Our movement is about replacing a failed
and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by
you, the American People. There is nothing the political establishment
will not do, and no lie they will not tell, to hold on to their prestige
and power at your expense.
The Washington establishment, and the
financial and media corporations that fund it, exists for only one
reason: to protect and enrich itself.
The establishment has trillions of dollars
at stake in this election. As an example, just one single trade deal
they’d like to pass, involves trillions of dollars controlled by many
countries, corporations and lobbyists.
For those who control the levers of power
in Washington, and for the global special interests they partner with,
our campaign represents an existential threat.
This is not simply another 4-year
election. This is a crossroads in the history of our civilization that
will determine whether or not We The People reclaim control over our
government.
The political establishment that is trying
everything to stop us, is the same group responsible for our disastrous
trade deals, massive illegal immigration, and economic and foreign
policies that have bled this country dry. The political establishment
has brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs, as they
flee to Mexico, China and other countries throughout the world. Our
just-announced jobs numbers are anemic, and our gross domestic product,
or GDP, is barely above one percent. Workers in the United States, were
making less than they were almost 20 years ago – and yet they are
working harder.
It’s a global power structure that is
responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working
class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the
pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.
Just look at what this corrupt
establishment has done to our cities like Detroit and Flint, Michigan –
and rural towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and across our
country. They have stripped these towns bare, and raided the wealth for
themselves and taken away their jobs.
medium |As sick as I am of Donald Trump, I am no match for my mama — and based on recent observations, probably not for yours either.
Whenever my mom is about to say something that might be considered impolite,
she prefaces her comments with “Lord forgive me.” I question whether
God takes offense to criticism of someone that’s the seven deadly sins
rolled up into a stupid man who acts as if he’s the omnipotent one, but I
don’t tell her how to be a good Christian and she lets me be a heathen
who elects to speak to God without an intermediary.
Where
we differ on how to practice our faith, we align in tone whenever
discussing the demon in the White House. That’s why more often than not,
what follows “Lord forgive me” is something that recalls the Old
Testament.
I
love that my mom aims to be polite even if the person she’s talking
about is spiritually something akin to a boil on the left ass cheek of
Satan, but Black elders have earned the right to be especially venomous,
given what his victory in the 2016 presidential election signified.
In an Undefeated article about Black voters’ reactions
published soon after the election, Melvin Steals, a retired educator
and school administrator living in western Pennsylvania, said of Trump’s
victory, “Now we see what was hidden.” Steals, 70 at the time, went on
to compare the outcome to the Great Redemption, the period after Reconstruction “when they wanted to eradicate all of the gains made by Blacks after the Civil War.”
“I’m working the voter protection hotlines and I’ve had some conversations with older voters that made me blush.”
“This
is another opportunity to reassert their authority,” Steals added. “At
the core there is something nefarious about it. It’s tied into White
supremacy, that it’s their way or the highway.”
President Obama had the house and a supermajority in the senate. He passed an insurance giveaway health care bill w no public option, failed to break up the banks, failed to rescue homeowners, and then has the audacity to blame progressives for his administration’s failures. Wow. https://t.co/QRZH9jzbHP
breitbart | Breitbart News recently reported on the New York Post’sbombshell story that
indicated that Joe Biden may have met with an adviser to the board of
Burisma while he was Vice President, arranged by his son Hunter, who was
working as a lobbyist for the company at the time. Joe Biden has previously said, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”
But, the leaked emails allegedly show that Hunter introduced his
father to a Bursima executive less than a year before Biden, acting as
Vice President, pressured the Ukrainian government into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company. Shortly after the story broke, many found themselves having trouble sharing it across social media. This censorship comes just weeks after executives from both Facebook and Twitter joined the Biden transition team.
Breitbart News reported in September that Twitter Public Policy Director Carlos Monje left the social media company to join
the transition team for Joe Biden. Monje’s specific role on the team
has not been made clear and Biden’s transition team reportedly declined
to comment on the situation.
Despite a specific role not being named, Monje will reportedly be
serving as co-chair of Biden’s infrastructure policy committee and has
already helped to host a fundraiser for Biden this week, according to an
invitation sent to Politico.
Monje has worked in the world of presidential transition politics in
the past, previously serving as the director of agency review on the
team that prepared for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s
administration, which failed to take flight. Monje also worked on the
Obama administration team’s 2008 national security working group
according to his LinkedIn profile.
Monje also acted as deputy policy director during Obama’s first run
for office and subsequently served as a senior policy advisor and
special assistant to the president on the Domestic Policy Council.
Monje’s final years in the administration were spent in the
Transporation Department before he departed for Twitter.
