How many more billionaires can we sustain before we collapse?

by Brian T. Lynch

The New York Times recently asked each of the Democratic primary candidates for President a series of identical questions. The last question on their list was, “Does anyone deserve to have a billion dollars?”

The trivial framing of that question bypassed the grave urgency for asking it in the first place. In a variant form of the question the Times was essentially asking, “Isn’t it OK to be a billionaire if you played by the rules and worked hard to earn it?”

The wording of the question pre-supposes that the laws and social rules in place, by which a person may accumulate a billion-dollars, are fair and open to anyone. It ignores whether inherited wealth is also deserved.  Most importantly, it treats wealth as if it is only a money count and not a measure of privilege and social power. By doing so, the question as it was posed ignored the essential problem that extreme private wealth is toxic to human society regardless of a person’s character or how they obtained it.

A more salient question would have been, “How many more billionaires can this human society sustain before it collapses?

In the 50,000-year history of human civilization, the concepts of private ownership and private wealth are recent developments. The full ramifications of these constructs on our social cohesion and collective welfare are still being revealed. The written history of civilizations offers no comfort. There are no examples of a happy, stable society where extremes of wealth inequality existed. The lessons of history seem to be that a suitable balance of power is required to sustain a healthy and stable society. Human populations simply cannot tolerate distributions of wealth/power that either force unnatural equality or permit unlimited extremes of private wealth.

There is no question that we crossed the Rubicon into a world where extreme wealth inequality is corrupting world governments and destroying the balance of nature. The questions we should be asking candidates for President and all our elected officials are, “What are your plans to rebalance the distribution of wealth and social power in America?"   And then the follow-up question, “What are you going to do to stabilize and rebalance the Earth’s damaged ecology?”

On September 19th Donald Trump Declared Himself our Dictator

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

On the morning of September 19, 2019, history will note, President Donald J. Trump officially declared himself to be this country’s first authoritarian dictator. On that day he announced to the world, in a court filing, that he was assuming unlimited criminal immunity to act within or outside the law. He also declared that anyone who works for him on his behalf is also above the law and cannot be investigated, charged or convicted of any crimes as long as he is in office. By logical extension, if no violation of the law can apply to him while in office, then no election can remove him from office and no Congress can remove him by impeachment or check his powers in any way.

This isn’t how the first draft of history read that day. Trump’s dramatic claims received relatively little notice. They came in a court filing and were so outrageous and incredible that no one took it seriously. The headlines on that Thursday read like some variation of this one from the New York Law Journal:

“Trump Sues Manhattan DA Vance in Federal Court in Wake of Tax Subpoenas” 

In the wake of the Mueller investigation, with its assortment of indictments, trials, and convictions of Trump associates, there were over a dozen less noticed criminal investigations spun off to be conducted in other states by other prosecutors. It was a court filing in one of these lesser-known investigations that the President announced his sweeping declarations.

On October 7, 2019, District Judge Victor Marrero, of the Southern District of New York, summed up the President’s claim in an introduction to his ruling rejecting Trump’s claim. Judge Marrero’s ruling reads in part:

“The President asserts an extraordinary claim in the dispute now before this Court. He contends that… under the United States Constitution, the person who serves as President, while in office, enjoys absolute immunity from criminal process of any kind. Consider the reach of the President's argument. [As] the Court reads it, presidential immunity would stretch to cover every phase of criminal proceedings, including investigations, grand jury proceedings and subpoenas, indictment, prosecution, arrest, trial conviction, and incarceration. That constitutional protection presumably would encompass any conduct, at any time, in any forum whether federal or state, and whether the President acted alone or in concert with other individuals. Hence, according to this categorical doctrine as presented in this proceeding, the constitutional dimensions of the presidential shield from judicial process are virtually limitless: Until the President leaves office… [this includes crimes committed in*] his official capacity, but also to ones arising from his private affairs, financial transactions, and all other conduct undertaken by him as an ordinary citizen both during and before his tenure in office."
 "Moreover, on this theory the President's special dispensation from the criminal law's purview and judicial inquiry would embrace not only the behavior and activities of the President himself, but also extend derivatively so as to potentially immunize the misconduct of any other person, business affiliate associate, or relative who may have collaborated with the President in committing purportedly unlawful acts, and whose offenses ordinarily would warrant criminal investigation and prosecution of all involved.”

