“Particularly damning is what today’s repeal will mean for marginalized groups, like communities of color, that rely on platforms like the internet to communicate, because traditional outlets do not consider their issues or concerns, worthy of any coverage. It was through social media that the world first heard about Ferguson, Missouri, because legacy news outlets did not consider it important until the hashtag started trending.”
–
Mignon Clyburn, FCC Commissioner for Net Neutrality
Today the FCC voted 3-2 to kill the net neutrality rules you helped pass back in 2015
Let’s not kid ourselves: This is a major setback in our fight for a free and open internet. But It’s not the end. Not for us, and we hope not for you.
Net neutrality is too important to be subject to the whims of any administration. We need legislative action.
Go to Battle For The Net to get connected directly to your Senators or Representatives. If we work together, we can get it done. Again!
Here’s more from Commissioner Clyburn this morning:
I am optimistic, that we will look back on today’s vote as an aberration, a temporary deviation from the bipartisan path, that has served us so well. I don’t know whether this plan will be vacated by a court, reversed by Congress, or overturned by a future Commission. But I do believe that its days are numbered. (Verge)
It has already become a cliche for white liberals to thank the Black voters of Alabama for keeping Roy Moore out of the U.S. Senate. I will become this cliche and thank the Black voters of Alabama for keeping Roy Moore out of the U.S. Senate. African-American turnout is definitely what made the difference. And unsurprisingly, again, according to these results, Black women rejected that five-alarm trash fire of a human being nearly unanimously, whereas white women went for Roy Moore by 29 points. I know you didn’t do it for me; there’s absolutely no reason that you should have done it for me; but thank you anyway, African-American voters and community leaders of Alabama, because my family and I cannot survive in Roy Moore’s America.
Imagine what this country could be like if all the African-Americans in the South who wanted to vote, could vote.
This something people have to understand when you look at how small the margin of victory was (about 1.5%; compare that with the 1.7% write-in vote, which must have primarily been Republicans who didn’t want to vote for Moore). What we called “vote caging” back in the Bush era has been a key strategy for the Republican Party in the South for decades, and in some parts of the Midwest for at least the whole 21st century. This was true even before that Supreme Court decision essentially gutted the Voting Rights Act and voter ID laws sprang up like a rash all over the country. In addition to just normal turnout-depressing things like the fact that our elections always happen on a weekday which is not a national holiday, here are some things that routinely happen in states with Republican governors and Republican-controlled state legislatures:
* The mass incarceration of African-Americans (felons are ineligible to vote in many states).
* Voter ID laws, which (because of the time, fees, and paperwork involved in obtaining government ID) are disproportionately harder on lower-income, working-class, and minority voters.
* Bogus “anti-fraud” initiatives like CrossCheck, which throw legitimate voters off the rolls.
* Obstruction of voter registration through the restriction of government services via budget cuts and other means. This is specifically relevant to Alabama, where after passing a voter ID law the state government then plotted to close down DMV offices in majority African-American districts. (Nobody admits that this was what was happening, BTW; but at least the publicity inspired the state government to establish other routes for getting a voter ID.)
* Refusing to update and repair voting machines in majority African-American districts. (Reports of voting machines breaking down on election day and causing multi-hour waits in urban districts have become increasingly common.)
Then we get into the REAL dirty tricks like deliberately misleading Black voters about where/when/how to vote (literally they will set up robo-calls telling people to turn out on the wrong day or in the wrong place, or threatening them with arrest if they don’t have all their paperwork in order). At any rate, my point is:
Democrats need to put voting rights front and center in 2018 and 2020. Apart from voting rights being something that you need for a freaking democracy and the right thing to do, equal access to the ballot for low-income and African-American voters is the only thing that can end this freaking nightmare.
The structure is made up of resilient, lightweight meshworks of thermally formed acrylic, laser-cut into geometrical patterns optimized for production with minimal waste. This unique space truss system is part of the Living Architecture Systems’ pioneering research into resilient and adaptable structures. Astrocyte’s structural mesh components use overlapping strands of material in doubly-curved conical forms that achieve extraordinary strength from minimal material. These innovative forms are clustered together in bundles that are similar to the multiple filaments spanning between outer and inner shells of natural bone structures.
