Wednesday, January 17, 2018

"The Post", A Tribute to the Fourth Estate

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

The Post. What a fantastic movie on so many levels!

I saw it recently with my family and, except for someone who kept falling asleep and snoring behind us, we really enjoyed this truly inspiring movie. The actual events surrounding the Pentagon Papers and the Vietnam conflicts here at home all flooded back to mind (yes, I am that old). But the movie brought in more detail and information than I ever knew. It filled the theater with suspense despite knowing the ultimate outcome. It reminded me again of just how vulnerable our First Amendment rights are, and how easy it is for an administration of government to take them away.

The U.S. Constitution doesn’t actually grant us our rights, it is just a slip of paper. Rather, it challenges us to physically inhabit those rights for ourselves. It lays the framework for an active civic process. Each generation must secure their rights anew under our Constitutional framework.

It was twice said in the movie that the right to publish the news is secured by publishing it, not by arguing about it. Our rights can wither in debate but can only strengthen when exercised. That is a lesson we must pass along to every generation.

Two present day examples of this principle come to mind. NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem is an actual exercise of our First Amendment rights, while the ensuing debate did little to strengthen our right to protest. A second example comes from a local news story of a lawyer who was stopped in her car by a police officer. The officer asked her if she knew why he had stopped her. She said she refused to answer the question, but otherwise cooperated and gave him her documents. The officer was so upset that she wouldn't answer his question that he arrested her for not following a "legal" command. As he put her in the back of his police car he read her that familiar Miranda warning, which says in part, "You have a right to remain silent..." She remained under arrest for hours before being released. She later won a modest settlement in a suit brought against the Department for her unlawful arrest. The story generated a lot of debate while her actions helped secure our actual rights.

But back to the movie. I also came away with a profound appreciation for the incredible heroine depicted so well by Meryl Streep.

Katharine Graham was a socialite and heiress to the Washington Post, which was a local newspaper at that time. Her father founded the paper and left her husband in charge. Then her husband died suddenly leaving all of this crushing responsibility for the newspaper on her.

Ms. Graham was ill prepared for her role as publisher in most aspects. But she had an incredibly noble character and somehow managed to summon enormous strength to do the right thing under threats of disaster. She was a woman alone in a man's world, yet she rose to meet the challenges. Her courage saved the Post and helped save the First Amendment for a generation to come. Her decision to publish the stolen, top secret Pentagon Papers exposed decades of government lies about Vietnam and helped bring that war to an end. The Supreme Court's decision to uphold the freedom of the press in publishing that information set the stage for journalism's victory in holding the Nixon administration accountable to the rule of law following the Watergate break in.

Contrast that with how the government is acting in the Edward Snowden matter today, for example, consider the public good Snowden has done in exposing illegal, unconstitutional government activities. His decision to selectively reveal classified information to the press has lead to strong government reforms designed to protect our privacy rights, yet he is considered a criminal, just as Daniel Ellsberg was a generation ago.

At a time when our current President openly lies to us, disparages the free press, calls it "fake news" and encourages citizens to distrust not only legitimate journalism but many trusted government institutions, this story about Publisher Katharine Graham, her Editor-in-Chief, Ben Bradley and the Washington Post is a timely tale of caution and inspiration for us all.

Sunday, January 14, 2018

Race, Social Divisions Sap Our Strength, but We Shall Overcome!

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

 I liked this humorous bit (below) because it reminds us that racism is used by the powerful to maintain their wealth and status. If poor whites and poor  minorities joined in common cause it would spell trouble for wealthy elite. They would be forced to share more of their wealth.

Dr. ML King came to understand this before he was murdered. He was never a greater threat to the established order than when he began his work to unite the races in a fight against poverty and the wealthy elite who structure societies to favor themselves.

Click Here to see the brief video of Dave Chappelle: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialChopShop702/videos/936060313225131/ 

There is only one source of social power in human society, and that is the power of coordinated actions. Whether you are building a house, a business, a movement or a government, it is the coordinated actions of people that get things done. 

The converse is true when powerful interests want to block the competing interests of others. They block others by disrupting their ability to communicate and organize. They disrupt our efforts to coordinate the actions of others. They diminish us through subversion or by distorting or hiding the facts. They create and exploit divisions among us. They create distractions, sow confusion, disparage dissent, arrest organizers, isolate factions and restrict access to resources. They use force if all else fails.

President John F. Kennedy once said, "Those that make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable." 

The tendency to form social divisions is part of our human nature, but so is forming alliances and overcoming differences for mutual benefit.  If our capacity to work together was not greater than our urge to only "take  care of our own," we would still be a society of hunter gatherers. Powerful people use their power to stay in power. They thwart our efforts to organize, to unionize, to communicate, to affiliate, to overcome our differences and even to vote in this republic.

And now a new layer has been added. A hostile foreign power has infiltrated our government at the highest levels. It is using its military to conduct mass media propaganda attacks against us, attacks designed to disunite us as a nation. It is compromising our politicians with illegal campaign cash. Its goal is to establish a global kleptocracy with unlimited powers to extract our wealth and control our culture.

Against these coordinated attacks on America we must come together, unite in common cause and overcome the differences between us that they magnifying and exploit.  It's time to unite against all odds and move in unison against the forces that are pulling us apart. 

Here, on Martin Luther King Day, are a few quotes  and an excerpt of his last major address before being assassinated.

“God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty.”
“A second evil which plagues the modern world is that of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus, it projects its nagging, prehensile tentacles in lands and villages all over the world. Almost two-thirds of the peoples of the world go to bed hungry at night. They are undernourished, ill-housed, and shabbily clad. Many of them have no houses or beds to sleep in. Their only beds are the sidewalks of the cities and the dusty roads of the villages. Most of these poverty-stricken children of God have never seen a physician or a dentist.”
 “The rich nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped, school the unschooled, and feed the unfed. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.’”
Most people think about Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech today, but I want to leave you with another speech of his. Watch Lin Manuel deliver Dr. King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech:

https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/952931323424907264



Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Restoring Democracy in the Democratic Party is Necessary to Save Our Republic

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Not long ago, Deborah Wassermann Shultz and the DNC boasted that Democratic super delegates buffer the Democratic Party leadership from capricious grassroots influence. Make no mistake, this was a boast, not an admission. Behind it is a fear that popular movement activists might upset the balance between wealthy donors who fund the Party and the needs of middle-class Americans, which is the largest voting bloc. But representing the middle-class leaves a lot of worthy American's without political representation.

Consider this, the U.N. is investigating poverty and civil right violations in areas of the United States that are on par with what can be found seen in 3rd world nations. Extremely insensitive GOP policies and attitudes are among the root causes of extreme systemic poverty. No where are the consequences more dire than in some red states in the South dominated by extreme conservative politics. In one poor neighborhood in Alabama under investigation by the United Nations, for example, ringworm is epidemic from contaminated drinking water. The reason is that waste water is being carried away in above ground PVC pipes that empty into open sewerage pits and even fields where children play. The Republican leaders don't seem to care about sanitation for these folks. In the eyes of many conservative politicians the poor have only themselves to blame. Leaders there allocate no money to help those who have no money to fix their septic tanks. These are the unworthy poor.



