A lot of NYPD computers are editing Wikipedia often

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Excerpt from an investigation by Capital New York into rampant editing of Wikipedia by NYPD-based computers:

Computer users identified by Capital as working on the NYPD headquarters’ network have edited and attempted to delete Wikipedia entries for several well-known victims of police altercations, including entries for Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo. Capital identified 85 NYPD addresses that have edited Wikipedia, although it is unclear how many users were involved, as computers on the NYPD network can operate on the department’s range of IP addresses.

NYPD IP addresses have also been used to edit entries on stop-and-frisk, NYPD scandals, and prominent figures in the city’s political and police leadership.

 
The full article has some clearer statistics and figures on the edits. Unsurprisingly, some police computers were also simply being used to edit articles of personal and non-police interest to members of the NYPD, such as things related to hobbies and pop culture.

But a heck of a lot of the edits were focused on airbrushing or contesting articles related to controversial killings by the NYPD. And the fact the changes were being made right from computers owned by the NYPD and used at NYPD IP addresses is pretty bold.

It’s hard to know if the changes were essentially “vigilante” actions by frustrated cops/staffers or whether there was some kind of official policy urging them to make such changes on their down time at the office.

The pattern of edits is reminiscent of the notorious editing efforts from computers in the offices of the U.S. Congress toward pages related to members and their rivals or opponents.

Flag of the New York City Police Department

Flag of the New York City Police Department

Counter-speech is no cure-all

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Kent Greenfield adds his voice to the growing chorus challenging the currently prevailing conventional wisdom in the United States on unfettered hate speech and how to deal with it, in a new piece for The Atlantic:

The way we interpret the First Amendment need not be simplistic and empty of nuance, and was not always so. The Supreme Court unanimously held over eighty years ago that “those words which by their very utterance inflict injury … are no essential part of any exposition of ideas.” And in 1952 the Court upheld an Illinois statute punishing “false or malicious defamation of racial and religious groups.” These rulings, while never officially reversed, have shrunk to historical trinkets. But they mark a range of the possible, where one can be a staunch defender of full-throated discourse but still recognize the difference between dialogue and vomitus.
[…]
Counterspeech is exhausting and distracting, but if you are the target of hatred you have little choice. “Speak up! Remind us why you should not be lynched.” “Speak up! Remind us why you should not be raped.” You can stay silent, but that internalizes the taunt. The First Amendment tells us the government cannot force us either to remain silent or to speak, but its reliance on counterspeech effectively forces that very choice onto victims of hate speech.
[…]
The First Amendment tells us that threats are punishable, but only if they are targeted at specific individuals. Burning a cross on the front lawn of a family’s home can be a threat; burning one in a field outside of town is not. The latter is protected; the former is not. The secret of converting threats into protected speech, says the First Amendment, is to aim them at more people.

 
bill-of-rights

Jeb Bush emails show special access/treatment for donors

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What has been uncovered so far just from the emails Gov. Bush chose to release…

Among the many thousands of emails Jeb Bush received as Florida governor are a string of notes from campaign donors asking favors and making suggestions. Invariably, Bush responded quickly. Sometimes, he appointed a person a donor had recommended for a position. Other times, he rejected advice about a piece of legislation.
[…]
Yet a review by The Associated Press of Jeb Bush’s emails found that prominent donors to Bush and his family regularly urged him to appoint candidates for judgeships, public boards and other positions. One suggested Bush appoint a political supporter’s step-daughter to a hospital board and asked the governor to support funding for his alma mater. One Palm Beach County fundraiser told Bush, the best man at his wedding, that companies hired him “because of my association with the administration and you.”

 
Update 3/14/15 at 2 AM ET: Additionally, in a related story, it turns out Jeb Bush significantly delayed the required release of his emails:

Jeb Bush has rebuked Hillary Rodham Clinton for her use of a private email account as secretary of state, holding up his own conduct as an example of transparency in government.

But it took Mr. Bush seven years after leaving office to comply fully with a Florida public records statute requiring him to turn over emails he sent and received as governor, according to records released Friday.

Mr. Bush delivered the latest batch of 25,000 emails in May 2014, seven and a half years after leaving the Statehouse and just as he started to contemplate a potential run for the White House, according to a newly disclosed letter written by his lawyer.

 
Oops. According to sources in Florida quoted by the Times, that delay is illegal. All records were due upon conclusion of his term, seven-plus years earlier.

Corporate borrowing diverted to shareholders, not investment

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A new paper from The Roosevelt Institute examines the “collapse” in the relationship between U.S. corporate borrowing and corporate investment into new projects or operations. Where every dollar a company borrowed prior to the 1980s would lead to 40 cents worth of investment, today more of the money is diverted into payouts for shareholders than is actually invested and there is almost no relationship between dollars borrowed and dollars invested.

In the summary blog post, they write that “very large swings in credit flows to the corporate sector [since the last recession] do not correspond to any similar shifts in aggregate investment,” while payouts to shareholders “appear more strongly associated with variation in cash flow and borrowing.” These relationships to borrowing were reversed in the pre-1980s period and crossed over each other in the 1985-2001 period most associated with significant changes to U.S. corporate governance norms and rules that tended to favor quarterly shareholder interests above all other priorities, including long-term investment.

This practice of borrowing to pay shareholders instead of borrowing to invest, as you might guess, basically means shareholders are profiting against the company’s future financial health, rather than from current (or future) returns on its previous (or current) investments. That means literally raiding the companies’ future earnings to generate payout cash now. The company will eventually have to pay back the borrowed money with interest, but it will not have gained anything from that borrowing because it was used to rain money down on shareholders instead of actually growing the company’s operations. This means companies are putting themselves deeper into a long-term hole, even as wealthy shareholders (the vast majority of American stock is held by a very small number of people with a lot of money to throw around) rake in money in the short-term.

