SOPA, PIPA, Frenzied Masses

Appalled Citizen: So we know the problem with PIPA and SOPA. The committees should fix them. There is a huge problem with online piracy, it’s killed industries and turned the media consumer experience upside-down. Goes back to YouTube/Viacom decision. But you’ve all drunken the Kool-Aid though folks, poured by silicon firms you think are benevolent do-gooders. I am more disturbed by the reaction, which demonstrates a very troublesome tendency to backlash.

Passerby: Finally some reason on the matter.

Engaged Pal: Sounds like you’ve been sipping a bit of that Capitol Hill Kool-Aid yourself. Observe them, but do not become one of them. You are way, way too good for that.

Appalled Citizen: Not even close. I started by recognizing as I do that the bills are flawed. There is wild, rampant piracy online. Think Chinese counterfeit, hurts this country’s manufacturers. So fix the bills, but fix the problem. So you and too many I can keep up with are whipped up in a frenzy. Anyone read the bills? I saw the same thing over domestic terrorist detention provisions in the Defense Authorization. It is precisely my proximity that affords me informed views and frankly, I’ve found in these two instances, the loudest are the least knowledgeable.

Another Engaged Pal: Are there not better ways to shut down pirate websites than asking U.S. companies to censor the web?

Engaged Pal: Not that I agreed with them either, but the domestic terrorist defense stuff was about protecting people. This is about protecting the interests of big business. If they have the resources to lobby Congress, than they have the resources to protect themselves without asking the government to censor our free speech.

Appalled Citizen: Of course there are, which is my point. What is copyright, what is intellectual property but protecting your output and ensuring compensation for your content? It’s the wild west out there and content providers – big and small – are mortally bleeding. Fix the bills, fix the problem

Engaged Pal: And the idea of protecting our manufacturing base is a joke. It’s already gone, having outsourced to foreign countries in the name of profits by the same types of folks who are bankrolling this legislation. America is now a service-based economy, and that’s where it will continue to head. The Chinese are counterfeiting themselves.

Appalled Citizen: I just used the example because the scope and magnitude and effect. nearly fatal. and the detention example because of the comparable uninformed frenzy. so on this thinking, we should sound the horns for silicon as their flock and enjoy all the Chinese counterfeit music and videos sloshing around the net.

Another Engaged Pal: Would we be talking right now if these bills had been in effect say, when Facebook or Twitter were launched? How would these bills affect social media sites?

Engaged Pal: Yes entire industries have been wiped out by the digital revolution, just like the horse-drawn carriage industry was probably wiped out by the Model T. The protection of intellectual property and copyrights will for ever remained changed, just as the intrinsic nature of how we use and share all information has. Welcome to the future folks, adapt now or remain forever irrelevant.

Appalled Citizen: Agreed on advancement and industry. However it’s a vicious circle and it’s regressive, because if musicians, filmmakers and television people, content folks, are not compensated and their works just slosh around, they close down and there is no original content to even slosh around. The problem with bills is their remedies, there is a problem to be solved.

Engaged Pal: For every one of those content folks who got burned by pirates, there are two more who got their break by posting their creation on YouTube or Photobucket. The internet giveth as well, not just taketh away. And really what is what is a bill without a remedy anyway? Its a bunch of old rich men in expensive suits sitting around arguing in an even older building, while you watch from above.

Thoughtful Participant: I don’t know so I am asking but is are their studies out there that content makers themselves are not compensated for their work? If so is their evidence that 100% of the reason for not being compensated is because of piracy?

Maybe I am not fully understanding the problem. Is the problem content makers are not getting paid? or not getting paid as much as they once were?

‎Status Quo Proponent: “It’s killed industries and turned the media consumer experience upside-down”

What industries have been killed? And how has my “media consumer experience” been changed? and the entire point of these bills is to go after effectively one site, and that site is not worried. When even the biggest target isn’t worried at all, why put the future of the Internet at risk?

Thoughtful Participant: The tricky thing about ‘piracy’ of copyrighted content is that everyone knows it has been going on since the birth of copyrighted content, it is just now with the age of information that we know how much max ‘potential’ money was unclaimed. We have factual proof that 100,000 copies of the latest hotness from Third Eye Blind for example. For math sake lets say the song cost $1 on iTunes. Apple can claim that they lost $100,000 due to piracy. Is that really true? For that to be true they also have to claim and assume that 100% of those 100,000 people who downloaded the song illegally when given no other choice will have the desire or even want to buy it for $1.00 that day when it was valued at $1.00. That isn’t reality Have you ever shopped for something and internally looked at the price and thought ‘hmmm nah it is not worth that’ I will wait a couple months until it is cheaper’.

Appalled Citizen: These bills’ mechanism is way too strong, yes. But again, the frenzy is my problem. That’s a good question, it’s a safe bet that the sloshing has cut compensation drastically. On a separate thread, a rockstar friend smartly noted the industry’s lag or resistance to adapt. David, our media consumption is as different as hitting YouTube (instantaneous free buffet) rather than heading to Tower Records, now dead. As above, this is YouTube/Viacom repeated.

‎Status Quo Proponent: That’s because going to a record store sucks. I’m not going to buy a CD to find out all but one song is total shit. The internet has made us better consumers for consumers, not for industries that don’t deserve to exist. The industries that have and are disappearing were not capable of adapting as fast as they should have. They don’t deserve to exist and the jobs and money will go to those that can adapt. Free market is a bitch. YouTube takes down videos with songs that they have been notified to do so with, so that’s over. The songs you can hear on YouTube are primarily independent artists making good music that don’t have big name record contracts. You like it, you can buy it. No middle man in between, good for them, good for me, and good for YouTube.

Thoughtful Participant: Tower Records failed because….well…. Records are dead the supply was more then the demand. Record companies tend to point fingers and put the reason for lack of demand on ‘piracy’ but really I tend to think it was just a bunch of things. Industries ‘crash’ all the time because of this unknown, people in mass is a tricky thing to calculate. Some industries rise up again stronger and different. In 1983 the video game industry crashed. Landfills were filled with Atari E.T cartridges. Now look at it. It is estimate to earn $61.8 billion globally. They adopted, they changed. The problem isn’t ‘piracy’ the problem is that some industry are falling while others are raising. Some that are falling are just louder.

Engaged Pal: So I won that one, right?

Appalled Citizen: No, because my problem to begin with is the masses of We the Googlers, the activist blackouts today. David, you know I’m all free markets, and I’ve chatted with a libertarian economist friend today who pointed to piracy as a good force in markets. I question that, I don’t quibble with the necessity to adapt, but I guess it boils down to free lunch..we all love it online, we ridicule pay walls, etc. As far as YouTube, it should be their responsibility as a host to keep tabs on, wait for it, the content they host, which is over insofar as YouTube/Viacom judge punted to them. It was wrong then and the hacktivism that despises paying for things is wrong now. Of course josh, firms should evolve to answer demands. However, the problem in this instance IS piracy, just as counterfeit is in the material world. Do we condone counterfeits? Cheap or free, inferior or even superior, we have completely deluded ourselves online. This, the whiplash blackouts and feverish public on the punch bowl as evidenced today, is mighty disappointing to yours truly.

Another Engaged Pal: Is there an overall theme to all of this? What’s the umbrella concern over the whole shebang? What’s down the road in ten words or less if these bills pass. Are they trying to ‘go China’ on us, or not?

