This sort of thing is one more reason why confidence in government is at all-time lows.
Nick Gillespie|Jun. 25, 2015 8:38 am
Regular readers of Reason.com know all about the recent federal subpoena and gag order we received.
The subpoena asked for identifying information we had on a half-dozen readers who left angry comments on a post about the verdict in the Silk Road Trial.
The comments ranged from suggesting the judge in the case should burn in hell to suggesting, in a well-known Internet homage to the movie Fargo, she be fed “feet-first” into a woodchipper. As Matt Welch and I have written, “The comments are hyperbolic, in questionable taste–and fully within the norms of Internet commentary.” They certainly don’t rise to the level of threat that should trigger requests from federal prosecutors.
We notified the commenters, who could have moved to quash the subpoena. Then the government hit us with a gag order, prohibiting us from talking about even the existence of the subpoena and the gag order. We fought to get the gag order lifted and once it was, we’ve been talking about the case.
I’ve got a new column up at The Daily Beast that gives more background on the matter. Here are some snippets:
The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the nationwide tax subsidies under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, in a ruling that preserves health insurance for millions of Americans.
The justices said in a 6-3 ruling that the subsidies that 8.7 million people currently receive to make insurance affordable do not depend on where they live, under the 2010 health care law.
The outcome is the second major victory for Obama in politically charged Supreme Court tests of his most significant domestic achievement.
Chief Justice John Roberts again voted with his liberal colleagues in support of the law. Roberts also was the key vote to uphold the law in 2012. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a dissenter in 2012, was part of the majority on Thursday.
“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
Nationally, 10.2 million people have signed up for health insurance under the Obama health overhaul. That includes the 8.7 million people who are receiving an average subsidy of $272 a month to help pay their insurance premiums.
Mass delusion is an important tool of oppressors because they can’t survive free expression. That’s why the First Amendment’s a target.
Nearly 100 years ago, Walter Lippmann wrote about “the manufacture of consent” in his classic work, “Public Opinion.” On the heels of that book, Edward Bernays penned a little volume called “Propaganda,” in which he stated that an elite would always be responsible for making the public aware of “new ideas” which the public would then act upon as the elite nudged them into it. Related, but more in-depth is Jacques Ellul’s 1962 book, “Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes.”
Political propaganda aims to mobilize the masses to move an agenda forward. That’s most effectively done when the masses are unaware of the process. It’s what “community organizers” work towards, whether they know it or not. Once the masses are mobilized to push for a cause, the propagandists’ goals can be put into law.
In fact, many newly propagandized ideas seem to have taken America by storm just in the past decade or so. Same-sex marriage is only one of those ideas. Transgenderism is now eclipsing that notion, and its propaganda techniques—wrapped in the language of civil rights—are getting Americans on board with the idea of erasing all sex distinctions in law, including theirown. It’s as though Americans are buying into a fast-talking sales pitch without being allowed to read the print, whether it’s large print or small.
There’s more on the horizon: a singles’ rights movement that promises to end legal recognition of all marriage. Then there is transhumanism, which includes a push to end “fleshism” by enacting laws that protect non-biological entities from discrimination.
Propaganda Is Directing Us Leftward
American conservatives are by and large clueless about propaganda methods and tactics. And it shows. There are virtually no conservative social psychologists around. You’d think once a liberal social psychologist hits the public over the head with this factsome on the Right would take notice and at least try to get clued in.
American conservatives are by and large clueless about propaganda methods and tactics. And it shows.
Meanwhile, the Left has been employing social psychology and depth psychology on the masses for decades. President Obama’s campaign staff was filled with social psychologists. In this context, those who believe conservatives can subsist on reason and logic alone are kidding themselves. It’s no wonder GOP leaders are caving on so many principles, and being absorbed so easily into the Left’s machine.
A lot of people are scratching their heads today, wondering how life got to be so surreal, so fast in the United States of America. Based on the silencing tactics revealedby the LGBT lobby, many observers are likely now thinking: “Gee, I thought marriage equality was merely a gay rights movement. I didn’t realize that fascism was part of that package.” The Great Unraveling continues at a rapid clip when slipping on a pronoun in these days of transgender rule could cost you your career or earn you massive social media rallies chanting “hater” at you.
Even benign reminders of the First Amendment—embodied in Religious Freedom Restoration Acts—are quickly dispatched by mob hysteria. One day a supposedly principled leader like Indiana Gov. Mike Pence promotes the RFRA, and the next day he folds and essentially signs on with the mob.