The judge concluded his introduction with these words:

“Because this finds aspects of such a [Presidential] doctrine repugnant to the nation' s governmental structure and constitutional values, and for the reasons further stated below it ABSTAINS from adjudicating this dispute and DISMISSES the President' s suit.”

The Trump Administration immediately appealed.

President Trump’s immunity doctrine stemmed from a criminal investigation to see if Trump’s non-profit organization falsified business records.

In summary, Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. is a District Attorney in New York. He empaneled a grand jury to probe whether the Trump Organization falsified business records related to money paid to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal prior to the 2016 Presidential Election to keep them quiet about his sexual relationships with them. These were payoffs funneled through Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. Some of these payments were by checks made out to Cohen from the Trump Organization, a non-profit entity registered in New York. These payments were categorized as legal fees on the books of this non-profit.

Paying to keep damaging information from the public during an election is a violation of campaign finance laws. Using money donated to a non-profit organization for personal use is also a violation of the law, as is falsifying business records to cover up such misdeeds.

The grand jury investigating the business records of the Trump Organization requires documents, tax records and the cooperation of Mazars USA, the accounting firm hired by the Organization. Trump sent a letter to Mazars USA and forbade the company from releasing his tax records. The jury subpoenaed the company to release the last eight years of Donald Trump’s tax returns. That’s when Trump made his move on unlimited Executive power.

How this constitutional crisis resolves is critical to our republic. By elevating William Barr to Attorney General, Trump, and the Republicans have removed any chance that the Barr-lead Justice Department will ever challenge any illegality committed by the President or his administration. By ramming through two ultra-partisan Supreme Court Justices, and by seating so many highly partisan judges to the federal bench, Trump and the Republicans are betting that all legal challenges to both Congressional oversights, or judicial challenges to Trump’s limitless criminal immunity doctrine, will ultimately fail. The complicity of Congressional Republicans in installing this all-powerful authoritarian government should now be obvious. Articles of impeachment should still be aggressively pursued, but it is no longer a given that an impeachment conviction in the Senate would remove Trump from office. Under his unlimited criminal immunity doctrine, it isn’t even certain that he will honor Presidential election results, or even allow future elections.

Here is where I believe we stand. If the courts don’t uphold the rule of law, all hope for the republic is lost. If the courts do uphold the rule of law after House impeachment and Senate conviction, then it will be up to some combination of the President’s willing capitulation, law enforcement, the U.S. military or massive national citizen protests to assure that Donald Trump leaves office. If the Senate won’t convict Trump of impeachable offenses, it is up to the voters to set the stage for the same options mentioned above. If Donald Trump is reelected, however, it will probably be too late to save our Republic from dictatorial rule.

The Funding Fight to Save Our Democracy

by Brian T. Lynch 

Total Money Raised So Far in the 2020 Presidential Race

WOW! Here is a pie chart showing how much Donald Trump (big blue slice) and all the Democratic Presidential Candidates raised so far this year. It is clear who the majority of corporate owners and billionaires are backing for President. They are backing the guy who is crazy enough to grant their every government policy wish.  CORRECTION: The billionaires and wealthy corporations are nearly divided between the two political parties. The right-leaning industrial billionaires still back the Republicans while the left-leaning tech billionaires are backing the Democrats. The result is a two-party system in which both parties are under the influence of a tiny fraction of the electorate.  Meanwhile, Donald Trump and his backers are mastering the art of collecting small donations from their base. To date, 61% of Trump's campaign contributions are from individuals giving $200 or less. The NY Times has an article worth reading regarding this shift in funding.

