2014). Schools, media coverage, documentaries, or drama among other institutions spend much of their time exploring these higher social classes. On the contrary, the causes and effects of poverty on the lower level are rarely investigated. This has contributed to the current social status quo gap in society.

The ethnic groups in the society today have found themselves in the midst of the institution. Recently the film institutions have experienced something which Hooks refers to as a “rupture” in which the spectator's rebels against the complete identification with the film’s discourse before any racial integration (Hooks, 2001, p. 250). The educational institutions such as universities, business organizations, prisons have had a series of media sensitization that has worked contrary to societal virtues. The society requires a natural coexistence of balance and equality. However, the use of media by these institutions to insinuate sensitivity to human concerns have created a thrift for promoting ethnic grouping and stereotyping. For example, prison can channel a whole range of ethnic issues. Imagine having prisons for African-Caribbean, Black people, Asian and Muslim people, what implication would this have on the ethical groupings. My opinion is that the media has persistently been used by these institutions to create a belief Asian or Muslim people are associated with national threats as well as associating specific crimes with the particular ethnic group.

Institutions and the media have used different genders of different age groups in their routine functions. The way media represent these groups generates a stereotypical impression. For instance, advertisements use children as cute, little angels, active consumers, accessories and brilliant to lure customers to their products (Lee, 2014). On the other side, as spectators to the world occurrences, the black men repudiate the reproduction of gender-based and racist films that taints the black supremacy. Hooks (2001) admits that much concern has been based on race and racism issues and rarely on gender (p.251). Therefore national-wide there has continued to be increased need for sensitizing the role of women to create gender equity. However, these institutions have continued to retain the inequalities in this area by the customs and corporate cultures already rooted in the organizations.

Daring enough, political movements and parties, as well as religious denominations, have been top in the list of promoting and maintaining illness of the society. Learning institutions, for instance, subject students to studies of the different political regimes, subject them to an array of political structure and arrangement, create segregation of the students based on political movements that exist and creating a mark of identity for either democrats or republican at the early stages of life. Hook (2001) refers that the black could feel their rebellion towards the white’s supremacy by daring to engage in phallocentric politics. The perception was that power was for the white and political regimes were for the white to exercise control over the rest. Imagine when Obama became the President of the United States of America. It was the most significant fact globally. This adds to this intensity; media is used by these political avenues, persons and the wealthy cartels working closely with the government to maintain the levels of inequality in the society.  Institutions and political regimes use the media to manipulate the choices that the people are to make by creating a belief powered by propaganda (Noam, 2013).

Similarly, religious denomination has been thriving amidst the division vessel. Having a black person in the early days in a white’s church was black coal in the snow. The preaching of the different ethnic, racial and denominations have continued to engage the religious division. Equally important, institutions and the media act as the vessels through which this division thrives. Inevitably, religious conflict and frictions result from this as some religion view theirs as the superior denomination to others.

The most important way that the society today has used to internalize the lessons learned is through the creation of awareness.  The impact that interactive learning institutions based poses is ideal for the teenage society whose behaviors and attitude are vulnerable to trending senses (Garaee, Kaveh, Shojaeizadeh, & Tabatabaee, 2015). Sensitization of the youthful age can be transformative in creating a society that is more aware of the requirements that would enable them to use the media to promote societal health. Hooks (2001) discusses that “identification can only be made through recognition.” Internalizing requires the society today to acknowledge the significant effects that this affluence has on the health of the society and accept that the belief exists before attempting to transform them. Human behaviors and beliefs are strongly correlated to the cultural norms and values. The society can internalize these lessons by promoting individual participation in collective activities rather than effective ones to create commonality (Gavrilets & Richerson, 2017). For instance, encouraging voting as a form of practice of democracy and choice for visionary leaders instead of propaganda spread by the media. Also, the individuals utilize the normative values to the maximum, and substantial impact on the culture initially created yet irrelevant today.

Tomasky (2018) reported to the New York Times that Republicans have continued to win in the argument for the best economic policies of the country and that the Democrats seek to the very supply side of the Economics. Based on the opinion formed, Republicans have a theory and a story on how the economy should grow-the supply-side economics. This theory instigates cutting down taxes on the rich and reducing regulations to attract and motivate innovations and economic activities that will later increase tax revenue. Now, in a society of creating class division and political inequality, the illness of the community is prone to convince under such conditions. The welfare of the lower classes would diminish significantly, and the alignment would continue to promote inequality.

In summary, the media in many ways has been the cause and the vessel for many societal illnesses. Ranging from the political, ethnic, racial, gender, religious to class division, the role of the media in the society has poisoned the minds of many and helped in maintaining social inequality. It is essential to internalize the lessons learned through learning programs and being on the frontline in advocating for these corrective measures that will enable a balance to be achieved. Concurrently, the ideology of belief and culture to which most of the states are accustomed to needing to change for better societal growth and development.

[marcjampole]

FCC enables more media consolidation. The result will be less real news.

We typically blame the decline of the news media in the 21st century on one of two factors: the growth of the Internet as a 24/7 source of news and the proliferation of fake and false news.

But given much less attention is the consolidation of news media and news-gathering operations. It used to be that the federal government had strict regulations about the number of radio and television stations any company could own and forbade ownership of both newspapers and broadcast stations in the same town. Even when single newspapers came to dominate many towns, there were typically many different organizations searching for and presenting the local and national news. A series of laws and new regulations over the past 35 years—aka the Reagan Era—has consolidated media ownership.

The key law was the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which enabled companies to own more stations. Larger companies bought smaller ones and suddenly instead of hundreds of owners of TV and radio stations across the country, there were only dozens.  We saw the impact on radio as Clear Channel, and recently Sinclair Broadcasting, and other companies owned by right-wingers gained control of the editorial policies of more and more stations.  Pretty soon the range of opinion on radio narrowed and moved extremely right. While Rush Limbaugh began making a name for himself before 1996, it was the consolidation of media ownership that led to the domination of talk radio by Rush and his clones—Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved, ad nauseum.

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took a major step in making the problem worse by voting to allow a single company to own both print and broadcast media in the same town. The FCC also voted to increase the number of TV stations one company can own in any given market. It was a close vote, 3-2, on party lines. Don’t be embarrassed if OpEdge is the first you’ve heard of this awful decision. It received very little coverage; the New York Times buried the news on page two of the business section.

The Obama Administration FCC also announced its intentions to end the restriction on ownership of both print and broadcast media in 2011, but eventually backed down. This time, under its brand new Trump-blessed FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, an Obama appointee to the FCC known for his pro-broadcasting industry views, the FCC has made good on the threat.

The rationales today and in 2017 are similar: That local media needs to consolidate to be able to compete against the giants of Facebook and Google. Pai, for example, has argued that local media companies would have a better chance to compete against Internet behemoths by combining local market resources.

