Data Dangers

There's a thing happening the past few years of the tech companies rushing around trying to build data centers everywhere. Normally, a data center is a building - oft-times a warehouse - where companies can maintain their servers, networks, and other business functions.

Thing is, most of these newer data centers are built to handle artificial intelligence (AI), which requires more processing speed and power that demands more electricity - and water for coolant - to where the local communities are shoved out of their own access to such resources. These data centers also take up more land than ever before, squeezing out communities looking to expand housing, maintain farmland, or protect fragile ecosystems.

It's a problem that's literally developing in my back yard, as there's a corporation trying to build a large data center in nearby Fort Meade where the city council approved a deal in spite of the large and angry turnout of locals who opposed it (via Chad Mills at ABC Channel 28):

The Fort Meade City Commission unanimously approved a controversial development agreement Tuesday night, which advances a massive data center proposal that has drawn weeks of concern from neighbors, especially over water use and the project’s long-term impact on the city.

The vote clears a major hurdle for Stonebridge’s proposed data center campus, planned for more than 1,300 acres northwest of downtown. The project calls for up to 4.4 million square feet of development and, if ultimately built out, could become one of the largest data center campuses of its kind in Florida.

Tuesday’s meeting stretched for hours, with many in the crowd speaking in opposition before commissioners cast their votes.

Mayor Jaret Landon Williams told the crowd the city was not deciding whether a data center could be built on the site. He described Tuesday’s vote as approval of the development agreement tied to a project that had already won land use and zoning approvals during a meeting last June...

What I can tell you about Fort Meade is that it's a small community in a very rural part of the county, where most of the surrounding lakes are carved-out shallow remnants of where phosphate mining took place, meaning there's not a lot of water resources to rely on. Stonebridge's people were claiming they'll only take up 50,000 gallons a day for "potable" use only, but that's still an insane amount of consumption (and I don't believe them when they're claiming they will recycle water coolant: for what I know, data centers evaporate every last drop). 

Internet connectivity out there is meager at best, begging the question how well that AI data center can reach the web. And the electric grid out that way arguably can't handle an energy hog of that scale. They're going to have to add more power stations (or do something like build a solar panel farm to support it). It's like the only reason the Stonebridge corporation wants to build out there is because there's not a lot of residents who could complain when things go bad.

If you read Mills' article above, you'll see photos of the city hall turnout by locals to where the room was packed and standing room only: I've rarely seen a turnout for local issues like that before. It should have been a warning to the city council, but they ignored it as well as ignoring the evidence that a lot of Americans across the nation hate the spread of data centers (via Jeffrey M. Jones at the Gallup news site):

Seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed. Barely a quarter favor these projects, with 7% strongly in favor.

These results, from a March 2-18 Gallup survey, represent the first time Gallup has asked about data center construction, a topic that has met fierce opposition from local residents in many parts of the country. These data centers house computing equipment that helps power AI technology used by businesses, universities and other institutions. The centers cover large areas of land, require extensive amounts of electricity to operate and need substantial water to cool the equipment, raising concerns about their impact on the environment and local electric bills...

The March survey asked people to rate their level of concern about the environmental impact of AI data centers. Forty-six percent say they worry a great deal and 24% a fair amount, largely mirroring the degrees of opposition to data center construction.

To gain a deeper understanding of people’s reasons for favoring or opposing data center construction in their area, Gallup asked an open-ended question on an April web survey using the Gallup Panel. Americans who favor the building of a data center in their area mostly cite the potential economic benefits. Opponents of data centers have more varied reasons for their position, but they focus mostly on environmental concerns.

Half of opponents mention data centers’ excessive use of resources, including 18% each mentioning their use of water and energy. Sixteen percent mention a related environmental concern of pollution, including noise pollution and air and water pollution...

Most of the remaining opposition stems from general or specific concerns about artificial intelligence.

Speaking of, the growing disdain towards AI especially as the "techbro" elites push the technology is growing louder, even at college graduation ceremonies (from Mirna Alsharif and Austin Mullen at NBC News):

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed multiple times Friday while discussing artificial intelligence during a commencement speech at the University of Arizona.

Schmidt, who led Google for a decade, opened his remarks by reflecting on his own student years and the rise of the computer, — a device named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 1982. He traced its evolution into the laptop and smartphone and its proliferation through the internet and social media...

Schmidt then drew a parallel between artificial intelligence and the transformative impact of the computer — and was immediately met with boos.

“I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you,” Schmidt said, addressing the crowd as many continued to boo him. “There is a fear ... there is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics is fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create, and I understand that fear.”

No, Schmidt, I don't think you understood that fear. It's not so much fear about losing jobs as it is fear of drowning in slop.

The disdain towards AI isn't entirely built on hostility towards technology overall: nearly everyone accepts the usefulness of things like smartphones and computers. Most of the ire is coming from getting overwhelmed - having it shoved almost literally down our throats - by high-tech oligarchs openly desperate to get people to buy their latest shiny toy that doesn't even work well.

I wrote about Artificial Intelligence over at my librarian blog last year, as the use of AI in research and document creation is showing up more in my profession:

This is a serious problem facing librarians and the overall reference/research profession. As a reference librarian it is (maybe was now) my job to ensure the proper information got to the people asking for it, that the materials were well-vetted, fact-checked, and proven. I was in a lot of trouble if I gave people the wrong info.

Now were we are with AI as a research "tool" except that people are expecting it to be 100 percent accurate; when AI still has problems seeing beyond the poor data getting uploaded, or understanding that the algorithms that produced those results might have been in error. It doesn't help if a patron's existing bias blinds them to the factual information that does come up: they'll take the bad info if it fits their world-view (even if it kills them).

Nothing since then has changed: AI is still faulty, still creating fake data, still untrustworthy, still a major health risk. And yet we are all getting AI shoved into our daily lives - in our browsers, our email services, even house appliances - when we didn't ask or even need them.

We're all in danger with this rush to an AI future that doesn't even look like it will work as promised.

Gods - or else Tech Support - help us. 

