10.2.2015

For the last several months, Conservative talking heads have feigned outrage at some manipulated and doctored videos regarding Planned Parenthood.  I’m not going to debate abortion, the hypocritical Republican stance on abortion, the constitutionally protected action of abortion, or women’s health in general.  I’m not concerned with that right now.  What I am concerned about is the amount of disregard for journalistic integrity, the fervor with which Planned Parenthood opposition is trying to get it shut down, and the basic premise of certain laws that we have in the United States.  And then I’m going to do some comparisons, because there are some incredibly disturbing numbers.

First of all, let me state, if you’ve seen any of the videos, they can be graphic.  I get that.  It’s just too bad that the graphic parts aren’t actually from Planned Parenthood.  This exchange took place just a few days ago with Chris Cuomo from CNN and David Daleiden, the scumbag that created these false videos:

“Carly Fiorina was referencing a sequence in our video that shows footage of a born-alive infant from a late-term abortion actually moving in the specimen pan,” he explained.

“But if you’re talking about organ harvesting and abortions and how terrible they are why would you use a stillborn fetus, which is not a function of an abortion?” Cuomo asked.

“It’s the same baby, whether it’s born dead or alive, whether the organs are harvested or not,” Daleiden replied.

“It’s also completely irrelevant to the point you’re trying to make, which is, ‘Look at what they do to these babies,'” the CNN host pressed. “It was born stillborn. It was not aborted. Doesn’t that matter to you if you’re talking about abortion?”

“It’s the same kind of fetus,” Daleiden continued to insist.

“My point is context,” Cuomo shot back. “You’re saying, ‘what they do in abortions,’ that wasn’t an abortion. That’s my point.”

So, to be clear, in the videos, there’s a graphic representation of a baby that Carly Fiorina described in the last Republican debates that are in these videos from The Center for Medical Progress, a regressive anti-women’s health organization, dedicated to violating Constitutional Protections.  The context in the video is that this is a late term aborted baby, and this is what is happening at Planned Parenthood.  However, it did NOT happen at Planned Parenthood, because that is illegal.  The baby was NOT an aborted baby, it was a stillbirth.  There are other major problems with the videos, including the fact that no one ever tried to make a profit from donating the fetal tissue to medical science, because it’s illegal.  The rest of the video is loaded with really poor “Gotcha journalism,” and it doesn’t suit anyone to actually watch it.

Some basic facts are that it is illegal for federal money to go towards abortion, it is legal to recoup some costs in the form of fees for the donation of anatomical tissue, as the Red Cross does for blood, and many facilities do for the processing of cadavers, etc., and the short videos are heavily doctored.

But even this isn’t the point I was trying to make.  The point I’m making is how disgusting the response has been.  There’s been hearings, the government is about to shut down, and lines are being drawn in the sand.  Over untrue videos loaded with emotional garbage.

And yet, we just had out 142^nd mass shooting since Sandy Hook, but if I want to discuss Gun Control, then I’m exploiting a tragedy in order to gain political points.  The hypocrisy stinks.

It’s disgusting how many politicians ignore the issue at hand: without some sweeping gun control changes in America, we are going to continue to be the worst country in the world for gun violence.  You can keep your canards to yourself about if law abiding citizens follow gun control, only criminals will have guns, that C&C states are historically safer, or that gun control leads to more crime.  None of those things are true in context, and the data has to be manipulated for that to look true.

What is true is that around the world, gun control has been enacted with sweeping success.  What is true is that more and more people are murdered with guns in America, and the NRA keeps lobbying away.  What is true is that there is mental illness all around the world, and we’re the only nation that sees mass shootings like this.

Enough is enough, and it’s time for our politicians to start representing the American public.  Overwhelmingly, Americans support sweeping gun changes.  We can no longer continue to cater to a group of lobbyist thugs like the NRA at the expense of our safety.

