Everyone is a socialist come April 15th

When April 15th rolls around, everybody become a socialist.

From January to April of each year have been working as a tax preparer at a little kiosk in the Midwest. In that time I have done taxes for people doing rather well, people barely scraping by, hourly employees, landlords, small business owners, tipped employees, salaried employees and people in other situations it takes longer to explain.

One thing is true about every single client I prepared taxes for: Not ONE of them has turned down a tax deduction or tax credit they have qualified for. Every single person - when it comes time to pay taxes - has preferred I choose every legal option on their return to owe the minimum amount possible or to get back as large of a refund as possible. Not ONE person has said "Can I pay in an extra 100 or so to help lower the national debt?" or such, or refused to take an energy/home loan interest/student loan interest/higher education/child care tax credit based on some principle of "I don't believe the government should be paying for X."

The rest of the year we all might be fiscal libertarians or such, but come April 15th, everybody's a socialist.

A sincere apology to my Conservative friends.

You wisened fellows deserve my respect>
I have been wrong about so very much, and you have been so very right... It's about time I offer a heartfelt apology to my conservative friends and praise their prescience on so many things. Looking back, if only we had listened to them in these past few years we would be so much wiser.

I offer my sincere apologies
Years ago you told me the Federal Budget Deficit would explode and grow each year under the stewardship of President Obama, and you guys were pretty much on the mark. You looked over the numbers and trusted your guts and sure called that one right.

You told America that allowing gays to openly serve in the United States Military was a horrible mistake, that it would destroy morale, dissolve unit cohesion, and hollow out our forces as our service people would leave in droves, and you were absolutely on point with that one. Clearly our military has never had a more devastating issue or difficult problem than allowing its gay members to openly serve.

You warned us that legalizing pot would have a devastating impact on the health, saftey, and livilihood of the residents of those states who had decriminalized it. You told me that the "Tough" approach on drugs was our only hope against this plague, and now that we can see the fallout we know that there has been an unambiguous explosion in violent crime in Colorado and Washington have taught us all not to ignore your warnings, and the hellish smoldering remains of Colorado after the "Last Bag of Cheetos" war of 2014 stands as a reminder of just how necessary the war on drugs is.

4/20, Never Forget
You predicted that the Affordable Care Act / Obamacare was going to result in everything from a doubling of unemployment to Government Death Panels. You told me that the kids wouldn't sign up and that the efforts to provide affordable health insurance to millions would fail. Boy, were you guys ever right on that one. We should have just given up on that goal since it took some effort and the goal of helping several million Americans get access to health care was just silly.

You gave dire warning about the slippery slope of Gay Marriage, and you pointed to your most prominent moral think tanks showing how it would lead to everything from bigamy to marrying horses. You claimed it would destroy traditional marriage. You guys were certainly right. In the states that have recognized gay marriage, straight marriage is no longer a thing. Polyamorous human-animal marriages are common, dogs and cats living together, the whole bit. If only we had listened to you.

You informed us that President Obama would conspire with his environmentalist cronies to destroy the United States' oil production, that it would be impossible to explore and drill for oil unless we had a leader who embraced the "Drill, baby, Drill" ethos - and looking at the state of the Oil Production in the US today, you sure were right.

Our economy was one place where you were perhaps the most right of all. The stock market since President Obama was re-elected has been devastated.

Perhaps your greatest concern, and perhaps the place were we liberals were the most wrong was in the area of Gun Control. You guys were quick to predict that President Obama was going to utilize the massacres in the past few years in Newton and Aurora to seize firearms in this nation and disarm us all. Some of you even speculated that these were "false flag attacks" to create a grab our guns pretense. If only we had listened to you, the "Total Firearms Seizure Act of 2013" wouldn't have happened, the Second Ammendment wouldn't have been repealed, and U.N. Troops wouldn't have gone house to house seizing every single legally owned American Firearm. It was tragic and unfolded exactly as you have been predicting for the last thirty years. Why, last year no guns at all were sold in the United States and Obama has left us unarmed as never before.

Mr. Heston's casket was opened, his fingers pried open, and his rifle seized
I apologize for ignoring your sage advice. From letting me know that Gold was the safest investment, to letting me know I should really have really gotten in on Bitcoin about six months ago. To even letting me know that I should invest in assault rifles, as they would continue to increase in value during the impending bans.