Where the Rich and the Racist Disagree

Update: Many thanks and Happy New Year to Batocchio at Crooks & Liars for adding this article to Mike's Blog Round-Up! Stay safe everyone, and meet me in Gainesville FL this February 1st for the Sunshine State Book Festival. ;-)

As part of the ongoing American meltdown this winter, we're witnessing a very public and very nasty spat between donald trump's MAGA voting base and trump's billionaire buddies. There's a quick refresher at NPR's All Things Considered with Stephen Fowler commenting:

So for people who are not terminally online, here's a quick recap. Trump made a number of smaller staffing announcements for his second term earlier this week. One of them is a high-profile tech entrepreneur named Sriram Krishnan, who's worked at Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, you name it. Far-right activists started trashing the pick on the social media site X, pointing out that Krishnan was born in India, that he previously made comments advocating for more green cards, and devolving into a lot of racist and anti-immigrant attacks on foreign workers that come to the U.S. on these H-1B visas...

the debate over H-1Bs and legal immigration and what Trump might do about them is not something new. In his first term, Trump said that certain visa programs were being abused to bring in foreign workers to replace American workers. He suspended the H-1B program during the pandemic for the same reason, but this time around, things could be different. People in the tech industry, with the Musk-Ramaswamy viewpoint that the U.S. needs more of these top workers no matter where they're from to keep an edge in fields like AI - they're more in Trump's ear and his good graces this time around.

There's also interest in reforming the visa process not just for these tech workers - from lawmakers across the aisle who say it's an overly complex system chock full of carveouts that benefit certain industries and, like Trump has said, are being abused. But there's also a lot of conservatives, especially among the base of the GOP, that shape primary elections, who believe Trump's hard-line immigration stances means reform should primarily come in a reduction of immigrants...

Fowler mentioned the "devolving into a lot of racist and anti-immigrant attacks" but didn't discuss it in detail, considering how that racism is foundational to the Far Right anger towards even legal migrants (like we saw during the elections with the spiteful attacks towards Haitian migrants in Springfield). Steve Benen over at Maddow's Blog (MSNBC) digs a little deeper:

It was against this backdrop that the president-elect announced early last week that venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan — a proponent of green cards for skilled workers — would work in Trump’s incoming administration, serving in a top artificial intelligence policy post. The news was not well received on the Far Right.

A highly controversial MAGA activist named Laura Loomer — who spent at least part of the year as a member of Trump’s inner circle — condemned the decision to hire Krishnan, pointing to his support for the H-1B program, which provides temporary worker visas for high-skilled tech workers. An ugly back-and-forth, which some have labeled the “MAGA civil war,” erupted soon after.

On one side of the divide are prominent far-right voices such as Loomer and Steve Bannon, who have spent the last week clashing with figures such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. They all remain Trump allies, of course, but they’ve also targeted each other in caustic and personal ways, culminating in the world’s wealthiest individual publishing a tweet in which he urged many of the president-elect’s supporters, “Take a big step back and f--- yourself in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”

Subtle, it was not.

We are witnessing the divide between the massive and anger-driven Far Right voting base that has been stirred up by fearmongering and racism to hate ALL immigrants (unless they're from Norway) and the upper elite billionaires of the Far Right who have fed all that fearmongering and racism to their masses while profiting - and hoping to profit even more - from that very immigration system that brings them cheap - and indentured - labor. From Janice Gassam Asare at Forbes (paywalled):

The support of H-1B visas by billionaires like Musk, Ramaswamy and others should come as no surprise. On the surface, these work visas seem like a win-win, allowing highly skilled workers in specialized fields to contribute to the U.S. labor force while being granted the ability to stay in the country. What isn’t talked about enough is the exploitation that these workers often experience. The Economic Policy Institute reported that a majority of H-1B workers are paid below median wages. Not only is paying employees lower wages advantageous for employers, but workers on H-1B visas may be less likely to report workplace harm and mistreatment due to fears of how the loss of an H-1B job could drastically impact their life. It’s not outside the realm of possibilities that because of what’s at stake, many H-1B workers are more compliant and less rebellious than American employees, which would naturally make them a more enticing hire. 

Billionaires like Musk need to rile up the voting base to keep them compliant and voting Republican - so that the Republicans can then gift those billionaires massive tax cuts and easy access to the federal pork barrel - but they need the current immigration system to hire thousands of workers who can't fight for better wages or defend themselves in a legal system skewed against them. This is a dynamic vulnerable to rebellion by the MAGA base when they realize their racism has limits. Back to Asare:

Ramaswamy and Musk’s posts on X have sparked a bitter debate among Trump’s supporters. Some Trump supporters have resorted to spewing racist and xenophobic rhetoric online based on fears of a “browning” America and anxieties about being replaced. Instead of uniting across party lines over class struggles and society’s collective disdain for rising inflation, racism has reigned supreme. At the end of the day, capitalism trumps nativism and regardless of one’s party affiliation, the almighty dollar rules. Many of Trump’s supporters may feel hoodwinked; voting for him because of his immigration promises, only to learn that Trump and his billionaire allies are more focused on how foreign workers make American businesses more profitable...

At the moment, this schism is mostly relegated to the social media arena where the MAGA haters are expressing their fury towards their GOP masters. There is no sign that this will translate into the Far Right voters from abandoning the Republicans altogether (after all, where can they go?), or any political factions in Congress turning against trump and Musk to make them suffer for their pro H-1B stances. 

But this all highlights one real fact: The voter anger that supported trump this 2024 wasn't really about inflation, or economic anxiety. It was about hating others who weren't privileged, who weren't viewed as American, who weren't "born here" and "needed to go back where you came from."

It was always the racism. It was always that fear - unjustified, uncontrollable - of the dread Others - even among the non-White communities - that the Far Right demonized for political gain.

That racism won't quiet down any time soon. In the coming year, we are going to see our fellow (White) Americans at their worst, on a scale we haven't seen since the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s.

Gods help us all, as that rage will consume more innocent lives and destroy more communities than the Far Right believes will happen.

Stay safe this 2025.

Fiscal Injustice On Display

In the follow-up to the guilty verdicts dropped on donald trump's corporation about a month ago, today we see the justice imposed for trump's fraudulent tax schemes. The judge imposed the largest possible fine allowed under the law... and yet the fine was honestly not enough. Via Ilya Marritz, Andrea Bernstein, and Brian Mann at NPR:

A state court in New York has ordered two companies owned by former President Donald Trump to pay $1.61 million in fines and penalties for tax fraud.