3.20.2015

The Internet is Temporarily Saved (Partially) from Profiteers and Fear-Mongers

By Adam Weber

March 20^th, 2015

The Internet is a haven of information, freedom, speech and expression never before seen in this world.  With it, students can research papers and projects, a mom can design T-shirts in her living room, civil violations by government officials can be exposed and documented, and activism can reach from small regional avenues to become global movements.  However, a very small collection of conglomerate corporations are determined to purchase the controlling shares of that power.  They are willing to spend whatever dollar amount is necessary to undermine the global phenomenon that the Internet is.  These corporations crave the control of the Internet that would limit access and delivery of content and information based on their bottom line.  This is why Net Neutrality is one of the most important issues to arise in the technological age, and why Net Neutrality must be preserved despite the misinformation from crony politicians.

In economic terms, there has not been a more universally useful tool to businesses, small, large, local or global than the Internet.  The Internet can be referred to as a great equalizer in regards to the low barrier to entry, consumer feedback, instant contact with both consumers and employees, and as a tool to be used to leverage bargaining power of the consumer against the bargaining power of the suppliers and the retailers.  As Senator Marco Rubio would put it, “[The Internet] has become a thriving exhibition of the power of free people operating in a free market to create prosperity and opportunity.”  Yet, he actively campaigns against the Internet being free.

However, the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have begun to undermine that freedom by charging other businesses extra money to allow data from the other businesses to flow through the ISPs to their customers.  This is an underhanded filthy attempt to extort companies, especially ones that base their entire business model on Internet connectivity.  In doing such, these ISPs have started the process to create both fast lanes for those willing to pay the extra tolls, and slow lanes to punish those that will not be bullied or extorted by the ISPs. 

Additionally, some ISPs, either as mobile or desktop broadband providers, sought to outright block certain content and throttle certain content.  That content included Bittorrent and encryption, both only to a certain extent, yet, they were blocked or throttled.   That type of power cannot be a purchased power, and private companies cannot be tolerated to only disallow content that they perceive as dangerous to their control over media and connectivity.  Obviously, illegal content should not be permitted, and that caveat is also addressed in the Open Internet rules from the FCC.

There is fear-mongering stating that foreign governments are using the Net Neutrality ruling to gain international control over the Internet.  Nothing could be further from the truth regarding the control of the Internet.  Certain oppressive regimes would love to have their power enhanced by control of the Internet, but as we have seen throughout the last few decades, freedom prevails in these instances.  We get videos uploaded from Iran, we get tweets from Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we even get content out of China and Russia.  This idea is nothing more than paranoia.  However, corporations are watching the government closely, because they cannot wait to seize power at the first instance of weakness.  Being uninformed and contentious regarding Net Neutrality is weakness that these ISPs and other media corporations will capitalize on.

The importance of the Internet makes this issue one of the most important issues of this age.  While other systems of American government need to be updated, addressed, or removed, everyone must start somewhere, and with the penalty for allowing the ISPs this unregulated power being so high, it was necessary to address it immediately.

In 2014, the case of Verizon Communications Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission stated that since ISPs were not identified as common carriers, they could not be held to the same standard as common carriers.  In addition, the FCC proposed other much more beneficial (to the corporations) plans to regulate the ISPs and corporate interests, but none of them were adopted.  This is the reason for the reclassification; basically, the ISPs became too greedy for power.

Net Neutrality is known as The Open Internet Order and is an eight page document of information reclassifying ISPs to common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act first written in 1934 and Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.  Any provisions that are not relevant to the reclassification to common carriers are legally prevented from being enforced under the Order.  The rest of the Order is supporting documentation from the Acts that has been in writing all along.

The power to make this reclassification comes from the fact that the FCC is a board that consists of five commissioners appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and granted authority by Congressional statute 47 U.S. Code Sections 151 and 154.  Despite even more fear-mongering and misinforming coming from Open Internet dissenters, the five commissioners are all legally granted power to regulate communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.  They are not unelected bureaucrats, they are appointed and confirmed commissioners.

The Internet began as a public good, a public service, controlled by the government, and used for the government.  Since that beginning as ARPANET, the Internet has turned into a truly magnificent human creation, and it is nearly unstoppable in scope and measure.  However, we have an obligation to continue to utilize the Internet in a free and open manor.  That includes preventing corporations from extorting money from small businesses, non-profits, religious group, anti-religious groups, or anyone or any entity engaged in expression.  Since the government is the representative body of the people, it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that this freedom is protected.