I should have learned my lesson ever since the Conservatives were so bravely right about the necessity of our military intervention to seize WMDs in Iraq and the ease of which that military operation would be carried out... these are some of the smartest, best informed, open minded and prescient people our nation has ever known and I apologize for ever doubting you guys. I am sure your NEXT prediction will be as right as your track record over the last few years.

They're right, they are just answering a different question.

“My personal opinion: these leaks have caused grave, significant and irreversible damage to our nation and to our allies. It will take us years to recover..."

"We’ve got to handle media leaks first."

-Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the N.S.A.
Remarks to Georgetown University, 2014

*****

In his opinion, the most dangerous is....the group which consists of people who are "20-something, sitting in pajamas and slippers, still living with their mother in the basement, who are mad at the world, who want to do what you and I can not understand and certainly can not perform."

Gen. Michael Hayden, former director C.I.A. and N.S.A., former Director of National Intelligence
Currently working for Motorola and the Chertoff Group
Speech at the National Bank in Bucharest, 2014

They are right. The "Greatest Danger" are hackers and journalists and they are right to fear them. What is different is what Joe and Jane Average consider a "Danger" and what the men who live in the world of Deep State truly fear.

Whistleblowers, hackers, journalists all have the power to expose what someone else was trying to conceal. If a set of lies fuels the gravy train that you and your associated have build careers on and which you plan to profit more from in the future, then any truth that challenges that lie is your "Greatest Danger". More than any carbomb or suicide vest some very specific truths threaten to destroy the "world" of certain men and their associates.

I will never stop stealing this panel from Tom Tomorrow
A long time ago, in what feels like a past life, I studied and practiced the art of propaganda for the United States Army which at the time was called Psychological Operations, or PSYOP. I took to it like a fish to water, they offered ample study materials but I wanted more, I studied more about persuasion, about belief and motivation and what really drives people to action. I read fundamentals, I read Bernays theories of Propaganda, I read little red books by Mao and Guevara, and little pamphlets by Franklin and Thomas Paine. I dove deeper into related fields neurology and graphic design. I learned about the power that words and symbols and narratives and ideas can have on the actions that we take, how people dedicate and even sacrifice their lives for them. I learned that the biggest bombs and biggest missiles were all built years before I was born and that the new arms race was being fought for human minds and souls.

Part of my job was to gather, analyze and estimate the impacts of propaganda (ours AND the enemy's). One lesson I took away from this is that the arguments or symbols or ideas that are believed to pose the greatest threat will draw the greatest and most rapid response. Most propaganda comes and goes with little response, but the things that make a target drop what they are doing and focus on answering from the highest levels right then and there - those are the things they believe will have an impact.

I have previously written about how the thing that we have lost with arguments regarding the recently leaked programs and "balancing" privacy and security is how the most broad and unconstitutional of them have never been shown to have caught a single terrorist. What bigger threat to their continued existence than to expose that particular fact?

The area surrounding the District of Colombia has the highest median income of any metropolitan area in the United States. While many groan about the salaries of Federal employees and lawmakers, these are tiny drops in a rather large bucket. The money that funds the wave of new wealth in the D.C. area is money from contractors, often National Security contractors with the clearances, backgrounds, and connections to make truly gigantic amounts of money filling "needs" we believe our government has.

Dear Disney: Please do not sue me.
Companies like Booz Allen Hamilton (who employed Edward Snowden on N.S.A. contracts), the Carlyle Group (which owns Booz Allen Hamilton), The Chertoff Group (founded by former Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff and currently employing former NSA/CIA director Michael Hayden)... these all make a handful of people behind the secret surveillance community known as Deep State VERY rich men.

These companies donate millions to the corrupt campaign finance and influence system that keeps lobbying firms and political consultants very, very, rich. These companies keep the pipeline open to welcome public servants and lawmakers onto their payrolls after they complete their service (and maybe throw a contract or favor their way while in office). I have written about this before.

Recently Senator Diane Feinstein has been a news item by going public with the fact that Senate computers were hacked to delete CIA files relevant to an ongoing investigation of the CIA by the Senate. What files and what report? The Senate report regarding the network of "Black Sites" and "Rendition" and "Enhanced Interrogation" (or Torture) that supposedly was a necessary program to keep us safe from Terrorism.

Remember the first half of Zero Dark Thirty was mostly this.
The Senate was closing in on pinpointing the exact number of crucial intelligence items discovered by this network, in relation to stopping terrorist attacks on the U.S. The number they were getting close towards? Zero, or close to it. Specifically they concluded "that the CIA program had yielded little or no significant intelligence."