The amount, the maximum allowed under state sentencing guidelines, is due within 14 days of Friday's sentencing.

"This conviction was consequential, the first time ever for a criminal conviction of former President Trump's companies," said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Bragg said he thinks the financial penalty for decades of fraudulent behavior wasn't severe enough.

"Our laws in this state need to change in order to capture this type of decade-plus systemic and egregious fraud," he said...

In context, the level of fraud trump and his corporation committed was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Business listings - via AtoZ Databases, which is behind paywalls - put the Trump Organization's yearly revenue around $1.6 billion . Forbes magazine estimated in 2022 the value of trump's personal holdings around $3.2 billion. trump may not be the richest duck in Duckberg, but he's still rolling in enough cash that $1.61 million is literally pocket change to him. It is roughly a tenth of a percent to trump.

This is where we run into the problem with the American legal system: The limitation - nay, inability - to effectively punish wrong-doers proportional to the crimes they've committed.

In terms of massive fines or penalties to discourage would-be reckless never-do-wells from committing those crimes, there will never be a fine large enough to do so. Greed is too much a motivation for those who think they will never get caught.

Punishment itself is not an effective deterrent to stop crime. Poor people who commit crimes do it because they have to. Rich people who commit crimes do it because they want to get richer. The sad thing is, we can't walk away entirely from the penalty system we have to uphold the laws. We still need some form of a penalty for law-breakers, so those of us who are law-abiding can keep faith in the legal system.

The injustice comes into play when we look at the burden of punishment we inflict on the guilty (and sadly on the falsely accused). Poor criminals are often hit with fines in the thousands of dollars that they can't afford to pay, forcing them deeper into poverty (SEE the unjust fine system that decimated the Ferguson MO community) and more likely to commit more crimes to escape the trap. Rich criminals are often hit with fines in the thousands of dollars, which barely puts a dint in their wallets as they head out to another part of the financial industry to run another fraudulent scam.

Fine a petty thief who tried to sneak off with a flatscreen TV worth $500 with a $10,000 fine and watch that thief lose his bank account, lose any legal means of employment to pay it off, lose any property his family owned (because they'll get sucked into the debt), and never get out of that spiral. Fine a white collar criminal who set up a scam fundraiser for $10 million with a $1 million fine, and watch that rich crook walk away with $9 million that his victims can't even sue to get back except for pennies on every dollar. There are thousands more victims of white collar crime than there are grocery stores bemoaning the loss of $3 bread loaves to shoplifting.

The income inequality adds onto the injustice of a legal system that punishes the poor too much and fails to punish the rich at all.

If there were any justice in this system, the criminal trial involving the Trump Organization should have included felony charges on donald trump (and the rest of the upper management like his elder kids who were part of the scams) instead of just the company itself. The fines shouldn't be capped to an arbitrary number - which is set at a level decades ago no longer reflecting the insane wealth of the few today - but scaled to the level of revenue/income the guilty actually have, so that the rich pay a greater burden for their sins compared to the poor struggling to get food on their tables. Any criminal act that defrauded people directly should require all money stolen from them recouped and given back, supplanting any civil court attempt to recover those funds.

One of the greatest open scandals of our legal system is how law enforcement fails to take financial fraud seriously as a problem. It comes up every time there's a stock market crash or bank run or "too big to fail" failures. The damage caused by white collar crimes are far greater and far reaching than anything a poor crook can pull off, and yet we punish the poor crook with a jail cell while the rich crook goes sailing to the Caribbean on whichever yacht the IRS didn't impound.

When you look back on the terrible history of going after white collar crime in this country: We jailed Martha Stewart because she was a bitch, not a criminal mastermind. And we jailed Martha Stewart for less than what the investment firms did to our housing market in 2007, for less than what donald trump and his corporate lackeys did with their tax dodging schemes.

Any legal reforms need to start with the reality that we must hold the wealthy criminals accountable, no more walking away, no more slaps on the wrist. Send the rich to jail like they were pot dealers (and free all those who are only guilty of pot dealing or other misdemeanor petty-ante shit). 

Mississippi Stealing

Political corruption, sad to say, is as old as politics itself. If you go back to the time of Hammurabi, you'll likely find court officials taking bribes from stone masons to avoid getting punished for racing their chariots through school zones. It doesn't matter which political party, doesn't matter which nation, doesn't matter which gender, doesn't matter the religion of the corrupt official or the race they identify. Greed is universally understood: It gets into anything where money and privilege is involved, and may God have mercy on the victims who suffer when the powerful get greedy.

One of the things in American politics is how the corruption plays out between the federal level and the states. As the dynamics of the Constitution shifted from states having more of the political might and wealth to the federal - it started under the Reconstruction era post-Civil War but by the time of the New Deal (and the Second World War) all the money (and the power) flowed from Washington DC - you saw the shift in corruption as well. If not the federal agencies and elected officials getting caught stealing from the till, it was the state-level officials who were funneling federal aid away from the citizens (who needed that aid) into the officials' own pockets.

A particularly ugly example of that just got revealed to the public this week, when federal and state investigators revealed that almost 77 million dollars meant for welfare programs to the state of Mississippi were diverted to other projects or organizations that directly profited either those state officials or their wealthy benefactors/allies. The story gained national attention from the revelation that famed sports star Brett Favre - football Hall of Famer from Southern Miss - was in on part of the theft. This is one of the few times on this blog I've ever linked to a story from ESPN:

An investigative report by Mississippi Today revealed Tuesday that former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant helped former NFL quarterback Brett Favre obtain welfare funds in order to help build a new volleyball center at the University of Southern Mississippi.

The news organization reviewed text messages from 2017 and 2019 that were filed Monday in the state of Mississippi's civil lawsuit over misspent welfare funds. The texts were filed by an attorney representing Nancy New, who has already pleaded guilty to 13 felony counts of bribery, fraud and racketeering for her role in the welfare scheme. New was the founder of the Mississippi Community Education Center, which was tasked with spending tens of millions in federal welfare funds to help the state.

State auditors determined nonprofit leaders misspent at least $77 million in welfare funds in the largest case of public fraud in Mississippi history.

