The Corn Maze
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 10/18/2008 - 21:31
Kathy Sierra, Amanda Marcotte and Danish Jews as ACORN Organizers
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 10/18/2008 - 09:39(Originally published at Greater Democracy.)
The United States has a sad history of bombings, lynchings, and death threats to people who are different from us either in looks or opinion. Some had hoped that as people learned to express themselves online, we would learn how to use our words for good instead of as part of threats. Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened, and online threats are a growing problem.
Early in 2007, the Edwards for President campaign hired two bloggers, Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan. In their blogging, they had expressed views online that were markedly different from those of some conservatives. As a result, conservative pundits demanded that Sen. Edwards fire them. It is one thing to vigorously disagree with another person’s opinion. It is another thing to try and get them fired. Yet it crosses a dangerous line when death threats are issued. Sen. Edwards assured everyone that their jobs were secure, but when Ms. Marcotte and Ms. McEwan started receiving death threats, they decided not to take the jobs after all.
Yet in the tradition of the King of Denmark wearing a Star of David during the Nazi occupation and proclaiming that we are all Jews, I set up a Facebook Group for all of us that would proclaim I am Amanda Marcotte.
A few months later, Kathy Sierra, started receiving death threats and as a result cancelled her speaking engagement at the O’Reilly Etech Conference and suspended her blog. Other bloggers temporarily suspended their blogs in solidarity, and Ms. Sierra wrote, “If you want to do something about it, do not tolerate the kind of abuse that includes threats or even suggestions of violence”
Now, the bullies that resort to physical threats have a new target. It is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Two ACORN offices have been broken into and vandalized. They have received threatening phone calls and emails, including one that wrote that a female organizer “is going to have her life ended”. The phone calls have included some of the worst racial epitaphs and talked about Sen. Obama being lynched. All of this has been turned over to the appropriate authorities.
Some of the phone calls have attacked ACORN for destroying one of our most cherished basic rights, the right to vote. Yet those same people have been destroying another of our most cherished rights, the right to due process and the assumption of being innocent until proven guilty. There have been many allegations against ACORN, both presently and in the past. Those that have been made in the past have been found to be without merit, and I expect there will be similar findings this time around. Whatever the findings, it is inappropriate for people to take matters into their own hands, threaten violence, destroy property, and with it destroy due process, part of what makes America strong.
So, if you believe in the things that make our country great, like democracy and due process, stand up against the threats and violence. Proclaim that you too, are an ACORN organizer. As Ms. Sierra said, ““If you want to do something about it, do not tolerate the kind of abuse that includes threats or even suggestions of violence”
Bloggers Notebook
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 10/17/2008 - 12:48As I read through my emails, the news, and other people’s blogs, I note various things that I want to blog about. If it is a website, I typically bookmark it with Mento.info, which feeds del.icio.us and ma.gnloia. ma.gnolia, in turn posts entries on this blog.
Sometimes, these notes turn into full blog entries. Other times, I just don’t get enough information, interest, or time to develop full stories, but I still look for opportunities to write about them. Sometimes they show up in blog posts with titles like “Random Stuff”. With that, let me go through my notebook to highlight some of the more recent random stuff.
McCain, DMCA and PRO IP
CNET News has an article about the McCain campaign protesting YouTube’s DMCA policy. They are claiming that their “advertisements or Web videos have been the subject of DMCA takedown notices regarding uses that are clearly privileged under the fair use doctrine”.
Unfortunately, for the McCain campaign, the DMCA process is pretty weak on due process, and even if it wasn’t, YouTube’s Terms of Service state, "YouTube reserves the right to discontinue any aspect of the YouTube Web site at any time."
About the same time as the McCain campaign sent their complaint to YouTube, President Bush signed The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2007 which creates a national IP czar to increase intellectual property protection for movie studios, recording companies and others.
Personally, I’m very concerned about the lack of due process in DMCA takedowns and a lack of proper consideration of Fair Use issues. I hope that this will get some better focus on IP issues.
