News bits: Too late to nail Trump; The science of consciousness

Trump is probably going to get away with everything: The Guardian writes:

This book by a former federal prosecutor is subtitled “How Powerful People Get Away With It” but its overwhelming focus is Donald Trump and Merrick Garland, the most famous unindicted miscreant of modern times and the attorney general most responsible for the failure, so far, to prosecute any of his offences.

Honig thinks the district attorney of Fulton county, Georgia, is still “the most likely to indict Trump” for his efforts to tamper with election results. But Honig makes a powerful case that “the prime opportunities to hold Trump criminally accountable for his actions have passed”, as federal and state prosecutors, especially Garland, “have fumbled away their best chances and inexcusably allowed years to lapse without meaningful action”.  

“The problem,” Honig writes, “is in seeking to … restore political independence [for the justice department], Garland has gone too far ...

“It’s one thing to do the job without regard to politics. But it’s another to contort ordinary prosecutorial judgement to avoid doing anything that might even be perceived as political or controversial.”

As a prior post here commented, the statute of limitations has run out for 9 out of the 56 crimes Trump is credibly accused of committing while in office. He can never be prosecuted for any of those crimes. This is why one can reasonably argue that the rule of law for the rich and powerful is more mirage than real. With Trump, it's a total farce.

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The state of consciousness science: Studying consciousness is a complex thing, fraught with ways that science can get things wrong. Unconscious biases are a plague and so is our limited capacity for metacognition or self-awareness. An article by Vox touches on the state of the science:

For something as intimate to our lives as perception — how we experience ourselves and the world — we know remarkably little about all the ways it can differ from person to person. Some people, for instance, have aphantasia, which means they experience no mental imagery, while others have no inner monologue in their heads, just silence. Studying what scientists now call “perceptual diversity” is part of an increasingly mainstream effort to learn more about consciousness itself.

Anil Seth, co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science .... popularized the idea of consciousness as a “controlled hallucination,” which suggests that our perceptions are less like looking through a transparent window on the outside world and more like watching an internally constructed movie. When sensory data from the outside world contradicts our brain’s movie, it updates the film.

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Child labor laws under attack by you know who: The Guardian writes:

Child labor in the good old days

‘It’s just crazy’: Republicans attack US child labor laws as violations rise

As child labor law violations have been on the rise in the US, some state legislators are pushing for changes at state and federal levels to roll back protections in what some see as a threat to return child labor to the country.

The laws aim to expand permissible work hours, broaden the types of jobs young workers are permitted to do, and shield employers from liability for injuries, illnesses or workplace fatalities involving very young workers.

Child labor law violations have increased in the US, with a 37% increase in fiscal year 2022, including 688 children working in hazardous conditions, with the number likely much higher as the recorded violations stem from what was found during labor inspections.

Several high-profile investigations involving child labor have been exposed over the past year, including the use of child labor in Hyundai and Kia supply chains in Alabama, at JBS meatpacking plants in Nebraska and Minnesota, and at fast-food chains including McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts and Chipotle.

Republicans apparently see this as a matter of personal freedom and want work restrictions loosened. Maybe that's the predominant thinking, but it is striking that nearly all the freedom-enhancing measures that Republicans are pushing for benefit businesses. Businesses get shielded from liability and more cheap labor. Children get the freedom to work and some income. It's a win-win!

Or, is that the wrong way to look at it, e.g., is it a win-lose? 

Modern child labor

An encouraging example of bipartisanship

Derek Kilmer (D-WA)

A long, detailed opinion piece in the WaPo by Amanda Ripley, an expert in conflict resolution, describes the fascinating and critically important work of the temporary House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. Among other things, the committee was formed to improve transparency, accessibility and communication throughout the House and to try to deal with the shift in too much power from congress to K Street lobbyists. The committee is now dissolved, but many of its recommendations have been implemented. Those recommendations came from a committee of six Democrats and six Republicans, with all recommendations requiring approval of an eight vote supermajority. 

This is the most positive and promising bit of news about the state of polarized politics and government function that I can recall since Trump was won the Republican nomination in 2016. It is a basis for some hope that our democracy maybe can find a way to avoid falling to demagoguery, authoritarianism and corruption.  