The texts show Favre, New and Bryant discussing how to divert at least $5 million in welfare funds to build a volleyball stadium at Southern Miss. Favre played football at Southern Miss, and his daughter was a volleyball player there at the time some of the texts were sent.

"If you were to pay me is there anyway the media can find out where it came from and how much?" Favre asked New in 2017.

After telling Favre that "we never have that information publicized," she circled back to him the next day.

"Wow, just got off the phone with Phil Bryant! He is on board with us! We will get this done!" New told Favre...

Favre not only understood how bad this story would look if it got out, Favre expressed relief in a follow-up text - "Awesome! I needed to hear that for sure" - that he was going to get political cover from Mississippi's governor.

If you need context to understand why this is so disgusting and horrifying an act by Nancy New, Phil Bryant, Brett Favre, and several others: You need to understand that the not-so-great state of Mississippi is one of the poorest states in America. For a little more analysis, let's take a look at this (via Stephan Bisaha at NPR):

This is a tale of two Jackson, Mississippis.

There's Jackson, the state capital, run historically by white conservatives. Then there's Jackson, the 82 percent Black city, run by a mayor wanting to make it "the most radical city on the planet."

February's winter storm and water crisis provided just the latest high profile example of the two Jackson's clashing. State and local governments have made a pastime out of pointing fingers at each other for the city's woes, from crime to potholes to urban blight.

Mississippi leaders say Jackson is just one city and can't hog resources to fix problems found elsewhere in the state too. Jackson leaders say they need more state support and that Mississippi can't thrive while its largest city suffers.

For Jacksonians, it can feel like Jackson the city versus Jackson the capital.

"I don't see this legislative body as representing me," said Jackson State University Professor D'Arby Orey, referring to the Mississippi Legislature. "I don't really expect it to provide support for Jackson..."

That's usually how the relationship goes. Jackson requests state dollars, Mississippi says it will help, but other parts of the state need those resources too.

"We had 78 different systems throughout the entire state that were having and experiencing challenges," Reeves said at a press conference in March. "This is not an issue that is unique to our capital city."

State politicians also often say city leaders need to take more responsibility.

"The prime mover needs to be the city itself. It's the city of Jackson, Mississippi," Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann told the Mississippi Free Press. "How much money is it going to take, and how do you even pay for it? I haven't seen any of that."

Mississippi often places last on state lists for everything from health to income. Jackson also struggles with the same problems, with 23 percent of the city falling below the poverty line.

Jackson's mayor says the fate of the city and state can't be separated – more support from Mississippi for its largest city would mean growth for the rest of the state.

"Without question it can't change without a significant alteration in the relationship with the city of Jackson" Lumumba says. "Ultimately it is not just a Jackson problem. It is a state of Mississippi problem..."

That article was published in 2021. Just this past month August 2022 Jackson Mississippi went into full crisis as their water became too toxic for anything. And the state - which has all the money and power at that level - still doesn't seem to be doing a damn thing to fix it.

What is happening here is racism: Yes, I am going there.

Jackson is Mississippi's largest population center. You would think, rationally, that as the major center the state legislature and governor's office - which work there! - would care more to fund that metro and keep its infrastructure working well, make its schools better, make sure the workplaces are safe, the homes are well-built, the roads working, the pipes flowing. You want your major city to attract good business, keep families living there, grow and expand into a major metro the way southern cities like Atlanta and Orlando and Charlotte grew.

But the state legislature - through decades of political gerrymandering, open hostility to civil (and voting) rights, and constant corruption of social conservatives (who flipped from Democrats to Republicans during the post-60s realignment) - as noted in Bisaha's article is mostly White at 68 percent, while the city of Jackson is 82 percent Black. This is in a state of Mississippi with 58 percent Whites and 38 percent Blacks. Mississippi has the largest percentage of Black residents among all the states (The District of Columbia is higher but doesn't count as a state (yet, which may also explain why DC statehood remains undone)).

The mostly White Mississippi state legislature doesn't care about taking care of their own state, because God forbid any attempts to improve their education, health care, business startups, and/or overall economy may go to "those people". Jamelle Bouie noted this years ago at Slate:

Driven by its high poverty rate, Mississippi ranks low on health and wellness. It has one the highest rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes in the country, as well as the highest mortality rate for infants and adults. These ills are worst among its black residents: 43.2 percent of Mississippi blacks are afflicted by obesity and its associated problems and 44 percent live at or below the poverty line, compared with a—still high—30.2 percent obesity rate and 16 percent poverty rate for whites...

We know why Mississippi Republicans refuse to work with the ACA: A hyper-ideological, small government conservatism that disdains social programs and public investment. But it’s worth a look at the history behind that conservatism, which lives strongest in Mississippi but exists throughout the Deep South.

Mississippi has poor social outcomes and a threadbare safety net. It also has—and has long had—the largest black population in the country. And it’s where slavery was very lucrative, and Jim Crow most vicious. This is not a coincidence...

Where they existed, public services were sparse and utterly segregated. Anything public had to be kept separate from blacks, or degraded, if that wasn’t possible. To get a sense of the scale of white resistance in Mississippi, consider this: During the civil rights movement, white supremacists built a network of state and private agencies to wreak havoc on black activists with surveillance, economic reprisals, and extreme violence. One of them was the Mississippi Citizens Council, and it, writes historian Joseph Crespino, “[P]oliced a white racial authoritarianism that ran roughshod over the civil and political rights of white and black Mississippians both. Because of the Council’s influence, no place in the United States … came closer to resembling the repressiveness of apartheid South Africa than did Mississippi.”

More than a half-century later, and all of this is dead. But the ideas and culture it built are not. And why would they be? For nearly 100 years, Mississippi was a white supremacist police state. Of course this made a mark on its culture. Of course these ideas of exclusion—and specifically, of racial hostility to outside interference and public goods—are still embedded in the structure of its politics.

Today, Mississippi is politically polarized along racial lines. Whites are Republicans, blacks are Democrats, and the former controls state politics. Public investment isn’t just disdained, it’s attacked as racially suspect. “The Republican Party has never been the food stamp party, or the party of pork until desperation set in with Thad Cochran’s re-election bid,” said state Sen. Angela Hill during the Mississippi Senate Republican primary, in reference to Sen. Cochran’s outreach to black voters. The state is harshly carceral—jailing more people per capita than almost anywhere in the country, the majority of them black—and has a huge number of all-white private schools while the public school system is largely segregated...

