Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Chart of the Day: Here’s What Corporations Did With Their Tax Cut

The Congressional Research Service has analyzed the 2017 Republican tax bill and concluded that it had no noticeable effect on GDP, consumption, domestic investment, or wages. But wait! What about the reinvestment of overseas profits, which the act allowed companies to repatriate at a low tax rate? One of the major sources of anticipated increased […]

Scapegoating George Soros: How media-savvy far-right activists spread lies https://prismo.xyz/posts/3b5ac4c1-3826-4b59-b5b3-c8815a6de117

China succeeds in greening its economy not because, but in spite of, its authoritarian government https://prismo.xyz/posts/74f3aff2-9d67-499c-b671-75e7a486a32d

You get annoyed by having to enter your #Mastodon handle each time you want to follow/interact with someone on a "foreign" page?

I got that too, but I've made a little add-on to solve this "problem". 😃

It automatically "redirects" you to your own instance.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/mastodon-simplified-federation/?src=external-mastodon

#Firefox #addon #Fediverse @switchingsocial

Study of northern Alaska could rewrite Arctic history

New research on the North Slope of Alaska could help revise predictions about the Arctic's oil, gas and mineral wealth.

Raw Data: Mass Incarceration and the 1994 Crime Bill

Via the National Academies of Sciences, here is our best estimate of the historical incarceration rate in America: As you can see, the 1994 crime bill had no effect on this trend. Incarceration rates started skyrocketing in the late 70s as a response to rising crime rates, and after the crime bill passed the increase […]

D.R.I. announce fall and winter U.S. tour dates

Crossover thrash icons D.R.I. have announced a three-month long U.S. tour, which begins in September and includes stops around the Great Lakes, West Coast and Gulf Coast areas of the continent. All the dates are below. D.R.I. last released the EP But Wait…There’s More! in 2016 via Beer City Records. They have reportedly been working on […]

The post D.R.I. announce fall and winter U.S. tour dates appeared first on Dying Scene.

Milo Aukerman hopes Descendents will record new music later this year

In a recent interview with Kerrang!, Descendents frontman Milo Aukerman confirmed that they are indeed writing new material for the band’s follow-up to 2016’s Hypercaffium Spazzinate. He’s quoted as saying: “We’re currently writing. We tend to write a variety of stuff, which for me personally tends to range from love songs to hyper-fast songs about coffee, which […]

The post Milo Aukerman hopes Descendents will record new music later this year appeared first on Dying Scene.

Unanswered questions on the San Francisco police raid of a journalist’s home

San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott finally apologized late last week for his police department’s outrageous raid of freelance journalist Bryan Carmody’s home.

The case drew national attention for the egregious press freedom violations permitted by the city of San Francisco, and because it seems that both the police and the judges who approved of the warrant for the raid apparently ignored the explicit language of California’s journalist shield law. For two weeks, Scott had been defending his department’s actions and had even accused Carmody of potentially engaging in criminal conduct for doing his job as a journalist.  

But in an about-face on Friday, Scott told the San Francisco Chronicle that, “I’m sorry that this happened. I’m sorry to the people of San Francisco. I’m sorry to the mayor.”

Scott also said he conducted a “top-to-bottom” review of the incident and that he was “specifically concerned by a lack of due diligence by department investigators in seeking search warrants and appropriately addressing Mr. Carmody’s status as a member of the news media.” He added: “This has raised important questions about our handling of this case and whether the California shield law was violated.”

Scott’s apology is welcome, but there are still many questions that have been left unanswered while a legal challenge to the warrant served on Carmody’s home is ongoing. Important questions have been brought up by the First Amendment Coalition’s David Snyder, Gabe Rothman at Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and even the San Francisco police union, which has called on Scott to resign over the incident.

Did Scott conceal that he knew Carmody was a journalist to the police officers who drew up the warrant application, like the police union alleges?

Were the judges who signed off on the warrant made aware of Carmody’s status as a journalist?

Did the police department purposefully conceal Carmody’s profession to the judges?

Did the judges authorize the search warrants even though they knew Carmody was a journalist, which would be in violation of the law?

Why did the FBI attempt to conduct an interview of Carmody after his house had been raided?

Why was the FBI involved in this case at all, since it dealt with a local matter?

Did the FBI follow its own guidelines involving an investigation into a member of the media?

Did the FBI gain access to Carmody’s equipment following its seizure and if so, did they search it, too?

Will anyone face consequences or accountability for this blatant violation of California’s journalist shield law?

Scott’s decision to finally apologize for this incident should be seen as a good development, but it does not resolve the underlying issues. The “top-to-bottom” review he said he conducted should be expanded into a full-scale an independent investigation of his own role in the case, as well as what roles the police department, judges and even local politicians took in precipitating the raid. When the findings in those investigations and the search warrant itself are unsealed, we’ll know a little more about how the city of San Francisco failed to protect core press freedom rights afforded to all those who engage in journalism.