To try to keep this from being TL/DR, some key information is summarized. 

• The main thing that made this committee an astounding success was the dogged pursuit of building trust between the two sides by forcing them to interact, talk to each other and over time (i) coming to understand each other's perceptions of reality and truth a lot better (often or usually without agreeing) and (ii) learning how to trust and not betray trust. What this committee did was the opposite of what polarizing, distrust-fomenting partisan sources, e.g., Faux News, routinely do. 

• After the 1/6 coup attempt, committee chairman Derek Kilmer (D-WA), went to each member separately and asked what they wanted to work on, and the basic answer was nothing. There was deep distrust between both sides and deep fear among some Democrats that Republicans were out to literally kill them. Committee Republicans who vote against certifying the 2020 vote were singled out as not acceptable people to work with. After those 11 separate talks, Kilmer said, “We’re screwed. We’re going to have to do some stuff differently.” The WaPo opinion described it like this:

When people in intractable conflict sit down and listen to each other under the right conditions, they make surprising discoveries. “There were several cases when one party said something, and the other side’s jaw dropped,” said David Eisner, head of the nonprofit Convergence, which helped organize the retreat. “Both sides believed the other side had been acting politically. And something happened where they realized they were all people — people who had been through something traumatic.”  

Even as they continued to bitterly disagree about many things, the simple experience of being heard was cathartic. “It felt like someone turned the air conditioner on,” Eisner says. “You saw people starting to be curious about each other again.” Afterward, several members told Kilmer they were ready to work together. Nothing was resolved, but much was illuminated. “It was still pretty raw,” [Republican vice chairman] Timmons says, “but it was helpful to understand the degree to which [some members] were legitimately in fear for their lives. It made me understand where they were coming from.” (I call that getting to stasis - see why it is a good thing in political disagreements?)

• Kilmer, a former management consultant, started looking for ways to make destructive intractable conflict and distrust morph into constructive intractable conflict and more trust. Minds were not going to change, but how those members did their work damn well was going to change. With Churchill’s insight in mind, “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us,” Kilmer forced members of opposing sides to regularly meet socially and to sit next to each other at a round table instead of across a physical gulf. In all other House committees, opposing members rarely or never socialize or talk in committee meetings. Instead they glare at each other across raised seats, with witnesses sitting in the valley below them. In other committees, opposing members mostly attack each other or say nothing. Distrust and anger just ferment. Kilmer desegregated cloak rooms and antechambers to force the two sides to face each other and talk. Kilmer also required there be just one set of bipartisan set of staffers for all the members instead of the usual two bipartisan sets, one for each side. Having a single bipartisan staff essentially forced committee staff to row in generally the same direction and doubled the amount of work it could do compared to two opposing staffs.

• Finally, during meetings, Kilmer allowed members to chime in when they felt like it, instead of giving each member a 5-minute time slot to speak. This change had a major impact, as Ripley writes:

This sounds small, but it was utterly subversive — and surprisingly popular. “The members truly loved it,” remembers Yuri Beckelman, the committee’s staff director. “It made people more comfortable. It was very conversational.” This was in stark contrast to his experience on other committees, where members glared at each other from opposite sides of the room.

It was also refreshing for the witnesses, as I can attest. The modernization committee asked me to testify two years ago, based on a book I’d written on conflict, and I came in with low expectations. I’d covered a lot of hearings as a reporter, and they always felt choreographed, stilted and performative. This experience was different. It felt, at times, like members were sharing their genuine fears and asking real questions. It was not obvious who was on which political side, which was at once both disorienting and wonderful.

“I learned more in one hour in a modernization committee hearing than weeks sitting in every other committee venue,” Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) says. “We learned by conversation — not confrontation. It was the most profoundly meaningful and gratifying time I’ve spent in Congress.”

Ripley described what Kilmer had done: “Because it turns out that basic practices you would use to prevent anarchy in any kindergarten classroom were not being followed in Congress.”

