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katyshannon

E.P.A. Broke Law With Social Media Push for Water Rule, Auditor Finds - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-water-rule-auditor-finds.html

water social media push law rule lobbying auditor new york times epa clean obama politics US

shared by katyshannon on 15 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in “covert propaganda” and violated federal law when it blitzed social media to urge the public to back an Obama administration rule intended to better protect the nation’s streams and surface waters, congressional auditors have concluded. From Our Advertisers .story-link { position: relative; display: block; text-decoration: none; padding: 6px 0; min-height: 65px; min-width: 300px; } .story-link:hover { background-color: #eeeeec; } .story-kicker, .story-heading, .summary { margin: 0; padding: 0; } .thumb { position: absolute; left: 0; top: 6px; } .thumb-hover, .story-link:hover .thumb-main { display: none } .thumb-main, .story-link:hover .thumb-hover { display: block } .story-body { padding-left: 75px; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: 400; color: #000; } .story-body .story-kicker { font-family: 'nyt-franklin', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 11px; line-height: 11px; font-weight: 400; color: #5caaf3; } .story-heading { font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: 700; padding: 5px 0 0; } Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation Changing Charity Younger donors are finding new ways to give. <noscript class=&quot;MOAT-nytdfp348531439194?moatClientLevel1=31074278&amp;amp;moatClientLevel2=343740158&amp;amp;moatClientLevel3=58584518&amp;amp;moatClientLevel4=94015704638&amp;amp;moatClientSlicer1=28390358&amp;amp;moatClientSlicer2=30706478&amp;amp;zMoatPR=n
  • The ruling by the Government Accountability Office, which opened its investigation after a report on the agency’s practices in The New York Times, drew a bright line for federal agencies experimenting with social media about the perils of going too far to push a cause. Federal laws prohibit agencies from engaging in lobbying and propaganda.
  • An E.P.A. official on Tuesday disputed the finding. “We use social media tools just like all organizations to stay connected and inform people across the country about our activities,” Liz Purchia, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement. “At no point did the E.P.A. encourage the public to contact Congress or any state legislature.”
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  • But the legal opinion emerged just as Republican leaders moved to block the so-called Waters of the United States clean-water rule through an amendment to the enormous spending bill expected to pass in Congress this week. While the G.A.O.’s findings are unlikely to lead to civil or criminal penalties, they do offer Republicans a cudgel for this week’s showdown.
  • The E.P.A. rolled out a social media campaign on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and even on more innovative tools such as Thunderclap, to counter opposition to its water rule, which effectively restricts how land near certain surface waters can be used. The agency said the rule would prevent pollution in drinking water sources. Farmers, business groups and Republicans have called the rule a flagrant case of government overreach.
  • The publicity campaign was part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to counter critics of its policies through social media tools, communicating directly with Americans and bypassing traditional news organizations.
  • At the White House, top aides to President Obama have formed the Office of Digital Strategy, which promotes his agenda on Twitter, Facebook, Medium and other social sites. Shailagh Murray, a senior adviser to the president, is charged in part with expanding Mr. Obama’s presence in that online world.
  • White House officials declined to say if they think Mr. Reynolds or other agency officials did anything wrong.
  • Federal agencies are allowed to promote their own policies, but are not allowed to engage in propaganda, defined as covert activity intended to influence the American public. They also are not allowed to use federal resources to conduct so-called grass-roots lobbying — urging the American public to contact Congress to take a certain kind of action on pending legislation.
  • As it promoted the Waters of the United States rule, also known as the Clean Water Rule, the E.P.A. violated both of those prohibitions, a 26-page legal opinion signed by Susan A. Poling, the general counsel to the G.A.O., concluded in an investigation requested by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
julia rhodes

U.S. Aid to Afghans Flows On Despite Warnings of Misuse - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-prevent-misuse-of-us-aid.html

u s aid afghanistan karzai US politics crisis policy economics obama

shared by julia rhodes on 30 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • With billions of dollars in American aid increasingly flowing straight into Afghan government coffers, the United States hired two global auditing firms three years ago to determine whether Afghanistan could be trusted to safeguard the money.
  • The findings were so dire that American officials fought to keep them private.
  • But the money has continued to flow, despite warnings from the auditors that none of the 16 Afghan ministries could be counted on to keep the funds from being stolen or wasted.
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  • The findings raise new questions about the efficacy and wisdom of giving huge amounts of aid directly to a government known for corruption.
  • Aid from Western countries pays most of the Afghan government’s expenses.
  • The direct assistance, which now accounts for about half of all American aid to the government, was a centerpiece of the Obama administration’s strategy to build a credible national government that could capitalize on the battlefield gains made by the surge of American forces in 2009 and 2010.
  • The agency said that despite all the warnings about risks, the report outlined no specific instances of fraud.
  • The agency, which has grown accustomed to harsh reports on its work in Afghanistan from the inspector general, characterized the latest report as one with lots of smoke but no fire.
  • For instance, $236.5 million earmarked for the Afghan Ministry of Public Health was in danger of misappropriation “arising from payment of salaries in cash,” according to a United States Agency for International Development risk assessment cited by the inspector general. The Afghan Mines Ministry could be “paying higher prices for commodities and services to finance
  • American officials are displeased with the release of the inspector general’s report, saying it is likely to infuriate the Afghan officials who allowed the auditors from the two auditing firms, KPMG and Ernst &amp; Young, to examine their operations.
  • The release will probably lead to “reduced cooperation from the Afghan government, and could undermine our ability to conduct proper oversight of direct assistance programs in the future,” the aid agency warned the inspector general in a letter.
  • The report accuses the agency and the State Department of not being forthright with Congress, saying the most dire assessments in the audits, which started in 2011, were withheld from lawmakers, including assessments that American officials had taken less than 10 percent of the measures they could have taken to reduce the risk that aid money would be lost to Afghan mismanagement or corruption.
  • U.S.A
Javier E

