Monday, July 24, 2017
The Levers of Democracy:
NYTimes OpEd: The Bogus Voter-Fraud Commission
"The truth can’t be repeated often enough: The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which held its first meeting last week, is a sham and a scam. It was born out of a marriage of convenience between conservative anti-voter-fraud crusaders, who refuse to accept actual data, and a president who refuses to accept that he lost the popular vote fair and square. It is run by some of the nation’s most determined vote suppressors, the kind who try to throw out voter registrations for being printed on insufficiently thick paper or who release reports on noncitizen voting that are titled “Alien Invasion” and illustrated with images of U.F.O.s. Its purpose is not to restore integrity to elections but to undermine the public’s confidence enough to push through policies and practices that make registration and voting harder, if not impossible, for certain groups of people who tend to vote Democratic...
In short, the commission is a fraud on the American people, and a far greater threat to electoral integrity than whatever wrongdoing it may claim to dig up. At the meeting last week, the commissioners lived down to expectations, repeating their stale and baseless claims about hordes of noncitizens, former felons, dead people and other ineligible voters storming polling stations...
If the commission were serious about improving confidence in elections, it would focus on real problems afflicting voting and registration — like aging voting machines, hours long lines at the polls and cyber attacks by hostile nations. Instead it plans to rely on tools like the Interstate Crosscheck System, a notoriously inaccurate antifraud data program championed by Kris Kobach, the commission’s vice chairman and crusader in chief. The Crosscheck program compares voter rolls to identify people who register and vote in multiple states — but for every actual double-voter it finds, it returns 200 false positives. That is, it’s wrong 99 percent of the time. But this hasn’t stopped Mr. Kobach, who, in his other job as Kansas’ secretary of state, has been one of the most influential promoters of restrictive voting laws. Called “the Javert of voter fraud” by The Kansas City Star, Mr. Kobach has secured a total of nine convictions for double voting over the years — most of them older Republican men. Now vaulted to the national stage, Mr. Kobach insists the commission is not relitigating Mr. Trump’s bogus claims of illegal voting. Yet after last week’s meeting he was asked whether Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote. “We may never know the answer to that question,” he replied. (We do; she did.) There are two possible explanations for why Mr. Kobach and his team continue to pursue their antifraud campaign. Either they know it’s all a lie but want to increase Republican electoral chances, or they actually believe their own paranoid fantasies. It’s hard to know which poses the bigger danger to democracy."
NYTimes OpEd: The Bogus Voter-Fraud Commission
"The truth can’t be repeated often enough: The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which held its first meeting last week, is a sham and a scam. It was born out of a marriage of convenience between conservative anti-voter-fraud crusaders, who refuse to accept actual data, and a president who refuses to accept that he lost the popular vote fair and square. It is run by some of the nation’s most determined vote suppressors, the kind who try to throw out voter registrations for being printed on insufficiently thick paper or who release reports on noncitizen voting that are titled “Alien Invasion” and illustrated with images of U.F.O.s. Its purpose is not to restore integrity to elections but to undermine the public’s confidence enough to push through policies and practices that make registration and voting harder, if not impossible, for certain groups of people who tend to vote Democratic...
In short, the commission is a fraud on the American people, and a far greater threat to electoral integrity than whatever wrongdoing it may claim to dig up. At the meeting last week, the commissioners lived down to expectations, repeating their stale and baseless claims about hordes of noncitizens, former felons, dead people and other ineligible voters storming polling stations...