It is the GOP that does most of the dirty work of stripping the social safety nets and public services of government funding. The money saved pays for tax cuts and sweetheart deals to wealthy corporations and their owners. These perks for business are rewarded with campaign donations and sometimes other, more corrupt, remunerations.

Democratic leaders are mostly silent about the poverty conditions in red states, and have been for years. These poor people aren't registered Democrats. They can't help Democrats get elected and can't donate to the Party. This is how Democratic leaders feel about the poor in general. Party leaders have become ever more focused on races where the Party has the best chances of winning, and corporate donations are all that is needed to secure a victory. But these corporate donations also come with strings attached. Business interests must be served. Regulations and consumer protections must be rescinded to boost corporate profits. Tax breaks for the wealthy must be provided in exchange for their support, and government services must be cut to make up for lost revenue.

This is an aspect of party over people. It is neoloberalism in action. Neoliberalism is devoid of any compassion or social justice for those who cannot compete in the market place. Neoliberals ascribe human rights to business entities and work to free corporations from restrictive government rules designed to protect and empower actual human beings. Neoliberal Democrats have given lip service to the needs of the middle-class for decades without ever mentioning the deteriorating conditions of the poor and the working class over the past 30 years. They run on prosperity platforms that emphasize job creation rather than wealth creation for middle-class families. They stress ways to boost business profits to create good paying jobs, but then don't hold businesses accountable when those jobs never materialize. They turn a blind eye when the wealthy hide their profits in off shore tax havens, and the list goes on. Neoliberals in both parties continue to promote failed policy ideas because they can't offend their business donors. So for all of us, silence is consent! Our hands are just as dirty if we aren't willing to speak out and advocate for ourselves and for those who have no voice in government.

Right now, the Republican Party is a lost cause while the Democratic Party is too focused on the tic tock of strategic planning to hear the cries of the needy. Both parties are badly in need of reform. The over representation of business interests (ownership class) over civil interests is at the core of the destructive neoliberal philosophy shared by leadership in both parties. I am a life-long Democrat. It is clear that the DNC and the State Democratic Parties must come to accept that populism IS what democracy looks like. If you do right by all the people you have nothing to fear from populist activism. Don't just cut the number of super-delegates, eliminate them and restore democracy.

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

The Promise Makers of Wall Street

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Not long ago a dollar was backed by the promise that it could be exchanged for gold or silver. To back up that promise the US gold reserve was established at Fort Knox in Tennessee, for example. The confidence of our people, and of the rest of the world, in our currency was far less certain than it is today.  The gold standard was perhaps a necessary step towards establishing the good faith of the US Government.

Look at a dollar bill and you will see that it is a Federal Reserve Note. Before the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank, many banks issued their own currency, or "bank notes".  The worthiness of those bank notes wasn't inconsistent. The Federal Reserve Bank standardized and stabilized our national currency. It's important to remember that the word "note" is another word for an I.O.U.  A banknote is a promise that a coin or a paper document can be exchanged for a stated amount of "tangible value."

The important point for this discussion is that all currency is a form of debt. A U.S. Dollar is a government-backed loan. Our trust in its worthiness has become an intrinsic faith in our government's ability to guarantee its face value. (Which is why the Congressional Freedom Coalition's talk of not raising the national debt ceiling is so dangerous.)

I recently saw "Junk" on Broadway. It is a play partially based on the story of Wall Street financier Michael Milken.  It is a cautionary tale of money and corruption. Milken's new approach to finance made him a billion dollars over just four years in the 1980s. He was like a god on Wall Street and all the normal rules didn't seem to apply to him until he got caught breaking the laws he willfully ignored.

More than that, Junk is the story of the paradigm shift Milken pioneered in how modern bankers and business leaders have come to understand wealth and power.  It is a view of wealth that can be summed up by the slogan, "debt is an asset".  Specifically, any financial instrument that reliably conveys the promise of value to another person or entity can be used as a form of currency.

Government regulated Federal Reserve Notes are no longer central to the exchange of wealth. Nor is any physical collateral or real estate necessary. It seems almost any promise of payment for money owed is sufficient to make financial transactions on Wall Street. These creative financial instruments often have clever names and deceptive structures. They are increasingly complex and difficult to understand or regulate. But they all have one thing in common, they are all based on debt. They all create wealth on a promise.

In  Milken's case, he began with generating cash by selling very high risk, but high yield bonds and then using those bonds as collateral to finance corporate takeovers. These "junk bonds" (as they are still called) were used as currency to finance "leveraged buyouts" of other businesses. Whole divisions within companies purchased in these buyouts often had to be chopped up and sold off to pay back these high-interest bonds.

The charges brought against Milken were ordinary financial crimes, such as insider trading. But his creative financing resulted in a whole new banking culture that upended how business was conducted around the world. It has lead to an economic environment where new methods for wealth extraction competes against more conventional methods of wealth creation on a global scale.

The growing methods and culture of wealth extraction do transfer wealth from one party or entity to another but doesn't create new wealth. It doesn't grow or manufacture anything. It only creates more opportunities for the wealthy to grow richer while disadvantaging mid-sized businesses and manufacturers. It is one of the drivers leading us into the next gilded age, but it hard to see just where it is taking us. It is harder still to know what we can do to make our economy work for everyone again.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Uranium One Hype a Big "Nothing Burger"

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

President Trump and some Republicans in Congress want the Department of Justice to investigate Trumps political opponent, Hillary Clinton. Specifically they want a Special Counsel appointed to investigate her ties to the sale of US uranium to Russia. Attorney General Jeff Sessions squirmed under pressure to act from a GOP congressmen at a hearing on November 14, 2017.

A President calling for criminal investigations of his political opponents is abhorrent in any modern democracy. In this particular case a second Special Counsel investigation would also give Trump political leverage to further obstruct the efforts of Robert Mueller's investigation of Trump's ties to Russia. But I suspect the biggest reason Jeff Sessions squirmed when pressed to appoint a Special Counsel was because there is simply no basis to investigate anything connecting Hillary to Uranium One sales. Here are the essential facts in a timeline format.

2005 - Bill Clinton and Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining financier with an interest in the UrAsia Mining Company, visit Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is an independent country that was once under the control of the former Soviet Union. Not long after the Guistra visit, UrAsia Mining receives a lucrative mining contract in Kazakhstan.

2006 - Frank Giustra donates $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation.
2007 - UrAsia Mining Company merges with South Africa Mining Company to become the Uranium One Company. Frank Giustra sells his financial interests in the company.
2008-2010 - During this period several active investors with an interest in Uranium One Company and a former investor (Giustra ) donate more than $8 million to the Clinton Foundation. Donation from just the active investors totaled just over $4 million. The Clinton Foundation omitted these active donors' names in a US Government filing document, later admitting that information was omitted by mistake.
2009 - Hillary Clinton becomes Secretary of State. Later that same year, Rosetom, a Russian mining company, begins buying a stake in Uranium One.