In October, Breitbart News further reported
that Biden’s transition team had hired top Facebook executive Jessica
Hertz to its general counsel to oversee ethical issues. The move
reportedly came as the campaign struggles with Facebook to have posts by President Trump censored on
the platform. This is the second Big Tech executive to join Biden’s
campaign. Hertz will reportedly be responsible for “enforcement,
oversight, and compliance” of the ethics plan that Biden’s team unveiled
this week.
New York Post op-ed editor Sohrab Ahmari was one of the
first to note that Twitter was blocking him from posting a link to the
Biden-Ukraine story, claiming that the link was “potentially harmful.”
realsludge | Democrats are looking ahead to the second nominating ballot at the
July Democratic National Convention, when superdelegates will be allowed
to cast votes if no presidential candidate receives a majority of
pledged delegates on the first ballot.
Superdelegates include 75 at-large DNC members, often prominent party
figures who are put forward as a slate by DNC Chair Tom Perez and do
not directly represent a state or other region. Among the 447 total
voting DNC members, who make up the majority of 771 superdelegates,
there are scores of corporate lobbyists and consultants—including many
of the 75 at-large DNC members, who were not individually elected.
These corporate lobbyists will be allowed to vote on the second
ballot under the compromise that emerged from the Unity Reform
Commission meeting in 2017. The Unity Reform Commission’s proposed
package of reforms was later passed by the Rules and Bylaws Committee
and adopted as the 2020 convention rules in a rushed voice vote of full
DNC members at the summer 2018 national party meeting.
In October 2017, Perez purged DNC committees of several members who
had supported either his rival candidate for chair, then-Rep. Keith
Ellison, or Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid. In their place, Perez
appointed several handpicked corporate lobbyists to the committees that
govern the party’s operating rules, budget, convention delegates, and
other matters.
Sludge reviewed a DNC committee membership list from September 2019
and found that nearly two-thirds of the members of the DNC Rules and
Bylaws Committee have backgrounds in corporate influence and legal
defense that present possible conflicts of interest for their work on
the party rules. Some individuals may not currently hold the same
committee assignments, but all are current DNC members. Committee
membership details are not made publicly available by the DNC.
The 32-member DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee contains the following
20 individuals: a health insurance board member co-chair, three
surrogates for presidential campaigns (two for Bloomberg, one for
Biden), four current corporate lobbyists, two former corporate
lobbyists, six corporate consultants, and four corporate lawyers.
This article, the second in a series
on DNC committees, looks at the Rules and Bylaws Committee, which is
responsible for the Charter of the Democratic Party, for which it “shall
receive and consider all recommendations for adoption and amendments.”
Here are the rules-making DNC members—many of them unelected—whose
voting power raises ethics questions, as the Rules and Bylaws Committee
continues to block proposed changes for stronger conflict of interest
policies.
theintercept |Members of the Democratic National Committee will meet on Saturday to choose their new chair, replacing the disgracedinterim chair Donna Brazile, who replaced the disgraced five-year chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Even though the outcome is extremely unlikely to change the (failed) fundamentals of the party, the race has become something of an impassioned proxy war
replicating the 2016 primary fight: between the Clinton/Obama
establishment wing (which largely backs Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez,
who vehemently supported
Clinton) and the insurgent Sanders wing (which backs Keith Ellison, the
first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Congress, who was an early
Sanders supporter).
The New Republic’s Clio Chang has a great, detailed analysis
of the contest. She asks the key question about Perez’s candidacy that
has long hovered and yet has never been answered. As Chang correctly
notes, supporters of Perez insist, not unreasonably, that he is
materially indistinguishable from Ellison in terms of ideology (despite his support for TPP,
seemingly grounded in loyalty to Obama). This, she argues, is “why the
case for Tom Perez makes no sense”: After all, “if Perez is like Ellison
— in both his politics and ideology — why bother fielding him in the
first place?”
The timeline here is critical. Ellison announced
his candidacy on November 15, armed with endorsements that spanned the
range of the party: Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Raúl Grijalva, and
various unions on the left, along with establishment stalwarts such as
Chuck Schumer, Amy Klobuchar, and Harry Reid. He looked to be the clear
frontrunner.
But as Ellison’s momentum built, the Obama White House worked to
recruit Perez to run against Ellison. They succeeded, and Perez announced his candidacy
on December 15 — a full month after Ellison announced. Why did the
White House work to recruit someone to sink Ellison? If Perez and
Ellison are so ideologically indistinguishable, why was it so important
to the Obama circle — and the Clinton circle — to find someone capable
of preventing Ellison’s election? What’s the rationale? None has ever
been provided.
