Dr. Steven J. Allen
Anti-deception and collective intelligence: Dan Rather, George W. Bush, and how the Internet makes deception more difficult (part 2)
Continuing our series on deception in politics and public policy.
Anti-deception and collective intelligence: How the Internet makes deception more difficult (part 2)
By Dr. Steven J. Allen (JD, PhD)
In last week’s installment, we looked at the effort to use “crowdsourcing” to catch the Boston Marathon bombers, at the system called “reCAPTCHA” that uses the work of millions of people to decipher words from old books and newspapers, and at the collective effort that caught CBS anchor Dan Rather when he tried to use fake National Guard documents to defect President George W. Bush in the 2004 election. We cited the Rather case as an example of using the Internet to expose deception.
This week, let’s look at the origins of the Internet and how it relates to the concept of collective intelligence—what columnist and author James Surowiecki calls “the wisdom of crowds.”
The origin of the Internet and the blogosphere
Some historians trace the theoretical origin of the Internet to a July 1945 essay by Vannevar Bush, a science advisor to FDR, in which Bush proposed Read all »
Labor Notes (from this month’s Labor Watch)
From the May 2013 issue of the Capital Research Center publication Labor Watch:
President Obama nominated Thomas Perez, head of the civil rights division of the Justice Department, to be Secretary of Labor. As we go to press, Perez’s nomination faces hurdles. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) has put a “hold” on the nomination and demanded that Perez answer questions about his failure to enforce requirements in the 1993 “Motor Voter” law that keep dead persons and other ineligible people off states’ voter rolls.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans have charged that Perez cut a “secret deal behind closed doors” with officials of St. Paul, Minnesota. Allegedly, Perez dropped cases involving bad paperwork on “stimulus” projects—cases that might have returned $200 million to the federal government—in return for the city’s dropping its appeal of a housing case.
Why was the housing case important? Because it could have given the Supreme Court an opportunity to overturn the doctrine of “disparate impact,” which allows the government to make false charges of racial discrimination based on racial bean-counting. (Among other things, Perez has used “disparate impact” to sue banks and force them to make loans to people who aren’t credit-worthy.) Leftists like Perez don’t want the Supreme Court to hear such a case—at least, not until President Obama gets a majority on the Court.
On March 28, Michigan officially became a right-to-work state, although it will take a while for everyone to benefit from the new law as union contracts expire and are re-negotiated. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy spearheaded the research that showed the advantages of right-to-work. Now the Center has created a new website on the issue: MIWorkerFreedom.org, which includes a feature that lets workers generate a letter invoking their right to stop paying union dues.
In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker and supporters of state-level union reforms chalked up another victory. Previously, unions targeted Walker, his lieutenant governor, pro-reform state legislators, and even state Supreme Court justices who voted not to strike down the reforms. But the reformers have won almost every contest, and the issue appears to have been settled for the near-future by the victory—with 57% of the vote—of Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack. That means the state’s highest court has a 4-3 majority in favor of respecting the reforms, a majority that’s likely to continue for some time.
Pro-reform forces also defeated unions in two local elections, including one in the union stronghold of Milwaukee County, where membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees fell from about 9,000 in 2011 to roughly 3,500 now. Statewide, public-sector union membership fell from 50% to 37% in just one year, 2011 to 2012. Nothing reveals more clearly how trapped workers have been by union bosses.
In Indiana, the state’s Supreme Court threw out by 5-0 a teachers’ union challenge to the state’s voucher program. In Colorado, the state Court of Appeals upheld that state’s only private school choice program, in Douglas County.
Many voucher programs across the country target students who attend failing schools, as determined by drop-out rates, test scores, etc. Meanwhile, in some jurisdictions, test scores now help determine teachers’ and administrators’ salaries. The result? In many places, manipulation of data or outright cheating. As the Wall Street Journal noted, “When Florida passed voucher legislation in 1999, 78 schools received failing grades. The next year, miraculously, there were none and thus no one qualified for a voucher.” In Atlanta, an investigation caught teachers using X-Acto knives and lighters to open and reseal test booklets, or holding parties where students’ answers were corrected. Some 180 teachers and administrators are believed to have participated; 34 have been indicted. Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers blamed the tests, saying the Atlanta case “crystallizes the unintended consequences of our test-crazed policies.”
Green Notes (from this month’s Green Watch)
From the May 2013 issue of the Capital Research Center publication Green Watch:
The nominations of Gina McCarthy to run the Environmental Protection Agency and Ernest Moniz to run the Energy Department have brought cheer to “crony capitalists” hoping to make big bucks from “green energy” scams. As Tim Carney of The Examiner observes, the nominees would “increase government’s role in the energy sector with the cooperation of business.” Moniz is head of MIT’s Energy initiative, which has received funding from corporations seeking to make money off their ties to the Left, including BP, Chevron, Siemens, Duke Energy, and EDF. In the “partnerships” between such businesses and the government—including ethanol, solar, and wind projects, not to mention the “stimulus,” bailouts of too-big-to-fail corporations, and Obamacare—“government steers the ship, while business rows,” Carney complains. “Politicians and bureaucrats tell business what to do, and [some] business gets to make a profit doing it.”
