Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

The Dumb Week That Was

These poor people, trapped in a reality where everything...is stupid!

AOC Is Right: Democrats Can’t Cave In on the Border Bill

Democrats are split over a bill to fund $4.5 billion in emergency humanitarian aid for the southwest border: With a House vote on the package planned for Tuesday, some Democrats are revolting over the measure, fearing that the aid will be used to carry out Mr. Trump’s aggressive tactics, including deportation raids that he has […]

The FCC Is Siding With Landlords and Comcast Over Tenants Who Want Broadband Choices

In December of 2016, the city of San Francisco boldly enacted the “Occupant’s Right to Choose Communications Services Provider” ordinance (also known as Article 52) that hinders a payola scheme cooked up between big cable companies like Comcast and landlords. In just a few short years since its enactment, a great number of apartments in San Francisco have at least four options for broadband service, including affordable gigabit fiber service. Fearing that other cities would follow suit, a whole range of associations and corporations that represent landlords and the cable industry pushed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hard to block these local efforts. For a federal agency tasked with promoting competition, it shouldn’t be a close call to simply ignore these groups. But that is not what the FCC plans to do next month.

How San Francisco Stopped Landlords and Cable Companies From Making Money by Taking Away Tenant Choice

The scheme is relatively straightforward: cable companies pay landlords for each tenant that they can get to subscribe to their particular cable service. The more tenants a landlord delivers to the cable company, the more money the landlord gets paid. That means a portion of a tenants’ cable bill is going to their landlord, on top of the rent they already pay. In fact, Comcast even offers landlords bonus money from the tenants’ cable bills that increases with the number of tenants using Comcast.

These revenue sharing agreements incentivize landlords, who like getting paid extra money by Comcast, to make sure Comcast is your only option. In return, Comcast enjoys monopoly status and monopoly profits, even if, technically, there are many broadband options in your city and neighborhood.

San Francisco’s local leadership regularly heard from tenants about the lack of choices, despite other ISPs being present. And ISP competitors to Comcast would often get requests for service only to be blocked by the landlord from entering the building. So the city decided to take action and established a legal right to apartment tenants to get whatever ISP they want through an ordinance. Article 52 effectively terminated a landlord’s ability to keep competitive ISPs out of their buildings. As the Board of Supervisors declared with its ordinance, “it is common in such buildings for property owners to allow only one provider to install facilities and equipment necessary to provide services to occupants."

In San Francisco now, thanks to the local ordinance, a tenant can request service from any ISP. A landlord is only allowed to refuse their entry if it’s physically impossible, dangerous for health and safety purposes, or if the competitive ISP’s access would cause “significant, adverse effect on the continued ability of existing communications services to serve the property.” The competitor also has to pay the landlord “just and reasonable compensation” for the construction and entry costs associated with connecting the tenant. Violating the local law carries a liability of $500 a day plus attorney’s fees against the property owner. The law can be enforced with a lawsuit that can be brought by the city attorney, the competitor ISP, or the tenant.

Since the adoption of the ordinance, local fiber-to-the-home provider Sonic has gained access to approximately 300 multi-tenant buildings in San Francisco and the local wireless/fiber ISP Monkey Brains went from zero percent access to now being in 75 percent of the buildings in the city. Landlords essentially were forced to open their doors to all ISPs, or face liability far greater than the benefits derived from the cable payola scheme. Now, people are getting the benefit of choice—increasing the quality of their service, and lowering their monthly bills. And it happened in just a few years.

The FCC Is Poised to Act on a Fiction Drummed Up by Landlords and Comcast Rather Than the Facts of What Happened in San Francisco

Based on the FCC’s record, the problem the FCC seems to want to fix is “in use” wire sharing, on the grounds that it disrupts cable service. This is despite San Francisco explaining to the FCC how the ordinance functions, including the fact that landlords can refuse on the grounds of disruption of existing services. Still, the agency is convinced that there's a problem that needs fixing.

The problem with the FCC’s rationale is that the issue appears to be a complete fiction. EFF has been unable to find examples of services being disrupted in the city. The complaint is dubious, since a landlord has a right to refuse entry to an ISP that disrupts currently existing services. So the complaints of the cable industry’s association (ie Comcast) and the landlords (who simply want to delete the SF ordinance in its entirety) should be called into question rather than followed as evidence of the ordinances’ allegedly negative impact on broadband deployment.

The ramifications of the FCC intervening on a purely local decision to open up apartment buildings for more broadband choices is fairly profound, because it would curtail other cities from copying the San Francisco ordinance for their renters. Whether intentional or not, the FCC will give landlords and their cable financiers grounds to reject competitive entry that did not exist prior to the FCC’s preemption. This also appears to prohibit cities from adopting forward-thinking open access fiber policies in the future through city code and other local laws. Not to mention, the FCC’s intervention in San Francisco doesn't fulfill the agency’s actual job description: to promote competition.