2009-2013 - During this time Rosetom completes three separate transactions to gain a controlling interest in Uranium One. Announcement of plans to take over Uranium One invokes the need for the Uranium One sale to be approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). (Note: This sale of Uranium One only involved product mined in the US and sold only to private nuclear power generation companies within the US. CFIUS is an advisory committee. Only the President of the United States can stop the sale of this company to a foreign business entity.)
2010 - The CFIUS committee, comprised of the Secretary of the US Treasury Department and department heads at the Justice Department, Homeland Security, Consumer Affairs, the Defense Department, The State Department, the Energy Department, The office of US Trade Representatives and the Science and Technology Policy group, approve the sale a controlling interest in the Uranium One Company to the Rosetom company. At the time of the approval, the State Department's CFIUS representative was the Assistant Secretary of State, Jose Fernando (not Hillary Clinton). Had any one of these agency heads objected to the sale the matter would have gone to the President to decide. The purchase of a controlling interest in Uranium One by Rosetom did not involve or allow the export of uranium to Russia.
2017 - President Donald Trump and Republican members of Congress call for a criminal Investigation of Hillary Clinton's connections to this uranium sale that took place seven years prior. 

That's it. If there was a quid pro quo arrangement between Hillary Clinton and Uranium One or Rosetom it isn't apparent from the facts, as least not to me. There are other facts that advocates of a Hillary prosecution toss into the mix (speakers fees, etc.), but they have little apparent relationship to the essential accusation the Republicans are making. If Hillary Clinton could no, and did not, contribute anything of value to the parties involved in the sale of financial interests in Uranium One, then there was no quid pro quo, no bribery to investigate.

Even FoxNews' Sheppard Smith called out his own company and the President on this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAWtb7McNvQ



CORRECTION: Original link to this clip was removed from YouTube. A fresh link has been substituted herein on 23 Jan 2019.

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Let's Talk!

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

I don't mean to offend anyone who enjoys sports, but professional sports have become a primary distraction keeping us from our due diligence to be well informed and actively engaged in the level of civil discourse our democracy requires.(This doesn't apply to everyone who likes sports). So when folks are upset that politics is infringing on sports, they affirm the role of sport as a means to avoid uncomfortable conversations.
Most Americans have developed a superficial relationship to politics (Including many in the media who cover it like a sport). Politics as sport is all process and insider intrigue. It is devoid of real substance or depth behind the reported facts. We lose sight of the real world consequences that bad policy decisions have on our lives.
Current events are forcing us to confront politics as we haven't done in years. It's a good development, but it will take time to get use to talking about politics with our neighbors again. It will take time to gather the essential facts we should have, facts that have been missing or withheld from us for years. And it will test our patience and tolerance as we begin to bridge the gaps that have come to divided us. So let's hang in there and keep talking.

Sunday, October 29, 2017

Taking Offense to NFL Counter Protests

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

[Below is a letter to the editor I sent to my hometown newspaper. Feel free to use it as a template for your own letter if you wish and feel the same way I do on the issues.]

In 2015, when police homicides in America first gained national attention, there were 59 civilians shot dead in the first 24 days of that year.  By contrast, in England and Wales there were a total of 55 civilians killed in police shootings during  the prior 24 YEARS.  Accounting for population differences we might expect  12 civilians killed by police here per year, not ten time that number.

We have too many police homicides and the problem is compounded when a disproportionate number killed are African-Americans. It may just be rogue cops and a few tainted police department behind most shootings, yet little is being done to correct the problem.

So when I see an NFL player kneeling at the National Anthem, I'm reminded we have to work harder  to overcome racial bias and improve our national policing. 

When fans, and especially Legionnaires burn NFL jerseys to protest the players calling our attention to this problem, I feel a disconnect. Don't they know they're dehumanizing the dead and trivializing the trauma of their loved ones?  Which is the greater offence, kneeling at the anthem or ignoring these needless killings? 


Tuesday, October 17, 2017

A War of Perceptions

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

[Bloggers note, 12/25/17: The latest perception bending attacks are coming from GOP members of Congress who are using documents from their House investigations and secret meetings to destroy the credibility of the FBI and the Mueller investigation. They are both using, and being influenced by right wing media outlets, some of which are Russian based fronts. You have to wonder if they are themselves compromised by intelligence collected on them from the hacked RNC documents, etc.  Why else would they be acting so contrary to their better instincts?] 

We are at war, but it isn't a kinetic war where things explode. It's a perceptual war that uses our advanced social medium platforms and weaponized psycho-social messaging against us. It radically "emotionalizes" every issue or belief system that naturally exists in our socially diverse, pluralistic society. Every difference is ripped open into an emotional divide until we can't discuss it without rancor. Friends and relatives whose company we once enjoyed we now avoid because conversations with them have become so contentious on the facts and crippled with emotions. 

We are in a global information war against democratic societies. It attacks our trust in self-government. It undermines our faith in civil institutions and the free press. It divides us, polarizes us, confuses us and eventually turns us against our neighbors. It eats away at the values, morals and principles that unit people. It fills us with mistrust, greed, envy and hate. We are led to see the world in stark contrast and black or white thinking.

When we are disunited and weak, when we are unable to govern ourselves and events spiral out of control, we will welcome the social order that the wealthy and powerful tyrants of our day want to impose. 

I know this sounds bleak and a little crazy, even to me, but we have entered into an age were the powerful elites who own or control the means of mass communications can modify and manipulate mass perceptions if we let them. 

We must hold fast to our love for humanity. We must trust in our shared values, heal our divisions, restore civility, take back control of our public discourse and re-balance public actions to better serve the greater good for all. Where we are estranged from friend and family over political or social issues, we must overcome our divisions so we can face the enemies that seek to divide us. 

Sunday, October 8, 2017

Oct. 7, 2016 - The Day We Learned and Forgot Russia Was Attacking Us

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW
OneDaysNews

James Clapper of the CIA and U.S. intelligence agencies announce that Russia is taking active measures to interfere with our Presidential elections.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/64-hours-october-one-weekend-blew-rules-american-politics-2-162827162.html

It was Friday, October 7, 2016. There was a rapid series of news dumps that day that changed the course of our Presidential Election, and our country.

If corporate (for profit) news outlets based reporting on the gravity of events rather than a story's public appeal, the top story that day would have been that US intelligence agencies announced that Russia was actively messing with our election. Media manipulations by powerful people behind the scenes took place in the hours that followed the announcement, burying the biggest news story in a decade. Who was behind the release of that shocking Access Hollywood tape that stole our attention?

The video was located by an Access Hollywood producer and turned over to NBC, who held onto it for a period of time. Somehow it was subsequently leaked to the Washington Post who published it. NBC published it minutes later. But how it got released isn't important, other to say that it wasn't released to NBC by the Hillary campaign. The public reaction to Donald Trumps debasing comments about woman was loud and immediate.*

Then, an hour after it was published, the first of the Podesta emails were released These emails that had been stolen by Russian based hackers and the content was used to strategically selected emails for release that maximize damage to the Hillary campaign. The Podesta email release blunted the impact of the Access Hollywood tapes. Both stories dominated the news for days. The two stories combined completely eclipsed the Russia story. And so the biggest story in a decade, That our democracy was currently under attack by Russia, got buried and erased from our collective conscious until after the election.

