Year: 2016

Liberty Links 11/12/16

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Must Reads/Op-eds Election Day: Only Josh Silver Won (Phenomenal article by Lawrence Lessig) Donald Trump is Moving to the White House, and Liberals Put Him There (Thomas Frank writing at The Guardian) Bernie Sanders: Where the Democrats Go From Here (The New York Times) It’s Worse Than You Think (Chris Hedges writing at TruthDig) Democrats, … Read more

Veteran Reporter Exposes The New York Times’ Arrogant, Disconnected, Agenda Driven Perspective

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Yesterday, Michael Cieply, a 12-year veteran of the New York Times who left this past July, wrote a phenomenal article at Deadline Hollywood titled, Stunned By Trump, The New York Times Finds Time For Some Soul-Searching. Before highlighting some key excerpts, let’s set the stage.

The New York Times’ coverage of the 2016 Presidential election was an abysmal disgrace. I first became aware of the extent of the paper’s shady and compromised reporting, when the editorial board endorsed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary over Bernie Sanders without making an intelligible or coherent argument to justify the stance. This outraged me to such an extent, I wrote a post titled, A Detailed Look at The New York Times’ Embarrassing, Deceitful and Illogical Endorsement of Hillary Clinton, which you should reread in full.

Here’s how I began the piece:

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Man Viciously Beaten in Chicago For Being a Suspected Trump Voter

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This is disturbing, depressing and sickening.

The Washington Post reports:

In a video that appeared to be shot on a smartphone, a group of young men and women viciously beat a 49-year-old man named David Wilcox while screaming phrases such as “You voted Trump” and “Don’t vote Trump.”

Wilcox told the Chicago Tribune that it began Wednesday about 1 p.m. at the corner of Kedzie Avenue and Roosevelt Road, when a black sedan scraped along the side of his Pontiac Bonneville, scratching it.

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Here’s The Daily Caller List of People Trump is Considering For Senior Roles

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With so much interest and speculation out there, I thought it might be useful to share The Daily Caller’s List of People Donald Trump Is Considering For Senior White House Jobs. According to the DC, the list was “provided by a member of the transition team on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press.”

Here it is:

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Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders Pledge to Work With Trump on Economic Issues

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Since the article I published earlier today had a more negative tone, I want to end the day on a more positive note. As I explained in yesterday’s piece, I want Trump to be successful because our fellow countrymen and women need him to succeed. This isn’t an episode of Game of Thrones, this is real life and millions of Americans are in deep pain.

In order to be a truly great president, Trump needs to unite as many Americans as possible around his agenda. On the positive front, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have both pledged to work with Trump in order to help our less fortunate fellow citizens get back on the right track. I really hope this happens.

As David Sirota highlighted at International Business Times:

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Draining the Swamp? Wall Street is Already Loving Donald Trump

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Before we move forward, let’s start with the following extraordinarily disturbing report out of CNBC:

In the wake of Donald Trump’s upset victory, advisors to the president-elect have floated the possibility of naming JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon Treasury secretary, according to two people familiar with the matter, but one of them added that Dimon said he would not be interested in the role.

A Trump spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment, and a spokesman for Dimon declined to elaborate beyond his past remarks that he would not be interested in the job.

First off, I want to say that the above isn’t confirmed. If it’s totally false, the Trump campaign should come out with a quick and vehement denial. I sincerely hope that happens.

That said, the report is cause for serious concern. Why? Because Trump’s reluctance to go after Wall Street was apparent throughout his entire campaign (as opposed to Bernie Sanders), and it was one of the main reasons I could never get comfortable with him. I wrote several posts where I articulated my concerns, but here’s an excerpt from one of them, Donald Trump’s True Colors Emerge as He Snuggles up to Wall Street:

While I’m not a Dodd-Frank fan, it’s not because it was too harsh, but because it didn’t really do much of anything. It was the typical neoliberal bait and switch, designed to look tough for public consumption, while merely making tweaks around the edges of a financial system that requires systemic, paradigm level change.

Trump’s support of repealing Dodd-Frank tells you all you need to know. A Trump Presidency will see Wall Street felons who should be in prison, running as wild and free as ever.

He will be the same thing to distressed working class whites that Obama was to the black community. A fake messiah and a shyster.

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Americans Roll the Dice With President Donald Trump

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The forgotten men and roomen of our country will be forgotten no longer.

– President elect Donald Trump in his victory speech

They said it couldn’t happen, but those of us who have been intimately studying what’s been going on since the financial crisis knew he could win. So here we are, in the midst of a historical populist revolt that brought a man who has never held public office to the Presidency.

I have so many thoughts to share, putting them down in a coherent manner within a single post is going to be a real challenge. As such, I’ve decided to separate this piece into sections. Let’s start with the following.

What Happened? 

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CBS Reports – Pennsylvanians Say Their Vote For Trump Was Changed to Clinton

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While not unexpected, this appears to be the first confirmed issue with voting machines so far today. It happened in Pennsylvania.

CBS reports:

There have been some scattered issues where voters are encountering problems.

Election judges in Clinton Township, Butler County confirmed there were issues with two of their eight automated voting machines. Most of the issues came when people tried to vote straight party ticket.

However, other said they specifically wanted to vote for Republican Donald Trump only to see their vote switched before their eyes to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

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Final Thoughts on the U.S. Presidential Election

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Election 2016 has been extremely bittersweet for me. On the positive side, through both the Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump grassroots movements, we have seen clear proof that a huge number of Americans accurately understand that the current system is totally rigged and simply not working for them. These people didn’t migrate toward these two candidates for some tweaks to the system here and there, their supporters want full scale paradigm level change.

As such, rather than dwelling on the differences between these two populist movements, let’s consider some of the areas where they overlap.

1. Trade — Opposition to NAFTA and current “trade” deals such as TPP, TTIP, and TISA have been central to both the Sanders and Trump campaigns.

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Here’s What Happened When a Hillary Supporting MIT Professor Decided to Analyze Her Emails…

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A few days ago, Cesar A. Hidalgo published a very important article titled, What I Learned From Visualizing Hillary Clinton’s Emails.

So who is Cesar Hidalgo?

César A. Hidalgo is associate professor of media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab and the author of Why Information Grows: The evolution of order from atoms to economies. He has also lead the creation of data visualization sites that have received more than 100 million views, including datausa.io, dataviva.info, atlas.media.mit.edu, immersion.media.mit.edu, pantheon.media.mit.edu, streetscore.media.mit.edu, and others (see chidalgo.com for more details).

At this point, I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m highlighting this guy’s post two days before the Presidential election. It’s for two reasons. First, the piece offers a very good representation of the sort of peer pressure that can come down upon an academic for being seen as having the “wrong” political opinion. Second, and perhaps most important, his email visualization tool taught him that the current state of our government in these United States simply can’t achieve the best outcomes for the public at current scale (size, geographic/cultural diversity, etc).

With all that out of the way, I’m going to highlight what I found to be the most powerful part of his piece.

Enjoy:

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