San Francisco's policy has been an undeniably good thing for local renters. EFF hopes that the FCC refrains from intruding on it, and that the agency will not issue a partial preemption of San Francisco’s ordinance at its July meeting.

Tropical soil disturbance could be hidden source of CO2

Researchers working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo found a link between the churning of deep soils during deforestation and the release of carbon dioxide through streams and rivers.

Don’t Blame Boomers, Blame Their Parents

Since I’m being cranky today, I might as well stay cranky. Over at Vox, fellow boomer David Goldstein says that our generation ruined college for everyone else: Boomers like me have pulled up the ladder behind us after being educated largely at taxpayer expense. No wonder young people have piled up more than $1.5 trillion […]

125 Years After the Pullman Uprising, We Could Be on the Verge of Another Sympathy Strike Wave

Roaming the sleepy streets of Pullman on Chicago’s Southeast Side, it’s difficult to imagine a time when it was the chaotic center of worker struggle in the United States.

Many of the handsome red brick homes in the center of Pullman—once a bustling company town and now a Chicago neighborhood—are occupied and well-maintained, but the shuttered luxury hotel hasn’t hosted a guest in decades, the skeletal factory buildings are locked behind a chain-link fence while the hands of the derelict clocktower that helped govern the working lives of thousands of men and women remain frozen in time.

Elizabeth Warren Wants to Know Why HUD Hired Someone Known for Racist Blog Posts

On Monday, Democratic presidential candidate and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Ben Carson criticizing the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s decision to hire Eric Blankenstein, a former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau official with a history of writing racist blog posts. “I am gravely concerned that Mr. Blankenstein has been hired as […]

Big data says food is too sweet

New research analyzed nearly 400,000 food reviews posted by Amazon customers to gain real-world insight into the food choices that people make. The findings reveal that many people find the foods in today's marketplace to be too sweet.

Damage to the ozone layer and climate change forming feedback loop

Increased solar radiation penetrating through the damaged ozone layer is interacting with the changing climate, and the consequences are rippling through the Earth's natural systems, effecting everything from weather to the health and abundance of sea mammals like seals and penguins.

Hearing Wednesday: California Should Audit Use of License Plate Data

EFF to Urge Lawmakers to Ensure Law Enforcement Complies with State Law

Sacramento – On Wednesday, June 26, at 10 am, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will urge the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to approve an audit on the use of automated license plate readers (ALPR) by state law enforcement.

ALPRs are camera systems that scan the license plates of vehicles in order to track people in real time and create search databases of driver’s historical travel patterns. As a mass surveillance technology, ALPR captures information on every driver, regardless of whether their vehicle is under suspicion. Several years ago, California lawmakers passed legislation to regulate ALPR use, including requiring publicly available usage policies and guidelines for how the information is accessed. State Sen. Scott Wiener, who previously supported EFF legislation to protect drivers’ from ALPR surveillance, filed the request for the audit.

At the hearing Wednesday, EFF Senior Investigative Researcher Dave Maass will explain that many California law enforcement agencies are not complying with this law. Researchers have found that ALPR data is routinely shared with hundreds of other entities without safeguards or proper legal process. A probe by the California State Auditor will help the public and policymakers learn more about how state agencies are protecting their data.

WHAT:
Joint Legislative Audit Committee Hearing to Consider New Audit Requests
WHO:
EFF Senior Investigative Researcher Dave Maass
WHEN:
Wednesday, June 26
10 am
WHERE:
State Capitol, Room 126
10th and L Streets
Sacramento, CA 95814
For more on the hearing:
https://legaudit.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
For more on ALPR:
https://www.eff.org/pages/automated-license-plate-readers-alpr

Contact:  Dave Maass Senior Investigative Researcher dm@eff.org

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We Have to Finance a Global Green New Deal — or Face the Consequences

An international approach to tackling climate change would require the United States and other industrialized countries to give money to developing nations.

The post We Have to Finance a Global Green New Deal — or Face the Consequences appeared first on The Intercept.

A solarium for hens? How to increase the vitamin D content of eggs

Many people suffer from a vitamin D deficiency. This can result in brittle bones and an increased risk of respiratory diseases. Chicken eggs are a natural source of vitamin D and one way to, at least partially, compensate for this deficiency. A team of nutritionists and agricultural scientists has found a new way to further increase the vitamin D content of eggs: by exposing chickens to UV light.

