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Javier E

John Roberts, the Umpire in Chief - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...berts-the-umpire-in-chief.html

interpretation legal judicial theory constitutionality supreme court

shared by Javier E on 29 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • The Roberts-Scalia debate is part of a longstanding argument about how judges should interpret laws passed by Congress.
  • the chief justice embraces an approach called “purposivism,” while Justice Scalia prefers “textualism.”
  • In Judge Katzmann’s account, purposivism has been the approach favored for most of American history by conservative and liberal judges, senators, and representatives, as well as administrative agencies. Purposivism holds that judges shouldn’t confine themselves to the words of a law but should try to discern Congress’s broader purposes.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • In the 1980s, when he was a lower court judge, Justice Scalia began to champion a competing view of statutory interpretation, textualism, which holds that judges should confine themselves to interpreting the words that Congress chose without trying to discern Congress’s broader purposes.
  • Textualism, in this view, promises to constrain judicial activism by preventing judges from roving through legislative history in search of evidence that supports their own policy preferences. But in the view of its critics, like Chief Judge Katzmann, textualism “increases the probability that a judge will construe a law in a manner that the legislators did not intend.”
  • Judge Katzmann, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, also accuses Justice Scalia of inconsistency for consulting the intent of the framers in the case of constitutional interpretation but not statutory interpretation.
  • The chief justice’s embrace of bipartisan judicial restraint in the second Affordable Care Act case was consistent with his embrace of the same philosophy in the first Affordable Care Act case in 2012, where he quoted one of his heroes, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr: “The rule is settled that as between two possible interpretations of a statute, by one of which it would be unconstitutional and by the other valid, our plain duty is to adopt that which will save the Act.”
  • Chief Justice Roberts was not, as Justice Scalia charged, rewriting the law. Instead he was advancing the view that he championed soon after his confirmation: In a polarized age, it is important for the Supreme Court to maintain its institutional legitimacy by deferring to the political branches.
  • Chief Justice Roberts’s relatively consistent embrace of judicial deference to democratic decisions supports his statement during his confirmation hearings that judges should be like umpires calling “balls and strikes.” As he put it then: “Umpires don’t make the rules, they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules, but it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.”
kushnerha

American 'space pioneers' deserve asteroid rights, Congress says | Science | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ricans-to-exploit-new-frontier

the guardian space bipartisan resources nationalism

shared by kushnerha on 13 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • In a rare bipartisan moment US lawmakers opened up the possibility of mining on other worlds despite an international treaty barring sovereign claims in space
  • The US Senate passed the Space Act of 2015 this week, sending its revisions of the bill back to the House for an expected approval, after which it would land on the president’s desk. The bill has a slew of provisions to encourage commercial companies that want to explore space and exploit its resources, granting “asteroid resource” and “space resource” rights to US citizens who managed to acquire the resource themselves.
  • lawmakers defined “space resource” as “an abiotic resource in situ in outer space” that would include water and minerals but not life.
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  • The company’s president, Chris Lewicki, compared the bill to the Homestead Act, which distributed public land to Americans heading west and helped reshape the United States. “The Homestead Act of 1862 advocated for the search for gold and timber, and today, HR 2262 fuels a new economy,” Lewicki said in a statement. “This off-planet economy will forever change our lives for the better here on Earth.”
  • obstacle to space mining is an 1967 international treaty known as the Outer Space Treaty, to which the US is a signatory. The treaty holds that no “celestial body” is subject to “national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means”.
  • careful to add in their bill that they grant rights only to citizens who act under the law, “including the international obligations of the United States”.
  • added a “disclaimer of extraterritorial sovereignty”, saying the US does not thereby assert ownership, exclusive rights or jurisdiction “of any celestial body”.
  • bill asserts certain rights for US citizens, it disavows any national claim – sending a mixed message on asteroid rights
  • “They’re trying to dance around the issue. I tend to think it doesn’t create any rights because it conflicts with international law. The bottom line is before you can give somebody the right to harvest a resource you have to have ownership.”
  • Asteroids vary in their makeup, but some are rich in platinum and other valuable metals. Nasa has run missions to explore the possibilities of mining asteroids
  • solidifies America’s leading role in the commercial space sector
Javier E