Meanwhile, I would surmise, investment banks stand to make a lot of profits in interest — as long as the borrowing companies don’t collapse from all their unproductive loans. Down the line, a lot of American companies could have very high debt burdens while also being very underdeveloped compared to foreign competitors who invested in keeping up with the times and growing their long-term potential earnings. That will make them vulnerable to bankruptcy and other problems.

Here’s the paper’s abstract:

This paper provides evidence that the strong empirical relationship of corporate cash flow and borrowing to productive corporate investment has disappeared in the last 30 years and has been replaced with corporate funds and shareholder payouts. Whereas firms once borrowed to invest and improve their long-term performance, they now borrow to enrich their investors in the short-run. This is the result of legal, managerial, and structural changes that resulted from the shareholder revolution of the 1980s. Under the older, managerial, model, more money coming into a firm – from sales or from borrowing – typically meant more money spent on fixed investment. In the new rentier-dominated model, more money coming in means more money flowing out to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks.

These results have important implications for macroeconomic policy. The shareholder revolution – and its implications for corporate financing decisions – may help explain why higher corporate profits in recent business cycles have generally failed to lead to high levels of investment. And under this new system, cheaper money from lower interest rates will fail to stimulate investment, growth, and wages because, as we show here, additional funds are funneled to shareholders through buybacks and dividends.

 
5000-dollar-bill-madison-slider

Beyond SAE: The bigger picture on college racism

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“There will never be a n—-r at SAE!” That’s the chant recorded over the weekend that got the University of Oklahoma chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity shut down. In the video that went viral on social media, you see a group of White students on a bus chanting the song to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” They look excited and well practiced at an obviously racist song, as if it had been passed from member to member across generations. They look as if this behavior is normal for them.

Almost immediately after the video went viral, there was a response from both the University and the fraternity’s national president. The closure of the Oklahoma chapter of the frat was quick and everyone from school officials, fraternity officials and even the schools football team severed all ties possible with them. All claiming that the behavior of the members was unacceptable, and that this kind of racism wasn’t something they stood for. The National SAE Organization has permanently revoked the membership of the students involved in the video. The University has reported to have expelled a few of the members, and the SAE house has been shut down, so other members have to find their own housing without the help of the University.

But let’s not act like this is new. This isn’t a lone, isolated, or one-time occurrence on one college campus. This isn’t even the only time Sigma Alpha Epsilon specifically has had issues with racism. Back in 2011, SAE members at Cornell University in New York during a hazing killed George Desdunes, a 19 year old Haitian pledge, by forcing him to drink until he passed out and then neglecting to take him to the hospital. When charges were brought up against the students involved, the students were only charged with misdemeanor hazing.

While the punishment that the students at University of Oklahoma received was justified, it’s clear that this event was far from isolated. Because of social media and sites like Twitter, Vine and YouTube, these random acts of racism are being proven to be less random and more of a product of the institutionalized racism that is still a big problem in the US.

On Tuesday, March 10th a group called NJShutItDown initiated a Twitter conversation about the topic using the hashtag #NotJustSAE that focused on the experiences many People of Color had with Fraternities and Sororities at primarily White Institutions. In the hashtag, people shared personal experiences, as well as news stories about racist themed parties centered around holidays like Cinco de Mayo and Martin Luther King Day. At many of these parties, white students are dressed up in blackface and wearing dreadlock and afro wigs. In all of them, the students seem at ease with their racism.

The ease with which these students can don blackface, chant about lynchings and even murder other students isn’t isolated. It’s a problem, and it’s been a problem for a long time now. To these students, this behavior is thought of as just “college fun,” and before social media it was treated as kids being kids in isolated, disconnected incidents. It’s unacceptable, and while it’s good that University of Oklahoma took action immediately, more schools should follow their lead.

March 11, 2015 – Arsenal For Democracy 119

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AFD-logo-470

Topics: A hypothetical journey through reorganizing America’s representative democracy, from elections to a parliamentary system to unicameralism. People: Bill, Nate. Produced: March 9th, 2015.

Discussion Points:

– Should U.S. state legislatures all have only one chamber?
– What reforms could make State Senates more useful and the US Senate more fair?
– Should the legislative branch hold executive power like in a parliamentary system?
– When do checks and balances just become pointless gridlock?
– Should US states move toward proportional voting elections?

Episode 119 (47 min):
AFD 119

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“What distinguishes Labour”

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Whether it comes from a Democrat or a Labour member, I’m always glad to hear someone vocally explain what distinguishes a mainstream left-leaning party from the alternatives, after so many years of “triangulation” and wishy-washy hedging.

Here’s an excerpt from Glasgow City Council Leader Gordon Matheson’s column in the Daily Record jokingly headlined “The Labour Party is up to its old tricks – standing up for working families”

Have you noticed that the Labour Party is up to its old tricks? I’m delighted to say it’s true. We’re making the wealthiest pay a bit more to help those who need support. And we’re holding the powerful to account to secure a fairer deal for the ordinary citizen and working families. That, after all, is what distinguishes Labour from the other political parties.

 
Policies to help young people and tax wealthier citizens to pay for progressive programs benefiting the working class are described and detailed thereafter. He also questions the leftist credentials of the Scottish National Party (SNP) in light of their tax policies, which he says don’t favor redistribution. (Since they’re independence focused, I think most of the SNP’s funding plans derive from using North Sea oil royalties or tax revenues extracted from England to fund projects in Scotland, which is its own kind of redistribution, I suppose.)

It would be nice to hear more Democrats arguing non-defensively (like Matheson for Labour) about helping “ordinary citizen and working families” get “a fairer deal” via taxes on the wealthiest, i.e. those who can comfortably afford it.