Even after the Civil Rights era brought an end to Jim Crow, Mississippi's power structure merely realigned itself to the task of "Well, if we're supposed to make Them equal, let's make it so shitty there's nothing good about it for Them to enjoy." And so the corruption ignores the needs of the state's biggest city, ignores the need to improve the schools to let children - White and Black (and Latino and Creole and Cajun if you got 'em) - get educations that could make them smart enough for good jobs at decent wages, and ignores the reality that poverty hurts a majority of state residents regardless of race while the rich play around at the Biloxi casinos and whatever upper-class country clubs they have upriver. 

Mississippi has been one of the poorest states for generations, and the actions of these grifters - who I'm willing to bet will tell you that "poverty is a character flaw" instead of it being pressed down upon the poor to keep them poor - are keeping Mississippi broken and impoverished for their own greedy ends.

Every elected official past and present who had a hand in this $77 million dollar ripoff should be in handcuffs facing juries, every millionaire who got money they didn't need off these schemes should be in handcuffs facing juries, even Brett Favre - who was $100 million in net wealth already and could have easily used his celebrity to raise more - needs to hang his head in shame in front of a judge reading back to him the charges of stealing from the poor to make the rich richer.

Racism is at the root of a lot of our nation's sins. Don't be at all surprised Greed and Racism go happily hand-in-hand as we beat down the impoverished for our sins (and not theirs).

As We Get Closer to 2020, the Democrats Get Closer to Having Rich White Men Panic

You might remember me all the way back in January of this year railing against the foolishness of a rich white man with no political experience trying to pull that stunt with Democrats the way trump did with Republicans.

A lot of that had to do with party ideologies. Republicans are thrilled to have amateur CEOs run for office because they believe those CEOs are their betters. Democrats tend to root for candidates who, you know, actually know what they're doing in office. Dems want politicians who speak to the actual majority of Americans who are NOT rich greedy white assholes. Just sayin.

It still hasn't stopped Rich White Men(tm) try to insert themselves into a Democratic primary stage in obvious desperate attempts to control the debates and stop such dangerous talk about raising wealth taxes or revoking the GOP 2017 Tax Cut from Hell. Just look at Thomas Steyer who jumped in back in July and has gotten nowhere even with 47 million already spent on his campaign.

Just look at Michael Bloomberg: he's not ready to run and yet there he is. And he's making poor decisions that ought to drive him to shut down already (via Bill Scher at RealClearPolitics):

Bloomberg’s late-entry strategy is more ludicrous than what Clark, Thompson and Perry cooked up. Bloomberg plans to completely skip the first four contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, and begin competing on “Super Tuesday,” March 3, when 15 states will hold primaries.

There is superficial logic to this plan. The billionaire former Republican isn’t a great fit for the college-educated liberals of Iowa and New Hampshire, nor for the union workers of Nevada, nor for the African Americans of South Carolina. Winning any of those four small-state contests involves much retail campaigning, and Bloomberg is very late in assembling high-quality, locally sourced, get-out-the-vote operations. So, he might as well pass on the ground game and go straight to the air war — dumping millions into a Super Tuesday TV and online ad blitz.

But red flags are everywhere. The last person who tried to circumvent multiple demographically unfriendly early states was Rudy Giuliani in 2008. After he performed poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire, he declared he would skip the next three contests and focus solely on Florida. But having already been weakened by defeat, he never found his footing in the Sunshine State and fizzled out.

Bloomberg wants to avoid this problem by never giving the first four states a chance to weaken him. But the fact that Bloomberg can’t easily compete is, in and of itself, a sign of weakness. If his natural constituency isn’t liberal college grads, working-class laborers or African Americans, then just who is it...?

Bloomberg's already had to apologize for his obsession to defend a flawed Stop-And-Frisk police policy that was overtly racist as well as ineffective in stopping drugs or other lawbreaking. Bloomberg's still arguing against marijuana legalization (which is insanely popular with Dem primary voters). As Scher points out and as others have added, Bloomberg has terrible optics when dealing with a voting bloc - Black voters - that's key to winning the primaries in battleground states.

And yet Bloomberg is throwing himself into the inferno, as though he alone can save the Democratic Party from itself.

That's because as the primaries move onto the first true stages of voter choices, Bloomberg (along with other billionaires) is convinced the Dems are moving in the wrong direction when it comes to things like Medicare-for-All (which would mean massive tax increases), a serious Wealth Tax on the One-Percenters, and the likelihood of forcing corporations to - gasp - pay workers by boosting a $15 federal minimum wage.

This isn't because these Rich White Men(tm) are honestly opposed to trump and to his destructive policies (although these RWM do loathe trump as a pretender con artist).

This is because these Rich White Men(tm) are terrified that a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren Presidency means an end to their cushy wonderful super-big tax cuts that let them be triple-digit-billionaires instead of single-digit-billionaires.

The good news is that Steyer (who oddly has offered a wealth tax plan... it's just weak compared to Sanders and Warren's plans) and Bloomberg and (and latecomer Deval Patrick who has ties to Wall Street that would make Hillary seem an outsider) are polling in single digits nowhere near to winning any primary votes.

If Bloomberg and Steyer, either or both, were legitimately serious about helping the Democratic Party stop trump, they wouldn't campaign: They should be setting up SuperPACs and funding every Congressional, Senate, and State-level Dem campaign across the board. If they do THAT, then we might see victory against Republican corruption and stupidity this election cycle.

Just focus on that, rich guys. Fight the fight that NEEDS winning, and worry about your godless tax breaks later.

Honest Bumper Stickers 2020 Part I: The Pantsing Menace

So there I was minding my own business, working on my NaNoWriMo project for this month of writing, when out of the blue we get a new wannabe candidate running in the 2020 Democratic Primaries.

So here comes Mike Bloomberg, doing nobody but billionaires any favors hopping into the campaign cycle ostensibly to run on a Centrist, pro-business platform but most likely doing whatever he could to stop the Progressives like Bernie and Warren taxing the ever-loving shit out of Mikey and his billionaire buddies.