I can’t recommend Chang’s analysis highly enough on one key aspect of
what motivated the recruitment of Perez: to ensure that the Democratic
establishment maintains its fatal grip on the party and, in particular,
to prevent Sanders followers from having any say in the party’s
direction and identity:
There is one real difference between the two: Ellison has
captured the support of the left wing. … It appears that the underlying
reason some Democrats prefer Perez over Ellison has nothing to do with
ideology, but rather his loyalty to the Obama wing. As the head of the
DNC, Perez would allow that wing to retain more control, even if
Obama-ites are loath to admit it. …
And it’s not just Obama- and Clinton-ites that could see some power
slip away with an Ellison-headed DNC. Paid DNC consultants also have a
vested interest in maintaining the DNC status quo. Nomiki Konst, who has
extensively covered the nuts and bolts of the DNC race, asked Perez how he felt about conflicts of interest within
the committee — specifically, DNC members who also have contracts with
the committee. Perez dodged the issue, advocating for a “big tent.” In
contrast, in a forum last month, Ellison firmly stated, “We are battling the consultant-ocracy.”
politico | I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of
her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did not want to
disappoint him. I kept asking the party lawyers and the DNC staff to
show me the agreements that the party had made for sharing the money
they raised, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the
other way.
When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found
the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement
between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.
The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and
Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for
raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the
party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had
the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director,
and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also
was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing,
budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.
I had been wondering why it was that I couldn’t write a press release
without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer.
When the party chooses the nominee, the custom is that the
candidate’s team starts to exercise more control over the party. If the
party has an incumbent candidate, as was the case with Clinton in 1996
or Obama in 2012, this kind of arrangement is seamless because the party
already is under the control of the president. When you have an open
contest without an incumbent and competitive primaries, the party comes
under the candidate’s control only after the nominee is certain. When I
was manager of Al Gore’s campaign in 2000, we started inserting our
people into the DNC in June. This victory fund agreement, however, had
been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her
candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.
I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption
that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary
to Hillary, but I could not find any in party affairs or among the
staff. I had gone department by department, investigating individual
conduct for evidence of skewed decisions, and I was happy to see that I
had found none. Then I found this agreement.
The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was
not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair,
one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had
decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but
as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.
I had to keep my promise to Bernie. I was in agony as I dialed
him. Keeping this secret was against everything that I stood for, all
that I valued as a woman and as a public servant.
“Hello, senator. I’ve completed my review of the DNC and I did find the cancer,” I said. “But I will not kill the patient.”
I discussed the fundraising agreement that each of the candidates had
signed. Bernie was familiar with it, but he and his staff ignored it.
They had their own way of raising money through small donations. I
described how Hillary’s campaign had taken it another step.
theintercept | It didn’t have to be this way. Obama’s campaign operation, Obama for
America, took small-dollar giving to never-before-seen heights
and opened up the possibility of a transformation of politics. But he
quickly decided to marginalize his group after the 2008 election. He
renamed it Organizing for America, but ordered it to do very little
organizing, worried that if grassroots activists attacked Blue Dog
Democrats, they would bolt from the president and lose in 2010.
Then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously told activists
such a strategy was “fucking retarded.” (Most lost anyway in 2010, as
the tea party wave swept them out.)
OFA became Obama’s primary campaign apparatus, supplanting the DNC,
which became an afterthought handed to Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who later
became Clinton’s running mate. After the 2010 wave, Obama put
Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on top of the moribund
institution, a clear signal that he was uninterested in it as a central
component of the party. Obama’s poor relationship with Wasserman Schultz
was widely known and written about, but he left her in the job for six
years regardless.
Raising money for a bland outfit like the DNC isn’t easy in the best
of times, but with Obama offering little to no help, and clinging to his
invaluable email list, Wasserman Schultz was set up to fail, even if
she would have done so on her own.
Obama instead reasoned that he could become the party, his dynamic
and charismatic personality carrying it at the national level.
Obama was re-elected, but the party itself went on a historic losing
spree, ultimately shedding nearly 1,000 seats across the country. Even
after Democrats lost the Senate in 2014, and the DNC continued spending
money on consultants at an eye-popping rate, Obama decided not to make a
leadership change. Instead, he left it saddled with debt — debt the
Clinton campaign would later agree to pay off in exchange for control.
Obama finally became interested in the party after the 2016 loss. His
final gift to the party apparatus was Tom Perez, his labor secretary,
who he recruited to stop Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., from winning the
race for DNC chair. Obama and Perez won. DNC funding has been anemic, and it recently had to add to its roughly $3 million in debt.
speaker.gov |Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined Wolf Blitzer on
CNN’s The Situation Room to discuss the resumption of COVID relief talks
after the President’s decision to walk away and other news of the day.
