Maintaining the moral high ground

Hunter of Daily Kos wrote about the travails of Elon Musk trying to get the verified blue checkmark on Twitter accounts to do what he wants it to do. This shows the guy has no concept of the way humans think. Musk finally carried through with his threat to reserve the verified status for those who paid him $8 a month. This status elevats a person’s tweets to the top of a thread of replies. Musk intended it for his far-right allies, the ones he wanted to promote. Musk wanted people to pay for their chance to be at the top of replies. But nearly all – including the muppet Elmo – said goodbye to the checkmark. Which mean those who still had a checkmark were the far-right fringe, which made knowing who to block easy. Perhaps even an app could do that. Then Musk tried to give a checkmark to celebrities – such as Stephen King – who responded they don’t want it, they don’t want to be identified as far-right. Checkmarks were bestowed on accounts with a million or more followers in an attempt to thwart methods of automatically blocking accounts. Those users denied paying for it and didn’t want it either. Wrote Hunter:

Musk instituted a system by which the most dedicated spammers, trolls, incels, racists, and the rest of the internet's least popular people can pay to play their way into becoming the featured "content" of the Musk hellsite. He's made the blue check synonymous with "a person whose opinions are so deeply unpopular that they could only receive attention by paying for it." He's made it toxic.

Kos of Kos discussed the large number of conservatives who see the firing of Tucker Carlson from Fox News as the death of the First Amendment. It only shows these people don’t understand the First Amendment. He began is discussion with:

No constitutional amendment is more misunderstood than the First, despite being just a handful of plain English words. And there’s nothing like Tucker Carlson’s firing at Fox News to bring out the ignorance in full force, with too many people thinking that a right to free speech somehow also means a right to a platform.

I add that while the First may be the most misunderstood, the Second is right behind it. SemDem of the Kos community reported there is a case before the Supreme Court that could devastate unions. There has always been a tussle between corporations and unions, especially in the last forty years when profits are less likely to be shared with the workers. Over the last two years union membership has exploded. Along with it has been union busting efforts. That includes corporations simply ignoring the union – and there isn’t a lot a union can do other than take the corporation to court (which could take a decade) or to strike. Leonard Leo, head of the Federalist Society, has been doing considerable work to get conservatives onto courts – and under the nasty guy and Bush II has been quite successful at it (see: Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch, even Roberts and likely Alito, and hundreds more in other federal courts). His latest project is to “crush liberal dominance.” And that includes delivering a death blow to unions. The case before the court, Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters is about a strike at a concrete mixing company that left behind a bit of damage. Glacier Northwest sued the union for $11K (yeah, not much). But if any company could sue a union over damages – say food that spoiled in the fridge while workers were on strike plus lost business – there goes the ability of a union to strike. This case goes before a Supreme Court that does what it wants, disregarding precedent, and has always given corporations what they want. Doesn’t look good. Keep in mind that things we now see as an essential part of working life – the weekend and the 40 hour week among them – we have because of unions. Even so, in countries that respect their unions they have paid vacation, sick days, and parental leave. And a decent minimum wage. David Nir and David Beard of Kos Elections are hosts of the Downballot podcast. In the second part of last week’s episode they talk to Matthew Sugart, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. I read through the transcript and summarized a 48 minute discussion. The US uses a majoritarian system, also known as winner take all. If your candidate gets 50% plus 1 vote your party is represented in Congress or the legislature. If your candidate doesn’t meet that threshold then your party does not represent your district and almost half of the citizens may feel they aren’t heard. Some countries use proportional representation, with variations in method. In countries that use it their citizens want to keep it. Instead of one representative from a district there are five (or ten, or 150). Yes, that changes the size of districts. For maybe one or two of the candidates the citizens vote directly for the candidate. For the rest they vote for the party. The number of representatives from each party are based on the percentage of votes that party got. If they got 60% of the vote they are awarded 60% of the seats. Yeah, 50% of the vote and five seats means a party should get two and a half seats, which isn’t possible. There are also several ways a party chooses which candidates get the seats. In some places the party ranks them, in others the voters do. There are several advantages of the proportional system. Candidates have to campaign in all districts, rather than ignoring the ones that don’t have a tight race. Also, the threshold for a small party to get a seat is much lower – in the case of a five-seat district it is 20% instead of 50%. As for applying this in the US, there is nothing in the Constitution and federal law that would prohibit it. In a Ukraine update from Friday of last week Mark Sumner of Kos discussed an incident where it looked like Russia bombed its own city of Belgorod, not the first time that has happened. The news has been full of reports of Russia bombing and sending missiles into Ukraine. There was another of those just last night. Which leads to an interesting question. Why isn’t Ukraine bombing Russia?

