October 24, 2017 0 Comment apgov
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How the liberal leanings of Google, Facebook shape the political landscape

Washington Times – Robert Epstein tried a simple experiment in the run-up to the presidential election: running searches on Google and Yahoo for political topics.

The results were stunning. Google searches returned twice as many pro-Hillary Clinton news articles as Yahoo searches.

Perhaps even more stunning was that men and blue-state residents saw more than double the number of pro-Clinton articles than women and people living in red states, Mr. Epstein, of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, and Robert E. Robertson, a professor at Northeastern University, argued in a report this year.

Mr. Epstein said he is still studying what caused the bias but worries that Google’s search algorithm — a form of artificial intelligence that chooses what results a searcher is looking for — ranked pro-Clinton articles ahead of positive articles about her opponent, Donald Trump.

Those algorithms have become the modern-day Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow, deciding what news reaches the eyes and ears of Americans in an increasingly Google-Facebook-Twitter media environment.

In recent months, the focus has been on whether the companies were able to be manipulated by Russian-connected operatives who attempted to sow “chaos” in the U.S. surrounding last year’s elections.

But the power of the companies to shape American politics goes well beyond that.

“The social media companies are the gatekeepers,” said Frank Foer, a writer at The Atlantic and former editor of the New Republic who has authored a book on social media’s power. “Whatever choices these companies make to elevate or bury information is very powerful and will have a big impact on what people read.”

Conservatives say they have long suspected that some of the internet giants discriminate against them and their content. They point to whistleblowers who have acknowledged they were pushed to treat conservatives differently.

The companies have denied the claims. They insist the algorithms are designed to capture the most-read news stories across the political spectrum. A computer program cannot distinguish between liberal and conservative, they say.

Mr. Foer, who says he is concerned about the level of power wielded by the algorithms the tech companies use, dismisses accusations of a liberal bias as “conservative paranoia.”

Studies allege bias

But an emerging set of studies suggests there is something to the concerns.

Mr. Epstein and Mr. Robertson, in their research, looked at 4,045 election-related searches on Google and Yahoo during a 25-day period from mid-October through Election Day. They found that the pro-Clinton articles swamped pro-Trump news.

“The algorithms are not programmed with an equal time rule,” said Mr. Epstein, a vocal Clinton supporter. “They are programmed to put one thing ahead of another in a way that is highly secret and ever-changing.”

He said his experiments show the power of news searches to affect politics and has found that he could boost support for a candidate by as much as 63 percent after just one Google search session. That is based on five experiments Mr. Epstein ran in two countries in which study participants changed their opinions of a candidate based on a manipulated search engine. He has dubbed this the “search engine manipulation effect.”

A separate study by Nicholas Diakopoulos, now at Northwestern University, analyzed the Google search results on Dec. 1, 2015. He searched for the names of all 16 presidential candidates and discovered Democrats, on average, had seven favorable search results among Google’s top 10. Republican candidates, meanwhile, had only 5.9 positive articles in the top 10.

Mrs. Clinton had five positive search results but only one negative on the first page, according to the study. Mr. Trump had four positive and three negative search results on the first page. Sen. Bernard Sanders, another Democratic candidate, had nine positive results without a single negative, and Republican candidate Sen. Ted Cruz had no positive results.

Mr. Diakopoulos ran a second study during the summer before the election and found the vast majority of sources selected for Google’s news box were left-leaning outlets. The New York Times, CNN and The Washington Post accounted for nearly 50 percent of Google news sources. Articles from Fox News, the only conservative news source among the 113 featured by Google during Mr. Diakopoulos’ study, appeared about 1 percent of the time.

Google eliminated the news box in November. Company spokeswoman Maggie Shiels said the box’s algorithm picked up news across the internet.

“There are several hundred signals that go into surfacing an answer,” she said. “The algorithm does not focus on political party or ideology.”

The company is secretive about the algorithm and insists it is constantly tinkering with the formula. But it says it promotes articles based on “freshness, location, relevance and diversity.”

“As a result, stories are sorted without regard to political viewpoint or ideology and you can choose from a wide variety of perspectives on any given story,” the company says on its online explainer.

Analysts have caught some deeper glimpses over the years, based on testing and on information gleaned from patent applications Google has filed, saying Google judges trustworthiness and importance of a news site, how much content it produces and even length of stories to gauge whether to elevate a site’s content.

News operations, just like other website owners, invest a lot of time and money trying to figure out Google’s system, and an entire industry known as search engine optimization, or SEO, claims to offer shortcuts to earn more eyeballs.

Patents suggest search engines may be increasingly tailoring results to the individual’s history, promoting websites or story themes the searcher seems to select the most.

Mr. Diakopoulos said someone who searches for positive news about Trump is more likely to get exposed to conservative news, while someone who searches for left-leaning topics will receive more liberal news.

And then there is the issue of the press itself.

“If 70 percent of the news media is liberal, you can expect there to be some unequal results to come from a search engine,” Mr. Diakopoulos said.

That means the social media may not be biased, but instead is a reflection of the bias perceived in traditional media, said S. Robert. Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University.

“If you are getting a certain perspective from the major news outlets, that is going to be passed on through social media, which is the last link in the chain,” he said.

But Mr. Epstein said the concern about who is creating the algorithm is just as concerning as the program itself.

“When accused of a liberal bias, these companies say, ‘It’s not us; it’s the algorithm,” he said. “That is so hilarious because they programmed the algorithm.”

Facebook workers raise questions

Accusations of an indirect bias may not carry as much weight if not accompanied by accusations of direct bias by the social media companies.

In May 2016, a group of several former Facebook workers told technology blog Gizmodo that they routinely suppressed news about prominent conservatives, including Mitt Romney, Rand Paul and the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference. The employees, who worked as ‘news curators,’ also said stories reported by conservative outlets such as Brietbart and Newsmax were dismissed unless The New York Times, BBC or CNN covered the same article.