The argument is completely specious for two reasons. First of all, most broadcast stations and daily/weekly newspapers are already owned by large chains. It’s not the case that the various media in Cincinnati will join forces to do one great job on local news. Instead, one national giant that also controls Toledo, Ohio, Syracuse, New York and four dozen other localities will end up owning all the media in Cincinnati. The new rule will surely lead to ever greater concentration of media outlets in the hands of fewer companies.

The second problem with Pai’s argument is the confusion of news-gathering with news media. Despite the alarming decrease in the number of daily newspapers over the past few decades, the number of absolute media outlets has increased: Internet news sites, cable news and specialty weekly and monthly pubs have more than made up for the decline in newspapers.

The problem is that while media outlets have increased, news-gathering on both the local and national level has decreased, as recent studies by the Pew Foundation and the FCC . And consolidation of media outlets is a major cause. When a company buys more than one newspaper, it can use the same news-gathering staff for all the news, except for the news that pertains to each newspaper’s particular readership, something most often defined by locality. All the newspapers in the Gannet or Tribune chains get the same national and international news and columnists. But each local paper has to find its own local news, typically in competition with the three or four local TV stations, the local business paper and the local alternative weekly.

Now that a single company is allowed to own all of these local properties, the company will be stronger, but primarily because it is able to cut costs through using the same news room to cover stories. The impact on overall news production will be horrific: Instead or more editorial boards deciding what is newsworthy, one will. Instead of three or more points of view on a story, there will be only one. Instead of three or more sets of reporters trying to dig deeper, only one will—that is, on those stories that the editors and business sides decide is worthy of delving. Instead of three or more sets of opinions on local issues, only one. Finally, instead of three or more organizations with ties to differing networks of national and international news gathering, there will be but one. The result will be less reporting.

Instead of actual reporting, what we’ll see once large media companies start buying up local properties is more of the same filler that has been replacing real news for the past 15 years or so, including more opinion pieces like this blog; more coverage of celebrities and sports; more repackaged how-to’s and advice columns; more part-and-parcel use of news release, fact sheets and “articles” produced by the government, rightwing think tanks, large companies and public relations firms; and more “sponsored” news reports, which are advertisements pretending to be news.

If the FCC and the current administration really cared about freedom of the press and creating a stronger marketplace of ideas, instead of allowing companies to buy more media properties, it would implement regulations and put pressure on Congressional leaders to break up the media industry oligarchy and stop the pilfering of free content that occurs on Facebook and Google News that denies news-producing media outlets needed revenues. Unfortunately, it would take Congressional action to do most of what I’m recommending:

Limit ownership of media properties to a total of 10 properties, including television and radio stations, newspapers, news magazines, cable networks and websites, and push for expedited divestiture by the current media giants.

Prohibit companies from owning more than three cable networks, and make all cable networks provide at least two hours of news coverage a day.

Prohibit companies owning ISPs from also owning media outlets.

Reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine, which used to make every broadcast television and radio outlet to devote some airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. The Fairness Doctrine was the law of the land from 1949 until 1987, when the Reagan FCC voted to end it.

Allocate billions of dollars in aid to nonprofit or small for-profit media outlets to produce original reporting and fund it at least partially by taxing social media services and Internet service providers (ISPs) like Spectrum and FIOS for their “free use” of news.

Legalize strict principles of journalistic ethics and start to prosecute journalists and media company executives for knowingly disseminating fake and false news. I propose to walk a fine line between censorship and responsible reporting. But by focusing exclusively on the reporting of facts and not the spouting of opinions, I think we can protect true freedom of the press.

I am not very optimistic about any of my recommendations being pursued by either a Republican or Democratic administration and Congress. Politicians of both parties have cozy relationships with the mainstream news media and conservative ones seem not to mind that so much in the rightwing media is false or fake news. Thus we face an ironic future in which there are many ways to access the same limited and somewhat flawed set of facts and conjectures about current events, society and government activity.

We like to conceive of history as a steady progress of human ingenuity solving problems and bringing an ever higher standard and quality of life to more and more people. But our 10,000 years of recorded history has seen many eras in which people were far worse off economically than the decades and centuries before, for example, during the 300 year transition from medieval times to the industrial revolution during which the world experienced the “Little Ice Age.”

In the same way, we have not seen steady progress in the spread of knowledge. After the death of Charlemagne, for example, Europe entered a centuries-long epoch in which scientific knowledge and literacy declined and intellectual activity retreated into monasteries.

It seems to me that America is are entering another intellectual dark age, in which people in general will know less, be able to reason less effectively and have less access to the gamut of human knowledge, from science to the arts. It’s not just the consolidation of the media and the decline in the number of news-gathering operations that is driving the drift towards ignorance. The large number of ideologically inclined think tanks churning out false research. The gradual starving of public schools. The increased involvement of for-profit corporations both in operating schools and in supplying material such as learning guides to public and private schools. The blurring of the distinction between the entertainment and news divisions of media companies and between advertising and news. The politicization of text books. The denial of basic scientific facts by one of our two major parties. The continued glorification of celebrity and mocking of intellectual achievement in the mass media. Virtually every trend in the marketplace of ideas is making Americans less educated, less informed and less capable of sifting through assertions and understanding which are reliably factual information and which are sheer nonsense.

[newsservicesnews]

A Long Road Ahead: The Current Landscape of Political News

In recent weeks, the political landscape in the United States has been anything but serene. As citizens tune in to various networks, the contrasting viewpoints provide a glimpse into the evolving narrative shaping our nation. Various outlets have dissected the latest developments, from legislative votes to looming elections, making the term political news more pivotal than ever in our understanding of these events.

With the upcoming midterm elections just around the corner, candidates on both sides are ramping up their campaigns, focusing heavily on core issues that resonate with American voters. From healthcare to job creation, the stakes have never felt higher. As we analyze the ebb and flow of public opinion, we see significant divergences in the way conservative news channels portray their candidates versus their liberal counterparts. This polarization in media representation is crucial in understanding voter sentiment and the potential outcomes of the elections.

One focal point of this political cycle has been the handling of economic issues. Inflation remains a hot-button topic, and how politicians address it can sway public opinion dramatically. Many conservative candidates are promoting tax cuts and deregulation as a means to boost economic growth. In contrast, progressive candidates advocate for more government intervention to support struggling families. This divide is clearly reflected in recent reports. While political news platforms cover various opinions, it is evident that one side’s data can often appear more favorable, depending on the source.

Furthermore, social issues such as gun control, abortion rights, and climate change have ignited passionate debates. The recent Supreme Court rulings have further heightened these discussions, with both conservitive news outlets and liberal commentators emphatically expressing their positions. The dichotomy in coverage illustrates how different ideologies can lead to radically different interpretations of the same events. It’s essential for voters to engage critically with the information presented to them, recognizing bias and seeking balanced perspectives.