The piece further incorporates 3D-printed lighting components and masses of custom glasswork that contain a combination of oil, inorganic chemicals, and other solutions to form a sort of chemical skin. At the core of Beesley research is the question of whether architecture can truly be “alive,” opening the possibility for self-repairing structures or deeply responsive organic environments, where artificial intelligence exists at almost every level of design. Regardless of the complexity and heady ideas, the works are deeply aesthetically intriguing, something directly out of science fiction.
Arson as a Christmas Tradition: The Gävle Goat Published on Nov 28, 2016 by Tom Scott
In Gävle, Sweden, every year they build Gävlebocken, an enormous traditional Swedish Christmas straw goat. And every year, someone tries to burn it down. Here’s to holiday traditions.
THANKS TO: Axel Wickman, @axelwickm on Twitter, for the post-burning photos of the goat from this morning!
Former
National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s guilty plea for lying to
the FBI is a big fucking deal on its own. In the few days since it
happened, it kind of feels like the break shot at the beginning of a
game of pool – this one strike sends things rolling in different
directions. There’s a lot of other news which is no less important.
This week, though, those other stories have been easier to
distinguish, while Trump-Russia is the rat king.
So, here’s your Trump-Russia cheat sheet for the first week of December:
Today we learned that shooting slo-mo video from train traveling at speed in the opposite direction from a flock of birds in flight results in awesome footage that makes it appear as though the birds are frozen in time.
Redditor davihey captured this surreal footage using an iPhone 8 while riding a train from Orlando to Miami:
Most of my Trump-Russia posts so far have been “if you’re going to spend five minutes on this story” Cliffs Notes posts. A few have been more comprehensive examinations of specific aspects of this story, which are longer, but still boiled down. This is not like that. This is a timeline of events happening during the 2016 election which were a part of the Russian interference in the election, may have been part of Russian interference in the election, or which are important to understanding how the various tentacles of the conspiracy played out.
This page has a few goals.
It’s a compilation of sources which might help make fact-checking the key parts of the story a little bit easier.
It should also provide context as stories about the 2016 campaign come out. This story is so bonkers that it can be a pain to get a grip on the basic facts when you start reading about it, and once you do read about it for a while the facts can start to blend together. I know it’s helpful for me to have a list of sources when I start going “wait, did that really happen?”
You also have to see it all laid out to appreciate the chaos of the attack. This is not about cracking some complex code. It is not an imagining of Putin’s Bond villain monologue where he reveals he planned it all along, muahahaha! It’s just a collection of facts which seem relevant.
Disclaimer: I am nobody. I have no inside knowledge. I don’t have any specialization in intelligence, I haven’t worked on a campaign. This is a 100% open source attempt to catalog events as they’re reported by reputable sources, which you should by all means check out for yourself.
Senate rules say the tax cuts can only add $1.5 trillion to the deficits over the next decade.
The Republicans had gotten rid of the corporate alternative minimum tax – which is the floor of tax rates corporations can pay after all of their deductions. (current standard tax rate is 35% – lowest they can go with deductions is 20%.
With McConnell’s deals made with individual senators to get the bill passed, the addition to the deficit added up to more than $1.5 trillion.
So he added the corporate alternative minimum tax back into the bill to offset the $ going into deals.
And forgot to reduce it. So the minimum tax a company can pay AFTER deductions is back to 20%, which is exactly the same as the new standard, starting corporate tax rate of, you guessed it, 20%.
Which means that corporations can’t use any of the fancy smancy deductions their lobbyists got inserted into the new tax cut plan, or any other tax plan, for that matter, if the bill passes without revision.
Next in “They just don’t know when to shut up, do they”:
Paul Manafort attempts to publish an op-ed under a ghost writer “to influence public opinion about his political consulting in Ukraine, work at the heart of the criminal case against him. The op-ed was being drafted as late as last week, prosecutors say. They did not name the colleague but noted the person is based in Russia.” All in violation of the judge’s Nov 8th gag order.
“At the time [of seeking to get the op-ed published], Manafort was working to secure his release from home confinement by posting more than $10 million in bond, and according to court papers, he had reached a tentative agreement with the government. But after discovering the op-ed, Mueller’s team is now opposing Manafort’s proposed bond agreement.”
Hearseeno 