Even benign reminders of the First Amendment are quickly dispatched by mob hysteria.
There seem to be few independent thinkers left. But even they don’t seem to know what hit them. A woman getsbanned by her gym and labelled a bigot because she told management that a man—who she only later learned “identified as female”—entered the locker room while she was getting undressed. Comedians who dare tread into trans territory are shut down. Never before have the media and pop culture dictated in such a draconian manner how each and every one of us is supposed to think about identity. Our own identity.
The list goes on. The unrest and rioting from Ferguson to Baltimore seem to be happening on cue also, with media propaganda that urges it on. There is no real debate on the merits of policies that depend on a blind faith in man-made global warming: those who disagree are labelled “deniers.”
Roughly 4 million current and former federal employees have had their data exposed by a hack, the Obama administration said Thursday.
The notification from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was short on details, but it appears troves of sensitive information had been pilfered.
Separate media reports cited China as being behind the massive hack.
The digital assailants first infiltrated the system in December, four months before they were discovered, The Washington Post reported.
“Protecting our Federal employee data from malicious cyber incidents is of the highest priority at OPM,” said OPM Director Katherine Archuleta. “We take very seriously our responsibility to secure the information stored in our systems.”
The FBI said it had opened up an investigation into the breach, which The Wall Street Journalreported is believed to have come from hackers in China.
An unnamed U.S. official told NBCNews that the data breach might touch every federal agency.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesman said it noticed “malicious activity affecting its information technology (IT) systems and data in April.”
Apr 25, 1:38 PM EDT
BY NEDRA PICKLER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — With debate gearing up over the coming expiration of the Patriot Act surveillance law, the Obama administration on Saturday unveiled a 6-year-old report examining the once-secret program to collect information on Americans’ calls and emails.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence publicly released the redacted report following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the New York Times. The basics of the National Security Agency program had already been declassified, but the lengthy report includes some new details about the secrecy surrounding it.
President George W. Bush authorized the “President’s Surveillance Program” in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The review was completed in July 2009 by inspectors general from the Justice Department, Pentagon, CIA, NSA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
They found that while many senior intelligence officials believe the program filled a gap by increasing access to international communications, others including FBI agents, CIA analysts and managers “had difficulty evaluating the precise contribution of the PSP to counterterrorism efforts because it was most often viewed as one source among many available analytic and intelligence-gathering tools in these efforts.”
Critics of the phone records program, which allows the NSA to hunt for communications between terrorists abroad and U.S. residents, argue it has not proven to be an effective counterterrorism tool. They also say an intelligence agency has no business possessing the deeply personal records of Americans. Many favor a system under which the NSA can obtain court orders to query records held by the phone companies.
The Patriot Act expires on June 1, and Senate Republicans have introduced a bill that would allow continued collection of call records of nearly every American. The legislation would reauthorize sections of the Patriot Act, including the provision under which the NSA requires phone companies to turn over the “to and from” records of most domestic landline calls.
The co-founder of the world’s sixth most popular website thinks that the National Security Agency’s Internet spying is not only illegal but violates core provisions of the Constitution.
While explaining the rationale behind Wikipedia’s lawsuit against the spy agency on Friday, Jimmy Wales hoped that the legal action would lead to a landmark ruling declaring new limits on government’s spying powers.
The “minimum acceptable” result of the case, Wales said in a conversation on Reddit, would be to find that the NSA’s massive collection of data on the Internet’s backbone was illegal.
How Government Surveillance Threatens How We Communicate
by Cynthia M. Wong (@cynthiamw), Senior Researcher, Internet and Human Rights
We have reached an inflection point for the future of the Internet. To preserve the Internet as an open, global platform for rights, development, and commerce, we need principled rules to govern digital surveillance and protect privacy that apply to every government.
Until the summer of 2013, the global movement for Internet freedom had been gaining momentum. A diverse range of governments had formed the Freedom Online Coalition and publicly committed to promoting a free, open, and global Internet through coordinated diplomatic efforts, led by the United States, United Kingdom, and their allies. There was broad recognition at the United Nations Human Rights Council that the same rights we enjoy offline must also apply online.
However, global trust in US and UK leadership on Internet freedom has evaporated ever since former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden began releasing evidence of mass surveillance by the NSA and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). In a blistering critique at the UN in September 2013, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff condemned these practices: “In the absence of the right to privacy, there can be no true freedom of expression and opinion, and therefore no effective democracy,” Rouseff declared. “The right to safety of citizens of one country can never be guaranteed by violating the rights of citizens of another country.”