Appalled Citizen: In fact, no one is out to replicate Chinese censorship. Rather, (ten words) both bills would strike “safe harbor” for online content hosts.

A liberal prof & a libertarian

Prompt: Republicans are supporting subsidies that will increase the deficit? Only if the subsidy goes to big businesses (e.g., OIL). Why do some libertarians think that the Republican party represents their ideology.

The Passerby

They both suck. Democrats are worse, though. It’s like someone coming up to you and asking if you’d rather have dinner with Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden.

The Instigator

I personally know some libertarians who think Republican party represents their ideology.

The Liberal Prof

I also know some libertarians who don’t think the Republican party represents (a consequence of?) their ideology, and who are wrong.

The Libertarian

‎”And who are wrong.” Please explain.

The Liberal Prof

Just because libertarians would like to think that the current brand of stupidity characteristic of the American right does not emanate from the same ideological underpinnings they call their own does not make it so.

The Libertarian

That’s an interesting view you have of classical liberalism. Just how has the progressive vision, new deal and great society programs worked out for us?

The Liberal Prof

It is, indeed, my view of classical liberalism. The rest is a discussion for another time, though, and any criticism I might have of classical liberalism does not in the least depend on it.

The Libertarian

Then just admit the stupidity characteristic of the American left and we’ll be on our way.

The Instigator

I wish there were more libertarian Republicans.

The Liberal Prof

Not sure why this wishy-washy pseudo-nihilism of “Both sides are equally as bad” has come into vogue. I think actually bothering to take a stance on pretty much anything involves recognizing that some particular approaches to that thing are going to be more in line with your stance than others, and I find it very weird and even worrisome that people are so willing to undercut real dialogue by throwing up their hands and declaring everything “equally” “stupid” (but they never turn out to truly have no opinions on the matter, do they?).

Which is to say: There are a variety of ways in which I think the current Democratic party in the U.S. is stupid. I’m not sure what it is you’re referring to as “the American left,” since there is no such thing in mainstream public view at the moment (except relative to the very present far right). I think the ways in which current Democrats are stupid mostly involve them being terrible at rhetoric, and not feeling especially compelled to take definitive stands on issues they should feel so compelled about. I think the stupidity characteristic of the GOP is much, much worse, insofar as it involves positively enacting broken policies based off of a highly problematic, confused, and perhaps even immoral ideological underpinning about what human beings actually are and what the government’s role and obligations to them actually are. I also think that a much more literal stupidity from the right is visible, insofar as certain of its members seem unable to string together coherent (let alone defensible) statements about what they’re even doing, and yet these same people (and their campaign teams) are so effective at deploying propaganda-level symbolism and preying on specifically a-rational ways to convince people that they’re actually damaging the public’s conception of what even counts as legitimate political debate.

Also, libertarians are typically pretty incapable of talking about any broad social justice issues, since that generally requires a conceptual model of the social dynamics at hand larger than either just an individual person or an individual event. So you get people like Rand Paul (and subsequently Ron Paul) saying crazy things about the CRA, or envisioning a world in which somehow magically any businesses with unjust business practices are untenable because people — who on this view must somehow have absolutely no practical limitations on their resources, or limitations on available alternatives — just don’t buy their product. But anyone who’s ever paid attention to what options they really have available — anyone who’s ever actually tried to enact such policies by never, ever purchasing a product from a company whose business practices they find objectionable, and who tries to refuse to work for any company whose labor practices they’re dissatisfied with, and so on — finds pretty quickly that we are not actually completely autonomous, isolated, radically independent free agents in the way libertarianism needs to get off the ground. (It should be obvious, too, that the privileged — those with money, those with power, who don’t have to worry about going hungry or getting sick or being assaulted — have a lot more of an ability to build for themselves the false impression of this radical independence). Libertarianism is an ideology for a world that does not exist, and trying to enact it in this one only opens the door for injustice to flourish.

The Instigator

Beautifully said. I agree that one of the major premises for libertarianism is false because the economic models that libertarians rely on assume that every agent will have full information on the product that he or she is buying. But in the real world, it is near impossible for every agent to have full information. With that said, I do wish there more Libertarian Republicans because they would support bills such as the one that I linked. They would vote “no” on unnecessary subsidies for huge corporations that already make billions of dollars. The Republican platform usually has something to do with fiscal conservatism. So, the Republican party usually attracts fiscal conservatives. However, it is just false that Republicans are more fiscally conservative than Democrats because they support subsidies to big corporations. It’s like welfare for the rich, which I deem is worse than straight forward libertarian ideology.

The Libertarian

I’ll try to respond in kind. (1) I’ve opinions, yes, but at that time you were initially dismissive. I find leftist liberalism to be a wholly self-contradictory, platonic, illusory, disconnected abstraction that could be..in fact dangerous. So there are opinions and yes, the left is worse. That said, the initial post was in re libertarians and Republicans, to which i repeat, the closest libertarians get (great variation among them, too) is something like the Republicans’ views of limited government & ‘liberal’ social views, which i don’t entirely hold. (2) Of course there is an American left, it is ridiculous to deny. Democrats’ rhetoric is their only strength; the appeals to emotion and humanity as maneuvers for gross government interjections over the mechanics of having bankrupt the country, (yes, they more than bush if you like that typical line) or the proper role of government, the current linking of subsidies & tax breaks to cutting social welfare programs are as tiresome & ineffectual as the Keynesian Economic response of the Democrats dating to 2007, or of the 1930s. Classical liberals are far more accurate in their initial account of man than the false abstractions fabricated by the left to justify their own power-taking (or ‘politicizing’ i.e. The entitlements under the new-found, boundless, unconstitutional purview of government). So it is the ideas, indeed the history that we mustn’t ignore; for propaganda we need only look at the left entrenched in our educational system, grade school to college, and news media i.e. Forming and informing minds – that’s sick. (3) Yes, the market. Choice. Economic freedom is political freedom. CRA is unconstitutional, DOJ voting reviews have – like most social re-engineering interjections – produced opposite, perverse results. So dovetailing into The Instigator’s glowing affection, Hayek and Friedman start with individuals’ inability to know everything, it is superior at comporting to the world as we find it, to leftist liberalism at a minimum – which the Wilsonian technocrats continue to fail at asserting for the bureaucracy. equal protection – political or economic – as special protections is out. libertarians offer the best chance for you or i to succeed in all endeavors. leftist liberalism has rotted this society from its moral sense to its inhibited economic freedoms, over 50 years as in the last two. Hence the social conservatism that occasionally appeals to this proletariat. Cheers!

 

quick stab at journalism: a judicial nomination

Liu nomination fails in Senate, again.

Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu failed to obtain the sixty votes required to limit debate on his third nomination by President Obama to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today. At just 40 years old, the nominee worked in the Clinton administration before returning to a star career by all accounts in academia.

In a party line 52-43 vote, only Senators Lisa Murkowski [R-AK] and Ben Nelson [D-NE] voted against their entrenched caucuses.

Criticisms of Liu included reference to testimony he gave the same committee in January 2006 on the nomination of Associate Justice Sam Alito to the Supreme Court. Senator Charles Grassley [R-IA] argued that his scathing observations of Roberts were outrageous, illustrating a lack of judicial temperament. Senator John Cornyn [R-TX] called those same remarks “vicious and disgraceful,” noting that Liu had apologized for his original comments as “unduly harsh and provocative.”