Below are the Speaker’s remarks:
Wolf Blitzer. Madam Speaker, thank you so much for joining
us, and as you know, there are Americans who are being evicted from
their homes. They can't pay their rent. Many Americans are waiting
in food lines for the first time in their lives. Can you look them in
the eye, Madam Speaker, and explain why you don't want to accept
the President's latest stimulus offer?
Speaker Pelosi. Well, because – thank you very much, Wolf. I
hope you'll ask the same question of the Republicans about why they
don't really want to meet the needs of the American people. Let me say
to those people, because all of my colleagues, we represent these
people. I have for over 30 years represented my constituents. I know
what their needs are. I listen to them. And their needs are
not addressed in the President's proposal.
So, when you say to me, ‘Why don't you accept theirs?’ Why don't
they accept ours? Our legislation is there to do three things
primarily: to honor our workers, honor our heroes, our health
care workers, our police and fire, our first responders, our teachers,
our transportation, sanitation, food workers the people who make our
lives work. We couldn't be doing what we are doing without them. Many
of them have risked their lives so that they – to save lives and now
will lose their job because Mitch McConnell says, ‘Let the states go
bankrupt.’ ‘Let the states go bankrupt.’
[Crosstalk]
Wolf Blitzer. Excuse me for interrupting, Madam Speaker, but they need the money right now. And even members of your own –
Speaker Pelosi. I understand that. You asked me a question.
Wolf Blitzer. Members of your own Caucus, Madam Speaker, want to accept this deal, $1.8 trillion. Congressman Ro Khanna –
[Crosstalk]
Speaker Pelosi. Wait a minute. Wait a second.
Wolf Blitzer. Let me just quote Ro Khanna, a man you
know well. I assume you admire him. He’s a Democrat. He just said
this, he said, ‘People in need can't wait until February. 1.8 trillion
is significant and more than twice Obama stimulus.’ ‘Make a deal, and
put the ball in McConnell court.’ So what do you say to Ro Khanna?
Speaker Pelosi. What I say to you is, I don't know if you're
always an apologists, and many of your colleagues apologists, for
the Republican position. Ro Khanna, that’s nice. That isn’t what we’re
going to do, and nobody is waiting until February. I want this very
much now, because people need help now.
But it's no use giving them a false thing just because the President
wants to put a check with his name on it in the mail that we should not
be doing all we can to help people pay the rent, put food on the table,
to enhance benefits, that they don't lose their jobs if they’re
state and local, that they – this – we are talking about
the consequences of a pandemic, symptoms of a problem that the President
refuses to address and that is the coronavirus. That is the
coronavirus.
[Crosstalk]
Wolf Blitzer. But we know, Madam Speaker, we know about the
problem out there, but here are millions of Americans who have lost
their jobs. They can't pay their rent. Their kids need the food.
Speaker Pelosi. That’s right, and that’s what we’re trying to get done.
Wolf Blitzer. $1.8 trillion and the President just tweeted, ‘Stimulus go big or go home.’
Speaker Pelosi. Right.
Wolf Blitzer. He wants more right now
Speaker Pelosi. That’s right.
Wolf Blitzer. So, why not work out a deal with him and don't let the perfect, as they say here in Washington, be the enemy of the good?
Speaker Pelosi. Well, I will not let the wrong be the enemy of the right.
Wolf Blitzer. What is wrong with $1.8 trillion?
Speaker Pelosi. You know what? Do you have any idea what
the difference is between the spending they have in their bill and that
we have in our bill? Do you realize that they have come back and said
all of these things for Child Tax Credits and Earned Income Tax Credits
or helping people who lost their jobs are eliminated in their bill? Do
you realize they pay no respect to the fact that child care is very
important for people whose children cannot go to school because they are
doing remote learning and, yet, they minimize the need for child
care, which is the threshold with which people, mothers and fathers, can
go to work if they have that? Do you have any idea at how woefully
short their concern, their concern –
[Crosstalk]
Wolf Blitzer. That is precisely why, Madam Speaker,
it's important right now. Yesterday, I spoke yesterday to Andrew Yang
who said the same thing. It's not everything you want, but a lot there.
[Crosstalk]
Speaker Pelosi. Okay you know what? Honest to God. You
really – I can't get over it because Andrew Yang, he’s lovely. Ro
Khanna, he’s lovely. But they are not negotiating this situation. They
have no idea of the particulars. They have no idea of what
the language is here. I didn't come over here to have you – so you're
the apologist for the Obama – excuse me. God forbid. Thank God for
Barack Obama
Wolf Blitzer. Madam Speaker, I’m not an apologist. I'm asking you serious questions because people are in desperate need right now.
sagepub | An early reader of this article posed a provocative question: is
there anything analytically distinct about the Internet? My answer
revealed my priors. “Of course the Internet is distinct,” I wanted to
say. But that is arguing from an embarrassingly basic logical fallacy.
