Freedom To Complain About Government Officials

November 25, 2011 — Ron Chusid

Yesterday I noted a story about someone who criticized President Obama and wound up being interviewed by the Secret Service. The person has signs up at his business with fallacious criticism, and has criticized Obama on Facebook. He was acting within his First Amendment rights, regardless of how absurd his claims are. Unless there is more to this story than I am aware of, such as statements promoting violence, there was no reason for any law enforcement agencies to get involved. Reportedly his statements made it to the Secret Service who interviewed him and laughed off the incident.

Today there is a report of a high school student being harassed due to a tweet which was critical of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback:

A Kansas teenager is in trouble after mocking Gov. Sam Brownback during a mock legislative assembly for high school students.

Emma Sullivan, a senior at Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, was in Topeka on Monday as part of Kansas Youth in Government, a program for students interested in politics and government.

During the session, in which Brownback addressed the group, Sullivan posted on her personal Twitter page:

“Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot”

On Tuesday, Sullivan was called to her principal’s office and told that the tweet had been flagged by someone on Brownback’s staff and reported to organizers of the Youth in Government program…

Brownback spokeswoman Sherriene Jones-Sontag said her office had forwarded a copy of Sullivan’s tweet to organizers of the school-sponsored event “so that they were aware what their students were saying in regards to the governor’s appearance.

“We monitor social media so we can see what Kansans are thinking and saying about the governor and his policies,” Jones-Sontag said.

“We just felt it was appropriate for the organizers to be aware … because of what was said in the tweet.”

Sullivan, 18, said she posted the comment because she doesn’t agree with Brownback’s policies, particularly recent cuts in state aid to schools. She is a registered Democrat.

“Some of my friends were joking about what they’d really like to say (to Brownback), so I just took out my phone” and tweeted, she said. “I guess it was kind of a heat-of-the-moment thing.”

This sounds like a quite clear violation of First Amendment rights, with both Governor Brownback’s office and the school principal acting inappropriately.

Update: I did receive this link from a reader who says that the person in the first incident was a member of right wing militias and had threatened the president. If that is the case, then the Secret Service was right to interview him. It is the principle as opposed to the specifics of this particular case which is most important–merely criticizing a government official, regardless of party and regardless of the validity of the criticism, should not lead to retaliation from any unit of government.

 

Posted in Barack Obama, Blogs & Social Media, Civil Liberties, Republicans. Tags: , , , , . 3 Comments »

Defriend Republicans

July 19, 2011 — Ron Chusid

Now we will really need a Dislike button on Facebook.  The Republicans plan to stream a  debate on Facebook.

If you support freedom and small government, as in keeping government out of your personal lives, Republicans are not your friends.

If you support fiscal responsibility, Republicans are not your friends.

If you support science and reason over superstition, Republicans are not your friends.

Posted in Blogs & Social Media, Republicans. Tags: , . 1 Comment »

The Independent (Conservative) Blogosphere, Facebook, and Twitter

July 18, 2011 — Ron Chusid

John Hawkins of Right Wing News wrote about The Slow, Painful Death of the Independent Conservative Blogosphere. He points out that, “in American politics, the energy tends to be with the party that’s out of power.” That means:

…when Barack Obama got into power, you’d have expected that traffic on the Right side of the blogosphere would have surged just as it did on the Left side of the blogosphere in the early Bush years.

That didn’t happen.

Hawkins has five explanations which I’ll condense from the longer discussions in the full post:

  1. The right has more avenues for people to get involved with, such as talk radio and the Tea Parties. (He apparently is putting aside the common view on the right that people on the left are all getting involved with dangerous organizations such as ACORN, the New Black Panthers, and NPR.)
  2. Social networking has taken off and people are spending more time on Facebook and Twitter. I’ll discuss this point more later.
  3. The market has become more mature, and people are more likely to read the big blogs such as Michelle Malkin or Instapundit as opposed to a small brand new blog.
  4. The market has become more professional, making it harder for someone who is not known to compete with names like Ann Coulter or the big blogs with large staffs.
  5. Bloggers are poor at marketing, and eventually have difficulty putting in long hours for a project which they are not likely to make money off of.

Other than the first, which claims that structural differences on the right are responsible, each of these other arguments are more general statements about the difficulties of a small, independent blog, regardless of ideology. If the right is withering more than the left, it must be for other reasons–perhaps such as the weakness of their viewpoints. If conservative bloggers are getting depressed by all of this, I will point out that a good Republican primary battle followed by a general election will do wonders to increase blog readership.

The argument based upon social networks is partially true, but also misses an important point. My interest is in using the internet to promote pro-freedom liberal values to counter the authoritarian right, and to promote reason over the anti-science view of the right. This does not have to be limited to blogs, and social networking has become a useful tool.

Facebook has pretty much killed off the discussion section here, but does it matter? There is often more discussion of blog posts when posted on Facebook than there was here on the blog. Facebook adds many additional readers. Less people might come directly to the blog, but there are many new readers who read the posts directly on Facebook. Sharing of the posts provides links which attract additional readers. Twitter also provides a number of comments, as well as additional links to the posts.