Snowden’s revelations laid bare the rift between the stated values of the US and UK and their behavior. Even while championing an open and free Internet, these governments were collecting data on hundreds of million people worldwide every day, including, in the case of the US, Dilma Rousseff herself. To make it easier to spy on people online and identify security threats, they have also surreptitiously weakened Internet security, paradoxically making all Internet users less safe and more vulnerable to hackers and identity thieves.
Obama “Very Interested” In Raising Taxes Through Executive Action
Conn Carroll | Mar 02, 2015
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirmed Monday that President Obama is “very interested” in the idea of raising taxes through unitlateral executive action.
“The president certainly has not indicated any reticence in using his executive authority to try and advance an agenda that benefits middle class Americans,” Earnest said in response to a question about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) calling on Obama to raise more than $100 billion in taxes through IRS executive action.
“Now I don’t want to leave you with the impression that there is some imminent announcement, there is not, at least that I know of,” Earnest continued. “But the president has asked his team to examine the array of executive authorities that are available to him to try to make progress on his goals. So I am not in a position to talk in any detail at this point, but the president is very interested in this avenue generally,” Earnest finished.
Sanders sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew Friday identifying a number of executive actions he believes the IRS could take, without any input from Congress, that would close loopholes currently used by corporations. In the past, IRS lawyers have been hesitant to use executive actions to raise significant amounts of revenue, but that same calculation has change in other federal agencies since Obama became president.
Secrecy around police surveillance equipment proves a case’s undoing
By Ellen Nakashima February 22 at 3:10 PM
TALLAHASSEE — The case against Tadrae McKenzie looked like an easy win for prosecutors. He and two buddies robbed a small-time pot dealer of $130 worth of weed using BB guns. Under Florida law, that was robbery with a deadly weapon, with a sentence of at least four years in prison.
But before trial, his defense team detected investigators’ use of a secret surveillance tool, one that raises significant privacy concerns. In an unprecedented move, a state judge ordered the police to show the device —a cell-tower simulator sometimes called a StingRay — to the attorneys.
Rather than show the equipment, the state offered McKenzie a plea bargain.
Today, 20-year-old McKenzie is serving six months’ probation after pleading guilty to a second-degree misdemeanor. He got, as one civil liberties advocate said, the deal of the century. (The other two defendants also pleaded guilty and were sentenced to two years’ probation.)
Republican lawmakers investigate White House net neutrality push
Republicans want to know whether the Obama administration influenced the FCC’s proposal
By Grant Gross
Computerworld | Feb 20, 2015 2:18 PM PT
WASHINGTON – Congressional Republicans are demanding to know how much the White House influenced the Federal Communications Commission while the agency crafted net neutrality rules.
The FCC has until Monday afternoon to produce unredacted email messages, focused on net neutrality rules, between FCC staff and officials with the Obama administration, U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz said in a letter to the FCC Friday. The Utah Republican is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Chaffetz’s committee is “investigating the potential involvement of the White House” in the creation of proposed net neutrality rules that the FCC is scheduled to vote on next Thursday, he said in the letter. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will propose regulations that would reclassify broadband as a regulated telecommunications service instead of a lightly regulated information service.
An FCC spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for a comment on Chaffetz’s letter.
The Government’s War on Freedom of the Press
Press freedom has declined in recent years.
Ken Silva | February 21, 2015
The U.S. plummeted to a dismal 49th place on the Reporters Without Borders annual Press Freedom Index, marking the country’s second lowest ranking since the list was created in 2002 and its lowest since 2006. Other countries ranked in the 40s and 50s include Haiti, Mongolia, and Chile .
The index cited “judicial harassment” of New York Times reporter James Risen, the arbitrary arrest of at least 15 journalists during the Ferguson, Missouri clashes, and the fact that U.S. journalists are still not legally entitled to protect sources who reveal confidential information about their work.
The U.S.’s slip in press freedom rankings mirrors its seven-place drop in Freedom House’s Global Press Freedom Index from 2013-2014, though the country still ranks among the 14 percent of countries whose press is classified as “free” in the latter scale.
Reality may be even worse than the rankings suggest. Legal protections for the press have only eroded since the 2006 trough year when the Bush Administration threatened to prosecute Risen for publishing stories chronicling warrantless wiretapping of citizens’ phone calls.