Technology plays an increasing role in shaping political discourse, too. The role of social media in amplifying certain messages cannot be understated. Political figures increasingly use platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok to connect directly with constituents. However, this also raises concerns over misinformation. The rapid spread of dubious claims often makes it challenging for voters to distinguish between fact and fiction, complicating the quest for informed decision-making. The media must take responsibility in presenting political news accurately while also leveraging technology for greater reach without compromising journalistic integrity.

Amid these challenges, grassroots movements have begun gaining traction, particularly among younger voters who gravitate toward issues like climate action and social justice. These movements are reshaping the political landscape and influencing party platforms. As traditional party lines blur, we see a surge in independent candidates, reflecting a desire for alternatives to the status quo. The representation of these movements in both conservative and liberal political news outlets can heavily influence public perception and voter turnout.

Looking ahead, the direction of political developments remains uncertain. The actions of Congress, decisions rooted in the executive branch, and evolving public sentiment will all play pivotal roles in shaping the nation’s future. With midterm elections approaching, the increasing divide in conservative news and mainstream media coverage will continue to impact how individuals perceive candidates and policies.

In conclusion, understanding the current state of affairs requires critical engagement with political news across the spectrum. As the nation moves closer to the elections, voters must navigate the complex and often contradictory narratives presented by various media. By maintaining a balanced and informed perspective, citizens can better participate in the democratic process and advocate for their beliefs, ensuring their voices resonate in the ongoing political discourse.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

I argued in a piece published earlier this week that the “Super Progressive” bloc of the Democratic Party was largely losing its fights with the party’s Progressive Old Guard wing. Big ideas pushed by more liberal Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — such as the Green New Deal, the impeachment of President Trump and single-payer health care — just aren’t getting much traction right now in the House, which Democrats control.

In particular, it seems like the most progressive wing of Democrats is not as influential under Democratic control of the House as the Freedom Caucus — the bloc of the most conservative House Republicans — was when the GOP controlled the chamber. So why are the Super Progressives struggling? I don’t think that there is one simple explanation. But here are a few theories, based on my own thinking and that of some congressional experts.

The Democrats’ base is more moderate than the GOP’s

The number of Democratic voters who identify as liberal has been increasing for some time, but the party is still about equally split between people who call themselves “liberal” and people who call themselves “moderate” or “conservative.” In the GOP, by contrast, people who say they’re “conservative” outnumber liberals and moderates. And you can see this difference in how elected officials behave. Polls suggest that more aggressively liberal positions (like impeachment) garner a fair amount of opposition1 among Democratic voters. This makes it easier for House Democratic leaders like Speaker Nancy Pelosi to sideline those ideas.

Instead, Pelosi is pushing forward proposals that are nearly universally popular among Democrats, such as allowing Americans to register to vote on Election Day.

“Progressive media and activists would not reward the most aggressive tactics,” said Gregory Koger, who is a political science professor at the University of Miami and studies Congress. “In 2013, there were conservative groups and media arguing sincerely that they could repeal the ACA by shutting down the government. If a super-progressive House member tried to argue on MSNBC or on Daily Kos that the House Democrats could force the Republicans to overturn the 2017 tax cut if Nancy Pelosi had the ‘courage’ to hold the debt limit hostage, he or she would be heckled.”

The Democratic moderate wing is powerful too

The Congressional Progressive Caucus is bigger than ever; it boasts 96 of the 235 Democrats in the House as members. But the New Democrat Coalition, a bloc of more moderate members, is bigger than ever too, and it now includes 101 members. Many of those members are not particularly excited about single-payer health care, the Green New Deal or other lefty stances. And while most of these members don’t have the same national profile as rising liberal stars such as Ocasio-Cortez, they have the same one vote that she does. Perhaps more importantly, many of these members are in swing districts — and Pelosi is focused on making sure these members can get re-elected in 2020.

“Pelosi is clearly keeping her eye on the prize of a Democratic Congress and White House,” said Matthew Green, a political science professor at Catholic University who specializes in congressional politics. “Her strategy is very similar to the one she followed as speaker in 2007 and 2008 — bring up bills popular with the base that also force moderate Republicans to break with their party, while staying clear of polarizing issues that could galvanize the opposition or alienate moderate voters.”

Green predicted that, if Democrats have control of the House, the Senate and the presidency after 2020, Pelosi might be willing to push more liberal goals, as she did in 2009 in embracing Obamacare and a cap-and-trade environmental bill.

And speaking of Pelosi …

Pelosi is a powerful speaker

The Freedom Caucus — perhaps because they are more closely aligned with GOP voters than the Congressional Progressive Caucus is with Democratic voters, and because Fox News and Trump are able to galvanize the party’s activists — was often able to run roughshod over the speaker, overpowering John Boehner or forcing Paul Ryan to bend to its will.

Pelosi, in contrast, seems fairly willing to ignore her party’s left wing — and as the speaker, she ultimately has the power to determine what bills come up for votes in the House. But Green argued that Pelosi’s power does not come just from her role as speaker.

“I don’t think Pelosi’s formal power alone explains why she is more immune to her party’s extreme wing than Boehner or Ryan, who also had substantial formal power. Her informal power is probably more important. She commands the support of committee chairs, whom she had substantial say in appointing,” said Green.

The Super Progressive bloc may be too big

You would think having more members would make a congressional bloc more powerful, but its broad membership might be having the opposite effect. “The Congressional Progressive Caucus is far larger than the Freedom Caucus, making it harder for them to reach agreement on strategy,” Green said. (The Freedom Caucus does not publicize its membership, but estimates in 2017-18 put its number at around 30.)

The progressive bloc includes some members of Congress who are more closely allied with Pelosi than with Ocasio-Cortez, for example. Indeed, she has floated the idea of creating a smaller, closer-knit group outside of the formal Progressive Caucus. I think that might be a more effective way for the most liberal members to pursue their goals.

The Super Progressives won’t blow things up

Cohesiveness aside, though, the Freedom Caucus members were influential in part because they were willing to engage in very aggressive tactics (opposing must-pass bills to fund the government and to increase the nation’s debt ceiling, for example). That approach gave them a lot of leverage. There is no indication at this point that the Democrats’ liberal wing will take similar steps — they are part of the pro-government party after all.

“The ties that bind the Freedom Caucus together seem to be more ideologically-oriented or value-oriented than to be about specific policies,” said Jennifer Victor, a political science professor at George Mason University. “The fact that the Progressive Caucus is more policy-oriented suggests they may be more willing to negotiate within their party than the Freedom Caucus was.”