(Editors Note: Paragraph three above was re-written. It originally implied that no one knows who released the tape. The edited version above clarifies that the unidentified leak was to the Washington Post. Access Hollywood did give the information to  NBC prior to the Washington Post getting a confidential or anonymous copy. 1:35pm 10/10/17) 

Thursday, October 5, 2017

The Hypocrisy Risk for Social Conservatives

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Whenever hypocrisy strikes a Republican politician, the immediate argument on the right is that Democratic politicians are not morally superior to Republicans. This is may be true, but it is also misleading. The most recent GOP hypocrisy scandal is an example.

Representative Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania became the latest GOP social conservative to manifest hypocrisy. Murphy is married, has an adult child, is a staunch right-to-life proponent and a member of the Congressional House Pro-Life Caucus. This January he voted for the latest Pro-Life bill that passed in Congress. He proudly highlighted his support for the bill in a press release that reads in part:

"Passage of H.R. 7 in the wake of the President’s executive action yesterday gives me great hope that moving forward, we will once again be a nation committed to honoring life from the moment of conception onward and ensuring American taxpayer dollars are never spent to end a life before it even begins.” [Murphy, January 24, 2017]

The scandal is that he had just suggested to a woman who became pregnant as a result of their extra-marital affair that she should have an abortion. The woman, Shannon Edwards, was offended by the hypocrisy of Murphy's public and private attitudes on abortion and told him so in a text message:

"And you have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options." [Edwards, January 2017]

Ms. Edward's texts went public and Tim Murphy has since announced he will not run for re-election next year.  The very polarized social media debates are well underway.

[ UPDATE: Tim Murphy announced he will be resigning at the end of October ]

From this brief account the hypocrisy is clear and the consequences are sad for those involved, especially his wife and child. Frustration on the right is also understandable as this keeps happening on the GOP side. It may seem like the media are selectively reporting on GOP moral gaffs, hence comes the counter-argument that Democratic politicians are just as likely to engage in immoral behaviors, but circumstances make this misleading.

On the Republican side, family values focuses on moral issues, such as those in this case. On the Democratic side family values focuses more on policy issues, such as universal health care, fair wages, school lunch programs, etc. It is less likely politicians will fall victim to hypocrisy if the family values they promote are policy related rather than morality based.

As long as Republicans exploit social conservative issues and insist on legislating morality, the GOP will continue to provide glaring examples that we all fall short of living perfect lives. Conceding that Democrats are just as likely to engage in immorality may be true, but it doesn't change the fact that they are still less likely to sound like hypocrites when they do.

Saturday, September 30, 2017

Should I Stand or Should I Kneel?

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Are the NFL players who kneeled in protest at the National Anthem to be reviled, or were they being courageous?

Did they insult our nation, or is their freedom to action what our flag stands for?

Were the protesting players disrespectful or patriotic? 

These questions vexed the nation in recent days. People argued and took sides. Tempers sometimes flared. Angry posts or tweets were exchanged. And somewhere in a Russian troll farm cyber warriors were smiling.

This National Anthem flap is a perfect example of how we are being manipulated by higher powers in the media sphere every day. Some of the bad actors are foreign, such as the Russia operatives at the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, with its army of automated bots, who took to Twitter once again to polarize our public discourse over the NFL protest flap.

The truth is that Russia has been doing this type of thing for years; Using social media platforms on the internet to post extreme and inflammatory messages on opposite sides of every issue. This is just one of Russia's many methods to sow discord and to splinter our national unity. Their goal: Polarize our politics, widen our political fault lines, pit us against one another and make America ungovernable. Russia is targeting other democracies this way in Europe as well.

But Russia isn't the only player fomenting disunity and despair. They may even be minor players next to some of our own "stateless" oligarchs who benefit from governmental paralysis at every level. These billionaires don't want to pay any taxes, support the public commons or be told what they can and can't do. They are among a oligarchs from around the world who control more wealth and power than most countries. They see self-governing entities as obstacles to be overcome in pursuit of wealth, or as competition in their exercise of power, and some have been messing with our politics and social perceptions for years.

To borrow from a prior article:
... there is strong evidence that the rogue interests of certain Western billionaires and Russian oligarchs have converged. Breaking down the economic barriers that keep wealth and power in check under civilian controlled democracies, and the goal of undermining the strength and unity of Western democracies (strengthening Vladimir Putin's global influence) are essential aligned.

This is the bigger picture. It is a picture so large it's hard to take in and even harder to accept as true. Yet here we are, confronted by a clear case where a foreign power used Twitter to influence the personal conversations we are having with each other.

Mainstream media also has its part to play in this NFL protest story and countless others like it. It is the "for-profit" news outlets that select what we will be talking about tomorrow. NFL players protesting during the National Anthem is a real money topic. It attracts a much wider audience compared to another story about race relations. It's important to remember here that we are the commodity the broadcast media delivers to advertisers. What they choose not to cover, we don't talk much about. A simple internet search for "NFL protests" proves this point. Lost in the hoopla about the flag is any discussion of why there is a protest.

So what was the protest about?:

1. Police in this country kill too many civilians.

2. If your skin is black, you are twice as likely to be one of those killed.

NFL players were trying to bring attention to these issues, one superimposed on the other. On average, police kill about two people per day. For perspective, in all of Great Britain police kill about two people per year. If the rate of police homicides were that low in the US there wouldn't be enough of them to reveal any sort of pattern. But a pattern does exist, and African-Americans are too often the victims.

These same racial patterns come up time and again in the American justice system because we have a pervasive and persistent problem with race. Whether we are looking at statistics about arrests, convictions, incarcerations, police stops, etc., the same pattern is superimposed on the data. Racial disparity, by far, is the more stubborn of the two problems listed above. We do need to address it. The other part of the problem, the high number of police killings, is a more solvable problem. We can all agree that the fewer number of civilians killed the better. That might mean better police training, better vetting of applicants and changes in police tactics or philosophy.

But here's the thing. When we try to have that discussion, the social media platforms light up with extreme, emotionally charged messaging that polarizes our public discourse. Conversations quickly become adversarial. Efforts to separate one issue from another to make problem solving easier are sabotaged. Fake news stories begin popping up to further cloud the issues and crazy websites emerge to sustain the divisions thus created. These are often organized disinformation campaigns to reinforce political disunity. They can be so successful that we sometimes can't even agree on the same set of facts. We get locked into an ideological battle and don't how we got there. We can't see the nefarious forces at work behind the scenes.

To understand how this is happening we have to consider the massive social media platforms though which we can broadly and anonymously communicate with millions of strangers. Never before have we had a cyber presence where everything we write or reveal about ourselves exists forever and is available to anyone. The whole internet is a gigantic, ever growing database that can be searched and analyzed. It's a mercurial universe of ones and zeros. Yet, to an ever greater degree, our world view is molded by our social media experiences. Even as we become more enmeshed in the cyber world, this new medium is increasing falling under the influence of powerful people with weaponized information technologies and the motivation to alter our perceptions, our behavior and our culture. Our vulnerability to manipulation by bad actors has never been greater.