IPv6
I want to thank people who commented on my blog post about IPv6. I always worry about writing really geeky posts and losing the interest of my readers. amoration commented about the benefits of IPv6 for people needing less laggy connections, such as musicians or gamers. Since my connection is via an IPv6 tunnel, it is pretty laggy. I look forward to the day of being able to get a direct IPv6 connection.
As to games, I note that there appears to be at least one MUD that has been modified to support IPv6 and people are talking about doing that for MOOs as well. Apparently, one of the early tests was a Quake3 server on IPv6. The question is, will OpenSim support IPv6? Hpw about Second Life, Entropia or others?
During the presidential debate, I connected to an IRC server over IPv6. Then, last night, I did a little more IPv6 hacking. It turns out that Microsoft Research built an IPv6 protocol driver for Windows NT a long time ago, and I’ve managed to add it to my old NT box. It takes a little tweaking, but I’ve gotten Firefox to access IPv6 based websites. I updated cygwin, which has IPv6 extensions. However, I didn’t have much luck getting that to work on IPv6 on my NT box yet. I did, however, have success getting ssh in cygwin on my Vista box connected to my Linux server over IPv6.
Meanwhile, I’m still looking for other interesting IPv6 sites and applications.
Talking about the Issues
Yesterday, I received an email about Minekey’s Presidential Election Site. It looks like an interesting place to explore issues from different viewpoints. Also, yesterday, I received an email about whereIstand, another site focused on discussing the issues. Both of these remind me a bit of essembly. A good todo is to compare and contrast the three different sites.
More about ACORN
Also showing up in my email yesterday was information about the FBI investigating ACORN for Voter Fraud. The section that jumped out at me was
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Justice Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly so close to an election.
So, the reporter chose to aid and abet senior law enforcement officials in violating Justice Department regulations. The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics says, that journalists must “always question sources’ motives before promising anonymity.” Was the reporting by the Associated Press not only aiding and abetting senior law enforcement officials in violating Justice Department regulations but also violating the ethics of journalists?
House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan had this to say to the Attorney General and the Director of the FBI:
It is with shock and disappointment that I read today's
Associated Press report that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has
opened and leaked an investigation into whether ACORN, a longstanding
and well regarded organization that fights for the poor and working
class, is involved in nationwide voter fraud.As an initial matter, it is simply unacceptable that
such information would be leaked during the very peak of the election
season. Such leaks of information about ongoing criminal
investigation matters are always inappropriate, and likely violate
the provisions of the U.S. Attorney manual governing release of
information about ongoing investigations ... More significant in this case,
however, they also run afoul of valuable Department traditions
regarding the need for cautious and sensitive
Chairman Conyers wasn’t the only one to note this. Talking Point Memo had these posts about it, Returning to the Scene of the Crime, Short Memories, Oldie But Goodie (And Still Going On?) and Iglesias: "I'm Astounded" By DOJ's ACORN Probe. It will be interesting to how this continues to develop.
Supreme Court and Ohio
In a related issue about trying to make sure that all appropriate voters get a chance to vote in Ohio, US Supreme Court sides w/Ohio Sec’y of State Brunner.
Abusing Journalists
Jill, whose story about the Supreme Court I linked to was among many twittering about a journalist being physically abused by a McCain supporter at a Palin rally. Unfortunately, this is not particularly surprising. However, there is an interesting addendum to the story.
In the comments, Maria Barton encourages people experiencing this sort of abuse to immediate alert campaign staff. “We will immediately & dutifully fetch a couple of police officers to throw out anyone (especially if that person threw the first punch - or kick) who physically attacks any other attendee.”
Maria Barton is listed as the campaign chair of the Greater Greensboro Republican Women’s Club. I don’t know much about Ms. Barton. I suspect we probably disagree on a lot of issues, but I have to say we need more Republicans, and Democrats to stand up the way she did.
Other Random Links
Yeah, these links are on my ma.gnolia posts, but I wanted to highlight a couple of them anyway. Check out The Great Schlep for a funny effort to get people to go to Florida to campaign for Obama. Check out this blog post about security cameras. I did the Google search and checked out some security cameras that way. Makes you think a little bit more about the surveillance society.