Facebook denied the accusations and said an internal study found virtually identical rates of liberal and conservative new topics. The company did concede bias could have occurred through improper human actions and it would take steps to prevent it from happening in the future. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg invited 16 conservative leaders to the company’s headquarters for a meeting.

Mr. Zuckerberg opened the meeting acknowledging that both he and Facebook are liberal and that he knows little about the conservative movement, according those who attended. But Mr. Zuckerburg conceded that if Facebook wants to be an open marketplace of ideas, then it must be open to conservative viewpoints.

“The meeting opened on a positive, honest note and went that way throughout the whole meeting,” said Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center.

Mr. Bozell said Facebook has made a sincere effort since the meeting to include conservative voices.

“We’ve never had a serious problem with Facebook,” he said. “Does that make us the exception to the rule? I don’t know.”

Zachary Moffatt, CEO of Targeted Victory, a Republican political strategy group, agreed that Mr. Zuckerberg was sincere and concerned about the perception of a liberal bias. Mr. Moffatt, who is working with Facebook ahead of the Senate hearings on the Russian ad buy, said Mr. Zuckerberg’s staff has followed up since the meeting.

“I think Facebook is doing more to address the unconscious structural bias than other partners in this space,” he said.

Conservative commentator Steven Crowder was among the voices blocked by the former Facebook workers. He said a social media bias against conservatives is real but sometimes gets obscured by conservatives claiming censorship when, in fact, they violated a site’s rules by spreading fake news or using a copyrighted image or song without permission.

“There are too many conservatives screaming censorship, but they need to make sure they are not embarrassing Facebook with false stories or too many pop-ups,” Mr. Crowder said. “That does a disservice to everyone who has been harmed by some of these practices. It does happen, but, unfortunately, the people it happens to are not the ones who scream the loudest.”

Mr. Crowder won a settlement with Facebook after filing a legal action seeking more information about the company’s advertising practices. He claimed Facebook refused to acknowledge his advertising payments. Mr. Crowder said he could not discuss whether the issue came from bias or mismanagement by Facebook’s advertising team because of the settlement agreement.

It’s not just Facebook and Google. Earlier this month, Twitter blocked a campaign ad by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, claiming it included “an inflammatory statement that is likely to evoke a strong reaction.” In the ad, Ms. Blackburn said she helped stop Planned Parenthood from selling baby body parts.

Twitter initially said it would air the ad for Ms. Blackburn, who is running for U.S. Senate, if the line about the sale of baby body parts is removed. After the congresswoman went public, the social media site backtracked and allowed the ad to run.

“The damage being done to conservatives is almost incalculable,” said Seton Motley, a technology policy specialist and president of Less Government, a conservative organization dedicated to reducing government power. “If network television media bias can give a candidate a 4- to 6-point advantage and social media giants have more power than the networks, can we even quantify a number?”

Google insists there is no truth to Mr. Epstein’s hypothesis that it could secretly influence an election outcome.

“Claims that Google News is biased or favors one political point of view over another are just not true,” Ms. Shiels said. “The whole ethos of the product is to give people access to a rich and diverse world of news, views and perspectives. We are able to do that thanks to the more than 80,000 publications from around the globe that are part of the corpus.”

Companies are politically active

The companies’ denials are complicated by their executives’ perceived political leanings.

Employees and affiliates of Alphabet Inc., a Google holding company, donated nearly $1.6 million to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential aspirations and about $359,000 to her Democratic primary opponent Mr. Sanders, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, received roughly $23,000 from the company.

In fact, the top 16 candidates who received contributions from Alphabet employees were all Democrats. The top Republican was Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, who received just over $23,000.

Mr. Walden is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is reviewing net neutrality legislation. Net neutrality, if imposed, would block internet providers from charging for or blocking online content.

Google and other social media companies have opposed such measures.

In total, 63 percent of Alphabet contributions in last year’s election went to Democrats and 22 percent went to Republicans — even though Republicans dominate elected offices at the national and state levels. The remaining 12 percent went to support independent candidates.

Ms. Shiels declined to comment on the donations.

Facebook also donated heavily to the Democratic Party. Of the nearly $4.6 million Facebook employees and affiliates spent on last year’s election, 67 percent went toward Democrats and 32 percent went to Republican candidates. Mrs. Clinton received $478,000 from Facebook, while Mr. Trump received about $4,665.

“These companies are shockingly political,” said Scott Cleland, who has authored a book about Google. “They are the gatekeepers of all the world’s information, and everything they do has a political angle to it.”

The relationships were also personal.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg was one of those in email communication with John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, according to messages released by WikiLeaks.

“I want HRC to win badly,” Ms. Sandberg said in one missive. In a later email, she told Mr. Podesta she was looking forward to working with him “to elect the first woman President of the United States” and she was “thrilled” by the progress Mrs. Clinton was making.

A representative for Ms. Sandberg declined to comment.

The leaked Podesta emails also showed that Google had loaned its jet to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign staff on several occasions. Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, publicly supported Mrs. Clinton, and the Clinton campaign’s chief technology officer, Stephanie Hannon, and chief product officer, Osi Imeokparia, were former Google executives.

The Obama administration also built deep links with Google, where 22 former White House officials worked, while 31 Google executives went to work for the White House or were appointed to federal advisory boards, including the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology and the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, according to a study by the Campaign for Accountability.

In total, nearly 250 people shuttled from government service to Google or vice versa during the Obama administration.

The same study found that Google representatives attended White House meetings more than once a week, on average, from the start of the Obama presidency through October 2015. During that same period, Google lobbyists visited the White House 128 times, the most of any lobbyist during that time.

“What Google and Facebook lost with a Trump victory is cronyism,” Mr. Motley said.

Google and Facebook have increased their lobbying efforts over the past few months as Congress scrutinizes their power. Facebook spent $285 million on lobbyists from July through September, a 41 percent increase over the same period last year. Google spent $417 million during those three months, including hiring Republican lobbyists Jochum Shore & Trossevin PC to fight a bill that would penalize tech companies for content that promotes sex trafficking. The companies are fighting the bill because it weakens some of their legal protections.

