[News] Liability in Press Laws

So I promised to type this up some time ago, but here are the basics. Several of my friends and I were all sitting around talking about politics. I think it goes without saying that there was a very wide spectrum of political beliefs present, but we, like the populace at large, held a general disgust with the media and its current environment. I think this discussion was timely, because of what has been going on in England recently with FOX news hacking into the phones of several prominent people. The government is holding hearings over a wide range of press abuses from the phone hacking to the paparazzi. Here in the US, there are numerous instances of extremely grievous abuses by Big Media (that includes Fox and all network and cable news) but even newspapers and magazines.

So the challenge lies in the fact, that the first sign of true oppression in a society is when the government moves to shut up or shut down the press. When you have a vibrant or democratic society, they need to find sneakier ways to do it like the “Protect IP” laws recently attempted to pass in Britain, Australia and here in the United States. You can still have an unspoken agreement among the major players that certain stories shall be spun a certain way (cough cough like Occupy Wall Street) but the truth is, I honestly believe in most cases this is simple idiocy, laziness and group think rather than some grand conspiracy.

They’re too incompetent and irresponsible to be in much of a conspiracy.

But how do you hold them responsible? Simply passing a law making certain kinds of behavior illegal is often ineffective, because they will either find clever ways to skirt the rules, or, if the enforcement is effective, then a government will use those enforcement tools to protect itself from embarrassing political stories. The “Official Secrets Act” in the UK, makes the abuses by the DHS in the US look like small potatoes.

So a friend of mine simply suggested the idea that you allow people to request that any footage or notes a media outlet took of them be made public in its entirety, and if they didn’t then they could be sued for damages of libel in a court of law. This is an excellent idea for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that it acknowledges that footage taken of an individual should guarantee THEM certain rights, not just the media. It also is an easily objective test. If you film me, I want the entire tape made public. If you won’t do that, you get sued.

That will discourage blatant manipulation which doesn’t carry the original intent of the individual.

Personally, I think we need more than that, but the fact that everyone present could agree on this reform seems like a very good place to start.

[Repost] GAO Audits Fed

(Via Bill Maxwell)

http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=BFA0CBEC-CCE1-4520-8899-122C8B719105

Topic List

This is mainly for administrative purposes, which I will be including in future posts at the bottom to help me remember, but the list of topics I want to do has grown so large I don't want to keep putting it off.

Neofederalism: Restrengthening the 10th amendment as an argument FOR liberalism
Neofederalism: the Oasis effect and who should rule?
Electing the Attorney General
Uniting Left and Right: Bitcoin
Why exactly does our DHS infrastructure need to be so secret? Who does that really serve?
The price of apathy
Corporations aren't actually evil vampires. They're just vampires. Its the Renfields that are the problem
How to exploit the apathetic
How to exploit the willing enablers of the Renfields
To Big to Fail: Entropy in Human Institutions past a certain size
The economy of scale vs the smaller element
The WTO: How it should be reformed or abolished
The UN: Dissolve the Security Council or Dissolve the UN

Repost from Daily Kos

They are becoming more sophisticated

Occupy wall street is becoming more sophisticated. The attempts to censor and oppress them are becoming more obvious. If the Tea Party REALLY cared about BOTH small government and controlling corporations they'd be all over this. If the news REALLY cared about 'the people' they'd cover #OccupyWallStreet in the hundreds to thousands when they covered Tea Party Rallies in the fifties.

The left is already aware that corporations own America. Some independents care. And as the Republicans have shown....if a sufficiently sized majority or even minority is willing to stand up and say, "NO!" then they cannot be stopped in this country. The wheels that make governance impossible without the will of a supra majority works both ways.

The false church of centrism combined with the fact that the rising generation is aware that their elders have been bought and paid for by Clinton Democrats and Corporate Democrats cannot hold the rank in file in check forever.

And all the pretty speeches followed by capitulative action by Obama cannot change that.

[Cons]The Founding Fathers

So the question is, how much should we take them as allegory and how much should we take them as historical persons?

I know that seems like it should be obvious, but it isn't.

You see as historical persons, they were flawed but brilliant men who lived in the context of their particular time frame. Conversely, as allegorical figures they are the architects that created the constitution that serves as the symbol of the social construct of our times. Having a written constitution provides stability to our system of governance, but we as a society decide how much of the written version we're going to accept vs how much of a 'living' document it might be.

Literalists interpret the constitution by the intent of the founding fathers and by the strict wording as it was meant a the time. But the problem is, that by restricting it to this, you can argue that you delegitimize it. Every flaw in a founding father (such as slave ownership) becomes another potential for angle of attack not just on a good but flawed man, but on the document that they helped create.

To white anglo saxon male, it is unfortunate that slavery happened, and it was eventually rectified with amendments to the constitution and (in the view of most) the civil rights acts passed in the 1960's. To someone of a different skin color, female or such, its not that simple. An amendment doesn't change the fact that the national story is SOMEONE ELSE's story. If the founding fathers are allegorical, then the document is living but if it is literal, then so too are the details of their stories. It is very hard to play down one without playing down the other.

I argue that the allegorical interpretation has its strengths. But then again, I'm in favor of having a constitutional convention every 50 years or so as a way of reconnecting people with the constitution. I understand why people are afraid of this, especially given our political difficulties now, but sometimes it is the hard choices that end up being the best ones.

[Science] The Tobacco Test

OK, for those of you out there who deny AGW, who are agnostic about AGW, or who have friends who are AGW deniers, yet who 'love' science, here's a challenge.

Name for me an issue in which you had a vested corporate interest on one side promoting one view point and the majority of the scientific community on the other, in which the majority of the scientific community proved to be wrong?

AGW deniers that 'love' science can find plenty of examples of mainstream science getting it wrong, because getting it wrong is part of science.

But can you find where corporations are on one side, and science on the other, in which science got it wrong?

I know I can find plenty where science was right. Specifically, I'm thinking of Tobacco.

But let's go farther:

Can you find such an example in the western world? In the last 50 years?

I'm willing to bet you can't.

Update: Bonus points if you can find one where Mainstream science has had the opinion for 40 or so+ years.

Qualifier: To be 'wrong' mainstream science has to actually change its opinion, like it did with Ether.