Politics

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21396125

Stephen Starr in Hamtramck, Michigan
Mon 14 Oct 2024 11.00 EDT

Last 30 minutes of the town-hall

A Texas county has mandated public libraries move a well-regarded children's book documenting the mistreatment of Native Americans in New England — Colonization and the Wampanoag Story — from the "non-fiction" section to "fiction." The decision was made after the government of Montgomery County, under pressure from right-wing activists, removed librarians from the process of reviewing children's books and replaced them with a "Citizens Review Committee." Colonization and the Wampanoag Story was "challenged" by an unknown person on September 10, 2024. The Committee responded by ordering that the book be moved to the fiction section of public libraries in Montgomery County by October 17, 2024, according to public records obtained by the Texas Freedom To Read Project shared with Popular Information.

The author of Colonization and the Wampanoag Story is Linda Coombs, a "historian from the Wampanoag Tribe." Coombs spent three decades working at the Wampanoag Indigenous Program, an initiative to preserve the history of the Wampanoag people. The book is published by Penguin Random House, which describes the book as "[t]he true story of the Indigenous Nations of the American Northeast, including the Wampanoag nation and others, and their history up to present day."

The move to reclassify Colonization and the Wampanoag Story comes after a controversial decision last March to remove librarians from the decision-making process when a children's book carried by Montgomery County is challenged. Previously, there was an advisory committee comprised of five librarians and five community members. As a result of the change, the librarians were removed from the Committee, and the determinations of the new Committee, which consisted of five non-librarians, became binding.

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics,” Trump said told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo in an interview on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen,” he added.

Foreign influence campaigns, or information operations, have been widespread in the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Influence campaigns are large-scale efforts to shift public opinion, push false narratives or change behaviors among a target population. Russia, China, Iran, Israel and other nations have run these campaigns by exploiting social bots, influencers, media companies and generative AI.

[...]

[Influence campaigns include] which researchers call inauthentic coordinated behavior. [They] identify clusters of social media accounts that post in a synchronized fashion, amplify the same groups of users, share identical sets of links, images or hashtags, or perform suspiciously similar sequences of actions.

[...]

[Researchers] have uncovered many examples of coordinated inauthentic behavior. For example, we found accounts that flood the network with tens or hundreds of thousands of posts in a single day. The same campaign can post a message with one account and then have other accounts that its organizers also control “like” and “unlike” it hundreds of times in a short time span. Once the campaign achieves its objective, all these messages can be deleted to evade detection. Using these tricks, foreign governments and their agents can manipulate social media algorithms that determine what is trending and what is engaging to decide what users see in their feeds.

[...]

One technique increasingly being used is creating and managing armies of fake accounts with generative artificial intelligence. [Researchers] estimate that at least 10,000 accounts like these were active daily on the platform, and that was before X CEO Elon Musk dramatically cut the platform’s trust and safety teams. We also identified a network of 1,140 bots that used ChatGPT to generate humanlike content to promote fake news websites and cryptocurrency scams.

In addition to posting machine-generated content, harmful comments and stolen images, these bots engaged with each other and with humans through replies and retweets.

[...]

These insights suggest that social media platforms should engage in more – not less – content moderation to identify and hinder manipulation campaigns and thereby increase their users’ resilience to the campaigns.

The platforms can do this by making it more difficult for malicious agents to create fake accounts and to post automatically. They can also challenge accounts that post at very high rates to prove that they are human. They can add friction in combination with educational efforts, such as nudging users to reshare accurate information. And they can educate users about their vulnerability to deceptive AI-generated content.

[...]

These types of content moderation would protect, rather than censor, free speech in the modern public squares. The right of free speech is not a right of exposure, and since people’s attention is limited, influence operations can be, in effect, a form of censorship by making authentic voices and opinions less visible.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama had frank words for Black men who may be considering sitting out the election.

“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” he said Thursday to Harris-Walz campaign volunteers and officials at a field office in Pittsburgh.

America’s first Black president touched a nerve among Democrats worried about Vice President Kamala Harris’ chances of becoming the second.