The question of what the Internet does analytically that, say, “capital”
or “economy” or “culture” or “organizations” does not already do is
important. My answer is debatable, but the debate is worthwhile. I do
not know if the Internet adds something analytically distinct to our
social inquiries, but it adds something analytical precision. Other
constructs capture important dimensions of social life in a digital
society. For instance, one can argue that Silicon Valley is a racial
project (Noble and Roberts 2019; Watters 2015) or a sociohistorical construction of racial meanings, logics, and institutions (Omi and Winant 2014). White racial frames (Feagin 2020) or color-blind racism (Bonilla-Silva 2006)
can elucidate how ironic humor about Black people, Muslims, and
immigrants in online gaming platforms reproduces “offline” racism (Fairchild 2020; Gray 2012).
These are just two examples of noteworthy approaches taken to studying
Internet technologies and “mainstream” sociological interests (i.e.,
economic cultures and discourses, respectively). Still, sociological
practice does not systematically engage with the social relations of
Internet technologies as analytical equals to the object of study. If
there is anything particular about Internet technologies for
sociological inquiry, we should make it explicit. And once explicit, we
should give it the same theoretical care as states, capital, and power. Daniels (2013) points us in the right direction when she argued that
the
reality is that in the networked society . . . racism is now global . .
., as those with regressive political agendas rooted in white power
connect across national boundaries via the Internet, a phenomenon that
runs directly counter to Omi and Winant’s conceptualization of the State
as a primary structural agent in racial formation.
Daniels
named to the global nature of both racism and the networks of capital we
gesture to when we say Internet or digital. It is an argument for
bringing back the political economy of race and racism. Internet
technologies are specific in how they have facilitated, legitimized, and
transformed states and capital within a global racial hierarchy. An app
with which underemployed skilled labor sells services to customers
(e.g., TaskRabbit) might be a U.S. racial project. But the capital that
finances the app is embedded in transnational capital flows. Global
patterns of racialized labor that determine what is “skill” and what is
“labor” mediate the value of labor and the rents the platform can
extract for mediating the laborer-customer relationship. Even the way we
move money on these platforms—“Cash App me!”—is networked to
supranational firms such as PayPal and Alibaba (Swartz 2020).
Internet technologies have atomized the political economy of
globalization with all the ideas about race, capital, racism, and
ethnicity embedded within. An understanding of the political economy of
Internet technologies adds a precise formulation of how this
transformation operates in everyday social worlds: privatization through
opacity and exclusion via inclusion. Both characteristics are
distinctly about the power of Internet technologies. And each
characteristic is important for the study of race and racism.
Understanding platform capitalism helps us understand how these two
characteristics are important.
Internet technologies have networked forms of capital (Srnicek and De Sutter 2017; Zhang 2020), consolidated capital’s coercive power (Azar, Marinescu, and Steinbaum forthcoming; Dube et al. 2020), flattened hierarchical organizations (Treem and Leonardi 2013; Turco 2016), and produced new containers for culture (Brock 2020; Noble 2018; Patton et al. 2017; Ray et al. 2017).
By that definition, the Internet has amplified and reworked existing
social relations. Platform capitalism moves us toward the analytical
importance of Internet technologies as sociopolitical regimes. Platforms
produce new forms of currency (i.e., data) and new forms of exchange
(e.g., cryptocurrencies), and they structure new organizational
arrangements among owners, workers, and consumers (see “prosumers”).
Even more important for the study of race and racism, platforms
introduce new layers of opacity into every facet of social life.
mintpressnews |The enormous economic dislocation
caused by the COVID-19 pandemic offers a unique opportunity to
fundamentally alter the structure of society, and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) if using the crisis to implement near-permanent
austerity measures across the world.
76 of the 91 loans it has negotiated with 81 nations since the
beginning of the worldwide pandemic in March have come attached with
demands that countries adopt measures such as deep cuts to public
services and pensions — measures that will undoubtedly entail
privatization, wage freezes or cuts, or the firing of public sector
workers like doctors, nurses, teachers and firefighters.
The principal cheerleader for neoliberal austerity measures across
the globe for decades, the IMF has recently (quietly) begun admitting
that these policies have not worked and generally make problems like
poverty, uneven development, and inequality even worse. Furthermore,
they have also failed even to bring the promised economic growth that
was meant to counteract these negative effects. In 2016, it described its own policies as “oversold” and earlier summed up its experiments in Latin America as “all pain, no gain.” Thus, its own reports explicitly state its policies do not work.
