Frank – CounterChange

We need a Super Supreme Court!

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) needs some oversight after seeing the reports of the lack of ethics by the members of the Court! Disapproval of SCOTUS has been increasing.

John Oliver did a scathing report on the ethics of the SCOTUS recently, especially Clarence Thomas, with a unique offer for Justice Thomas. But he is not the only one that seems to lack ethical and moral judgement.

One of the points of John Oliver’s report was U.S. Federal Judges have a code of ethics, but it does not apply to the SCOTUS. There is federal law 28 U.S. Code § 455 – Disqualification of justice, judge, or magistrate judge, which seems to be forgotten and does apply to the SCOTUS justices. Additionally the SCOTUS use to be thought of as above politics but no longer seems to be the case and maybe never really was.

The paradox is in the United States of America, no one is above the law, but the SCOTUS is the final arbitrator of the law. Maybe we (the People) need a Super Supreme Court of the United States to provide some oversight to the SCOTUS made up of ordinary citizens. Or maybe there should be term limits, age limits, ethic rules, political representation rules added to the U.S. Constitution for the SCOTUS. Just because something did not happen in the past does not mean it cannot happen in the future.

The IRS is finally cutting out the Middle Men!

The IRS Direct File is a new limited pilot program that will allow a subset of American taxpayers to file their 2023 tax return electronically directly with the IRS! The Direct File pilot is available to eligible taxpayers residing in Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. You can even file your state tax forms if you state has an income tax and developed their own system.

The Direct File pilot will allow you to:

File a 2023 federal tax return – for free – in English or Spanish,
Add your tax information with step-by-step guidance,
Connect with real-time online support from IRS customer service representatives,
Access it from smartphones, laptops, tablets and desktop computers.

The best part, it is free and you do not have to give all your personal financial information to a company just so they can sell you a mortgage or worse, sell your information to someone else. So the IRS is finally getting to the 20th, er 21st Century and providing a way to directly file electronically. I cannot wait until they provide this to all Americans like me. To find out if you are eligible go to the IRS Direct File web site at https://directfile.irs.gov/

Also you may want to sell your Intuit (INTU) and H&R Block (HRB) stocks if you own them.

Dumpty Trumpty

Dumpty Trumpty wanted a wall,
Dumpty Trumpty had a great fall;
Fifty lawyers and fifty more,
Couldn’t put Trumpty where he was before.

MAGA?

What does MAGA really mean? Donald Trump says it means Make America Great Again, but what does that mean? He even trademarked it, even though it has been in general use for years.

I think it means Make America Gilded Again. In the United States, the Gilded Age was an era extending approximately from 1877 to 1896.

The Gilded Age was characterized by high concentrations of wealth, low wages for most workers. Seems just what we have today in the United States of America. Off-shoring of manufacturing has gutted the middle-class in America. The technology industry has concentrated wealth increasingly in fewer hands.

The phrase works because the greatness is in the mind of the beholder, so it resonates with a large number of people, but promises nothing specific, making it a great slogan for a politician. That’s why so many people have used it and many variations. Personally I like “MEGA” or “Make Everything Great Again” popularized in a wall mural by artists Dominykas Čečkauskas and Mindaugas Bonanu in Vilnius, Lithuania.

MEGA wall mural — Wall mural in Vilnius, Lithuania.

FCC Petition Seeks to Deny Renewal of FOX’s Broadcast License

FCC Seal The Media and Democracy Project (MAD) announced its filing of a petition to deny the broadcast license renewal application for Fox Corp-owned television station FOX 29 Philadelphia (WTXF-TV). MAD filed their objection before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), alleging that senior management of Fox Corporation (FOX) manipulated its audience by knowingly broadcasting false news about the 2020 election. Its intentional and chronic news distortion further divided the country, sowing discord that was a contributing factor to the attack on our nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021.

As an FCC broadcast licensee, WTXF-TV, one of 29 FOX subsidiary broadcast stations, has a basic statutory duty to conduct its operations in the public interest. MAD believes it has not done so, relying on the court decision in Dominion v. FOX, which found that FOX’s broadcasts leading up to January 6 repeatedly were false and held that FOX had defamed the voting machine company. The intentional distortion of news, authorized at the highest levels of FOX’s corporate structure, and fabricated by management and on-air personalities, represents a severe breach of the FCC’s policy on licensee character qualifications. MAD claims that FOX’s activities shock the conscience.

Owning a broadcast station is more than a business—it is a public trust. Never before has the Commission been confronted with so much evidence attached to a petition that clearly shows that an FCC broadcast licensee undermined that trust.

MAD is calling on the FCC to initiate an evidentiary hearing into FOX’s conduct. The FCC has the duty to hold FOX accountable and send a strong message that intentional, knowing news distortion will not be tolerated on America’s airwaves.

MAD’s petition is supported by a declaration from former Fox Broadcasting executive Preston Padden. Padden describes from firsthand experience Rupert Murdoch’s ultimate decision-making authority over every aspect of FOX operations. He also includes personal email exchanges with Rupert Murdoch. Some or all of those email exchanges were produced by Fox into the public record of the Dominion litigation without Mr. Padden’s knowledge or consent.

This landmark petition seeks to safeguard the integrity of the broadcasting industry and uphold the public’s trust in accurate and responsible news reporting. By holding FOX accountable for its deliberate dissemination of false narratives about the 2020 election, the petitioners aim to protect the foundation of our democratic society.

The Media and Democracy Project: MAD is a non-partisan, all-volunteer, grassroots organization focused on strengthening a free and independent media in the public interest. MAD aims to improve our national discourse so that American voters can engage in informed decision-making. As part of that goal, MAD has an interest in the responsibility of journalists and media to report fully, accurately, and fairly on the electoral process and the outcome of elections. Additional information is available at www.MediaAndDemocracyProject.org.

