Should we require an intelligence test to vote?

 There are multiple links on Google search (or whatever your search engine is) that asks the question: Should passing an intelligence or IQ test be required to vote? 

Ideally not. But when the truly ignorant, bigoted, and ill-informed can vote, what does that say about our ability to vote wisely?

Consider: The senior, who is barely able to still contemplate the world around him or her, being coerced by their kids to vote a certain way. 

Consider: A uneducated poor rural family, who have limited access to the internet or news other than Fox.

Consider: A tribe that gets told how to vote by their local leader, or an urban slum resident who lacks a highschool education but is "taught" how to vote by his or her local activist.

Consider: The bigot, who has made no bones about his or her feelings about those different from themselves.

I have read opinions both in favor of and against this idea. Because ONCE you start down this slippery slope, who ELSE will be denied a vote? Already moves are under way to make voting harder for minorities or those without "proper" IDs. 

Now imagine asking people to be informed or intelligent to vote. BUT AGAIN, why not? We need to know how to drive to get a driver's license, right? Yeah but, we can also be as dumb as doorknobs to have kids and no one can say different. Same, apparently, for voting.

SO the question remains: Should we require that voters at least have some level of knowledge, learning, and intelligence to vote?

Random stuff from the internet

There is just so much going on. 

Satan returns for Christmas to the capitol building

In the Illinois capitol building, The Satanic Temple out up its annual Christmas display with its God Baphomet shown as a baby in a basket. Baphomet is the goat headed thing with a human body and hoofs. Grumpy Catholics were there protesting its presence. 

Catholics protesting the baby Baphomet

Ban blasphemy, gol' darn it!

Insulting the president during a Christmas good will phone call

In Oregon, a man who joined a public phone call with Biden closed by insulting the president. The man, southern Oregon parent, 35-year-old Jared Schmeck, ended his initially polite conversation with, “Merry Christmas and let’s go, Brandon.” The schmuck Schmeck lied when denied he was a Trump supporter and complained that he was being attacked online, commenting "now I am being attacked for utilizing my freedom of speech." After the call, he wore a MAGA hat to an interview with the toxic traitor Steve Bannon. CNN comments: "Aww, poor "victim" Schmeck. Apparently, he thinks he should be able to tell Biden to basically go f**k himself while on a family friendly holiday call, but no one should be able to take issue with his actions."

One has just gotta love that freedom of speech thingie. And liars with their lies.

Democrats really did steal the election!

In a novel rationale to explain why Trump lost the 2020 election, the always delightfully crackpot Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), adduced a novel explanation grounded in evil, underhanded deeds. Here's what the Dems did to win, and (microaggression alert) this isn't for the faint of heart: They went out and legally convinced some voters to vote for Biden. The horror . . . the horror . . . . how could they sink so low? 

The Independent comments on this catastrophe: 

Kentucky senator Rand Paul was mocked on social media after he accused Democrats of “stealing elections” legally by convincing potential voters to support them.

Sharing an article from The American Conservative on how “Mark Zuckerberg’s millions and the Centre for Technology and Civic Life turned Wisconsin blue in 2020,” Mr Paul wrote: “How to steal an election.”

He then cited a paragraph from the report that suggested that Democrats planned to seed “an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results”.

My God (Baphomet), what is this country coming to?

I don't know what I am talking about, but it is

my right to talk, blah, blah, blah! 

Yup, the Republican leadership still blithers about the election

Making elections have integrity again

Reuters reports that the new laws in Georgia are being used to purge Black Democrats from county election boards. Reuters writes:

Now a faction of three white Republicans controlled the board – thanks to a bill passed by the Republican-led Georgia legislature earlier this year. The Spalding board’s new chairman has endorsed former president Donald Trump’s false stolen-election claims on social media.

The panel in Spalding, a rural patch south of Atlanta, is one of six county boards that Republicans have quietly reorganized in recent months through similar county-specific state legislation. The changes expanded the party’s power over choosing members of local election boards ahead of the crucial midterm Congressional elections in November 2022. 

