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#individual

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Chuck Darwin

Fifty years ago, Watergate sparked a national reckoning with the corrosive role of #unregulated #money in our political system.

Another round of significant reforms is long overdue.

So what can be done?

The next Congress can start by passing the
"Freedom to Vote Act"
– a broad
💥democracy reform package that includes a variety of strong provisions to
rein in Super Pacs,
curb dark money
and strengthen enforcement.

Congress came within a few votes of passing this package in 2022.

Congressional leaders have affirmed they will make it a top priority in 2025.

They should renew that commitment at the first opportunity.

Over the longer term, it is also critical that governments at all levels explore
💥alternative ways to fund campaigns
– including through reviving and building on the long-term goal of effective #public #financing.

The new system that went into effect this cycle in New York state, for instance,
uses public funds to match small private contributions from candidates’ constituents
– making it possible for them to rely less on wealthy donors outside of their districts and states.

New York could be an excellent model for a revitalized federal public financing system.

#transparency#BigMoney#SuperPacs
Public
Chuck Darwin

Unregulated money continues to corrode US politics -- Reforms are needed

Watergate was not just about abuse of presidential power. It was also a major campaign finance scandal.

By the time Nixon resigned, Americans were outraged to learn that the Watergate break-in and cover-up and other “dirty tricks” had been 🔸financed from a secret slush fund made up of donations from corporations and wealthy individuals. 🔸

In response, Congress passed historic reforms designed to increase #transparency and curb the influence of #BigMoney in politics.

This was a watershed moment that helped reshape the ethos of government in America.

Today, however, ♦️our elections are once again dominated by big money and secret spending. ♦️
The post-Watergate reforms are in dire need of repair.

Thanks to a combination of factors, campaign finance in 2024 looks much like it did before Watergate.

Ultra-wealthy donors can pour unlimited amounts of money into key races using lightly regulated #SuperPacs that are supposed to be independent from candidates
but can actually work hand-in-glove with them.
In the 2022 midterms, the top 100 federal #individual #donors together spent more than $1.2bn, mostly through Super Pacs,
swamping contributions from the millions of Americans who gave $200 or less.

Billionaires are also set to pour vast amounts of money into the 2024 presidential race,
including a small group of tech oligarchs with anti-democratic views and vastamounts of business with the government.

More and more spending is also done in secret in the form of “#dark #money” from non-profit organizations and shell companies that don’t disclose their donors
– often a favored vehicle for controversial industries like the #cryptocurrency sector,
which is working feverishly to secure favorable regulatory treatment.

All of this spending has helped drive a broad collapse of #trust in democratic institutions.
Recent polling shows that 80% of Americans think major political donors have too much influence over our politics.
Nearly two-thirds – including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents – say Congress should do more to limit big money’s sway.

This mirrors the mood after Watergate, when the public’s faith in government plummetedand Congress listened.
Lawmakers passed tougher disclosure requirements, tighter limits on campaign contributions and spending, and created a presidential public financing system.
These changes shaped national politics for decades.
Running for re-election in 1984 under the post-Watergate system, Ronald Reagan won in a landslide without holding a single fundraiser.

This system was never perfect, but it held together relatively well,
especially after Congress passed a bipartisan overhaul in 2002 that closed several major loopholes.

But then it started to unravel.
In a series of highly ideological 5-4 decisions
– most notably, Citizens United v FEC
– the #supreme #court swept away key limits on big money,
launching the era of Super Pacs and opening the door for dark money in our campaigns.

Lawmakers have done nothing to respond to these rulings,
repeatedly failing to update the law to limit the damage from the court’s decisions
or respond to new developments in campaign fundraising, like using email, the web and other technologies for appeals and advertising.

And the agency charged with enforcing campaign finance law, the #Federal #Election #Commission, has proved even more feckless.
Evenly divided and often deadlocked, the #FEC often ⭐️fails to enforce even laws still on the books, ⭐️like restrictions on candidate “coordination” with notionally independent Super Pacs.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/

The Guardian · Unregulated money continues to corrode US politics. Reforms are neededBy Guardian staff reporter
Public
h o ʍ l e t t

#ScarlettJohansson Shocked #ChatGPT Seemingly Used #Her #Voice
thewrap.com/scarlett-johansson
“In a time when we are all grappling with #deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own #work, our own #identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity. I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that #individual #rights are protected.”

TheWrap · Scarlett Johansson Shocked ChatGPT Seemingly Used Her VoiceScarlett Johansson was "shocked" after ChatGPT created an AI voice that sounded "eerily" like her after she declined to voice it herself
Public *
David

I've found out that @mastdn.social (administrated by @stux) has hidden my profile. No warnings, no emails, no reasons, nothing. 🙄🧐

That a single user can hide or block accounts or servers is right. Is an #individual decision.