Make America Great Again?

Well former President Trump has rained terror on the U.S. government and has kept up the stream of lies. Check out PolitiFact’s Statements by Donald Trump (500+) where he occasionally tells the truth.

I saw some video of Trump supporters at a Steve Bannon rally where a woman said “Never in my life did I think I’d like to see a dictator, but if there is going to be one—I want it to be Trump.”

Everybody take a few minutes to look around, watch the news, because this is how Putin, Maduro, Ortega, Erdogan…became dictators of their countries. This happens slowly by suppression or takeover of the news media, suspension of civil liberties, proclamation of a state of emergency, repression of political opponents, not abiding by the rule of law, suspension of elections.

Given the events of January 6, 2021, Trump is trying to turn the United States into a dictatorship and the Republican Party seems to willingly act as his goon squad! This event was the most severe assault on the Capital since the 1814 burning of Washington by the British Army during the War of 1812, with a Confederate battle flag paraded inside the Capital for the first time in U.S. history! This is a crucial time for democracy in the United States! Can we keep it?

Privacy not found!

Trump demands secrecy himself but you cannot use the Internet with any privacy. To add insult to injury, every major company in any ties to the Internet are selling or going to be selling information about you.

Congress voted to repeal the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband privacy rules on March 28. President Trump signed the legislation (SR Res 34) April 3rd, to take the regulations off the books and prevent future privacy rules.

Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future, “the only people in the United States who want less Internet privacy are CEOs and lobbyists for giant telecom companies who want to rake in money by spying on all of us and selling the private details of our lives to marketing companies.”

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said “It is worth remembering that the FCC’s own overreach created the problem we are facing today. Until 2015, the Federal Trade Commission was protecting consumers very effectively, policing every online company’s privacy practices consistently and initiating numerous enforcement actions. However, two years ago, the FCC stripped the FTC of its authority over Internet service providers. At the time, I strongly opposed usurping the FTC, and the FCC’s struggles to address the privacy issue over the past couple of years (along with its refusal to recognize consumers’ uniform expectation of privacy) has only strengthened that view.”

The FTC’s Privacy Guidelines seem to cover criminal acts with your data or very fragmented rules about using your data. Rules about how AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon use and sell your data seem to be governed by the “Privacy” contract (3000 words) that you forced to sign before you can get service. If you have every read one, you will find that they allow the company to do just about anything with your data and change the contract at anytime.

Collecting, using, and selling your data has become a huge growth industry benignly called Big Data. This industry collects, analyzes, and extracts value (make money). Facebook is a database marketing company, posing as a social networking service, that eliminated the need for data collection and data entry by convincing 1.86 billion+ people to enter lots of data about themselves.

Donald, Do Not Fuck Up America!

Nor the rest of the world! Do nothing evil that you promised to do to women, Muslims, Mexico, immigrants and above all, do not nuke’em! Also do not sue all the women that came out accusing you of sexual harassment nor put Hillary in jail. These things will not help most Americans. I watched as you promised everything to everyone, but you cannot deliver everything to everyone. Disinformation will not change the truth. Please try to deliver something good to most people. I fear that your term will continue the decline of America that President Obama was slowly turning around. As in the words of one MSNBC commentator, “This is going to take a lot of sinking in.” Donald, remember that more than half the citizen’s votes were not for you and some of your votes were not Hillary votes.

We do want you to improve our infrastructure. Maybe you can deliver us the fastest, cheapest, most neutral Internet in the world. And rebuild and secure our electric grid, because electric power is the fuel that will drive our success. Please remember that everything that you say or tweet will send shock-waves around the world for better or worse for Americans.

Release your tax return or are you afraid that it will show you are not doing your fair share to make America great. In the end the American public will judge you not on what you say or tweet, but what you do! Think how it will effect everyone, not just Donald Trump. And finally some hope from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, “There has got to be a pony in this crap pile.“

Donald Trump, Still A Loser!

You lost $916,000,000 in 1 year! You are the biggest loser! Business has it’s ups and downs, but claiming you are the best because you can be a success while losing money and not paying people that work for you makes you a narcissist, not a successful business person.

I can only assume that you will fix the loopholes (as you stated) by plugging all the ones for lower income people (less than a billion dollars). At the same time, expanding the loopholes for billionaires?

You have shown lots of people how to lose money at several Trump businesses, like the Trump University and Trump Entertainment Resorts. The German government believes that a Trump presidency would result in a ravaged U.S. economy, expanding by less than expected by $1,000,000,000,000 (trillion) by 2021. So you would Make America Great Again by making U.S. citizens the world’s biggest losers!

Pandora’s iPhone

The U.S. government’s case against Apple to force Apple to change the iPhone’s operating system software, iOS to allow access to a terrorist’s information is an issue that impacts all of us.

Even though the FBI has insisted that this is just about this case is just about a single phone, the end result would be opening Pandora’s Box or iPhone in this case. Once the solution has been created, everyone will want to use it; the British, the French, the Russians, your wife’s divorce lawyer…. And the FBI has other cases where this might be used to compel Apple to change their product. And once a method has be created, it will only be a matter of time (weeks or days) before hackers have created their own version to steal your identity and bank balance.

As the government demands access to our secrets, they demand their secrets are protected by the highest level of encryption in the name of “National Security,” some which turnout to be questionable and illegal, many exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013. On the opposite side, the government does have valid reasons for protecting certain information and so do citizens.

We all should be creating or buying the best encryption technology available to protect our lives, liberties, and bank accounts. Our government should not be trying to weaken that protection. Maybe it is time to create an explicit Right to Privacy in our constitution instead of the current maze of laws and implied protections.