Who Turned My Blue State Red? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-turned-my-blue-state-red.html

safety net government benefits government GOP Democratic party poor voters trends

shared by Javier E on 21 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • IT is one of the central political puzzles of our time: Parts of the country that depend on the safety-net programs supported by Democrats are increasingly voting for Republicans who favor shredding that net.
  • The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting against their own interests.
  • this reaction misses the complexity of the political dynamic that’s taken hold in these parts of the country. It misdiagnoses the Democratic Party’s growing conundrum with working-class white voters. And it also keeps us from fully grasping what’s going on in communities where conditions have deteriorated
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  • the people who most rely on the safety-net programs secured by Democrats are, by and large, not voting against their own interests by electing Republicans. Rather, they are not voting, period. They have, as voting data, surveys and my own reporting suggest, become profoundly disconnected from the political process.
  • The people in these communities who are voting Republican in larger proportions are those who are a notch or two up the economic ladder — the sheriff’s deputy, the teacher, the highway worker, the motel clerk, the gas station owner and the coal miner. And their growing allegiance to the Republicans is, in part, a reaction against what they perceive, among those below them on the economic ladder, as a growing dependency on the safety net, the most visible manifestation of downward mobility in their declining towns.
  • After having her first child as a teenager, marrying young and divorcing, Ms. Dougherty had faced bleak prospects. But she had gotten safety-net support — most crucially, taxpayer-funded tuition breaks to attend community college, where she’d earned her nursing degree.
  • She landed a steady job at a nearby dialysis center and remarried. But this didn’t make her a lasting supporter of safety-net programs like those that helped her. Instead, Ms. Dougherty had become a staunch opponent of them. She was reacting, she said, against the sense of entitlement she saw on display at the dialysis center
  • “People waltz in when they want to,” she said, explaining that, in her opinion, there was too little asked of patients. There was nothing that said “‘You’re getting a great benefit here, why not put in a little bit yourself.’ ” At least when she got her tuition help, she said, she had to keep up her grades. “When you’re getting assistance, there should be hoops to jump through so that you’re paying a price for your behavior,” she said. “What’s wrong with that?”
  • these voters are consciously opting against a Democratic economic agenda that they see as bad for them and good for other people — specifically, those undeserving benefit-recipients who live nearby.
  • Where opposition to the social safety net has long been fed by the specter of undeserving inner-city African-Americans — think of Ronald Reagan’s notorious “welfare queen” — in places like Pike County it’s fueled, more and more, by people’s resentment over rising dependency they see among their own neighbors, even their own families.
  • This political disconnect among lower-income Americans has huge ramifications — polls find nonvoters are far more likely to favor spending on the poor and on government services than are voters, and the gap grows even larger among poor nonvoters
  • THAT pattern is right in line with surveys, which show a decades-long decline in support for redistributive policies and an increase in conservatism in the electorate even as inequality worsens. There has been a particularly sharp drop in support for redistribution among older Americans,
  • researchers such as Kathryn Edin, of Johns Hopkins University, found a tendency by many Americans in the second lowest quintile of the income ladder — the working or lower-middle class — to dissociate themselves from those at the bottom, where many once resided. “There’s this virulent social distancing — suddenly, you’re a worker and anyone who is not a worker is a bad person,” said Professor Edin. “They’re playing to the middle fifth and saying, ‘I’m not those people.’ ”
  • Meanwhile, many people who in fact most use and need social benefits are simply not voting at all. Voter participation is low among the poorest Americans, and in many parts of the country that have moved red, the rates have fallen off the charts. West Virginia ranked 50th for turnout in 2012; also in the bottom 10 were other states that have shifted sharply red in recent years, including Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee.
  • The political upshot is plain, Mr. Cauley added. “It’s not the people on the draw that’s voting against” the Democrats, he said. “It’s everyone else.”
  • low turnout by poor Kentuckians explained why the state’s Obamacare gains wouldn’t help Democrats. “I remember being in the room when Jennings was asked whether or not Republicans were afraid of the electoral consequences of displacing 400,000-500,000 people who have insurance,” State Auditor Adam Edelen, a Democrat who lost his re-election bid this year, told Joe Sonka, a Louisville journalist. “And he simply said, ‘People on Medicaid don’t vote.’
  • Republicans, of course, would argue that the shift in their direction among voters slightly higher up the ladder is the natural progression of things — people recognize that government programs are prolonging the economic doldrums and that Republicans have a better economic program.
  • it means redoubling efforts to mobilize the people who benefit from the programs. This is no easy task with the rural poor, who are much more geographically scattered than their urban counterparts. Not helping matters in this regard is the decline of local institutions like labor unions — while the United Mine Workers of America once drove turnout in coal country, today there is not a single unionized mine still operating in Kentucky.
  • it also means reckoning with the other half of the dynamic — finding ways to reduce the resentment that those slightly higher on the income ladder feel toward dependency in their midst. One way to do this is to make sure the programs are as tightly administered as possible. Instances of fraud and abuse are far rarer than welfare opponents would have one believe, but it only takes a few glaring instances to create a lasting impression
  • The best way to reduce resentment, though, would be to bring about true economic growth in the areas where the use of government benefits is on the rise,
katyshannon

