CousinIT
CousinIT's JournalDemocracy by Margaret Atwood
Donald Trump is NOT eligible to run for President. Period.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/framers-14th-amendments-disqualification-clause-analysis/story?id=105996364NOTE TO MODERATORS: most of the following text is from the public US Congressional record in 1866, not a media-paid or copyrighted writer or author. I'm asking that the 4-paragraph limit be waived in this instance.
"I should prefer a clause prohibiting all persons who have participated in the rebellion, and who were over twenty-five years of age at the breaking out of the rebellion, from all participation in offices, either Federal or State, throughout the United States," Howard said on the Senate floor on May 23, 1866. "I think such a provision would be a benefit to the nation."
After about a week of discussions with colleagues, Howard offered the Sec. 3 language that was ultimately ratified. Howard's revision removed specific references to "the" rebellion and added an important qualifier: those who were to be excluded from government service would have to have violated prior oaths to defend the constitution by having "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against it or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."
In 2024, the originalists on the Supreme Court will likely seek to determine whether the ratifiers could have had it in mind 158 years ago that Sec. 3 might not only be applied to the "late insurrection," as the House-passed version originally had it, but also to any other rebellion that might later take place.
But originalists might take note of what Sen. Peter Van Winkle of West Virginia said as he sought to have the threshold for congressional amnesty in Howard's version lowered to a simple majority, rather than two-thirds.
"This is to go into our Constitution and to stand to govern future insurrection as well as the present; and I should like to have that point definitely understood," Van Winkle said at the time.
It's also worth noting that there was just a single reference in the Senate debate to the fact that the president and vice president were not explicitly mentioned in Howard's draft as "officer(s) of the United States," the way members of Congress and state officials had been itemized in the text. Would the disqualification clause of the amendment not cover the top posts in the executive branch?
"Why did you omit to exclude them?" asked Maryland Democratic Sen. Reverdy Johnson.
Maine's Lot Morrill jumped in to clarify.
"Let me call the Senator's attention to the words 'or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States,'" Morrill said, ending the discussion on that point.
Nationally, about 85,000 people are getting PrEP through community health centers, MAGA want to defund that program
https://ncnewsline.com/2023/12/01/prep-has-revolutionized-the-war-on-hiv-but-barriers-to-access-remain/(and they call themselves "Pro-life"?) I DON'T THINK SO!
. . . several paragraphs down...
Unfortunately, the Republicans in the Congress on the House side have zeroed out that program, Schmid said. The Senate has that funding for it, its $147 million. But they zeroed out all the Ending the HIV Epidemic funding that impacts North Carolina and 57 jurisdictions. The Senate is actually keeping that money, but, you know, we are facing the possibility of it going away.
Earlier this month, health care advocates helped defeat an amendment to eliminate the Minority AIDS Initiative, by a vote 109 to 324.
And so that shows even with Republicans the majority, a majority of the Congress does not support these cuts, Schmid said. But thats what were facing right now.
Beyond Trump (why American capitalism is so rotten, Part 1) - RB Reich must-read (IMO)
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/beyond-trump-why-american-capitalismIf you want to understand where American capitalism is now and what you might do to help move it in a more humane direction, you need to look under the hood.
First, forget politics as youve come to see it as electoral contests between Democrats and Republicans. Think power. The underlying contest is between a small minority who are gaining power over the system and the vast majority who have little or none.
Next, forget what you may have learned about the choice between the free market and government. A market cannot exist without a government to organize and enforce it. The important question is whom the market has been organized to serve.
Forget the standard economic goals of higher growth and greater efficiency. The issue is who benefits from more growth and efficiency.
Dont be dazzled by corporate social responsibility. Most of it is public relations. Corporations wont voluntarily sacrifice shareholder returns unless laws require them to. . .
MUCH MORE at the link! https://robertreich.substack.com/p/beyond-trump-why-american-capitalism
Warped Front Pages: CJR Researchers examine the self-serving fiction of 'objective' political news
I got this in my Thom Hartmann email this morning so sharing it. https://www.cjr.org/analysis/election-politics-front-pages.php
TLDR (my comment):
They haven't changed since 2008, 2016 and before. There has been no self-reflection on their collective journalistic malpractice of consistently failing the voting public and therefore our Democracy.
The "news" media stinks of slant and infotainment and none of them tell the entire story even when they do bother to mention the issues at stake in elections. When they cover actual issues, which issues they cover and how they report on them are anything but "objective", though their snotty nose-in-the-air arrogant owners and operators love to say they are "objective" and "independent". They are SO not any of that. They are galaxies from anything resembling objective or independent.