The Facebook Fallacy: Privacy Is Up to You - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...facebook-privacy.html

facebook privacy disclosure psychology rational choice social media brain science

shared by Javier E on 25 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • As Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive parried questions from members of Congress about how the social network would protect its users’ privacy, he returned time and again to what probably sounded like an unimpeachable proposition.
  • By providing its users with greater and more transparent controls over the personal data they share and how it is used for targeted advertising, he insisted, Facebook could empower them to make their own call and decide how much privacy they were willing to put on the block.
  • providing a greater sense of control over their personal data won’t make Facebook users more cautious. It will instead encourage them to share more.
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  • “Disingenuous is the adjective I had in my mind,”
  • “Fifteen years ago it would have been legitimate to propose this argument,” he added. “But it is no longer legitimate to ignore the behavioral problems and propose simply more transparency and controls.”
  • Professor Acquisti and two colleagues, Laura Brandimarte and the behavioral economist George Loewenstein, published research on this behavior nearly six years ago. “Providing users of modern information-sharing technologies with more granular privacy controls may lead them to share more sensitive information with larger, and possibly riskier, audiences,” they concluded.
  • the critical question is whether, given the tools, we can be trusted to manage the experience. The increasing body of research into how we behave online suggests not.
  • “Privacy control settings give people more rope to hang themselves,” Professor Loewenstein told me. “Facebook has figured this out, so they give you incredibly granular controls.”
  • This paradox is hardly the only psychological quirk for the social network to exploit. Consider default settings. Tons of research in behavioral economics has found that people tend to stick to the default setting of whatever is offered to them, even when they could change it easily.
  • “Facebook is acutely aware of this,” Professor Loewenstein told me. In 2005, its default settings shared most profile fields with, at most, friends of friends. Nothing was shared by default with the full internet.
  • By 2010, however, likes, name, gender, picture and a lot of other things were shared with everybody online. “Facebook changed the defaults because it appreciated their power,” Professor Loewenstein added.
  • The phenomenon even has a name: the “control paradox.”
  • people who profess concern about privacy will provide the emails of their friends in exchange for some pizza.
  • They also found that providing consumers reassuring though irrelevant information about their ability to protect their privacy will make them less likely to avoid surveillance.
  • Another experiment revealed that people are more willing to come clean about their engagement in illicit or questionable behavior when they believe others have done so, too
  • Those in the industry often argue that people don’t really care about their privacy — that they may seem concerned when they answer surveys, but still routinely accept cookies and consent to have their data harvested in exchange for cool online experiences
  • Professor Acquisti thinks this is a fallacy. The cognitive hurdles to manage our privacy online are simply too steep.
  • While we are good at handling our privacy in the offline world, lowering our voices or closing the curtains as the occasion may warrant, there are no cues online to alert us to a potential privacy invasion
  • Even if we were to know precisely what information companies like Facebook have about us and how it will be used, which we don’t, it would be hard for us to assess potential harms
  • Members of Congress have mostly let market forces prevail online, unfettered by government meddling. Privacy protection in the internet economy has relied on the belief that consumers will make rational choices
  • Europe’s stringent new privacy protection law, which Facebook has promised to apply in the United States, may do better than the American system of disclosure and consen
  • the European system also relies mostly on faith that consumers will make rational choices.
  • The more that psychologists and behavioral economists study psychological biases and quirks, the clearer it seems that rational choices alone won’t work. “I don’t think any kind of disclosure or opt in or opt out is going to protect us from our worst instincts,”
  • What to do? Professor Acquisti suggests flipping the burden of proof. The case for privacy regulation rests on consumers’ proving that data collection is harmful. Why not ask the big online platforms like Facebook to prove they can’t work without it? If reducing data collection imposes a cost, we could figure out who bears it — whether consumers, advertisers or Facebook’s bottom line.
Javier E

Opinion | The Strange Failure of the Educated Elite - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...failure-educated-elite.html