Connecticut to Ban Gun Sales to Those on Federal Terrorism Lists - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...n-federal-terrorism-lists.html

ban gun sales federal terrorism lists new york times politics us crisis

shared by katyshannon on 11 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • “Like all Americans, I have been horrified by the recent terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris,” Mr. Malloy, a Democrat, told reporters. “This should be a wake-up call to all of us. This is a moment to seize in America, and today I’m here to say that we in Connecticut are seizing it.”
  • Connecticut to Ban Gun Sales to Those on Federal Terrorism Lists
  • While Democrats in Congress have been calling almost daily for a fix to the so-called watch list loophole, Republicans have succeeded in defeating measures that would prevent people on the lists from buying guns. Democrats say they intend to keep pushing the issue, and on Thursday the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, introduced a motion demanding a vote to restrict the sale of guns from anyone on a federal terrorism watch list. House Republicans swiftly shelved it.
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  • “What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semiautomatic weapon?” Mr. Obama said. “This is a matter of national security.”
  • “Seems to me that the greatest importance of this is to get the ball rolling so more people follow, and ideally the federal government,” Mr. Webster said. “I suspect more states will do this.”
  • own a gun.
  • Connecticut has passed some of the strictest gun laws in the country, including measures enacted after the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, when a gunman killed 20 schoolchildren and six staff members before killing himself.
  • The National Rifle Association “does not want terrorists or dangerous people to have access to weapons,” said Jennifer Baker, a spokeswoman for the organization’s lobbying arm. “But this is a constitutional issue,” she said, adding that mere suspicion should not be enough to take away the righ
  • The no-fly list is a subset of the watch list.
  • Correction: December 10, 2015 An earlier version of this article, using information from state officials, erroneously attributed a distinction to the proposed measure in Connecticut. It would not be the first such law in the nation; at least one other state has such a ban.
  • “These are everyday Americans that have nothing to do with terrorism,” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a Republican candidate for president, told CNN. “They wind up on the no-fly list, there’s no due process or any way to get your name removed from it in a timely fashion, and now they’re having their Second Amendment rights being impeded upon.”
  • Abe Mashal, a former Marine and a Muslim of mixed Palestinian-Italian background who lives in the Chicago area, was on the no-fly list until last year, for reasons he said were still a mystery to him.
  • “Never had any trouble with that,” he said of the gun purchase.
  • Since 2004, there have been 2,233 people who, like Mr. Mashal, landed on the government’s no-fly list because of terrorism suspicions and applied to buy a gun, according to a recent review of F.B.I. data by the Government Accountability Office.
  • But only rarely are legal reasons found to prohibit the sale, according to federal auditors. Since the F.B.I. began tracking the data, only 190 gun sales to people on the list — or 8.5 percent of all the attempted sales — have been blocked for other reasons, including mental illness or criminal convictions, auditors found.
  • But Democrats say increased fears of domestic terrorism stoked by the recent gun attacks in San Bernardino and in Paris are reason enough to stop people on a watch list from being able to buy a gun.
  • Mr. Malloy has lobbied federal lawmakers on the issue. “I have previously written to Congress on this matter,” he said. “But inaction is not an option. So here in Connecticut, we are acting.
  • The federal government’s terrorism watch list is a database maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center, an arm of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
  • “Like all Americans, I have been horrified by the recent terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris,” Mr. Malloy, a Democrat, told reporters. “This should be a wake-up call to all of us. This is a moment to seize in America, and today I’m here to say that we in Connecticut are seizing it.”
  • With his decision, Mr. Malloy has stepped into a fiery debate that has stretched from the Oval Office to the contest to become its next occupant: Should being a terrorism suspect prohibit a person from buying firearms? At the moment, it does not.
  • With the mass shooting in California last week focusing attention on terrorism and guns, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut announced on Thursday that he intended to sign an executive order barring people on federal terrorism watch lists from buying firearms in the state.
  • President Obama has moved it to the front of his continuing push for stricter gun restrictions. “Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun,” he said in
  • While Democrats in Congress have been calling almost daily for a fix to the so-called watch list loophole, Republicans have succeeded in defeating measures that would prevent people on the lists from buying guns. Democrats say they intend to keep pushing the issue, and on Thursday the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, introduced a motion demanding a vote to restrict the sale of guns from anyone on a federal terrorism watch list. House Republicans swiftly shelved it.
  • What some critics have called a startling gap in the law has gnawed at counterterrorism officials for years. But it has now emerged as a flash point following the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., in which a married couple who the authorities believe were inspired by foreign extremists killed 14 people using legally obtained firearms.
  • But the argument, gun rights advocates say, is a matter of due process. They say that the no-fly list — with tens of thousands of names on it — is unreliable, with innocent people like Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts senator who died in 2009, and other well-known Americans wrongly placed on the list.
  • While federal gun control legislation has gone nowhere in recent years, certain states have had more success. Connecticut has passed some of the strictest gun laws in the country, including measures enacted after the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, when a gunman killed 20 schoolchildren and six staff members before killing himself.
  • Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, said it was unclear what the practical implications of Connecticut’s proposed ban would be in stopping someone who is determined to carry out an act of terrorism. That person could simply travel to another state.
clairemann