So here I am rolling my eyes at Bloomberg's tone-deaf needless sacrifice to take one for the rich white guys, because the last type of person who is going to win over enough Democratic primary voters is going to be someone who promoted anti-civil-rights BS like Stop and Frisk while encouraging Wall Street to rip off homeowners by the truckload. Christ, look at the polling already. Wassisname, the Starbucks guy he didn't even survive the first wave of Twitter outrage. There's already this hedge fund manager Tom Steyer doing his best to get over 2 percent polling (and failing). If Bloomberg thinks he's gonna cut into Warren's - or even Biden's - lead, he's let his campaign advisors rip him off for millions with bad advice.

Here's the dark secret, billionaires who may harbor non-Republican values enough to be Dems: Most of the Democratic voting base hate rich guys who refuse to pay their fair share of taxes. If you wanna do Dem voters any favors, help fund the state-level candidates who need the fcking money to break the stranglehold Republicans have on too many state legislatures.

But no, the worst part of Bloomberg's rollout had to be this:

Yeah, I know. I couldn't stop laughing for three minutes.

Sadly, it turns out the marketing logo is actually a fake, but for a day or two I was haunted by this terribly designed logo: This cluttered mess of trying to make Bloomberg's name 'exciting' by putting in two 2020s and capping it with a lame motivational "OWNING IT TOGETHER." Whoever did design this fake logo knew how bad it could get. Seriously, this looked like something that would have wowed the crowds... back in 1973.

Ah, and this kind of thing stoked my ire back in 2015/16, when all the bad campaign ad work popped up on BOTH sides of the political primaries. All of that questionable logo design - all because Obama's people figured out early the big letter O for Obama could get used artistically for genuinely eye-catching logos - struggling to try and match Obama's marketing success.

It drove me to make Honest Bumper Stickers for 2016, and now here I come for 2020, revved up to mock the ever-loving hell out of candidates I will support for the Democratic ticket (I am not at the moment in any mood to make mocking bumpers for trump: All I will make for him is IMPEACH THE FUCKER, indeed).

So here I come, walking down your street, I get the funniest looks from, everyone I meet... HEY HEY IT'S HONEST BUMPER STICKERS! ...what?

What Epstein Proves, As All Corruption Proves

With the weekend developments surrounding Jeffrey Epstein's arrests on sexual abuse of underage girls, after months of investigative reporting exposed not only his empire of sleaze but how a political-driven prosecutor like Acosta pretty much gave him an earlier slap on the wrist, we as a nation - we as humanity - ought to recognize these established truths.

There are far too many men of power who abuse people they view as their lessers, who are poor, often young, almost always women.

I rattled off a list of names in a couple of tweets this morning.

And that list is incomplete.

The sexual abuse, the financial corruption, the political rot, it all ties together. Everyone looked the other way on Roy Moore's open pursuit of teenage girls for decades in Alabama because even in his 30s he was a politically connected attorney. Hollywood moguls and celebrities, rolling in their wealth, have their goddamned casting couches. Any institution that holds ANY power over people, political or financial or religious, is going to have some nasty rot hidden among their elites, like the priests who kept molesting children while their superiors covered it up to avoid any scandal weakening their authority (or because the reforms needed to reduce such crimes - like the Catholic Church changing rules to priests can have normal sex and get married - would violate their dogma).

And as the Epstein case is proving, all of these rich, authoritative, politically connected men travel in the same goddamn circles.

We do not take rape and sexual abuse claims serious enough.

These men of power get away with what they do because our culture eagerly looks away, or excuses bad behavior out of certain - hint: White Upper Class - boys whose parents and friends all claim "He comes from a good home" after the accusations and evidence come out. How many judges have tossed aside allegations of violent sexual assaults by teen boys on teen girls, or college boys on teen girls, or 30-year-olds on teen girls, all because "Well, we don't want to ruin the bright future that's facing these fresh-faced young men." Christ, it happens enough that we've made it a cliche.

It does not help that these upper class families can afford teams of lawyers to overwhelm the courtroom, throw doubt into the mix with psychologists and privately-paid research to counter the evidence and witness testimonies. Yes, every person has a right to a legal defense. But the rights of the victims in these cases get tossed to the curb.

Nearly every state has a backlog of rape kits, untested and going bad, numbering in the tens of thousands, which allows those rapists - they never stop at one - to continue raping because the cops don't have enough physical evidence to arrest them yet.

And despite most evidence and research proving that a majority of rape and assault charges are legit, our culture cannot abide such reality. We live in a situation where every accusation becomes a "He Said She Said" and we rarely believe the She Said (even when the victim has scars and bruises across her body). We have juries who come back with Not Guilty decisions because of what the woman wore (she deserved it) or if she drank (she deserved it) or she should have known not to go to a man's house (she deserved it) or get a ride in his car (she deserved it). In this reality, we seem to blame the victim first.

Of any ethnic street gang out there, none of them have the destructive power or violence like Wall Street White Boys.

You think MS-13 is bad, or the Crips and Bloods, or the Triads? They ain't got shit on investment bankers and third generation rich boys rolling in drugs, human trafficking, and billion-dollar acts of fraud. A biker gang might mug you for your wallet. A hedge fund manager from JP Morgan will mug you for your mortgage, college debt AND pension plan.

Our nation has had a long, troubling history of Rich White Boys Behaving Badly. At what point will the bill come due?

Brief Thought on How to Label Rich Jerks

Idiot Billionaire Hoping To Save His Tax Cuts From Impending Progressive Passage of High Marginal Rates Doesn't Like Being Called a Billionaire (via Arwa Mahdawi of the Guardian).

When asked by New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin whether he thought billionaires had become too powerful in American life, the coffee magnate complained that “the moniker billionaire now has become the catchphrase”. Rather than using a word like billionaire to describe a person with billions of dollars, Schultz suggested it may be better to use expressions like “people of means” or “people of wealth”.

Poor Schultz. He was just trying to help us all out; generously digging into his rich vocabulary and spreading the semantic wealth. However, after footage of the interview went viral this week, the businessman has been mercilessly mocked. People of mean spirit have been suggesting their own alternatives to billionaire such as “robber barons”, “cash vampires”, and various other phrases that are probably too rude to repeat...