Cornyn called Liu’s moderation in appearances during his own nomination to the federal appeals court in California a “true conversion,” going on to point out Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s own assurances during her hearing on gun rights were soon contradicted by a dissenting opinion in her first term on the bench. Even then, Cornyn and others contended, Sotomayor had prior experience as a judge and a record beyond academic ruminations.

As an academician, Liu had also written controversial papers from which passages seemed to indicate a clear progressive but who, in Coburn’s opinion, had clearly advocated for the use of “foreign law to interpret the U.S. Constitution.” A more recent standing criticism of Democrat nominees, the Supreme Court itself has issued opinions that seemed to indicate a willingness in that direction.

With a “well qualified” rating from the American Bar Association, which Senator Tom Coburn [R-OK] criticized as meaningless during debate on Thursday, Liu had appeared twice before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the last Congress. Saying that “due diligence is lacking” at the ABA, Coburn stated that their rating had meant nothing to him in years, that they were “no longer trustworthy” and “hadn’t been for some time.”

At a time when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [D-NV] has had repeated success with cloture on nominees the last two weeks – ten confirmations by votes or consent – and the House was not in session, leaving the Senate to consider Liu and politicized oil production legislation, floor consideration seemed ripe. Reid had kicked off debate in calling up the nomination by referring to the Gang of Fourteen’s 2005 agreed aversion to judicial filibusters, closing debate by naming Republican senators who had signed on to that promise and a “gentleman’s agreement” at the beginning of the 112^th Congress to reiterate that stance.

However, Senator Lindsay Graham [R-SC], a member of the Gang who had voted for Sotomayor, regretted that Liu’s attack on Alito was “a bridge too far.” Senator John McCain [R-AZ] concurred that Liu’s consideration was the kind of “extraordinary circumstance” set by the Gang of which he was also a part because of Liu’s “clear belief that judges have vast powers to shape and even rewrite the law,” together with the absence of time as a judge.

But it was precisely Liu’s academic record, government service and good references that Democrats picked up on to argue for closing debate on this third round. Home state Senators Barbara Boxer [D-CA], who was “honored and privileged” to praise his nomination, and Diane Feinstein [D-CA] repeated his numerous awards as a student and as a professor at Boalt Hall; Boxer remarked that “everything this man touches turns to gold.” Following the attack by Grassley, Feinstein opened her half-hour statement: “I have never heard a harsher statement about a brilliant young man than I have just heard.”

A graduate of Stanford University, Liu was co-president of the student body. He had received the university’s highest honor for outstanding service, later attending Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship. After earning a master’s degree in philosophy and physiology, he went to Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He clerked for Judge David S. Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Calling Professor Liu one of the “leading legal academics of his generation,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse [D-RI], a former Rhode Island federal prosecutor, quoted Liu about the scholar’s role, “to question the boundaries of the law [and] to raise new theories,” saying that “the scholar’s role is different from the role of a judge.”

Boxer argued that the immense Asian-American demographic in California was in disaccord with having just one Asian judge on the federal bench. The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Boxer reminded the Senate of the pride that would spread throughout that community in Liu’s presence in a federal district now classified as a “judicial emergency” for lack of judges – a circumstance which the Gang had agreed not to filibuster.

Reid stated that, “he even helped to launch AmeriCorps.” With endorsements from former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr and one-time Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr, Reid and Boxer regretted “that it has come to this.” It was not clear if Obama would send Liu’s nomination up a fourth time.

On Reporting and Breaking News

As if by the Hippocratic oath, the maxim of doing no harm precludes journalists from reporting information which is not true. On account of the capability to make notice immediately, together with the modern news consumers’ demand which it spurs, news organizations have more and more often been faced with the question of timeliness over accuracy.

Journalistic integrity, generally construed, precludes reportage which violates the self-stated principle of truth seeking and trust-earning, fact-based coverage. Between the echo chamber phenomena, the viral tendency of information as first published and the immediate amplification and spread of this information around the internet, the impetus to be correct has been trumped by the necessity to publish first. Reasons include, but are hardly limited to, the perceived wisdom that being first is the crux of the contest for news outlets, the need to drive traffic and hence one’s brand online – and viewers on television – and the insatiable desire to beat the competition, which in this case, are others racing to report on the same matter in a distinguishable way.

Caution and corroboration, a posture that takes the time to confirm a piece of information must remain the highest priority of news organizations. This approach to breaking news can actually be saving grace. For, aside from the superior reputation which is built on true reporting, those that report bad information can revoke the standing and trust that retains an organization’s audience – in an instant, beyond recovery. In fact, there have been instances where reportage of a news story overtook the story itself. Let this comprise a crucial moment of clarity for some news media in the wake of its reportage on the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on January 8, 2011.

Only regret and demotion can visit those who report falsely that someone in surgery following a violent attack has died. Insistent retraction and correction of this inexcusable errata can never completely undo the harm done one’s self by making such false claims. It diminishes credibility, but worse, as relates to both the Giffords incident and the current news environment, it pollutes the internet and thus, as illuminated by the game ‘telephone’, provides for fodder-making based on false premises. Indeed, it confuses the real facts as they are released, and propels news consumers’ own conversations – as they further relate the news as they know it – into a spiral of speculation, doubt, or unfounded suffering and conclusions. Justified suspicion and the skepticism of a sacred trust broken inevitably result.

The traditional news media will continue to make the remote, disperse and far less resourced blogging and online franchise news more appealing if these high-profile, national news events continue to receive, even if very seldom, inaccurate or misleading coverage. The need for self-reflection would disappear; the cloud of criticism and public worry would evaporate if the possibility for such self-injurious practices, swirled about in the commons and proliferated online, were negated in favor of deliberate, considered reportage were the norm. This is what police departments and hospitals do prior to announcing facts to the public. Until that point, news media now routinely engage inferior witnesses, solicit unremarkable expert input, or, worse, fill the ensuing vacuum with conjecture. Those typing online and those who must keep talking “on air”. Ongoing, fluid situations in particular must be met with a principled approach as each iteration of the pronouncement of new developments

The organization that “had it right” and waited five or twenty minutes to rigorously confirm information correctly will always wins out over that which “went to press” with bad information. This, when a Google news search can’t distinguish veracity or truth, may seem less important to some news desks and confounding for those who seek to ascertain facts without the burden of cross-referencing sources themselves. But the wildfire caricature which this portrays to dependent news consumers is a disservice at the least, a purveyor of misplaced grieving at the worst. The living subject and the clamoring public deserve better.

Debating the FCC’s Net Neutrality Action

Agitator: Someone dispute any component of this. And stay on topic.

John Fund: The Net Neutrality Coup

Free Press and allied groups such as moveon.org quickly got funding. Of the eight major foundations that provided the vast bulk of money for campaign-finance reform, six became major funders of the media-reform movement…

Onlooker: What was wrong with the system in the first place, that it needed new rules?

Agitator: Precisely what so many of us have been asking. Solution in search of a problem, or, an ante-problem power grab.

Respondent: Okay. How about the title? “The Net Neutrality Coup” = this is going to be another one-sided, ultra-biased, OMG-the-socialists-are-taking-over piece of selective “journalistic” advocacy.

I know right away that if I read this article I’m going… To have to find and read it’s equally biased antithesis. After doing so, I will surely decide I can’t trust anything any of these people have to say. I’ll just have to do the research myself and come to my own conclusion if and when I find the time. (That is not to say I have not already done so.)

That being said… I did read the article. And I was right. Mr. Fund does make one solid point though:

“… President Obama… [blah]… Is ignoring both Congress and adverse court rulings, especially by a federal appeals court in April that the agency doesn’t have the power to enforce net neutrality.”