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And that is why I keep harping on the poisonous power of dark free speech to kill trust. To that I should add, the power of dark social situation to kill trust. Both are trust killers. Loss of trust undermines democracy and empowers both authoritarianism and corruption. It is a tragedy, maybe an existential threat, that all House and Senate committees do not operate under rules that tend to turn destructive conflict into constructive conflict. Over time, that milieu would probably lead to less perceptions of vast partisan differences and distrust and more trust and constructive governance. Kilmer should get a Nobel Peace Prize.

Well, I gotta admit, I am impressed!

 Are all right leaning media outlets the same? Are all pro-Republican outlets full of you-know-what?

Maybe not after reading this:

If you’re ‘not woke,’ doesn’t that mean you’re asleep?

The craziest political word of the year is “woke,” as in “Don’t be woke!” It’s a command barked by far-right-wing fomenters of a hokey culture war and their political toadies.
Their intent is to demonize and shut up schoolteachers, preachers, librarians, historians, musicians, students, websites, business executives and any sensible human who dares speak (and act on) the truth that racism, sexism, poverty, environmental degradation and such are systemic blights in America. These pious censors of reality proclaim that anyone presenting less than a morally pure portrait of our history and society is a traitor whose voice must be suppressed.
Social, economic and cultural awakenings are what have made America historically significant. A political party screaming “Don’t be woke” is a party afraid of the people, wanting you, me and civil society to be asleep, out of it, in dreamland, torpid, inactive… dead. Are they stupid, or do they just hope we are?

https://www.timesrepublican.com/opinion/columnists/2022/12/if-youre-not-woke-doesnt-that-mean-youre-asleep/

Doesn't the above read like something you would find in a leftwing rag? Well, guess again:

• Overall, we rate the Marshalltown Times-Republican Least Biased based on reasonably balanced editorial positions that slightly favor the right. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact check record.
• https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/marshalltown-times-republican-bias/
  

News bits: Republican federal judges continue to radicalize; etc.

From the radical right federal court files: Slate writes:

Far-right judges are crafting a theory that would empower courts to strike down trillions of dollars in federal spending.

Recently, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals crafted a theory that would empower courts to strike down mandatory spending on federal programs, compelling Congress to either reappropriate the money or let the programs die. This radical and antidemocratic reading of the Constitution would threaten Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Affordable Care Act, unemployment benefits, child nutrition assistance, and so much more. Democrats and Republicans would be foolish to ignore the rebellion against federal spending that’s brewing in the 5th Circuit.

The conservative assault on entitlement programs arose during litigation against a frequent target of GOP ire: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a watchdog agency created in 2010 that protects Americans against exploitative fraud and deceit in home mortgages, credit cards, consumer loans, and retail banking.

At least seven different federal courts dismissed this theory until it landed in the 5th Circuit, the nation’s Trumpiest appeals court. In May 2022, Judge Edith Jones—a Ronald Reagan appointee and hard-right bomb-thrower—wrote a 39-page concurrence asserting that the CFPB is funded unconstitutionally. Four other judges joined her. Then, in October, a three-judge panel formally declared that the CFPB’s independent budget mechanism renders the entire agency unconstitutional. Judge Cory Wilson, writing for the panel, revoked the CFPB’s ability to issue or enforce any regulations. (All three members of the panel were appointed by Donald Trump.) Thus, under the current law of the 5th Circuit, the CFPB effectively does not exist.

You might wonder: What does this skirmish over a small financial agency have to do with hundreds of billions of dollars in annual entitlement spending? The answer: everything. In her concurrence, Jones took pains to clarify that her reasoning was not limited to the CFPB. Jones announced that all “appropriations to the executive must be temporally bound.” If Congress does not put a “time limit” on funding, it gives the executive branch too much discretion over spending.

I've been warning about this case for a while now. One needs to pay close attention to what the authoritarian radical right Supreme Court is doing in terms of the law and nature of government. The Republican Party is hell-bent on gutting all domestic spending programs as much as possible as soon as possible. 

We've seen the radicalized House recently back away from publicly stating that they want to gut Medicare and social security. Instead, they leave this politically dangerous dirty work for the Supreme Court. Once the social safety net is effectively gutted, radical right Republican politicians will claim they had nothing to do with it. That way, they can save them selves from public accountability in the next election. Of course, that assumes that in view of rigged elections, public accountability is even a serious threat to anti-democracy Republican politicians in red states any more. The results of the 2024 elections ought to shed some light on that issue.