The extent to which corporations control state and federal governments is on the ballot this year, as it has been for 40 years. The difference this year is that there is so much more at stake. Will we finally step up to address climate change in the remaining years over which we can still have a window to effect a positive outcome? Will America continue to be a democratic republic or will we become a fascist-style authoritarian, single-party state? Will we restore our place as a global leader and shining example in the world, or will we become a bully and a pariah among nations? The answers very much depend on the degree to which our next President is not politically compromised or beholding to the ultra-wealthy minority. Our best hope for a bright future requires that citizens collectively out spend billionaires and make politicians financially dependent on us once again. 

On the Democratic side of this candidate funding war, Elizabeth Warren has brought in a whopping $17 million from small donors, 48% of her campaign funds. But Sanders is in a different league altogether among Democrats, collecting 60% — $28 million — from small donors. With his many Mainstreet donations, Sanders is the leading fundraiser among the Democratic field. [All pie chart and Democratic small-donor data are from a table and article in Opensecrets.org.]

Bernie Sanders proved we don't need big donors in 2016 and he is proving it again for 2020. We have been duped by the Democratic Party into believing we can't win elections without big donor money and corporate funding. In reality, this is the easy, lazy way to raise cash and the Democratic Party has been losing more elections than they have been winning ever since the Party fell under the influence of big money. And now Trump Republicans are taking a lesson from the 2016 Sanders campaign and going after small-donor contributions from their radical base.

The upcoming challenge after Democrats pick their candidate, as I see it, is whether he or she will be able to run a successful small-donor campaign. Or will the next candidate, and the Party, slink back into the arms of left-leaning corporate donors.  Will Democrats remain under the influence of the big corporation and continue to neglect the issues and need of the vast majority of its base? The latter course is the formula-for-failure that has mostly dogged the Democratic Party for several decades resulting in devastating losses in Congress and in governors races and statehouses across the country.

What this pie chart suggests is that regardless of who wins the nomination, if Democrats want to win the Presidency and an agenda that benefits the majority of citizens, they need to reject big donor money and aggressively engage voters in a grass-roots giving campaign. Democrats and left-leaning independents have to do their part to save our democracy by opening their wallets much wider than they have up to now. 

Jeffrey Epstein – Murder or Suicide? His Prison Psychiatrist May Hold the Key

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW 

Jeffrey Epstein was holding the bag for some of the most powerful billionaires and politicians in the world. He provided such men with underage girls upon which they could act on their pedophic sexual fantasies. For decades he got away with it, protected as he was by these rich and powerful men.

But his luck ran out when the voices of victimized women finally pricked the conscience of the nation and the world. Epstein was arrested and soon placed in the secure federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York to await trial. Would he name names and expose his clients? Would he take the fall and spend the rest of his life in prison for his despicable crimes? Or would he die and take his secrets to the grave?

Then on July 23, 2019, Epstein was found unconscious in his cell. Prison officials didn’t report it to the public until July 25th when they sent out an email. This is from the New York Times:

     “A week after being denied bail, Jeffrey E. Epstein was found unconscious in his cell on Tuesday at a federal jail in Manhattan with marks on his neck, and prison officials were investigating the incident as a possible suicide attempt, a law enforcement official who had been briefed on the matter said.”
     “Prison officials had not ruled out the possibility, however, that Mr. Epstein had been assaulted by another inmate or had staged the incident, a person with knowledge of the investigation said… Mr. Epstein’s injuries were not serious, the law enforcement official said… The Bureau of Prisons, in an email on Thursday morning, gave no details about the incident, citing “privacy and security reasons.”

Afterwards, Epstein was placed on suicide watch. By protocol, there was supposed to be another inmate in his cell, but he was alone. If he realized he was at risk, or was planning his suicide and wanted to make a jailhouse confession, he was denied that chance.

