Elon Musk and Twitter

From what I’ve seen in the press, it seems like the things Elon Musk wants to do with Twitter are worthwhile changes designed to make the platform more of a place where everyone can share their ideas rather than a place focused on who can be kept off the service.

To me, that is a very positive step in the right direction. I don’t believe that any service of the kind that Twitter claims to be should be in the business of cutting people off and denying people the right to be heard. We should allow people to say whatever they want, assuming the result is not illegal. We should then argue about what they say on the merits rather than based on the ability to stop them from saying it. While I still don’t think it’s a good thing for a bunch of rich guys like Musk and Zuckerberg to be making decisions about what counts as a worthwhile speech and who has the opportunity to speak, I like Musk’s approach far better than Zuckerberg. And also much better than the approach of the American left and the government, which both want to see choices made to remove some people from the ability to express themselves in this media.

Still, I think that any organization with this much power over what we get to say where we get to say it should be a publicly-traded organization rather than what Musk wants, which is the ability to control the process as a single individual. This is a significant important distinction between Facebook and Musk’s vision for Twitter.

I also think it is terrible that algorithms decide what kind of information should be provided to people based on what they currently believe, which Facebook does now. There should be a default by which people are given all kinds of information they disagree with. I think that Facebook should have a default that the information you receive is not based on what you currently think and therefore exposes you to all sorts of information. It might be worthwhile to also give people an opportunity to have their info tailored to their own thinking and have this be an option that you could purchase but which would not be the primary way your information was otherwise presented to you.

Baltimore Harbor Accessibility

The Harborfront here is very accessible, with two notable exceptions. The waterfront has no railing to keep you from falling into the water. We have been living here for about three months, and already we have seen two people fall into the harbor, and one of them died as a result. So it is clearly an issue for everyone, but it is particularly problematic for people in wheelchairs and children who play along the Harborfront. It wouldn’t take much to fix this problem. You really need to put a small barrier between the water and the walkway, and it could be a really low fence or just a curb of some kind.

A separate problem is that the water taxi system that crosses the harbor is also inaccessible. People in wheelchairs would particularly benefit from using this system to get around the Harborfront.

Since my wife and I are immunocompromised elders, we have not had an opportunity to go into any restaurants, theaters, or nightclubs. Hence, it’s not possible yet to say anything about these. We have eaten at some restaurants with outdoor seating, but that doesn’t really allow me to say much of anything about the restaurant other than that the food is either good or bad, but that doesn’t constitute a review of the accessibility of the restaurant so I will wait until we can go inside them to try before I try to write about them.

Having lived in Boston before moving here, I can say that in most respects, Water Front here is much more community-friendly and unrestricted than the waterfront is in Boston, where much of the development that interferes with public access is much newer. Therefore the access issues could have been easily avoided.

U.S and it’s Allies need to be willing to protect Ukraine, Hong Kong, and Taiwan with military assistance including troops

We need to recognize that simply threatening financial sanctions will probably not be enough to keep Russia and China from trying to take over their neighbors. We must decide we care enough about democracy to take the steps necessary to genuinely protect it in these areas. Being willing to do so should include being willing to send troops and aircraft if necessary.

This is most complicated concerning China’s relationship with Hong Kong and Taiwan because we have already recognized them as parts of China. We should take a different position and protect them. Concerning Taiwan, we should not have agreed to the notion that it was not a separate sovereign nation. Concerning Hong Kong, we should recognize that the Chinese have not followed the rules they said they would concerning Hong Kong’s ability to maintain its own system of government after the Chinese got control.

In both cases, we are not looking at the likelihood of another endless civil war of the sort that we joined in Afghanistan and Vietnam. Instead, if either side determines to take action under the circumstances if either side determines to take the ultimate available action they will be ensuring a world war. Hopefully, that will deter either side from proceeding to take such action. This is only true if we decide that we will act in whatever way is necessary to respond to any provocation. In this sense, our failure to be clear that we will take whatever steps are necessary will allow the other side to assume that we are unwilling to respond in kind, which under the circumstances will make continued actions by the Russians or Chinese more likely rather than less so.

To show our resolve, we must be willing to get involved in the Ukrainian conflict ourselves in whatever way the Ukrainians prefer, rather than refuse to impose a no-fly zone and provide troops or other types of military assistance requested. If we refuse to do so we are sending a clear message to Putin and also to the Chinese that we will not take the necessary steps to push back against their aggression.

The problem with Progressives is that they cannot count

If you do not have the votes even in your own caucus to pass a piece of legislation that you want, then there is no point in tying up good meaningful legislation that gets you part way there.

This is a reality that seems completely lost to progressives. In the meantime, people are denied access to programs they need while progressives hold out for the perfect solution that is politically unavailable.

I watched Bernie Sanders last week on CBS This Morning, and his responses to questions demonstrated this problem clearly. He was not willing to compromise on the $3.5 trillion dollar proposal even though he doesn’t have the votes for that, even in his own caucus.