If true, that would be unacceptable.

This comment must be considered “on topic” because it addresses the interests of the source of the topic itself, and thus, the credibility of all components therein.

Observer: I’ll take a stab at answering the Onloooker’s question.

If the government more often used foresight to produce solutions to problems yet-to-be, maybe we wouldn’t have to play catch-up every time a catastrophe happens. Problems should beget solutions,… And as rational people, we can see problems before they happen… Usually. For those arguing that these rules represent “one more hand in the private sector’s cookie jar,” I would point them to recent consequences of what can be kindly described as myopic regulatory inaction (ex. MMS, the entire economy, etc).

Granted, failure to keep equitable internet access doesn’t have the same consequences as, say, not regulating predatory lending practices, but it’s still something that I, as a consumer, care about protecting. I don’t want to have to pay more for reasonable water pressure, either. Or to be able to take calls from people on other networks if I’m using one particular phone company over another. Those are close metaphors for what we could see done to the internet if there weren’t some kind of protections in place. We’ve talked about real-world scenarios before, and the FCC cites several in their press briefing.

Here’s a great read, because it actually spells out what rules the Commission put in place, and why they did. See if you can find anything you disagree with:

And I’m kind of with the Respondent. It’s one thing to present the topic, but citing guys who use “regulation” and “liberal” as dirty words and who paint the John & Catherine MacArthur Foundation as some activist conspiracy doesn’t exactly win people over. There’s a reason that opinion article was in the WSJ.

Anyways, this was fun as always! Making me put thoughts into words…that’s why I love you, man.

Respondent: I would also raise the question of how enforceable these regulations are, really. The internet is… Kind of big. Many of the entities existing within it are prodigiously proficient with computers and networks and the like. It is also kind …of an international thing. If the authority to enforce is acted upon, how potent will that authority ultimately prove to be, really? An interesting thought experiment that can lead to legitimate points in favor of all schools of thought.

More importantly, regulating The Internet sounds rather expensive, doesn’t it? Can we really afford the effort right now? I’ll admit I haven’t seen any figures, but initially I would say… Ah, no. Probably not so much.

Agitator: What in the piece are you disputing? That the title foretells the subject of an opinion essay?… The FCC has moved without Congressional authority, which, like any executive agency regardless of its mandate should be just as unacceptable. Or do you stand with so many who have refuted Genakowski’s long advocacy, in which case you dispute the action. The idea that a title shouldn’t indicate the content, then that an author shouldn’t use the usual essay form to flesh out his point, in turn leading to a conclusion (Fund’s):

“The Net Neutrality Coup” ends “So the “media reform” movement paid for research that backed its views, paid activists to promote the research, saw its allies installed in the FCC and other key agencies, and paid for the FCC research that evaluated the research they had already paid for. Now they have their policy. That’s quite a coup.”

…is not a repudiation of his argument—it’s a rejection of good argumentation! Fund’s conclusion is what it should be, a simple restatement and impenetrable logical progression of premises.

Observer, what you initially describe is “agency (or regulatory) capture”, the idea an agency created to advance the public interest instead advances the commercial or special interests in its jurisdiction. That’s MMS. The SEC has been myopic. Fund is saying that in fact this move was soup-to-nuts the fruition of something more sinister than even those bureaucratic examples.

Let’s take Cliff Stearns http://ht.ly/3sjnu, who exemplifies more directly your first point, my own elsewhere and repeated by bureaucracies and regulations, that it’s a solution without a problem, or as here, in advance of the problem. As Stearns says, it’s Congress’s job to build a legislative history (we all know they’ve been on this for years) around an issue and address is legislatively. Rulemaking is like that, but after enactment of laws! Genakowski substituted his process for theirs. Back on topic, Fund tells us how. It’s interesting, though, as follows.

We’ll hit a go-to liberal, “involved” government proponent, The Nation. http://bit.ly/gnltmx This piece seems pretty critical. In a way this was as claimed the result of a bona fide rulemaking process, which produce actions across the government that resemble compromises, hence the criticisms of Fund and this guy Nichols. This liberal ends with a typical confusion of his persuasion: “We can have the real thing, and we can realize the full promise of the Internet.” Well, we do have the real thing, and the promise of the Internet is being realized.

Anyway, none of us dispute Fund.

Observer: What I can see as the future without these rules: one company (Verizon, for example) decides to shut off access to Netflix in favor of their own On Demand service. Another company (let’s say Comcast) allies with Netflix, in exchange for so…me cash, and shuts off Blockbuster to get Netflix’s cooperation. A third (Cox, the dick joke of broadband providers) advertises that they won’t discriminate. Customers eventually move to Cox, the other companies realize that the lost user fee revenue outweighs the benefits gained from their crazy deals, and follow Cox’s model. In 5 years we’re back where we are now and i’ve been inconvenienced in having to move services. My selfish side says I want to avoid that.

See my link for where the FCC specifies the congressional authority under which it’s operating, dating back to 2005. Seems a pretty clear delegation of powers. Sorry for the double-post, i’ll look more at refutations tomorrow.

Respondent: I think I catch your drift. You asked someone to dispute any component of ‘this’ and stay on ‘topic.’ This challenge was posed along with a link to a WSJ article. If the ‘topic’ is ‘this.’ and ‘this’ is a link, then the link IS the topic. And the link is an extremely biased, pointed, and shit-slinging WSJ article. My dispute is with the component of the article itself (categorize and call it whatever you want.) It is uncompelling. It is not an accurate portrayal of the entire issue. The title tells me it’s just another guy screaming “socialist conspiracy!” It’s useless to me. Heard it all before – a million times – tired of it. I heard it the first time. And that was over 2 years ago.

I support the quotation I cited. Conditionally: if it’s true. And I mean entirely true. If such regulations are to be imposed they must go through the appropriate channels. No matter how clogged and dysfunctional those channels may be.

I find the transcending topic posed in my thought experiment much more compelling.

Respondent: If you’re wanting a debate about internet regulation, I don’t think Mr. Fund is a fair way to open the floor.

Agitator: I’m down with spilt ink. To the Respondent, you were right on, but I think that in your first reply you’d criticized argument itself and op-edness rather than disputing any of Fund’s claims. He was not attempting to lay out the entire issue, and nothing short of an encyclopedia could. As we all know, this has been hot topic for years. Fund’s piece is however an accurate portrayal of the set-up – the parties, their interests and their role in this latest incident.

In a largely agreeable accompanying statement, Genakowski recognizes that, “Now at the same time, government must not overreach by imposing rules that are overly restrictive or that assume perfect knowledge about this dynamic and rapidly changing marketplace.” To my point and that of many, many others, McDowell says, “More than 300 Members have warned the agency against exceeding its legal authority. The FCC is not Congress. We cannot make laws.” With the court decisions on this matter, the authority cited has already been roundly rejected. And any “crisis” or observable harm would be quite foreseeable, on the horizon as with the brazen moves of Comcast during the review of its NBC-Universal merger.

Since the Fund piece has served to kick off discussion rather than as a test piñata, I’ll join you outside the prompt. Coups are by necessity keen to timing, and this announcement couldn’t have come at a more interesting time. It’s paradoxical though: the Democratic majorities in Congress could’ve done this, and the incoming majority will inevitably pass Stearns’ disapproval resolution. Additionally, it seems that Genakowski’s FCC has perpetrated what Congressional Democrats have done for four years: bad process pursuing a non-problem unless you’re a union or other interested party besides those who run the thing. I’m also struck by McDowell’s notion of “global Internet regulatory pandemic.” But these aren’t the thrust of Fund’s essay.