Add all this together, and you get a Super Progressive bloc of Democrats that, at least so far, is struggling to push the Democratic Party to the left. I’d emphasize so far, however. Remember that in 2009 it was considered a fairly left wing position to propose including a public option — a Medicare-style plan Americans could opt into — as part of the health insurance choices offered through the Affordable Care Act. Now, the public option is considered a more centrist position, and many Democrats are going a step further and backing single-payer health care (in which Americans would get their coverage through a government-run system). So the progressives may, over time, push the party left. But the first months of 2019 suggest that progressives won’t be successful immediately — and maybe no one should have expected them to be.

[libertariantaoist]

President Trump’s former enemies in the  mainstream media, which he has characterized as purveyors of “fake news,”  turned on  a dime the moment he bombed Syria: the Establishment  was thrilled that, suddenly, he was acting “presidential.”  CNN, a particular target of the President’s ire, was gushing:  NBC’s Brian Williams, in a bizarre turn of  phrase, hailed the “beauty” of the bombing, which killed a number of civilians.  Democratic party politicians, with few exceptions, stood at attention and saluted,  while Trump’s Republican critics – notably John McCain and Lindsey Graham –  praised the President while taking the opportunity to agitate  for more extensive military action.

On the other hand,  conservative media that has been supportive of Trump reviled  the  move: Breitbart  readers weren’t happy, Ann Coulter  was furious,  and Laura  Ingraham was hardly supportive. Michael  Savage declared himself a “conservative peacenik,” Tucker  Carlson was very skeptical, and on Twitter, the “Trump trolls” were trolling  their former hero. British populist Nigel Farage, who led the Brexit referendum  to victory, and who endorsed Trump, opined  that Trump voters “will be scratching their heads” in bewilderment. Even over  at National Review, a neocon redoubt, the voice of dissent was raised.

In short, Trump’s most vocal supporters were joining the ranks of the antiwar  movement, a development the media noted with the same vitriolic disdain it had  formerly reserved for Trump himself:

As Carlson noted in the video above, “on this topic the news has never been  faker.” Politico ran a piece excoriating “Trump’s  troll army,” in rebellion against their ostensible leader’s policy, as racists  and conspiracy mongers; the New York Times denounced anti-interventionists  as representative of “a “small but influential white nationalist movement” on  the “far right,” while the Washington Post described them as holding  “racist, anti-Semitic and sexist” views.”

“Like so much news today,” said Carlson, “this isn’t news but propaganda designed  to smear and deceive rather than to inform. On this topic “the ‘news’ has never  been faker.”

Fake – just like the media’s coverage of Trump himself. And now that Trump  has ditched one of the pillars of Trumpism, those who took it seriously are  being treated exactly like he was treated before – with a barrage of outright  lies.

It serves the War Party’s agenda to frame a narrative that characterizes anti-interventionists  on the right as “racists,” “conspiracy-mongers,” etc., but the reality was more  accurately described  by Daniel McCarthy in The National Interest:

“Before he gets more deeply involved in Syria’s civil war, Donald Trump  will have to win one at home. The Republican Party was already divided after  failing to repeal Obamacare. Now the conflict has spread to the White House,  where Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner are at daggers drawn. Even Trump’s most  loyal grassroots and media supporters are in an uproar over the president’s  evolving foreign policy, which has taken a turn toward the establishment as  his domestic agenda sinks into the swamp he promised to drain.

“How much damage has the Syrian attack done to Trump? He’s lost Ann Coulter,  who took to Twitter to vent her outrage and retweet lesser-known supporters  who felt equally betrayed. He’s lost Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com and the  sizable blocs of Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan activists who had flocked to Trump’s  ‘America First’ banner….

“The president has lost his base, or is in  grave danger of doing so. But he has also picked up new support: from John McCain,  Lindsey Graham, and Bill Kristol, all of whom praised the airstrike on Syria.  Neoconservatism is suddenly back in fashion at the White House, or so it seems.”

While I’m not sure how “losing” little old me is significant, McCarthy is entirely  correct about the President’s activist base: they are defecting in droves. And  while the Syria turnabout is bad news, especially for the Syrian people, there  is a bright and shining silver lining.

The millions of voters who voted for Trump based, at least in part, on his  “America First” foreign policy views had to experience – and embrace – what  might be called “Trumpism” before they could be react in bewilderment and disgust  as he turned on a dime. Trumpism, in this sense, was a bridge they had to cross  before coming to a full understanding of just what “America First” means. Trump’s  many denunciations of our regime change policy in Syria, Libya, and throughout  the world brought them halfway across that bridge – and his betrayal is bringing  many thousands of them all the way over … to us.

This is what sectarians of all stripes refuse to understand. With their static  one-dimensional view of how political change comes about, they simply see Them  and Us – and never the twain shall meet. How, they asked during the presidential  election campaign, can those Trumpian troglodytes possibly be opposed to our  foreign policy of perpetual war? What they didn’t get – and still don’t get  – is that it took a catalytic figure like Trump to explode the phony left/right  paradigm and imbue his supporters with some understanding of why the Empire  exploits and impoverishes them. With this sudden reversal, the President is  increasing their understanding of why this is so – because they aren’t  going along with it.

And they aren’t going along with it because to even consider voting for Trump,  while the media was hammering away at him and the Washington Establishment was  sliming him as a dangerous “isolationist,” took a not inconsiderable independence  of mind. Whether Trump was sincere in making his various anti-interventionist  pronouncements, particularly when it came  to the Syria issue, is beside the point: the point is that millions of voters  took him at his word. The idea that his supporters were “fooled” by his rhetoric  is similarly irrelevant. I, for one, foresaw that he would contradict himself  while in office, as  I wrote back in January of this year:

“That Trump is inconsistent, and an imperfect vessel, hardly needs to be  said. That the danger of war still looms over us is also a fact that none can  deny. Yet all this is irrelevant in the face of the conceptual victory his winning  the White House represents. Here is a candidate who campaigned against GOP foreign  policy orthodoxy, explicitly rejecting the legacy of the Iraq war and even going  so far as to call out the Bush administration for lying us  into that war….

“Yes, the Trump administration will take many actions that contradict  the promise of their victory: that is already occurring. And we are covering  that in these pages, without regard for partisan considerations: and yet it  is necessary to step back and see the larger picture, looking past the journalistic  details of the day-to-day news cycle. In short, it is necessary to take the  long view and try to see what the ideological victory that was won this past  November augurs for the future.”

Well, we’re living in that future right now: I have  to admit it came a little sooner than I imagined, and a bit more abruptly than  I thought possible. Yet that abruptness is a good thing: it dramatically underscores  the contradiction between what Trump said and what he is now doing, and his  most vocal supporters – particularly among the conservative opinion-making class  – aren’t taking it lying down. They are in open revolt. Taking advantage of  that revolt, encouraging it and highlighting the contradictions, is the task  we have before us.

As I said in my January column cited above, we have  to take the long view: that is, we have to understand that we’re building a  movement. And the way to build that movement is not to stand aside and denounce  those who are only halfway to understanding why the Empire is an albatross around  our necks, but to patiently explain and let them learn why and how their leaders  have betrayed them.