Harris is counting on Black turnout in battleground states such as Pennsylvania in her tight race with Republican Donald Trump, who has focused on energizing men of all races and tried to make inroads with Black men in particular.

Obama’s comments belie that Black men still overwhelmingly back Harris. But her campaign and allies have worked hard trying to shore up support with this critical group of voters — and addressing questions about potential misogyny.

Black Americans are the most Democratic-leaning racial demographic in the country, with Black men being outpaced only by Black women in their support for Democrats.

MADISON, Wisconsin — On an oppressively hot August day in downtown Madison, the signs of this famously liberal city’s progressive activism are everywhere. Buildings are draped in pride flags and Black Lives Matter signs are prominently displayed on storefronts. A musty bookstore advertises revolutionary titles and newspaper clippings of rallies against Donald Trump. A fancy restaurant features a graphic of a raised Black fist in its window, with chalk outside on the sidewalk reading “solidarity forever.”

Yet the Green Party, which bills itself as an independent political party that has the best interests of self-described leftists at heart, is nowhere to be found. It has no storefronts, no candidates running for local office, no relationship with the politically active UW-Madison campus, which has almost 50,000 students.

Where it does have purchase is in the nightmares of local Democrats, who are deeply afraid of the effect the third party might have here in November. As one of the seven presidential battleground states, Wisconsin is a critical brick in the so-called Blue Wall, the term for the run of Rust Belt states that are essential to Kamala Harris’ chances of winning the presidency. It’s a deeply divided state that’s become notorious for its razor-thin margins of victory — a place where statewide elections are so close that even tenths of a percentage point matter. Against that backdrop, the Green Party looms very large this year.

We all knew that Jill Stein was running as a spoiler, but to have someone on her team openly admit that? They're openly aiding and abetting the rise of fascism in the U.S.

Archived version

Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has proposed a wide variety of tax policy changes. Taken together, these proposals would, on average, lead to a tax cut for the richest 5 percent of Americans and a tax increase for all other income groups, an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has found.

If these proposals were in effect in 2026, the richest 1 percent would receive an average tax cut of about $36,300 and the next richest 4 percent would receive an average tax cut of about $7,200. All other groups would see a tax increase with the hike on the middle 20 percent at about $1,500 and the increase on the lowest-income 20 percent of Americans at about $800.

[...]

Trump has offered several tax proposals, which are all included in these estimates:

• Extending the temporary provisions in Trump’s 2017 tax law that will otherwise expire at the end of 2025, except for the $10,000 cap on State and Local Tax (SALT) deductions, which Trump says he would not extend
• Exempting certain types of income from taxes (overtime pay, tips, and Social Security benefits)
• Reducing the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 20 percent and then further reducing it to 15 percent for “companies that make their product in America”
• Repealing tax credits enacted as part of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that provide incentives for the production and use of green energy
• Imposing a new 20 percent tariff on imported goods, with a higher rate of 60 percent for goods from China

[...]

Measured as a share of income, the tax increases faced by most Americans would fall hardest on working-class families. [...] The middle 20 percent of Americans would face a tax increase equal to 2.1 percent of their income, while the poorest 20 percent of Americans would face a tax increase equal to 4.8 percent of their income – all while the top 5 percent get a tax cut.

I struggled with which community to put this in, but ultimately: When a presidential candidate tries to stop a movie about himself from being released, that's politics.

I've got my ticket for the first showing in town!

Archived version

Global trade records [...] show a printing company in China’s eastern city of Hangzhou shipped close to 120,000 of the Bibles to the United States between early February and late March.

The estimated value of the three separate shipments was $342,000, or less than $3 per Bible, according to databases that use customs data to track exports and imports. The minimum price for the Trump-backed Bible is $59.99, putting the potential sales revenue at about $7 million.

The Trump Bible’s connection to China, which has not been previously reported, reveals a deep divide between the former president’s harsh anti-China rhetoric and his rush to cash in while campaigning.

[...]