My bad y'all...
Again, this is the kind of secret that shuts down sites and ends contracts. This required a response. (The head of the CIA during the relevant time of investigation was Michael Hayden.) This report - and the threat of it reaching the kinds of people who might reject the program that hurt our reputation around the world, threatened our core values, and likely violated our constitution and various treaties if it did not yield a damn thing. This is the report that inspired individuals to invade the computers of the Senate Intelligence Community and delete evidence. I assure you if the people doing this were wearing Guy Fawkes masks there would be a bipartisan call for them to be pursued to the ends of the Earth and penalized to the fullest extent of the law.

But they are not. Hopefully, somewhere in the mind of a senior Senator the idea is brewing "Since they were not reigned in from doing this to ordinary Americans, of course they would utilize these tools on us." A series of events have led us to a once in a generation national discussion regarding the powers, funding and secrecy we allow "Deep State" to have.

We will hear arguments about Privacy versus Security, we will hear nightmare scenarios about captured terrorists and hidden ticking time bombs (never happened), we will - and of this I am 100% certain - hear the Snowden leaks/revelations used as evidence that the companies making these tools need to be paid billions of additional dollars to "repair" the effectiveness of a program which has (in regards to mass collection) NEVER CAUGHT A SINGLE TERRORIST. In all of this we need to keep that one piece of signal among all the noise - These programs cannot display they produced ANYTHING, let alone the kind of vital and consistent operational advantage to justify their existence.

Hell, just the financial cost alone (let alone the moral, human, or constitutional cost) should kill these programs in an era where we are told we as a nation cannot afford our levels of such things as Food Stamps and Veteran's Pensions.

How much military pension funding would you cut to preserve an unconstitutional program that has never caught a terrorist? What about education funding? What about roads, or bridges or medical research or food for the hungry? How are the to build all those new mansions in and around the D.C. area unless you fund our multi-billion-dollar boondoggles that protect no one. For that matter, how long does a person need to be imprisoned for leaking details about programs that never caught a single terrorist?

Their most secret, horrible, and expensive activities protected no one. This is the secret that threatens them. Are hackers and leakers and journalists "The Greatest Danger"? If your asking about the danger to their unaccountable riches and power, then you are DAMNED right they are.

Hilarious thought...

Thought: Most of the people who just lost their savings in the crash of the biggest BitCoin exchange on the planet are 100% confident that they know how to run the economy better than the officials doing it.


(Some background) So, Bitcoin, which if you want to know can be learned about here, has been a thing for a few years.

It has some rather innovative solutions to an ongoing problem - namely that all online commerce requires putting funds or credit in an account somewhere (Paypal, Visa, etc..) and then providing that information to a vendor who charges a proper amount to that account based on the information provided. This creates the problem of identity theft, since the data with account numbers, codes, etc... is stored somewhere and can be stolen.

BitCoin was about creating a system by which the data itself transmitted was the value, and where the transmission of the data transferred ownership from one party to another. Utilizing designed scarcity, cryptography, Peer-to-Peer networking and at least four other economic and technical buzzwords it created a system that accomplished this to some degree.

Some of us noted that the first adopters of BitCoin were, for some reason, Libertarians... in fact the Libertarian Party is the ONLY party which has created a mechanism to take BitCoin donations on it's website. Noted writers have been observing the relationship between Libertarian ideals and BitCoin enthusiasts. The most recognizable names involved in BitCoin to most people were the Winklevoss twins of Facebook fame. BitCoin's primary use as a currency (and not as a speculative store of value) has been buying drugs over the Internet. from a guy operating from a pseudonym taken from an 80s Movie.

Truly, an icon of trust on many levels
Regardless of the ideas and technical background behind BitCoin, many of us who were intrigued by the notion looked at the nest of criminality and gullibility massed into this scheme and knew that many, many, people were going to be manipulated and taken to the cleaners to benefit a VERY few winners who manipulated the system. The investors with shadowy histories, the built in secrecy and lack of accountability, the fact that it was popular with Libertarians - who happen to be the most gullible group of human beings that have ever lived. People have just - in a day - lost anywhere for a few dollars to their life savings - and most of them talking about it online are (somehow) not learning anything about markets, security, or legal frameworks and accountability from any of this.

And these are, for the most part, the same people who will tell you the banks that haven't crashed in nearly a century are "a scam" or that treasury bills that have never failed to be paid out in the entire history of the United States are "worthless" and that they have better ideas than the staff of the Federal Reserve or the U.S. Treasury.