Betrayal is a painful experience: it is also a useful  one. Physical pain is the body telling us that there’s something in the environment  that must be avoided: psychic pain plays the same instructive role. As Trump’s  supporters process what is undoubtedly a painful experience for them, they will  realize how and why it happened – and with a little help from Antiwar.com, the  best of them will come to understand how to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.  

The post-Trump political landscape is far better  for anti-interventionists than it was before the orange-haired real estate mogul  came on the scene: there now exists a considerable faction within the GOP and  its periphery that not only supports an anti-interventionist foreign policy  but is also in open rebellion against the policies of the President they helped  elect. They are sorely disappointed, but they are also angry – and energized.  Because anger, after all – anger at injustice  –  is the primary motivating factor  in politics, and never more so than at this moment in our history.

As I said in January:

“This isn’t about Trump, the politician, or the journalistic trivia of the  moment: we are engaged in a battle of ideas – and, slowly but surely, we are  winning.”

We are indeed winning, and the War Party knows it: that’s why Politico,  the Washington Post, and the New York Times are doing their best  to marginalize  the emerging antiwar movement. They won’t succeed, but our victory won’t happen  overnight. Nothing worth achieving ever does. As long as we take the long view,  and adopt a movement-building perspective, the case for optimism is irrefutable.

[epistolizer]

Hit & Run Commentary #130

Democrats obsessed with race to the point that their primary principle of social organization is preferential pandering to specific demographics are outraged that Trump utilized the term “lynching” in reference to the President’s impeachment travails abandoning the rudiments of habeas corpus. It is argued that the term ought only be articulated in reference to a solemn historical remembrance. As such, do these linguistic marms also intend to surrender usage of the term “witch hunt” as well? For a significant number had their own rights tragically violated during such inquisitions to stamp out occult activity. One must suppose that the majority of such apparently weren’t Black enough to bring the English language to a screeching halt.  

New York has changed state law so it can still prosecute those that have been granted a presidential pardon. So how is this appreciably different than Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio enforcing immigration law when the federal government refused to? Do progressives intend to speak out as forcefully in regards to this New York development? 

Some people really need to think through the implications of the things they advocate.  Apparently an associate is outraged that a student could be denied the opportunity to attend prom because of an unpaid lunch tab. Yet the same individual stated he is actively praying for the conditions to come about where that very same student could very easily end up being a trafficked sex slave or summarily executed on the streets. Civil wars are not the photographic tourist monuments of the Gettysburg fields. Just what exactly does this person think will come about if his prayer is granted that God judges American through a civil war? God promises things will be well afterwards for those that place faith in Him once the person is dead. However, history proves that He allows overwhelming horrors to take place in regions gripped by such conflict. Such a naive thinker apparently epitomizes Stalin's remark that one death is a tragedy but a million are just a statistic.  

It is often argued that Halloween used to be OK but no longer is because “times have changed”. If one holds the celebration is wrong, isn’t that essentially the same as saying that it used to be acceptable for grandpa to go to the strip club but Junior had better not do it?

On the 8/14/19 edition of Fox and Friends, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas in part blamed video games for the El Paso massacre because the gunman allegedly mentioned in his manifesto wanting to live out the super soldier scenarios found in video games. If this is the route we are to head down as a culture, will Marvel Comics also be blamed since Captain America is also a super soldier? While we are at it, why not lay a bit of the blame offices within the Pentagon such as DARPA constantly speculating about tinkering on the genetic, psychological or biochemical levels to create actual super soldiers and whose surreptitious machinations might actually have some shady role behind these acts of violence.  

In light of a series of mass shootings across the United States, it is repeatedly admonished that people need to come together in unity. Apart from not shooting people, just how close are people obligated to come together?  Relatedly, do those insisting that these incidents are failures in tolerance intend to compromise on the incessant demands those advocating progressive revolution constantly make under threat of upheaval?  For it is usually those holding to traditionalist conceptions of morality and social organization that are expected to alter their fundamental beliefs or be penalized with a variety of punitive sanctions.

Obama is now jacked out of shape about the ideological purity of cancel culture. But didn’t he in part get that particular ball rolling when he urged supporters to get in the faces of those that dared articulate criticism of his policies and when he threatened to punish his electoral enemies?  

Cambridge University Press has published a book titled “Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism”. So the people of the United Kingdom governing their own affairs is to be feared but arbitrary bureaucratic intervention into their lives on the part of transnational technocrats as epitomized by the European Union is the ideal to which they are expected to aspire?  

A Florida church is accusing the 18% that did not vote in favor of a Black pastoral candidate of racism. But if the congregational leadership is going to take the allegations online, shouldn’t the rest of us be provided with some idea what was actually said to determine if it actually was racist or merely what passes as such in the circles of contemporary Southern Baptist elites? Often that can be as little as disagreeing with a Black person or, perhaps more importantly, with the White leaders metaphorically using Black people as human shields to keep their hold on power.  

The Southern Baptist Convention is considering disfellowshipping a Florida church where a Black pastoral candidate did not receive the percentage of affirmations necessary to be granted the position. In all fairness, it was remarked in the Religious News Service coverage of the development that things were so split in the church that it’s doubtful Billy Graham in his prime could have mustered the necessary votes. Getting  booted from the Convention like that at this time could end up being the best thing that could happen to such a congregation. For is that really a spirit of diversity and inclusion if a mere 15% of a congregation fails to bend to dictates from a level of hierarchy technically derived nowhere from the pages of Scripture?  

Media and political elites are outraged that Trump announced that he is switching his official residence from New York to Florida. Commentator Juan Williams remarked that greed was behind this as part of a scheme to take advantage of Florida’s more favorable tax rates. So why isn’t it greed for governments to demand an increasing percentage of what individuals have prudently accumulated? Golfer Phil Mickelson was essentially accused of being a tax cheat in the press for making a similar move from California. But shouldn’t this mobility instead be praised as one of the inherent strengths of the federal system where the individual is free to ideally select from the fifty jurisdictions most in accord with their particular values or in which one can maximize individual well being?  

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary provost Matthew Hall laments that he views reality through a racialized lens, that that has given him undeserved power, but being called a racist is not the worst thing that one can be called. If so, why do those ranking among this faction of Southern Baptist functionaries spend so much time peddling White guilt and (along with what even Obama criticized as cancel culture) invoke that label with little evidence as a way to frighten opponents into silence? Most importantly, Hall seemingly does not feel so guilty as to be compelled by his conscience to relinquish his posh lifestyle to someone of their preferred demographic. But he does apparently feel guilty enough that you as a mere pewfiller in his estimation should be called upon to surrender what you have earned by the sweat of your own toil to be redistributed to or at least seized from you in the name of those that have not really lifted a finger of their own.  