Meanwhile, Chevron, EDF, Shell, CONSOL Energy, and other corporations have teamed with environmentalists at the Center for Sustainable Shale Development, an “independent organization” that will set performance standards and create a certification process for fracking in shale reserves in the Northeast. Among the participating organizations: the Environmental Defense Fund, the Clean Air Task Force, the Group against Smog and Pollution, the William Penn Foundation, and the Heinz Endowments (which have significantly funded fracking critics).
Dow Chemical, Nucor (the country’s largest steel producer), and the aluminum giant Alcoa have teamed in a group called America’s Energy Advantage, which hopes to block exports of liquefied natural gas. The companies want government to keep natural gas artificially cheap so they can benefit financially, but as the Wall Street Journal noted, they are playing into the hands of “the likes of the Sierra Club, whose real goal is to shut down all fracking in a way that would force Dow, Nucor, and Alcoa entirely overseas. Remember what Lenin said about businessmen [selling] the rope to hang themselves?”
In 2008, Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute attended a “green investments” conference where (in Ebell’s words) “leading crony capitalists” from such companies as General Electric, Duke Energy, Dow, and Kleiner Perkins (Al Gore’s firm) “smugly explain[ed] how they were going to strike it rich off the backs of consumers and taxpayers with green energy subsidies and mandates, federal loan guarantees, and the higher energy prices that would make renewable energy competitive with coal, oil, and natural gas once cap-and-trade was enacted.”
Now, however, “green energy” is losing money even with all the subsidies and mandates. For example, the chief investment officer of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers) noted recently that the organization’s fund for “clean energy and technology” has an annual rate of return of minus 9.7 percent since 2007.
The solar panel maker Suntech—a Chinese company heavily subsidized by its government—closed its U.S. plant, despite receiving $4.1 million from the U.S. government, the Arizona government, and the city of Goodyear, Arizona.
Fisker Automotive, which taxpayers lent $180 million to build electric cars for rich people, recently dismissed 150 of its remaining 200 employees. It hasn’t built a car since July of last year, when its battery maker, A123 Systems (itself a recipient of $249 million in tax dollars), filed for bankruptcy.
The April 3 “Today” show discussed a poll on “20 widespread conspiracy theories.” “Global warming is a hoax, 37% believe that,” said fill-in host Willie Geist. “Wow!” said weatherman Al Roker. After “Today” laughed at people’s belief in Bigfoot, the faking of the moon landing, and the conspiracy to kill JFK, Roker reiterated, “37% said, 37% of these people don’t believe in global warming! They think it’s a hoax!” Newsreader Natalie Morales: “All these weather events!” Roker: “Okay, two words: Superstorm Sandy!” Morales: “Sandy? Right. There you go.”
Warmist beliefs have spread even among military leaders. The Boston Globe reported that Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, listed “climate change” as the biggest long-term security threat in the Pacific region. He said “people are surprised sometimes” to hear him make that assessment and that, in order to deal with the problem, “the imperative” is to prepare for the effects of climate change on the “massive populations” of India and China. “If it goes bad, you could have hundreds of thousands or millions of people displaced and then security will start to crumble pretty quickly.”
Meanwhile, in the world of science, global warmers are frantic to keep gloom alive. Reuters reported on April 16 that “Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions. Often focused on century-long trends, most climate models failed to predict that the temperature rise would slow, starting around 2000. Scientists are now intent on figuring out the causes and determining whether the respite will be brief or a more lasting phenomenon.”
Anti-deception and collective intelligence: Dan Rather, George W. Bush, and how the Internet makes deception more difficult (part 1)
Continuing our series on deception in politics and public policy.
Anti-deception and collective intelligence: Dan Rather, George W. Bush, and how the Internet makes deception more difficult (part 1)
By Dr. Steven J. Allen (JD, PhD)
Normally, in this series, we look at how deception is used by politicians, bureaucrats, academics, the media, and the allies in order to advance their agendas. This time, though, let’s take a look at how the Internet and related IT (Information Technology) can be used to expose deception.
Also, let’s consider how America’s intelligence agencies process information, and how they might do so more effectively.
The Marathon bombers, JFK, and Turing
The hunt for the Boston Marathon terrorists marked the beginning of a new age in the use of Information Technology.