COVID-19 Surge Ahead Of Election Day Creates Concerns For Polling Places | HuffPost - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...ces_n_5f9f12e6c5b65662bcc84528

US voting election trump pandemic

shared by clairemann on 01 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • A surge in coronavirus cases across the country, including in key presidential battleground states, is creating mounting health and logistical concerns for voters, poll workers and political parties ahead of Election Day.
  • “We can’t afford to have Election Day serve as a superspreading event across the state and country,” he said.
  • In Wisconsin, Gov. Tony Evers sought to assure voters in the critical swing state that going to the polls would not be risky, even as officials announced more than 5,000 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday.
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  • Republicans worked to downplay any concerns that health risks will keep some of their voters home, after Democrats heavily promoted mail-in and early in-person balloting to their voters.
  • Republicans are counting on a huge Election Day turnout among their supporters to offset the big leads in early voting among Democrats in states that are pivotal to the presidential race.
  • “If you were worried about voting at the polls on Election Day, you’ve probably already voted,” said John March, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Virginia.
  • Linn County Auditor Joel Miller said a woman who acknowledged she was positive for coronavirus voted curbside Thursday at a mall where early voting is taking place, the first known infected voter in the county.
  • Several other voters who were awaiting test results or wanted to avoid the line for health reasons also used it, and county auditors were preparing for a major increase in the rarely-used option Tuesday.
  • “Heck yes I’m concerned. I’m going to have 500 people working on Tuesday. I don’t want it on my conscience that somebody caught COVID at a polling place and got sick,” he said. “It could happen. It could happen to me.”
  • “Some of my poll workers are a little bit concerned because they are older individuals,” she said. “Still, I would rather do curbside than have them (voters) go to the polls.”
Javier E

In Lean Years After Boom, Spain's Graft Laid Bare - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...om-spains-graft-laid-bare.html

corruption

shared by Javier E on 06 May 13 - No Cached
  • For decades, corruption was accepted in Southern Europe as a fact of life, a way to distribute the spoils, and few people — including, in many cases, prosecutors — gave it a second thought. But the grinding economic crisis, which stalled projects and ended the flow of cash, has helped lift the veil on corrupt officials, exposing graft, bribery, payoffs, secret favors and other misdeeds on a scale that few imagined.
  • Corruption did not cause the euro zone crisis. But the economic problems will persist, regional experts say, until these countries remake themselves into modern societies with efficient, competitive economies.
  • “The political class has no respect in Southern Europe. The public institutions need to be rebuilt, step by step, so the government can be a credible actor.”
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  • Some experts believe there is still far more to come, the result in Spain of a political structure that puts huge power in the hands of local officials. Many of them can grant procurement contracts or rezone land with little or no consultation.
  • experts say that the concentration of power in the hands of regional and municipal officials and their ties to the local savings banks created ideal conditions for corruption in the construction boom years.
  • “Over a lunch, they can decide that you are going to make 100 million euros,” around $131 million, said Manuel Villoria, a professor of political science at the University of Juan Carlos in Madrid, who is writing a report on Spanish corruption for the European Union. “So, they could ask for what they wanted. It often wasn’t for them. It was an apartment for a daughter or for a sister’s children.
  • Unlike in Greece, corruption is not a way of life in Spain. Most Spaniards go about their daily business without ever paying a bribe.
  • There are so many scandals that some newspapers have taken to organizing all but the biggest developments in a quick-list format, rather than writing whole articles.
  • Already there is talk of overhauling the country’s party financing and transparency laws, increasing sentences for corruption and strengthening the independence of auditors. At the same time, many experts say more needs to be done to bolster an underfinanced judicial system, which allows many corruption cases to go unresolved for years.
sarahbalick

Luxleaks whistleblowers trial begins in Luxembourg - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-europe-36135626

world trial luxembourg

shared by sarahbalick on 26 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Luxleaks whistleblowers trial begins in Luxembourg
  • Three Frenchmen have gone on trial in Luxembourg accused of leaking thousands of confidential documents revealing corporate tax deals.
  • Two ex-employees of accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and a journalist are on trial. They could face up to 10 years in jail.
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  • Antoine Deltour, a former auditor at PwC, is accused of passing information on clients to French journalist Edouard Perrin, who first broke the story on French TV in 2012, in collaboration with the BBC's Panorama.
  • Raphael Halet, the other former PwC employee, is suspected of a separate leak and faces the same charges. Mr Perrin is accused of being an accomplice.
  • While Luxembourg has laws protecting whistleblowers, they are confined to exposing illegal practices. Civil rights groups have attacked the case.
  • "Deltour should be protected and commended, not prosecuted. The information he disclosed was in the public interest," said Cobus de Swardt, the Managing Director of Transparency International.
brookegoodman