meritocracy merit ethos community consciousness

shared by Javier E on 29 May 18 - No Cached
  • We replaced a system based on birth with a fairer system based on talent. We opened up the universities and the workplace to Jews, women and minorities. University attendance surged, creating the most educated generation in history. We created a new boomer ethos, which was egalitarian (bluejeans everywhere!), socially conscious (recycling!) and deeply committed to ending bigotry.
  • The older establishment won World War II and built the American Century. We, on the other hand, led to Donald Trump. The chief accomplishment of the current educated elite is that it has produced a bipartisan revolt against itself.
  • the new meritocratic aristocracy has come to look like every other aristocracy. The members of the educated class use their intellectual, financial and social advantages to pass down privilege to their children, creating a hereditary elite that is ever more insulated from the rest of society. We need to build a meritocracy that is true to its values, truly open to all.
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  • But the narrative is insufficient. The real problem with the modern meritocracy can be found in the ideology of meritocracy itself. Meritocracy is a system built on the maximization of individual talent, and that system unwittingly encourages several ruinous beliefs:
  • Exaggerated faith in intelligence.
  • Many of the great failures of the last 50 years, from Vietnam to Watergate to the financial crisis, were caused by extremely intelligent people who didn’t care about the civic consequences of their actions.
  • Misplaced faith in autonomy
  • The meritocracy is based on the metaphor that life is a journey. On graduation days, members for the educated class give their young Dr. Seuss’ “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” which shows a main character, “you,” who goes on a solitary, unencumbered journey through life toward success. If you build a society upon this metaphor you will wind up with a society high in narcissism and low in social connection
  • Life is not really an individual journey. Life is more like settling a sequence of villages. You help build a community at home, at work, in your town and then you go off and settle more villages.
  • Instead of seeing the self as the seat of the soul, the meritocracy sees the self as a vessel of human capital, a series of talents to be cultivated and accomplishments to be celebrated.
  • Misplaced notion of the self
  • If you base a society on a conception of self that is about achievement, not character, you will wind up with a society that is demoralized; that puts little emphasis on the sorts of moral systems that create harmony within people, harmony between people and harmony between people and their ultimate purpose.
  • Inability to think institutionally.
  • Previous elites poured themselves into institutions and were pretty good at maintaining existing institutions, like the U.S. Congress, and building new ones, like the postwar global order.
  • The current generation sees institutions as things they pass through on the way to individual success. Some institutions, like Congress and the political parties, have decayed to the point of uselessness, while others, like corporations, lose their generational consciousness
  • Misplaced idolization of diversity
  • But diversity is a midpoint, not an endpoint. Just as a mind has to be opened so that it can close on something, an organization has to be diverse so that different perspectives can serve some end.
  • Diversity for its own sake, without a common telos, is infinitely centrifugal, and leads to social fragmentation.
  • The essential point is this: Those dimwitted, stuck up blue bloods in the old establishment had something we meritocrats lack — a civic consciousness, a sense that we live life embedded in community and nation, that we owe a debt to community and nation and that the essence of the admirable life is community before self.
  • The meritocracy is here to stay, thank goodness, but we probably need a new ethos to reconfigure it — to redefine how people are seen, how applicants are selected, how social roles are understood and how we narrate a common national purpose
maxwellokolo

White House requests Congress investigate whether Obama administration abused power - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by maxwellokolo on 06 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • maxwellokolo on 06 Mar 17
     
    "Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling," Spicer said, posting the statement on Twitter. "President Donald J. Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016.
clairemann

Democracy Can't Survive Unless the Far Right Is Marginalized | Time - 0 views

time.com/...emocracy-marginalize-far-right

Democrats history thinking education

shared by clairemann on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • As our nation comes to grip with the horrific events of January 6 and watches the Republican Party descend further into Trumpism as it pushes hundreds of restrictive voting laws across the country, the obvious question is how does American democracy come back from all this?
  • The super-majority of Americans across the political spectrum who reject the extremism need to come together. This includes the pro-democracy right
  • But only a new small “l” liberal Republican Party—distinct from the increasingly illiberal Trumpist GOP, can establish a new partisan identity that gives center-right voters a meaningful home.
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  • Republican Party is an illiberal anti-democratic nativist global outlier, with positions more extreme than France’s National Rally, and in line with the Germany’s AfD, Hungary’s Fidesz, Turkey’s AKP and Poland’s PiS, according to the widely respected V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute.
  • The GOP has been sliding into authoritarianism over two decades, using increasingly demonizing rhetoric against its opponents.
  • Historically, democracy dies.
  • Three-quarters of Americans disapprove of the January 6 mob’s actions, and Trump’s seemingly immovable approval floor dropped by about more than six points. In the days after, only 13 percent of Americans considered themselves “Trump Supporters” while another 16 percent considered themselves “Traditional Republicans.” If “Trump Supporters” were their own party, they’d be about as popular as Germany’s far-right AfD, which polled at about 15 percent for 2019, though their support more recently dropped off to 11 percent.
  • . For decades, majorities of Americans have told pollsters they want more parties to choose from, and registered their dissatisfaction with the two-party system by increasingly identifying as independents.
  • But as the two parties began sorting more clearly along liberal-conservative lines as “culture war” issues starting in the 1970s, and as American politics nationalized around these cultural issues, and, starting in the 1990s, as the long-time Democratic control of the House ended, every election became a high-stakes all-or-nothing fight for control of federal power.
  • The only way to elevate the moderate Republicans is for Congress to use its constitutional authority (Article I, Section IV) to change how we vote, and create electoral opportunities for a center-right to rise again.
cvanderloo