Knowing that they can’t receive votes from Republicans and knowing that at least two members of their caucus will not vote for $3.5 trillion, it is necessary for Democrats to understand that a proposal will need to be cut back. And given that Joe Manchin seems to be stuck at $1.5 trillion they should understand that they will get nowhere near $3.5 trillion.

FOX

Liberals and Progressives talk a lot about not buying products from people who support conservative causes but it doesn’t seem that people are willing to do that when it comes to products they can’t get anywhere else and that they really want. That is certainly true of Fox Television, Fox Sports, and 20th Century Fox movies.

I believe all of those products are much more valuable to Rupert Murdoch than is Fox News so I would think that if people decided not to buy any of those products it would make a huge difference to his support of Fox News.

This is one of the few situations where it is not possible to get a product that is comparable to the one you are giving up so it is one of those few situations where you actually need to give something up to follow your political beliefs. Unless you are willing to do that, your believes are not very important to you.

I challenge all my progressive friends and others to actually make a real commitment by being willing to give up things they actually want and cannot get from other sources.

I have no in interest in having Mark Zuckerberg be the person who decides who has the ability to speak in America

The notion that social media moguls have and use their platforms to decide for the rest of who can speak to us is ridiculous, but that is what happens today because online media is how we communicate these days.

Instead, they should have the responsibility to decide whether the things people say on their platforms violate the law, and make sure that they don’t.

It is one thing, to require that what people say is responsible, but another thing to just decide that some people have no right to say anything on their platforms. They should also have the ability to decide that they do not want to publish speech they believe to be totally false or defamatory.

The social media moguls like to have and use the power to take people off their systems as a way for them not to have any responsibility to actually monitor what people use their systems to say. It is definitely true that as private businesses these social media leaders are not held to the same standards as the government would be but that does not mean they should have no responsibility whatsoever.

This is an area of the law that needs some major development to deal with the importance of social media in our society at this point. Social media is today is the place where most political speech happens.

So there needs to be a set of rules that apply to the platforms that support access to these portals regardless to how the owners of these portals feel about the content of that speech.

The first thing that should be done is to get rid of the the law that now provides that these platforms are not responsible for the content that people use their platforms to post. In my opinion, the law should also prevent them from stop removing people from their platforms as opposed to removing specific content that is illegal, clearly false, or defamatory.

Replace Filibuster with Regular Availability of Voteramas

The filibuster gives the minority power to block everything while voterramas allow the minority to raise any interest they want and have their approach to that issue get a vote before the legislation can get passed. Doing this means that all legislation will be more what all legislators support, but no party gets to hold up all the others’ priorities completely.

This is exactly what the Senate is supposed to be about, giving each party’s representatives the right and ability to be heard. But not the ability to veto what the majority wants to do, and thereby stand in the way of what the voters were trying to get done in voting the way they did.

It’s important to remember that the founders actually indicated they wanted to limit the power of political parties. Not give one political party the ability to hold another party’s agenda hostage.

Location of new jobs

As we try to create a new energy infrastructure we need to make sure that a significant number of the jobs created are located where the jobs being lost currently exist. This means that we need to place lots of jobs building wind turbines and making solar panels where currently there are a significant number of jobs in coal, oil, and fracking.

We should also try to produce jobs relating to battery technology where the auto industry currently makes internal combustion engines. Providing subsidies to the new industries based on whether companies do so would go a long way toward making this happen.

People who work as coal minors are in no position to sell their homes and move to where these jobs would otherwise be located. The same is true for people in lower income jobs in the oil and gas industies.

To make this approach work it would also be necessary to provide the job training required to make this work doable for the people who will need to be able to do these new jobs.

Facebook should help people see outside their bubble

The ability of Facebook’s algorithms to help people see only there own side of an issue should and could be used by Facebook to do just the opposite. Most Facebook users don’t do anything to alter their newsfeeds. Facebook should make it’s news feeds default to providing information that does not just include voices that agree with your own views.

It seems to me that the best thing would be for it to be a paid option to see a feed that is not bipartisan. A small number of people would actually spent the money to buy the partisan view. The rest of us would see a more normal view of the world.

Focus on Commonalities not Differences

It is time for the Democratic Party to begin focusing on commonalities instead of differences in people. The party has gotten so far into looking at race and gender as the basic on which to define everyone that we have lost the working class white population as part of the party’s base.

If you are a working-class white male you would have no reason to be part of the Democratic Party since you are now just treated only as the group that other constituency need to take jobs away from. One way to deal with this would be to make working-class whites a recognized constituency in their own right. This would allow the party to pay attention to the interests of this group in the same way it does with other groups it wants to reach.

An even better approach would be to focus to a greater extent on commonalities than on differences. This does not mean ignore differences, just give commonalities as much of your time and interest as you give to difference. The Democratic Party does not do anything chose to that today.

At this point if you are a white male in the Democratic Party you are viewed as largely unimportant group. It is a good thing to recognize that white males have had a privileged position for too long. But that is different than what is happening now which is to treat the group as if it to no longer matters at all which is how white males can feel today.