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Discontent on the reservation: The AP writes about crime on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota:

Months later, a father and son who live near Wilson on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe, were shot and killed by an intruder, and their bodies weren’t found for six days, she said. Just a few nights ago, Wilson’s oldest son was held at gunpoint in his home.

These types of crimes have become increasingly common on the 5,400-square-mile (14,000-square-kilometer) reservation. Only 33 officers and eight criminal investigators are responsible for over 100,000 emergency calls each year across the reservation, which is about the size of the state of Connecticut, tribal officials said. The officers and investigators are all federally funded — and the tribe says it’s just not enough.

The tribe sued the Bureau of Indian Affairs and some high-level officials in July, alleging the U.S. is not complying with its treaty obligations nor its trust responsibility by failing to provide adequate law enforcement to address the “public safety crisis” on the reservation. The federal government countered in court documents that the tribe can’t prove treaties force the U.S. to provide the tribe with its “preferred level of staffing or funding for law enforcement.” After two days of court proceedings this week, a judge said he would take the case under advisement.

“We need change. Everybody’s tired of the same old talk. It’s all talk, talk, talk every year after year, and our people have suffered for decades,” Oglala Sioux Tribe President Frank Star Comes Out told The Associated Press. “We believe now is the time to take that stand.” 

Between January and June 2022, tribal law enforcement received 285 reports of missing persons, 308 gun-related calls and 49 reports of rape, Oglala Sioux officials said. There are typically only five tribal officers on any given shift, and response time for weapon-related calls can be anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour, Marks said.

The government will argue it is doing enough and completely fulfilling its obligations. The question is whether that is true or not. Treaty obligations are probably ambiguous and thus open to debate. I suspect that state and federal governments still have not figured out how to deal with Native Americans. Maybe they never will.

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Defamation law and the seething radical right: Another frequent target of Republican politicians is the press and news media generally. They are outraged at allegedly being defamed via slander (oral statements) or libel (written statements). It is hard for a politician to prove that they have been defamed in view of the current evidence standard they need to meet. The NYT writes about a current episode in this long-simmering cauldron of elite Republican grievance:

When Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida convened a round-table discussion about the news media this week, he spared no effort to play the part, perching at a faux anchor’s desk in front of a wall of video screens while firing questions to his guests like a seasoned cable TV host.

But the panel’s message was as notable as its slick presentation: Over the course of an hour, Mr. DeSantis and his guests laid out a detailed case for revisiting a landmark Supreme Court decision protecting the press from defamation lawsuits.

Mr. DeSantis is the latest figure, and among the most influential, to join a growing list of Republicans calling on the court to revisit the 1964 ruling, known as The New York Times Company v. Sullivan.

The decision set a higher bar for defamation lawsuits involving public figures, and for years it was viewed as sacrosanct. That standard has empowered journalists to investigate and criticize public figures without fear that an unintentional error will result in crippling financial penalties.

But emboldened by the Supreme Court’s recent willingness to overturn longstanding precedent, conservative lawyers, judges, legal scholars and politicians have been leading a charge to review the decision and either narrow it or overturn it entirely.  

“How did it get to be this doctrine that has had really profound effects on society?” DeSantis said at the event, which featured two libel lawyers known for suing news organizations and a conservative scholar who recently published an essay titled “Overturn New York Times v. Sullivan.”  

Under Sullivan, public figures who sue for defamation must show not only that a report contained false and damaging information, but also that its publisher acted with “actual malice” by knowing that the report was false or by recklessly disregarding the truth.

This forces a person to speculate what new evidence standard the radical right wants. As usual, that is never made clear. At present the law protects all of the press, including crackpots and knowing liars like QAnon and Faux News. Under Sullivan, all that dark free speech sources have to say when they assert lies and slanders is that the assertions were a mistake and there was no malice or disregard for truth. Proving the contrary is hard, usually impossible. 