"What we want to make sure is that we have election integrity,” said Butch Miller, the No. 2 Republican in the Georgia Senate, a leading advocate for Senate Bill 202 and a sponsor of the bill to reconstitute the Lincoln County election board.

In five of the Georgia counties that restructured election boards - Troup, Morgan, Pickens, Stephens and Lincoln - the legislature shifted the power to appoint some or all election board members to local county commissions, all of which are currently controlled by Republicans.

By golly, we're gonna get so much election integrity in 2022 and 2024 that it will slop over the top of the bottle and spill over into the swamp in Washington. That will cause all the swamp creatures to prodigiously reproduce. No wait. That's not right. The swamp creatures will go away. That's it -- they'll go away.

Republicans didn't even need the 1/6 insurrection

Republicans in congress were ready to commit the coup without street violence

The (medium credibility) Baily Beast writes:

A former Trump White House official says he and right-wing provocateur Steve Bannon were actually behind the last-ditch coordinated effort by rogue Republicans in Congress to halt certification of the 2020 election results and keep President Donald Trump in power earlier this year, in a plan dubbed the “Green Bay Sweep.”

In his recently published memoir, Peter Navarro, then-President Donald Trump’s trade adviser, details how he stayed in close contact with Bannon as they put the Green Bay Sweep in motion with help from members of Congress loyal to the cause.

But in an interview last week with The Daily Beast, Navarro shed additional light on his role in the operation and their coordination with politicians like Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).

“We spent a lot of time lining up over 100 congressmen, including some senators. It started out perfectly. At 1 p.m., Gosar and Cruz did exactly what was expected of them,” Navarro told The Daily Beast. “It was a perfect plan. And it all predicated on peace and calm on Capitol Hill. We didn’t even need any protestors, because we had over 100 congressmen committed to it.”  

Staffers for Cruz and Gosar did not respond to requests for comment. (Well, duh! What a shocker!)

I'll just assume the medium credibility Daily Beast (DB) isn't just making this stuff up. Some of it is fact checkable. Of course regarding the interview, Navarro can now just deny that he said what the DB says he said. He would do that if he was told to say he didn't say those things because it just looks soooo darn bad for Republicans. Well, probably to at least some Republicans based on their "don't play into their hands" talking point. 

Caveat: This brings up a common problem in modern day politics. Here, we've got the medium credibility news source DB talking about a rabid, no credibility Republican Trump supporter. So, even if Navarro changes his mind and denies all of it, the DB still gets the benefit of the doubt. Why would Navarro makes up lies like that to the DB -- to trap the DB or make it look bad? 

But of course, minds will differ on this. This is why I prefer and usually use high credibility sources over lower or no credibility sources. 

A political propaganda organization vs. press lawsuit

Project Veritas: Toxic conspiracy theories, failed fact checks

MBFC: Low Credibility, questionable source

The radical right political group Project Veritas (PV) is suing the New York Times claiming the newspaper misused information it got from PV in discovery documents in a defamation lawsuit.[1] The judge held in favor of PV and the NYT is appealing. The crux of the dispute seems to be whether the NYT misused information from the original lawsuit as PV claims, or whether the information was obtained by standard independent journalistic investigation as the NYT claims. The NYT Editorial Board writes on the serious danger to the press and free reporting this court decision could have if it is upheld. 

If this winds up in the US Supreme Court, it might be a basis to significantly limit press freedom. This dispute relates to the concept of prior restraint, where governments, politicians and special interests try to prevent a news story from being published. One source defines prior restraint like this: judicial suppression of material that would be published or broadcast, on the grounds that it is libelous or harmful. In US law, the First Amendment severely limits the ability of the government to do this.

The Editorial Board writes:

Half a century ago, the Supreme Court settled the matter of when a court can stop a newspaper from publishing. In 1971, the Nixon administration attempted to block The Times and The Washington Post from publishing classified Defense Department documents detailing the history of the Vietnam War — the so-called Pentagon Papers. Faced with an asserted threat to the nation’s security, the Supreme Court sided with the newspapers. “Without an informed and free press, there cannot be an enlightened people,” Justice Potter Stewart wrote in a concurring opinion.