We need to educate ourselves about this new virtual world in which we find ourselves. We have lost control over our public discourse and need to win it back. We have to learn how to recognize when we are be targeted with propaganda messaging and how to resist falling victim to it. We mustn't let our authentic narratives become hijacked by those who would alter our perceptions to serve their own ends? If democracy is to survive, if America is to survive, we have to overcome our differences and fight back against those who want to see our people's Republic fail.


Addendum: Home › News › Politics › BREAKING: Russians Influenced The NFL National Anthem Debate This Weekend

http://www.denverhill.info/2017/09/breaking-russians-influenced-nfl.html

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Why Russia Hacked Voter Registration Databases - Micro-targeted Messaging

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

What if Presidential candidates could identify the exact swing districts, to the precinct, that they need to win state elections? Imagine how concentrated their campaigns efforts and resources would be, including the ad buys and how those ads are tailored to the voters in those districts.

Welcome to the modern political campaign. The ability to do exactly this grows greatly every election cycle. Highly detailed voting information has not only allowed candidates to geographically concentrate their resources, it has given unscrupulous party operatives a map to devise voter suppression strategies, vote tampering schemes and gerrymandered districts that give their party structural advantages.

This much is well known by the savvy readers here, even if it remains under appreciated by the many voter. Less well understood are the new information technology weapons that were employed in the last election.

Into the" big data" world of our modern political campaigns came a whole set of newly developed propaganda technologies that can exploit a campaigns massive knowledge base. Explaining how just one of these new, information technology weapons work, one called micro-targeting, we can see how the dots are connected in the Russia election scandal now unfolding.

Here is a step by step plan to use modern information technologies to micro-target individual voters in swing districts to manipulate their vote.

Step 1. CREATE BIO-PSYCHO-SOCIAL PROFILES ON POTENTIAL VOTERS: All the publicly shared Facebook and Twitter information voluntarily provided by individual users has unwittingly created the most massive database ever imagined. Marketing companies can use this database to target ads to those most likely to buy certain products. But in politics, companies like Cambridge Analytica can use this data to creates highly accurate bio-psycho-social profiles (BPS profile) on millions of American adults, and use that information to manipulate voting behavior. The ability to create these very accurate, highly predictive individual profiles using a meta-analysis techniques is well established. Researchers have estimated that just 150 "likes" on Facebook, along with self-reported biographical information, can produce a BPS profile for individuals that better predicts their behavior than what their own spouse could predict. These profiles can even predict which words or phrases will elicit specific emotional reactions in a person. Of this profiling data, Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a Swiss mathematician, said, "People just don't understand the power of this data and how it can be used against them."

For those who don't know, Cambridge Analytica is a election data analysis company founded by Robert Mercer, an American billionaire with some very radical ideas. The company was lead by Breitbart's Steve Bannon until he joined the Trump administration. Cambridge Analytica was contracted by the Trump campaign to utilize the company's extensive voter profiles to help get Donald Trump elected in 2016.

Information that Facebook or Twitter does not uniformly obtain is the current voter registration status of users or their voting history. This type of information is only kept in state or county voter registration databases spread throughout the country. For a political campaign to get this type of information they would need to hack into many state and county databases, and do it in a way that doesn't easily trace back to the campaign.

Step 2. HACK SPECIFIC VOTER REGISTRATION FILES: Micro-targeting voters is a huge undertaking requiring a massive amount of computing. It also requires connecting an individual's BPS profile with their current voter registration status and voting history. Micro-targeting voters cannot happen without this information. There is currently no national source for voter registration information, but one has been proposed by Donald Trump's Presidential Advisory Commission of Election Integrity.

Not having a national voter registration system is probably a good thing. A hack of a single database would be far more damaging, and is less likely to be detected. Hacking dozens or hundreds of smaller databases increases the odds of getting caught. Hacks of voter registration files should therefore be limited in number, and the hacks must therefore be targeted at just the right swing districts where micro-targeting has the best odds of changing voting behaviors. The people with the best idea of which voting districts to hack are those within the campaign. The same internal polling numbers used to direct ad buys are the same numbers needed to direct voter registration hacks.

One way to assure that hacking activity can't easily be traced back to a candidate's campaign is to covertly employ third parties to conduct the hacks and supply the stolen information to the data analysis companies. If micro-targeting of voters took place during the 2016 elections, as a growing body of evidence suggests, then there has to be a connection between the micro-targeting and the Russian hacks of voter registration files that took place in 22 states. Some information sharing between the campaign and third party hackers would be required to assure that the information to be obtained is useful.

It is still highly speculative, but not unreasonable, to investigate the connections between the Trump campaign and Russian hacking of the voter registration databases. It is also reasonable to investigate whether any of the stolen information ended up in the databases of companies such as Cambridge Analytica.

Step 3. IDENTIFY INDIVIDUALS IN SWING DISTRICT WHOS VOTING BEHAVIOR CAN BE INFLUENCED BY MICRO-TARGETED MESSAGING: Once a voter's registration information and voting history is matched up with his or her BPS profile, it is a relatively straight forward step to distinguish implacable voters from casual or inconsistent voters. BPS profile characteristic can be used to identify a voters political leanings and the issues they might care about. Another characteristic that micro-targeting requires is that the target must be engaged in social media.

Step 4. BOMBARD TARGETED VOTERS ON THEIR SOCIAL MEDIA WITH SPECIALLY DESIGNED MESSAGES: In the final phase of the operation the object is to create an alternative social media landscape for the targeted voter by bombarding them with fake news stories, tweet storms and biased commentary designed to alter their perceptions of the political environment. These messages are tailored to elicit specific emotional reactions in the subjects. The messages are delivered by a virtual army of trolls (Russia has internet troll farms) and automated bots using fake Facebook or Twitter accounts. If the targeted voter ever shared any doubts about Hillary Clinton on social media, for example, the content of their micro-targeted messages might be designed to amplify those doubts and raise new ones. The purpose is to lessen the likelihood of that voter voting for Hillary. If a person ever "liked" a story about building the border wall, targeted messages might contain outrageous immigration stories to heighten fear and loathing toward immigrants, and to strengthen the voters motivation to vote for Donald Trump. By BPS profiling and micro-targeting people, it is the targeted voters who get manipulated, not the voting machines or the voting process itself.


RESULTS: The psychological and emotional impact of targeted propaganda messaging on individual voters will motivate some to go to the polls and vote for a candidate when they might have otherwise stayed home. Or the messaging may dispirit some voters and cause them to stay home when they would have otherwise cast their ballot. Researchers tell us that people manipulated by these technologies generally don't realize they are being manipulated. Because of the massive computing power available to these election data companies, and the unprecedented social media databases, identifying and targeting voters susceptible to targeted propaganda messaging is capable of directing these attacks on many thousands of voters just before an election. Flipping whole election through this process may be possible. Did micro-targeting flip the 2016 Presidential election to Donald Trump's win? No one knows yet, in part because it is so difficult to prove.

It is my belief that the state voter registration hacks were not done to disenfranchise voters at the polls, but to supplement data needed in order to identify and to micro-target low malleable voters with propaganda messaging. I also suspect targeting information was provided to the Russian hackers who broke into the state voter registration files. I don't know if these are crimes. I certainly hope they are, and I hope the Justice Department Probe is pursuing this line of investigation.