US museums hold the remains of thousands of Black people - 1 views

theconversation.com/ousands-of-black-people-156558

racism america history research

shared by cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Among the human remains in Harvard University’s museum collections are those of 15 people who were probably enslaved African American people.
  • This dehumanizing history of collecting African American bodies as scientific specimens is not a problem just at Harvard.
  • However, scholars and activists across the U.S. are now seeking to recognize and redress the deep history of violence against Black bodies. Museums and society are finally confronting how the desires of science have at times eclipsed the demands of human rights.
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  • By one estimate, the Smithsonian Institution, Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Howard University hold the remains of some 2,000 African Americans among them. The total only increases when considering museums with remains from other populations across the African diaspora.
  • His collection eventually ended up at the University of Pennsylvania. Only last year did the university officially announce the collection had been removed from a shelved display within an archaeology classroom.
  • systematic collection of African American remains, as well as those of people from other marginalized communities, began with the work of Samuel George Morton.
  • Institutions long embraced such collections primarily for the pseudoscientific work of justifying racial hierarchies.
  • The U.S. Senate passed the African American Burial Grounds Network Act in December 2020. This bill would establish a voluntary network to identify and protect often at-risk African American cemeteries.
  • This work is necessary because many of the remains of Black people, like those of Native Americans, were taken without the consent of family, used in ways that contravened spiritual traditions, and treated with less respect than most others in society.
  • Even more importantly, the absence of a coordinated, national effort will mean the delay of justice for thousands of African American ancestors whose bodies have been, and continue to be, desecrated
ilanaprincilus06

I survived a school shooting. My kids shouldn't have to face the same danger | Ashley Jordan | The Guardian - 1 views

www.theguardian.com/...g-northern-illinois-university

school shooting congress

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Surviving a school shooting was an initiation of evil. The world didn’t look or feel the same afterward
  • Despite 12 years and countless other mass shooting incidents across the country, not much has been done by our federal legislators to make anyone safer from gun violence anywhere – let alone at school.
  • I clutched my eight-month-old son to my chest as the precious faces of young children murdered at school cycled across my television screen on the evening news.
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  • Little kids were new casualties in our country’s ongoing struggle to define itself. Its endless argument over guns appeared to be a symptom of a national identity crisis between political polar opposites – two parties so ideologically opposed that even the needless deaths of tiny innocents couldn’t bridge the divide between them.
  • What sickened me most, though, wasn’t our government’s failure to prioritize people over partisanship. It was knowing that there were parents who took their kids to school and returned home eternally empty-handed.
  • Survivors of school shootings like me are now raising kids of their own, worrying they will suffer similar fates. Although the psychological effects of school shootings on parents may not yet be fully known or understood, research suggests that those with loved ones who have been exposed to “assaultive violence” have a higher risk of mental health disorders.
  • School shootings don’t just deprive children of their lives and innocence; they deprive parents of a sense of safety and security their parents and grandparents took for granted.
  • This reality is a painful part of our collective consciousness. We send our kids to school, hoping the horror of gun violence won’t happen there, but knowing no child or school is immune.
  • Both sides seem content to debate the second amendment and the founders’ intent until they run out of breath. But in the meantime, Congress must come together, in earnest, to find common ground and common-sense solutions to stop this bleeding. The consequences of inaction have become too high – and our kids are counting on them.
ilanaprincilus06

Biden's Intended Commerce Secretary Nominee Is Gina Raimondo : Biden Transition Updates : NPR - 1 views

www.npr.org/...bidens-commerce-secretary-pick

Rhode Island Census Bureau

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 14 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, the first woman to lead the country's smallest state, has been named President-elect Joe Biden's intended nominee for commerce secretary.
  • would oversee the U.S. Commerce Department's eclectic portfolio of federal agencies, including some that have been thrown into political hot waters during the Trump administration — most notably the Census Bureau.
  • been scrambling to prepare the release of the first set of 2020 census results, which was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic and last-minute schedule changes by Trump administration officials.
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  • The state population counts that determine each state's share of congressional seats and Electoral College votes for the next decade are not expected to be out until February at the earliest,
  • Raimondo would take over the position from Wilbur Ross, a Trump appointee who has been found in contempt of Congress by the House for defying a subpoena to turn over documents about the Trump administration's efforts to add a citizenship question to census forms.
  • "The mission of the Commerce Department is a very simple one — to help spur good-paying jobs, to empower entrepreneurs to innovate and grow, to come together with working families and American businesses to create new opportunities for all of us,"
  • "Commerce Department employees are getting a terrific new boss who will listen to them, support them, lead from the trenches, and get the very best out of them by holding them to the same high standards she holds herself,"
  • "And Congress will be getting a partner who is an honest broker of unquestioned integrity."
anonymous