Moron Kicked Out of Office in Texas

Remember that story from a few months ago about the Great Immigrant Voter Hunt in Texas? Today brings a smidgen of good news on that front: Texas’s acting secretary of state, David Whitley (R), resigned Monday just months after leading the botched voter purge of nearly 100,000 suspected noncitizens that erroneously also targeted U.S. citizens, […]

Network of Islamophobic Facebook Pages Exposed by Snopes Goes Dark - https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/05/26/fb-islamophobic-network-down/

Supreme Court Passes Up a Chance to Reconsider Roe

Republican legislators passing extreme abortion restrictions in red states around the country are hoping that they can get the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade and chip away at the right to an abortion. But on Tuesday, the court passed up on one of its best chances to do so. For almost six months, the […]

Comet inspires chemistry for making breathable oxygen on Mars

Researchers have demonstrated a new reaction for generating oxygen that could help humans explore the universe and perhaps even fight climate change at home.

Librem 5 – End of May Progress Update

So many changes -- kernel updates, making calls, messaging, adaptive UI improvements, documentation, and more. Plus some quick video clips demonstrating some of the software work (including running on dev kit)!

https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-end-of-may-progress/

Donald Trump’s Path to Victory

President Donald Trump currently has the lowest average public approval rating of any president since opinion polls were invented. He is poised to lose the popular vote in 2020, as he did in 2016.

The GOP, however, sees a road to the White House, and, again, it runs through the Electoral College. Trump tweeted March 19, “I used to like the idea of the Popular Vote, but now realize the Electoral College is far better for the U.S.A.”

While the Electoral College is integral to a possible Trump re-election, the GOP’s war plans contain four other components.

In a March speech at the Romanian Academy in Bucharest, campaign manager Brad Parscale said Team Trump will keep their man in office by spending $1 billion and mobilizing 1.6 million volunteers in a data-driven, get-out-the-vote campaign targeting the 36% of the electorate in swing states who are “inclined to vote for Trump.” The campaign will also again invest in Facebook ads to reach the “lost, forgotten people of America.” “Millions of Americans, older people, are on the internet, watching pictures of their kids because they all moved to cities,” Parscale said. “If we can connect to them, we can change this election.”

Second, the Republican Party will suppress the vote of Democratic constituencies—with the help of the five-justice conservative majority on the Supreme Court (four of whom were appointed by presidents elected despite losing the popular vote). In June 2018, for example, the conservative justices upheld an Ohio voter suppression law that purges voters who fail to return an address confirmation form. Meanwhile, in the swing state of Arizona, the House voted in March to create new crimes associated with voter registration. Anyone who registers a voter in Arizona but fails to turn in the filled-out registration form within 10 days could face four months in jail. The good news is that groups across the country, like Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight Action in Georgia, are mobilizing “to ensure access to democracy for all.”

Third, the GOP will try to win over affluent suburbanites by smearing Democrats with the S-word. “We’re going into the war with some socialists,” Trump told GOP congressmen in April. “I love the idea of ‘Keep America Great,’ because you know what it says is we’ve made it great. Now we’re going to keep it great, because the socialists will destroy it.” Fourth, Politico reports that pro-Trump PACs, like America Rising and America First, are spending millions “pursuing a strategy intended to pit Democrats against each other in a battle of progressive bona fides.”

Not that the Democrats aren’t already at odds. Party unity handwringers fear the Left won’t rally to the Democratic candidate should Sanders or Warren fail to secure the nomination. (Yes, in 2016, 12% of Sanders voters ultimately voted for Trump, according to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. It’s a significant number, but less than the 25% of Clinton primary voters who voted against Obama in 2008.)

Another threat to unity comes from centrists who fume about Sanders at high-end donor soirées. The specter haunting these discussions is Howard Schultz, the plutocracy’s designated spoiler. As novelist Jacob Bacharach observed, the Democratic donor class is not so much worried that Schultz will sabotage 2020 as they are threatening to rally to Schultz themselves, and thereby hand the election to Trump.

A united and broad anti-Trump front will be essential in November 2020. To the extent that a handful of super-rich liberals jeopardize that unity, they should be named and shamed.

Choose Your Own Apocalypse

A fun diversion from our Empire issue.

Begging Your Pardon

It’s evidently a “war crime” to kill a bunch of civilians and pee on their corpses?

Pretty Wacky!

Tomorrow’s news, today!

Fuck this noise.

"The Uber of Live Music" - https://www.jwz.org/blog/2019/05/the-uber-of-live-music/

Group A strep genome research expedites vaccine development efforts

The global search for a group A streptococcal (Strep A) vaccine has narrowed after researchers identified a common gene signature in almost all global Strep A strains by sequencing thousands of genomes in a project spanning 10 years and more than 20 countries.