Theologian Kyle J. Howard claims that the rise of homeschooling is linked to racism. Where in the Constitution does it say that the exercise of a right is predicated upon a socially acceptable justification? And what exactly does he define as “racism”? To many of these woke Southern Baptists, that consists of little more than disagreeing with a minority or, more importantly, with White elites claiming to speak for minorities.  

In a podcast on racial reconciliation, the theologian that denounced the founding of the homeschool movement as racist said that it is his desire to plant a multiethnic, minority led church. If he is to be praised for being so race conscious as to exclude Whites apriori from leadership positions, why would any Whites other than the self-loathing variety be willing to attend such a venue of subversion and leftist cognitive conditioning? For what if a minister spoke of his desire to plant a multiethnic yet Caucasian-led congregation where it was insinuated that all that minorities are wanted for is what they can drop funds in the collection plate?

The cover story of the Oct 2019 issue of Harper’s Magazine is titled “Do We Need The Constitution: Has The Nation’s Founding Document Become The Nation’s Undoing?” Usually when such questions are asked, it is not to consider provisions such as those regarding the establishment of post offices or forbidding the issuance of a title of nobility. Rather such grandiose inquires are enunciated as a pretext to justify the elimination of the Bill of Rights, particularly the fundamental guarantees of the First and Second Amendments.  

So if Chick-Fil-A is on record as not being an explicitly Christian company, perhaps we can at least do away with having to justify if one is a believer why one has never been to one or for feeling sleazy over picking an outright heathen establishment such as McDonald’s for a fast food outing.

Doesn’t the altering of a corporation’s philanthropy policy to placate an agitated faction indicate which side in that debate is most likely to engage in acts of violence or sabotage in the so-called “culture war”?

After a call to the CEO, Franklin Graham assures the faithful that Chick-Fil-A remains committed to Christian values. So does that mean celebrity Christians will stop upbraiding the mere pewfillers that don’t make themselves religious nuisances in the workplace but instead model their witness more along the lines of Joseph of Arimathea who Scripture references as a secret disciple?

In a world where the Salvation Army is looked upon with more contempt than outright subversive front groups such as C.A.I.R, Planned Parenthood, and La Raza, how long will it be before it becomes a crime to drop spare change in the Christmas kettle or parents charged with child abuse for letting their little ones do it?

Hugh Ross as an Old Earth Creationist believes that the days of the Genesis creation account are not to be understood as literal but rather as lengthy epochs of time. Now it seems his ministry has uploaded a podcast insinuating that the global flood was likely not quite as global as many Christians have come to believe. The astrophysicist assures that, by making this concession, the skeptic might be more inclined to consider other more important miraculous claims of Scripture. So how long until Ross starts insisting that it does not matter so much whether or not Jesus really did rise from the dead or that believers go to Heaven when they die?  Instead what really matters are the moral teachings of Jesus. Think this is an allegation a step too far? Ross’ conclusions were arrived at through a form of linguistic analysis not all that different than that resulting in the RSV substituting “young woman” for “virgin” in its translation of Isaiah.  

If as the commercial suggests it is Jimmy Dean sausage that lifts your spirits this time of year, you must be having one really miserable and pathetic Christmas.

Those sneering down their noses over Trump’s remarks about the effort to undermine Thanksgiving are the same ones that pitch a fit about the Pilgrim’s being White European Christians and over romanticize American Indians as the embodiment of Rousseau's noble savage hooey.

Apparently the KFC fire log is  something to burn in your fireplace and not what emerges from the other end of the digestive tract once that culinary treat is consumed.  

In a SermonAudio homily, a pastor confessed that, in terms of paganism, Christmas is as inherently evil as Halloween.   As such, he weaned his family off the celebration over the span of three years. But if Christmas is as evil as he insists and given that a holiday cannot produce biophysical dependency like a narcotic or alcohol, isn’t his way of renouncing the practice akin to saying one should quit the strip club over time rather than suddenly? Perhaps having a lapdance only once every other week followed by a time where one just goes to watch with no physical interaction?

If Hillary Clinton was really shocked at the way Donald Trump speaks about woman, wouldn’t she have not gone on the Howard Stern program?

By Frederick Meekins

[hiphopluvr]

In early April, Senator Bernie Sanders ended his presidential campaign for the second time. This meant that former Vice President Joe Biden had secured the Democratic nominee. Many Americans were overjoyed with the thought of beating Trump, and many were devastated at their candidate forfeiting. However, all these sentiments have simmered out as COVID-19 has taken over all media coverage and preoccupied people from all over the world. In a video published by Bernie Sanders on YouTube, he said “As I see the crisis gripping the nation, I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and which would interfere in the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour.”

Bernie’s campaign slogan was “Not me. Us.” However, this raises the question, who is “Us”? Sander’s audience and staff is a cultural, religious, gender, and ethnic melting pot of people celebrating their differences. American Muslims were a notable part of his fanbase - with only 1% of the U.S. being muslim, 58% of them voted for Bernie, compared to 26% who voted for Biden.

In class, we talked about how Muslims are ideologically complex and often have mixed religious views. Muslims are conservative on several issues, and oppose gay marraiage, abortion rights, and pornography. However, they are liberal on issues such as universal healthcare and government assistance to poor citizens, therefore, this increases their allegiance to Democratic candidates. Obama won 90% of the Muslim vote, and hopefully Joe Biden can gather the same support this fall. But it is no surprise Muslim voters were in support of Bernie Sanders: he opposed President Donald Trump’s “Muslim Ban,” voted against the Iraq war, spoke at the Islamic Society of North America’s presidential forum, and hired Pakistani and Palistinean people to work for his campaign.

According to a report conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2017, 86% of voting Muslims are under the age of 55 and they hold progressive views on healthcare reform and minimum wage. Over 60% support a single-payer healthcare system, and over 70% agree the federal minimum wage should be raised to $15/hour. When looking at where they stand on these issues, it is no surprise they favor Bernie Sanders, as these all align with his campaign.  

Muslims in America have faced discrimination and hardship since the devastating events of 9/11. In class we watched a PBS documentary called America at a Crossroads that highlights the inequality that American Muslims have to deal with on a daily basis. The media in America has portrayed Muslims in an unfavorable light, and people who are not educated think of Muslims as terrorists. This has led to an uneasy feeling in the Muslim community, and many of them never feel at home in their own country.

Personally, it is very upsetting that Americans don’t feel at home in their own country. Muslims are an integral part of society and the way they are treated is a disgrace. I was a Bernie Sanders supporter as well, and I feel for the Muslim Americans who were aligned with his policies and political stances. Unfortunately, Sanders did not win the democratic nomination, but there is still hope for a better future for Muslim Americans and I hope it comes sooner rather than later. (548 words)

[maxwellyjordan]

Empirical SCOTUS: About this term: OT 2019

Even though briefing is not complete in all the cases that will be argued before the Supreme Court this term, interest in the court’s cases is at an apex. There was a lot of hype leading into this term, as it is the first full term for the current Supreme Court, whose bench has been largely in flux since Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden passing in the middle of the 2015 term. Increased media coverage has also put a spotlight on the court’s integral role in resolving high-profile issues, such as the potential release of President Donald Trump’s tax returns and the legality of the president’s immigration policy.