Yeah, I've probably repeated about twenty rude ones on Twitter just this weekend alone.

But let's play nice, shall we? Let's not go after the super-rich who are failing at noblesse oblige with the vindictive venom of French Revolutionaries.

If we're gonna label Billionaires for what they are, let's keep this professional yet accurate.

Let's call them:

Avarice Americans.

What, Schultz. You don't like that? You don't like getting called out for your greedy tax-dodging stealing-from-the-public ways?

Whadda ya gonna do, pay us to NOT insult you? You should. All of you Billionaires should tread lightly. There's 300 million of us and only 585 of you. I think we can take 'em in a fair fight.

A Billionaires Ballot, An Electoral Nightmare (w/ Update)

Given how the Beltway media loves covering elections - the horse race nature of campaigning always involves personality clashes and plot twists galore - we're already into the nightmare of 2020 coverage not only with the usual suspects putting in their expected nominations but also a surprising opening appearance.

It seems the former CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz is thinking about putting his hat in the 2020 ring to run as an independent.

Naturally, this requires a reasoned and well-thought response from Twitter (just read this article from Balloon Juice for a nice refresher). Which, if I can summarize for you, was this:

OH FUCK NO.

There's already been calls to boycott Starbucks (I originally argued that it might not work since he retired the CEO gig, but it turns out he still owns a hefty share so yeah go ahead nuke the company).

Schultz's reasoning for running is he posits the "Both Sides are wrong" argument popular with the "No Labels Third Party Will Save Us" wing of mainstream media.

But he's made his real reason pretty clear after his first couple of interviews: He's already attacked the likes of Kamala Harris (who announced this week) and Elizabeth Warren (who's announced earlier) and Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez (who is too young to announce but can dance circles around him) for their open calls for higher tax rates and expanded healthcare / social aid programs that will likely involve taxing the rich.

He's terrified by Democratic Party calls for a high marginal tax rate on billionaires, and he wants to do everything in his power - such as Spoiling the Democrats as a "Centrist" - to ensure trump wins a second term to keep that from happening.

Let's refer to Eugene Robinson at RealClearPolitics on this:

At present, the specter of a second Trump term looks comfortably remote. The blue wave in the midterm election and Trump's cellar-dwelling approval numbers show what the country thinks of him and his corrupt, chaotic, kooky administration. A recent poll shows him trailing any of his likely Democratic opponents. If the election were held next week, I'm pretty confident that Trump would lose to a ham sandwich.

He does have a chance in 2020, however, if the anti-Trump vote is split between two or more candidates. Imagine Schultz, a lifelong Democrat, siphoning off even 5 percent of the Democratic candidate's vote in, say, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. The horror of 2016 threatens to become a recurring nightmare.

Here is the sad truth of American Presidential Elections that I have noted before: The Electoral College system as currently rigged favors a Winner-Take-All by state meaning the top two major party candidates - Democratic and Republican - are the ONLY possible candidates to win the Electors.

No third party or independent candidate stands a chance. Anderson in 1980 barely won 6 percent of the overall popular vote and NOTHING in the Electoral College. Perot ran his vanity campaigns in 1992 and 1996 and achieved the same Electoral College results (Nada). Libertarians and Green candidates have yet to garner even ONE Elector over multiple campaigns. The last time we had a successful third party candidate was Wallace in 1968 with 46 EV, and that was because of the cultural and political shift over the Civil Rights Acts that sent the racist Southern voters to the polls in revolt.

But that's the thing, as Robinson notes, the third party candidate can perform the role of Spoiler to knock the possible winner down a peg and force the Electoral College - by having key battleground states flip the wrong way by just a handful of votes - to elect the losing Second-Place finisher.

We've seen it within our own lifetimes. The Perot races in 1992 and 1996 arguably pulled away enough votes from the Republican candidates, and there's still bitterness among Democrats towards the role Ralph Nader played in the 2000 elections. You could argue about Jill Stein affecting Hillary's chances in key states, but Libertarian Gary Johnson had a bigger popular vote impact and it did little damage to trump's chances (there's still the specter of Putin sabotaging the whole 2016 scene so that's kind of a wash). Outside of our times, the biggest Spoiler election was 1912's when Teddy Roosevelt - angry at his Republican protege Taft's soft business policies - decided to run his Bull Moose campaign... letting the Democratic candidate Wilson win due to the split Republican voter base.

Robinson notes in his article how even trump understood that in 2015-16:

Remember how coy Trump was early in the Republican primary campaign, reserving the option of an independent candidacy if the GOP did not treat him fairly? Trump used the threat as leverage to get his way on debate logistics and ballot access. But then he suddenly reversed course, signing a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee.

A person familiar with Trump's thinking told me why. Trump understood that the most likely outcome, if he ran on his own, would be to guarantee Hillary Clinton's election by taking votes away from the GOP candidate. In his wildest dreams, he might hope to win enough electoral votes to keep either major-party candidate from reaching a majority. But in that case, the election would be thrown to the House of Representatives -- which would surely choose the Republican or the Democrat, not Trump.

That's the real purpose - and threat - of a strong third party candidate in our current Presidential system: shake up enough votes to make the likely winning party actually lose.

Schultz is not actually strong - at least not yet, because he's a relatively unknown figure just re-entering the spotlight - but he is RICH. As a confirmed billionaire, he can throw about 500 million dollars at a vanity campaign and still use it as a tax write-off somehow because he can STILL spend enough money on accountants to cheat the IRS.

Referring back to my earlier argument against Schultz: the sonofabitch is running scared because the ascendant Democratic Party - with its new lineup of Progressive and left-leaning Congresspersons - shows little sign of slipping back for the upcoming 2020 cycle. The Dems are likely to retain control of the House, can arguably retain enough state governments (and maybe win a few Purple ones if the turnout's high enough) to keep progressive efforts going, may threaten Republican control of the Senate (more GOP Senators are up for re-election than Democrats this next cycle), and are poised to win against an unpopular and inept incumbent in trump (barring further Russian intervention).

Running for Governor or Senator as an "Independent" (or even as a business-friendly Democrat - he is apparently a registered D) won't stop that momentum. Running for President - even with the unlikelihood of winning without a popular base of support - to ensure trump retains veto power over everything is the best achievable goal.