A subsequent mental health evaluation was conducted that determined Epstein was not a suicide risk. He was taken off of suicide watch, which means he was to be checked by guards every 30 minutes instead of every 10 minutes.

Then just 18 days after the first time he was found unconscious in his cell, Epstein was again found unconscious in his cell, but this time he was dead. It looked like he hanged himself.

Because Epstein was the most high-profile inmate in the United States, and because the Metropolitian Correction Center is directly under the control of the US Justice Department, the FBI were called in to investigate. It violates a prisoner’s privacy rights to have cameras in their cell, but there were two cameras outside of Epstein’s cell. They didn’t work and the guards who were supposed to check on Epstein both fell asleep. This is from Reuters:

“Two cameras that malfunctioned outside the jail cell where financier Jeffrey Epstein died as he awaited trial on sex-trafficking charges have been sent to an FBI crime lab for examination… The two cameras were within view of the Manhattan jail cell where he was found dead on Aug. 10. A source earlier told Reuters two jail guards failed to follow a procedure overnight to make separate checks on all prisoners every 30 minutes.”

While the FBI is focused on the camera, I’m focused on the psychiatrist whose evaluation said Epstein wasn’t a suicide risk. The shrink either:

1) got it right,
2) blew it big time, or
3) was complicit in some way.

If #1 above is true, Epstein’s first incident couldn’t have been a suicide attempt, but an assault and possibly a failed murder attempt. With all factors at play, the high-stakes involved and the fact that research shows a high rate of suicide for men facing such charges, erring on the side of caution to extend the suicide watch should have been an easy call. A competent psychiatrist determining that he wasn’t suicidal would be a courageous and confident finding that should have sent a message that the prisoner was possibly under external threats.

Which is why #2 is a big deal. If Epstein really did just try to kill himself just 18 days earlier, given all the other factors in this case, extending the suicide watch should have been a no-brained. You would have to be grossly incompetent to have determined he was no longer a suicide risk after such a short period of time since his last attempt, especially since he received no treatment.

That leaves #3, that the psychiatrist was in some way a part of an assassination conspiracy. Calling off the suicide watch protocol would be a necessary step if you were planning a homicide.

Only gross incompetence by the psychiatrist supports the whole suicide theory. It should be easy enough to look at the doctor’s assessment skills, history and conduct in this case. And if it turns out Jeffery Epstein really wasn’t suicidal, then murder is the only motive left to consider.

REMINDER: Political Parties Are Private Clubs, Not Democratic Institutions

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

A reminder that both political parties in the US are nothing more than networks of private clubs. Don't expect them to be keepers of the flam of democracy. They are NOT democratic institutions. They need not be responsible to live up to their own rules or charters. They are under no obligation to be fair or impartial.

Each state political party is an independent sister club, also private and under no legal obligation to the DNC, the DCCC, the RNC, etc. Unless you actually join the leadership in one of these state or national organizations, you are not technically members. You pay no dues. You don't have a vote on their internal affairs. You and I merely associate ourselves with them so that we can vote in their taxpayer-funded primary elections. Political parties see themselves as being in no way responsible to the voters or the courts.

In a transcript of a 2017 court filing in which Sanders supporters sued the DNC for violating the section of its charter that requires DNC-run elections to be “impartial” and “evenhanded,” DNC lawyers argue that the DNC has a right to pick candidates in back rooms. The attorneys claim the words ‘impartial’ and ‘evenhanded’—as used in the DNC Charter—can’t be interpreted by a court of law.

Keep this in mind as we continue to move forward in the current campaign season. If the DNC or RNC does anything that bothers you, consider sending campaign contributions directly to candidates that you feel you can support, even if they are in other states or districts. There is no democracy in America if voters have no say in the selection of candidates. There is no democracy when political parties control the outcomes of our primaries.