One measure of public interest in a given case is the number of amicus briefs filed. Amicus briefs filed on the merits after cases are granted can be differentiated from amicus briefs filed in support of cert petitions (which show groups’ interest in the court deciding particular issues). Cases this term have averaged high numbers of both cert-stage and merits-stage amicus briefs. Specific trends are also evident in the justices’ choice of cases for this term. These analytic measures provide insight into attorneys’ strategies for convincing the court to hear their cases and into the justices’ interests in taking them.

The chart below shows how the justices have granted cert petitions in clusters so far this term.

Click to enlarge.

The most granted petitions filed within the same week, three, were filed during the weeks of October 21, 2018, and February 3, 2019. The court also granted two petitions filed during the same week for several weeks between October 21, 2018, and February 3, 2019, highlighting the importance of strategically timed petition filing.

The justices took an average of 168.72 days from the filing date to grant petitions for argument this term. (It’s worth noting that this time period can be drawn out if the respondent requests an extension to file their brief or the solicitor general is invited to share the views of the federal government).

Click to enlarge.

A total of 42 petitions, the majority of those granted for argument this term, were granted in a window of 70 to 170 days from the time the petitions were filed. Two cases, both involving whether the president can prevent the release of his tax returns, took the justices fewer than 30 days to grant. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Opati v. Republic of Sudan — looking at whether the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act applies retroactively, thereby permitting recovery of punitive damages under 28 U.S.C. § 1605A(c) against foreign states for terrorist activities occurring prior to the passage of the current version of the statute — was granted 483 days after the petition for cert was filed.

For most cases, more time elapsed between cert grant and oral argument than between petition filing and the day the justices granted the petition. Still, the opposite was true for a nontrivial number of cases, 22. The following figure shows the distribution of time between petition grant and oral argument for cases granted for argument this term.

Click to enlarge.

The justices scheduled oral argument in 10 cases for between 120 and 140 days from cert grant and in 10 other cases for between 180 and 200 days from cert grant. Looking at the ratio between the length of time from petition filing to cert grant and from cert grant to argument date, the case with the smallest ratio was McKinney v. Arizona. This case was granted 109 days after the petition was filed and scheduled for oral argument 184 days after the cert grant, for a ratio of .59. This can be compared to Google v. Oracle, in which the justices took 409 days to grant the petition after filing and scheduled oral argument in the case 176 days after cert grant, for a ratio of 2.32.

Cases this term have averaged a high number of amicus briefs both at the cert stage and on the merits. Case averages by amicus party type are shown below.

Click to enlarge.

Merits cases have averaged just over 12 amicus briefs so far this term, with petitioners averaging 6.66 briefs and respondents averaging 5.15 briefs. R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has the most merits amicus filings with 86, followed by June Medical Services LLC v. Gee with 70 and Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia with 68 (for a deep dive into cases with a large number of amicus briefs in previous terms, see this paper). Because we don’t have all the amicus filings in all cases for this term, the averages in the chart above as well as this ranking of cases with the most amicus filings may shift before the term is complete.

For cases already argued and with at least one amicus brief filed on each side, the case with the most amicus briefs filed on behalf of petitioners relative to those filed on behalf of respondents is the consolidated case of Maine Community Health Options v. U.S., with nine petitioner amicus briefs and one respondent amicus brief. The case with the most respondent amicus briefs relative to petitioner amicus briefs, also at nine to one, is U.S. v. Sineneng-Smith.

The amicus filings so far this term include many filed by repeat players who have been active in Supreme Court litigation for years. A look at counsel of record for all merits-stage briefs, both for amici and for parties to the dispute, filed in cases this term bears this out.

Click to enlarge.

So far, Brianne Gorod of the Constitutional Accountability Center is counsel of record on the most briefs, with 12. She is followed by Paul Clement from Kirkland & Ellis, who is counsel of record on a mix of parties’ briefs in cases he argued (or will argue) and amicus briefs; Lawrence Joseph, who regularly files amicus briefs on behalf of various groups (for example); and the Cato Institute’s Ilya Shapiro — all counsel of record on a brief in nine cases. Just behind these three with eight briefs apiece are New York solicitor general Barbara Underwood and Williams & Connolly’s Lisa Blatt.

The court’s decisions in many cases this term are highly anticipated. The large presence of amicus filers as well as veteran attorneys representing parties is a testament to this. Based on the justices’ voting patterns in highly anticipated decisions over the last few terms, we can expect several of these cases to be decided by 5-4 votes along ideological lines. By the end of the term we will know with more clarity whether these ideological divisions will persist, or whether this court will rise above the ideological fray in a manner articulated by Chief Justice John Roberts on multiple prior occasions.

This post was originally published at Empirical SCOTUS.

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What Does Jokowi’s Win Mean for Indonesia’s Economy?

Joko Widodo, commonly regarded as “Jokowi,” was just re-elected for a next 5-12 months time period as president of Indonesia, in accordance to a brief rely conducted by the Middle for Strategic and Intercontinental Studies, defeating Prabowo Subianto, his presidential challenger, for a 2nd time. The election, whilst not with out scandal, was a relatively peaceful affair, further more solidifying Indonesia’s youthful democracy, but did demonstrate a swing towards Islamic conservatism in Indonesia. Bogus news also spread on social media, with some hoaxes, but was rife on both sides of the political divide. Despite the fact that Subianto is contesting the result, all reputable polling reveals that Jokowi has won all around 55 % of the vote. Formal results are not expected for some months, on the other hand.

The election was a fight about the economic system, with millennials and the middle course possessing the decisive vote in the election. Jokowi’s male-of-the-people today image propelled him to the presidency at the time all over again on a platform agenda of economic and social welfare good results tales, with a vision to go on his reformist and infrastructure making agenda. Jokowi’s successes in functioning the economic climate in his to start with time period ended up noteworthy wherever he tackled fiscal deficits and ballooning energy subsidies and returned Indonesia to a entire financial investment grade rating for the initial time in two many years. Indonesia also grew to become Southeast Asia’s only trillion-greenback economic climate throughout Jokowi’s very first term.

His accomplishment in capping the rate of staple merchandise, generating employment and developing new infrastructure paid out off and the Indonesian electorate rewarded him for it. His shrewd selection of an Islamic clergyman, Ma’ruf Amin, as his vice president also aided Jokowi handle any issues about his Islamic credentials.

