The Next Hurrah

Participatory budgeting

by emptypockets

It's hard to believe that Bush's proposed budget is what anyone wants. For example, he suggests cutting half the federal funds for public broadcasting, while he spends the same amount ($200 million) in Iraq every 12 hours.

Unfortunately, as ordinary taxpayers, we don't have that much influence over the final budget. If we want to see more money put into biomedical research or the arts we can vote every couple years, we can try to lobby Congress, or we can give to charitable groups and bypass the government entirely. Maybe there ought to be a more direct method.

Suppose we try something new. Take the budget -- Bush's proposal is over $3 trillion -- and make a 0.1% across-the-board cut, reducing every agency's funding by one penny out of every 10 dollars. Take the resulting $3 billion and put it into a Taxpayer-Directed Spending fund. And let the people decide where that money should go.

A flash of grey flannel, a whiff of BenGay...

by Kagro X

When is an Internet-based, third party organizing effort a Very Serious Idea?

When David "Wild Man" Broder f*cking well tells you it is. That's when. You lowly moron.

Until plans for this meeting were disclosed, the most concrete public move toward any kind of independent candidacy was by Unity08, a group planning an online nominating convention to pick either an independent candidate or a ticket combining a Republican and a Democrat. The sponsors, an eclectic mix of consultants who have worked for candidates including Jimmy Carter (D) and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), have not aligned with a specific prospect.

Now, some people with high-level political and governmental credentials are moving to put muscle behind the effort.

What meeting, you ask? Why, the Big Bipartisan Serious Person's Kumbaya Love-In for America, of course.

Imagine there's no telecoms

by emptypockets

This afternoon, on the outskirts of Lima, in a mountain village a mile and a half above sea level, all 46 children and each of their teachers are wired. Their laptops came courtesy of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, and a quarter million other Peruvian children will soon be wired as well, as are children in other pilot programs in Abuja, Nigeria; Villa Cardal, Uruguay; Samkha village, Thailand; Porto Alegre, Brazil; and Khairat, India.

(You can be, too, for $200 and a matching tax-deductible donation to give one to a child somewhere. The give-one-get-one program runs until Dec. 31.)

There are several things to say about this remarkable project, but first let me establish the basics. The OLPC laptops are small, power-efficient laptops built to withstand rugged conditions. Each has a microphone, a camera, a screen that can be viewed in bright daylight or in dark, a small amount of flash memory (no hard drive), and innovative wireless networking capabilities that I'll come back to in a minute.

They are open-source, run linux, and are produced, sold, and distributed by a non-profit academic group as a charitable enterprise -- not by a computer company. From what I can tell, the villages that receive them are poor, but children have clothing, access to clean water, limited electricity (the laptops can be charged from a wide range of voltages, solar panels, or a hand pull), and some educational infrastructure. Rather than sprinkle the laptops throughout the population of developing countries, OLPC is targeting individual villages and saturating them, so that every child in the village has his or her own personal computer to use at school and at home.

A number of criticisms have been leveled against the program, including that the money would be better spent on providing more teachers, and that the program seeks to destroy some natural harmony that exists between poor people and the land (for example, here). With regard to the latter, the ads for the give-one-get-one program, showing a black girl with a laptop perched on her head like a bucket of water, leaves itself particularly open to critique, implying as it does -- to me, anyway -- that the program is targeted to Africa (it's not) and that the recipients are supposed to swap basic resources for new technology and smile.

I'll come back to these two topics -- what you can learn from a computer that you don't learn from a teacher, and whether "living in harmony with nature" is a myth -- in a couple of posts down the road. Right now, though, I'd like to overlook the question of all the good that I think will come out of the project in the future... and look instead at some of the good that, perhaps, already has.

What Are Newspapers Best For?

by emptywheel

As you no doubt know, I appeared on a panel in Boston called "No News Is Bad News" over the weekend. It was a fascinating conference, with journalistic heroes like John Carroll and Anthony Shadid. Just as exciting, I got to meet phred, Selise, BlueStateRedHead, and others. And my own personal favorite--from my panel, at least--came when someone asked me what I would have done to prevent the Lewinsky scandal (and more importantly--picking up on a point I had made--having the press report on a topic that the majority of the country just didn't think was important). I responded something to the effect that, "I would have liked to see the press reporting on the rise of the Scaife funded partisan press with some attention to the way it inserted stories into the non-partisan press; I would have liked to see people report on Ken Starr's prosecutorial misconduct, and I would have liked someone to get up and say 'It was just a consensual blow job between consenting adults.'" I think I repeated "blow job" a few times as I tend to do when you get me riled. According to phred, who was in the audience, some of the seniors in the audience gasped. At which Joe Lockhart, who was on my panel, responded, "Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I wanted to say just that."