If the goal is to compete with the bigger blogs or to make lots of money, small independent bloggers will be disappointed. Small bloggers can still get their views out before a significant number of people–and effectively utilizing social networks will help to increase this number.

Posted in Blogs & Social Media. Tags: , , , . 3 Comments »

Initial Impression of Google+

July 18, 2011 — Ron Chusid

Google+ is the hot new social networking site, with Google probably hoping to do to Facebook what Facebook did to MySpace.  In design, Google+ looks a lot like Facebook. It does have some good features such as the ability to edit a post and easily decide on a post-by- post basis whether people can share it or comment on it.

In some ways Google+ is more like Twitter (without the 140 character  limit) than like  Facebook.  A user follows who ever they want, but the person does not need to follow back in the way that friending people on Facebook must be a mutual proposition.  This is like Twitter, where people you follow may or may not follow back.  There is a notification that someone has started to follow you on Google+ (or in their lingo, added you to one of their circles).

The circles are a key feature of Google+. You can have circles for certain groups of people, making it suitable to limit material to certain groups of friends, you can post things to the world, or you can exercise other controls over who can see what you post. Facebook can also do this, but the controls are not buried on Google+ as they are on Facebook.  On the other hand, a lot of people like mixing up personal posts with political comments on Facebook and assigning posts to specific circles on Google+ might make the site less interesting.

A key difference between Google+ and Facebook is that Google is more realistic and flexible in how the site will be used. Facebook is set up for people who actually know each other in the real world as opposed to more public posting and discussions. They continue to ignore the fact that many use Facebook for more public discussions. Facebook has a 5000 friend limit, and even has messages suggesting people are doing something wrong by friending someone they don’t really know. Google+ doesn’t expect people to move to a fan page if they want to have  a larger number of people following like on Facebook.

Google doesn’t seem to care how you use Google+. Perhaps after seeing so few people adopt Buzz, they just want people to use it any way  they want to. They are open to what is essentially public tweets without the 140 character limit, while also being able to handle closed discussions among friends.

Facebook has lists which can serve the function of circles to some degree. I use them when on a pc to choose between a newsfeed with more public comments versus reading personal items from people I actually know. Unfortunately none of the Droid apps can handle reading a list (short of using the browser to go to the full site). I’m currently using Friendcaster,  a third party Droid app for Facebook, which allows users to limit posts to a specific list. It still can’t handle limiting the newsfeed to specific lists. The iPhone app does allow reading of lists, so I am hoping the Droid version adds this. I haven’t tried the mobile version of Google+ yet, but from what I’ve heard I’d be shocked if it doesn’t include the benefits of circles.

That said, despite what I like about how Google+ is set up, I wonder if it can compete with Facebook. I already have well over 4000 Facebook friends, so a post over there will generally get responses, while only a few people are following me  so far on Google+. Many people I know in the real world are on Facebook and we use it for more private functions along with my public posting, but I don’t think any of them are on Google+. If I want to find someone I know on line, at the moment the best shot of finding them is via Facebook. Perhaps people will migrate to Google+ over time, but I bet that Facebook will adopt many of the advantages of Google+ before they let that happen.

If anyone wants to get onto Google+ and needs an invitation, let me know. Setting up a Google+ account is pretty easy, especially if you already have a gmail account. There was one thing about the set-up which I found curious. Why does Go0gle have users type in all that persona information when it can easily populate the  fields with the information Google already has on us? I’m not saying that Google knows too much about us all, but today they sent me gmail alerting me that the loaf of bread on our counter is starting to get stale and that the flowers on the front porch could use a little more water. (Ok, not everything in the last paragraph is completely true).

Posted in Blogs & Social Media. Tags: , , . No Comments »

My Current Facebook Status

July 17, 2010 — Ron Chusid

The hardest thing about carrying around a Droid is constantly being stopped by iPhone users who want to borrow it because they need to make a phone call

Posted in Gadgets, Humor and Satire. Tags: . No Comments »

A Message For The FCC

July 15, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Yesterday I had this post on a court ruling throwing out the FCC’s indecency rules. The video below was added during the discussion of the post on Facebook. I had intended to add it to the original post, but just noticed I had added it to a different post in error. The video is definitely not safe for work, so turn your volume down low if playing it.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Humor and Satire. Tags: , , . No Comments »

Democrats Split As Nancy Pelosi Betrays Seniors

June 22, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Nancy Pelosi’s irrational behavior regarding the Medicare “doc fix” is creating rifts between Pelosi and other Democrats. For the past several months we’ve had a repeated pattern of the Democrats taking the lead in trying to fix the problem while the Republicans have blocked passage. Suddenly it is Nancy Pelosi who is jeopardizing Medicare.