Hey, who could have guessed... just a couple months ago Ron Paul was speaking praises of Bitcoin, but yesterday, after the crash he gave an interview on Fox News where he defended its existence but casually mentioned that he never put a penny of his own money in the stuff. Ron Paul is the Con Artist in this game, not the mark.

Why we cannot respect our elders...

This smug asshole is the embodiment of willful and
hateful ignorance hiding as "folksiness"

Seriously, fuck this guy.

Respect your elders. It's one of the most sacred and shared traditions across the world. It's mandated by most rules of etiquette, it seems to be a foundation of a civilized society as it encourages us to be receptive to the lifetimes of collective knowledge our forerunners held...

But this generation of elders makes it damned hard to hold them in any kind of esteem. The smug turd pictured above is Don Martin, who has recently had some Facebook/Meme fame from some ignorant commentary he wrote to a local paper who had the bad judgement to print it. You may have already seen this is you have friends/family who follow Facebook Groups like "White History Month" or People Who Believe What Fox News Says" or "Hives of Scum and Villiany". The piece goes as follows:

...Heavy Sigh
There are two points I want to address here:
#1) This man just told a story about how he left a loaded gun accessible to minors and anyone else.
This is a horrible thing to make light of, letting kids have unsupervised access to weapons with no training or preparation is a terrible thing to do. Hundreds of kids die needlessly in our country each year, because worthless fucks won't secure their damned weapons. I know this is just some bullshit fantasy story by an crusty old fuck, but it is still a pretty horrible thing to gloss over.

#2) This man is arguing against NOBODY.
I've been a fairly liberal fellow for a long damned time, and that means I've come across my fair share of individuals who advocate stronger and smarter gun control laws. I have spoken to hundreds of gun policy advocates in my political life and - during those several decades - I have met precisely ZERO people who have professed a belief that guns, absent a human operator, kill people.

Well, maybe this one exception

This man is having an argument against imaginary opponents who are stating something they have only said in his imagination, and is smugly proud of himself for winning that fight. It would be as if someone bragged to you about winning a fierce physical battle against a severely disabled man who they bested in a dream they had once. Whether talking about gun policy, social programs, military interventions, crime prevention, or tax laws... there are individuals who strongly argue against positions they pretend their imaginary opponents had, and then they congratulate themselves for winning.

It looks like this.
(Note: Clint Eastwood may have been having some fun
at the Republicans expense by doing this bit.)
Now, let me give you some background on my position. I've lived for years in Rural Missouri and have been shooting in some fashion since grade school. I have a silly and unjustifiable number of guns and may very well buy some more. I was taught to fire a pistol by a former member of the U.S. Armed Forces in Europe Pistol Team who also happened to be an Infantry Sergeant AND my father. I carried a weapon for a while as a body guard, as a contractor in Iraq, AND as a soldier in the United States Army for two tours of duty. I've qualified from "passed" to "expert" on a variety of weapons and even coached others on ranges for certain weapons. I am by no means an expert, but I am not unfamiliar with weaponry nor its purpose....

...That being said, firearms are tools designed to kill things from a distance. Some of these weapons are designed to kill animals (We call this hunting), and some of these weapons are designed to kill human beings. There is much variety based on what you wish to kill, from how far away, how many targets you may have, what weight you are willing to carry, and many other concerns. There exist shooting sports not focused around killing - but traditionally those events (such as skeet shooting) existed to prepare hunters for the hunting season or soldiers for war - only recently have those taken on a life of their own competitively.

Ancillary purposes exist for firearms, but those are derived from their primary purpose. For instance you can deter attacks with firearms, because of the firearm's understood lethality. Firearms are not a tool that fails when it's use leads to injury and death, rather, that is their purpose. This is no great secret, in fact, many of us were trained on understanding the lethality of firearms and - therefore - the respect and care we should utilize regarding handling and accounting for these tools. Don Martin was in the Marines - unless military training was different back in his day than in more recent times - he should be fully aware that his rifle wasn't issued to him to be a cane or tentpole, but rather an instrument of directed violence.

Baby boomers, despite their outward appearance, were not BORN old and withered
I was curious about Don Martin after reading the letter, but with a name and the small town he is from a man is easy to find. Like most people who write letters to the local paper in 2014, Don has a blog (or several). You can read them here. His writings indicate he seems a nice enough and respectable fellow in his personal life. Father, husband, solid career, veteran... he has made some good choices and seems curious enough to still be in classes well into his retirement years. The man seems to have a happy life he has worked hard for and - in that - I wish him happiness.