England could face droughts in 20 years due to climate breakdown - report | Environment... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ess-urgent-action-taken-report

crisis culture

shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • England is in danger of experiencing droughts within 20 years unless action is taken to combat the impact of the climate crisis on water availability, the public spending watchdog says.
  • Water companies will have to reduce the quantity of water they take out of rivers, lakes and the ground by more than 1bn litres a day, creating huge shortfalls in the coming decades, the NAO warned.
  • The total supply is forecast to drop by 7% by 2045 because of the climate crisis and the need to scale back the amount of water taken out of England’s waterways and soils.
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  • Gareth Davies, comptroller and auditor general of the NAO, criticised ministers in his report for failing to lead on the issue of water sustainability. He said personal water consumption had risen every year for the past five years.
  • The report said during the past five years water companies had made little or no progress in reducing water consumption and cutting leakage.
  • The NAO urged the government to monitor progress on the water suppliers’ pledge to reduce leaks by at least 15% by 2025
  • Defra should work with other government departments to reduce water consumption by large public sector users, such as hospitals and schools. The NAO said Defra should also better understand how willing the public were to pay higher water bills in order to improve water infrastructure.
  • “The recently published National Framework for Water Resources sets out a bold vision for bringing together consumers, businesses and industry to safeguard the future of our water resources while ensuring that our natural environment is protected for future generations.”
anonymous

Republicans Aim to Seize More Power Over How Elections Are Run - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...republicans-election-laws.html

shared by anonymous on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • election officials in Georgia, from the secretary of state’s office down to county boards, found themselves in a wholly unexpected position: They had to act as one of the last lines of defense against an onslaught of efforts by a sitting president and his influential allies to overturn the will of the voters.
  • Buried in an avalanche of voting restrictions currently moving through the Georgia Statehouse are measures that would give G.O.P. lawmakers wide-ranging influence over the mechanics of voting and fundamentally alter the state’s governance of elections.
  • “It’s looking at total control of the election process by elected officials, which is not what it should be,” said Helen Butler, a Democratic county board of elections member. “It’s all about turnout and trying to retain power.”
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  • Nationwide, Republican lawmakers in at least eight states controlled by the party are angling to pry power over elections from secretaries of state, governors and nonpartisan election boards.
  • The push is intertwined with Republicans’ extraordinary national drive to make it harder for millions of Americans to vote, with legislative and legal attacks on early voting, absentee balloting and automatic voter registration laws.
  • The new legislation across the country would systematically remove the checks that stood in Mr. Trump’s way, injecting new political influence over electors, county election boards and the certification process. In doing so, the Republican effort places a few elected officials who refused to buy into the lies and falsehoods about the election in its cross hairs.
  • If the bill becomes law, the State Election Board, under control of the Legislature, would have more authority over these county boards, including the ability to review and fire their members.“It will give the State Election Board the authority to replace a limited number, it appears, of county election superintendents, and that can be a very partisan tool in the wrong hands,” said David Worley
  • State Representative Barry Fleming, a Republican who has been a chief sponsor of the bills in Georgia, did not respond to requests for comment. In a hearing on the bill this month, he defended the provisions, saying, “We as legislators decide how we will actually be elected, because we decide our own boards of elections and those of the counties we are elected from.”
  • A new law in Iowa restricting access to voting also targeted county election officials. In addition to barring them from proactively sending out absentee ballot applications, the bill introduced criminal charges for officials who fail to follow the new voting rules.
  • “We can be fined heavily now, removed from office,” said one of those officials, Travis Weipert, the Johnson County auditor. “And instead of just saying, ‘Don’t do it again,’ they brought the hammer down on us.”
  • One bill gives the Legislature the authority to approve the state election manual, an essential planning document that is drawn up every two years by the secretary of state. It had previously been approved by the governor and the attorney general.The effort has been roundly criticized by election officials in the state.
  • Republicans are also introducing measures to give them more electoral oversight in some states, like Michigan and New Jersey, that have Democratic governors who would most likely veto such bills.
  • It is nearly assured that almost all of these bills will face legal challenges from Democrats, who have signaled that combating the efforts to restrict voting will be a top priority through both federal legislation and the courts.
katherineharron

Kim Reynolds, Iowa governor, signs controversial law shortening early and Election Day ... - 0 views

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

voting

shared by katherineharron on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Monday signed into law a controversial bill aimed at limiting voting and making it harder for voters to return absentee ballots, her office announced Monday.
  • The legislation, which passed both Republican-controlled chambers of the state legislature last month, will reduce the number of early voting days from 29 days to 20 days.
  • It will also close polling places an hour earlier on Election Day (at 8 p.m. instead of 9 p.m.).
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  • The bill additionally places new restrictions on absentee voting including banning officials from sending applications without a voter first requesting one and requiring ballots be received by the county before polls close on Election Day.
  • "It's our duty and responsibility to protect the integrity of every election. This legislation strengthens uniformity by providing Iowa's election officials with consistent parameters for Election Day, absentee voting, database maintenance, as well as a clear appeals process for local county auditors," Reynolds said in a statement Monday.
  • The new law drew immediate backlash from Democrats in the state, including a tweet from the Iowa Democratic party stating, "We deserve better."
  • Democratic election attorney Marc Elias similarly called the law "the first major suppression law since the 2020 election" in a tweet and noted that litigation could be forthcoming.
tsainten

Derek Chauvin trial jury: What we know about the jurors selected so far - CNN - 0 views