I then got into a fascinating conversation following John Carroll's panel. He had said that we need to find a way to fund investigative journalists, and that blogs just wouldn't do that. Afterwards, I agreed with him that blogs could not replace Dana Priest or Eric Lichtblau (at least not yet, though TPM's crowd is doing a lot of the same work as Lichtblau). I also pointed out that David Carr--who has had a long simmering debate with Jay Rosen over whether bloggers could do original work and who admitted that we, the FDL team, had during the Libby trial [Big crow correction: Rosen informs me it was not Carr; I apologize for the error]--had described advising his college aged daughter aspiring to be a journalist to make sure her own writing was getting noticed on the Internet, thereby admitting the value of a reputation-based vetting system.

We need big companies to pay (and more importantly, legally protect) journalists like Priest and Lichtblau (and, just as importantly, Shadid). But do we need big media to report on culture and sports?

Which is why the two latest incidents of the NYT's ham-handedness with blogs really resonates for me.

Boston: No News Is Bad News

by emptywheel

Just a reminder that I'm headed for Boston for what promises to be an interesting conference. Here's the description:

No News Is Bad News

A free and independent press is essential for democracy.  The press has a responsibility to inform citizens about both the policies and the actions of the government and about credible challenges to those policies and actions, to report on conditions that may require new or different government initiatives, and to raise timely questions itself about debatable policies and the rationales presented for them.

With the recent controversies over the failure of the press to fully live up to its responsibilities in the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the role of the media in the outing of a covert CIA agent, the rise of the blogosphere and so-called citizen journalism, and the impact of increasing financial pressures on newspapers and magazines, public confidence in the mainstream media is at an all-time low.  What are the implications of this for our democracy?  How might our faith in the press be restored?

There is (free) registration,

As before, put a link below if you're interested in get-together events associated with this.

No News Is Bad News

by emptywheel

I'm going to be a panelist on a conference in Boston a week from tomorrow (Saturday). The conference is:

No News Is Bad News

A free and independent press is essential for democracy.  The press has a responsibility to inform citizens about both the policies and the actions of the government and about credible challenges to those policies and actions, to report on conditions that may require new or different government initiatives, and to raise timely questions itself about debatable policies and the rationales presented for them.

With the recent controversies over the failure of the press to fully live up to its responsibilities in the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the role of the media in the outing of a covert CIA agent, the rise of the blogosphere and so-called citizen journalism, and the impact of increasing financial pressures on newspapers and magazines, public confidence in the mainstream media is at an all-time low.  What are the implications of this for our democracy?  How might our faith in the press be restored?

The rest of the panelists (aside from Andy Sullivan) are journalists--many of the good ones, people like John Carroll. My panel--Political Reporting--had a conference call today which got me really excited about the conference. It should be worth attending.

There is (free) registration, and I understand the room is filling up. So if you're interested, register now!

Afterwards, phred and Scarecrow and I and hopefully some other folks from these parts will be heading out for drinks, probably to An Tua Nua. I'll post another thread closer to the event, but if you might show, leave a comment.

The Constitutional Right to a Press Pass

by emptywheel

I get asked about press passes a lot--I guess because I once had one. And the more I think about it, the more I'm raring for a constitutional challenge to the way many press passes are assigned in this country.

You see, historically, just about the only meaning of Freedom of the Press that would have made sense to our founders was freedom from having the government choose official reporters by licensing or fees or some other means. The whole reason we have Freedom of the Press is because stodgy countries in Europe were ensuring a tame press by either picking official printers, only giving licenses to their favorites, or charging a lot of money for the kind of press they didn't like. And when those Dirty Fucking Hippie colonists rebelled against the Stamp Tax, they determined never to see something like it or the more onerous licensing on their watch.

Currently, many government agencies are discriminating against citizen-bloggers like me--or even plain old online reporters--because they don't kill trees to circulate their work. This is changing (one of MI's bloggers has a legislative press pass, apparently some DFH bloggers have been allowed into Federal courthouses). But not everywhere. For example, given my current circumstances, I cannot get a press pass to Congress. So far, nice Committee staffers have been willing to set aside a seat for me. And they're good seats, too, right behind the witnesses. But they're far away from the power sources, and journalists who don't know me get really crabby when I go to the wall to use them so I can keep my laptop running.

Anyway, a blogger-reporter in NY is going to challenge the constitutionality of all this.

New York journalist Rafael Martinez-Alequin and his lawyer Norm Siegel are challenging the New York City police department's policies for issuing press credentials. (For somewhat arcane reasons having to do with access to crime scenes, the NYPD issues all City media credentials.)

[snip]

Martinez-Alequin was a credentialed member of New York's working press for since the early '90s . He published the New York City Free Press on newsprint until the end of 2005, and shifted the paper online in 2006. He also started blogging at Your Free Press.

In 2006, the department downgraded Martinez-Alequin's status from "working press" to "press identification pass"--without explanation. The journalist didn't realize there was any difference. He kept on doing what he'd always been doing.

In 2007, he jumped through the familiar hoops to get his pass renewed, but his application was denied.