Thom Hartmann said in the email:
_ _ _ _ _ excerpt from the actual article below _ _ _ _ _
Stepping back, if the Times and other major news outlets went through any critical self-reflection after the 2016 election, it doesnt seem to have affected their coverage. Nor did the leadership of the Times publicly acknowledge any failings. Quite to the contrary, in early 2022, Dean Baquet, the outgoing editor at the time, said in an interview that he didnt have regrets about the papers Clinton-email stories. In the same interview, Baquet acknowledged critiques of his papers political coverage but pushed back on them aggressively: My job is to try to convince my newsroom that they should not be overly influenced by criticism from Twitter, he said. If Twitter doesnt like it, Twitter can jump in the lake. Baquetand his successors, and peers at other major outletsseem to view themselves as exhibiting objective (or pure, independent) judgment. Indeed, A.G. Sulzberger, the chairman of the New York Times Company and publisher of the Times, made exactly that argument in a piece for CJR this spring: I continue to believe that objectivityor if the word is simply too much of a distraction, open-minded inquiryremains a value worth striving for, he wrote, adding that independence, the word we use inside the Times, better captures the full breadth of this journalistic approach and its promise to the public at large.
Regardless of what journalists and owners of major papers proclaim, however, news judgments are inherently subjective. Any claims to objectivity are a convenient fiction. On any given day there are many accurate and arguably newsworthy stories that could appear on a front page. (In our study period, the overlap in front-page-story selection at the Times and the Post was only about a third.) Which topics editors choose to emphasize is neither accurate nor inaccurate; they simply reflect subjective opinions. Likewise, the way an article is written also involves a series of choiceswhich facts are highlighted, whose voices are included, which perspectives are given weight. Words such as objectivity and independenceeven truthmake for nice rhetoric but are so easily twisted to suit ones agenda as to be meaningless. After all, Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlsonwho, unlike the Times and the Post, dont operate within the realm of realityalso stake claims to veracity and independence.
What appears in a newspaper is less a reflection of what is happening in the world than what a news organization chooses to tell about what is happeningan indicator of values. Last year, for instance, the Times decided to heavily cover the Russian invasion of Ukraineunderstandable, to be surebut also largely ignored policy implications of the midterm election on the war, as Republicans were threatening to block military aid. Abortion rights were clearly critical to the midterms (with potential impact on laws and judges), whereas crime rates were essentially irrelevant (with no discernible policy hanging in the balance), yet the Times chose to publish twice as many articles on crime (a topic generally favored by Republicans) as on abortion (a topic key to Democrats). The paper also opted to emphasize inflation, rather than job or wage growth, in economic coverageanother choice that catered to Republicans. The Times provided admirably extensive coverage of potential threats to democracy, but in general, midterms coverage didnt engage much with the dangers posed to the integrity of the election. . . .
The entire thing is worth a read and worth shoving into the faces of the damn media if you find a chance. And THANK YOU Thom Hartmann! https://www.cjr.org/analysis/election-politics-front-pages.php
If you frequent the 'X' sewer, there is my media list:
@AP @CNN @MSNBC @ABC @CBS @NBC @NPR @NYTimes @bpolitics @USATODAY @Newsweek @Reuters @WashingtonPost @maddow @TheReidOut @Lawrence @ABCPolitics @ABCWorldNews @CBSNews @CBSEveningNews @TheBeatWithAri @NBCNews @NBCPolitics @NewsHour @CNNPolitics @TheLeadCNN @CNNSotu @MeetThePress
Bruce Schneier: Ten ways AI Will Change Democracy
https://ash.harvard.edu/ten-ways-ai-will-change-democracyIn a new essay, Harvard Kennedy Schools Bruce Schneier goes beyond AI generated disinformation to detail other novel ways in which AI might alter how democracy functions.
1. AI as educator. We are already seeing AI serving the role of teacher. Its much more effective for a student to learn a topic from an interactive AI chatbot than from a textbook. This has applications for democracy. We can imagine chatbots teaching citizens about different issues, such as climate change or tax policy. We can imagine candidates deploying chatbots of themselves, allowing voters to directly engage with them on various issues. A more general chatbot could know the positions of all the candidates, and help voters decide which best represents their position. There are a lot of possibilities here.
2. AI as sense maker. There are many areas of society where accurate summarization is important. Today, when constituents write to their legislator, those letters get put into two piles one for and another against and someone compares the height of those piles. AI can do much better. It can provide a rich summary of the comments. It can help figure out which are unique and which are form letters. It can highlight unique perspectives. This same system can also work for comments to different government agencies on rulemaking processes and on documents generated during the discovery process in lawsuits.
3. AI as moderator, mediator, and consensus builder. Imagine online conversations, where AIs serve the role of moderator. It could ensure that all voices are heard. It could block hateful or even just off-topic comments. It could highlight areas of agreement and disagreement. It could help the group reach a decision. This is nothing that a human moderator can't do, but there aren't enough human moderators to go around. AI can give this capability to every decision-making group. At the extreme, an AI could be an arbiter a judge weighing evidence and making a decision. These capabilities dont exist yet, but they are not far off.
. . .