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The Economic Implications

To a significant extent, the re-election of President Jokowi is validation of his insurance policies. Indonesians have been amazed with his concentration on infrastructure progress and major spending on social plans like overall health and education cards, which grant access to these essential companies to Indonesia’s bad. Training will be one more critical aspect, where the government will most likely aim on far more effective and focused shelling out.

To preserve his attractiveness high, investing on infrastructure across the country as very well as govt-funded social systems is established to continue. For the economy, this will indicate a ongoing above-reliance on point out-owned enterprises, which may shortly see the establishment of a super keeping organization to oversee the operations of all state-owned enterprises  – which are at this time crowding out private investment – coupled with aggressive tax assortment endeavours to fund infrastructure and social shelling out from the government.

The renationalizing of most of Indonesia’s normal assets will also most likely carry on, as properly as the authorities having shorter-time period protectionist moves to control energy charges.

In phrases of economic emphasis, the “hard” and “soft” solution is nonetheless quite a lot element of Jokowi’s economic method. The tricky method will focus on setting up infrastructure and the tender method will concentration on even further streamlining rules and increasing education and techniques. There is also a breakdown in infrastructure shelling out beyond the evident – as perfectly as major infrastructure initiatives this kind of as new roads, airports, and railways, smaller infrastructure initiatives these as sanitation, clear drinking water, irrigation, and squander management are also in emphasis.

On the economic stage, the governing administration will get the job done to keep inflation regular, preserve fiscal well being solid by raising point out earnings by way of intense tax collection, and decrease unproductive condition expenditure. The Central Lender has been concentrated on trying to keep the financial state secure, growing curiosity premiums six periods last year in reaction to U.S. Federal Reserve rate hikes, which was a little something admirable prior to an election 12 months. Financial steadiness is likely to continue on less than the Bank’s current leadership.

Unfinished Small business: The Coverage Gaps

Jokowi arrived to place of work with an bold financial and social agenda 5 years in the past. He famously wanted to thrust Indonesia’s financial system forward, aiming for a 7 % development target. That development target was not recognized in the course of his first phrase, with the financial system growing at close to 5 p.c. This was in some part due to world-wide financial situations these types of as international economic uncertainty, a slowdown in Europe and China, and a trade war involving the United States and much of Asia, as well as a commodities slump.

While Indonesia is on keep track of to develop into a $2 trillion economic climate in the future 5 decades and a best 10 economic climate by 2030 or earlier, Jokowi still has his do the job minimize out to go Indonesia from emerging market to designed nation standing. Thousands and thousands of Indonesians nevertheless are living on much less than a dollar a working day. Progress has been quick but not swift plenty of in a region of 260 million persons, with quite a few young persons getting it hard to get get the job done, in component for the reason that they lack the standard vocational and simple skills to safe work. Jokowi has pledged throughout the presidential marketing campaign to produce 100 million careers in the next 5 a long time, strengthen paying on instruction, and refocus from infrastructure to human cash progress.

On top of that, Jokowi has made development in bureaucratic reform in some areas – these kinds of as tax selection and company permits – but Indonesia however suffers from stiflingly challenging polices and red tape over areas this kind of as land permits and suffers from endemic corruption. Indonesia’s “negative investment list” also indicates that not all sectors of the economy are available to international traders. This will be section of Jokowi’s bureaucratic reform agenda in his 2nd phrase, where by he will carry on to goal to enhance the relieve of doing organization in Indonesia – Indonesia currently ranks 73rd globally according to the World Bank annual ratings.

Moreover, area and national regulations frequently overlap, earning it difficult for organizations to maneuver through a quagmire of paperwork. The erratic regulatory ecosystem and a failure to deal with bureaucratic and authorized reform during this his 1st term, additionally very poor authorized certainty and ideological economic nationalism, has also meant a continuation of Indonesia’s weak competitiveness in its investment decision local weather and constrained growth.

Jokowi has designed sizeable progress with infrastructure development – the Jakarta Mass Immediate Transit (MRT) process is now up and managing as of April this year, which is a enormous image of achievement – but Indonesia’s perennial dilemma with poor infrastructure across the greatest archipelagic country in the earth, with 17,000 islands, stays. A large amount extra however needs to be done. The Entire world Financial institution estimates that Indonesia even now has an infrastructure deficit of $1.5 trillion. Despite a $327 billion system to construct new airports, highways, and ports, significantly a lot more requirements to be finished to make improvements to and develop the infrastructure that Indonesia requirements to hook up the archipelago and boost woeful logistics. Improvements in infrastructure also correlate straight with increased financial expansion.

On a macroeconomic degree, Jokowi has also so considerably failed to produce Indonesia as a production hub, even with its large labor pressure. He pledged in the course of the latest presidential marketing campaign to remodel Indonesia into a production powerhouse as part of the fourth industrial revolution. This was also a single of Jokowi’s policy aims five several years ago. Indonesia’s labor rules have not found substantially alter over that time, which is 1 reason for the stagnation in producing and the failure to draw in international immediate investment into the sector. It is high-priced to employ and hearth employees in Indonesia due to clauses that be certain generous severance payments and long-lasting contracts. It is nevertheless for that reason much less expensive to established up producing operations in other Southeast Asian countries, these types of as Vietnam. The failure to appeal to expenditure and boost manufacturing has been yet another reason why growth targets have not been understood.

What the Federal government Expects From Company

Jokowi has been welcoming and supportive of enterprise through his to start with term – in the context and constraints of Indonesia’s transactional politics and nationalist sentiment. The president is notably eager on firms that can innovate and devote in Indonesia to establish additional skilled positions. He also is pretty supportive of providers who want to assistance and aid Indonesia establish its infrastructure – from toll roadways to ports, airports, and energy. With production now in focus, enterprises that can add to this sector will also be welcomed with open arms by the governing administration.

A lot more frequently, providers will carry on to be inspired and legally mandated to give again to the neighborhood communities wherever they do the job by company social duty plans. Businesses that can link in to the president’s coverage goals will probable be looked on favorably by the federal government and for that reason have much more leverage when they experience business enterprise issues.

The Total Outlook

In summary, Indonesia can hope a great deal of the very same in conditions of financial plan underneath Jokowi. He gained acceptance for his managing of the overall economy for the duration of this initially expression and therefore the essential strategy is set to go on – heavy investing on infrastructure and social plans, primarily instruction, and a ongoing force to reform Indonesia’s sclerotic forms and polices. It continues to be to be noticed how formidable Jokowi will be in the determined need to reform Indonesia’s labor legislation if he is to realize his designs to change Indonesia into a producing hub – there will be critical drive back from unions on this. Over-all though, the potential for Indonesia’s financial system seems to be brilliant. The concern is not if Indonesia will know its economic potential but when.

Edward Parker is a contributor to The Diplomat, primarily based in Jakarta, Indonesia. He can be adopted on Twitter @EdinIndo

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