I would agree with Baker and McDowell that this action alone could make the industry blink. The whole spectacle is classic. As Baker puts it, “the majority solves a problem of its own making.” And later, “At best, there is a burned-out bulb in the Christmas lights. We endeavor to replace the entire electrical system to fix it.” Who wants this problem? Those named by Fund. How must they solve it? See Fund, soup-to-nuts.

I fully anticipate that this action will get struck down and that, within the next two years, the Congress will deal with this. And thank the Genakowski’s of the world for the provocation.

Agitator: To Mike’s first point: http://bit.ly/ehkpnw Houston, we’ll have a problem!

Respondent: Ah, okay then. I understand all of that. I have not criticized, or even stated my position on, the central issue of internet regulation: yes or no and on what grounds. In that sense you are correct that I have not disputed any of Fund’s claims, but rather expressed my absolute disdain of opinion pieces such as his. Left, Right, Liberal, Progressive, Conservative, Capitalist, Socialist, Fascist, Despot, Pacifist, Communist. I could totally agree, personally, 100% with the content of an opinion piece and still hate it. They egregiously violate my standards of truth. I study logic, so again you are correct that I am often irked somewhat by open-endedness. Unless I can use it to bend something to my advantage if I need to!

Truthfully, I would have to do more research to be in a place to openly declare a position and match your details. Therefore, I will respectfully bow out of this debate.

I will say that I like your words “coups are by necessity keen to timing.” Indeed. The concept of manufacturing problems is as old as the evolution of reasoning. I love the single burnt bulb analogy. And governmental under-reach is just as potentially harmful as governmental overreach.

In the end, I will not dispute Fund, but I will agree on the point of ignoring court rulings. Fin!

Realism vs. Conspiratorial Pacifism: North Korea, iterated

The Accused Hawk, sarcastic but serious: We should attack North Korea, they’ve crossed the line.

The Conspiricist-Pacifist: Cool! Who exactly did you have in mind for the excursion? You didn’t join the forces did ya? (“Injuns, Koreans –no matter– we’re fucking AMERICANS, and just because so few of us still have our teeth, we’ve still got BITE!”)

The Accused Hawk: Don’t know where you’re going with this, but perhaps, given the statement ‘attack North Korea’ we can start there. Do you think their actions are excusable? If so, defend them. And do you really think this crisis is about American power? If so, how?

The Conspiricist-Pacifist: Perhaps given the statement ‘attack North Korea’, I assumed you wanted to attack North Korea. Did you join the forces, or is this a little personal vendetta you’re about to partake in??

The Accused Hawk: but for china, DPRK’s big brother, I would like to see a coalition remove that most-fucked, most-oppressive regime. I would like see the DPRK dissolved into South Korea. I would like to see all this done in accordance with the UN charter and the conditions of Just War, which I think the DPRK has just helped to satisfy. In fact, I think 2/3 of the ‘axis of evil’ remain, and need to be destroyed. So to progress from nuisance to discussion, I’ll repeat my great friend:

Do you think the DPRK’s recent attacks, their pattern of behavior are excusable? If so, defend them. And do you really think this crisis is about American power? If so, how?

The Conspiricist-Pacifist: no one should attack anyone. Period. And most definitely, American power can’t be discounted, unless of course one completely ignores the history of American hegemony regarding Southeast Asia going back to the Nineteenth Century. I understand the mind set that could even ask such a question though. If it asked outside the war mongering bubble that is dc, its legitimacy would at the very least be ignored as fantastical. Come on dude–Bush-speak? Axis of evil? What exactly is that anyway, three countries without USA military bases?

The Accused Hawk: ‎”No one should attack anyone. Period.” both pacifist and critical of North Korea’s aggression. I’ll take one for the other in this matter. As to American “hegemony back a century” do you mean capitalism as accepted and thrived on from Indonesia to Japan? Or the counter reactionary, “revolutionary” suffering from Vietnam or Cambodia through to the DPRK itself? The ‘bush-speak’ accusation was expected, don’t know what that entails or alleges exactly, but is that formulation wrong? Are these not precisely the demonstrable menaces to the world?

The Conspiricist-Pacifist: Ya know, when the attitude is ‘we own the world’, it’s easy to formulate questions based on the supposed benign and beneficial effects of ideal capitalistic systems, and totally ignore the usual real effects of immoral, empire building campaigns. Iraq was a menace to the world before being destroyed? They went from good buddy, to menace to the world? I also live in the world, and not once did I feel Iraq being a menace. Afghanistan is a menace to the world and needs occupation? Ok. Well, they never seemed to menace me. But they did to you? Iran is a menace to the world because I suppose wanting their arch enemy held at bay by, you know, the one’s that have nukes acquired illegally, but (wink, wink), “They’re our buddies so don’t go there”? When you feel you ‘own the world’, well, isn’t it easy to think that you’re actually speaking for the world?

The Accused Hawk: you are absolutely right about those who make claims from such beliefs, correct in full. And you must be the oracle or something too because you apparently have the ability to ascribe beliefs to me before I’ve articulated my own! That’s not my attitude at all, but it is pretty impressive, knowing another’s worldview before they do. You make a nice, logically consistent argument, however substantively flawed, in this latest post for once, so I appreciate that. And it’s worth noting that I loved Chalmers Johnson and we will miss his views.

Iraq was another with a pattern of behavior, so if you’re discounting 20 years of history (say, from the Iraq-Iran bloodbath thru the Kuwait invasion and repeated defiance of the 90s), making the invalid claim that because Saddam wasn’t a threat to you yourself that he wasn’t a problem for the world, say as the un security counsel agreed, you can deplore our occupation there. You make the same empty argument re Afghanistan; do I fear al Qaeda and Islamist terrorists, yes I do, and they should be routed wherever they are. Iran’s government is a menace to its own people, they consort with terrorist groups, and besides, the whole point of that fucking caliphate is to have a world caliphate. And Americans want to dominate the place? Your ‘empire’ arguments are so tired and tiring.

Intentions matter, particularly when in possession of nukes. Iran’s and Kim Jung Il’s is clear – aggression – which are at once menaces and threats to the world peace, stability even as a kool-aid ideal so dear to you and other conspricist-pacifists.

The Conspiricist-Pacifist: the empire arguments are only tiring to the empire builders and self proclaimed owners of the world– definitely not overlooked by innocents in say Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or Yemen, or Somalia, etc., being murdered by drone daily, by cowards in Nevada playing video games. Are these countries in your so-called axis of evil?

Pacifist Observer: Gotta love this one

The Conspiricist-Pacifist: ‎and ‘intentions matter’? That’s interesting. Can you explain what possible use of a nuclear arsenal other than potential or real aggression could be? (What reason did the USA at Los Alamos REALLY have in mind when it developed the bomb?) And if ‘friends’/allies of the owners of the world acquire nukes–illegally or not–then their motives must be benign; certainly not acquired for aggression, or at best blackmail, correct?

Pacifist Observer: Just something as “attack North Korea” is a scary statement. Possibly if they actually attack us then yes, but to just attack them .. That is a scary statement.

The Conspiricist-Pacifist: ‎however, back to the main point: when Israel, for example, decided on teaching those pesky Palestinians a lesson in the concentration camp at Gaza, as they did a couple of years back, with artillery bombardments of white phosphorous, did you scream “Attack Israel”?