Was the US Capitol Riot a Coronavirus Superspreader Event? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...uper-spreader-coronavirus.html

shared by anonymous on 12 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The riot on Wednesday may have started a coronavirus superspreader event, fueled by the mob that roamed through the halls of Congress and unmasked Republicans who jammed into cloistered secure rooms.
  • It could have been worse. Because of the pandemic, lawmakers were instructed to remain in their offices unless speaking during debate over the certification of votes
  • But the normal precautions — already haphazardly enforced — collapsed as pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.
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  • On both sides of the Capitol, lawmakers, aides, police officers and reporters who had fled to secure locations have been warned that they might have been exposed to the coronavirus while hiding from the mob
  • “It angers me when they refuse to adhere to the directions about keeping their masks on,” Ms. Watson Coleman, a lung cancer survivor who will turn 76 next month, said in an interview. “It comes off to me as arrogance and defiance. And you can be both, but not at the expense of someone else.”
  • The scene that unfolded on Wednesday in that one secure room — where an offer of masks from Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, Democrat of Delaware, was rejected by a group of Republicans — is emblematic of the challenge that has dogged Capitol Hill’s disorderly response to the pandemic.
  • Republicans accused Democrats, who needed their narrow majority fully present in person to confirm Ms. Pelosi as speaker, of subverting their own rules on the first day of the Congress
  • permitting the construction of a small plexiglass enclosure with its own ventilation system in one of the galleries so that lawmakers in a protective quarantine could vote in person
  • Complicating matters further, lawmakers in both parties have delayed receiving a vaccination, despite being granted primary access, arguing that essential workers needed to receive it first.
ilanaprincilus06

World Leaders React To Pro-Trump Extremists Storming U.S. Capitol : Insurrection At The Capitol: Live Updates : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...tremists-breaching-u-s-capitol

US Capitol democracy violence

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 13 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The spectacle transfixed people around the globe.
  • "The enemies of democracy will be delighted at these terrible images from Washington DC."
  • Violence is incompatible with the exercise of democratic rights and freedoms.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • "A basic rule of democracy is that after elections there are winners and losers," Merkel said. "Both have their part to play with decency and responsibility so that democracy itself remains secure.
  • "Disgraceful scenes in U.S. Congress," Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain tweeted. "The United States stands for democracy around the world and it is now vital that there should be a peaceful and orderly transfer of power."
  • He noted that for generations, American democracy has inspired millions of people, including him.
  • I have no doubt that American democracy will prevail — it always has."
  • "Everyone saw what a populist did to his country and damaged his country's reputation in the international arena."
  • "While people in Palestine & in many other places in the world are struggling to achieve democracy, there are those in the US who are actively sabotaging theirs,"
pier-paolo

Opinion | The War on Logic - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...17krugman.html

shared by pier-paolo on 16 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • We are, I believe, witnessing something new in American politics. Last year, looking at claims that we can cut taxes, avoid cuts to any popular program and still balance the budget, I observed that Republicans seemed to have lost interest in the war on terror and shifted focus to the war on arithmetic. But now the G.O.P. has moved on to an even bigger project: the war on logic.
  • First of all, says the analysis, the true cost of reform includes the cost of the “doc fix.”
  • in 1997 Congress enacted a formula to determine Medicare payments to physicians. The formula was, however, flawed; it would lead to payments so low that doctors would stop accepting Medicare patients. Instead of changing the formula, however, Congress has consistently enacted one-year fixes.
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  • And Republicans claim that the estimated cost of future fixes, $208 billion over the next 10 years, should be considered a cost of health care reform.But the same spending would still be necessary if we were to undo reform. So the G.O.P. argument here is exactly like claiming that my mortgage payments, which I’ll have to make no matter what we do tonight, are a cost of going out for dinner.
  • So, is the Republican leadership unable to see through childish logical fallacies? No. The key to understanding the G.O.P. analysis of health reform is that the party’s leaders are not, in fact, opposed to reform because they believe it will increase the deficit
  • All they ever needed or wanted were some numbers and charts to wave at the press, fooling some people into believing that we’re having some kind of rational discussion. We aren’t.
jmfinizio

