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media and media people national politics & policies political challengers responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Conscience Clear?

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Today the Electoral College meets to elect the 45th President of these United States.

But if they fail to cast the required majority for a candidate, the contest goes into the House of Representatives, where each state gets one vote — Wyoming and California equally weighted — and a state’s vote can only be cast for one of the top three Electoral College vote-getters.

Of course, only two candidates won electoral votes, because only they won states. Donald Trump won 30 states comprising 306 electoral votes; Hillary Clinton won 20 states with 232.

That’s the arithmetic. But, as I explored at Townhall yesterday, nothing in the Constitution requires an elector pledged to Trump or Clinton to vote for that candidate.* They can vote their conscience.

That’s why in recent days, Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, a California elector, petitioned to have electors receive an intelligence briefing about Russian hacking — hoping to sway electors.

Her petition was denied.

Desperation showing, a group of Hollywood actors led by Martin Sheen starred in a Unite for America video talking down to — er, directly to — Republican electors. Asserting that the Electoral College was designed by “Hamilton himself” to prevent an “unfit” “demagogue” (they mean Mr. Trump) from attaining the presidency, the actors claim to “stand with” and “respect” GOP electors, who could be heroes in Hollywood (no honor more tempting!) if only they’d cast their vote for someone other than Trump.

Anyone! — who meets presidential qualifications. “I’m not asking you,” three actors in a row assure, “to vote for Hillary Clinton.”

As much as I support the idea of voting one’s conscience and as much fun as this election has been, I think we’ve all now had enough. Let’s prepare ourselves to help Mr. Trump do what’s right and stop him from doing what’s wrong . . . with a clear conscience.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Some electors do sign a loyalty pledge to the candidate and there are state laws, almost certainly unconstitutional, which penalize electors who do not vote for the candidate they are pledged to.

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Original (cc) photo by Crosa on Flickr

 

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Accountability ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

The Revenge of the Gatekeepers

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We saw glimmerings last year when Twitter began to selectively enforce “policy” against some (Milo Yiannoupolis) and not against others (the hordes of leftists who threatened to assassinate Donald Trump).

You could see it in Hillary Clinton’s campaign; after Trump won, it loomed to eclipse all reason.

And on Thursday I noted Congress’s reaction.

I refer to the hysteria over non-Democratic “memes” and “fake news” that trumped the erstwhile gatekeepers of the Fourth Estate and the political classes — including the lobbying and bureaucratic cliques — and stymied the ascension of Mrs. Clinton to the Most Powerful Office in the Whole Wide World.

Now Facebook has come on board with a way to combat this freewheeling flow of ideas.

Fact-checking.

Hayley Tsukayama, writing in the Washington Post, explained the new program:

The social network is going to partner with the Poynter International Fact-Checking Network, which includes groups such as Snopes, to evaluate articles flagged by Facebook users.

If those articles don’t pass the smell test for the fact-checkers, Facebook will pass on that evaluation with a little label whenever they are posted or shared, along with a link to the organization that debunked the story.

The problem, here, is not a First Amendment issue: Facebook is not the government; when it tampers with your communications, it does not break the law.

The problem is that the Internet’s self-proclaimed fact-checkers are not exactly fair-minded, or even capable of sticking to the facts. I quoted Nietzsche yesterday (“there are no facts, only interpretations”), today I will merely reference Ben Shapiro, who has a history with false fact-checkers, and riff off of Juvenal: who will fact check the fact checkers? (Obvious, I know.)

Meanwhile, the folks behind new social media service minds.com offer an innovative posting promotion system, and promise never to sneakily favor some ideas over others.

The proper response to a business firm’s discriminatory policy is to provide market pressure.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

Effrontery Propaganda?

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Buried within another, more innocuous-sounding piece of legislation*, the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act passed the U.S. Senate last week. Introduced in March, the corresponding House bill is still in committee.

Designed to “counter foreign disinformation and propaganda,” especially but not limited to Russia’s, the law, if enacted, would set up what amounts to the ultimate fact-checking outfit. But since, in politics, Nietzsche’s Law of Hermeneutics** holds — “there are no facts, only interpretations” — what it really would be is an anti-propaganda propaganda house, described by critics as a “Ministry of Truth.”

From Senate sponsors Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chris Murphy (D-CT), however, it sounds a lot more noble. It seeks to develop “a whole-of-government strategy for countering foreign propaganda and disinformation” as well as “leverage expertise from outside government to create more adaptive and responsive U.S. strategy options.”***

You can see why government insiders would be concerned. After all, information (mis- and dis- and even correct) travels fast these days.

That is the way of memes — “mind viruses,” popularly called**** — in this age of the Internet.