Sanders and Warren Have Very Different Plans to Fix Student Debt

Bernie Sanders just took his long-running war against the high cost of college to a whole new level: He’s introducing a bill to cancel all $1.6 trillion outstanding student debt, providing instant relief for more than 45 million Americans. On Monday, the Vermont senator unveiled a revamped version of his College for All Act. The […]

i.MX8MQ's MIPI DPY driver entered linux next (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next.git/commit/?id=f4c8116e294b12c360b724173f4b79f232573fb1) - one more thing of the display stack going mainline (number of driver wise we're halway there now but the large chunks are still ahead)

Jay Inslee's Latest Climate Plan Would Be the Beginning of the End For Fossil Fuels https://earther.gizmodo.com/jay-inslees-latest-climate-plan-would-be-the-beginning-1835772790?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=earther_twitter&utm_campaign=sharebar via @EARTH3R #climatechange #climatecrisis

Zero Negative (Hardcore, UK) Stream Single “Disarray” from Debut Album “Skate. Kill. Destroy.”

Sunderland’s Zero Negative have just announced their debut album. It’s called Skate. Kill. Destroy. and the band have been good enough to let you lot stream a track from it before its full release on July 14. You can check out “Disarray” from Skate. Kill. Destroy. below. The previous releases from the group were a […]

The post Zero Negative (Hardcore, UK) Stream Single “Disarray” from Debut Album “Skate. Kill. Destroy.” appeared first on Dying Scene.

Life, Liberty and a Stable Climate: These Kids Are Arguing for a New Constitutional Right

PORTLAND, ORE.—Judge Andrew Hurwitz arched an eyebrow. “You’re asking us to do a lot of new stuff, aren’t you?” He was grilling Julia Olson, executive director of Our Children’s Trust, who was arguing before a panel of three judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to allow a groundbreaking climate justice lawsuit, Juliana v. U.S., to proceed to trial in federal court.

Filed in 2015, Juliana includes 21 plaintiffs, then aged 8 to 19, asking the judiciary to order the federal government “to swiftly phase-down CO2 emissions … [and] develop a national plan to restore Earth’s energy balance” because their lives are in danger from government-caused climate change. To make the case, the plaintiffs, more than a dozen of whom packed the benches behind Olson, need to prove the government is violating their constitutional rights by facilitating climate change.

The question of government culpability is central to the Juliana lawsuit. The government can’t be held liable for inaction to a danger—but it can be held responsible for creating that danger. The lawsuit hopes to prove youth are being discriminated against in favor of the present generations of adults who will experience few of the consequences of catastrophic climate change.

While the right to a “stable climate system” is not enumerated in the Constitution, the Ninth Amendment states that other rights exist even if not listed. Olson argues a stable climate system is one such right, and it is essential to the Fifth Amendment right of not being “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

Jeffrey Clark, assistant attorney general of the Environment and Natural Resources Division, argued to the judges June 4 that the lawsuit is “a dagger at the separation of powers.” He claimed that, if elected officials fail to stop an imminent threat to life, the solution is “the political remedy of removing them from office”—not having the courts to step in.

Hurwitz’s gravelly voice interjected, cutting through the thicket of legalese. The government position, he summarized, is if the plaintiffs faced immediate harm and the legislative and executive branches did nothing, “The plaintiffs would have no option but to die.” He added, “That may well be constitutionally correct.”  

But the judges did express skepticism of the government’s case. Judge Josephine Staton asked Clark why the right to a life-sustaining climate wouldn’t “fit comfortably within the nature of other unenumerated rights—such as the right to an abortion, the right to bodily integrity, the right to marriage—that the court has found exists in the ‘life, liberty and property’ rights of the constitution.”

Clark answered with the same arguments made by the Obama administration, which also sought to quash Juliana: The youth have no standing to sue, their grievances are not redressable and the problem is outside the powers of the judicial branch.

"The Trump administration appears even more determined to quash the lawsuit than its predecessor—which is not surprising given its hostility to climate policy. This animosity is shared by Clark, who, in a 2010 panel discussion, called the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulation “reminiscent of kind of a Leninistic program from the 1920s to seize control of the commanding heights of the economy.”

The ruling may take months, but the plaintiffs and their legal team were in a celebratory mood, pouring out of the federal courthouse to a sunny day, TV news cameras and cheers from supporters. Led by the Unpresidented Brass Band, they paraded through the streets to a plaza in downtown Portland.

A grandmother and granddaughter team from climate-justice group 350.org performed a skit outside, reading scientific warnings about climate change going back to 1961 followed by puppets of presidents, from John F. Kennedy to Donald Trump, describing the policies they enacted to burn more oil, coal and natural gas. The granddaughter would ask, “Did the government know?” and the audience of hundreds would yell, “The government knew!”

Politically, the focus on children has helped to change the face of the climate-justice movement from older and white to youth-led and diverse.