“The IMF has sounded the alarm about a massive spike in inequality in
the wake of the pandemic. Yet it is steering countries to pay for
pandemic spending by making austerity cuts that will fuel poverty and
inequality,” Chema Vera, Interim Executive Director of Oxfam
International, said today.
These measures could leave millions of people without
access to healthcare or income support while they search for work, and
could thwart any hope of sustainable recovery. In taking this approach,
the IMF is doing an injustice to its own research. Its head needs to
start speaking to its hands.”
Oxfam has identified at least 14 countries that it expects will
imminently freeze or cut public sector wages and jobs. Tunisia, for
example, has only 13 doctors per 10,000 people. Any cuts to its already
scant healthcare system would cripple it in its fight against the
coronavirus. “If people can’t afford testing and care for COVID-19 and
other health needs, the virus will continue to spread unchecked and more
people will die. Out-of-pocket healthcare expenses were a tragedy
before the pandemic, and now they are a death sentence,” Vera added.
tabletmag | Tides
was founded in 1976 by Drummond Pike, a California real estate investor
who named the entity after a Bay Area bookstore popular among
left-leaning activists. From the beginning, according to their own documents,
Tides was designed unlike most other nonprofit institutions. Rather
than building up or spending down an endowment, it sought to become more
like a sophisticated piece of software—a financial instrument that
would allow wealthy individuals and donors to contribute to the causes
of their choosing with more anonymity than is generally allowed by the
laws governing ordinary nonprofits.
Recently,
after Pike stepped away, the Tides network has taken on a distinctly
political role, whose guiding star appears to be Barack Obama. The
secretary of the Tides board
is Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of PEN America and a former deputy assistant
secretary of state for international organizations in the Obama
administration; board member Cheryl Alston was appointed by Obama to the
advisory committee of the federal pension program. Peter Buttenwieser,
the heir to the Lehman Brothers fortune who passed away in 2018,
financed a fund in his own name which is administered and distributed
entirely by the Tides Foundation. A “major behind-the-scenes supporter of Democratic candidates,”
Buttenwieser was one of President Obama’s earliest high profile
backers, helping the then-senator organize his bid for the White House.
Moreover, Atlantic Philanthropies, a nonprofit created by billionaire retailer Chuck Feeney in the 1980s, has directed more than $42 million in grants through the Tides network since 2000. Based in Bermuda,
Atlantic Philanthropies was able to participate in political lobbying
efforts in ways that continental United States nonprofits cannot.
Atlantic became increasingly aggressive under the Obama administration.
As Gara LaMarche, Atlantic’s president, said in one think tank address,
when Obama was elected “we saw opportunities to assist our grantees in
moving forward more rapidly and broadly in a number of areas central to
our mission.” In return, Atlantic dispensed $27 million to help push Obamacare through Congress. At the ceremony to sign Obamacare into law, LaMarche stood beside President Obama in the East Room of the White House.
In
any case, what’s clear is that there is now a sophisticated and complex
structure underneath what many assume to be an organic and spontaneous
social movement, one with deep pockets and ambitious goals. “After over
fourteen years of learning and over 700 million dollars invested ... the
collapse we have been expecting is surely underway,” reads the NoVo
Foundation’s website. Right now there’s only this one statement on the
site, which is under construction as noted: “Working on solutions now so
old patterns of power can’t, once again, re-form to rebuild and
continue to repress.”
WaPo | The
day after President Trump told the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a
history of inciting violence, to “stand back and stand by,” during the
first presidential debate last week, tech investor Cyan Banister tweeted that the group was misunderstood and had “a few bad apples.”
The
open defense of an organization that has been deemed a hate group by
the Southern Poverty Law Center is one extreme example of an
increasingly public reactionary streak in Silicon Valley that diverges
from the tech industry’s image as a bastion of liberalism. Some
libertarian, centrist and right-leaning Silicon Valley investors and
executives, who wield outsize influence, power and access to capital,
describe tech culture as under siege by activist employees pushing a
social justice agenda.
Curtis Yarvin, dubbed a “favorite philosopher of the alt-right” by the Verge, has become a familiar face
on the invite-only audio social network Clubhouse, in rooms with
investors such as Facebook board member Marc Andreessen, the founder of
Andreessen Horowitz, which invested in the app.
Cryptocurrency
start-up Coinbase recently sought to restrict political speech by
employees, a move many interpreted as a shift to the right because it
came in reaction to internal discussions of Black Lives Matter.
Tensions
are running high even at some of the biggest tech companies. The
crackdown on employee speech in response to social activism over the
past year has spread to Facebook, Google and Pinterest, among others.