Both Republicans and Democrats have come to respect the power and reach of the tech giants. Although Mr. Trump’s Twitter account gets the most attention, his campaign said it was Facebook that helped them win the presidential election.

Brad Parscale, who ran Mr. Trump’s digital team, said in a recent interview with CBS’s “60 minutes” that he asked Facebook employees to be “embedded inside our offices” to help craft carefully tailored ads he said reached voters they never could have with television ads.

“I think Donald Trump won, but I think Facebook was the method — it was the highway in which his car drove on,” he told CBS.

Patrick Hynes, an adviser to the 2008 McCain and 2012 Romney Republican presidential campaigns, said he expects social media companies to double down on their support for Democrats in the 2020 election. He predicted efforts to silence Mr. Trump and others, similar to Twitter’s attempt to ban Ms. Blackburn’s ad.

“The social media companies will engage in full-scale censorship with the approval or rejection of advertising content in the next presidential election,” he said. “Trump’s advertising will be critiqued in a way that they will not do to the Democrats.”

Source: US Government Class

October 19, 2017 0 Comment apgov
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Two Different Views

Bergen: No, Trump didn’t defeat ISIS

Shift in War That Beat ISIS Occurred on Trump’s Watch
 CNN  National Review
(CNN) – On Tuesday, US-backed forces announced that Raqqa, the de facto capital of ISIS in Syria, had fallen.

President Donald Trump quickly took a victory lap during an interview the same day, stating that ISIS hadn’t been defeated earlier because “you didn’t have Trump as your president.”

Is this claim true? Not really, according to US military officials.

In August 2016, Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, who was the ground commander for the fight against ISIS, said the US-led coalition had killed an estimated 45,000 ISIS fighters.

About a year later, at the Aspen Security Forum in July 2017, the commander of the US Special Operations Command, Gen. Raymond “Tony” Thomas, said that an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 ISIS fighters had been killed since the US-led campaign against the terror group began in August 2014.

Ergo, according to these senior US military officials, the bulk of ISIS fighters were killed during the pre-Trump period.

That shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, the campaign to eradicate ISIS began two and a half years before Trump assumed office.

The operation to take back Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq where ISIS had first declared its “caliphate,” began in October 2016 while President Barack Obama was still in office and had been long-planned.

Shortly after the Mosul operation was launched, Gen. Joseph Votel, the commander of US Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Syria, told me: “We have been doing preparatory stuff against Raqqa and Mosul for a long time, long before we said, ‘the assault on Mosul has begun.’

We have taken out 36 ISIS leaders in the Mosul area; to me that is part of the preparation phase.” Under Obama, ISIS also lost significant Iraqi cities such as Falluja, Ramadi and Tikrit. To be sure, Trump loosened the “rules of engagement” for the US military, enabling ground commanders to more easily carry out operations without having to seek permission up the chain of command, but these are tactical changes — not strategic game changers.

According to the UK-based Airwars, which carefully tracks coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, the numbers of strikes has declined in Iraq under Trump, while they have spiked in Syria. Significantly, in May, Trump approved a plan to arm the Kurdish forces fighting ISIS in Syria.

Turkey strenuously objected to this plan because of its restive Kurdish population, but the Trump administration went ahead anyway.

These are the Kurdish forces that helped to liberate Raqqa on Tuesday. Bottom line: There is much continuity between the Obama campaign plan against ISIS and the Trump plan. Also, Trump needs to be careful about taking too much of a victory lap when it comes to ISIS. He could fall into the same trap that Obama did when he observed in early 2014 that ISIS was a “JV team” — meaning junior varsity team, made up of younger, less-experienced players.

The political conditions in the Middle East that gave rise to ISIS — the sectarian and ethnic conflicts around the region and the collapse of Arab governments and economies — will surely engender a son of ISIS. And even a deeply wounded ISIS can continue to inspire attacks in the West. ;

 When President Donald Trump boasts, the nation rolls its collective eyes. From his first moments in office, Americans on both sides of the political aisle understood that his claims of triumph usually had little to do with the facts.

That was true of the talk about record attendance at his inauguration and continues to also be true about his claims of passing more legislation or getting more done than all of his predecessors.

The controversies engendered by Trump’s bragging or false statements (such as those he recently made about other presidents consoling the survivors of American combat troops killed in battle) have become the obsessive concern of his critics as well as of fans who brand the president’s debunkers as purveyors of “fake news” or merely take delight in his trolling of his liberal opponents.

But when it comes to one of Trump’s boasts, it’s hard for even his sternest detractors to gainsay him. Try as they might to deny it, even the efforts of the New York Times to discount his assertion rings false.

ISIS was still largely undefeated and in control of much of the territory of Iraq and Syria when Trump was sworn in before a non-record setting crowd.

But only nine months into his administration, the Islamic State’s hold on these countries has dwindled, and after the liberation this week of Raqqa, Syria, capital of the Islamists’ caliphate, it’s fair to say that the group is being routed after years in which it held its own against coalition forces.

How much of this is due to Trump’s influence? As with any war and, indeed, a great many other occurrences during any administration, the personal credit or blame that accrues to a president is widely exaggerated.
The people winning this war are the U.S. air crews and special operators killing the terrorists as well as the coalition forces — principally local militias and the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters — who have paid for the ground won from the terrorists in blood.
Trump didn’t personally beat ISIS anymore than Franklin Roosevelt beat Japan and Germany singlehandedly. Nor, on the other side of the ledger, were Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon solely to blame for the disaster in Vietnam.
But that is how history and politics works, and if the current victories lead, as seems highly likely, to the collapse of the caliphate, the only reason to deny Trump his fair share of the credit is partisan politics and the personal animus most of the press harbors toward him.

