Month: November 2018

A Common Sense Website and Movement

I recently came across this website (Freedom From Facebook) and looked into its mission and organizers. I think it’s a worthy organization to pay attention to if you’re concerned at all about your data on the Internet. Don’t take your privacy for granted. It’s YOUR data Facebook is monetizing, and we need to be informed about what they’re harvesting, and how they’re using it. How else can we judge if the trade-off is worth it?

Also, you should go to this page on the website for a step-by-step guide for getting the maximum privacy from your Facebook use. You don’t have to give them everything!

By the way, the New York Times has been doing an admirable job of exposing the egregious misuse of power by Facebook.

Jump back Jack!! Times Are Changin’ in Texas!!

 

Here are some excerpts from a November 9 article in the New York Times about the mid-term election turnout. Texas is on the move.

“By percent of people eligible to vote, it was the highest turnout of any midterm election [nationally] since at least 1970 and the first time midterm turnout topped 100 million. . .”

“In some counties, something almost unheard-of happened: More people voted in the midterms than in the last presidential election. One example is fast-growing Travis County, Tex., which contains the left-leaning city of Austin. Preliminary numbers show that 775,950 people voted there on Tuesday, compared with 725,035 in 2016.”

“Texas, which had the nation’s lowest percentage turnout in 2014, saw the biggest increase this year: 63 percent more people voted than in the last midterm elections.”

“For one thing, there were exciting and competitive races in some states that rarely have them. In Texas, which had the biggest turnout increase in the country, Beto O’Rourke launched a headline-grabbing challenge to Senator Ted Cruz and lost by less than three percentage points. (For comparison, Mr. Cruz was elected by 16 percentage points in 2012.)”

AND HERE’S MORE PROOF TEXAS IS CHANGING:

In Harris County . . .

Seventeen lawyers, all Black women, won their races for judgeships “by double-digits in Harris County, Tex., the nation’s third largest county, which includes Houston. Each of the lawyers, all Democrats ranging in age from 31 to early 60s, will join the bench in January for four-year terms in the civil, criminal, family and probate courts.”

Houston is also the nation’s most racially diverse city.

Real America Versus Senate America

This article by Paul Krugman highlights once again, the disparity in voting weight between rural and urban Americans in an age when most of the population is rapidly shifting to urban settings. There have been countless articles about this, but this one provokes a great deal of insightful comments.

I often find the comments section of many news platforms that use them as instructive as the articles themselves. They show you how “most people” stand on the views of the columnist. It’s an excellent learning tool for me.

Read this article and then check out the comments. Good stuff.

A Theory and a Story

Here’s an article by Michael Tomasky that makes an argument that I whole-heartedly embrace. It’s about how, of the two major American political parties, the Republicans’ messaging in the last 30 or 40 years has steam-rolled the Democrats, who seem to be utterly incapable of refuting it or offering something better.

The main reason the Republicans have been so successful: they have a theory and a story and they’re sticking to it. It’s supply-side economics: Cutting taxes, especially for the rich, and decreasing regulation, they say, will unleash so much innovation and economic activity that tax revenues will actually increase and the entire economy will benefit.

But now the Republicans have a problem with their theory and story: they haven’t worked. During the same 30 or 40 years they’ve been flogging that mantra, the middle class has all but disappeared, while the wealth of the upper 5% has exploded. Now, it seems, the people are finally catching on to the Republican shell game.

Tomasky’s argument is that the Democrats are long overdue for a theory and a story of their own, one that will clearly convey to the voters what they stand for, and how they want to respond to the Republican deception . And he has some answers to that. I urge you to read the article.

Democrats need to hear and heed Tomasky’s message. Then do it.

Side by side headlines, dramatically different stories.

I’m occasionally struck by the media’s juxtaposition of stories with startlingly different headlines. You wonder why editorial chose to put such jarring stories side by side. I came across this one last week: the cruelty of poverty and war . . . and the unabashed abundance of a wealthy nation.

The day before yesterday the New York times posted this image again . . . and said the little girl had died.