Collective Bargaining isn't the Problem

This is an example of what happens when people's livelihood is tied to political posturing.

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

When government is the employer, employment questions become policy questions … and policy questions are intrinsically political questions. This means that all the players involved will mobilize political power to get the answers they want.

The problem isn’t the existence of a teachers’ union. The problem is on the other side of the negotiating table.

Get government out of education, and the alleged rapaciousness of teachers’ unions is limited by the ability or inability of private employers to meet their demands (or their ability to generate revenue by forming their own cooperatives and serving willing customers). Read more at c4ss.org

 

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Rapid Fire Crowd Control

"Arsenal of Freedom" alert: #activists take note, prepare to defend yourself against rapid-fire weapons of suppression.

Amplify’d from www.newscientist.com

THE US army is planning to field "rubber bullets" for machine guns. Military officials claim the ammunition will allow them to more effectively quell violent protests without loss of life, but human rights campaigners are alarmed by the new weapon.

Firing rapidly at long range is likely to be dangerously inaccurate, says Angela Wright of Amnesty International. "Such a weapon system would allow for a burst of non-accurate fire at a crowd, with high risk of hitting bystanders, ricochets and of hitting vulnerable areas of the body," she says. Read more at www.newscientist.com

 

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Guerrilla Networking: Internet Access for the Coming Apocalypse

Keeping up with your web comics when the Zombies are at your door (not really)

Amplify’d from www.pcworld.com

These days, no popular movement goes without an Internet presence of some kind, whether it's organizing on Facebook or spreading the word through Twitter. And as we've seen in Egypt, that means that your Internet connection can be the first to go. Whether you're trying to check in with your family, contact your friends, or simply spread the word, here are a few ways to build some basic network connectivity when you can't rely on your cellular or landline Internet connections. Read more at www.pcworld.com

 

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Top 10 Logical Fallacies in Politics

Knowledge is power, people. Purge these maggots of sloppy thinking from you own brains and learn to identify them.

Amplify’d from open.salon.com

#5.

THE UNFALSIFIABLE HYPOTHESIS/SPECIAL PLEADING

We've all tried debating somebody with an unfalsifiable hypothesis, and we all know how futile it is. An unfalsifiable hypothesis is exactly what it sounds like, a theory that cannot be disproved. The simplest example is solipsism, the philosophical notion that the only thing that really exists is you and that everything you perceive and experience is a figment of your own imagination. There's simply no logical way to argue against this notion. Like the slippery slope, it might be true (yeah, you might be the only person in existence, and you're only reading this because you've made the whole thing up in your sick, twisted mind), but it's still a faulty argument. Note, though, that some unfalsifiable hypotheses, though they can't be disproved, can still be proved. If aliens landed on the front lawn of the White House, for instance, that would pretty definitively prove they exist, even though there is no way to disprove the existence of aliens today. Read more at open.salon.com

 

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Rushed renewal for PATRIOT Act defeated

Amplify’d from www.eff.org

Today in the U.S. House of Representatives, an unlikely alliance of House Democrats and Republicans stood up for civil liberties and successfully beat back a fast-track attempt to reauthorize the USA PATRIOT Act without the much-needed checks and balances EFF has championed.

The renewal bill voted on today would have extended three dangerous surveillance provisions in the PATRIOT Act until December 2011, provisions that are otherwise set to expire at the end of this month. In order to pass under the fast-track procedure adopted by House leadership to prevent the introduction of any reform-minded amendments, the bill would have had to garner a two/thirds majority--that is, 290 votes. The renewal effort narrowly failed on a final vote of 277 Yeahs to 148 Nays, thanks to the staunch opposition of Democratic leaders and an insurgent movement of freshman Republican Representatives and "Tea Party" conservatives who were unwilling to rubber-stamp the PATRIOT renewal. Read more at www.eff.org

 

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Our Own Worst Enemies

Stop hitting yourself.

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

“Government is just all of us working together.” “We are the government.” I frequently read such statements by liberals who react with alarm to the very notion that someone might fear the government.

If we are the government, we certainly do a lot of stuff to ourselves that isn’t very nice. Here, in no particular order, are some examples from the past week or two: Read more at c4ss.org

 

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Data Privacy Day is Among Us

Get out there and flaunt your privacy!

Amplify’d from techliberation.com

To appreciate Data Privacy Day you must first ignore the Euro-babble description of what is Data Privacy Day (“an international celebration of the dignity of the individual expressed through personal information”) and take it for what it really is: a prodding for Internet users to take a critical look at how they share and communicate information online. Read more at techliberation.com

 

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A Step Toward a Decentralized Currency

Rainey Reitman on Bitcoin and the value of digital curency.