Recent political history provides us with a clear example of how this works. Republicans and conservatives winced in 2011 when President Barack Obama took credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Their irritation grew as Obama and other Democrats never missed an opportunity during the 2012 election to do a bin Laden touchdown dance, which sought to draw a contrast between this easily understood symbolic American victory and the bloody stalemates produced by the frustrating wars George W. Bush fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But while Obama may have exploited bin Laden’s death for partisan purposes, the fact remains that it happened on his watch, not that of Bush, who had done all that he could to achieve the same object, as well as to avenge 9/11 by depriving al-Qaeda of its base in Afghanistan.
Dismiss it as mere luck if you like, but if we are prepared to blame presidents for everything else that happens while they are in the White House, it’s only fair to let them take credit for anything good, especially if they are the ones involved in making the decisions, as Obama was on the bin Laden operation.
The facts about the campaign against ISIS are just as clear-cut. When Trump took office, the U.S. had been mired in a discouraging stalemate in the fight against a group that Obama had initially dismissed as the “JV” terrorist team and therefore unworthy of his attention.
Obama had little appetite for another Middle East war after he pulled U.S. forces out of Iraq. Having claimed that he had ended or wound down America’s wars, it took more than a year for him to admit that his Iraq bugout and refusal to intervene in the Syrian civil war — even to enforce his “red line” over Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons — had created a vacuum that ISIS filled.
That reluctance seemed to carry over into U.S. efforts during the two years following Obama’s 2014 pledge to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the terrorist group as coalition forces made little headway against the enemy.
Did Trump entirely reinvent the war against ISIS?
No, he didn’t, and his liberal detractors have spent the year correctly pointing out that the coalition war plans implemented this year were conceived by Obama’s Pentagon. But try as they might to deprive Trump of credit, there’s no way to pretend that the coalition didn’t have better success with those plans this year than they had in the previous two. In January, ISIS controlled 23,300 square miles.
Today it holds onto about 9,300 square miles. Trump’s role in the transformation is not insignificant. It is unfair to U.S. and coalition troops to claim, as Trump does, that they didn’t “fight to win” until he arrived in the Oval Office. But as the Times admits, there was one significant difference. In the spring, Trump loosened the rules of engagement to allow commanders in the field more authority in day-to-day decisions about fighting the enemy.
Under Obama, the White House micromanaged the conflict in a manner that calls to mind the way President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara fought the Vietnam War with similar dismal results.
The Times and other Trump critics blame Trump for the increase in civilian casualties in the fighting against ISIS since then. But if you are going to link Trump to that statistic, it isn’t logical to assert that the new rules of engagement had nothing to do with freeing up the coalition to attack the enemy with more aggression.
Though the number of air strikes hasn’t increased, their impact has been greater, and that is probably because competent military commanders in the field are making the decisions rather than civilian staffers posing as military experts in the White House situation room. It’s true that the taking of Raqqa and the collapse of the caliphate as a functional state won’t end the war. ISIS fighters will probably reassemble to fight a guerilla war.
Trump’s defense team will have to be nimble enough to adapt to the shift. Trump must also understand that the fight against ISIS shouldn’t distract the U.S. from Iran, which remains the main threat to Western interests in the region. Ultimately, he’s going to have to choose between his correct instinct to confront Tehran and his desire for better relations with Russia, Iran’s ally in Syria.
Yet none of that changes the fact that ISIS is being defeated on Trump’s watch and, at least in part, because of decisions he has made. There will be plenty that happens during his presidency for which he will deserve to be blamed but, his boasts notwithstanding, this victory also belongs to him.

 

Source: US Government Class

October 15, 2017 0 Comment apgov
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Choose Your Current Event

Choose a story from the list below. These articles are from RealClearPolitics. Most of the stories are editorials or opinion pieces that do not cover the story in a non-bias approach. If there is an article that appears to have a view from the other side of the political spectrum, read both articles to see how the issues is covered.

Be sure to reference the article within your comment.

Sunday, October 15

For Trump, ‘Consequences Are Piling Up’ in Washington – Susan Glasser, New Yorker
Trump Gives Congress a Kick in the Rear on Health Care – John Fund, FOX News
As Goes Pennsylvania, So Goes Congress in 2018 – Salena Zito, Washington Examiner
In VA Governor Race, History Points to Democratic Win – Goldman & Rozell, The Hill
Behind Trump’s Moves, a Return to Constitutional Government – F.H. Buckley, NY Post
Is the American Idea Doomed? – Yoni Appelbaum, The Atlantic
Disgraceful Charade Unfolds in Battle Twixt Mueller, Congress – Conrad Black, NY Sun
WH Tries to Rush the Russia Probe. We Can’t Let It Happen – Rep. Adam Schiff, WP
Trump’s Tough Terms for DACA Renewal Put Dems on Spot – Jonathan Tobin, NRO
I Wrote DACA. Now I’m Suing to Save It From Trump – Janet Napolitano, NBC News
Yes, Build the Wall – Robert Samuelson, Washington Post
How Cronyism Distorts Economy, Undermines Entrepreneurs – Charles Koch, GPC
Trump’s Order on Health Care Is Flat-Out Disgusting – Eleanor Clift, The Daily Beast
Trump Exposes the Fake Math of Obamacare – Frank Miele, Daily Inter Lake

 

Source: US Government Class

October 15, 2017 0 Comment apgov
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Pretrial supervision or punishment?

Santa Fe New Mexico – James Coriz was charged with intimidating a witness during a trial in the First Judicial District in April.

Coriz, 57, said he hadn’t threatened anyone and refused to take a plea deal. About five months later, a jury found him not guilty.

But by then, Coriz says, he had paid more than $1,000 to Santa Fe County for being on an ankle monitor while awaiting his trial and had spent 21 days in jail after program officials said he’d violated the electronic monitoring agreement that governed the conditions of his release.

Had he been found guilty and sentenced to time in jail, Coriz would have been given time-served credit for every day he spent on electronic monitoring, plus the 21 days he spent in jail. But after being exonerated, he got no consideration for the time and money he spent on the court-ordered ankle bracelet — not even an apology, never mind a refund.