Saturday, September 9, 2017

Covert Assaults On Our Democracy Getting Noticed At Last

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

The mainstream media is finally starting to get it. They haven't yet declared that we are at war with both foreign and domestic adversaries bent on dismantling our democracy, but they are starting to report on the outlines of the cognitive warfare raging against us in the media universe.

A recent New York Times editorial piece broadens awareness of the means by which Russia influenced our 2016 election.
"But as a startling investigation by Scott Shane of The New York Times, and new research by the cybersecurity firm FireEye, now reveal, the Kremlin’s stealth intrusion into the election was far broader and more complex, involving a cyberarmy of bloggers posing as Americans and spreading propaganda and disinformation to an American electorate on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms."  

And a New York Times Op-Ed piece today by Siva Vaidhyanathan provides further insight into how Facebook allowed (and continues to allow) Russia to influence American politics.
"On Wednesday, Facebook revealed that hundreds of Russia-based accounts had run anti-Hillary Clinton ads precisely aimed at Facebook users whose demographic profiles implied a vulnerability to political propaganda. It will take time to prove whether the account owners had any relationship with the Russian government, but one thing is clear: Facebook has contributed to, and profited from, the erosion of democratic norms in the United States and elsewhere." 
Here is another rather scary quote from this Op-Ed:
" We are in the midst of a worldwide, internet-based assault on democracy. Scholars at the Oxford Internet Institute have tracked armies of volunteers and bots as they move propaganda across Facebook and Twitter in efforts to undermine trust in democracy or to elect their preferred candidates in the Philippines, India, France, the Netherlands, Britain and elsewhere. We now know that agents in Russia are exploiting the powerful Facebook advertising system directly."
Even if there was no direct collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the last election, there is strong evidence that the rogue interests of certain Western billionaires and Russian oligarchs have converged. Breaking down the economic barriers that keep wealth and power in check under civilian controlled democracies, and the goal of undermining the strength and unity of Western democracies to strengthen Vladimir Putin's global influence are essential aligned.

The Facebook, Twitter and alt-right media assaults on public perceptions during the 2016 election were not only parallel, but closely coordinated to produce the surprising outcome of Donald Trump winning the Presidency. The proof of this is slowly emerging. 

What is even less appreciated now is the ongoing media assaults aimed at Trump's supporters to maintain their loyalty and their perception that he is saving America from a "deep state" takeover of our government, or from radical Islamist trying to establish Sharia law, etc. 

We are at war. It is a new kind of cognitive warfare directed at altering our perceptions and dis-uniting us as a nation. It began long before the last election season.. and so far it's working.

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Charlottesville Battlefield - Follow the Money!

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW



Charlottesville isn't so much a turning point as a tipping point where a long standing social problem became a passionate social issue for the rest of us, as it should have been sooner. The media's periodic stories of hate crimes and hate groups over the years just didn't catch our attention.

Back when this latest iteration of white supremacy started growing again during the 1980's, it was financed by bank robberies and break-in's with the proceeds being shared around the country with various other hate group chapters. 

Think about that for a moment. 

The oxygen needed to organize and grow these hate groups is the same as for any other enterprise. It takes money... lots of it. 

So how much money does it take to sustain and operate this huge national, in fact global, white supremacy movement today? Who provided the cash to pay for all those tiki torches,the military equipment and the uniforms worn by so many alt-right protesters? Who provides the money to support the targeted alt-right media campaigns required to convert, recruit and motivate so many young white men? Who coordinated and subsidized the transportation needed to get everyone there and back, and where did the money come from to pay for it all? Who would want to harm our country and paralyze our politics so much that they would provide tens of millions of dollars to sustain this sick movement? 

I don't have answers, but these are among the questions we should be asking. Since it is obvious the movement is no longer being funded by bank robberies these days, and since it is a global movement with strong elements in Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy (to name a few), it is likely that funding for this movement is coming from wealthy sources that what to diminish or control Western democratic countries like ours. 


I suspect foreign sources are ultimately behind the growth of hate groups here and abroad. You might think I'm crazy, but if I'm correct, this is just another aspect of the new type of warfare raging against us.Power and control are behind this movement. The haters themselves are only brainwashed pawns in a much larger game.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Immigration - Let's Change the Narrative

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

IMMIGRATION - Immigration is largely an economic migration driven by huge wealth inequality. Start there if you want to understand it. 

Most people prefer to live in the country where they were born. The United States has a history of exploiting foreign countries and extracting their natural resources for domestic gain. Foreign economies start to falter as a result, and we (through the World Bank) lone them money until they can't afford the payments. The quality of life in those countries deteriorates to the point that people can't feed their families. The breadwinners migrate here to find work and send back money to feed their family. Or they bring their families here, breaking through whatever barriers stand in their way, because they love their family and don't want to see their children suffer. Understand this cycle and a whole different set of solutions to immigration become apparent. 

A whole new conversation emerges when the full cycle of immigration is understood. It is a problem we helped create as we pursue foreign policies that mostly benefit private corporate interests.

Thursday, August 3, 2017

E pluribus unum and Our Call to Be a Beacon

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

As we fall into the shadows of the propaganda wars raging to divide us, it is more important than ever to hold our focus on the principles and values that united America in the first place. From our founding we were uniquely conceived in the world of nations that existed in the 1700's. We are the first nation built on shared values rather than shared religion, tribe, geography, common language, ethnicity or race. We are still an experiment well conceived, if poorly lead. From the beginning we place the universal needs of human beings and the universal rights of every individual at the center of a system of self-government. From the start, and throughout our history, we are a nation of truly global diversity united by common dreams and shared values.

"E pluribus unum" is our motto. It's printed on our currency. It means "out of many, one." This is the essence of who we are as a nation or, more accurately, what we strive to become as a people. We are bonded by nature to all who hold "... these truths to be self evident." We fought and died in a bloody civil war that tested whether this nation, "... or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure." We are still here. We are still called to be a beacon for a world in which ethnic and cultural diversity is a new and scary transition. If the United States of America can't be both diverse and united after 241 years, if our experiment to make self-government work in a pluralistic society falters, what hope is there for a world where massive cultural migrations are challenging nation identities unaccustomed to such diversity.

In this spirit of unity I recommend this recent article by Rebekah Entralgo in ThinkProgress. It is a brief article that highlights one example where our history and ideals are being undermined.


Online racists celebrated Miller’s performance.
THINKPROGRESS.ORG

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Frontlines in the Cyber War Against America


by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Did it seem like many supporters of Donald Trump are out of touch with reality? Why are they so dismissive of claims that Russia attacked our election? Even in the face of truly damning information about how Donald Trump Jr. colluded with Russian's to get dirt on Hillary Clinton, the far-right and their Representatives in Congress seem unmoved. Why?

Map of cyber activity by Right-wing websites during the 2016 election to counter mainstream media advantage.