One related meme is the phrase “effrontery propaganda,” repeated in Internet postings, which characterizes the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act’s mission as that of developing and disseminating “‘fact-based narratives” to counter effrontery propaganda.”

Insiders in government and major media do see as “effrontery” the memes that so strongly captured our imaginations in 2016. But is it fakery that really bothers them? Or mere effectiveness?

In any case, effrontery is precisely the right word for any centralized, government-run propaganda outfit.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Titled a “report”!

** This being about propaganda, I hone my philosophical chops and chutzpah by dubbing the infamous F. A. Nietzsche saying as a “law.” On the order of Murphy’s and Parkinson’s so-called laws. Why not? Maybe it’ll catch on.

*** Specifically, the Senate version of the bill would expand “the authority, resources, and mandate of the Global Engagement Center” — an existing institution — to handle state actors (Russia, Russia, Russia, and China) as well as “help train local journalists” and seek to influence (and fund) NGOs and think tanks.

**** Richard Dawkins, in The Selfish Gene (1976; 40th Anniversary Edition, 2016), proposed a new science, memetics. Which has since been developed. See The Meme Machine, for example, by Susan Blackmore (Oxford University Press, 1999).

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Accountability crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Savagely Killing Conversation

Michael Savage, police, murder, killing,, justice, Bernie Sanders

“You think the police deserve to be killed?” That’s what talk show host Michael Savage asked his caller yesterday.

What brought that on?

A self-described liberal woman named Teri had called The Savage Nation. Though not a Trump supporter, she “did not have the antipathy for him that most liberals did.”

“[U]nderneath his brashness and braggadocio,” Teri had thought, “there actually beat a heart for America.” But after his numerous initial appointments, she is now “terrified.”

On air, Teri admitted that her preferred candidate for president had been independent (not turned Democrat) Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Savage called Sanders a “con man” — a “race-baiter” who “attacked the police regularly.”

That’s when he inquired if it was her desire to see police officers murdered. To which, she replied, “No, my husband was a police captain.”

Savage: “That’s amazing. How could you vote for a man like Bernie Sanders, who hated the police and used the police as a weapon to stir up minorities?”

Teri: “Believe it or not, my husband actually supported him, too.”

Savage: “Why would a police captain support Bernie Sanders?”

Teri: “Well, my husband was a very honored and honorable policeman.”

Savage: “You mean, all the police who were killed deserved to be killed?”

Savage, indeed. Does he really believe that a person criticizing certain police behavior or seeking reform necessarily thirsts for the blood of innocent police? Really?

Or does he simply hope to shut down any thoughtful conversation about the injustice in our criminal justice system?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency ideological culture national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to a Reform

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Going into the presidential race, last year, Donald Trump was far from a typical Republican.

His rich man braggadocio, his prior support for abortion, and much else, put him culturally at odds with the social conservative wing of the GOP. He dared heap scorn on neoconservative foreign policy strategy, sacrosanct since Reagan on the right. He has supported many Democratic programs, not the least of which is the Gephardtian protectionism that pulled in so many moderate Democrats.

Besides, as he has famously stated, Democrats loved him, asked him for money, and (not coincidentally) gave him praise . . . right up until he started his campaign under the Republican banner. Then he was excoriated as sexist, racist, xenophobic, Ugly Americanist. Ivanka, his eldest daughter — extraordinarily close to him — was a registered as a Democrat recently enough that she couldn’t even vote for him in the primary.

Ideologically, he has been all over the map.

So one might reasonably think he would govern as a centrist. A non-humble Jimmy Carter retread, perhaps.

But he has assembled the most conservative cabinet in our lifetime. Far more conservative than Ronald Reagan’s. Predictably, Democrats are freaking out.

Why the move “rightward”?

Well, if all the Democratic leadership plus most of the moderate Republican leadership have come out strongly against you — in high moral dudgeon — what point is there to appease them?

The cost of the Trump anathematization strategy may become all too clear in Trump’s first Hundred Days.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency media and media people national politics & policies too much government

Seventeen, Again

spy, spies, intelligence, agency, 17, Hillary Clinton, Russia

The first I heard of an actual enumeration of federal “intelligence agencies” was from Hillary Clinton. In the final presidential debate, she claimed that the truths spilling out of the Podesta emails had been revealed courtesy of Russian hackers, and she knew this because all 17 U.S. “intelligence agencies” had briefed her.

Seventeen!

The number, at least, does not come from a secret source. Business Insider had popularized it. “These 17 Agencies Make Up The Most Sophisticated Spy Network In The World,” Paul Szoldra informed us three-and-one-half years ago in a fascinating listicle.

Call me paranoid . . . but if I am told that the government has 17 spy agencies, I wonder about one more: The Really, Really Secret Infodump Agency. There is, after all, no official definition of “government agency”; the federal government doesn’t even publish an official overall count, intelligent or otherwise.