The Accused Hawk: neither I nor my country are empire builders, we can clear that up right now. The world and our lives would suck much worse if not for my country’s leadership and, yes, interventions – whether humanitarian, benevolent, with coalitions, ‘Just Wars’; even the wrong-headed, ill-planned failures have resulted in status quo in some regions or ‘blowback’ at worst, fabulous socio-economic ascent at best.

It is this country, and indeed Israel, who bend over backwards not to kill innocents, to abide by Geneva, to attack in accordance with ‘Just War’ tenets. Israel occasionally fails that test, but raining rockets is no prospect for a country. Was the phosphorous incident ever more than accusation or rumor on the discussion boards? Did Hamas not herd families to their rooftops precisely after Israeli notice that this or that civilian edifice – school, hospital, home – was to be destroyed for launching rockets? We can play ‘who’s worse’ if you like.

So innocents in those countries can thank their next-door neighbors, from Hamas to AQAP to Lashkar-e-Taiba. Has battlefield (a dying term) technology so advanced that the physical threat to our troops has been so reduced that they’re not even present in the case of drone attacks? Yes, may look like cowardice to you, but it looks like military superiority to big brass, and death from the sky for a bad guy. There was a car bombing in Yemen last week and I didn’t give a shit; in fact, I was glad, because attacking one’s own (worshippers at mosque, Mumbai, etc – vicious, spectacular, indefensible) serves to rouse non-extremists. Cowardice is targeting civilians themselves, or shipping I.E.D. printer cartridges.

So, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia are a ring around the axis, but the difference has always been state-sponsorship or state activity. Those places are anarchic nowheres, hence great havens.

The history is quite clear about our development and use of the bomb. Like it or not, Truman had a clear calculus about its use, and our efforts ever since, thru Obama’s new start, have been to prevent another use ever again. But there are 20+ countries with it, malevolents among them, state and non-state, where there were 3-4 before.

Finally, the main point remains North Korean aggression – its undeniable blackmail of the international community over time. Observer, thanks for refocusing our friend: the statement was originally sarcastic-cum-suggestive, yes. They attacked the South! A dangerous crescendo in an unacceptable pattern of behavior! You two wrongly and offensively think I’m an unstudied hawk but trust me, I don’t just throw this around. No one says ‘just attack them’ – a complete misreading of the statement and my arguments. The Conspiricist-Pacifist is all conjecture and no more, ever! Do you want to stand down? Let’s all sit back and watch.

The Conspiricist-Pacifist: ‎If you were alluding to my ‘own the world’ idea when you said you’ll miss Johnson– it’s actually from Chomsky. Nice try though.

The Accused Hawk: I’ll take this as conceding; I’ve now won the argument. Mate. Always fun!

Health care debate installment: Suzy, Timmy, et al.

Suzy: Please don’t let health care reform fade away – just because the media isn’t talking about it every five seconds doesn’t mean it isn’t a dire issue.

Timmy: I’m not insured, and I don’t think it’s a right. Reform will now come as it should – incrementally. Example: in a couple weeks the house takes away insurance companies’ anti-trust exemption. Then, pre-existing conditions. That artists don’t have health insurance is not society’s problem, ‘unjust’ as it may be. And so on. Great story, though, despite its misplaced argument, thanks for sharing!

Suzy: I absolutely think it is a right to take care of our people. If one person’s quality of life is reduced because they cannot get proper medical care yours will be reduced too in some way that you can’t even imagine. If those around you aren’t doing well, how can you do well?

You don’t live in a vacuum Timmy. Uninsured people are everyone’s problem. The mentality that “I got mine so get your own” in regard to the basic resource as medical care is what is completely fucking up this country.

I like the quote from Michael Moore’s article, I share his feelings explicitly, please read:

“I feel that the products of scientific research that save lives belong to the human race. Science is a gift to the world. It should not be owned or sold or hoarded by the rich. You shouldn’t have to be a financier or a prime minister or an employ of Salon to get this health care. You should get it because you’re human. That should be enough.” –Michael Moore

Timmy: An obligation to care for others or a right to receive care? These are unclear and unshared moral obligations at best. And on that line, we should have ‘rights’ (an abused term) to a lot of things.

This debate requires more concrete arguments than a karmic causality. I might get an infection in a state hospital, or obtain an inferior treatment to that of a physician-run hospital. Neither seems desirable.

I already rebutted your second point about selfishness – I don’t got mine, I don’t want it, which magnified to a generation (plus there aren’t enough of us, and the trough had been picked already) is drying the well. This is the real problem: entitlements are killing us. Insurance markets (costs) are jacked precisely because of government involvement. 

Finally, in order: they do, but only air belongs to all. It is an arduous process, not a gift. Talk to those who have patented genes. You should be responsible for yourself. We’ve never had it so good, which is good enough for me – and for you!

Lucy: Public health care is good in theory but we can’t afford it. This nation is already too deep in debt. If I ran my company like the government (generally speaking) has run this country, I would be living on the streets. I work hard for my accomplishments and do not feel it is my duty to take care of those who don’t. Not saying that everyone who doesn’t have health care doesn’t work hard, because Lord knows the first few years in working for myself I did not have health care. I find it really difficult to write that tax check every year knowing that it’s going to be used unwisely. Government needs to take their grabby little hands out of my pockets and start using what they already have wisely before they start marching up and down the streets chanting “one for all and all for one” and singing “we are the world”. I’m fighting right now in the Virginia General Assembly to keep the government from letting criminals out of jail with no accountability. And the mantra our opposition is singing is that all accused, despite financial solvency should be let out of jail “free”. So what? We give everything away for free? How do we afford all of that? If we keep going down this road, the peso will be more valuable than the dollar.

Suzy: I think you are misunderstanding the point. If we all pool our money into a universal health care system we will all be well taken care of. And in a great society we should be conscious of everyone. I never said we should get something for free but we certainly need to reconstruct the current system to actually work so that it doesn’t rape our citizens who are hardworking.

Our current system has caused health care costs to be driven up and the middle class struggles to pay for health insurance. That isn’t right.

And Timmy, just because you want to refuse your needs doesn’t mean that others should. Wanting to be healthy in a country that has all of the resources available IS NOT ENTITLEMENT. Wanting to survive isn’t entitlement. Getting access to affordable healthcare shouldn’t be a luxury. Going into debt because you had to pay a ridiculous deductible after paying each month on a premium when you had an appendicitis and don’t have a job that pays 100K a year is not an ideal system. Just saying.

Lucy: I’ve read the bill, talked it over, even compared it with friends in Germany who have a socialized healthcare system…Their taxes are ridiculous. It sounds nice, gives us that warm and fuzzy feeling, but remember, you will pay for it. I stand firm that I do not want to pay my “fair share” just because I make more money than my neighbor. If I were still teaching and making pennies, I still wouldn’t want to pay my “fair share”. My husband tells this joke: (I’m going to shorten it a bit because I’m kind of burned out from being at the Gen Assembly all day)

A father and daughter are having a conversation about Dem v Rep. The daughter says, “We need to take care of everyone, no matter what.” Her father asks her, “How are your grades?” “They’re great, dad, straight A’s & I’ve got really hard classes this year.” Her dad asks, “How’s your roommate’s grades?” “Oh man, she’s not doing so well. She’s not going to class, not turning in homework and drinking all night.” “Wow, well how about we take 2 grade points from your A and add it to her F, so you both will have a C average…” The daughter looks at her dad with disbelief, “No way!!! I worked hard for those grades; I don’t want to share them with a slacker!!!” He father looks calmly at her and says, “Welcome to the Republican Party.”