9.15.2014

It’s been some time, so I thought I’d write another blog entry for the 10-12 people that read my blogs.  Who knows, maybe it will go viral at some point, right?

So, recently, Mike Tyson made headlines after a completely useless human asked him some stupid questions on a talk show while Mike was promoting his One Man Show.  So basically, Mike spent some time with Toronto mayor, Rob Ford, a man that we are all familiar with, I’d imagine.  The reporter then stated this stupid nugget: “Some of your critics would say, ‘You know, there’s a race for mayor, we know you’re a convicted rapist, this could hurt his campaign.’  How would you respond to that?”  Mr. Tyson then responded in turn: “I don’t know who said that. You’re the only one I heard say that,” Tyson said. “And I don’t have no comment for that, because it’s negative and you’re being negative…and I met the mayor. And there’s nothing they can do about it.”

But that wasn’t it for Mike: “It’s so interesting because you seem like a nice guy but you’re really a piece of shit,” Tyson said.  

So, this scenario really got me thinking about the way that we treat and think about convicted felons in America, and I just don’t think that I understand the system.  So, just to make sure that I at least understand the premise, if you commit a crime (or even if you don’t and the police and prosecutors don’t feel like putting in the work) you go to prison, and after serving your sentence, you are released back into the world to be a productive member of society.  Is this right?

But with a recidivism rate of nearly two-thirds of released prisoners (unfortunately, I do not have access to any information separating felony and misdemeanors), it’s hard to believe that the system is working.

So, why then, is the rate of recidivism, the rate of re-arrest, and the rate of crime committed by previous felons so high?  America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, so the system can’t be working if we have continually increasing incarceration numbers.  I could easily step into the world of discussing the world of systemic racist laws, which see a drastically higher rate of black Americans going to prison, although there is no evidence that black Americans commit crime at any rate higher than white Americans, or that the way that we currently treat felons is an extension of Post-Slavery Jim Crowe laws that basically prevent a class of citizens from having a voice.  But that isn’t what this blog is about today.  Today, this blog is about fixing our system, stopping the labels that follow someone that has served their time, and about establishing a healthy class of citizen instead of perpetual criminals.

So, my biggest issue all along with prison has been the idea that if you serve your time, then you’re free when it’s over.  You’re never free once you’re a felon.  That title will follow you for the rest of your life, haunting your job prospects, haunting your voting rights, haunting your gun rights, and basically making it impossible to continue living life in the legal arm of society.

I guess my primary issue is the label, “felon” that someone gets when they commit a felony and are then released from prison.  What I don’t get is why that label exists in the first place.  If the person is still a threat to commit more crimes, then why is he out of prison?  If he isn’t a threat to commit more crimes, then why is he being segregated socially?  That’s at the heart of the issue, honestly.  If you commit a crime, serve your time, and are released only to find out that you can’t ever get a decent job, you can’t vote, and society looks down on you, then why even try?

For me, the solution is easy:  Convicted felons are required to serve time until a time that they are no longer deemed a threat, and upon release and an obvious period of time with their parole steps, then they are released completely, their records sealed, and the title of felon is never attached to them again.  Anything short of that is a human rights violation in my world view.

If prisoners were to know that they could escape the miserable existence that led them down the path that ended in prison, then there’s at least a small chance that some of them would take the opportunity to leave the world of law breaking behind them.

This is more of an idea blog than in the past, and as I opened with, it’s because I saw the Tyson interview, and I thought, why in the fuck does that reporter feel entitled to ask about Tyson’s felony past, and why in the fuck would anyone care about

6.27.2014

Taxes, Minimum Wage, and how they relate to the Poor and Middle Class.

The marginal propensity to consume and demand side economics are today’s topics.  I’m going to discuss a little bit about taxation and wages, and how if you look at things from a demand perspective (which Libertarian/Conservative/Republican legislators are loathe to do, because it reduces income inequality) it works out where everyone benefits.  The long definitions I’ll get into in a minute, but right now, let’s consider a few very topical implications.  