In September, Facebook restricted spaces
for political discussions after employees protested the company’s
moderation policies against hate speech affecting Black users. Pinterest
shut down a Slack channel used to submit questions for company meetings
and turned another Slack channel read-only, opting to use a different
tool for up-voting. Employees, who had used both channels to question
leadership about race and gender bias and pay equity in recent months,
were upset, according to records viewed by The Washington Post.
Banister, a
former partner at Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm and an early
investor in Uber and SpaceX, said she applauded Coinbase’s decision.
“Enough is enough. The pendulum swings and it swings back,” she told The
Post. “Sometimes people just want to have a safe place to go where they
don’t have to think about this stuff anymore because it’s literally
everywhere. ”
Banister
told The Post she became interested in the Proud Boys after Trump
mentioned them during the debate. She said she does not condone white
supremacy and it should have been “dead easy” for the president to say
the same.
“Questioning something does not mean condoning or agreeing,” she said.
Often, the trigger for this public pushback has been social pressure around racial equity, according to diversity consultants.
The tech industry went through similar reactionary spasms around the last presidential election, revealing a different strain
of libertarianism from the counterculture and cyberculture geeks coding
away in their garages. At the time, the underlying tension was also
around equity and injustice. But the battle was about disavowing Thiel, a
Trump donor and adviser, rather than expressing support for Black Lives
Matter.
tomluongo | Back during the early days of the Democratic primaries I told you
that the real story behind the scenes was a three-sided civil war for
control of the DNC.
Not quite an equilateral triangle, the two major factions were the
Clintons and the Obamas with the Soros-backed squad pushing them both
farther and farther left, through the fake Progressivism of Bernie
Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
And with the ascension of Joe Biden as the candidate, triumphing over
the inept Hillary-backed challenge from Mini Mike Bloomberg, it was
clear that the Obamas won the internal battle.
Hillary eventually bent the knee and endorsed Biden along with everyone else.
After her failure to beat Trump in 2016 it became clear that Obama was the choice by The Davos Crowd to deliver the U.S. into their hands weak, divided, literally on fire and close to irretrievably insane.
In the words of Bush the Lesser, “Mission Accomplished.”
But what’s been sticking in the back of my mind for months was Trump’s tweet from May:
sandrarose | The latest statistics confirm what U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said about face masks in February.
Dr. Adams previously said the public should not wear masks to protect
against the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease because masks offered little protection against a virus.
"Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!" Adams tweeted on Feb. 29.
The WHO, the CDC and NIH's Dr. Anthony Fauci also strongly discouraged wearing masks as not useful for the public.
Dr. Adams changed his tune months later. He encouraged Americans to
wear a mask to stop the spread of the coronavirus — insisting the face
coverings don't infringe on Americans' "freedom".
Adams was not wearing a mask in August when he and another man were cited for trespassing in a park in Hawaii that was closed.
Adams, 46, was with his personal assistant, Dennis Anderson-Villaluz,
a 37-year-old dietician with the U.S. Health Dept. The two men
were "taking pictures" inside the rural park.
People who are most at risk for contracting Covid-19 include those
with preexisting conditions such as cardiac problems, hypertension,
asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), immunodeficiency
(HIV), psychiatric condition, diabetes, or obesity.
"The idea that we're going to do a national, stay-at-home order ... it's just not going to happen," says @ScottGottliebMD. "When history looks back on us, the critical failing is going to be the fact that we were so blind to the spread back in April and May." pic.twitter.com/x7xJP1OvcX
NYPost | The World Health Organization has warned leaders against relying on
COVID-19 lockdowns to tackle outbreaks — after previously saying
countries should be careful how quickly they reopen.
“We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Nabarro said.
“The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time
to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health
workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”
Nabarro said tight restrictions cause significant harm, particularly on the global economy.
“Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never, ever
belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer,” he said.
He added that lockdowns have severely impacted countries that rely on tourism.
“Just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry in the
Caribbean, for example, or in the Pacific because people aren’t taking
their holidays,” Nabarro told the outlet.
“Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. Look
what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a
doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a
doubling of child malnutrition.”
off-guardian | The World Health Organization has finally confirmed
what we (and many experts and studies) have been saying for months – the
coronavirus is no more deadly or dangerous than seasonal flu.
In fact, they didn’t seem to completely understand it themselves.
At the session, Dr Michael Ryan, the WHO’s Head of Emergencies
revealed that they believe roughly 10% of the world has been infected
with Sars-Cov-2. This is their “best estimate”, and a huge increase over
the number of officially recognised cases (around 35 million).
Dr. Margaret Harris, a WHO spokeswoman, later confirmed the figure,
stating it was based on the average results of all the broad seroprevalence studies done around the world.