“I think it’s terrible that they put people on ankle monitors before they are found guilty,” Coriz said in a recent interview. “They find you guilty before they find you innocent.”

First Judicial District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer recently called a meeting to discuss pretrial electronic monitoring — prompted by the fact it’s being used more frequently since voters approved a constitutional amendment to help prevent defendants from remaining in jail simply because they can’t afford to pay bail.

In the meeting were some of the area’s legal heavyweights: state Supreme Court Justice Charles Daniels, District Attorney Marco Serna, Chief Public Defender Morgan Wood and Santa Fe County employees who run the county’s Electronic Monitoring Program.

The issues surrounding electronic monitoring — legal, financial and constitutional — are deep and complex. But for critics of the practice, it comes down to these questions: Is it constitutional to order people who haven’t been convicted of a crime to pay for court-ordered electronic monitoring? And does that amount to pretrial punishment?

For now, officials say they’re only looking at the implications of charging defendants for the costs of participation in the program.

The chief judge said she called the meeting to “understand the types of charges being required of participants in the Electronic Monitoring Program,” and to “make sure that no one has to stay in or gets brought back in because they can’t afford the fees.

“I brought Justice Daniels in because I wanted to know if any of this is prohibited under the concept that you can’t stay in jail simply because you can’t afford bail,” Marlowe Sommer said.

For now, Daniels said he’s taking a “methodical” approach and reviewing only the financial aspects of the program in light of the fact that federal law “really puts it in black and white … that you can’t put people in jail for not having money.”

Marlowe Sommer said she has asked Santa Fe County, which runs and funds the Electronic Monitoring Program, to provide the written policies that govern the program so she and Daniels can examine the rules before meeting again to see what, if any, changes needed to be made.

But until the judicial officials asked to see the policies, they might not have existed.

When public defender Jennifer Burrill subpoenaed “current polices and procedures” in May while defending a client who had spent 50 days in jail after being arrested on a warrant and electronic monitoring violation, Assistant County Attorney Cristella Valdezresponded: “Santa Fe County has no records responsive to your request.”

The New Mexican’s public records request in early August netted about a dozen pages of signatures for program participants in early August, but no policies.

It wasn’t until Sept. 28, after court officials had requested the policies, that the county emailed The New Mexican, saying additional responsive records had been “identified” and that a set would be provided to the newspaper. The documents, however, contained only blanks where officials’ signatures or dates of effectiveness should have been, leaving open the question of who approved them and when.

County spokeswoman Kristine Mihelcic attributed the earlier denials of the existence of the records to “a miscommunication” and said the county “is currently looking into why the policy was not signed and dated, but we understand it has been in use since approximately 2013.”

District Defender Morgan Wood, who oversees the Santa Fe County offices of the state Public Defender’s Office, says her staff has had “a lot of problems” with the Electronic Monitoring Program, adding that program Director Tino Avla has “been given a wide latitude to decide when someone has violated and when to take them into custody.

“There is such a lack of documentation, and there are no standards, and it doesn’t seem like there is any oversight,” Wood said. “It’s a little difficult when [electronic monitoring] isn’t held to standards.”

Alva said in a recent phone interview that the program does provide reports on the violations — but only to the court, not the public defenders.

But when public defenders are afforded the opportunity to see reports, Wood said, “the paperwork is wrong, there are typos, it’s very uninformative, [it’s] maybe a paragraph. It makes it difficult to defend [against]. You can explain to the judge, but you are the person charged with the crime, versus the person who has the contract to run [electronic monitoring]. So, who you gonna believe?”

‘Case-by-case basis’

A review of the policies in an interview with Alva and Santa Fe County Public Safety Director Pablo Sedillo confirmed many aspects of the program are left to the discretion of program staff and judges.

There appears to be no set criteria for determining who is eligible for the Electronic Monitoring Program. According to the policies the county provided, “approval or denial of admission to the program shall be established on a case-by-case basis.”

Because the eligibility criteria isn’t explicit, it’s unclear if the procedures were written with consideration of the different legal rights of pretrial detainees and those who have been convicted.

Justice Daniels said in a recent telephone interview that the policies he received appear to have been written to govern only the monitoring of post-conviction defendants.

“Apparently they don’t have written protocols for pretrial supervision,” he said. “It would be a good idea to have that. They haven’t been worked out.”

Mihelcic said the county has used the same polices for pretrial detainees and post-adjudicated inmates “for years, without judicial complaint.”

Complicating the issue is this: Within the tri-county First Judicial District, Santa Fe and Los Alamos counties operate their own electronic monitoring programs and use taxpayer money to subsidize them. Rio Arriba County does not.

That means Santa Fe and Los Alamos defendants can ask for fees to be waived or reduced based on financial hardship, while Rio Arriba County defendants must pay full fees to a private nonprofit that provides the service there.

Any waiver or reduction in electronic monitoring fees “is at the sole discretion of the County” according to the policies. Alva said there is no matrix detailing the income thresholds for eligibility or the process for appealing a denial. He added that senior case managers determine who qualifies “basically based on how many hours they [defendants] work.”

For example, someone who is employed 40 hours a week pays full price — a $25 setup fee, $25 for each drug test and $10 per day for the ankle bracelet. For a defendant who works 20 hours a week, the payment goes down by half, Alva said.

But the rules also specify that program participants must pay setup costs up front while waiver requests are pending.

What if they can’t afford the fee?

“Every situation is a case-by-case basis,” Alva said. “That’s how we look at it.”

Judge Marlowe Sommer said she hasn’t heard of anyone being kept in jail because they couldn’t afford the $25 setup fee, and Burrill said some defendants have been allowed to perform community service instead of paying fees.

According to numbers provided by Santa Fe County, the cost of running the program generally hovers around $1 million each year, and participant fees bring in only about 20 percent of that. The other 80 percent is funded by county taxpayers.

Santa Fe County pays about $400,000 a year to a private vendor, BI Inc, to rent the electronic monitoring equipment. The balance funds salaries for the program’s approximately five employees and its drug-testing services.