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

shared by tsainten on 12 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Five men and two women -- half the jury -- had been chosen to serve during the trial in Minneapolis by the time court adjourned on Friday.
  • Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, a White former Minneapolis Police officer, placed his knee on Floyd's neck for an extended period while Floyd pleaded, "I can't breathe." His final moments were captured on video, and his death led to widespread protests against police brutality and racism under the banner Black Lives Matter as well as incidents of unrest and looting.
  • Eric Nelson is questioning the prospective jurors for the defense, while Steve Schleicher is questioning them for the prosecution. Judge Peter Cahill is presiding over the trial.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The first juror selected was a White man in his 20s or 30s who works as a chemist and said he has an analytical mind.The second juror was a woman of color who appears to be in her 20s or 30s, according to a pool reporter's observations in court. She said she was "super excited" about getting the jury questionnaire form.The third juror selected was a White man in his 30s who works as an auditor.The fourth juror was a White man in his late 30s or 40s who said he had a "very favorable" view of Black Lives Matter. He also said he believed police are more truthful than other witnesses. The juror is planning to get married on May 1 and told the court that if he was selected for the trial it could delay the wedding.
ethanshilling

Republicans Push for Greater Power Over How Elections Are Run - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...republicans-election-laws.html

US Politics republicans

shared by ethanshilling on 24 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • In the turbulent aftermath of the 2020 presidential contest, election officials in Georgia, from the secretary of state’s office down to county boards, found themselves in a wholly unexpected position: They had to act as one of the last lines of defense against an onslaught of efforts by a sitting president and his influential allies to overturn the will of the voters.
  • Buried in an avalanche of voting restrictions currently moving through the Georgia Statehouse are measures that would give G.O.P. lawmakers wide-ranging influence over the mechanics of voting and fundamentally alter the state’s governance of elections.
  • “It’s looking at total control of the election process by elected officials, which is not what it should be,” said Helen Butler, a Democratic county board of elections member.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • State Representative Barry Fleming, a Republican who has been a chief sponsor of the bills in Georgia, did not respond to requests for comment.
  • Nationwide, Republican lawmakers in at least eight states controlled by the party are angling to pry power over elections from secretaries of state, governors and nonpartisan election boards.
  • In Georgia’s new voting bill, the State Legislature is looking to strip Mr. Raffensperger of his role as the chair of the State Election Board and make him an ex-officio member without a vote.
  • If the bill becomes law, the State Election Board, under control of the Legislature, would have more authority over these county boards, including the ability to review and fire their members.
  • Jon Greenbaum, the chief counsel for the nonpartisan Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said Republicans were engaged in an “all-out effort to change the voting rules in lots of ways that would allow for greater opportunity for them to challenge the eligibility of electors,” and that the party would “add micromanagement by state legislatures to the process of running an election.”
  • It’s not just Georgia. In Arizona, Republicans are pushing for control over the rules of the state’s elections. In Iowa, the G.O.P. has installed harsh new criminal penalties for county election officials who enact emergency voting rules.
  • Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican, has not weighed in publicly on the changes to election administration and oversight.
  • The threat of increased punishment seemed to be directed at three county election officials in the state, who last year chose to mail absentee ballot applications to all registered voters in their counties, drawing the ire of state Republicans.
  • Bobby Kaufmann, the Republican state representative in Iowa who sponsored the voting bill, said the county auditors’ actions were “as much the inspiration for the bill as anything,” pointing to their decisions to mail out ballots with prepopulated information.
  • In Arizona, the Republican-controlled Legislature is pursuing multiple paths to tip the scales of election oversight.
  • Ms. Hobbs, who was the target of many Republican attacks after the 2020 election, said that purely partisan politics were at play in the bills.“The Legislature wasn’t interested in control over elections until I got here and happened to have a ‘D’ by my name,” she said.
  • Efforts in other states to muddle with the mechanics of elections have gone beyond state legislatures. In Michigan, the state Republican Party has indicated that it is unlikely to ask a G.O.P. member of the State Board of Canvassers who chose to certify last year’s election results to return to his post.
  • It is nearly assured that almost all of these bills will face legal challenges from Democrats, who have signaled that combating the efforts to restrict voting will be a top priority through both federal legislation and the courts.
carolinehayter

'Stop Lying': Muslim Rights Group Sues Facebook Over Claims It Removes Hate Groups : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-claims-it-removes-hate-groups