I set out to answer that question. Recognizing that computer algorithms currently used by social media keep me from viewing the conversations of those who don't share my views, I began reading conservative websites such as Breitbart and Info Wars for clues. I forced myself to listen to broadcasts of the Alex Jones Radio Show on Info Wars. For those who don't know him, Alex Jones is a popular right-wing talk show host. He has millions of listeners and claims those numbers are growing as Fox News numbers decline. He admonished Fox News for having lost its conservative edge. He is also the manager or owner of a number of conservative media outlets.

You probably are familiar with Breitbart. It was initially financed by a recluse billionaire, Robert Mercer. Steve Bannon was the man in charge there until after this past the last election.

As I browsed through these websites, one particular radio show caught my attention. I listened in detail (took notes) to a radio broadcast of Alex Jones on July 12, 2017. Using this as a starting point, after sampling other content on both Breitbart and Infor Wars, some patterns emerged that I want to share.

First, the verbiage of Alex Jones' show can't be easily unpacked. It is dense with disinformation, oblique references, inflammatory innuendos, and repetitive conservative and nativist memes. The overall narrative establishes and affirms an alternative frame of reference for his conservative listeners. The broadcasts contain a blitz of buzz words and references to long-debunked Obama era scandals, as I would characterize them, woven into a storyline that alters the context of current events. The content is clearly intended to evoke strong emotions in the listener.

But the biggest insight was that these conservative sites ring exactly the same alarm bells about democracy under attack and a pending authoritarian takeover that those on the left worry about. Info Wars also points to the same means and methods used to attack America as do the rest of us, such as disinformation programs and internet propaganda. But these conservative websites substitute Islamic jihadists for Russian oligarchs, and they substitute "Marxist" liberals for right-wing nationalists.

In effect this counter narrative creates two American world views that are mirror images. It unites us in our worst fears for American democracy while irreconcilably dividing us politically. We agree that we are at war conducted through information warfare, but we see different enemies waging that war against us and different ideas on what those foreign enemies want to accomplish. We can't come to any mutual understanding of our common fears as long as we have an entirely different framework and different sets of facts.

For factual confirmation of the conservative world view listeners are referred to other conservative websites, such as understandingthethreat.com. Here is what that site says about its founder:

John Guandolo is the Founder of UnderstandingtheThreat.com, an organization dedicated to providing strategic and operational threat-focused consultation, education, and training for federal, state, and local leadership and agencies, and designing strategies at all levels of the community to defeat the enemy.

That enemy is radical Islam. Guandolo's website promotes the view that the real threats to America originate from the Middle East terrorist organizations. The site has been active since June of 2012 and appears to be hosted in Montreal, Canada, according to domain registration data.

On the other side, Rachael Maddow had Michael Carpenter on her show recently. He was a U.S. Deputy Assistant Director of Defense before retirement. His take on our strategic threats places Russia at the center of the attacks on our democracy. From what he saw in the past, the cyber operations during the last election are consistent with what Russia has employed in places like Ukraine. Typically, Russia seeks proxies and allies in the foreign countries they attack to help carry out the cyber operations. They try to penetrate the networks of insurgent political groups seeking power within their county. They do this and help support those groups, to have influence as those groups gain power. Carpenter has no doubt that this has included infiltrating far right-wing groups in America and, by extension, the GOP.

For Alex Jones, his constellation of media outlets continue to create and maintain this alternative world view focused on terrorists as the existential to American democracy. Those who believe this are convinced the investigations of the Trump Administration are witch hunts and that the allegations of Russian interference are smokescreens by the "deep state" to conceal a leftist Islamist takeover of America. They point to their universe of alternate facts, theories, and political conspiracies to prove there is an unholy alliance between the liberal elites and Islamist jihadists seeking to impose Sharia Law on America. They deny the DNC was hacked by Russia, claiming there is no evidence. They see the accusation itself is proof of "deep state" preparations for a coup against Donald Trump. Even more moderate Republicans are held in suspicion. One guest on Alex Jones's show said, "The GOP establishment hates Trump more than MSNBC." In other words, the Republican establishment is also complicit with the liberal elites in working with Hamas and other Islamic groups to bring about an authoritarian state and Sharia Law in America. The CIA, NSA, and FBI are all in on it and can't be trusted.

The Goal of Islamic radicals, according to Alex Jones, is to create chaos in America; to destabilize us so that out of the chaos jihadists can bring about a revolution, an authoritarian state, and implementation of Sharia Law. Rodger Stone, a guest on his show, said, The elite have to assume there will be no elections in the future, but a global takeover. An authoritarian state in America."

Alex Jones defines Sharia Law as total warfare against our culture, social institutions, political systems, military systems, our media, and our American way of life. According to Jones, these jihadists are experts in political influence operations. Note that this is just what our Intelligence community is saying about Russia.

These are the alt-right media voices that conservative GOP members in the House and Senate are hearing on their radio. These are the sentiments reflected in their core constituents, their power base. Is it any wonder they hardly react to the US Intelligence community's warning about Russia? The men and women of the GOP are just as patriotic as any of us, but they are straddling two very different world views. They have to know that both worlds can't be true. Either the Russians are undermining our democracy in league with ultra-conservative oligarchs to divided America, or it is the Islamic extremists doing the same thing in league with liberal Democrats and the deep state (i.e., our Intelligence community).

Since even the most conservative GOP members aren't ranting in the halls of Congress about jihadists destroying American democracy, I assume they have picked which scenario is more likely. But they also know how to stay in power. Even if a Republican lawmaker doesn't share their constituents' views they can't challenge their base without losing their seat. The GOP is, in fact, compromised.

I said earlier that the content of Alex Jones' show is densely packed with disinformation. In fairness, I'm sure his regular listeners have no problem understanding his messages. If they were to watch Chris Hayes or Rachael Maddow, they would have the same critique as me of those shows. We really do have two different perceptual realities. The forces creating this schism require that they are well organized, well funded, and very entrenched to pull this off. It's time to uncover everyone involved in this disinformation warfare that is tearing us apart. It's time to fight back, reunite and restore our republic.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Un-Rig the System - Publicly Elected, Non-Partisan Boards of Election

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

It's time! 

Un-rig the System - take all election responsibilities out of the hands of those in power. 

Let's establish nonpartisan state and local public boards of election via publically elected membership. Disqualify any election board candidates who hold or have held any public office, other than board of education. Disqualify any candidate who holds, or has held a leadership position in any political party. Give these elected, non-partisan boards the power and responsibility to re-draw voting districts, manage voter registration, maintain and operate voting equipment, manage and conduct elections, draft ballots, count and preserve physical ballots and prepare their own budgets. Require these boards to submit all major changes regarding voting practices, methods or redistricting proposals for public referendum. 

Let the people control the mechanics of democracy. Take that power out of the hands of elected representatives who eventually abuse that power to stay in power. 

Repost, RE-tweet or email this to friends if you thing there is any merit to it. Thanks!

Saturday, June 3, 2017

WE ARE AT WAR!

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

To say we are at war isn't hyperbole, or exaggeration. We are in a real war with real adversaries and real human consequences. It isn't a "shock and awe" kinetic war as in the past where things go bang, although that happens occasionally. It is a new type of global war being waged against Western style, civilian controlled democracies. Our adversaries are powerful, and wealthy, and well on their way to dominating our world. But the most shocking fact is that this war has been raging and escalating, for decades while most of us remain aware.