A question of effectiveness

Electronic monitoring has long been touted as a way to reduce incarceration costs while keeping those who are accused of crimes employed and out of jail while awaiting trial, as well as a way to ensure defendants show up for court dates.

But is it working?

Chief Judge Marlowe Sommer said it is working but couldn’t point to hard data. She said electronic monitoring and other forms of pretrial services — including drug testing and mental health referrals — allow the courts to take a more “hands-on” approach to helping defendants while also protecting the community.

For example, she said, drug testing — a mandatory element in the electronic monitoring system — can keep people accused of drug crimes from committing property crimes to support their habit while they are awaiting trial.

But public defender Hans Erickson countered that contention.

“It does the exact opposite,” he said, adding that in his experience, drug users are afraid to come to pretrial hearings for fear they’ll test positive and be arrested.

“If someone is a lifelong heroin addict, he’s not going to magically not be addicted to heroin because a judge said so,” Erickson said.

Perhaps the most important question facing criminal justice officials is whether putting pretrial defendants on electronic monitoring violates the rights of people who are considered innocent until proven guilty, regardless of who pays for the service.

Marlowe Sommer and others are quick to point out that defendants who are convicted after spending time on electronic monitoring are credited for time spent, just as if they had been in jail.

But no one The New Mexican interviewed had any answers when asked about how people who have been exonerated are credited for the money and time they spent adhering to program rules.

Asked whether that constitutes pretrial punishment, Justice Daniels said he couldn’t address the question head-on — in part because the state Supreme Court had not been formally asked to consider the issue.

Daniels said there is a “general principal of law” that “you can’t punish people before trial,” but he added that a mid-1980s U.S. Supreme Court decision found “pretrial conditions are not, per se, pretrial punishment.”

Paul Haidle, a criminal justice advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, said the civil rights organization is concerned the costs associated with electronic monitoring and other pretrial services, including drug testing, could “encourage innocent people to plead guilty” — increasing incarceration rates in a state that already has one of the highest rates of pretrial detainees in the country.

Coriz, who walked free after a jury found him not guilty, is certain that he was punished nonetheless.

“I wish I could get my money back for the [electronic monitoring] and for all the lost time,” he said. “I don’t think it’s fair. I think we are still in America, aren’t we?”

Source: US Government Class

October 13, 2017 0 Comment apgov
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NY Times changes social media guidelines so reporters don’t appear biased

New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet issued new social media guidelines to his newsroom on Friday and advised staffers to “read them closely, and take them to heart” so that the paper’s journalists are not perceived as biased.

“Many of our journalists are influential voices on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms. The voices of our readers, listeners and viewers inform and improve our reporting,” Baquet wrote. “But we also need to make sure that we are engaging responsibly on social media, in line with the values of our newsroom.”

Baquet discussed Twitter at a forum at George Washington University Thursday and said his staff “should not be able to say anything on social media that they cannot say” in the Times, according to Politico.

The Times’ rival, The Washington Post, published a story back in Oct. 2016 headlined, “#Biased? Reporters on Twitter don’t hold back about Trump”. The article mentioned Times reporters throughout, noting that “reporters are supposed to keep their opinion out of the stories they write” but that policy doesn’t seem to apply to Twitter. The Post called out Times staffers Alex Burns for attacking Trump on a regular basis – and that was before he defeated Hillary Clinton on Election Day.

Media Research Center Vice President Dan Gainor thinks it’s too little, too late when it comes to the Times’ reporters appearing anti-Trump on social media.

“Twitter has been around for 10 years and The New York Times is only now realizing that its staff say lots of stupid, left-wing things there? I know Baquet isn’t active on Twitter, but he claims he is aware of the Times agenda problem. You’d never know it though,” Gainor told Fox News.

“His solution is a mere fig leaf so the Times can pretend to be a serious news organization. This is the same paper whose columnist Paul Krugman recently tweeted about a nonexistent cholera outbreak in Puerto Rico,” he added.

“This is the same paper that tweeted about its climate change agenda in August, asking ‘What’s a greater threat to Guam? North Korea, or climate change?’ And it will be the same paper that continues to bash Trump across all platforms, no matter what this new rule claims.”

Perhaps Baquet’s decision to update the policy has to do with the Times’ White House correspondent Glenn Thrush, who has not tweeted since Sept. 19 but had a habit of criticizing Trump prior to going dormant. Thrush said he stopped tweeting because it was “too much of a distraction” but some of his past tweets would have probably violated the paper’s new guidelines.

“In social media posts, our journalists must not express partisan opinions, promote political views, endorse candidates, make offensive comments or do anything else that undercuts The Times’s journalistic reputation,” the Times listed as a key point in the new policy.

Thrush has a handful of tweets on his timeline that can be viewed as partisan opinions, and we only went back to the beginning of August in search of examples.

Source: US Government Class

October 12, 2017 0 Comment apgov
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Chicago’s soda tax fizzles after two months

Santa Fe New Mexican – Less than two months after the country’s largest soda tax went into effect, embattled lawmakers in Cook County, Ill. — the home of Chicago — are already poised to repeal it.

The tax has been plagued, in its very short life, by legal challenges, implementation glitches and a screeching, multi-million-dollar media battle between the soda industry and public health groups. On Wednesday, in recognition of growing public pressure, Cook County’s Board of Commissioners is expected to vote to roll back the tax, effective as soon as Dec. 1. The vote comes after the board’s finance committee Tuesday nixed the levy, 15-1.

It’s a major victory for Big Soda, which has spent millions on ad buys, lobbyists and political contributions in the county. It’s also the second blow this year to the soda tax movement, which suffered a defeat in Santa Fe in early May.

Advocates of that movement — which include a number of top public health groups and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg — have advanced the taxes as a means to fight obesity while also raising revenue for local jurisdictions.

But critics say the collapse of the Cook County tax is proof the national soda tax movement is losing its momentum.