Political parties can only be held in check by the collective voices of the people. We must all be activists to assure that our will be done within political parties and within the halls of government. Democracy only works when we become physically involved with our voices, our pens, our presence, and our checkbooks.

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Further reading:

http://jampac.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/042517cw2.pdf

https://observer.com/2017/05/dnc-lawsuit-presidential-primaries-bernie-sanders-supporters/

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/reminder-dnc-lawyers-to-court-we-do-not-owe-voters-an-impartial-or-evenhanded-primary-election.html

Warren vs. Sanders is at the Core of Who Democrats Are

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

In an excellent article written by Benjamin Studebaker, he clarifies the significant distinctions between Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders. To do this, he also traces the ways that the Democratic Party has evolved over the past several decades. His description of that evolution is perfectly aligned with the recent findings of Thomas Picketty’s scientific study of voting data over the last fifty years. In essence, both Studebaker and Picketty find that the Democratic Party increasingly ignores the poor and working-class in service to the growing influence of the wealthy elite, who left-leaning on social issues but pro-corporate and conservative on fiscal issues.









                 Above: Graphic depictions from Studebaker's article. A similar graph shows Biden supporting both the professional class and the 1%. 

I will not attempt to summarize the Studebaker or Picketty articles further here. Instead, I have provided links to them below and encourage you to read them. I only offer here a few personal reaction from what they have to say.

For me, Studebaker’s article raised profound personal questions I hadn’t thought about, beginning with the question, whose interests do I want the Democratic Party to address? How inclusive am I really when it comes to getting the attention I want? When times are good, and I am comfortable with my prospects, it is easy to promote the welfare of those less fortunate. But when even those with considerably more resources than me are feeling squeezed by the economy, egalitarian notions start to fade.

All this raises the idea that if we don’t limit the attention directed at the poor and working-class, will we get less attention then we deserve? But then, isn’t this the very question that the wealthiest 1% of voters are asking? Is the self-interests of middle-class voters just as toxic to the poor and less fortunate?

These are questions everyone should be asking themselves. We should be searching our soul and asking who should the Democratic Party stand for if not for everyone? Listen carefully to what the Democratic Presidential candidates propose and who they are proposing it for. Are they speaking for everyone, or only for those in the professional class who are feeling the pinch?

For me, the answer always come back to my belief that we are all deserving. The Democratic Party, indeed the whole of all governments, should fairly represent everyone’s needs. No one should be excluded or ignored.

The Main Difference Between Warren and Sanders

by Benjamin Studebaker

https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2019/08/07/the-main-difference-between-warren-and-sanders/?fbclid=IwAR1wXTx3m7RXworl6dg7wjjSBu-g77ARFKwq5ElXTm3R5oh2pQhEGkVHc-Y

Data Analysis Shows a Dem Centrist Candidate Loses

https://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2019/06/americans-new-political-landscape-as.html

And this can be contrasted with an article posted here in February of 2016 about Bernie vs. Hillary in which the battle to define the heart of the Democratic Party was getting underway.

https://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2016/02/bernie-vs-hillary-clearest-distinction.html 

Image credit: https://dnyuz.com/2019/07/30/bernie-sanders-and-elizabeth-warren-take-on-all-comers/

Hidden Forces Behind Fascist Movements Here and Abroad

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Sweeden's war on global fascism is our war too. Some of you might dismiss me as a conspiracy nut when I write that Russians and our own right-wing media are attacking us every day. The article linked to here from the NY Times is illuminating on this subject and supports my observations. And yes... Russia really IS waging a vigorous global war on all Western nations. Donald Trump really IS enabling foreign attacks on U.S. citizens to further his own white nationalist goals.

The Russian goal is to destabilize Western democracies and turn them into fascist-crony capitalist states where super-billionaires like Putin, the richest man who ever lived, can make more money, control more people and destroy more lives for his personal pleasure. This isn't too far from President Trump's own desires.  It is perhaps why he holds Vladimir Putin in such high regard.