Speaking at the rally, plaintiff Vic Barrett, 20, said, “We spent another day in court facing our government, the apparent strongest government in the world, showing fear of young people and showing fear of facts.”

The youngest plaintiff, 11-year-old Levi Draheim, also spoke. “It’s been four years since I got involved with this case. That’s literally one-third of my life that I have dedicated to this lawsuit.” Rising sea levels are threatening to submerge the barrier island he lives on off the Atlantic coast of Florida, a place where, he says, “I can watch dolphins, turtles and manatees, and I can go barefoot all year round.”

As the rally dispersed, a marimba band struck up. Olson and a handful of plaintiffs started dancing. When asked if they were looking for the government to do something new, Olson said, “We’re asking them to apply bedrock constitutional law to new factual circumstances.” Excusing herself, she continued dancing.

Meet the Woman Who’s Fought Racism in the Mississippi Delta for 54 Years

DREW, MISS.—Inside what was the city’s last remaining high school before it closed in 2012, Gloria Dickerson, 65, leads me through the hallways she and her six siblings integrated back in 1965, when she was 12. She describes how frightening it was to be the only black student in class, surrounded by white peers who would hurl racial epithets and tell her she didn’t deserve to be there.

The building now houses a food pantry run by We2gether Creating Change, a nonprofit community hub Dickerson founded in 2011. The organization provides food and civic and financial education in a poor and working-class black community that suffers from a poverty rate of 43.7%.

Dickerson attributes the lack of resources in Drew and other black communities to a long legacy of neglect and racist policymaking. “It all goes back to the struggle that African Americans have had because of slavery,” she says. “And the racism … the white supremacy.”

In the state of Mississippi, upward of 55% of the population was once enslaved. The Lower Mississippi River Valley had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the country in 1860—wealth created by forced labor. After the Civil War, Black Codes criminalized so-called mischief, and vagrancy laws forced unemployed freed people into essentially unpaid labor, ensuring black people remained poor or in jail. By 1960, more than a third of black people in Mississippi still worked land they didn’t own. As In These Timeshas reported, the low percentage of black land ownership contributes to “limited job opportunities, low education levels and low population density.” Black people in Mississippi continue to win settlements for the discriminatory way the state hands out farm subsidies.

The discriminatory distribution of resources in the state is “more subtle now,” Dickerson says, from vastly unequal state funding for education to one of the country’s cruelest histories of incarceration. “ZIP codes that don’t have very many people in them, ZIP codes where the people are poor—those people are not getting their fair share,” she says.

Going to school with white children “wasn’t about being around them,” Dickerson says—it was an opportunity to reclaim resources owed to black students. “That’s what Mama kept saying … ‘That school is just as much your school as it is their school.’ It was about claiming … what we were entitled to.” Dickerson’s mother, Mae Bertha Carter, fought to end school segregation, most notably as a plaintiff in an NAACP lawsuit that in 1969 overturned Mississippi’s “freedom of choice” law, which discouraged black families from sending their children to white schools.

But educational resources are still lacking in Drew. In 2012, the state of Mississippi scrapped Drew’s public school system by merging three school districts into one. While state takeovers may help with budget issues, they also strip the locally elected school board of decision-making power and have not been shown to improve academic performance. The state may then choose to close schools, as was the case with Dickerson’s old high school, which state officials say was closed due to poor academic performance and a hard financial situation. School closures further impoverish communities by reducing graduation rates and laying off longtime teachers.

Organizations like We2gether are working hard to fill the gaps. Where the state has failed or refused to invest in the futures of young people, for instance, We2gether’s “$$$ For Your Thoughts” program provides scholarships to young people who set goals for themselves, such as graduating from high school. The organization also provides classes for youth on leadership development. A host of adult programs help participants access resources, find economic footing and launch community projects. The food pantry serves around 900 people every month.

We2gether hosts regular community meetings to discuss plans for the city, with attendance upward of 100 people. The Drew Collaborative, also founded by Dickerson, brings together roughly 20 representatives of civic organizations across the city to make collective decisions, often “based on input from the community.” The collaborative is currently developing plans for more affordable housing units and a grocery store, both of which have the city’s backing and are grinding through a long process for space and funding.

Asked about the change she’d like to see, Dickerson doesn’t hesitate to think big, from major leaps in public transportation and affordable housing to rebuilding health and education infrastructure. “I’m talking about real change,” she says. “Societal change. Systemic change.”

Debates Matter More Than You Thought

It’s finally happening. On Wednesday, 10 Democratic candidates will take the stage in Miami for the first debate of the 2020 presidential campaign. On Thursday, 10 different Democrats will do it again. Sure, it will be entertaining. But do debates actually matter? Debates “can lose you the campaign if you mess up too badly.” According […]