That a moderator on a personal and maybe whimshical decision can hide individual profiles from others, affecting users from their server that dont have a problem with such profiles is #censhorship. 🤬

It makes #mastodon to have a thousand Elon Musks wannabes exerting such censhorship. How this makes mastodon better/safer than X?

Public
Chuck Darwin

High-energy #laser weapons are designed to #defeat #incoming #drones and missiles by employing a narrow beam of energy to #burn incoming threats out of the sky.
In contrast, high-powered #microwaves create a cone of electromagnetic interference that #disables #electronics across both a wider area and a wider range of target systems, according to the latest Congressional Research Service report on directed-energy weapons.

While #lasers provide #point defense against #individual drones,
#microwave weapons are widely considered a more effective #blanket defense across a broader area, making them suited to deal with complex attacks involving #swarms of multiple fast-moving drones.

military.com/daily-news/2024/0

Military.com · Top General in Mideast Calls for Microwave Weapons for 'Layered' Defense Against Drone SwarmsThe top general responsible for U.S. troops in the Middle East wants to see a surge of directed-energy weapons in the region to counter the rising tide of adversary drones.
Public
Nando161

"you're just never going to have a realistic #analysis of #capitalist #food #production until you really process that #farm #owners are not the #working #class, the #people who #work on those farms are. this should be #evident in the term "#factory farm" drawing a straightforward #comparison with #factories (owned by #capitalists, #worked in by #workers), but many people still have this #idea that any opposition to these large #companies is inherently opposition to the #individual workers who are #exploited there.

when there are so many people who understand that criticizing #Amazon is not being against people who work in #warehouses, but believe that criticizing Cargill #Meat Solutions is harming poor workers, idk what to say except you are not immune to #propaganda"

tumblr.com/theconcealedweapon/

TumblrConcealed Weaponyou're just never going to have a realistic analysis of capitalist food production until you really process that farm owners are not the working class, the people who work on those farms are. this sh…
Replied in thread
Public
tallship

@fraying

Hi Derek!

And greetings from the remote mountain regions of #Humboldt where we export the genetics for those 🌺 flowers 🤘💀🤘

Anyway...

I'm trying to your post in which you both misconstrued and misinformed the reader with alarmist, and generally misunderstood narrative.

Specifically, and respectfully:

>***"I wonder if people using mastodon know that, without section 230, no one could legally afford to run a mastodon instance in the US. Section 230 protects what we do here every day. Politicians threatening 230 are threatening free speech on the internet."***

Although we'll go over both sentences, the part that I really take exception to is the first one:

- "I wonder if people using mastodon know that, without section 230, no one could legally afford to run a mastodon instance in the US."

I quoted you twice for emphasis, because what you said is simply NOT TRUE, at all Derek, but who would want to run a single user mastodon server instance anyway?

Okay a select few, but it's not economical to do so - here's why:

It's such #bloatware and a #resource_hog compared to other, more capable and featureful #Fediverse servers, like #Pleroma, #Takahē, #Epicyon, #Akkoma, #Calckey, #Soapbox, #Friendica, #Socialhome, #MicroblogPub, #Misskey, #Smithereen, and the list goes on and on for a while; a veritable laundry list of platforms endowed with more feature rich, more resource and energy conserving footprints.

You could call mastodon the white elephant in the room when it comes to kruft, waste of energy and resources, or lack of the most desired features by it's traditional userbase (although people are nowadays migrating their accounts to these other Fediverse platforms in ever increasing numbers).

Like you, I'm also a staunch proponent of Section 230, as it was originally intended and written - to protect publishers, NOT editors. But most of the conservative agendas to which you refer only seek to remove protections for sites that cross that line between that of #publisher to that of #editor anyway - so as long as you don't interfere with a user's #speech those deprecated silos would have nothing to worry about.

It's the Marxist/Leftist agendas in Congress that you need to worry about - they're proposing complete evisceration of section 230 - and yes, that would jeopardize, probably even put those monolithic deprecated silos out of business for good.

- I see very little that is bad about killing a rabid animal... Or a fox in the henhouse.

But... riddle me this Batman:

What would be so bad about that? It would destroy the surveillance plutocracy and data farming of individuals and their identities by those socalled, "Big-Tech" subjugation engines like #Faceplant, #InstaSPAM, #Reddit, #Twitter, and to a large degree, #Google too... (It won't do anything to stop the likes of Amazon or Apple though wrt their surveillance programs).

All if that, while at the same time encourage the migration of people to a fully decentralized and safer social media network where there are either no platforms (only censor proof protocols), as in #nostr; or #federated #SmallWeb and single user #ActivityPub platform instances; or those #Fediverse platforms that vow not to #molest_users who #publish on those platforms by imposing draconian #editorializing (censorship) upon their users.

Either way you can certainly look at this as a win-win situation for the #individual in #social_media networking. The question really is therefore, "How badly do you wish to punish the privacy disrespecting subjugation farms that comprise that deprecated, monolithic silo space?"

I hope that helps, Enjoy!

#tallship

⛵

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