But there is also a side of him engaged in public commentary, and it shows he has been afflicted by the same mental disease that has claimed so many of our elders. He has a chronic case of smug conservatism. He has his links to people calling state budget officials "Socialist" for the mildest of policy changes. He links to deceptive drivel like The Drudge Report. He has the standard anti-Union, anti-Teacher, anti-State smears blaming budget shortfalls on (supposedly) highly compensated teachers, police, corrections officers, and so on. There is a reasonably good chance that his friends and associated get a deluge of forwards about the need to cut food stamps, working people's pensions, education, environmental protection, and so on. There is a decent chance he promotes a conspiratorial and paranoid notion of government that prevents reasonable discussions. Somehow he has fallen into the abyss of conservative swill that has nearly halted our ability to respect an entire class of our elders.

Go ahead and hit "share". It probably checks out.
I want to have a healthy respect for the wisdom of the generation that came before me. I really do. But you lose some of that each time you hear one of them who can't explain aggregate demand tell you how to improve the economy, or hear one who can't explain the difference between the "debt" and the "deficit" tell you how to balance the budget, or listen to one who has never set one foot in the Middle East tell us how to "straighten things out" over there. The "Greatest Generation", the one who has personal memories of FDR and Eisenhower, of a nation that fully committed to difficult choices, of sacrifices abroad AND at home for the cause of Liberty... they are dying off. Our current group of elders have lived much of their lives on the successes their parent's generation fought for. Social Security and Medicare... these are programs from the New Deal era. Working, mostly Union men and women had to go to the streets to fight for the worker protections that existed when this generation entered the workplace. It is easy to praise the virtues of unregulated capitalism when the hard work of your predecessors protects you from its worst predations.

David Mitchell is a great comedian, and often great comedy comes from a great insight into human conundrums. One of these is that it is hard for him to respect the latest generation to turn elderly. I am sharing that below.


I like the summation of comparing the Greatest Generation to the next couple as such "They didn't beat Hitler... ... They presided over our long slide into mediocrity"

That kind of summarizes how generations following "The Greatest Generation" have held up. The fact that we collectively call their parents "The Greatest Generation" without their protest is a sign they don't plan of having a similar legacy. For a couple of centuries the United States expanded, or was at least open to admitting the willing as members states. The last state admitted to the Union was Hawaii in 1959. It isn't like we don't have options (D.C., Puerto Rico, The Virgin Islands) The vast majority of Americans alive today have never seen the flag have a different number of stars in their lifetime. The last Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1992, after being submitted in 1789. The "Living Document" has not changed since I have been a legal voter. Our largest corporation (Wal Mart) grows its fortune not by developing some innovative new product or service, but by keeping wages for most of its workers at or below the poverty line.

I recently wrote on how we are sold bullshit by way of social media, but I don't think that people who promote bullshit realize the respect they lose when they take their place on the bullshit pipeline. This goes double for the times when they "argue with the empty chair" which is as bad as the bullshitting. Any discussion of how we can keep the violent or mentally ill from getting extremely lethal firearms? That degenerates into "Guns don't kill people" childish nonsense. Any discussion of a collection of pressing issues becomes the same. On issues where there is a clear generational divide (Allowing gays to openly serve in the military, allowing the decriminalization of Marijuana in some states) it looks like the apocalyptic fantasies our elders had were exactly that, fantasies.

There is a lesson here I hope my generation takes in. Bullshit kills respectability. Smugness kills respectability. Technology allows an accountability for one's words more than ever before. It also enables Mark Twain's "A lie can travel around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes"(*) more than ever before. A deluge of "noise", of distraction and deception bombards us as never before. Taking the time to cut through it and promote only what is true is a more stand out respectable trait than ever. We live in a world that is, and will, face a gauntlet of challenges to us - both public and private - that take everything we can to meet. We DO NOT have time to argue with chairs or Straw Men. Those before us have wasted enough time with nonsense, it's going to be up to us to restore that path to greater and better things.

I leave you with this, from the comic geniuses at SMBC Theater:

*-Mark Twain, Selected Writings of an American Skeptic

Privacy vs. Security, a Noisy Question.

A noisy question. Surveillance, resources, privacy, and asking the wrong things

Better shovel some more on there if we ever want to find that needle.
A quote you will see many times, especially if you live part of you life on the Internet and CERTAINLY if you discuss technology, surveillance, or politics online is this:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1775.