And, if your tired of politics and want to put it all into perspective read about this effort to explain politics.
Enough random stuff for now.
John McCain, ACORN and the Financial Crisis
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/16/2008 - 13:33Today, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) released a report, ACORN and John McCain: The Real Story of the Financial Crisis 1999-2008.
While the report does not focus on the issue of the voter registrations that ACORN conducted, the issue of voter registration has been a key focus in the media recently and it is important to provide details about this effort. For this election cycled, ACORN registered over 1.3 million new voters in 21 states. They did this by employing around thirteen thousand people to go out help people register. Some quick number checks: ACORN used about half the number of employees that Lehman had when they went bankrupt. A quick number check shows that the average worker for ACORN would have helped a hundred people register to vote.
Make not mistake about it, this was a large effort. This effort included important checks and balances. The voter registration forms which were collected were reviewed and those that were found questionable were reported to the elections officials responsible in each state for verifying the eligibility of potential voters. In cases where ACORN had reason to believe that an employee was violating laws, they also reported this.
It should be noted that improperly filled out voter registration cards are not necessarily fraudulent. In some cases, people fill out multiple forms because they were not clear if they were registered, or simply because they have moved frequently.
Registration cards that are fraudulent do not necessarily imply that the person collecting the card was aware of or participated in an fraudulent registration. Having employees that commit fraud does not necessarily imply that the employer is aware of or participating in fraud. In ACORN’s case, it appears clear that they have worked hard to prevent registration fraud.
Beyond that, registration fraud does not mean that there is voting fraud. If a person who has fraudulently registered attempts to vote, that would be voting fraud, but there is no evidence of that.
Yet the attacks on ACORN have gone beyond its efforts to get low and moderate income people registered to vote. Some conservatives are claiming that ACORN’s effort to promote affordable housing has led to the housing crisis. They assert that the Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to make loans to people that couldn’t afford them. Unfortunately for conservatives, the data tends to indicate the opposite.
Earlier this year, Traiger and Hinkley issued a report The Community Reinvestment Act: A Welcome Anomaly in the Foreclosure Crisis, which found, among other things that banks participating in the Community Reinvestment Act were 66% less likely than other lenders to originate the types of loans that have been the primary driver in the foreclosure crisis.
In 1999, ACORN set up its Financial Justice Center in an effort to address issues of predatory lending that “that set homeowners up to fail and lose their homes and equity”. Since then, ACORN has fought hard to prevent the sort of lending that has led to the current financial crisis.
The report notes that:
John McCain's history with this issue is more difficult to document, mostly because there is not much history. In a search of mccain.senate.gov, which contains records dating back to 1988, there is not a single mention of predatory or risky practices in lending and only one mention of foreclosure, from a speech this March about earmarks in which he acknowledges that foreclosures are increasing. This level of engagement is far less than one would expect from a Senator representing the state with the third highest foreclosure rate, where one in every 182 households is in foreclosure1. By comparison, a search of acorn.org yields 479 hits about foreclosure and 737 hits about predatory lending. Nor is it the case that Senator McCain's website is just lacking information on his work – a search for "earmark" yields 240 hits.
…
Indeed, in looking at the totality of their work, the only available conclusion is that ACORN fought with all its might for a decade to prevent this crisis while Senator McCain sat on the sidelines and cheered on the deregulation of the financial services industry that paved the way for the nation's economic collapse.
Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 10/15/2008 - 19:26Well, I didn’t get any profound post written about Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty. So, I figured the least I could do was highlight a few posts that I read.
@hmason twittered about BatchBlue’s Fighting Poverty in RI. Pamela is promoting the Rhode Island Food Bank. She writes
Please get involved by leaving a reply message using the form below. For each reply that we receive, we will donate 3 meals to a deserving RI family.
Last I checked, they had around thirty comments. Stop by, add a comment, and check out there site.
Another great blog post is a personal story by Blogger Newbie. Read it and ponder what poverty means.
Then, if you want a lot of good blog posts from a blog that focuses a lot on poverty issues, be sure to check out Momocrats.
With all these great posts, other than highlighting them, I’m not sure I could add much to the conversation.