I’m also reminded by something my grandfather used to tell me all the time. I can still hear him tell me this- it is not how much money you make, it’s what you do with it that counts. I don’t put any weight behind an argument based on how much money a person makes. Not when I see people pulling out several thousands of dollars out of them pocket wrapped around an EBT card. Not when I am proof that a person can make $34k a year with a Master’s degree and still manage to buy a house, a car and not be in any really serious debt. And I was not house poor…I vacationed, partied, did everything I wanted to do.

Do I think the healthcare system we are currently entangled in sucks? Absolutely. Do I think socialized medicine is the way to go? Absolutely not. Do I have the end all, be all answer? Not even close. What I am certain of though is I don’t want my representatives bullied into making a decision because our president says “This health care plan will be approved by X date.” When our lawmakers allow themselves to be bullied into voting one way or another, they have absolutely lost sight of what the voters, the people they represent, want/need.

I would say they need to start with commonsense and work from there. Just like the rest of us.

Joey: I am self employed. I have employees. I pay taxes. I will not pay for anyone’s heath care expenses that do not work for me! My money will not go to lazy motherfu@ers that don’t want to work! Especially when I can’t afford to help my own employees who do get up to go to work every god damn day! Any questions?

Timmy: Check out this great breakdown of the historical accidents that produced the system we have now.

There is no good reason but for remnants of unions’ heydays that healthcare, or any benefits for that matter, are tied to employment. The car ins example too frequently used wrongly does actually hold here and only here: I get it, I maintain the policy, I take it with me anywhere, it is tied to me alone; requiring ins to the point of penalty may be good on the roads, but as the other side of the ‘have it because you’re human’ argument is wrong i.e. ‘Get it or get penalized’ is wholly unconstitutional, for starters.

Witness how Bush’s social security privatization proposal, though short on its own, was totally on target in intent. think of the talk now to form a commission to make hard choices – cut spending and entitlements while raising taxes – because of our deficit/debts – this, because government was already spending more than it took in. And I’m talking about California or New York, notwithstanding the Bush years. Where is this spending (redistribution)? Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security! It’s tragic how every graph rises to the right.

The leveling effect in the father/daughter talk is correct. Free riders at the bottom sacrifice advance (admittedly expensive) at the top. The good news is, can be said of capitalism also, the best gets cheaper and thus more widely available i.e. To all!

To be continued…

Corporations and personhood

Societies clearly do not ‘exist’ insofar as existing entities are sensible. While I will have to go on to explicate senses of ‘existence’ what ‘being’ might entail, I will for the current essay only unhide my own inclination that there are ‘levels’ or categories of existence which would look a lot an iceberg, more or less the way students are taught Freud’s ego. The most ‘real’ is that which is sensible. Look up any of the Empiricists for better definitions and philosophical consequences.

So then, societies are not real. I placed this diversion from common parlance on agency, that is, societies neither do nor think or know anything—and they really don’t have uniform beliefs. It would seem then that my friends of conflicting persuasions might retort, “Corporations don’t exist.” They would be right, no matter how many occasions they take to refer to societies and what they want. I would expect that they might wait for my definition of a market and then attack through a back door or crack. Granted, so I instead focus on how a subsisting (less than the most real things in life) concept such as that of ‘market’ differs from ‘society’.

The problem is restated rather well as the problem of corporate personhood. Corporations have, since the 19^th century, been formally recognized by courts as persons—that is, afforded many of the legal rights of people. In the absence of this legal attribution, companies could not respond to suits, nor indeed be found liable as people are of malpractice or other liabilities such as those arising from fatalities which result from shoddy workmanship.

But this legal construct, while ‘settled’ according to many, has not been without controversy. Take political influence, which is again at the fore on account of the recent Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court. Sen. Whitehouse explained it on the Senate floor on January 29:

“Citizens United is an advocacy corporation that accepts corporate funding. It sought to broadcast on on-demand cable a lengthy negative documentary attacking our former colleague, now Secretary of State Clinton, who was then a candidate for president. The law prohibited the broadcast of this kind of corporate-funded electioneering on the eve of an election. Citizens United filed suit arguing that this prohibition violated the first amendment. The conservative justices agreed, holding that all corporations have a constitutional right to use their general treasury funds, their shareholder funds, to pay for advertisements for, or against candidates in elections. Although the decision was cast as being about the rights of individuals to hear more corporate speech, its effect will be with corporations—big big oil, pharmaceutical companies, debt collection agencies, health insurance companies, credit card companies and banks, tobacco companies, now all moving, without restriction, into the American election process.”

He went on. “Federal laws restricting corporate spending on campaigns have a long pedigree. The 1907 Tillman Act restricted corporate spending on campaigns, as did McCain-Feingold. Various loopholes have come and gone since, but the principle embodied in that law more than 100 years ago that inanimate business corporations are not free to spend unlimited dollars to influence our campaigns for office was an established cornerstone of our political system.” But he then went further, relating the common sense notion about corporate personhood to the recent decision. “Only the dissent points out the most basic point, and I quote, “that corporations are different from human beings.” That, and I quote, ‘corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires.’ I would add they have no souls. ‘The dissent explains, and I quote again, “corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their personhood often serves as a useful legal fiction, but they are not themselves members of we, the people, by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.”

No one thinks that giving corporations the legitimacy of ‘being an entity’ is on par with living people. There are limits to their rights, and their ability to influence policy is again a huge issue.

Whether you think that the Citizens United decision was good for the first amendment or bad, or whether you think foreign corporations can insert themselves into campaigns (they can’t), Congress is set to react—to fix what it and the White House perceive the Court to have gotten wrong. Either way, a constitutional amendment is now in play.

A young Perot at that.

On January 28, the New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks published his sense that, unless the President “reclaim the mantle of the permanent outsider,” a real Washington outsider, pointing out all the shortcomings of the current two-party cabal, will arise from and for the political masses. I would propose that he, a favorite on NewsHour opposite Mark Shields, is partly correct in his of “this billionaire Simon Cowell, this political Bobby Knight.” Indeed, “He’s out there — that saner Ross Perot. He’s a-comin’.”

But the real Perot that’s out there is not the middle- or older- aged, personally accomplished, “specter of a saner, updated version” of the comparatively successful independent candidate for president in 1992. The real specter is of a generation of millenials who have now witnessed an appreciative, but moreover instructive, set of circumstances pass over this country.

As youth in the 1980s, we were too young to comprehend or care about the Cold War, though our brains, raised on MTV, had developed enough to cognize the fall of the wall in ’89, the coup and fall of the Soviet Union in ’91. As adolescents and teens in the 1990s, we, coming into our own, listened to a wealth of great popular music as we enjoyed, without a fuller understanding, the economic prosperity and comparable peace of that decade. Becoming adults at the start of the century, we, as most of America did for the first time since WWII, lost our innocence and our youth. Politically, intellectually, emotionally, millenials have been made ripe; millenials have been prepared in just the right way for the challenges that this country faces, just as we are set to make the slow professional and political ascension of every preceding generation.