It is often shortened or paraphrased as such:

"Those who give up liberty for safety, deserve neither"
- Some guy on Facebook, all the time.

This quote implies there is some kind of trade off between one's Liberty and one's safety, as if increasing the communications, people, and property open to searches and seizures will make us more safe. This mindset is ingrained even more today than in Franklin's time - as recent revelations regarding the NSA and other agencies have made clear. The same conceptualization is made today, one of a "balance" between protecting our private affairs on one side and preventing terrorist attacks on the other. The White House spokesmen speaks speaks in such terms and even the Libertarian/Republican CATO institute discusses the issue in the same way.

The problem is that this conceptualization is, at least relevant to the programs recently brought to light, entirely wrong.

If you are asking the question "How much privacy am I willing to lose to mass surveillance in order to gain security from terrorist attacks?" or if you are asking "How many more terrorist attacks am I willing to allow to happen to our nation to prevent our government from engaging in mass surveillance?" you are wrong either way. These questions are "noisy" - they only serve to distract us from what we SHOULD be asking.

These questions imply that if we surrender our privacy then we automatically gain safety or at least a framework that could make us more safe. The evidence - as far as we know it at this time - leads us to believe the opposite. From the Civil Liberties Oversight Board Report:

"Based on the information provided to the Board, we have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the telephone records program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation"
-The Final Report of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. (underline mine)
-Go read the Whole Thing

This implies that the safety gained from this sacrifice of our privacy for this particular program was Zero. That significantly changes the equation about how much privacy should be sacrificed because zero times any amount is still zero. Despite all the shows about NCIS super-hackers or Ex-CIA agents with A.I. best buddies... the number of real world plots that were stopped with this nonsense seems to be Zero.

Sorry I spent so much money on this cool spy scopeSorry I watched you all this time without y'alls permissionSorry I didn't catch any bad guys doing this stuff. My bad.
And, in a world of limited resources, every Law Enforcement or National Security penny spent on the Program to Observe Ominously but Prevent Few if Any Real Terrorists is one less dollar spent on resources that HAVE been proven to catch real terrorist and prevent actual attacks. Or... funds could be spent elsewhere on things we are desperately behind on (Education, Infrastructure) or could even not need to be spent at all to ease burdens on taxpayers or reduce debt.

A less noisy question would be "Has this program been necessary to stopping even one terrorist attack in the last several years?", which - if answered by the same rubric as the way the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board interprets it, is "No." Earlier claims had been made that 54 terror attacks were stopped by mass surveillance, but that started to seem fishy as those making the claim had little, if any, evidence to back up that claim.

That question only began to demand an answer after the Snowden leaks. And, sadly, we are all worse off for in not being asked long ago. We were all under the spell of "Losing Security vs. Losing Privacy" when the reality was "Losing NOTHING vs. Losing Privacy", which is a much easier choice. I was as guilty as the rest of us for assuming that if THAT much money and THAT many resources had unfettered access to ALL of communications of EVERYONE, they would surely catch a real terrorist now and then.

A friend of mine once joked a few years back that the various contractors that supplied "Intelligence" and "Analysis" to the Department of Defence and various other Three Letter Agencies were - first and foremost - a giant government welfare program to ensure 0% unemployment for former spooks and some types of us ex-military folks, and that if they occasionally found actionable intelligence or genuine insight that was just icing on the cake. He was joking, but now we can see how much closer to the truth he was than he thought.

Isn't preventing this all worth it?(Tom Tomorrow made this joke months ago.)
Questions can be "noisy". They can generate as much, or more, disinformation than information. They do this by implying statements in the way that they are asked. A famous example would be "Have you stopped beating your wife, yet?" which implies a history of spousal abuse. Another "noisy" question that has been asked is "How long would it take country X to have nuclear weapons?", again, this question implies the existence of a program well on its way to producing a nuclear weapon - when in truth ANY industrialized nation could produce nuclear weapons in a few years time. The United States developed the first Atomic Bomb - a concept not even proven possible at the time - in less than four years, using technology from more than sixty years ago.

The noisiest questions completely shut out the questions tuned in to the signals we should be listening for. Questions about how much value you place on security and on privacy are mostly opinion - anyone can chime in with their opinion, values, or analysis at any time. We can ask that question and divide into our Hippie and Fascist camps and yell at each other all day long without one second of research. The other question: "Did any of this crap accomplish anything other than making a few contractors super rich and wasting our agents' damned time?" required specific knowledge that only a few were allowed to have and which they were prohibited by law (classified) from being able to share with the general public. The noisy question was the easier to get answers to.