The Senate passed a six month temporary fix last Friday which differed from the House proposal. While far from perfect, the Senate bill would have at least bought some time to again work on a long term solution. It was initially assumed that the House would quickly approve the Senate bill but instead Pelosi has insisted she will not act upon a Medicare fix which does not also include the jobs proposals in the House bill.

While fighting for the jobs proposals are admirable, this should not be done at the expense of passing the Medicare fix. Failure to pass the fix endangers the Medicare program and will cause seniors, the disabled, and military families to have difficulty getting access to health care. (Medicare directly covers seniors and the disabled while Tricare, which covers active members of the military and their families, bases its fee schedule on the Medicare fee schedule).

As Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took differing positions, Politco reported this morning that  Congress battles as Medicare burns. There even appears to be some disagreement with Pelosi among the House Democratic leadership, as reported by The Hill:

Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.), the Chair of the Education and Labor health panel, tells The Hill that Congress should quickly pass a bill delaying cuts to Medicare physician payments. The comments seem at odds with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) statement Monday that the House should hold off on taking up the Senate’s Medicare doc fix until the Senate passes a tax extenders bill, which some House members fear might go nowhere if it’s uncoupled from the must-pass doc fix.

“Leverage is less important than ensuring seniors can see their doctors,” Andrews said as he was entering a meeting in the office of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). “So I think it’s important to pass it.”

As I said earlier as my Facebook status, also posted to Speaker Pelosi’s FB page (and on Twitter in an abreviated 140 character version):

Nancy Pelosi: We expect Democrats to fight to preserve Medicare, not give Republicans political cover to destroy it. So far it has been the Republicans who have been blocking the payment fix, but if you follow through with threats not to pass the latest temporary fix passed by the Senate the Democrats become responsible for endangering Medicare, and risk losing the senior vote.

Posted in Congress, Democrats, Harry Reid, Health Care, Nancy Pelosi. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 8 Comments »

New Blog Features & Social Media Integration

June 17, 2010 — Ron Chusid

I’ve been experimenting with a few new blog features which readers might be interested in. One is the addition of tags to posts. Categories have been used since the start and will link to posts of any age but there is a limited number of categories. I’m using a wider variety of tags but for now they are limited to recent and a handful of older posts. The feature will become of greater value as more posts are tagged but for now they provide another way to find hot topics such as BP Oil Spill. There is also a tag cloud on the right margin which lists tags in use with larger fonts for more commonly used tags.

I’ve also activated Gravatars, which are Globally Recognized Avatar pictures which can be used on any participating blog. This will allow you to have a picture attached to your comments here and at any other blogs which use Gravatars. You can set up a Gravatar at this site.

A new mobile theme has been set up for those accessing the blog on mobile web browsers which will make it easier to read posts and add comments. (At present there’s one minor issue with the format. The “share or print” icons following all the posts are listed at one per line. It is only a minor inconvenience if I can’t find a fix for this. At least on my Droid it only takes a second to flip the screen past all of them to get to the comments section.)

I’m also restoring some of the Twitter integration including the Topsy widget. For those wanting to retweet a post here, the Twitter icon in the long row of social icons will use the full file name in the tweet while the icon from Topsy below it will substitute a short file name.

Most of the discussion of posts has been on Facebook the last few months. I’ve partially fixed some of the recent problems with sharing blog posts. Unfortunately it has gone back to the older problem in which it picks up text from a recent comment rather than the linked text. One work around is to cut the desired text from the post, click on the text in Facebook, and replace it with the selected text. Alternatively you can share a link already on Facebook or Networked Blogs and avoid this problem.

Posted in Blogs & Social Media. Tags: , , . No Comments »

Sarah Palin Always In The News

June 2, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Can we every be rid of Sarah Palin? Between her various feuds, the latest of which is with Joe McGinniss (the journalist who moved in next door to her) and her rants on Facebook and Twitter being repeated by the press, she seems to be in the news every day.

The former half-term governor of Alaska showed that she had minimal knowledge of public policy issues, but this doesn’t prevent her from expressing her opinion. The late night comics found it especially absurd when she acted as if she had some understanding of the BP oil spill. Some responses:

Palin weighed in on her Facebook page. She demanded that Obama  plug the damn hole.’ You first, Sarah.” —Bill Maher

“Sarah Palin has now weighed in on the gulf oil spill. Finally, the voice of reason. She said that President Obama should grasp the complexity of the situation. Sarah Palin giving advice on complexity. What, was Snooki from ‘Jersey Shore’ unavailable?” —Jay Leno

Posted in Humor and Satire, Sarah Palin, Television. Tags: , , , , . 2 Comments »

Politics Made Simple

May 28, 2010 — Ron Chusid
Republican economic strategy in recent years has been to plunder the nation’s wealth and transfer it from the middle class to the wealthy. Republican political strategy has been to screw up the country as much as possible when in power. When out of power they can then claim that government does not work and blame everything on the other party. That’s pretty much all you need to know. Everything else is just details.

(My current Facebook status–too long to fit on Twitter)

Posted in Republicans. Tags: , . 2 Comments »
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