“Consumer outrage is off the charts,” said David Goldenberg, a spokesman for the industry-funded Can the Tax Coalition. “People know this tax is all about raising revenue to fuel more county spending and they resent the idea of a billionaire from New York City coming in and telling them what they should do here in Cook County.”

Unlike other cities and counties that have passed soda taxes in recent years, Cook County was arguably cursed from the start.

The county of 5.2 million people was already contending with budgetary woes and widespread voter frustration with state and local government when the board voted in November 2016 to levy a one-cent-per-ounce tax on soda and other sugary drinks.

The measure was pitched largely as a means to plug a $1.8 billion budget gap, and secondarily as a means to improve public health by discouraging the consumption of beverages linked to obesity and other conditions.

In an Oct. 5 budget address, Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle, the most stalwart defender of the soda tax, argued that county services — including hospitals, clinics and community intervention programs — would suffer without the tax.

But there were early signs that the soda tax might not raise the revenue advocates hoped, and certainly not on the intended schedule. The policy’s rollout was dogged by implementation errors and legal challenges.

An early version of the tax, for instance, was aimed at distributors, who would then pass the cost on to consumers. But the county was forced to revise that plan when it realized that it would make the soda tax subject to an additional sales tax, which is illegal in Illinois.

Shortly after that, the county proposed making the tax a line item at the point of sale, much like sales taxes are assessed currently. But local governments are not allowed to tax transactions that are paid for using federal nutrition benefits, which meant Chicago had to exempt more than 870,000 people from paying the tax — a last-minute change that dented revenue expectations.

When the tax finally did go into effect on Aug. 2, following a lawsuit by the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, it was met with staunch public opposition: Consumers have organized highly visible boycotts, driving to nearby Indiana for groceries, and flooded their representatives with complaints.

The question now — for soda tax critics and supporters alike — is whether Cook County’s failed soda tax is a sign of things to come in other jurisdictions. While the battle was ostensibly fought by state and country groups, it’s well-acknowledged on both sides that local soda tax skirmishes are essentially proxy wars between the national soda industry and well-heeled public health groups.

In Cook County, the Can the Tax Coalition, an anti-tax group funded by the American Beverage Association, has spent more than $3.2 million on TV and radio ads. Repeal advocates have paid constituents of target districts $11 per hour to circulate anti-tax petitions.

Michael Bloomberg, meanwhile — the former New York City mayor who has made the soda tax battle his own — is said to have spent more than $5 million on radio and ad campaigns since mid-August, and an unknown amount on lobbyists and mailers. Both Bloomberg and the soda industry have committed to backing commissioners who supported their cause in next year’s elections.

The billionaire was also involved, with the American Heart Association and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, in the wave of local soda taxes that swept through six cities in 2016. That established new sugary drink policies in Boulder, Colo., San Francisco and Cook County.

But where that movement once seemed unstoppable, cracks have begun to show. In May, Bloomberg and others backed a failed soda tax referendum in Santa Fe, which voters rejected by a wide margin.

Philadelphia’s soda tax, in effect since January, has also failed to generate the revenue that backers initially expected. That has limited the reach of the pre-K program the tax was set to fund, and has empowered some of the policy’s critics.

“The results have been shifting as local municipalities, residents and business learn more about the devastating impact these taxes have on working families and businesses, and how they aren’t good budget solutions,” Goldenberg said.

But it’s likely too early for Big Soda to gloat, experts caution. An analysis of the political and demographic climates in cities that successfully passed soda taxes, published in the journal Food Policy this year, concluded that as many as 40 percent of Americans live in cities with the right conditions to pass their own taxes. Those include external financial support and Democratic Party dominance.

Seattle’s City Council passed a tax in June. Massachusetts and Tennessee have also expressed interest, said Jim O’Hara, the director for Health Promotion Policy at the non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Source: US Government Class

October 12, 2017 0 Comment apgov
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Trump signs health care executive order

CBS News – President Trump on Friday announced he is “starting that process” of repealing and replacing Obamacare with his executive order to unilaterally change some aspects of health insurance coverage.

Mr. Trump, surrounded by top administration officials, business leaders and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, in the White House’s Roosevelt Room praised his executive order as step towards repealing and replacing his predecessor’s signature health care law. Mr. Trump, stuck with a Republican-led Congress that hasn’t passed a bill to undo Obamacare, announced earlier this week that he is resorting to his “pen” instead.

Mr. Trump, who began to walk out of the room Friday without signing the order until Vice President Mike Pence reminded him to, used that pen on Friday.

“We’ve been hearing about the disaster of Obamacare for so long — in my case, many years, most of it outside in civilian life,” Mr. Trump said. “And for a long period of time since I’ve started running and since I became president of the United States, I just keep hearing ‘repeal and replace, repeal and replace.’ Well, we’re starting that process, and we’re starting it in a very positive manner.”

Mr. Trump said the order will cost the federal government “virtually nothing,” and will force insurance companies to start “fighting” to sign people up for care.

“But the competition will be staggering,” Mr. Trump said. “Insurance companies will be fighting to get every single person signed up, and you will be hopefully negotiating, negotiating, negotiating, and you’ll get such low prices for such great care.”

Mr. Trump didn’t back down on his desire to repeal Obamacare and fulfill a signature campaign promise, despite the GOP-led Congress’ inability to agree on how to do that. Mr. Trump said he will “pressure” Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare, “once and for all.”

“Well, this is promoting healthcare choice and competition all across the United States,” Mr. Trump said. “This is going to be something that millions and millions of people will be signing up for, and they’re going to be very happy. This will be great health care.”

The president’s executive order is intended to make lower-premium plans more widely available. Mr. Trump has long talked about his desire to make health insurance plans available across state lines. His order directs Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta to consider expanding access to association health plans, which could possibly allow American employers to form groups across state lines, according to the White House. The order could also allow employers in the same line of work to join together to offer health care to employees, no matter their state. The president’s order, according to the White House, also directs the Labor Department, Treasury Department, and Health and Human Services Department to consider expanding coverage for short-term, limited duration plans that could be made available to people in specific circumstances, like if a person loses his job or misses the open enrollment deadline.