Stimulus checks: Biden puts $2,000 payments back in play - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

stimulus checks biden

shared by jmfinizio on 15 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • A $2,000 stimulus check will be at the heart of a $2 trillion Covid relief plan that President-elect Joe Biden is set to unveil Thursday evening.
  • Congress included payments of $1,200 in its initial stimulus when shutdowns because of the coronavirus began last spring.
  • Current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected a standalone bill on increasing the value of the checks, but with Democrats about to take control of the chamber -- and of Congress -- following victories in two Georgia Senate runoff elections, Biden will likely have the votes to approve increased relief spending.Read More
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "Democrats wanted to do much more in the last bill and promised to do more, if given the opportunity, to increase direct payments to a total of $2,000,"
  • Undocumented immigrants who don't have Social Security numbers are ineligible for the payments
  • their spouses and children are now eligible as long as they have Social Security numbers.
runlai_jiang

Trump suggests arming teachers as a solution to increase school safety - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by runlai_jiang on 22 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • "We need more security, we need more firearms on campus, we need better background checks, and we need to study more on mental health."Read MoreFred Abt, father of Parkland shooting survivor Carson Abt, said he had discussed with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over lunch that rather than waiting for first responders to arrive, it would be more efficient to have firearms locked on school campuses.
  • "I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons and I support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun," he wrote in his 2000 book, "The America We Deserve." "With today's Internet technology, we should be able to tell within 72 hours if a potential gun owner has a record."Trump disavowed those statements during the 2016 campaign.Polls have found, however, that most Americans blame Trump and Congress for not doing more on guns. A new Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday found that 62% of respondents said Trump is not doing enough to prevent mass shootings and 77% say Congress is doing an inadequate job on the issue.
  • We're fighting hard for you and we will not stop... I just grieve for you, I feel so -- to me, there could be nothing worse than what you've gone through."
katherineharron

List: Two more members of Congress test positive for Covid-19 - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 28 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham of South Carolina and Republican Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania are the latest members of Congress to test positive for Covid-19, their offices announced Friday.
  • In addition, more than two dozen lawmakers have also self-quarantined or taken other steps to isolate themselves as a precaution after interacting either directly or potentially with an infected individual.
Javier E

The Economic Case for Regulating Social Media - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...media-facebook-regulation.html

social media network economics conspiracy theory hate speech addiction platform ad-financed business model click-bait psychology technology

shared by Javier E on 15 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter generate revenue by using detailed behavioral information to direct ads to individual users.
  • this bland description of their business model fails to convey even a hint of its profound threat to the nation’s political and social stability.
  • legislators in Congress to propose the breakup of some tech firms, along with other traditional antitrust measures. But the main hazard posed by these platforms is not aggressive pricing, abusive service or other ills often associated with monopoly.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • Instead, it is their contribution to the spread of misinformation, hate speech and conspiracy theories.
  • digital platforms, since the marginal cost of serving additional consumers is essentially zero. Because the initial costs of producing a platform’s content are substantial, and because any company’s first goal is to remain solvent, it cannot just give stuff away. Even so, when price exceeds marginal cost, competition relentlessly pressures rival publishers to cut prices — eventually all the way to zero. This, in a nutshell, is the publisher’s dilemma in the digital age.
  • These firms make money not by charging for access to content but by displaying it with finely targeted ads based on the specific types of things people have already chosen to view. If the conscious intent were to undermine social and political stability, this business model could hardly be a more effective weapon.
  • The algorithms that choose individual-specific content are crafted to maximize the time people spend on a platform
  • As the developers concede, Facebook’s algorithms are addictive by design and exploit negative emotional triggers. Platform addiction drives earnings, and hate speech, lies and conspiracy theories reliably boost addiction.
  • the subscription model isn’t fully efficient: Any positive fee would inevitably exclude at least some who would value access but not enough to pay the fee
  • a conservative think tank, says, for example, that government has no business second-guessing people’s judgments about what to post or read on social media.
  • That position would be easier to defend in a world where individual choices had no adverse impact on others. But negative spillover effects are in fact quite common
  • individual and collective incentives about what to post or read on social media often diverge sharply.
  • There is simply no presumption that what spreads on these platforms best serves even the individual’s own narrow interests, much less those of society as a whole.
  • a simpler step may hold greater promise: Platforms could be required to abandon that model in favor of one relying on subscriptions, whereby members gain access to content in return for a modest recurring fee.
  • Major newspapers have done well under this model, which is also making inroads in book publishing. The subscription model greatly weakens the incentive to offer algorithmically driven addictive content provided by individuals, editorial boards or other sources.
  • Careful studies have shown that Facebook’s algorithms have increased political polarization significantly
  • More worrisome, those excluded would come disproportionately from low-income groups. Such objections might be addressed specifically — perhaps with a modest tax credit to offset subscription fees — or in a more general way, by making the social safety net more generous.
  • Adam Smith, the 18th-century Scottish philosopher widely considered the father of economics, is celebrated for his “invisible hand” theory, which describes conditions under which market incentives promote socially benign outcomes. Many of his most ardent admirers may view steps to constrain the behavior of social media platforms as regulatory overreach.
  • But Smith’s remarkable insight was actually more nuanced: Market forces often promote society’s welfare, but not always. Indeed, as he saw clearly, individual interests are often squarely at odds with collective aspirations, and in many such instances it is in society’s interest to intervene. The current information crisis is a case in point.
peterconnelly