The Canadian professor, philosopher, and media theorist, Marshall McLurhan predicted that this war was coming. Most of us know him by his quote, made famous in the 1960's, "The medium is the message." Few know he also said, "World War III will be a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation." How could any of us have understood this at a time well before personal computers, email, the internet, and social media?

The mechanisms of this war are relentless media attacks to alter our public discourse, weaken our faith in public institutions and self-government, amplify disunity along social fault lines, polarize our politics, distract us, alienate us and pits us against each other. It is a war that assaults our collective consciousness. It erases or rewrites our history for sinister gain. It attacks our core beliefs, undermines our principles, debauches our morality, occludes our access to knowledge and obscures all truth. In the end, it re-sculpts our culture to better serve the enemies of civil society.

I know this account of the war will likely fall into the silent media abyss that swallows almost every minority narrative. It is up to you and me to support the authentic voices of real people and insist that we be heard in this social medium that surrounds us.

(end of part 1)

Part II - The evidence of war is all around us. 

Propaganda in the Digital Age - Mind Control on a Massive Scale



Part III - The Muller Indictment lays out the attack on our 2016 election

https://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2018/02/muellers-russia-indictment-condensed.html



Part IV - Even the Republican Party is caught up in the plot to undo majority rule in America 

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

"Blood on Their Hands" - Trump Attacks the Judiciary

by Brian T. Lynch

President Donald Trump is fomenting a constitutional crisis that he cannot be allowed to win. In an official White House press release today, Donald Trump's Administration said elected officials in San Francisco "... have the blood of dead Americans on their hands" for opposing the Sanctuary Cities Executive Order that would strip away the city's federal funding for not fully engaging in federal immigration enforcement efforts.  The press release said, "Today, the rule of law suffered another blow, as an unelected judge unilaterally rewrote immigration policy for our Nation."

The press release was a response to a lawsuit filed by San Francisco and other county officials requesting an injunction against enforcement of financial sanctions against them. They argued that the Executive Order is unconstitutional.

After hearing both sides of oral arguments in federal court, Judge William H. Orrick granted the injunction against the Administration, barring it from withdrawing any federal funding to cities and counties until after the issue can be adjudicated in a trial. In the judges legal opinion, the merits of the case presented by the city and counties would likely prevail at trial.

Summary of Judge Orrick's Ruling.

According to Judge Orrick's ruling, the Trump Administrations Sanctuary Cities Executive Order:

1.    Violates the separation of powers because it improperly seeks to wield congressional spending powers

2.    Is overbroad and coercive, violates 10th Amendment prohibition against commandeering local jurisdictions

3.    Is so vague and standardless that it violates the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause

4.    Deprives local jurisdictions of Congress' allocated funds without notice or opportunity to be heard, violating the procedural due process requirements of the Fifth Amendment and because the Counties have not been named “sanctuary jurisdictions” pursuant to the Trump Administration Order

Judge Orrick's goes on to detail the substance of this federal court hearing: 
  • Trump's lawyers said at oral argument the Sanctuary Order is merely an exercise of the President’s “bully pulpit” to highlight a changed approach to immigration enforcement. Administration lawyers didn't even respond to the constitutionality of the order itself, but instead argued that the Counties lack any standing in the court as the Executive Order didn't change existing law
  • Under the Administration's interpretation of the Order, as presented by Trump Administration's lawyers in court, Section 9(a) applies only to three federal grants in the DOJ and DHS, and provisions to withhold federal funding under those three grants can already be enforce under existing law.
  • Trump's own lawyers in court disavowed the Government's right to affect most of the billions of dollars in federal funds that sanctuary cities receive every year
  • Yet other language the Executive Order tries to include all other federal grants, and all federal funding as subject to sanctions against municipalities that don't comply with federal immigration enforcement efforts. 
  • President Trump called his Order “a weapon” to use against these jurisdictions. 
  • The Attorney General warned that jurisdictions that do not comply with Section 1373 would suffer “withholding grants, termination of grants, and disbarment or ineligibility for future grants,” and the “claw back” of any funds previously awarded
  • The Constitution vests the spending powers in Congress, not the President, so the Sanctuary Cities Executive Order cannot place new conditions on federal funds
  • The Tenth Amendment requires that federal funds be unambiguous, must bear some relationship to the funds purposes and that the financial incentive cannot be coercive.
  • Federal funding that bears no relationship to immigration enforcement cannot be threatened because a city has chosen an immigration enforcement plan which is at odds with the Administration's plans
  • Judge Orrack therefore granted the County's request for an injunction to prevent the Administration from withholding federal funding until after full hearing on the matter determines whether the Order is constitutional, saying "... this injunction does nothing more than implement the effect of the Government's flawed interpretation of the Order."


Read Judge Orrick'sInjunction against Trump's Sanctuary Cities Executive Order in full:  http://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000015b-a6d5-de92-a17b-aed55e780001 

Trump's outrageousresponse to the Sanctuary Cities injunction sets up a serious constitution crisis.  His Administration is at war with another co-equal branch of government and the checks on his executive powers that were built into our constitution. We can't allow him to win this fight in the courts or in the court of public opinion.

Here is the Administration's outrageous press release printed in full:

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate ReleaseApril 25, 2017
Statement on Sanctuary Cities Ruling
Today, the rule of law suffered another blow, as an unelected judge unilaterally rewrote immigration policy for our Nation. Federal law explicitly states that “a Federal, State or Local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”  8 U.S.C. 1373(a).  That means, according to Congress, a city that prohibits its officials from providing information to federal immigration authorities -- a sanctuary city -- is violating the law.   Sanctuary cities, like San Francisco, block their jails from turning over criminal aliens to Federal authorities for deportation.  These cities are engaged in the dangerous and unlawful nullification of Federal law in an attempt to erase our borders.
Once again, a single district judge -- this time in San Francisco -- has ignored Federal immigration law to set a new immigration policy for the entire country.  This decision occurred in the same sanctuary city that released the 5-time deported illegal immigrant who gunned down innocent Kate Steinle in her father's arms.  San Francisco, and cities like it, are putting the well-being of criminal aliens before the safety of our citizens, and those city officials who authored these policies have the blood of dead Americans on their hands.  This San Francisco judge's erroneous ruling is a gift to the criminal gang and cartel element in our country, empowering the worst kind of human trafficking and sex trafficking, and putting thousands of innocent lives at risk.
This case is yet one more example of egregious overreach by a single, unelected district judge.  Today’s ruling undermines faith in our legal system and raises serious questions about circuit shopping.  But we are confident we will ultimately prevail in the Supreme Court, just as we will prevail in our lawful efforts to impose immigration restrictions necessary to keep terrorists out of the United States.

In the meantime, we will pursue all legal remedies to the sanctuary city threat that imperils our citizens, and continue our efforts to ramp up enforcement to remove the criminal and gang element from our country.  Ultimately, this is a fight between sovereignty and open borders, between the rule of law and lawlessness, and between hardworking Americans and those who would undermine their safety and freedom.

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