Destroying pluralism, establishing global white supremacy, and making the world safe for crony capitalism is also Steve Bannon's vision. He readily admits in his interviews that he wants to break us down so he can remake the world according to his liking. His ideas are aligned with the visions of many on the far right, including rogue billionaires such as Robert Mercer and the Kock brothers. And their visions are aligned with many of Senate and Congressional Republicans who want to control our country.

And so it is that the interests of the political far-right, Vladimir Putin's Russia, rogue international billionaires, and now wealthy totalitarian states like Saudi Arabia, have all converged. The separate interest groups may not be directly coordinating with each other, but they are aligned and working in tandem. The forces arrayed against us are both domestic and foreign, both civilian and military. The methods of attack are the used of wealth and power to take economic controls over national economies and public media domination to conduct military-grade psychological warfare augmented by high-tech, mind-altering media propaganda techniques. We are clearly under attack yet most of us refuse to admit it.

For many who have fallen victim to these attacks, to admit you have been attacked is to admit you have been gullible, vulnerable, and manipulated. It means admitting your ideas might not be entirely your own, that others may have been controlling how you feel about think. Who has the courage to admit to all that?

There are things we can do to take back and hold onto our heritage, our narrative, and our democracy, but first, we have to open our eyes to the global assault we are under. We have to look past partisan politics which is tossed like sand in our eyes so we don't see the big picture. We have to see ultra-partisan citizens as damaged victims in this global war and find ways to reach them. We have to unify and rally ourselves. We have to reject leaders who think we are still operating on the old political paradigms. But it must start by recognizing that we are at war. 

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Picture Credit: NY Times:https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/10/world/europe/sweden-immigration-nationalism.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Micro-targeting: How Personal Data Stolen From Facebook Helped Elect Donald Trump

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

In the spirit of "past as prologue", I offer this brief review of how the newest high-tech cyberwarfare techniques were successfully used by the Trump campaign in 2016 to win the electoral contest despite nearly three million fewer popular votes.

Imagine a world in which corporations, political organizations, billionaires, and hostile governments had the computing power, data storage capacity, personal information about you (think Facebook), and sophisticated computer algorithms to accurately predict your behavior. What if they could predict the behavior of every adult in the United States? Then imagine they could find you on social media by filtering the entire US adult population according to the specific personality characteristics they compiled on everyone. And after identifying you by your personality, imagine that they could flood your personal media accounts with specific messages and images designed to trigger your emotions, alter your opinions, or fundamentally change your social outlook without you catching on that this is happening to you.

This science-fiction horror scenario, reminiscent of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie years ago, isn’t science fiction. It is the real world in which we live today.

What the above scenario describes is “micro-targeting.” It is just one of the latest high-tech propaganda weapons manipulating our personal information against us. It was first unleashed in this country by Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 Presidential election campaign, but it was previously used by them in Great Britain during the Brexit campaign. It has also been used in numerous other foreign countries during their elections. It is a certainty that micro-targeting will play a much bigger role in the 2020 election cycle.

Cambridge Analytica was a British political consulting firm that combined data mining, data brokerage, and data analysis with strategic communication during the electoral processes here and abroad. Public scrutiny that followed them after their schemes were later uncovered force the company out of business, but their successful application of micro-targeting and other sophisticated propaganda tools triggered an arms race among big businesses and powerful interest groups to master these new technologies and apply them for both competitive advantages and political control.

There is a 2019 documentary currently available on Netflix that chronicles the story of Cambridge Analytica and how our personal data is being stolen from us and used against us. It’s called “The Great Hack,” and everyone should see it after reading this. There are also many other articles now about micro-targeting and other propaganda technologies being adopted by corporations and political consulting companies. My limited purpose here is to give a concrete example of how micro-targeting was used in the 2016 Presidential campaign.