Dropping the standard to something like imposing defamation liability for, . . . . what, an honest mistake?, a reasonably debatable truth? . . . would essentially shut down lies and slanders sites like Faux, QAnon, Trump's Truth Social website, Steve Bannon's chock-full-'o-lies podcast, etc. It could also shut down Twitter and Facebook depending on how broad the court decided to make the scope defamation, despite other laws that protect them. On balance, the radical right would be hurt a lot more than the left, radical or not.

Obviously, that is not going to happen. If the Republican Supreme Court decides to tweak the evidence standard, it would try to do so in a way that hurts honest news and liberal sites more than radical right and crackpot sites. How that can be done is not clear, without just coming out and saying what they really want. What the radical right really wants is to make the left shut up, but leave the radical right alone. That is the holy grail.

In normal times, it would be extremely unlikely that the Supreme Court would reconsider the Sullivan evidence standard. But these are not normal times. 

News bits: Tracking disinformation; US inches closer to combat troops in Ukraine?

Regarding disinformation: The NYT writes about a study on disinformation from podcasts. The NYT writes: 

Steve Bannon’s Podcast Is Top Misinformation Spreader, Study Says

In a study released on Thursday by the Brookings Institution, Mr. Bannon’s show was crowned the top peddler of false, misleading and unsubstantiated statements among political podcasts.

Researchers at Brookings downloaded and transcribed 36,603 podcast episodes from 79 political talk shows that had been released before Jan. 22, 2022. When researchers compared the shows’ transcripts against a list of keywords and common falsehoods identified by fact checkers, they found that nearly 20 percent of Mr. Bannon’s “War Room” episodes contained a false, misleading or unsubstantiated statement, more than shows by other conservatives like Glenn Beck and Charlie Kirk.

The Brookings study comments:

Since the advent of the medium, podcasts have generally offered a space where, in the words of [radical right podcaster] Michael Knowles, ‘you can say whatever you want.’ Once written off as a dying medium, podcasting has undergone rapid growth and monetization, while largely avoiding content moderation and regulatory debates. Today, nearly 41% of Americans listen to podcasts monthly, and almost one in four Americans look to podcasts for their news. Globally, the medium is projected to reach an audience of 504.9 million by 2024, while ad revenue in the United States is expected to double between 2022 and 2024, jumping from $2 billion to $4 billion. .... These podcasters, who span the political spectrum, make up the mainstream of the medium and regularly boast audiences in the millions.

Red = skews conservative

Blue = skews liberal

Yellow = skews moderate

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US involvement in Ukraine: The WaPo writes:

Pentagon looks to restart top-secret programs in Ukraine

If approved, the move would authorize U.S. Special Operations troops to employ Ukrainian operatives to observe Russian movements and counter disinformation

The Pentagon is urging Congress to resume funding a pair of top-secret programs in Ukraine suspended ahead of Russia’s invasion last year, according to current and former U.S. officials. If approved, the move would allow American Special Operations troops to employ Ukrainian operatives to observe Russian military movements and counter disinformation.  

The debate arises as Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine nears the start of a second year, and as the Biden administration dramatically accelerates and expands the scope of military assistance it is providing the government in Kyiv despite repeated Russian protests and threats of escalation.

Russia will continue to target and destroy Ukrainian infrastructure. Putin has no qualms about freezing and starving any or all of the civilian population to death by obliterating public utilities. Unfortunately, Putin does not seem to be very interested in peace talks. And US policy appears to have been tepid at best about pushing for peace talks. It looks like the Ukraine is going to be pulverized unless a peace agreement can be negotiated. 

A BigThink article on Stoicism…

sto·i·cism

[ˈstōəˌsizəm]

NOUN

1.    the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint. SIMILAR: patience; forbearance; resignation; lack of protest

2.    an ancient Greek school of philosophy founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium. The school taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge; the wise live in harmony with the divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain.

Article link.

From the article:

"Stoicism developed as a unified philosophy that sought to understand the essence of knowledge and the natural order of the cosmos."

"…focused on self-sufficiency, benevolent calm, and a near-indifference to pain, poverty, and death. This would in turn lead to happiness (in the eudaimonic sense of the word)."

Questions:

1. On a scale of 1-10, 10 being totally stoic, how stoic are you?
2. How stoic would you like to be?
3. What keeps people from being stoic?  What’s the(ir) problem?