But the president’s executive order is likely to face backlash from medical groups, and could very well face a legal challenge.

Former President Barack Obama was criticized heavily by Republicans in 2014 when he said, I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” a nod to his intention to use executive action when Congress wouldn’t cooperate.

Live updates from earlier below:

11:45 a.m. Trump begins to walk out of the room without signing the order

After making his remarks, Mr. Trump began walking out of the room, until Vice President Mike Pence tapped him and reminded him to sign the order. Mr. Trump then turned to the table to sign the executive order.

11:45 a.m. Trump pledges to work with Congress to repeal Obamacare “once and for all”

Despite Republicans’ inability to repeal Obama’s signature law thus far, Mr. Trump isn’t giving up, he said. He said he would work with Congress to repeal Obamacare, “once and for all.”

11:45 a.m.: Trump: “The whole country is looking for these massive tax cuts”

Mr. Trump brought up his administration’s efforts to cut taxes, saying the “whole country” is looking for such “massive” cuts. The night before, Mr. Trump said his plan will net an average of $4,000 more per average family, although his White House has been unable to explain the math behind those figures.

11:43 a.m. Trump says Obamacare is “destroying everything in its wake”

“The cost of the Obamacare has been so outrageous, it is absolutely destroying everything in its wake,” Mr. Trump said.

11:41a.m. Trump pitches short-term, limited-duration policies

President Trump didn’t expand much on this point, but he said he intends to allow the provision of short-term, limited-duration policies.

11:39 a.m. Trump: This order will cost the U.S. government “virtually nothing”

Mr. Trump touted how he believes his plan will — or rather, won’t — have an effect on the federal budget. Mr. Trump said insurance companies will be “fighting” to get everyone signed up.

“You’ll get such low prices for such great care,” he said.

11:36 a.m. Trump: We’re “starting the process” of repeal and replace

Mr. Trump said that for years, mostly during his time in the private sector, he heard the need for repealing and replacing Obamacare. Now, the White House is “starting the process,” he said.

11:34 a.m. Trump: More countries are starting to respect the U.S.

President Trump said other countries are beginning to respect the U.S.

His comments echoed what he said Wednesday night at a tax plan rally in Pennsylvania.

“America is being respected again,” Mr. Trump said in remarks Wednesday evening focused on tax reform just outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

11:31 a.m. “Today is a big day,” Sen. Rand Paul says

Paul praised the executive order as something that will help reform the health care system. Paul said he was glad to be a part of this, and sad he appreciated the president’s boldness.

11:30 a.m. Trump enters the room

President Trump enters the room, to applause, surrounded by top administration officials and members of Congress.

© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Source: US Government Class

October 11, 2017 0 Comment apgov
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Trump refutes NBC story, suggests challenging its broadcasting license

CBS News –

President Trump criticized NBC in a series of tweets Wednesday morning, also suggesting that the network’s broadcasting license should be reviewed.

“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License?” Mr. Trump tweeted. “Bad for country!”

The president’s words come following an NBC report that Mr. Trump told top DOD officials he wanted what amounted to “a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.” NBC News cited three officials who were present during a summer Pentagon meeting of the nation’s highest ranking national security leaders.

NBC also reported the national security assembly was the same meeting in which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly called Mr. Trump a “F*****g moron” shortly after officials were dismissed.

Mr. Trump said that NBC News’ reporting is “Pure fiction, made up to demean” and compared it to CNN, which he has previously also criticized and labeled as “fake news.”

“Fake @NBCNews made up a story that I wanted a “tenfold” increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal. Pure fiction, made up to demean. NBC = CNN!” he tweeted earlier Wednesday morning.

Just last Saturday the president accused NBC News of “knowingly inaccurate” journalism, apparently over last week’s reporting on Tillerson.

“@NBCNews is so knowingly inaccurate with their reporting. The good news is that the PEOPLE get it, which is really all that matters! Not #1,” the president tweeted.

© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Source: US Government Class

October 10, 2017 0 Comment apgov
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Steve Ballmer says social platforms can’t stop fake news

Major Twitter investor and ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said social networks aren’t currently able to prevent fake news.

But he does think they can help curb it.

With companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google facing heavy scrutiny from Congress over Russian operatives potentially meddling in the 2016 presidential election, Ballmer told Bloomberg TV on Monday that he’d like those companies to adopt a system that lets users know whether they’re getting news from a trusted source.

How Russia-linked groups used Facebook to meddle in 2016 election

He compared his plan to Twitter’s blue-checkmark “verified” badge. Last week, Facebook introduced a feature offering context on articles posted on users’ newsfeed. This includes a button that launches a pop-up window providing details about the article and its publisher.

Ballmer’s comments come as Facebook disclosed last week that Russian-linked buyers had placed ads on the social network that were seen by 10 million people. Two weeks ago, Twitter said it had found more than 200 accounts on its platform connected to the buyers of the Facebook ads. And according to reports on Monday, a Google investigation found that Russian agents bought tens of thousands of dollars in advertising on YouTube, Gmail and Google search.

Twitter, Facebook and Google officials are expected to testify before Congress about Russian influence on their platforms on Nov. 1.

When asked about Twitter’s ongoing harassment problems, Ballmer said while he believes in free speech, all social networks need to take action to remove “wholly inappropriate” content.

“There is a line once crossed, you need to make sure you are moving that stuff out of the public sphere,” he said.

Regarding President Donald Trump’s at-times controversial tweets, Ballmer said Trump has a right to be heard. Ballmer’s comments echo a similar sentiment by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as the company has no plans to kick Trump off anytime soon.

“It’s what he’s thinking,” Ballmer said about Trump. “And every voter probably benefits from the ability to hear it directly.”

This article originally appeared on CNET.

Source: US Government Class

October 5, 2017 0 Comment apgov
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NRA calls for ATF review of bump stocks, new regulations after Las Vegas shooting

Source: US Government Class