5. AI as political strategist. Right now, you can ask your favorite chatbot questions about political strategy: what legislations would further your political goals, what positions to publicly take, what campaign slogans to use. The answers you get won't be very good, but thatll improve with time. In the future we should expect politicians to make use of this AI expertise: not to follow blindly, but as another source of ideas. And as AIs become more capable at using tools, they can automatically conduct polls and focus groups to test out political ideas. There are a lot of possibilities here. AIs could also engage in fundraising campaigns, directly soliciting contributions from people.
Raising SS Retirement Age is a VERY BAD IDEA. Almost half of retirees were forced to retire earlier than planned...
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/31/why-working-longer-is-not-a-good-retirement-plan.htmlIn 2022, the average expected retirement age was 66, according to a Gallup poll. But the actual retirement age was 62, on average. While the averages have varied somewhat over the years, there has been a consistent gap of about five years between expected and actual retirement ages since 2002, Gallup said.
. . .
Almost half, 46%, of retirees said they left the workforce earlier than planned, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institutes 2023 Retirement Confidence Survey. That share has been similar for the past two decades, largely hovering between 40% and 50%.
I think a lot of people who arent on track [for retirement] maybe theyre in their late 40s or early 50s say, I want to retire at 65 but Ill work to 70, said David Blanchett, a certified financial planner and head of retirement research at PGIM, the asset management arm of Prudential Financial.
. . .
But they probably wont make it to 70, he added.
. . .
Job loss at older ages is really consequential, said Johnson, a report co-author. He attributes much of that workplace dynamic to ageism.
CMD: Lawmakers la Carte: How ALEC Sells Access to State Legislators
https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2023/10/18/lawmakers-a-la-carte-how-alec-sells-access-to-state-legislators/Its no secret that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) offers its corporate sponsors a variety of options for buying access to state lawmakers.
Now, new documents reveal just how much or little it costs.
For $50,000, a corporate or industry executive can give a main stage presentation to all ALEC members in attendance at its annual meeting. For $35,000, a corporation or industry group can work with ALECs policy staff to design a workshop for lawmakers.
Materials obtained and reviewed by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reveal a menu of opportunities for corporate sponsors interested in purchasing access to lawmakers at ALECs annual conferences. The documents were prepared in advance of last years three-day annual policy meeting in Atlanta, which focused on efforts to combat woke capitalism, reproductive healthcare, voting rights, and the administrative state, as CMD previously reported.
Fees for sponsoring this years 50th anniversary annual meeting were likely the same, if not higher. Opportunities to buy access to lawmakers and shape legislative priorities range from buying special pre- and post-conference sessions for an unspecified price to hosting ice cream socials ($15,000) and the Kids Congress ($25,000), which allows the sponsor to give t-shirts with their corporate logo to children of legislators in attendance.
Most of the sponsorship packages offer substantial face time with lawmakers, including multiple complimentary meeting registrations (which tend to cost approximately $800 for private sector members) and invitations to each of ALECs VIP events, as well as extras such as free banner ads in the meeting app.
Here's a link to the "price list": https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24037869/alec-2022-annual-meeting-sponsorship-packet.pdf
After Shunning Nobel-winning Scientist, University of Pennsylvania Celebrates Her Nobel Prize
School that once demoted Katalin Karikó and cut her pay has made millions of dollars from patenting her workUntil recently, the school and its faculty largely disdained one of those scientists.
Penn demoted Katalin Karikó, shunting her to a lab on the outskirts of campus while cutting her pay. Karikós colleagues denigrated her mRNA research and some wouldnt work with her, according to her and people at the school.
Eventually, Karikó persuaded another Penn researcher, Drew Weissman, to work with her on modifying mRNA for vaccines and drugs, though most others at the school remained skeptical, pushing other approaches.
Karikó hasnt only proven her detractors wrong but also reached the pinnacle of science. Her research with Weissman helped lead to the mRNA vaccines that protected people worldwide during the Covid-19 pandemic and now shows promise for flu, cancer and other diseases.
Penn, which patented their mRNA technology, has made millions of dollars from drugmakers that licensed it. And on Monday, when Karikó and Weissman were awarded the Nobel, on top of prestigious science prizes in recent years, the school expressed a different perspective on their work.
https://archive.ph/hWXMz
The anti-abortionists' domestic abuser mindset:
Tuberville and many American Taliban like him have a domestic abuser mindset. This mindset is one in which they will destroy literally anybody or anything in order to exert and maintain control of the target of their abuse.
In this case the target is America's girls and women. There's a reason that the most dangerous time in a relationship with an abusive person is when the abused person leaves or tries to get out. This is the reason.
The uncontrollable desire for abusive control over other person(s) is more intense at that time than usual. For Tuberville and other anti-abortionists, abusive, torturous control over America's women and girls is a top priority, as it is for any abusive person.
It takes precedence over national security, the ability of the US Senate to function - anything.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4193234-pentagon-warns-tuberville-blockade-could-bring-senate-to-complete-shutdown/
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