Angst on the Internet

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From Michael Ledeen at PJ Media:

. . .Compared to those happy early days, most of what I read is fearful and/or angry.  As a Russian commentator observed back when, the Internet did indeed threaten tyrants, because it provided internal challengers with information that both exposed the malefactions of the regime and also enabled the opposition to plan their actions.  If you talk to Iranian anti-regime activists and ask them what they most need, they will usually reply that they need secure communications with one another, along with access to detailed, reliable reporting on their own country.

However, as that smart Russian commentator observed, the same Internet that threatened the tyrants could also be used to suppress the promised wide-open exchange of facts and ideas. And so it has. The world’s most effective oppressors, those in places like Iran, Russia, North Korea, China and Cuba, have all developed technology to isolate their citizens from the Net, and to inundate their cyberspace with the regime’s own disinformation.  No doubt they have helped each other, as free and open communication threatens them all.

. . .

All that is part of the ongoing war against America, but that’s only a part of what disturbs us, what has changed our feelings about the Internet.  Our current upset has more to do with the spying on us by our own government, and by our own corporations. We unaccountably continue to cherish privacy, even though there hasn’t been any for a long time. Some of us have not assimilated the unpleasant fact that our emails, even those we believe to have been “encrypted,” are public documents, available to anyone with the requisite skills to read them. And there are lots of people with the requisite skills, ranging from broadcasters to blackmailers.  Is there a remedy?  I don’t think so. I think we simply need to shut up, until the day comes when a tough-minded judge slaps the snoopers with hefty fines and maybe even prison time.

It doesn’t seem to me that that day will come very soon.  It seems instead that freedom of speech protects the bad guys along with the good, and it is up to us to protect ourselves as best we can.

Meanwhile, we must use the Internet as the weapon it has always been, and count on the bad guys’ entirely justified fear of it. They’ve got more to fear than we do.

Read the rest  here. And then there are ongoing issues with Facebook; here’s the latest on “privacy lapses."

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Action Alert: amnesty again

Posted yesterday by Ralph King:

***Action Alert***

The cheap labor, open border, donor daddies of the GOP - the Koch Brothers (Americans For Prosperity) are at it again!

The Koch Brothers & their pro-illegal immigrant groups, along with GOP Congressmen Will Hurd (R-TX) & Dan Newhouse (R-WA), are hosting a meeting in DC today to push Amnesty for DREAMERS.

Let these two Congressman know MAGA does NOT mean Make Amnesty Great Again!

Rep. Will Hurd (202)225-4511
Rep. Dan Newhouse (202)225-5816

And contact the GOP / RNC and tell them to get control of their open border members.

GOP / RNC (202)863-8500

Lastly, contact your State group for Americans For Prosperity & tell them you will refuse to donate or volunteer if they continue to support open borders & amnesty!

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Voter ID Laws Don’t Stop People Voting

image credit: texastribune.org

In favor of Voter ID laws:

No difference across race, gender, or party, analysis finds

Getty Images

Charles Fain Lehman at Washington Free Beacon (h/t Instapundit) reports:

Strict voter ID laws do not suppress turnout, a new paper finds, regardless of sex, race, Hispanic identity, or party affiliation.

Requiring photo ID to vote is a hotly contested subject in American political discourse. Proponents argue that it is necessary to insure against fraud and preserve the integrity of the American electoral system. Opponents argue that it will disenfranchise otherwise eligible voters—many of whom would be poor and of color—who are unable to easily obtain ID.

In total, 10 states, ranging from Georgia to Wisconsin [and including Ohio], require voters to show ID in order to vote. Seven of those states require a photo ID, and three do not. An additional 25 states "request" that voters display ID, but may still permit them to vote on a provision ballot if they cannot. The remaining states "use other methods to verify the identity of voters," according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The new research, from an economics professor at the University of Bologna and another at Harvard Business School, indicates that "strict" voting laws of the type implemented in those ten states do not have a statistically significant effect on voter turnout.