Trump didn’t say where the “God Bless the USA” Bibles are printed, or what they cost; a copy hand-signed by the former president sells for $1,000. Trump also didn’t disclose how much he earns per sale.

[...]

The Bibles are sold exclusively through a website that states it is not affiliated with any political campaign nor is it owned or controlled by Trump.

[...]

The website states that Trump’s name and image are used under a paid license from CIC Ventures, a company Trump reported owning in his most recent financial disclosure. CIC Ventures earned $300,000 in Bible sales royalties, according to the disclosure. It’s unclear what period that covers or how much Trump received in additional payments since the disclosure was released in August.

[...]

For years, Trump has castigated Beijing as an obstacle to America’s economic success [...] But Trump also has an eye on his personal finances. Pitching Bibles is one of a dizzying number of for-profit ventures he’s launched or promoted, including diamond-encrusted watches, sneakers, photo books, cryptocurrency and digital trading cards.

[...]

“You have to assume that everything that the individual does is being done as a candidate and so that any money that flows through to him benefits him as a candidate,” Claire Finkelstein [founder of the nonpartisan Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law and a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania] said. “Suppose Vladimir Putin were to buy a Trump watch. Is that a campaign finance violation? I would think so.”

Selling Bibles, she added, “strikes me as a profoundly problematic mixing of religion and state.”

[...]

As president, Trump would be in a position to influence policies and markets to benefit businesses in which he and his family have financial stakes. While president, his administration exempted Bibles and other religious texts from tariffs imposed on billions of dollars of Chinese goods

[...]

The Chinese printing company confirms shipments.

The primary group supporting Amendment 4, Floridians Protecting Freedom, is running television ads supporting its passage. One such ad is a first-personal narrative of a woman named Caroline who was diagnosed with brain cancer while pregnant with her second child. "The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom," Caroline says in the ad. "Florida has now banned abortion, even in cases like mine." Caroline urges voters to support Amendment 4 to "protect women like me."

On October 3, the Florida Department of Health sent a letter to Mark Higgins, the General Manager of WFLA, Tampa's NBC affiliate. The letter, sent by Florida Department of Health General Counsel John Wilson, claimed that airing the ad violates Florida law. Wilson cites Florida's law against "sanitary nuisance," which prohibits "the commission of any act… by which… the health and lives of individuals… may be endangered." Wilson argues that WFLA's decision to air the ad could "threaten or impair the health and lives of women." Wilson advised Higgins that, now that he has been notified that the ad is creating a "sanitary nuisance," WFLA must stop airing it within 24 hours. Failure to do so, Wilson writes, would be a crime punishable by up to 60 days in prison under Florida law. The letter was first reported by investigative reporter Jason Garcia.

Don't think most Invidious instances work any more, but you should be able to watch on FreeTube.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate the law in Texas, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans.

The justices did not detail their reasoning for keeping in place a lower court order that said hospitals cannot be required to provide pregnancy terminations if they would break Texas law. There were no publicly noted dissents.

The decision comes weeks before a presidential election where abortion has been a key issue after the high court’s 2022 decision overturning the nationwide right to abortion.

The justices rebuffed a Biden administration push to throw out the lower court order. The administration argues that under federal law hospitals must perform abortions if needed in cases where a pregnant patient’s health or life is at serious risk, even in states where it’s banned.

Today's the deadline for AK, AZ, AR, FL, GA, IN, KY, LA, MS, NM, OH, RI, SC, TN, TX.

In addition to the obvious, we are voting for:

State constitutional rights to abortion in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Nevada, and South Dakota.

Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin have initiatives on the ballot to ban noncitizens from voting. It's already illegal, but the initiatives will probably be used to harass and disenfranchise minorities and activists, if they pass.

Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, D.C., Alaska, and Missouri will vote to adopt or prohibit ranked choice voting.

Alaska, California, Massachusetts, and Missouri will vote to adopt a $15-18 minimum wage.

And so on. Ballotpedia has a complete list.

Go register to vote, or check your registration if you've already registered.