That sentiment reflects one of the oldest and most enduring principles in our legal system: The government may not tell the press what it can and cannot publish. This principle long predates the Constitution, but so there would be no mistake, the nation’s founders included a safeguard in the Bill of Rights anyway. The First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

This is why virtually every official attempt to bar speech or news reporting in advance, known as a prior restraint, gets struck down. “Any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity,” the Supreme Court said in a 1963 case. Such restraints are “the very prototype of the greatest threat to First Amendment values,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a generation later.

On Friday, however, a New York trial court judge broke from that precedent when he issued an order blocking The Times from publishing or even reporting further on information it had obtained related to Project Veritas, the conservative sting group that traffics in hidden cameras and fake identities to target liberal politicians and interest groups, as well as traditional news outlets.

The group’s lawyers also argue that the memos are protected by attorney-client privilege and that The Times was under an ethical obligation to return them to Project Veritas, rather than publish them. This is not how journalism works. The Times, like any other news organization, makes ethical judgments daily about whether to disclose secret information from governments, corporations and others in the news. But the First Amendment is meant to leave those ethical decisions to journalists, not to courts. The only potential exception is information so sensitive — say, planned troop movements during a war — that its publication could pose a grave threat to American lives or national security.

Project Veritas’s legal memos are not a matter of national security. In fact, but for its ongoing libel suit, the group would have no claim against The Times at all. The memos at issue have nothing to do with that suit and did not come to The Times through the discovery process. Still, Project Veritas is arguing that their publication must be prohibited because the memos contain confidential information that is relevant to the group’s litigation strategy.

It’s an absurd argument and a deeply threatening one to a free press. Consider the consequences: News organizations could be routinely blocked from reporting information about a person or company simply because the subject of that reporting decided the information might one day be used in litigation. More alarming is the prospect that reporters could be barred even from asking questions of sources, lest someone say something that turns out to be privileged. This isn’t a speculative fear; in his earlier order, Justice Wood barred The Times from reporting about anything covered by Project Veritas’s attorney-client privilege. In Friday’s decision, he ordered The Times to destroy any and all copies of the memos that it had obtained, and barred it from reporting on the substance of those memos. The press is free to report on matters of public concern, he wrote, but memos from attorneys to their clients don’t clear that bar.

This is a breathtaking rationale: Justice Wood has taken it upon himself to decide what The Times can and cannot report on. That’s not how the First Amendment is supposed to work.

The order, a highly unusual and astonishingly broad injunction against a news organization, was issued by Justice Charles D. Wood of the State Supreme Court. He wrote that The Times’s decision to publish excerpts from memos written by Project Veritas’s lawyers “cries out for court intervention to protect the integrity of the judicial process.” This ruling follows a similar directive Justice Wood issued last month in response to a story The Times published that quoted from the memos. The Times plans to appeal this latest ruling.

In requesting the order from Justice Wood, Project Veritas’s lawyers acknowledged that prior restraints on publication are rare, but argued that their case fits a narrow exception the law recognizes for documents that may be used in the course of ongoing litigation. This exception recognizes that because parties are forced by the court to disclose materials, courts should have the power to supervise how such forced disclosures are used by the other party. The litigation here is a libel suit Project Veritas filed against The Times in 2020, for its articles on a video the group produced about what it claimed was rampant voter fraud in Minnesota. The video was “probably part of a coordinated disinformation effort,” The Times reported, citing an analysis[2] by researchers at Stanford University and the University of Washington.

Journalism, like democracy, thrives in an environment of transparency and freedom. No court should be able to tell The New York Times or any other news organization — or, for that matter, Project Veritas — how to conduct its reporting. Otherwise, it would provide an incentive for any reporter’s subjects to file frivolous libel suits as a means of controlling news coverage about them. More to the point, it would subvert the values embodied by the First Amendment and hobble the functioning of the free press on which a self-governing republic depends. (emphasis added)

It is not clear to me how likely the court order blocking the NYT is to stand on appeal. If it does stand, it is not clear what the final outcome will be and how much damage to press freedom there might be. That the NYT has raised the profile of this case like this seems to indicate that the paper is really frightened at how this might turn out.