“He is lurking out there, ready to ride the free-floating anger and distrust of Washington.” He is, to restate, actually a smart, capable generation which has been properly prepared by experience. The “anger and distrust” is not for these young adults directed at Washington alone. It is much wider, much more fundamental, much more pervasive. Yet, it is coupled with an amicable, internationalist desire for diplomacy—towards others within and without our borders. This is a special and needed quality indeed. That this antagonism is “free-floating” is rather a symptom of the politics and policies of precisely the preceding generation(s). It is not undirected though, nor misdirected, though there be a thousand deserving targets.

The warranted mistrust placed with institutions is not whole, nor is it, of course, shared by all millenials. In fact, millenials of all political stripes (it is also not the case that all young people are liberal—that is a lie intended to convince as it spreads) have a view of institutions, and of economic engagement, that is defined as ‘enabling’ rather than political-evil or profit-evil.

The structure of Brooks’ column should tell us something. Let us briefly break it down. Brooks describes the raw qualities of this coming political saint. But he then spends more than half the essay espousing what he, as an adviser to President Obama, would advise. Distancing oneself from the status quo or anything else tends, in the popular view of politicians, to be for mere appearance. Millenials’ distance is rooted in a conviction to fix problems and live (we have just begun producing the generation to pass the world on to) in a better world. We are mad at our fathers and our enemies for leaving us the world as it is. We know that this is a usual belief of rebellious youth, but we also know that we have inherited big stuff. So have our predecessors, but not like this, not as based on uniqueness. We get that. Look for us—we’ll have the laptops instead of the sickles. And the charts, common sense, and ingénue to back us up. That’s what Perot had.

 

Running roughshod over terrorism.

My inclination to write at length on this subject will be restrained, but the respective depth of each of the items below mentioned with respect to terrorism in the air and on land as it persists should not stand under appreciated. Likewise, this brief essay is neither meticulous nor comprehensive and every sentence, while loaded, is debatable and subject to further discussion which I can only hope to eventually fill out as part of a larger project.

First, a brief description of the unique problem of terrorism from the standpoint of the observer in terms of identity as generally treated by philosophy. Identity has to do with uniqueness—numerity and properties. Male, brown skinned, Muslim, Yemeni is a set of traits which encompasses nearly twelve million persons. Location may defined as where a person is physically present at a time, such as, un-needful of  granularity to a meter or a second, in Sanaa on January 1, 2009—presumably picking out some few million given that about 30% of the population in that country live in urban areas, the capital city the most populous. The idea that a brown skinned Yemeni Muslim gentleman was in Sanaa on January 1, 2009 is easy enough to comprehend. Nor is the idea that these bits of data strung together need in fact be assembled and associated. It is considerably harder to identify one individual as ostensibly fitting the description, in that much more information must be added in order to do so with adequate qualification that the subject is the subject at hand. Let us add only that is harder still to ascertain that one will be somewhere at a time, what they are there to do, where they came from and what they did there, and so on.

Secondly, profiling. This unfortunately politically incorrect tactic, notwithstanding a review of the relevant statistics, is effective and it comes in many useful flavors. The talk from a couple of America’s former security heads (head of the CIA and the Secretary of Homeland Security) was of behavioral profiling. This seems right, even if you think that lower, more trite forms such as racial profiling are useless and despicable, which is probably in most cases true. Racial profiling seems to stand in opposition to so-called religious profiling, which is nonsense on its face because with some few exceptions for traditions, one’s religion is not observable about their body. Racial and religious profiling are as ineffectual as they are offensive. This, and they are not sufficient qualifiers of who terrorists are. Only in conjunction with many other attributed properties such as affiliation, location, and intention (where possible) may some set of information about an individual become instructive.

Analyzing behavior may be conceived of in two basic ways – at a time and over time. The first would be the observations of a co-passenger, TSA personnel, etc. The latter is ascertained by the intelligence community, culled from a combination of methods and sources. The latter assists the former and the two work somewhat in concert – as well as we can make them. All this, and yet we’ve no account of veracity and accuracy, that is, truth in fact and precision of assemblage. Collecting and connecting dots.

Now take the problem of the bad apple. A rotten apple is picked from a tree alongside ripe apples. The bad apple’s presence within and among the set of good apples places unholy requirements on the farmer who wants to sell them by the dozen at market. He must check all dozen, which seems totally uneconomical, to ensure against the mere potential of the bad apple. This is a sure tragedy of time and effort seemingly wasted, for his success identifying and removing bad apples goes unnoticed at the market. Compensated only insofar as his apples are good, his incentive is to closely examine every apple contrasted with his willingness to let some through as an acceptable probability.

Let us turn then to the situation of terrorism in the skies. Untold billions of dollars and hours of people’s time is spent, or wasted if you like, by the necessary inconveniences of closely scrutinizing every airplane passenger. For what? The deterrence of air terrorists, real and perceived. There is zero tolerance for misses and lapses; singular failures can be independently fatal—remote as they may be. This, leaving aside the techniques terrorists employ, the devices they may use, the enormity of the task, the intrusiveness of various security measures and policies set in place.

Terrorism on land may be conceived of as of two basic kinds, which I take as uncontroversial upon further consideration: spatio-temporally remote attacks A (bombings, assassinations, spectacular events) and persistent preparation P (training, plotting, provision of support). P could be over a period of years whereas A is instantaneous, P precedes A, P pervades geographic areas whereas As are specific to objects and landmarks, P is engaged by a group whereas A is carried out by just a few or one, and so on according a number of distinctions. By clearing and holding P areas, by disrupting P, by apprehending or killing agents of P, we hope to minimize or eliminate the likelihood of A. Note that the counteracting work is of prevention, over time and in as many disparate regions of the world as there is P —where threats originate.

Although the list is not exhaustive, let us add in a most cursory way political considerations. There are countries in the world where governments’ dependence on the United States is premised for us on our own security but for them on their own stability. Anywhere an appreciable linkage exists between our support for those governments, our military presence in those countries, or our diplomatic efforts are intensive and the persistence of terrorism, P, A, and both, is most troublesome and is in fact the real threat to the vitality of our country. Both have in history, and will continue to in real life, drain this fine nation predominantly of treasure just as the direct (real and felt) consequences of counterterrorism corrode our democratic freedoms, lifestyles, sensibilities.

Where stable, effective government dominates, P tends not to, except of course for terrorist-enabling states. Belligerent terrorist groups are strategically attracted to P in places where there is no government including central governments without complete territorial reach. Hence, America’s terrorist enemies, her asymmetric threats are posed by disparate groups in disparate places. P is there and A is here, put most generally. Again, exceptions permeate the discussion, and this writer is quite aware of that.

It is the case that some few thousand individuals in the world are winning in a sense. The difference in magnitude of resources employed by terrorists as compared to the United States is regrettable at our best, laughable at our most sardonic. The insidious asymmetries are nearly insurmountable. The effects to this country and its people of A—successful, failed and otherwise—are unavoidably costly. Our government plays into their formula at every turn, from military invasion and escalation to financial and material support for ancillary governments. This poor leviathan hasn’t a choice in the matter. The persistence-cum-minimalism of terrorists and their threats to this country simply necessitate an expensive, restrictive, democratically odious response from our government. Part of my own frustration is with these fundamental, innate asymmetries; part of my aggravation is with the brilliant situation in which our terrorist enemies have developed for themselves and for us (not necessarily attributable to themselves, however), and my outrage is at their nuisance to all. A way out of this most unhappy circumstance must be found, for while we were told that this is a ‘long war’, the basic fragility of state is continually exploited and our wealth, standing, and freedoms are decimated.