Opinion: No more union-busting. It's time for companies to give their workers what they deserve - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

companies cnn opinion

shared by peterconnelly on 04 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • This year, workers at Amazon, Starbucks and other major corporations are winning a wave of union elections, often in the face of long odds and employer resistance. These wins are showing it's possible for determined groups of workers to break through powerful employers' use of union-busting tactics, ranging from alleged retaliatory firings to alleged surveillance and forced attendance at anti-union "captive audience meetings." But workers should not have to confront so many obstacles to exercising a guaranteed legal right to unionize and bargain for improvements in their work lives and livelihoods.
  • For decades, wage suppression, growing income inequality and persistent racial and gender wage gaps have characterized the US labor market.
  • But now, as workers are pointing the way to better workplaces and a more equitable economy, employers and policymakers need to pay attention. Policymakers must better protect workers' union rights, and employers must start respecting workers' right to participate in union elections without interference or coercion.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Unions are among the most effective mechanisms available for addressing massive economic inequalities. Congress should adopt labor law reforms to better protect workers' right to organize, starting with the widely popular Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. Among other things, the PRO Act would create the first serious monetary penalties for employers that retaliate against workers for unionizing.
  • Congress must also adequately fund the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) so the agency can enforce labor law.
  • Many US workers say they want a union, but far too few have one. Right now, workers who've won recent union elections are inviting employers to meet them as equals and start bargaining union contracts.
  • Labor unions are highly correlated with safer conditions because they give workers a voice in setting workplace policies and the ability to engage management in addressing concerns without fear of retaliation.
  • The Black-led, multiracial committees that have led organizing drives at Amazon warehouses and the young women baristas leading breakthrough organizing victories at Starbucks are changing the public face of the labor movement in powerful and promising ways.
  • Two-thirds of union workers are women and/or workers of color.
  • In any company, the transparency and consistency of a union contract that sets wage rates, scheduled raises and procedures for promotions helps guard against forms of discriminatory bias that otherwise disadvantage women and workers of color.
  • Unionizing workers will continue to need extraordinary solidarity, persistence and public support in order to succeed. This is a moment of opportunity for all of us. Anyone ready to start reversing the worst economic inequalities the US has seen in almost a century can choose now to join and support workers who are organizing unions.
peterconnelly

Tech experts call for Congress to bring 'skeptical approach' to crypto - 0 views

www.cnbc.com/...ptical-approach-to-crypto.html

tech crypto

shared by peterconnelly on 03 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • More than two dozen high-profile tech experts have signed onto a letter asking congressional leaders to apply a skeptical eye to the booming crypto industry.
  • market cap of $1.27 trillion
  • “We urge you to resist pressure from digital asset industry financiers, lobbyists, and boosters to create a regulatory safe haven for these risky, flawed, and unproven digital financial instruments and to instead take an approach that protects the public interest and ensures technology is deployed in genuine service to the needs of ordinary citizens,”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The tech leaders question claims by crypto evangelists that “crypto-assets are an innovative technology that is unreservedly good” and instead urge lawmakers to “take a critical, skeptical approach” toward crypto.
  • digital token bitcoin taking up a $562 billion chunk alone.
  • The signatories write that “not all innovation is unqualifiedly good” and say that “the history of technology is full of dead ends, false starts, and wrong turns.”
Javier E