Congress probing White House role in FCC chief’s net-neutrality plan
By JIM PUZZANGHERAcontact the reporter
Two congressional committees have launched investigations into whether the White House improperly influenced the net-neutrality proposal released last week by the head of the Federal Communications Commission.
On Monday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) asked FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in a letter to explain his decision and produce documents related to communications and meetings involving the White House and agency officials concerning the issue.
Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told Wheeler he was concerned that there was “apparent pressure exerted on you and your agency by the White House.”
The Obama Administration’s Net Neutrality Proposal Could Change the Internet Forever—but the FCC is Keeping it Secret
The FCC wants to regulate the Internet as a utility, but won’t release its full plan.
Peter Suderman|Feb. 6, 2015 1:15 pm
On Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler announced a major new proposal to regulate the Internet as utility, and, in doing so, institute restrictive net neutrality rules on every major component of the Internet. Given the Obama administration’s unusual and aggressive effort to push the FCC chief into putting forth the proposal, it’s better thought of as the White House’s net neutrality proposal.
The proposal is extraordinary in many ways: According to an op-ed by Wheeler and other accounts, it would not only reclassify wired broadband service as a Title II utility, like the phone system, it would also apply to wireless data. In addition, it would give the FCC new authority over the Internet’s backend—the middleman services that transfer data between Internet service providers (ISPs). It would pave the way for new taxes to be applied to Internet service.
It would, in other words, be a fundamental break from the sort of relatively light federal regulation that has defined the Internet since its inception, and it represents a blatantly political reversal on the part of Chairman Wheeler, a technically independent agency head who plainly caved to White House pressure.
But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the proposal, which is 332 pages long, is that it is being kept secret from the public—and it will remain secret until after a vote later this month in which it is likely to pass on a 3-2 basis, with Wheeler and the FCC’s two Democratically appointed commissioners outvoting the two Republican-appointed commissioners.
Here’s something that many Americans — including some of the smartest and most educated among us — don’t know: The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading.
Right now, we’re hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is “down” to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.
None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job — if you are so hopelessly out of work that you’ve stopped looking over the past four weeks — the Department of Labor doesn’t count you as unemployed. That’s right. While you are as unemployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are not counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news — currently 5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren’t throwing parties to toast “falling” unemployment.
There’s another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you’re an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 — maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn — you’re not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know this.
Yet another figure of importance that doesn’t get much press: those working part time but wanting full-time work. If you have a degree in chemistry or math and are working 10 hours part time because it is all you can find — in other words, you are severely underemployed — the government doesn’t count you in the 5.6%. Few Americans know this.
There’s no other way to say this. The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.
And it’s a lie that has consequences, because the great American dream is to have a good job, and in recent years, America has failed to deliver that dream more than it has at any time in recent memory. A good job is an individual’s primary identity, their very self-worth, their dignity — it establishes the relationship they have with their friends, community and country. When we fail to deliver a good job that fits a citizen’s talents, training and experience, we are failing the great American dream.
Gallup defines a good job as 30+ hours per week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck. Right now, the U.S. is delivering at a staggeringly low rate of 44%, which is the number of full-time jobs as a percent of the adult population, 18 years and older. We need that to be 50% and a bare minimum of 10 million new, good jobs to replenish America’s middle class.
I hear all the time that “unemployment is greatly reduced, but the people aren’t feeling it.” When the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start reporting the truth — the percent of Americans in good jobs; jobs that are full time and real — then we will quit wondering why Americans aren’t “feeling” something that doesn’t remotely reflect the reality in their lives. And we will also quit wondering what hollowed out the middle class.
The head of the Federal Communications Commissionis urging his fellow commissioners to block state laws that would prevent cities and towns from building out their own government-run Internet services.
Chairman Tom Wheeler this week will circulate a draft decision to nullify laws in Tennessee and North Carolina, after receiving a request from towns in each of those states.
Cities across the country “should be able to make their own decisions about building the networks they need to thrive,” Wheeler said in a statement on Monday.
“After looking carefully at petitions by two community broadband providers asking the FCC to preempt provisions of state laws preventing expansion of their very successful networks, I recommend approval by the commission so that these two forward-thinking cities can serve the many citizens clamoring for a better broadband future.”
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_riaIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 165
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_inhaIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 166
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_mastodonIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 177