For what it is worth, the report itself discussed the fallacy of "Privacy vs. Security" and how its implications muddied the waters of our discussions about mass surviellance. Also, for the record, I am not opposed to surveillance as an activity... targeted surveillance has caught criminals and stopped horrible plots many times in our history, it is just the "lets spy on EVERYONE" method has a ZERO in the win column.

On an unrelated note, did you know that 70% of the Intelligence Budget is spent hiring private contracting firms, and that those firms have put MILLIONS of dollars in the PACs of the Congressmen specifically tasked with overseeing those very firms? It's true! . Hey those ugly black-and-white with red text attack ads aren't going to pay for themselves! One of those on the Senate Intelligence Committee was Saxby Chambliss, and he used his sweet security contractor money to fund an attack ad against his opponent Max Cleland, who lost several limbs serving in Vietnam if that stuff is important to you.

Attacking the patriotism of that disabled Vietnam Veteran was worth every penny.
And, for what it's worth, for the last five months some folks from Anonymous have been on the case of promoting just how much of a money game the mass surveillance apparatus is. They've been putting together videos detailing how leaders on the take misbehave, such as Senator (and former House Member) Chambliss explicitly misinforming TV audiences about the capabilities of the NSA programs while serving on their oversight committee AND taking hundreds of thousands in contributions from the very firms making millions on his watch. I've talked before about the legalized bribery nature of money in American politics and the Senator from Georgia does a great job of illustrating this at its most blatant:

Someone is making a fortune selling Guy Fawkes masks
My takeaway from this is going to be:
#1) Ask the right questions
#2) Think about the implied assumptions of the questions we all ask each other.
#3) Never underestimate the power of cash and secrecy to hide waste.

It will be good to see how this discussion takes place. Will the same people that want Edward Snowden tried and imprisoned for his crimes demand the same of those running programs also determined to be crimes? Will people still accept the "Privacy vs. Security" dichotomy without questioning its assumptions? Will Anonymous members ever change up their style beyond basing it on a movie from 2005 (that was based on a comic book from 1982)? Time will tell. At the very least, let's not let "Privacy vs. Security" slide into our conversations without questioning it.

#BearFalseWitness

The King James Bible, Exodus 20:16
"Thou Shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor"
Social media exists. It exists so pervasively that still having a two-word label for it feels overly cumbersome, like hearing someone say they just received an "Electronic Mail" or that their phone has "Short Message Service" features. Like it or not, it is here to stay and touches our lives more days than not.

An idea that I have an almost cultish devotion to is that our lives are enriched when we either increase "signal" and learn new truths, or when we fend off falsehoods and reduce the "noise" in our daily communications. This ratio of knowledge to bullshit defines much of our ability to function as adults and to improve our lives, our communities, and the lives of those around us. If you have more than three people in your Facebook feed you might see where this is going.

If you have grandparents who are somehow still angry that some teens wore baggy pants several years ago, then you are familiar with these Memes.
I am using the above as an example. It implies that during the evacuation operations in Benghazi, while the Consulate in that town was being overrun, that US Navy Seals requested additional military assets of some kind and that those assets were denied specifically because of executive decisions, perhaps involving the personal demands of the President of the United States. The further implications is that the President is somehow engaged in covert cooperation with Islamic Militants in Libya, if not throughout the world, and that he chose to protect those individuals over the lives of Americans.

This is, of course, a verifiable 100% falsehood, silly, and an indicator of a weakness either in the intellect or integrity of every individual who has ever made this assertion. Some versions of this lie are more elaborate than others. Here is one - from TheDailySheeple that goes on to allege General Carter Ham was arrested for mobilizing Special Operations Forces in violation of a stand-down order (Of course this never happened).

These lies - and I am focusing more on the right wing falsehoods at this moment - are truly multi-media. The highest level of involvement comes from agitation and statements by those in authority such as Senator Darrel Issa of California or Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. These individuals don't handle the most blatant of falsehoods, they merely abuse their authority to imply there are scandals to be found and continue to keep poking a prodding and maintaining a rationale for this issue to be discussed by the next level.

The Next Level
The next level is, of course, the Right Wing News collectives. This includes Fox News and other News Corporation outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, openly conservative media such as National Review, and talk radio programming such as Rush Limbaugh and the many Fox Hosts who also have radio broadcasts. These "journalists" will take this to the next level and ask leading questions and make unsourced assertions, but generally try to steer clear of the explicitly stating the conclusions they wish their viewers to come to. That brings us to the final level...