As much as the WHO were attempting to spin this as a bad thing – Dr Ryan even said it means “the vast majority of the world remains at risk.” – it’s actually good news. And confirms, once more, that the virus is nothing like as deadly as everyone predicted.
The global population is roughly 7.8 billion people, if 10% have been infected that is 780 million cases. The global death toll currently attributed to Sars-Cov-2 infections is 1,061,539.
That’s an infection fatality rate of roughly or 0.14%. Right in line
with seasonal flu and the predictions of many experts from all around
the world.
0.14% is over 24 times LOWER than the WHO’s “provisional figure” of 3.4% back in March. This figure was used in the models which were used to justify lockdowns and other draconian policies.
In fact, given the over-reporting of alleged Covid deaths, the IFR is likely even lower than 0.14%, and could show Covid to be much less dangerous than flu.
None of the mainstream press picked up on this. Though many outlets reported Dr Ryan’s words, they all attempted to make it a scary headline and spread more panic.
WEForum |The challenge: As countries around the world work to overcome
the COVID-19 pandemic and restart their economies and tourism, they all
face the challenge of how to reopen their borders and allow
international travel to resume while protecting their populations’
health. The current patchwork of policies and ever-changing border entry
and health screening requirements has made international travel
incredibly complex, leaving airlines and border agencies uncertain about
the validity of test results and passengers unsure of what is being
asked of them.
The solution: CommonPass aims to
develop and launch a standard global model to enable people to securely
document and present their COVID-19 status (either as test results or an
eventual vaccination status) to facilitate international travel and
border crossing while keeping their health information private.
Recognizing that countries will make sovereign decisions on border entry
and health screening requirements, including whether or not to require
tests or what type of test to require, CommonPass serves as a neutral
platform which creates the interoperability needed for the various
'travel bubbles' to connect and for countries to trust one another's
data by leveraging global standards.
For governments,
airlines, airports, and other key stakeholders throughout the end-to-end
travel journey, CommonPass aims to address these key questions:
How can a lab result or vaccination record from another country be trusted?
Is the lab or vaccination facility accredited/certified?
How do we confirm that the person who took the test is indeed the person who is travelling?
Does the traveler meet border entry requirements?
How it works: In line with protocols and guidelines
from international organizations and standards bodies in the aviation
and health sectors, CommonPass allows individuals to securely document
their COVID-19 status electronically and present it when they board a
plane or cross a border.
The framework will:
Allow individuals to collect and store their health information
securely and present their health status in conjunction with border
crossing and travel requirements.
Support a range of health data inputs, including PCR test results and vaccination records.
Support a range of health screening entry requirements that vary
from country to country and will evolve through the course of the
pandemic and beyond.
Protect the privacy of individual health data.
Be interoperable across countries and regions.
Be based on proven, international standards and open technologies.
Be operated on an open, independent, sustainable, not-for-profit basis.
thecorrespondent | It seems that blockchain sounds best in a PowerPoint slide. Most blockchain projects don’t make it past a press release, an inventory by Bloomberg showed. The Honduran land registry was going to use blockchain. That plan has been shelved. The Nasdaq was also going to do something with blockchain. Not happening. The Dutch Central Bank then? Nope. Out of over 86,000 blockchain projects that had been launched, 92% had been abandoned by the end of 2017, according to consultancy firm Deloitte.
Why are they deciding to stop? Enlightened – and thus former – blockchain developer Mark van Cuijk explained: “You could also use a forklift to put a six-pack of beer on your kitchen counter. But it’s just not very efficient.”
I’ll list a few of the problems. Firstly: the technology is at loggerheads with European privacy legislation, specifically the right to be forgotten. Once something is in the blockchain, it cannot be removed. For instance, hundreds of links to child abuse material and revenge porn were placed in the bitcoin blockchain by malicious users.
It’s impossible to remove those.
Also, in a blockchain you aren’t anonymous, but “pseudonymous”: your identity is linked to a number, and if someone can link your name to that number, you’re screwed. Everything you got up to on that blockchain is visible to everyone.
The presumed hackers of Hillary Clinton’s email were caught, for instance, because their identity could be linked to bitcoin transactions. A number of researchers from Qatar University were able to ascertain the identities of tens of thousands of bitcoin users fairly easily through social networking sites. Other researchers showed how you can de-anonymise many more people through trackers on shopping websites.
The fact that no one is in charge and nothing can be modified also means that mistakes cannot be corrected. A bank can reverse a payment request. This is impossible for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. So anything that has been stolen will stay stolen. There is a continuous stream of hackers targeting bitcoin exchanges and users, and fraudsters launching investment vehicles that are in fact pyramid schemes. According to estimates, nearly 15% of all bitcoin has been stolen at some point. And it isn’t even 10 years old yet.
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
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New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