If the commission were serious about improving confidence in elections, it would focus on real problems afflicting voting and registration — like aging voting machines, hours long lines at the polls and cyber attacks by hostile nations. Instead it plans to rely on tools like the Interstate Crosscheck System, a notoriously inaccurate antifraud data program championed by Kris Kobach, the commission’s vice chairman and crusader in chief. The Crosscheck program compares voter rolls to identify people who register and vote in multiple states — but for every actual double-voter it finds, it returns 200 false positives. That is, it’s wrong 99 percent of the time. But this hasn’t stopped Mr. Kobach, who, in his other job as Kansas’ secretary of state, has been one of the most influential promoters of restrictive voting laws. Called “the Javert of voter fraud” by The Kansas City Star, Mr. Kobach has secured a total of nine convictions for double voting over the years — most of them older Republican men. Now vaulted to the national stage, Mr. Kobach insists the commission is not relitigating Mr. Trump’s bogus claims of illegal voting. Yet after last week’s meeting he was asked whether Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote. “We may never know the answer to that question,” he replied. (We do; she did.) There are two possible explanations for why Mr. Kobach and his team continue to pursue their antifraud campaign. Either they know it’s all a lie but want to increase Republican electoral chances, or they actually believe their own paranoid fantasies. It’s hard to know which poses the bigger danger to democracy."
Thursday, July 13, 2017
Media:
Joanne Ostrow: Could Sinclair’s possible purchase of Tribune shift two major Denver TV stations to the right?
"There’s an undercurrent of anxiety at Denver’s two Tribune-owned TV stations, KDVR and KWGN. Newsroom staffers are waiting to see whether Sinclair Broadcast Group will be allowed to purchase Tribune Media Company and its 42 local TV stations to become the country’s single largest station group owner. What that would mean for the local stations — and for the media landscape nationally — is a looming question. Sinclair has a reputation for weaving conservative commentary into local newscasts. And the group may have even grander ambitions. As if to illustrate the concern about the potential new owner, KDVR news director Holly Gauntt announced her departure Wednesday after two years at the station. She’s jumping across the street, literally, to KMGH-Channel 7 in the same role, replacing Lindsay Radford who departed on June 3. “I have so much respect, admiration and affection for the KDVR/KWGN team,” Gauntt said. She added that she looks forward to working with the staff at KMGH. “We’ll do good things with the backing of a company that has such rich history in quality journalism.” In a note to staff, KDVR-KWGN general manager Joan Barrett said, “We have great momentum here at 100 East Speer, and that won’t change.” A strict “no comment” mandate is in effect at KDVR and KWGN, but the newsroom is understandably rattled. Sinclair announced its $3.9 billion bid to buy Tribune in May. In addition to CW2 and Fox31 in Denver, the deal includes WGN in Chicago, WPIX in New York, KTLA in Los Angeles and WDCW in Washington. The anxiety on Speer Boulevard isn’t so bad that employees are readying resumes. But some said they might if, after six months or a year of Sinclair ownership, they find the situation untenable. Specifically, there is consternation at the local stations regarding the well known political bent of the Sinclair group. A recent comedic rant by John Oliver on his HBO show, “Last Week Tonight,” conveyed the quite serious problem: Sinclair dictates certain “must-run” content to its stations’ newsrooms. That content is usually politically right-of-center. This is, after all, the broadcast operation that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner bragged he struck a deal with for more favorable coverage during the campaign in exchange for greater access. (Sinclair denied a deal ever happened.) Speculation is rife that Maryland-based Sinclair is rapidly expanding as a prelude to launching its own conservative news network — one to rival Fox News. If the merger goes through, Sinclair could add 42 stations in 33 markets to its media empire, as well as the cable network WGN America..."
State of the Nation:
George Yancy: Noam Chomsky: On Trump and the State of the Union
"...G.Y.: What are the weightiest issues facing us? N.C.: The most important issues to address are the truly existential threats we face: climate change and nuclear war. On the former, the Republican leadership, in splendid isolation from the world, is almost unanimously dedicated to destroying the chances for decent survival; strong words, but no exaggeration. There is a great deal that can be done at the local and state level to counter their malign project. On nuclear war, actions in Syria and at the Russian border raise very serious threats of confrontation that might trigger war, an unthinkable prospect. Furthermore, Trump’s pursuit of Obama’s programs of modernization of the nuclear forces poses extraordinary dangers. As we have recently learned, the modernized U.S. nuclear force is seriously fraying the slender thread on which survival is suspended. The matter is discussed in detail in a critically important article in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in March, which should have been, and remained, front-page news. The authors, highly respected analysts, observe that the nuclear weapons modernization program has increased “the overall killing power of existing U.S. ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three — and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.” The significance is clear. It means that in a moment of crisis, of which there are all too many, Russian military planners may conclude that lacking a deterrent, the only hope of survival is a first strike — which means the end for all of us..."