[snip]

Siegel and his client are prepared to challenge the constitutionality of the City's whole press credentialing policy. The NYPD may be discriminating against reporters for web-based publications. Or, it may be singling out Martinez-Alequin for some other reason. Either way, the reporter and his lawyer say they're prepared to go to court if the pass isn't reinstated. 

I've been waiting for a really good person to challenge this system, because contrary to what many journalists understand, it goes to the heart of what our founders intended press freedom to be all about. You could make a really compelling argument that many current press pass schemes amount to privileging those who work for large corporations--who, after all, have certain conflicts of interest with some kinds of reporting. So if they're choosing the corporate reporters and not us DFHs, they're effectively choosing to license primarily staid, cautious reporting--with a strong bent toward corporate coddling.

May the DFHs win freedom of the press!

The United States of AT&T Wants Satellites Now, Too

by emptywheel

Well, here's another reason AT&T is so desperate for retroactive immunity. It'd suck to have their bid to acquire a satellite TV company derailed as consumers realized AT&T is using that technology to spy on them, huh?

AT&T has been consulting lawyers in Washington about how long it would take to get government approval to purchase either EchoStar Communications Corp. or DirecTV Group Inc., people familiar with the matter said. If it does make a bid for one of the satellite providers, AT&T could unveil the offer before year's end in hopes of getting federal antitrust officials to approve the combination before a new administration takes over, these people say. [my emphasis]

Yeah, I'm sure AT&T would like to get such a move approved before the end of the year. You know, while they still had their former lawyer in charge of DOJ and still had one of their big lobbyists running the oval office?

The Kiddie Porn Excuse

by emptywheel

Remember when Alberto Gonzales called for Google to preserve all its search data to support potential child porn investigations? We crazy moonbats suggested that that sounded like an invitation for abuse, that once Google had preserved the records, such records would be accessed for other purposes.

Now Cannonfire points to one such case.

In brief: An incendiary comment appeared on a blog called the Deerfield Beach Insider -- which uses the Blogger service. (So do I.) The anonymous "pundit" was upset about alleged corruption at the Public Works Department. "Nothing will be done until somebody brings in a gun and shoots up the whole place," he wrote.

Deerfield City Manager Mike Mahaney took these words as a threat, so he called the Broward Sherrif's Office. The cops subpoenaed Google (owner of Blogger) and soon found their man -- a guy named Wayne Adams. He insists that he has no violent intentions. As it happens, writer Bob Norman is acquainted with Adams and vouches for his character, although he does not defend his atrocious choice of words.

So what makes this tale a matter of national interest? This: When the Broward Sherrif's Office wanted info from Google, they used a disturbing strategy.

BSO turned to its child porn task force for help.

The task force, Law Enforcement Against Child Harm (LEACH), is adept at getting sensitive information on the web. But when deputies subpoenaed Google for the IP address of the Deerfield Beach Insider commenter, the heading on the document indicated that the case was part of an ongoing child porn investigation. The Broward Times' Elgin Jone wrote about the apparent deception Friday after BSO, which had stalled me, finally released the documents.

Now, for the record, I don't believe the proper way to fight corruption is to speak--even hypothetically--of violence breaking out at government agencies. So I'm not so bugged about the investigation into this comment. What bothers me is that law enforcement went to Google and claimed they were investigating kiddie porn, not potential threats of violence and/or political speech.

It's a troubling precedent.

Trojan First Amendment

by emptywheel

In his book, Unequal Protection, Thom Hartman shows how corporations (specifically, railroads) used the 14th Amendment--which ostensibly guaranteed African Americans the same rights other citizens enjoyed--to enshrine the concept of corporate personhood in our legal system.

With the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, the owners of the what were then America’s largest and most powerful corporations - the railroads - figured they’d finally found a way to reverse Paine’s logic and no longer have to answer to “we, the people.” They would claim that the corporation is a person. They would claim that for legal purposes, the certificate of incorporation declares the legal birth of a new person, who should therefore have the full protections the voters have under the Bill of Rights.

[snip]

Acting on behalf of the railroad barons, attorneys for the railroads repeatedly filed suits against local and state governments that had passed laws regulating railroad corporations. They rebelled against restrictions, and most of all they rebelled against being taxed.

The main tool the railroad’s lawyers tried to use was the fact that corporations had historically been referred to under law not as “corporations” but as “artificial persons.” Based on this, they argued, corporations should be considered “persons” under the free-the-slaves Fourteenth Amendment and enjoy the protections of the constitution just like living, breathing, human persons.

It's an important lesson in history--but also an important lesson in Trojan Horses. That is, when you're passing legislation, you might want to think about the unintended consequences the most powerful entities in the State might make of that legislation.

Case in point is the reporter shield bill just passed 398-21 in the House. The bill gives several acceptable reasons why the government can force a reporter to reveal her sources in a criminal investigation (after exhausting all other means of learning the source and proving the public interest in disclosing the source outweighs the public interest in the free flow of information). Those reasons are: