Monthly Archives: June 2017

What can powerless, concerned citizens do in response to President Trump's move to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement?

Here's a pretty good answer from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.:

If you haven't joined an environmental group, join one. If your voice needs to be heard, get active. If you are a big corporation with good climate policies that has shied away from engaging politically, it's time to engage.

Taken from his official statement on the withdrawal, Whitehouse describes exactly the type of activity the First Amendment was written to protect. When government takes action that citizens find objectionable, the First Amendment protects their right to organize, petition, and speak out. In other words, it protects the right to "get active."

Unfortunately, Whitehouse has spent his political career promoting efforts to hamper just this sort of civic engagement.

He uses the megaphone that comes with his position of power to rail against the rights of advocacy groups that choose to respect the privacy of their donors. And he supports bills that would cripple all but the most well-funded groups.

Whitehouse has introduced the so-called "DISCLOSE Act" multiple times now. DISCLOSE is a contrived acronym for "Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections."

Whitehouse and his allies say this bill would increase transparency. But the "light" that would be cast would not shine on those in power, such as senators. We wouldn't know anything about what groups or persons he meets with behind closed doors.

Rather, the bill targets citizen groups that seek to hold those in power accountable. Whitehouse would like us to believe that the legitimate interest in government transparency necessitates exposing the personal information of private citizens who choose to join groups and advocate for social change.

Disclosing the names, addresses, occupations, and employers of citizens who give to advocacy groups exposes people to potential intimidation and harassment. So if his bill became law, fewer are likely to want to join an environmental group. The loss of privacy increases the costs of civic engagement.

The laws drive up compliance costs for groups too. Disclosure laws are very complex. They require groups to file frequent, detailed reports to government agencies. To stay in compliance, groups must hire expensive lawyers and spend resources on exhaustive record-keeping. As a result, Whitehouse is promoting laws that would directly hinder citizens' willingness and ability to "get active."

The DISCLOSE Act is just one part of Whitehouse's endless crusade against the free speech rights of groups he likes to call "dark money" organizations. The pejorative term "dark money" refers to money spent on speech by groups that do not have to publicly report the private information of their donors to the government.

One such "dark money" group is the Sierra Club. Among the most well-known environmental advocacy groups in the nation, it is presumably one of the groups Whitehouse would encourage concerned citizens to join.

The Sierra Club explicitly offers to protect the privacy of its donors, including corporate donors. So, it clearly has supporters who desire anonymity and with good reason. Surely, some of those supporters would choose not to donate if they no longer had this option.

Whitehouse's call for increased political engagement from corporations highlights his apparent myopic view that the First Amendment only applies to advocacy he agrees with as well.

Whitehouse makes no attempt to hide his animus toward corporate political speech. He has repeatedly co-sponsored a constitutional amendment that, among other abominations it would do to the First Amendment, seeks to grant Congress unlimited power to prohibit any corporate entity from spending money on political speech.

No word on whether he favors an exception for corporations with "good" policies on climate change.

It is heartening to see that Whitehouse is now encouraging citizens (and corporations) to engage in political speech instead of yet again attempting to silence opposing viewpoints.

His statement demonstrates that he does indeed understand the value of First Amendment-protected advocacy. However, the statement is also an example of the far too common tendency among many politicians to view only friendly advocacy as legitimate.

The First Amendment protects the right of every American to privately support an environmental group. It also supports the right of every corporation to speak in opposition to the president's actions regarding climate policy.

But Whitehouse must realize that the First Amendment also protects the right of citizens, nonprofit groups, and corporations to engage in political speech he opposes. In the end, his anti-speech objectives will harm the First Amendment rights of his allies as much as his opponents.

Alex Baiocco is a Communications Fellow at the Center for Competitive Politics in Alexandria, Virginia.

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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is a hypocrite on the First Amendment - Washington Examiner

Yesterday, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) participated in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today titled Free Speech 101: The Assault on the First Amendment on College Campuses.

During his opening remarks he offered a passionate defense of the First Amendment which you can watch below:

Below is the transcript of his remarks:

Thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you for holding this very important hearing. Free speech matters. Diversity matters. Diversity of peoples backgrounds, but also diversity of thought. Diversity of ideas. Universities are meant to be a challenging environment for young people to encounter ideas theyve never seen, theyve never imagined, and that they might passionately disagree with. If universities become homogenizing institutions that are focused on inculcating and indoctrinating, rather than challenging, we will lose what makes universities great.

The First Amendment is not about opinions you agree with. Its not about opinions that are right and reasonable. The First Amendment is about opinions that you passionately disagree with and the right of others to express them. Its tragic, what is happening at so many American universities where college administrators and faculties have become complicit in functioning essentially as speech police, deciding what speech is permissible and what speech isnt. You see violent protests the senior Senator from California referred to. In acting effectively, a hecklers veto, where violent thugs come in and say, This particular speaker I disagree what he or she has to say and therefore I will threaten physical violence if the speech is allowed to happen. And far too many colleges and universities quietly roll over and say, Okay, with the threat of violence, we will effectively reward the violent criminals and muzzle the First Amendment.

I saw a recent study from the Knight Foundation that said a majority of college students believe the climate on their campus has prevented people from saying what they believe out of fear of giving offense. What an indictment of our university system. And what does it say about what you think about your own ideas? If ideas are strong, if ideas are right, you dont need to muzzle the opposition. You should welcome the opposition. When you see college faculties and administers being complicit or active players in silencing those with opposing views, what they are saying is they are afraid. They are afraid that their ideas cannot stand the dialectic, cannot stand opposition, cannot stand facts or reasoning or anything on the other side, and it is only through force and power that their ideas can be accepted.

I am one who agrees with John Stewart Mill the best solution for bad ideas, for bad speech, is more speech and better ideas. Are there people with obnoxious ideas in the world? Absolutely. The Nazis are grotesque, and repulsive, and evil. And under out constitution they have a right to speak and the rest of us have a moral obligation to denounce what they say. The Ku Klux Klan are a bunch of racist, bigoted thugs, who have a right to express their views. And we have an obligation then to confront those views which are weak, poisonous, and wrong, and confront them with truth. We dont need to use brute force to silence them because truth is far more powerful than force. This is an important hearing. I thank the witnesses for being here and I thank the chairman for hosting.

Shane Vander Hart is the founder and editor-in-chief of Caffeinated Thoughts. He is also the President of 4:15 Communications, LLC, a social media & communications consulting/management firm. Prior to this Shane spent 20 years in youth ministry serving in church, parachurch, and school settings. He has also served as an interim pastor and is a sought after speaker and pulpit fill-in. Shane has been married to his wife Cheryl since 1993 and they have three kids. Shane and his family reside near Des Moines, IA.

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Ted Cruz: The First Amendment is not about opinions you agree with. - Caffeinated Thoughts

In just a few short months, the Trump wrecking ball has pounded away at rules and regulations in virtually every government agency. The men and women the president has appointed to the Cabinet and to head those agencies are so far in sycophantic lockstep, engaged in dismantling years of protections in order to make real what White House strategist Steve Bannon infamously described as "the deconstruction of the administrative state."

The Federal Communications Commission is not immune. Its new chair, Republican Ajit Pai, embraces the Trump doctrine of regulatory devastation. "It's basic economics," he declared inan April 26 speech at Washington's Newseum. "The more heavily you regulate something, the less of it you're likely to get."

His goal is to stem the tide of media reform that in recent years has made significant progress for American citizens. Even as we rely more than ever on digital media for information, education and entertainment, Pai and his GOP colleagues at the FCC seek to turn back the clock and increase even more the corporate control of cyberspace.

Net neutrality, the guarantee of an internet open to all, rich or poor, without preferential treatment, was codified by the FCC in 2015. Pai -- a former lawyer for Verizon -- wants net neutrality reversed and has taken the first steps toward its elimination. He has abandoned media ownership rules and attacked such FCC innovations asthe Lifeline programthat subsidizes broadband access for low income Americans. Among other rollbacks, he also has opposed rules capping the exorbitant cost of prison phone calls (that cap was overturnedon June 13 by the US Court of Appeals).

To see more stories like this, visit Moyers & Company at Truthout.

A veteran of the FCC, Michael Copps vehemently opposes Pai's master plan to strengthen the grip of big business on our media. Copps served two terms as a commissioner, including a brief period as interim chair. He also has taught history, worked as chief of staff to former South Carolina Sen. Fritz Hollings and was an assistant secretary of commerce.

Today, Copps is special adviser for the Media and Democracy Reform Initiative at the nonpartisan grassroots organization Common Cause. He "just may be,"Bill Moyers once said, "the most knowledgeable fellow in Washington on how communications policy affects you and me."

Recently, I spoke with Copps to get his assessment of how the election of Donald Trump and Ajit Pai's FCC chairmanship are affecting Americans and the media landscape. "I remain convinced that the last presidential election we had was of, by, and for, big media," he said. "It made billions of dollars for these big media companies. We're entering into a period where there likely will be more mergers than we've ever had before. The political and marketplace atmosphere that we have in this country right now favors them."

The transcript that follows has been edited for length and clarity.

***

Michael Copps:[CBS CEO Les] Moonves said it best: "I don't know if Donald Trump is good for the country. but he's damn good for CBS." The election was just a glorified reality show and I do not think it was an aberration. Until we get that big picture straightened out and we get a civic dialogue that's worthy of the American people and that actually advances citizens' ability to practice the art of self-government -- that informs citizens so they can cast intelligent votes and we stop making such damn-fool decisions -- we're in serious trouble.

To me, that remains the problem of problems, it remains at the top of the list. Journalism continues to go south, thanks to big media and its strangulation of news, and there's not much left in the way of community or local media. Add to that an internet that has not even started thinking seriously about how it supports journalism. You have these big companies like Google and Facebook who run the news and sell all the ads next to it, but what do they put back into journalism? It isn't much.

I don't think right now that commercial media is going to fix itself or even that we can save it with any policy that's likely in the near-term, so we have to start looking at other alternatives.

I don't think right now that commercial media is going to fix itself or even that we can save it with any policy that's likely in the near-term, so we have to start looking at other alternatives. We have to talk about public media -- public media probably has to get its act together somewhat, too. It's not everything that Lyndon Johnson had in mind back in 1967 [when the Public Broadcasting Act was signed], but it's still the jewel of our media ecosystem. So I'm more worried than ever about the state of our media -- not just fake news but the lack of real news.

That's priority No. 1; I don't think you solve anything until you find some ways to repair our commercial media. That's not coming from inside the fabled Beltway anytime soon. It'll require major input from the grass roots. Big media won't cover its own shortcomings, so we have to have a national conversation and make some democracy-encouraging decisions. We just have to find a way.

Michael Winship: What about "fake news?"

The fake news thing is a challenging phenomenon. No one has a viable solution yet that I know of. Again, don't look to Washington for much input under the present management. Maybe reinvigorating real news, the fact-based investigative journalism that big media has done so much to eliminate, would be the best solution. True journalism can do more than anything else to push aside fake news.

So how do you characterize the Trump administration's attitude toward communications issues?

True journalism can do more than anything else to push aside fake news.

This is not populism; this is a plutocracy. Trump has surrounded himself with millionaires and billionaires, plus some ideologues who believe in, basically, no government. And the Trump FCC already has been very successful in dismantling lots of things -- not just the net neutrality that they're after now, but privacy, and Lifeline, which is subsidized broadband for those who can't afford it. And just all sorts of things up and down the line. The whole panoply of regulation and public interest oversight -- if they could get rid of it all, they would; if they can, they will.

I think the April 26 speech that Ajit Pai gave at the Newseum, which was partially funded, I think, by conservative activist causes, was probably the worst speech I've ever heard a commissioner or a chairman of the FCC give. It was replete with distorted history and a twisted interpretation of judicial decisions. And then, about two-thirds of the way through, it became intensely political and ideological, and he was spouting all this Ronald Reagan nonsense -- if the government is big enough to do what you want, it's big enough to take away everything you have, and all that garbage. It was awful.

It's maybe the worst FCC I've ever seen or read about.

How much of all this do you think is just simply the idea of destroying anything supported by the Obama White House? Is it that simple?

Well, I think that some of it is the ego problem, but I think it goes beyond that. I think there is that right wing, pro-business, invisible hand ideology, and then there's just the unabashed and unprecedented and disgusting level of money in politics. I don't blame just the Republicans; the Democrats are just about as beholden to it, too.

You mentioned Pai's speech at the Newseum; does he have any real philosophy?

Yes, I think he believes this stuff, I think he's a true believer. He was in the Office of General Counsel when I was in there -- very articulate, very bright, very pleasant. He is an attractive personality, but he has thisWeltanschauungor whatever you want to call it that is so out of step with modern politics and where we should be in the history of this country that it's potentially extremely destructive. And Michael O'Rielly, the other Republican commissioner, is about the same. He's an ideologue, too.

It's all about the ideology, the world of big money, the access that the big guys have and continue to have. It's not that the FCC outright refuses to let public interest groups through the door or anything like that; it's just the lack of resources citizens and public interest groups have compared to what the big guys have. The public interest groups don't have much of a chance, but I think they've done a pretty good job given the lack of resources.

Did you expect Pai to move so fast against net neutrality?

It doesn't surprise me, but it's so dangerous. Net neutrality is thesine qua nonof an open internet -- "You can't have one without the other," as the old song goes. We'll need to hope for a good court outcome if the FCC succeeds in eliminating the rules. But I really don't see how big telecom or the commission can make a credible case to overturn what the court approved just two years ago, and then go back to what the court overturned before that. It's downright surreal. But citizens should not limit their pro-net neutrality messages to just the FCC; Congress needs to understand how popular these rules are, so they keep their hands off it, which they may be more inclined to do as the 2018 elections come closer.

There's so much of an X factor to everything.

There really is. I just hope we can get the media covering it better. I think if we get a couple of really big mergers, and of course we haveAT&T and Time Warnerout there now, which Trump said he was going to oppose. I don't think he really will, but that itself should be an issue. And then, if we can join that to the net neutrality issue, then I think we can get some media attention. If we can do that with Time Warner and AT&T or whatever other mergers come along, certainly includingSinclair-Tribune, then we can actually make some progress. I sure hope so.

There still seems to be a lot public support for net neutrality.

No question about it, but there would be an avalanche if more people were informed about the issue by the media. Many Trump voters, I am convinced, are not consumers who support $232 a year for a set-top box or who like constantly rising bills for cable and internet service, or who want a closed internet. That's not why they voted for him.

Have the net neutrality rules passed in 2015 had a chance to work? Have they had a chance to be effective?

Yes, I think so. Some say they are a solution in search of a problem, but that's not true. I think the companies have been on their good behavior over the last few years, by and large -- but there have been numerous abuses, too. But once you throw out the rules we have now, it'll be "Katy bar the door," and by the time we get another administration in, either the FCC or the Congress, it'll probably be too late to reverse the tide.

What are the implications for free speech?

They are huge. If you have an internet service provider [ISP] that's capable of slowing down other sites, or putting other sites out of business, or favoring their own friends and affiliates and customers who can pay for fast lanes, that's a horrible infringement on free speech. It's censorship by media monopolies.

It's tragic: here we have a technology, the internet, that's capable really of being the town square of democracy, paved with broadband bricks, and we are letting it be taken over by a few gatekeepers. This is a first amendment issue; it's free speech versus corporate censorship.

I want to talk to you about privacy, about protecting consumer information that's on the net.

If the huge internet service providers are going to glean all manner of personal information about us and share it with others or sell it to others, we ought to have a right to say, "Yes, count me in, I don't mind that," or "No, I don't want any part of that." And I think the vast majority would say, "No, thank you, I don't want any part of that." So privacy is a huge issue. We've talked about it some in national security terms, but it's a much bigger issue in citizen terms and what it does to the average person.

You mentioned Lifeline; I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that

Lifeline is directed toward those who cannot afford to be connected to broadband. How do they find a job when most corporations don't accept paper resumes or don't want to interview you in person? Nowadays you have to email something to potential employers. How do you and your kids educate yourselves? How do kids do their homework when they don't have broadband, and the kid in the next town or even in the next block has high-speed broadband? How do you care for your health -- especially that now we're getting seriously into tele-health and tele-medicine?

You cannot be a fully functioning 21st-century citizen in this country unless you have access to high-speed broadband. It's as simple as that. We shouldn't settle for less. I don't know that the FCC can do this by itself, and we need a national mission to do this. And we need everybody pushing for it. I hope it's going to be included in Trump's infrastructure plan, but I'll be surprised if it's in such a meaningful way that it's going to get coverage for all the people in the inner cities and rural America.

You cannot be a fully functioning 21st-century citizen in this country unless you have access to high-speed broadband. It's as simple as that.

And, you know, we're way, way down in the rankings in broadband penetration, adoption and affordability. And without competition, even when you have broadband, without competition people are paying through the ceiling for inferior service. They've got to feed families and find shelter, but broadband is also essential to them.

I think another issue that a lot of people aren't aware of is the whole prison telephone problem.

Commissioner Mignon Clyburn has done a fantastic job on that. We have such a high percentage of our population in the United States incarcerated and for their families to communicate with them or vice versa has become just very, very expensive. It's an industry that has made a lot of money off of other people's distress, and if you have a son in prison, and you can't afford to communicate with them, that doesn't help anybody, including the person who's in prison. Commissioner Clyburn made some good progress on interstate calling in this regard, but then you've got to go state by state, and now the court has just thrown some obstacles in the way of the intrastate calls. So, there's work to be done, and we'll see how far it goes. But we were on the track of making good progress under the previous commission.

Do you think there's any interest in consumer service remaining among the Republicans on the FCC or in Congress?

It's mighty hard to find if you look at all the party-line votes and partisanship at work. I think there will be some cooperation for infrastructure if broadband is included. It depends on how much. Some Republicans will vote for that, but you can't find a Republican for net neutrality, and you can't find a Republican for doing anything to counteract the outrageous influence of money in the political bloodstreams.

With so many of these American Enterprise Institute types and various other conservative groups and people wielding influence, would they lobby to eliminate the FCC completely?

Oh, yes indeed. There were reports during the transition that some of those people were actually saying, "Do we even need an FCC? Why don't we just get rid of it?"

So what can we all do at this point?

Figure out how you really make this a grass-roots effort -- and not just people writing, in but people doing more than that. In July, we will have a day devoted to internet action, so stay tuned on that. In addition, as Bill Moyers says, "If you can sing, sing. If you can write a poem, write a poem." Different initiatives attract different audiences, so whatever you can do, do. John Oliver made a huge difference in getting us to net neutrality and now he's helping again. If you went up to the Hill right afterthat first John Oliver show on net neutrality[in 2014], you saw immediately that it made a difference with the members and the staff.

There's no one silver bullet, no "do this" and it suddenly happens. You just have to do whatever you can do to get people excited and organized. It's as simple as that.

So that's where the hope is?

Well, that's where my hope is. I don't see anything else unless we get a change in power in Washington, and not just the name of the party in control but candidates who really are ready for a change and ready to do something to make it more reflective of what, I think, is the popular will.

Which of the Democrats are good on these issues?

There are a lot of them. I hesitate to get into names for fear of missing some. The problem is that Republicans inside the Beltway are joined in lockstep opposition on almost all these issues, and the level of partisanship, lobbying, big money, and ideology have thus far been insurmountable obstacles. But I believe if members of Congress spent more time at home, holding more town hall meetings, they would quickly learn that many, many of their constituents are on the pro-consumer, pro-citizen side of these issues.

It's just such a formative time, and in many respects the future is now. I don't know how long you can let this go on. How long can you open the bazaar to all this consolidation, how much can you encourage all this commercialization, how much can you ignore public media until you get to the point of no return where you can't really fix it anymore? And I also think that the national discourse on the future of the internet has really suffered while we play ping pong with net neutrality; one group comes in, does this, the other group, comes in and reverses it, boom, boom, boom. And net neutrality is not the salvation or the solution to all of the problems of the internet. As you know, it's kind of the opening thing you have to have, it lays a foundation where we can build a truly open internet.

But net neutrality alone doesn't solve consolidation, it doesn't solve commercialization, it doesn't solve, really, the big questions of the future of the internet. Add to the list issues of artificial intelligence and is AI going to put us out of work? These aren't strictly communication issues, but they are internet issues. What does AI mean for the future of work in our society? Are we even going to be working? Or, can we say the internet is throwing people out of work without sounding Luddite, because that's been said throughout history and it's been proven wrong, but I think now it looks like a lot of people already have been thrown out of work by it.

If Hillary Clinton had been elected, I would have gone down and talked with her and suggested a White House conference on the future of the internet. You can't answer all these questions that I just posed but you can ask the questions and you can get the best minds in the country talking about them. Give the conference a mandate and get them to come back with a report and some recommendations and at least put people on it with enough visibility that the media has to cover it.

If we could win net neutrality, which is a stretch, there will be a lot of people who say, "Well, that takes care of the internet, everything's fine and dandy right now." But that's not true at all. It's just not true.

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Former FCC Commissioner: Net Neutrality Is a First Amendment Issue - Truth-Out