One thing should be clear right from the start—if Ukraine wanted to destroy the Russian city of Belgorod, or at least cause enormous damage and kill many Russian civilians, it could do so.

Since Belgorod, only 30km from the border, is a rail nexus and a lot of Russian war supplies go through the city the thought of bombing it had likely been tempting. Yeah, a few military related sites have exploded. But nothing has damaged the city, as Russia has done to Ukrainian cities. Russia bombs Ukrainian cities...

Because they can. Because it kills people. Because it causes suffering and misery for Ukrainians.

And why doesn’t Ukraine do the same?

Ukraine’s restraint in not attacking Russian towns and cities, when it very much could, is in part because it wants to maintain the moral high ground. No matter how much the West shares with Ukraine, or how foolishly Russia wastes its men and materiel, Ukraine is still the underdog in this fight. Maintaining the moral high ground is important to how Ukraine presents itself to the world. Russia brought this fight to Ukraine, not the other way around. Ukraine doesn’t want to do anything that makes them appear as the aggressor, even if it’s plain old retaliation. Ukraine is defending its nation from an illegal, unprovoked invasion. Period.

From Thursday of last week Sumner discussed a speech by Secretary of State Tony Blinken on why we’re fighting there. Sumner then has a few comments on the latest round of peace proposals. He wrote:

Defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is about much more than standing up for one nation’s right to choose its own path, as fundamental as that right is. It’s also about defending an international order where no nation can redraw the borders of another by force. If we fail to defend this principle, when the Kremlin is so flagrantly violating it, we send a message to aggressors everywhere that they can ignore it, too. We put every country at risk. ... Here’s the reality. None of us chose this war. Not the Ukrainians, who knew the crushing toll it would take. Not the United States, which warned that it was coming and worked to prevent it … One man chose this war. One man can end it. Because if Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. As Russian sources keep making clear, that’s not just true of the nation of Ukraine. It’s also true of the people of Ukraine. With the latest round of peace proposals being pressed by multiple analysts, it’s worth remembering that all these supposed solutions for “lasting peace” are actually formulas for three things: * Dividing Ukraine * Preventing Ukraine from entering NATO * Giving Russia a chance to rebuild their military

The proposals also ignore “what Russia has done in Ukraine.” They ignore the mass graves and war crimes, the theft of children, the destruction of many cities, especially Mariupol. The proposals also ignore the crimes Russia wants to commit – Putin and his propagandists have called for the total elimination of Ukrainians, for a genocide. We may get tired of the war and of funding the war, but the consequences of implementing any of these “peace” plans will be disaster. The Intel Crab tweeted that Google Earth has updated their satellite images of Mariupol. What is visible is a great deal of destruction. In a post from a couple days ago Sumner discussed the war of apps. There is an app called Alpine Quest that, to the horror of and with the disavowal from the makers, has become important for Russians to mark the location of Ukrainian troops so other forces who are better positioned can attack. Even though the maker prevents downloading to Russian devices the app has been around for a decade and is easily shared. Russia has also created several other apps. And, of course, Ukrainian military people have come up with a comparable app of their own, plus a few more. Perhaps after the war Ukraine could be the next place to attract investment to tap into their technical prowess. Sumner, who used to work in mining, talked about the technology developed 30 years ago to keep track of all the mining vehicles. Each one required the installation of $40K of special hardware. Fifteen years ago he realized all that could be replaced with an app on smartphones. He earned a lot of hate from the drivers. Of course, the best thing smartphones do for soldiers is to keep them in contact with family.