Schultz making this a suicide mission is the only thing that makes sense. He has to know he's already getting hit on social media by outraged Democrats, and he's making a terrible impression with the media talking heads he's interviewed with. He's just another amateur at politics. It'd be like... me, making an announcement from my blog that "HEY, I'm throwing my hat in the ring for 2020 as an Independent!"

The only difference between Schultz and myself is I cannot afford to even download the paperwork I'd have to file to start a campaign, and he can afford to hire 10,000 people to do all that for him.

But we're running into the OTHER big problem with modern American politics (actually it's several): terrible, horrifying myths about business and politics.

• The myth that Government ought to be run like a Business;
• The myth that Business Leaders - CEOs for example - are capable of managing Public Sector powers;
• The myth that our partisan landscape can be healed/fixed by a calming Centrist figure that can create bipartisan support just by standing there oh so pretty.

As we've seen from bad performances from other Presidents with business backgrounds - Hoover and Dubya and the current Loser of the Popular Vote trump (the con artist's not even a successful businessman in the first place!!!) - we should know by now that being a CEO is different from being a President. Decision making in a business is top-down, has to be, and there's nothing wrong with that. But a President has to lead by consensus and awareness of the public will, and CEOs can never think like that (everything has to be HIS WAY or the highway, or in Dubya's case he deferred authority out to handlers like Cheney - also having corporate experience - who DID think like that).

The myth of Government being run like a Business should be taking hits as well. Where a business operates in order to earn profits, a government has to operate to provide services as a public good. Those are opposing objectives. Every time the Republicans pull their "run it like a business" stunt - tax cuts and deregulations - everything falls apart with deficits and collapsing infrastructure.

The final myth is the belief - the hope - of the mainstream media and high-ranking punditry that all we need is a Uniter figure outside of "Party" corruption to rise up and save us from our weak political overlords. They look to figures like Washington who seemed to rise above party (only because he existed before they formed, and when they did he leaned conservative/Federalist). They look to calming, fatherly patriarchs like Eisenhower or amiable, cheerful types like Reagan (his spell on the current punditry remains horrifyingly intact).

THAT is the biggest pipe dream of all. There is no outisde Uniter figure waiting to save us, no one with a level of public popularity - outside of entertainers with universal appeal - that can sweep in and guide us to sane policy. And if there is, it sure as hell isn't yet another billionaire - especially one whom nobody could pick out of a police lineup two weeks ago - thinking he can buy his way onto the national ballot.

But we're stuck with Schultz, just like we were stuck with other vanity candidates like Perot, or the likes of Steve Forbes or Herman Cain trying their luck in Republican primaries.

Because the final biggest problem we have with our electoral system: It favors the rich.

It's been a thing since our nation's founding: Every political player from the Founders at the Declaration of Independence through the first few decades of forming the Constitution were all wealthy men. Lawyers, merchants, landowners, slaveowners. Not a one of them were what we'd call poor or middle class. They could afford to play the game of politics and then hand it off to the next rich newcomer to come along and keep the game going.

As our nation grew, we'd get the occasional poor person - someone from a struggling background - but we'd still get overwhelmed by the business leaders and the profit makers, all of them keeping control of government to ensure their needs - staying rich - were met first before taking care of the general welfare (reforms when they happened only happen in waves, like the Progressive Era of the early 20th Century in response to the corruption of the late 19th Century).

This is where we're stuck today. Only the rich can run for office. Entry fees alone to get on a ballot can get expensive. You have to take time to campaign, make speeches, get on airwaves, kiss babies, etc. and only the self-employed and indolent wealthy can afford that. You have to raise campaign funds, which means getting other wealthy people to chip in, and who else can do that but someone from those same social circles?

And the current electoral system favoring dark money and deep-pocket SuperPACs - thanks Citizens United! - guarantees that the wealthy can buy their candidates and make sure they stay bought.

We may live in a republic democracy, and we in theory should have open elections where any person could put their name in to run for office. But in practice we're stuck in a system where the billionaires hire the millionaires to run the government across the board as much as possible. And whenever that gets threatened - when a political party gains power like the Democrats that are willing to disrupt the rich people's attempts to get even richer by avoiding their civic duty of paying taxes or answering to the law - they break out fellow billionaires to run themselves and do their hardest to convince enough suckers voters into thinking they are the MODERATE CENTRIST NON-PARTY SAVIOR of their dreams.

This shouldn't be a hard decision to make, America. Billionaires are ironically not worth it as Presidential candidates. They are more disaster than savior.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN uh DON'T VOTE BILLIONAIRES.

Update: So far, Schultz's campaign rollout has been getting negative reviews. If he's trying to appeal to Democrats, accusing the party's more popular figures as "unAmerican" isn't going to cut it... (via Paul Blest at Splinter):

Schultz has just been getting pummeled from all sides over the past few days for everything from his inability to provide a vision for the country that doesn’t sound like it was left on the cutting floor during West Wing writers’ meetings to his repeated insistence that taxes, a robust safety net, and essentially everything that he doesn’t like are “un-American.” But while a lot of the attacks have come from the left, even Schultz’s presumed natural constituency—ideological centrists who think Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump pose a remotely similar level of danger to the country—are already tired of his shit.

Axios’ Mike Allen, who’s never afraid to ask the tough questions, has a blog out in Axios today which serves to allow Democratic Party “insiders”—i.e., the people whose main responsibility for the last couple of decades has been making sure it never does anything too popular—the opportunity to verbally whale on Schultz and his insipid candidacy... One of Washington’s best-wired party operatives told me: “I’ve talked to six dozen Democrats, and the overwhelming sentiment is that he will be pushed out by this incredible wave of disgust and disdain rolling his way...”

Schultz is going to have a problem appealing to the "Centrists" among the Democratic ranks if Schultz keeps talking like he's further to the Right on economic issues than most Republicans.

Like I tweeted:

it's at the point where Schultz is essentially just trump without the MAGA Hat Racism, which shouldn't make Schultz a draw to anyone in this electoral market. Except the damn media will pretend he's a fcking moderate to try and draw centrist voters away from the Dems. >:(

This election cycle requires total focus, America. Don't vote for billionaire assholes, thank you.