politics US Culture policy

shared by carolinehayter on 08 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Frustrated with what it sees as a lack of progress, Muslim Advocates on Thursday filed a consumer protection lawsuit against Facebook, Zuckerberg and Sandberg, among other executives, demanding the social network start taking anti-Muslim activity more seriously.
  • The suit alleges that statements made by the executives about the removal of hateful and violent content have misled people into believing that Facebook is doing more than it actually is to combat anti-Muslim bigotry on the world's largest social network.
  • The suit cites research from Elon University professor Megan Squire, who found that anti-Muslim bias serves "as a common denominator among hate groups around the world" on Facebook. Squire, in 2018, alerted the company to more than 200 anti-Muslim groups on its platform. According to the suit, half of them remain active.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • "We do not allow hate groups on Facebook overall. So if there is a group that their primary purpose or a large part of what they do is spreading hate, we will ban them from the platform overall," Zuckerberg told Congress in 2018. Facebook's Community Standards ban hate speech, violent and graphic content and "dangerous individuals and organizations," like an organized hate group.
  • Lawyers for Muslim Advocates say Facebook's passivity flies in the face of statements Zuckerberg has made to Congress that if something runs afoul of Facebook's rules, the company will remove it.
  • A year earlier, Muslim Advocates provided Facebook a list of 26 anti-Muslim hate groups. Nineteen of them remain active today, according to the suit.
  • "This is not, 'Oh a couple of things are falling through the cracks,'" Bauer said. "This is pervasive content that persists despite academics pointing it out, nonprofits pointing it out. Facebook has made a decision to not take this material down."
  • The lawsuit is asking a judge to declare the statements made by Facebook executives about its content moderation policies fraudulent misrepresentations.
  • It seeks an order preventing Facebook officials from making such remarks.
  • "A corporation is not entitled to exaggerate or misrepresent the safety of a product to drive up sales,
  • Since 2013, officials from Muslim Advocates have met with Facebook leadership, including Zuckerberg, "to educate them about the dangers of allowing anti-Muslim content to flourish on the platform," the suit says. But in the group's view, Facebook never lived up to its promises. Had the company done so, the group alleges in the lawsuit, "it would have significantly reduced the extent to which its platform encouraged and enabled anti-Muslim violence."
  • In the lawsuit, the group says it told Facebook that a militia group, the Texas Patriot Network, was using the platform to organize an armed protest at a Muslim convention in Houston in 2019. It took Facebook 24 hours to take the event down. The Texas Patriot Network is still active on the social network.
  • The suit also referenced an August 2020 event in Milwaukee, Wis. People gathered in front of a mosque and yelled hateful, threatening slurs against Muslims. It was broadcast live on Facebook. The video was removed days later after Muslims Advocates alerted Facebook to the content.
  • It pointed to the Christchurch mass shooting in New Zealand, which left 51 people dead. The shooter live-streamed the massacre on Facebook.
  • "Civil rights advocates have expressed alarm," the outside auditors wrote. "That Muslims feel under siege on Facebook."
liamhudgings

$11 Billion And Counting: Trump's Border Wall Would Be The World's Most Costly : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...uld-be-the-world-s-most-costly

US politics Policy trump gop economics

shared by liamhudgings on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • The pricetag for President Trump's border wall has topped $11 billion — or nearly $20 million a mile — to become the most expensive wall of its kind anywhere in the world.
  • And the Trump administration is on the hunt for funding to build even more
  • The Department of Homeland Security has asked the Defense Department to come up with money for 270 additional miles of border wall that DHS says is needed to block drug smuggling routes on federal land.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • To get an idea why the government is spending so much on Trump's border wall, look no further than the construction sites down in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
  • On one side of a caliche road, you can see the pedestrian fence that was erected more than a decade ago. At 18 feet, it looks downright puny. On the other side of the road are massive steel bollards topped with an "anti-climbing plate" that rise 30 feet above the cotton fields, surrounded by men in hardhats and heavy equipment.
  • "The cost of almost $20 million per mile cost is four times as much as the most expensive other walls being built,"
  • Border walls are much in vogue in the post-Cold War era, he said, and there are now at least 60 around the world.
  • The federal contractors are mostly giant construction companies with experience handling complex federal projects.
  • Taking private land through eminent domain involves multiple agencies, including the Department of Justice, and can lead to lawsuits.
  • "Where you have private property and the government has to go through the courts to get that property, it takes a lot longer and it drives the cost up because you have to pay for that land,"
  • Contrary to President Trump's claims, the wall is not "going up at a record speed." In fact, construction has fallen months behind schedule because of the complexities of acquiring private land in the South Texas.
  • Democrats say they do want border security, but the way to do it is with manpower and technology, not steel and concrete.
  • "I live on the border. I don't want to see chaos. I want to see law and order at the border," Cuellar continued. "But I don't want to just be spending billions of dollars to those federal contractors."
  • Some of the extra money will be used to build the wall higher and 10 miles longer. There have also been "increased project costs due to unforeseen site conditions" — to wit, serious seepage problems where the levee wall crosses a canal that empties into the Rio Grande.
  • Now, the Pentagon inspector general is reviewing the contract. Auditors want to know if the White House steered it to Fisher, who maintains his bid was the best.
kaylynfreeman

Trump Deflects Questions About Taxes, but First Debate Has a New Issue - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...taxes-presidential-debate.html

trump politics taxes

shared by kaylynfreeman on 29 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • The disclosure that President Trump paid little or no federal income taxes for years, including while in the White House
  • While Mr. Trump tried to deflect the news about his taxes, and his Republican allies generally kept their silence, Democrats pounced and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the party’s presidential candidate, posted a video noting that the president paid less in income taxes than everyday Americans like teachers, firefighters and nurses.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 29 Sep 20
       
      Wow that is horrible. I dont understand why they let him get away with everything. As rich as he is he should not be paying less taxes than teachers thats ridiculous
  • so the tax revelations are not likely to shift the election in any fundamental way,”
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Mr. Trump paid no federal income taxes for 11 of the 18 years examined and just $750 in 2016, the year he won the presidency, and $750 in 2017, his first year in office. Mr. Trump wrote off more than $70,000 paid to style his hair during “The Apprentice” and collected $72.9 million in refunds challenged by I.R.S. auditors. He owes hundreds of millions of dollars due in the next four years.
  • Mr. Trump, who unlike other presidents since Watergate has adamantly refused to release his tax returns and fought efforts to obtain them all the way to the Supreme Court, attacked the Times report on Monday on Twitter without actually denying any of its particulars.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 29 Sep 20
       
      clearly its not in his favor if hes going that far to hide it
  • The Fake News
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 29 Sep 20
       