Besides, the prime number 17 just seems too . . . contrived. Sixteen or 18? Boring numbers. But 17? Its numerological magic lends plausibility to “the most sophisticated spy network in the world.”

Of course, when Mrs. Clinton insisted that all 17 had concurred that the Russians were on Trump’s side, I did not believe her. And now that mainstream media outlets — in an apparent frenzy to prove themselves a more reliable fake news source than the Twittersphere, blogosphere, Facebook-o-sphere and Breitbart combined — run with nearly the same story, I don’t believe them, either.

It is as if they’ve had their talking points delivered in a secret dossier.

Reasons for doubt? All the anonymous sources, all the hedges on the order of “may be linked to” and “‘one step’ removed.”

Fake news. Brought to you by the number 17.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Original (cc) photo byAli T on Flickr

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education and schooling ideological culture meme too much government

The Ignorance of Experts

RIchard, Feynman, science, ignorance, experts, meme

Richard Phillips Feynman May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman, jointly with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.

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“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

—Richard Feynman

(address “What is Science?“, presented at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, in New York City (1966), published in The Physics Teacher, volume 7, issue 6 (1969), p. 313-320)

 

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ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Climate Change Assertions

Scott Pruitt, EPA, Global Warming, Climate Change, illustration

I know Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s pick to head the EPA; he replaced the egregious Drew Edmondson as Oklahoma Attorney General.

Pruitt seems like a good man.

But Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) says different. “Mr. Pruitt’s record is not only that of being a climate change denier, but also . . .”

Wait: that “climate change denier” charge is everywhere. But all I’ve seen is assertion.

It would indeed be weird were he — or anyone — to deny the reality of climate change. Way back in my Seventies’ youth, I saw all sorts of climate change articles . . . predicting a new Ice Age.

Decades later, the headlines began to change: Global Warming was in.

But note: those Seventies’ articles usually mentioned that the world had been heating out of the recent Little Ice Age, with the thaw beginning before the dreaded Industrial Revolution.

I bet that what our new Trump pick really believes is that

  • warm weather is generally better than cold weather;
  • CO2 is not a poison as such (plants thrive with more carbon dioxide);
  • every major climate model has predicted more warming than we’ve experienced; and
  • stifling progress to offset poorly understood climate events would be disastrous, especially for the poor.

Betting aside, what does Pruitt believe? The Advocate actually repeats the disproven “97 percent of climate scientists” meme to pile on the abuse*, but did link to a National Review article Pruitt co-authored with Alabama’s attorney general.

They did not deny climate change, merely insisting that “the debate is far from settled.” More importantly, they argued that governments should not intimidate energy companies in service to the climate cause. Instead, they called for open debate.

Shocking!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The Advocate also irrelevantly charged Pruitt with “transphobia.” But then, Trump’s Small Business Administration pick, Linda McMahon, has also been tarred with the “climate denier” charge, which is as irrelevant to an SBA head as vegetarianism would be for a Secretary of Treasury.

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Original (cc) photo by Gage Skidmore on Flickr

 

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meme

“Settled Science”

Karl Popper, meme, science, settled

Sir Karl Raimund Popper  (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher and professor. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century.

“The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finallyverified, retires from the game.”

—Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery

 

Categories
Accountability ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

More Forced Registration

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Voting’s a right, not a duty.

So voter registration and actual voting should be made easy. But I’m not for mandating that people vote, or for registering them involuntarily.

Which is why I oppose the Automatic Voter Registration Initiative (AVRI), an indirect Nevada initiative that state officials just announced has turned in enough petition signatures.

Now, you may not be familiar with this “indirect initiative” process. These are initiatives that first go to the legislature and then, should the legislature not pass them, appear on a later ballot (in this case, 2018’s) for voters to either enact or reject.

Currently, when Nevadans conduct business at the Department of Motor Vehicles, they’re asked if they’d like to register to vote. If they opt in, i.e., say “yes,” then the DMV transmits their information to the Secretary of State to be added to the voter rolls.

However, the new initiative would automate the process, so every person’s information gets whisked over to the Secretary of State, whether said person wants to be registered or not. It reads: “Unless the person affirmatively declines in writing,” he or she “shall be deemed to be an applicant to register to vote.”

Declining registration must be “in writing”?

A simple, “No, thank you,” won’t suffice?

Now, I understand: should the AVRI become law, the seriousness of the injury Nevada’s government would inflict on those seeking to remain unregistered admittedly pales in comparison to the Japanese internment camps during World War II, the Trail of Tears, civil asset forfeiture abuse, etc., etc.

But still. Assert a simple truth: people have a right to register and vote, which entails a right not to register and not to vote.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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