In 2016 Cambridge Analytica stole the personal data of 50 million US Facebook users to create their giant database. They fed this data into very sophisticated AI-enhanced algorithms (mathematical computer programs) to create very accurate “biopsychosocial” personality profiles on every person from whom personal data was stolen. From these profiles, they were able to accurately identify adults in the United States who either didn’t have strong political opinions or were otherwise susceptible to having their minds changed. They called these people the “persuadables,” and there were many of them all across the country. In fact, there were too many to directly target each of them, but this isn’t necessary. We don’t elect presidents by the popular vote, but by electoral votes from individual states.

To understand how micro-targeting works, it is helpful to review how state election systems works. Every state divides its electorate into scores of smaller voting precincts or polling districts, each with a long public record of how precincts voted in the past. Presidential campaigns conduct extensive polling in every state district where their candidate has a historical possibility of winning. After analyzing the polling data in conjunction with historical voting trends, they are able to identify the voting precincts that they need to win in order to win the state’s electoral votes. Campaigns use this information to determine where to campaign, where to spend money on ads and where to build strong get-out-the-vote efforts.

Cambridge Analytica went further. They identified and targeted all the persuadables in every swing precinct in four swing states, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Then they used social media networks and their knowledge of the personality profiles of each targeted person to bombard them with images and content designed specifically to get them to either vote for Donald Trump (and other Republican candidates down-ballot) or to feel so dispirited that they didn’t vote at all.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume there was a total of 24 swing precincts targeted in these four swing states. The number was probably more. Each precinct contained around 20,000 persuadable voters, according to the documentary report. That means at least 480,000 individuals were targeted by a personal media blitz to either vote for Donald Trump or be dissuaded from voting for Hillary Clinton. That’s just 480,000 voters out of 130 million.

An analysis of the 2016 election found that the results came down to the winners of the six swing states. Hillary Clinton won two of those states. Donald Trump won four of them, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida, the same states targeted by Cambridge Analytica.

According to an analysis by the Washington Post:

 “Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania account for 46 electoral votes. If Clinton had won these states, she could have sealed the presidency with 274 total electoral votes… This election was effectively decided by 107,000 people in these three states. Trump won the popular vote there by that combined amount. That amounts to 0.09 percent of all votes cast in this election.”

Donald Trump unexpectedly won Michigan by a narrow margin of 0.23%. This stands as the narrowest margin of victory in Michigan's presidential election history. He unexpectedly won Wisconsin by a narrow margin of just 0.77 percent, becoming the first Republican candidate to win in Wisconsin since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Trump won Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes out of more than six million votes cast, a difference of 0.72 percent and the narrowest margin in a presidential election for that state in 176 years. Trump did better in Florida where he won a plurality with 1.2 percent of the vote.

So, did Cambridge Analytica play a key role in Donald Trump’s electoral victory? It seems conceivable, but they weren’t alone. Russian cyberattacks on our election also played a significant role in helping to defeat Hillary Clinton.

Did the Robert Mueller investigation cover micro-targeting of voters during the 2016 campaign? No. This election activity was not directly linked to Russian interference and so it was outside the scope of his investigation, although there is some evidence of a nexus between Russia and Cambridge Analytica involving the Brexit campaign. Also, Robert Mueller was not charged with investigating the actual impact of Russian interference in our election results. No one is investigating that issue. It is possible that the stealing of personal Facebook data was referred out elsewhere for criminal investigation, but we don’t know.

What we do know is that the American public is compromised by the massive collection and misuse of our personal data. We are vulnerable to psychosocial based manipulations that alter our behavior without our being aware that it is happening to us. We know that micro-targeting is now a major tool in corporate marketing, which may explain why the personal data collection and analysis industry has surpassed the oil industry as the most profitable business sector on earth. And we know that little is being done to protect our privacy rights, or our elections from weaponized propaganda, or to educate the public about the threats to which we are exposed every day. And we can all be very sure micro-targeting will be a prominent factor in the next election and every future election to come.