Sadly, it's not this awesome
The final level is a network of online groups who utilize everyday folks to spread the most blatant parts of these lies by way of social media. These groups are usually funded by way of a fraudulent filing as 501(c) status with the IRS and claim they exist as being "educational" when in reality they are 100% political in their orientation and only want the 501(c) status for a tax write-off and so their donors can remain secret. So, FYI, your tax dollars are subsidizing this nonsense.

Examples of such groups include Special Operations Speaks, which is funded by the donors behind the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" and which exists to promote falsehoods aimed at our President, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and any other non-Republican who they wish to debase. Another is True The Vote which is funded by a handful of wealthy Republicans from the Houston area and exists to spread the falsehood that pervasive voter fraud exists and onerous Voter Restriction laws are needed to combat it in ways that just happen to impact Democratic Voters (Working Class, Students, Minorities) more than Republicans. Another is GlobalClimateScam which exists to spread the falsehood that there is an international conspiracy involving thousands of scientists to invent and promote notions of climate change. They are maintainted by "The Minnesota Majority" another 501(c) with secret donors who are racist as all hell, and who also have maintained sites such as the old wewantvoterid.com and the more recent more focus-group sounding ProtectMyVote.com.

Old website banner with racist stereotypes from 2012....

NEW BANNER FOR 2013
So F'ing Diverse it BLOWS YOUR MIND!
We even have a lady in a wheelchair now!
These sites ALL have "Like Us On Facebook!" and "Share" links and newsfeeds where they generate and share Memes and articles that all have the purpose of promoting one or more of the falsehoods that they are paid to promote (The existence of pervasive voter fraud, the idea the Climate Change is a "scam", the idea the our President or leadership in collaborating with Al Qaeda, and so on). The spread of these lies is finally facilitated by social media users who are too ignorant, trusting, apathetic or filled with emotion regarding some issue to perform even the most basic checks for the truth of what they are sharing. Without these facilitators, the liars would have a harder time promoting and deceiving millions with their blatant lies. These groups succeed by using the trust you have earned with the people you know to inject lies into their minds.

It's 2014, so he has a Facebook account now..


My current issue with this - the constant bombardment of lies, half-truths, lies, manipulations, and more lies aimed at your friends, associates and loved ones day in and day out for as long as they stay in contact with you - is that most of the people doing this profess to be Christian...and Christians are not supposed to lie. It's in the 10 Commandments,"Thou shalt not bear false witness" (Exodus 20:16) and repeated again and again throughout scripture. (Leviticus 19:11, Proverbs 14:5, Proverbs 19:5, Proverbs 19:9 and so on all the way up to Revelations 21:8 "...all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.")

"Why did I have to click SHARE?"
Even without the religious implications, both from a Judeo-Christian standpoint and from other faiths, being party to a constant stream of lies is a failing by just about any moral standard... and it is done to us (or by us) every time we check our Facebook feeds and is facilitated by people who should know better.

If we didn't share lies without checking them out, or if we didn't just roll our eyes and think "Oh, Grandma!" when hateful lies were given a platform, then these groups would not be as successful changing mass behavior or influencing public policy. We would have a better national dialogue if it were not polluted by these interest-serving lies that infect our collective consciousness. What does it say when the highest praise one of the groups can receive for their efforts is that they have "gone viral"? The metaphor for disinformation is infectious disease. It spreads from cell to cell and weakens or kills the host. It is a truly harmful "noise" that blocks the "signals" we need to be focusing on.

So, the action step I have taken so very long to come around to is this: Every time someone who should know better posts/forwards/shares a blatant falsehood, don't just let it slide. Either debunk it (and point to where) or just tag it as such. I like #BearFalseWitness, as most of the carriers of viral disinformation I am friends with are professed Christians. I have given old folks here a hard time, but one of the most prolific promoters of viral bullshit on my F-list is barely an adult - it happens with all kinds and all ages. While the right-wing disinformation machine is the most streamlined and prolific, other groups promote their share of falsehoods too. We can, and should, do better.

I am going to leave you with a link to a recent bit from The Onion that related and made me laugh. The premise is what if one of these disinformation groups "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" was exactly what their name implied - a group seeking truth? Satire is best when it uses absurdity to point out falsehoods we have just learned to live with:


It's 2014. Please, let us take an extra few seconds and decide to promote fewer lies this year.