Amplify’d from www.eff.org

To understand digital currency, one must first note that money in the digital age has moved from a largely anonymous system to one increasingly laden with tracking, control and regulatory overhead. Our cold hard cash is now shepherded through a series of regulated financial institutions like banks, credit unions and lenders. Bitcoin, created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, is a peer-to-peer digital currency system that endeavors to re-establish both privacy and autonomy by avoiding the banking and government middlemen. The goal is to allow individuals and merchants to generate and exchange modern money directly. Once the Bitcoin software has been downloaded, a user can store Bitcoins and exchange them directly with other users or merchants — without the currency being verified by a third party such as a bank or government. It uses a unique system to prevent multiple-spending of each coin, which makes it an interesting development in the movement toward digital cash systems. Read more at www.eff.org

 

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Targeting our efforts

Kevin Carson points the way.

"When the wise man points at the moon, the fool looks at his finger."

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

John Robb, who writes about asymmetric warfare and networked organization, is one of my favorite writers.  A central theme of his work is what he calls “systems disruption.”  To disrupt centralized, hierarchical systems, it’s not necessary to take over or destroy even a significant portion of their infrastructures.  It’s simply necessary to destroy the most vulnerable of their key nodes and render the overall system non-functional.

We can apply these lessons to our own movement to supplant the state.  Conventional politics aims at taking over the state’s policy apparatus and using it to implement one’s own goals.  But taking over the state through conventional politics is enormously costly.

We must find some weak point besides gaining control of the state.  For us, the state’s systempunkt is its enforcement capability.  By attacking the state at its weak point, its ability to enforce its laws, we can neutralize its ability to interfere with our building the kind of society we want here and now — and we can do so at a tiny fraction of the cost of gaining power through conventional politics. Read more at c4ss.org

 

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Why you should always encrypt your smartphone

Ryan Radia delivers solid advice on protecting your privacy.

Amplify’d from arstechnica.com

Last week, California's Supreme Court reached a controversial 5-2 decision in People v. Diaz (PDF), holding that police officers may lawfully search mobile phones found on arrested individuals' persons without first obtaining a search warrant. The court reasoned that mobile phones, like cigarette packs and wallets, fall under the search incident to arrest exception to the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

California's opinion in Diaz is the latest of several recent court rulings upholding warrantless searches of mobile phones incident to arrest. While this precedent is troubling for civil liberties, it's not a death knell for mobile phone privacy. If you follow a few basic guidelines, you can protect your mobile device from unreasonable search and seizure, even in the event of arrest. In this article, we will discuss the rationale for allowing police to conduct warrantless searches of arrestees, your right to remain silent during police interrogation, and the state of mobile phone security. Read more at arstechnica.com

 

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Default comment for any police misconduct story

Brad Spangler has composed a handy response for police misconduct reports. Yes, it is as simple as that. You want reform? This is reform.

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

Please feel free to save this little text blurb I composed earlier today and use it yourself as a default comment on ANY police misconduct story.

“Simple economics tells us that any monopoly will have a strong tendency toward excessively high price, poor service/product quality, poor customer service and poor service/product availability. Police are a service monopoly. If you don’t like this [INSERT STORY REFERENCE], you basically have to support opening up competition — which makes you an anarchist. It’s as simple as that.” Read more at c4ss.org

 

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Greenwashed Corporatism is Still Corporatism

Posted by Kevin Carson at C4SS

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

I hear frequently from a doctoral student named Keith Taylor, who’s researching electrical power cooperatives and decentralized models for developing wind power.  He’s sent me quite a bit of material, over the past year or so, on the extent to which government “alternative energy” policy systematically privileges large-scale, conventional corporate business models and expensive proprietary technology.

The government’s refundable tax credits, for example, don’t go to rural electric co-ops because they’re tax-exempt.  Sounds only fair, right?  But the thing is the credits are refundable — which means that if a business pays any taxes at all the credits it’s eligible for don’t have to bear any relation to the amount of taxes actually paid.  It’s like a $20,000 welfare check that kicks in when you earn a single dollar in wage income, but is unavailable to the unemployed.  So the credits are, in fact, a massive subsidy to the largest corporate wind farms. Read more at c4ss.org

 

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The Net Neutrality Fight Goes on…and on

Larry Downes comments on CES panel debate over the FCC and the steps Congress is taking (HR96)

Amplify’d from techliberation.com

I published an article for CNET late last night on a spirited debate at CES yesterday over the FCC’s recently-enacted “open Internet” rules, aka net neutrality.  Panelists from the FCC, Congress, AT&T, Verizon, Google and the Center for Democracy and Technology actually agreed on one point, which is that the neutrality saga has only completed its first chapter.

While some panelists believe the next step is more regulation, others promised Congressional and perhaps court challenges aimed at undoing the Commission’s “Christmas Surprise.”  As I note in the piece, the new Congress, with its Republican majority in the House, has already taken up reversing the rulemaking as a priority.  Rep. Marsha Blackburn has introduced legislation, signed by 60 other members including at least one Democrat, that would make clear the FCC’s lack of authority over broadband access.

And Neil Fried, senior counsel to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, promised the overfull audience that the Committee would take up the FCC’s “overreaching” as its first tech agenda item. Read more at techliberation.com

 

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The Next Net

Douglas Rushkoff prepares us for the next step.