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Image credit: https://thehumornation.com/know-facebook-addiction/

Who Are We, America? And Who Will We Become After Trump?

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

For more than a generation the narratives, myths, legends and stories (culture) that bound us together as a nation were overpowered by media noise and corporate branding campaigns. Our culture became threadbare as many insurgent subgroups chipped away at our national mythology by inserting competing amendments and alterations to America's story in an effort to make us a more inclusive nation.

Millions of Americans became disoriented, disaffected and felt marginalized amid the morass of competing narratives, the vanishing clarity of who they are, and the unfulfilled promises of both political parties and corporate entities that are competing for power over our lives with increasingly loud and belligerent messaging.

Then along came Donald Trump with an entirely new American mythology, a new story about who we are. This has been a clarifying storyline that captures the imagination of those who no longer respond to America's traditional fictions. Donald Trump has created a new nation in the minds of millions who needed something and someone to believe in again. It is a story that defines America as an exceptional nation of exceptional people under siege by immigrants, racial groups, ethnic group, the gay community, and non-Christian religions.

Now we are at a crossroad in history. We can't go back to what wasn't working and can't abide by what Trump has created. We need a better, brighter, more radically different national narrative about who we are as a nation. We need a broadly shared vision of who we are that can make and keep better promises for us all.

A Practical Temporary Solution to Child Detention Camps

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Children are children no matter where they live. They are humanities precious future, and every country is ultimately obligated to secure the safety and welfare of every child under its jurisdiction regardless of citizenship status or how that child got there.

The Trump administration's unconstitutional policy of arresting and incarcerating asylum seekers coming into the United States from South and Central America has created a humanitarian crisis. This crisis is especially traumatic for children who become separated from their families because of their parents' criminal incarceration. Thousands of separated children are languishing in over-crowed holding areas under inhumane conditions. They are not receiving age-appropriate care or supervision while their incarcerated parents are being held in prison-like settings for months without judicial reviews of their asylum claims. These children need immediate relief, which the federal government is incapable of providing.

The obvious over-all solution is to follow the law and keep the families of asylum seekers intact at all times. We must stop arresting these parents for requesting asylum, which is an internationally protected human right. Until that happens, what can we do to end the immediate crisis for tender aged children whose parents are incarcerated, or in some cases already deported without their child? These children need immediate, but temporary home-based care. They need temporary caregivers who can hold them, comfort them and meet all their physical and emotional needs. They need frequent and ample visitation with their parents to maintain healthy emotional bonding. And they need to be permanently reunited with their parents as quickly as possible, even if their parents have already been deported without them. 

Just because an immigrant parent has been deported doesn't mean an unaccompanied child left here can't be returned to them or to another responsible relative in their country of origin.

I use to have to make these sorts of international arrangements in my career in a state child welfare agency. When a foreign-born child came into state custody, for whatever reasons, we would seek out parents or relatives here or in their home country. If the best or only option was a relative in a foreign country, we would work with the social service authorities in that country to arrange a safe return home.

These foreign countries in all had social service agencies who would work with us and conduct a home study of the parents or interested relatives, when located, to make sure we weren't returning the child to a dangerous situation, such as a child prostitute ring or whatever. Then we would arrange for the child to go back to live with the responsible relatives. Each case was reviewed by a judge before the child was returned to make sure we were doing our job.

If there were no safe or viable alternatives in here or in the country of origin, the child would remain here to be raised by foster parents, and hopefully, be adopted. All 50 states have similar policies, procedures and resources in place for this humane handling of unaccompanied minors, but the current federal authorities aren't utilizing (or supplementing) these well-established state resources to assist with the crisis at the border.

For just a fraction of the money, the federal government is currently spending to warehouse these children in horrendous conditions, the administration could distribute these children equitably across all 50 state child welfare agencies and provide sufficient funding per child to compensate the states for the additional staff and resources the states would need to build capacity to do the job they already do now so successfully.