Joanne Ostrow: Could Sinclair’s possible purchase of Tribune shift two major Denver TV stations to the right?
"There’s an undercurrent of anxiety at Denver’s two Tribune-owned TV stations, KDVR and KWGN. Newsroom staffers are waiting to see whether Sinclair Broadcast Group will be allowed to purchase Tribune Media Company and its 42 local TV stations to become the country’s single largest station group owner. What that would mean for the local stations — and for the media landscape nationally — is a looming question. Sinclair has a reputation for weaving conservative commentary into local newscasts. And the group may have even grander ambitions. As if to illustrate the concern about the potential new owner, KDVR news director Holly Gauntt announced her departure Wednesday after two years at the station. She’s jumping across the street, literally, to KMGH-Channel 7 in the same role, replacing Lindsay Radford who departed on June 3. “I have so much respect, admiration and affection for the KDVR/KWGN team,” Gauntt said. She added that she looks forward to working with the staff at KMGH. “We’ll do good things with the backing of a company that has such rich history in quality journalism.” In a note to staff, KDVR-KWGN general manager Joan Barrett said, “We have great momentum here at 100 East Speer, and that won’t change.” A strict “no comment” mandate is in effect at KDVR and KWGN, but the newsroom is understandably rattled. Sinclair announced its $3.9 billion bid to buy Tribune in May. In addition to CW2 and Fox31 in Denver, the deal includes WGN in Chicago, WPIX in New York, KTLA in Los Angeles and WDCW in Washington. The anxiety on Speer Boulevard isn’t so bad that employees are readying resumes. But some said they might if, after six months or a year of Sinclair ownership, they find the situation untenable. Specifically, there is consternation at the local stations regarding the well known political bent of the Sinclair group. A recent comedic rant by John Oliver on his HBO show, “Last Week Tonight,” conveyed the quite serious problem: Sinclair dictates certain “must-run” content to its stations’ newsrooms. That content is usually politically right-of-center. This is, after all, the broadcast operation that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner bragged he struck a deal with for more favorable coverage during the campaign in exchange for greater access. (Sinclair denied a deal ever happened.) Speculation is rife that Maryland-based Sinclair is rapidly expanding as a prelude to launching its own conservative news network — one to rival Fox News. If the merger goes through, Sinclair could add 42 stations in 33 markets to its media empire, as well as the cable network WGN America..."
State of the Nation:
George Yancy: Noam Chomsky: On Trump and the State of the Union
"...G.Y.: What are the weightiest issues facing us? N.C.: The most important issues to address are the truly existential threats we face: climate change and nuclear war. On the former, the Republican leadership, in splendid isolation from the world, is almost unanimously dedicated to destroying the chances for decent survival; strong words, but no exaggeration. There is a great deal that can be done at the local and state level to counter their malign project. On nuclear war, actions in Syria and at the Russian border raise very serious threats of confrontation that might trigger war, an unthinkable prospect. Furthermore, Trump’s pursuit of Obama’s programs of modernization of the nuclear forces poses extraordinary dangers. As we have recently learned, the modernized U.S. nuclear force is seriously fraying the slender thread on which survival is suspended. The matter is discussed in detail in a critically important article in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in March, which should have been, and remained, front-page news. The authors, highly respected analysts, observe that the nuclear weapons modernization program has increased “the overall killing power of existing U.S. ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three — and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.” The significance is clear. It means that in a moment of crisis, of which there are all too many, Russian military planners may conclude that lacking a deterrent, the only hope of survival is a first strike — which means the end for all of us..."