Amplify’d from shareable.net

The moment the "net neutrality" debate began was the moment the net neutrality debate was lost. For once the fate of a network -  its fairness, its rule set, its capacity for social or economic reformation - is in the hands of policymakers and the corporations funding them - that network loses its power to effect change. The mere fact that lawmakers and lobbyists now control the future of the net should be enough to turn us elsewhere.

That's right. I propose we abandon the Internet, or at least accept the fact that it has been surrendered to corporate control like pretty much everything else in Western society. It was bound to happen, and its flawed, centralized architecture made it ripe for conquest. Read more at shareable.net

 

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Iraq's New Government Is As Old As Time

Meet the new boss...

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

The Iraqi people ought to be euphoric with anticipation of the new governing coalition, a change a lot like the one Barack Obama represents in this country. Now that the politicians have decided how to parcel out bureaucratic realms of authority, they can get to work on discharging the terminal duty within politics, apportionment of the country’s wealth and natural resources among the influential.

Party politics is a diversion, one of many like national security or some amorphous notion of the “common good” that are all subsumed within what Kevin Carson has phrased “ideological hegemony”; the dominant linguistic and cultural paradigm has succeeded in, for instance, making Americans think that someone like Nancy Pelosi, just another garden variety shill for corporatism, is situated on the far reaches of the ideological left. Notwithstanding the unsavory sport of politics, though, there are alternatives that survive, including a principled left that stands at variance with the barren, political left. Read more at c4ss.org

 

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Two Scathing Dissents on the FCC's Illegal, Unnecessary & Harmful Net Neutrality Order

Federal Communications Commissioners Rob McDowell and Meredith Baker speak their minds.

Amplify’d from techliberation.com

The FCC’s order still isn’t out (just a news release in .DOC form), but the Commissioner’s accompanying statements are. Anyone interested in net neutrality regulation or the coming political, legal and constitutional fights over it must read the scathing dissents by Commissioners Rob McDowell and Meredith Baker.

Commissioner McDowell summarizes his dissent beautifully: Nothing is broken in the Internet access market that needs fixing; The FCC does not have the legal authority to issue these rules; The proposed rules are likely to cause irreparable harm; and Existing law and Internet governance structures provide  ample consumer protection in the event a systemic market failure occurs. Read more at techliberation.com

 

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Did societies evolve to be corrupt?

Corruption is how the privileged share their privilege (Latin for "private law") with the un-privileged. Sharing is good, right?

Amplify’d from io9.com

Corruption is as old as human history. For as long as people have organized themselves into groups with powerful leaders, those leaders have sometimes abused their power. But evolutionary biologists say corruption might actually be holding societies together.

Their findings make a lot of intuitive sense - most people will continue to cooperate to keep their society together, in part because they don't want to be punished by law enforcers. People will tolerate a certain amount of corruption from their leaders and law enforcers as long as there isn't too much of it. Above a certain level of corruption, people stop seeing the point of cooperating and society begins to break down. Read more at io9.com

 

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Preserving the Open Internet by Changing Everything

Amplify’d from techliberation.com

It doesn’t matter how well-meaning these rules may be, but as a non-legislative body, the FCC must have been granted the authority to regulate in this area specifically from a legislative body (Congress) and it has not received such authority. As Commissioner McDowell pointed out, why would have Congress introduced legislation just a few months ago addressing this very issue if the FCC already had direct regulatory authority in this manner? Read more at techliberation.com

 

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Get a Taste of Some Nutritious Freedom

Speak out on the Food Safety Modernization Act: http://pvox.co/2qCXsA

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

Debate over the Food Safety Modernization Act reflects a broader discussion about the American food supply. While tweaks to the regulatory system could improve things, a shift away from industrial agriculture and lobbying toward a more consumer-driven approach should be the long term goal.

Government regulation of food production encourages centralization.  Government focuses on enforcing minimum standards, not encouraging best practices. It requires costly procedures that drive small producers out of the market without necessarily improving the quality of food.

Any regulatory regime will be implemented by the Food and Drug Administration, a federal bureaucracy with connections to large producers. A nice illustration of the revolving door between government and business lobbies is provided by Judith McGeary of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, in comments on grist.org: “FDA is staffed by people who come from within the industrial food system, many of whom are looking to get jobs in that food system when they leave the agency.” Read more at c4ss.org

 

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Net Neutrality: A Christmas Gift for Washington Lawyers & Lobbyists

Also see: http://drewt333.amplify.com/2010/12/20/red-tape-under-the-tree-fcc-plans-internet-regulation-for-christmas/

Amplify’d from techliberation.com

I can’t help but to be amused by all the delightfully naive talk on Twitter and in the blogosphere about how the FCC’s move to impose Net Neutrality regulation is about “standing up for the little guy,” “putting consumers first” or “preserving Net freedom and openness.”  It all reminds me of a line from those rock-n’-roll sages Guns N’ Roses: “I’ve worked too hard for my illusions just to throw them all away.”   But I can’t help but be jaded by actual history, in which special interests and Washington insiders co-opt each and every regulatory process in this field for their own ends. Read more at techliberation.com

 

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