Musk, SBF, and the Myth of Smug, Castle-Building Nerds - 0 views

newsletters.theatlantic.com/...-of-smug-castle-building-nerds

myth nerds founder genius cult tech responsibility social media twitter crypto

shared by Javier E on 16 Nov 22 - No Cached
  • Experts in content moderation suggested that Musk’s actual policies lacked any coherence and, if implemented, would have all kinds of unintended consequences. That has happened with verification. Almost every decision he makes is an unforced error made with extreme confidence in front of a growing audience of people who already know he has messed up, and is supported by a network of sycophants and blind followers who refuse to see or tell him that he’s messing up. The dynamic is … very Trumpy!
  • As with the former president, it can be hard at times for people to believe or accept that our systems are so broken that a guy who is clearly this inept can also be put in charge of something so important. A common pundit claim before Donald Trump got into the White House was that the gravity of the job and prestige of the office might humble or chasten him.
  • The same seems true for Musk. Even people skeptical of Musk’s behavior pointed to his past companies as predictors of future success. He’s rich. He does smart-people stuff. The rockets land pointy-side up!
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Time and again, we learned there was never a grand plan or big ideas—just weapons-grade ego, incompetence, thin skin, and prejudice against those who don’t revere him.
  • Despite all the incredible, damning reporting coming out of Twitter and all of Musk’s very public mistakes, many people still refuse to believe—even if they detest him—that he is simply incompetent.
  • What is amazing about the current moment is that, despite how ridiculous it all feels, a fundamental tenet of reality and logic appears to be holding true: If you don’t know what you’re doing or don’t really care, you’ll run the thing you’re in charge of into the ground, and people will notice.
  • And so the moment feels too dumb and too on the nose to be real and yet also very real—kind of like all of reality in 2022.
  • I don’t really know where any of this will lead, but one interesting possibility is that Musk gets increasingly reactionary and trollish in his politics and stewardship of Twitter.
  • Leaving the politics aside, from a basic customer-service standpoint this is generally an ill-advised way for the owner of a company to treat an elected official when that elected official wishes to know why your service has failed them. The reason it is ill-advised is because then the elected official could tweet something like what Senator Markey tweeted on Sunday: “One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online. Fix your companies. Or Congress will.”
  • It seems clear that Musk, like any dedicated social-media poster, thrives on validation, so it makes sense that, as he continues to dismantle his own mystique as an innovator, he might look for adoration elsewhere
  • Recent history has shown that, for a specific audience, owning the libs frees a person from having to care about competency or outcome of their actions. Just anger the right people and you’re good, even if you’re terrible at your job. This won’t help Twitter’s financial situation, which seems bleak, but it’s … something!
  • Bankman-Fried, the archetype, appealed to people for all kinds of reasons. His narrative as a philanthropist, and a smart rationalist, and a stone-cold weirdo was something people wanted to buy into because, generally, people love weirdos who don’t conform to systems and then find clever ways to work around them and become wildly successful as a result.
  • Bankman-Fried was a way that a lot of people could access and maybe obliquely understand what was going on in crypto. They may not have understood what FTX did, but they could grasp a nerd trying to leverage a system in order to do good in the world and advance progressive politics. In that sense, Bankman-Fried is easy to root for and exciting to cover. His origin story and narrative become more important than the particulars of what he may or may not be doing.
  • the past few weeks have been yet another reminder that the smug-nerd-genius narrative may sell magazines, and it certainly raises venture funding, but the visionary founder is, first and foremost, a marketing product, not a reality. It’s a myth that perpetuates itself. Once branded a visionary, the founder can use the narrative to raise money and generate a formidable net worth, and then the financial success becomes its own résumé. But none of it is real.
  • Adversarial journalism ideally questions and probes power. If it is trained on technology companies and their founders, it is because they either wield that power or have the potential to do so. It is, perhaps unintuitively, a form of respect for their influence and potential to disrupt. But that’s not what these founders want.
  • even if all tech coverage had been totally flawless, Silicon Valley would have rejected adversarial tech journalism because most of its players do not actually want the responsibility that comes with their potential power. They want only to embody the myth and reap the benefits. They want the narrative, which is focused on origins, ambitions, ethos, and marketing, and less on the externalities and outcomes.
  • Looking at Musk and Bankman-Fried, it would appear that the tech visionaries mostly get their way. For all the complaints of awful, negative coverage and biased reporting, people still want to cheer for and give money to the “‘smug nerds building castles in the sky.’” Though they vary wildly right now in magnitude, their wounds are self-inflicted—and, perhaps, the result of believing their own hype.
  • That’s because, almost always, the smug-nerd-genius narrative is a trap. It’s one that people fall into because they need to believe that somebody out there is so brilliant, they can see the future, or that they have some greater, more holistic understanding of the world (or that such an understanding is possible)
  • It’s not unlike a conspiracy theory in that way. The smug-nerd-genius narrative helps take the complexity of the world and make it more manageable.
  • Putting your faith in a space billionaire or a crypto wunderkind isn’t just sad fanboydom; it is also a way for people to outsource their brain to somebody else who, they believe, can see what they can’t
  • the smug nerd genius is exceedingly rare, and, even when they’re not outed as a fraud or a dilettante, they can be assholes or flawed like anyone else. There aren’t shortcuts for making sense of the world, and anyone who is selling themselves that way or buying into that narrative about them should read to us as a giant red flag.
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