Footnote: 

1. The article that PV originally sued the NYT over appears to have been this one, which reads in part:

A deceptive video released on Sunday by the conservative activist James O’Keefe, which claimed through unidentified sources and with no verifiable evidence that Representative Ilhan Omar’s campaign had collected ballots illegally, was probably part of a coordinated disinformation effort, according to researchers at Stanford University and the University of Washington.

Mr. O’Keefe and his group, Project Veritas, appear to have made an abrupt decision to release the video sooner than planned after The New York Times published a sweeping investigation of President Trump’s taxes, the researchers said. They also noted that the timing and metadata of a Twitter post in which Mr. Trump’s son shared the video suggested that he might have known about it in advance.

2. The analysis the NYT relied on includes this about the 2020 election:

Sept. 29, 2020

Contributors:
Isabella Garcia-Camargo, Alex Stamos and Elena Cryst, Stanford Internet Observatory
Joe Bak-Coleman, Kate Starbird and Joey Schafer University of Washington Center for an Informed Public

On Sunday night, a right-wing activist group, Project Veritas, released a video alleging illegal ballot harvesting in Minnesota. The video made several falsifiable claims that have either been debunked by subsequent reporting or are without any factual support. As the video calls into question the integrity of the election using misleading or inaccurate information, we determined this video to be a form of election disinformation. While we have reported our findings to the relevant online platforms, this video stands as an interesting example of what a domestic, coordinated elite disinformation campaign looks like in the United States. This post will explore the timeline of how the ideas in this video were initially seeded and then aggressively spread.

Economic distress in rural America continues

Food prices have gone up, but income for small and medium farms is stagnant. The New York Times describes more family agriculture operations in dire financial straits. The NYT writes:

SHEPHERD, Montana — Judging from the prices at supermarkets and restaurants, this would appear to be a lucrative moment for cattle ranchers like Steve Charter.

America is consuming more beef than ever, while prices have climbed by one-fifth over the past year — a primary driver for the growing alarm over inflation.

But somewhere between American dinner plates and his 8,000-acre ranch on the high plains of Montana, Mr. Charter’s share of the $66 billion beef cattle industry has gone missing.

A third-generation cattle rancher, Mr. Charter, 69, is accustomed to working seven days a week, 365 days a year — in winter temperatures descending to minus 40, and in summer swelter reaching 110 degrees.

Mr. Charter has long imagined his six grandchildren continuing his way of life. But with no profits in five years, he is pondering the fate that has befallen more than half a million other American ranchers in recent decades: selling off his herd.

“We are contemplating getting out,” Mr. Charter said, his voice catching as he choked back tears. “We are not getting our share of the consumer dollars.”

The distress of American cattle ranchers represents the underside of the staggering winnings harvested by the conglomerates that dominate the meatpacking industry — Tyson Foods and Cargill, plus a pair of companies controlled by Brazilian corporate owners, National Beef Packing Company and JBS.

Since the 1980s, the four largest meatpackers have used a wave of mergers to increase their share of the market from 36 percent to 85 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Their dominance has allowed them to extinguish competition and dictate prices, exploiting how federal authorities have weakened the enforcement of laws enacted a century ago to tame the excesses of the Robber Barons, say antitrust experts and advocates for the ranchers.  

In past decades, when beef prices rose, so would payments to cattle ranchers, who claimed over half of what consumers paid for meat. But that relationship began to break down in 2015. Last year, cattle ranchers received only 37 cents on every dollar spent on beef, according to federal data.

The NYT article goes on to point out that current high beef prices are most directly reflective of scarce stocks, which is part of the supply chain disruption that accompanies the pandemic. Coronavirus spread through slaughterhouses, killing scores of workers and sickening thousands. That stopped some beef production, which caused beef shortages.