      HE ALWAYS SAYS FAKE NEWS WHEN HES DEFLECTING
  • taking advantage of the tax code is simply “smart” for a business person, while also painting himself as a jobs creator.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 29 Sep 20
       
      we talked about how he was a bad business man in class
  • Tim Murtaugh, the campaign spokesman, called the report inaccurate because the president has paid “tens of millions in taxes,” without specifying whether they were federal income taxes or directly denying that there were years he paid none.
  • Fox News.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 29 Sep 20
       
      bias towards trump
  • hairstyling expenses
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 29 Sep 20
       
      IM CRYING HIS TOUPEE LMAO
  • Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York tweeted that she paid thousands of dollars in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017 — when she was still working as a bartender in New York City. “He contributed less to funding our communities than waitresses &amp; undocumented immigrants,” she wrote.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 29 Sep 20
       
      This example rly puts it into perspective
  • Mr. Limbaugh said on his show on Monday that Mr. Trump’s penchant for minimizing his taxes was something to be proud of, not scorned. “He’s a master at this,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “These tax returns show that he is a master at using the tax code legally. If Trump had done all of this illegal stuff after all of these years, it would have caught up with him by now.”
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 29 Sep 20
       
      its the ignorance for me. How is that something to be proud of?
  • “These folks are scraping to make a living and they’re going to wake up to find out this incredible mogul paid $750? I don’t care what his excuses are,” Mr. Kasich told CNN. “It doesn’t pass the smell test. It’s not going to disrupt those people who were for him totally. They’ll still be for him. But it’s those people on the fence.”
  • In his tweets, the president seemed to be as upset about the perception that he is not as wealthy and successful as he claims to be.
  • Fake News
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 29 Sep 20
       
      he says fake new a lot
  • n fact, as the article noted, Mr. Trump is heavily in debt, and much of what he owes to lenders will have to be paid back in just a few years.
Javier E

AI firms must be held responsible for harm they cause, 'godfathers' of technology say |... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...e-godfathers-of-technology-say

AI threat experts 2023 conference policy politics

shared by Javier E on 24 Oct 23 - No Cached
  • Powerful artificial intelligence systems threaten social stability and AI companies must be made liable for harms caused by their products, a group of senior experts including two “godfathers” of the technology has warned.
  • A co-author of the policy proposals from 23 experts said it was “utterly reckless” to pursue ever more powerful AI systems before understanding how to make them safe.
  • “It’s time to get serious about advanced AI systems,” said Stuart Russell, professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. “These are not toys. Increasing their capabilities before we understand how to make them safe is utterly reckless.”
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • The document urged governments to adopt a range of policies, including:
  • Governments allocating one-third of their AI research and development funding, and companies one-third of their AI R&amp;D resources, to safe and ethical use of systems.
  • Giving independent auditors access to AI laboratories.
  • Establishing a licensing system for building cutting-edge models.
  • AI companies must adopt specific safety measures if dangerous capabilities are found in their models.
  • Making tech companies liable for foreseeable and preventable harms from their AI systems.
  • Other co-authors of the document include Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, two of the three “godfathers of AI”, who won the ACM Turing award – the computer science equivalent of the Nobel prize – in 2018 for their work on AI.
  • Both are among the 100 guests invited to attend the summit. Hinton resigned from Google this year to sound a warning about what he called the “existential risk” posed by digital intelligence while Bengio, a professor of computer science at the University of Montreal, joined him and thousands of other experts in signing a letter in March calling for a moratorium in giant AI experiments.
  • The authors warned that carelessly developed AI systems threaten to “amplify social injustice, undermine our professions, erode social stability, enable large-scale criminal or terrorist activities and weaken our shared understanding of reality that is foundational to society.”
  • They warned that current AI systems were already showing signs of worrying capabilities that point the way to the emergence of autonomous systems that can plan, pursue goals and “act in the world”. The GPT-4 AI model that powers the ChatGPT tool, which was developed by the US firm OpenAI, has been able to design and execute chemistry experiments, browse the web and use software tools including other AI models, the experts said.
  • “If we build highly advanced autonomous AI, we risk creating systems that autonomously pursue undesirable goals”, adding that “we may not be able to keep them in check”.
  • Other policy recommendations in the document include: mandatory reporting of incidents where models show alarming behaviour; putting in place measures to stop dangerous models from replicating themselves; and giving regulators the power to pause development of AI models showing dangerous behaviour
  • Some AI experts argue that fears about the existential threat to humans are overblown. The other co-winner of the 2018 Turing award alongside Bengio and Hinton, Yann LeCun, now chief AI scientist at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and who is also attending the summit, told the Financial Times that the notion AI could exterminate humans was “preposterous”.
  • Nonetheless, the authors of the policy document have argued that if advanced autonomous AI systems did emerge now, the world would not know how to make them safe or conduct safety tests on them. “Even if we did, most countries lack the institutions to prevent misuse and uphold safe practices,” they added.
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