Full report is here. Ohio’s Voter ID laws are considered “strict.”  See here.  

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Happy Birthday, President Lincoln

Happy Birthday, President Lincoln

Border Security: Trump Rally in El Paso at the Tex-Mex border

Border Security: Trump Rally at 9pm

Conservative Treehouse links to the dedicated streams from three sources.  Starts at 9pm.  Beto O’Rourke’s counter-rally for open borders also starts at 9pm.  CBS reports here.

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Green New Deal: insane, dangerous, etc.

Image credit: federalobserver.com

Patricia McCarthy at American Thinker considers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez "A One-Woman EMP":

An electromagnetic pulse attack, essentially a nuclear device exploded at high altitude above America, would knock out power grids, rendering anything electrical or digital non-functional.  Cars, trucks, computers, etc. would be dead (unless still running vehicles from the 1960s).  The country would come to a full stop.  That is exactly what Miss. O-C is prescribing.  She means to send us back to an age her Millennial friends would not recognize.  Most of them would be unable to function, as so many are seriously lacking in the skills older generations grew up taking for granted.  Most young people would have no idea how to repair anything they own if it broke, least of all their cars.  They would be apoplectic if their smartphones were suddenly mute.  If Miss O-C were ever to implement any aspect of her Green New Deal, her very own friends would be reduced to the snowflakes they've been raised to be, helpless.

Another one of my favorite journalists, James Delingpole, puts the Green New Deal, in historical perspective at Breitbart:

Not everyone who believes in man-made climate change is a full on Commie. Some are merely useful idiots. But whatever reason people may have for supporting the scam – greed, stupidity, virtue-signalling, idiot leftist teachers – the net result is the same: bigger government, higher taxes, more regulation, lower standards of living. Exactly like you’d get under communism, in fact.

So color me completely unshocked by the Green New Deal. It looks like a revamped Communist Manifesto because that’s exactly what it is.

If implemented, the size of government would increase to levels never before seen in a Western economy. The state’s control of everything from wage levels to how businesses are run to your personal freedoms would be total. There’s no mention of gulags or political prisoners or secret police but of course those would inevitably follow because how else would the state have a hope of enforcing measures which freedom loving Americans would naturally resist?

Here’s hoping the Green New Deal and its sponsors will all implode. Soon.

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Solyndra on steroids: how to stifle competition

Lots of us are laughing at AOC’s idiotic Green New Deal “plan.” Tea Party people want smaller, not bigger government. Mr. Instapundit linked to a timely analysis by Chelsea Follett at Human Progress:

“The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.” Senator Bernie Sanders first said those words in 1974 and has been repeating them ever since. Senator Sanders is not alone in his belief. Three out of four Americans agree with the statement, “Today it’s really true that the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer.” 

Senator Sanders is half right: the rich are getting richer. However, his assertion that the poor are becoming poorer is incorrect. The poor are becoming richer as well. 

Economist Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution showed that between 1979 and 2010, the real (inflation-adjusted) after-tax income of the top 1 percent of U.S. income-earners grew by an impressive 202 percent. He also showed that the real after-tax income of the bottom fifth of income-earners grew by 49 percent. All groups made real income gains. While the rich are making gains at a faster pace, both the rich and the poor are in fact becoming richer. 

In addition to these measurable real income gains, decreases in prices have given the poor increased purchasing power, helping to raise living standards for the worst off in society. As a result of falling prices such as for groceries and material goods, along with gains in real income, Americans have more income left after basic expenses.

Technology has also become cheaper, improving our lives in unexpected ways. For example, consider the spread of cell phones. There was a time when only the wealthiest Americans could afford one. Today, over 98 percent of Americans have a cellular subscription, and the rise of smart phones has made these devices more useful than ever.

Unfortunately, progress has been uneven. In those areas of the economy where competition is hobbled, such as education, housing, and healthcare, prices continue to increase. 

. . .

“Competition is hobbled” whenever the government intrudes. Ms. Follett's full article is here. (And Solyndra is now defunct.)

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