But before the pandemic, there were decades of corporate takeovers that closed slaughterhouses. When the packers cut their capacity to process beef, supply was reduced, and consumer prices increased. But maybe counter intuitively, fewer slaughterhouses meant a limited demand for live cattle. That reduced prices paid to ranchers and helped shift economic advantage or power to the the big corporate players.

One expert commented: “Their goal is to control the market so that they can control the price. The pandemic exposed the consequences of the consolidation of the meat industry.”

As usual for American capitalism, the big corporations are now fighting against a push from the Biden administration to revive antitrust enforcement. The rationale this time for deregulation of business by not enforcing existing laws is that, according to the NYT, it is “misguided.” JBS, the largest meatpacker in the US refused to discuss the effect of consolidation. JBS just referred the NYT’s questions to the North American Meat Institute, an industry lobbying firm.[1] A NAMI spokesperson said “Concentration has nothing to do with price. The cattle and beef markets are dynamic.” Tyson claims that slaughterhouses were closed because they were losing money, commenting: “The packers are not masterminds. The packing industry was unprofitable for several years, so they closed plants.” 

Misguided. Dynamic markets. Unprofitable operations shut down. Think about that. On the one hand, concentration is said to have nothing ton do with prices. On the other hand, allegedly unprofitable operations were shut down, which reduce supply and drove up prices. Concentration has something major to do with prices.

Why is it that sooner or later the big guys almost always wind up winning and the little guys usually wind up losing? Power, wealth, deregulated markets and non-existent law enforcement, that’s why. The big guys have the power and wealth because they are deregulated and relevant laws not enforced.

Here making a point about politics and ideology is useful. Conservative politicians and other neoliberal elites claim that deregulation allows markets to run free and wild, which best serves the public interest and society generally. The conservative rank and file mostly believe that because they have been told that thousands of times a year for decades. But what the elites know that the rank that file does not know is that deregulation means (i) deregulation of businesses, and (ii) not enforcing relevant laws. It does not mean reducing limits on individual liberties. In fact, power flows to the businesses, who then use it to control and crush whatever and whoever they can reach if it serves their lust for profit, like family farms and ranches and the land they sit on.

As I've argued here many times and argue again, when Republicans and other conservatives deregulate business, power flows from government to the businesses and their owners, not to average people. Power flows from government to the businesses. Why were there regulations in the first place? To protect the public interest and society generally. Government was protecting people, or at least trying to until it got subverted by business interests. Businesses protect profit, not people.

The NYT article comments that ranchers complain that the game is rigged. Well duh! Of course it is rigged. That is what the businesses want and that is what their campaign contributions, propaganda and lobbying money buys in our pay-to-play political system. It buys deregulated markets running free and wild and ranchers going out of business so other huge agriculture companies can buy the land and push the small guys out.

Jeez, this isn’t rocket science. It almost at the level of common sense, if there was such a thing (but there isn’t).

Anyway, The NYT notes that Congress passed the Packers & Stockyards Act of 1921 to “safeguard farmers and ranchers” — among other market participants — from “unjustly discriminatory and monopolistic practices.” Enforcing that is what the four huge meat packers claim to see as “misguided.” By misguided, the meat packers really mean, but would never admit, they see a threat to profits if existing law were to actually be enforced.

Questions: 

1. Is most of the conservative rank and file mostly deceived about what deregulation means, at least when Republicans do it?

2. Is it true, as the meat packer lobbyists claim, that concentrated means of production and supply have no impact on prices? (If so, most economic theory appears to be just crap)

3. Who is more likely to better protect family cattle ranchers from behemoths, Republican politicians or Democratic politicians?

Footnote:

1. The NYT article points out that a lot of Montana cattle are processed in slaughterhouses run by JBS, the world’s largest meat processor. Two brothers, Wesley and Joesley Batista, control JBS. They are worth about $5.8 billion. They went to prison after pleading guilty to participating in a Brazilian bribery ring a few years ago, but are out of the slammer now. JBS spent $20 billion to buy control of one-fourth of the American beef slaughter capacity. JBS had $18 billion in revenue between July and September of 2021. That was a 32% increase compared with the same quarter in 2020.