First, law enforcement officials asked people to provide them with copies of videos and still photographs taken at or near the scene of the bombings. The pictures were used to create a four-dimensional virtual image Read all »
The “arms race” that wasn’t
Continuing our series on deception in politics and public policy
Arms control and the race with a single runner
In the best strategy games, you win by tricking your opponent into making bad moves. Of course, he won’t make a bad move if he knows it’s a bad move. So deception is important; you bamboozle your opponent into attacking you where you’re strongest rather than where you’re weakest, or into attacking you with his weakest forces rather than his strongest.
This works best when the deception involves more than a particular set of facts—say, throw-weights of a type of missile or the range of a class of bombers. A deception based on a few fake bits of data is easily penetrated; all it takes to blow it up is the interception of a secret message or the recruitment of a defector. But a deception based on an adversary’s theory of the game—his perception of the game’s rules—can be so powerful that it continues to work long after it’s uncovered.
Mitt Romney and his backers Read all »
Why scientist-activists believe stupid things
[From the April 2013 issue of Green Watch. This is part of our series on deception in politics and public policy.]
When scientists become political activists, they almost always take positions that are later revealed to be foolish, even dangerous. Why?
A clue might be found in the work of James Randi, the magician known as The Amazing Randi. Randi has made a second career out of exposing con men who make claims of the paranormal, such as Uri Geller, whose mystic powers (such as bending spoons with his mind) were supposedly confirmed by a number of scientists. Scientists, Randi wrote,
think logically, from a cause-and-effect paradigm. A trickster supplies all the misdirection, the elements expected by logical inference, the necessary aspects that identify a situation as normal—then he uses a different approach, a set of actions, a scenario that leads the dupe to accept that the expected situation is being fulfilled—but it’s not. The scientist’s conclusion is that nature—which he knows does not change the rules to deceive—has been abrogated in some way. In other words, it’s magic. Read all »
Green Notes: Sierra Club goes radical, global warming causes asteroids and shootings
From the March 2013 issue of the Capital Research Center publication Green Watch.
The Sierra Club, formerly seen as a mainstream environmental group, is showing more radical colors as controversy over the Keystone XL pipeline escalates. At a protest outside the White House February 13, various left-wing celebrities were arrested, including Robert Kennedy Jr., actress Daryl Hannah, former NAACP president Julian Bond, and, with the approval of his board, Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune, making him the first leader in the group’s 120-year history to be arrested at a protest.
Interviewed on the radical radio program “Democracy Now!” Brune insisted, “If we want to keep our temperature increases below three and a half degrees Fahrenheit, at least two-thirds of the oil, and coal, and gas that we know about all around the world has to stay in the ground.” Again: According to the head of the nation’s oldest environmentalist organization, two-thirds Read all »
Labor Watch: Jindal vs. the Teachers’ Unions
Jindal vs. the Teachers’ Unions
Louisiana leads the way to dramatic school reforms at the state level (Labor Watch, March 2013 – PDF here)
By Steven J. Allen
Summary: In Louisiana, a tough and savvy governor has succeeded in enacting an impressive package of school reforms. The teachers’ unions are horrified and using every legal trick to stop changes. But citizens—and legislators from both parties—are pleased. Could this portend similar reforms in other states?
The battle for education reform in Louisiana has major implications both for the future of the nation’s schools and for the future of American politics. Reform legislation pushed through the state’s legislature by Gov. Bobby Jindal promises to remake Louisiana’s educational system, freeing schools from the chains of bureaucracy, corruption, and union dominance. First, though, the Jindal measures must survive a series of union-backed legal challenges. (More on that later.)
How significant are the reforms?
► The Economist noted that Jindal’s “bold plan weakens teacher tenure, and therefore the teachers’ unions, while greatly expanding the use of school vouchers and the reach of charter schools.” Read all »
Race: the scam
Continuing our series on deception in politics and public policy.
As we’ve noted in this series, much of the power of politicians and bureaucrats stems from their ability to classify people and things, to create arbitrarily their own definitions for such terms as “poor,” “assault weapon,” and “species.”
Perhaps their greatest power is the ability to put people in categories based on so-called race. Race is used as a basis for public and private employment, for government contracting, for the distribution of political power, and for college admissions and scholarships.
Currently, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering the case of Fisher v. University of Texas, in which a woman was the victim of racial discrimination Read all »
Labor Notes (March 2013)
From the March 2013 issue of CRC’s Labor Watch.
Over the long haul, unions and union-backed politicians tend to put employers out of business. But there’s another big reason for unions’ systematic decline: they’ve lost touch with their members’ interests and values. Fewer top union officials have backgrounds like those of the workers they are supposed to represent. A longtime national official of the Laborers’ International Union of North America told the Washington Times, “It’s becoming impossible to find anyone at [LIUNA] who has ever actually worked the trade beyond a summer or two while they attended the Harvard Labor College. How can you represent working men and women Read all »