A McDonald’s worker, for example, a married parent of three children and in their mid-20s is out of work elsewhere, and doing what they can to provide for their family (roughly half of workers paid the federal minimum wage are over 25 years old).  Imagine that they get a jump from $7.25 an hour to the total of $10.10 an hour.  That’s nearly $3 more, per hour that they spend at work that they can now spend elsewhere.  It’s almost a complete guarantee that those three dollars are going to go back into the economy.  That is the marginal propensity to consume.  For lower income workers, the impoverished, and even the Middle Class, the MPC is much higher than for the wealthy.

Anyway, let’s get some specific definitions out of the way.  The Marginal Propensity to Consume is the proportion of an aggregate raise in pay that a consumer spends on the consumption of goods and services, as opposed to saving it (Source).  In economics, the word marginal means basically “next,” “additional,” or “change.”  So, the MPC is the “next” “likelihood” to “spend money on goods or services.”  In the source I linked, the question arises, if you get a $500 bonus at work, what do you do with the money?  If you spend $250 of it in the economy, and save $250 of it, you have a .5 MPC and a .5 MPS (S means save) equaling a total Marginal Propensity of 1.  

This economic construct belongs in a side of economics that is not discussed much in America because our politicians are extensions of corporate lobbyists rather than independent thinkers (thanks to Citizens United and other like activist SCOTUS rulings, in which corporations are considered people, money is considered free speech, and therefore, people (corporations) can give as much free speech (money) to politicians as they’d like to).  The side of economics I am speaking about is of course Demand Side Economics.  Demand side economics differs from the more commonly discussed Supply side economics in a few very important ways.  The way that I’m most concerned with right now is the idea that Demand side economics incentivized consumption, whereas Supply side incentivizes production.  In Demand side, the poorest citizens receive the greatest marginal incentive, and in Supply side, the wealthiest citizens are incentivized.

So, here we are, having bought into the Corporatist Propaganda Myth that the poor are lazy, dirty, disgusting, and not worth our time.  In fact, according to this propaganda, we should give the wealthiest citizens monetary incentives and they will “hook us up” with the idiomatic “trickle down” (thanks, Reagan).  If we incentivize the corporations, if we give them a larger chunk of revenue, if we decrease their social obligation in the form of taxation, well, then, they’ll just hire more people as they continue to produce more and more.  They will also buy more things, like boats, yachts, more houses, more cars, and they will keep our economy afloat with their large concentration of wealth.  Well, herein lies a large issue that we continue to ignore economically in this country: the wealthy like to save and invest their money, which in fact is detrimental to a struggling and rebounding economy on the scale that it is happening right now.  Their MPC is extremely low, since they already have most of the things they want to consume, any additional money has no purpose being used on consumption marginally, and is therefore saved marginally.  Economies cannot survive periods of time consisting of large-scale marginal saving.

On the other hand, by giving a higher minimum wage and by granting tax breaks to the lower income families (as well as manipulating the interest rates and encouraging government spending in the economy) suddenly, the consumers are incentivized.  In my earlier example, $3 more per hour added to a minimum wage worker will almost assuredly be spent in the economy as opposed to being saved or invested.  The more money we incentivize towards lower income earners is going to be more money that ends up back in the economy.

The thing about incentivizing the consumers is that the consumption is a long term concept.  Incentivizing the producers is short term and temporary, and has to be continually renewed.  Frequently incentivizing production will result in artificial production increases or artificial production decreases.  Eventually, federal subsidies will be granted to the producers to not produce because of the surplus resulting from increased production and stagnant or decreased consumption.  Supply side economics can never work in any system that is not plutocratic in nature, regardless of how much money is given to the wealthy in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, or decreased wages for the poor.  Income inequality is the only result from Supply side economics.

I know I didn’t touch on very much in the post, and I know that this is by no means all encompassing.  Like I’ve said before, it’s just my opinion.  I hope it makes someone at least realize the truth of the economic situation we currently live in, though.