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West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin has spent the last months batting around his fellow Democrats like a cat toying with a mouse. President Bidens signature Build Back Better Act has been the target of his torments his energy industry paymasters hate it and want it destroyed, and so he has carried their water with dutiful ruthlessness and today, the sham pretense of negotiation was dropped with an audible thud.

In recent days, reports Mother Jones, Sen. Joe Manchin has told associates that he is considering leaving the Democratic Party if President Joe Biden and Democrats on Capitol Hill do not agree to his demand to cut the size of the social infrastructure bill from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion, according to people who have heard Manchin discuss this. Manchin has said that if this were to happen, he would declare himself an American Independent. And he has devised a detailed exit strategy for his departure.

Such a move, if Manchin follows through, could immediately deliver Senate majority control to Mitch McConnell and the Republicans, if Manchin chooses to caucus with them. In such an instance, Bernie Sanders would lose his Budget Committee chairmanship to Lindsey Graham, the current ranking Republican. The Build Back Better Act, along with Bidens entire domestic agenda, would fall to ashes. This is the biggest club Manchin has, and he just audibly rattled it in the bag.

The road to this nauseating juncture has been torturous. Weve made breakthroughs, an unnamed Democratic senator told reporters just yesterday, after a meeting between Joe Manchin and Bernie Sanders. The two diametrically opposed committee chairs had come together, according to The Hill, to reach a deal on a path forward for President Bidens economic agenda by the end of the week.

Specifically, the pair sought to find a path to passage for the Build Back Better Act, a bill packed with climate and social policies that are anathema to Manchins corporate paymasters, and to his own personal coal-stained bottom line. This has been going on for months now, and what was a robust piece of legislation is now a shadow of itself, and under mortal threat thanks to todays latest Manchin pronouncement.

It has been like this from the beginning. The same day Manchin had his breakthrough meeting with Sanders, he announced his opposition to the carbon tax, an idea being floated to salvage the bill after Manchin demanded the most effective climate elements be stripped. Bidens staffers have been scrambling to fix the damage done by Manchin, and when they offered this solution, they got Manchin telling reporters, The carbon tax is not on the board at all right now, right before his sit-down with Bernie.

Are we sensing a pattern yet?

Three weeks ago, Manchins whole problem was the cost of the bill, yet he refused to publicly offer a number he could live with. When congressional progressives offered a solution to that concern chop the time frame of the bill in half, which cuts its price tag in half it suddenly seemed as if a way to daylight had been found

which was precisely when Manchin (perhaps realizing he was about to fail his paymasters) started blasting out specific complaints about the details. No clean energy impetus. No child tax credit (without worthless work requirements included). No carbon tax. Include the Hyde Amendment. Vote on the infrastructure bill first and alone.

Just yesterday, Biden informed House progressives that he was dumping tuition-free community college from the package, in order to try and please Manchin.

The problem all along has been simple: Nothing will please Manchin. He may have specific ideological complaints about elements of the bill, but that is not what motivates him. Clinging to a doomed home-state industry motivates him, which is perhaps the greatest tragedy of all. Nothing would do more good for West Virginia than a deliberate transition away from coal, even if it means subsidizing former coal workers until they get trained up for new work. That wont happen this round because of Manchin.

More than this, I suspect, Manchin is motivated by a desire to protect his own personal coal-based wealth, and the wealth of the lobbyists who are in his ear even as they fill his wallet. He does not want a denuded bill. He wants no bill at all, and every time his fellow Democrats try to appease him by slicing up their own policy objectives, he moves the goal posts again. His threat to flee the party is a dramatic version of more of the same. If this were a football game, Democrats would be kicking field goals in the parking lot outside the stadium by now.

Hurricane Manchin, the worst climate-driven storm we have endured to date, is threatening to blow everything to the ground. It is not just the Build Back Better Act that is in peril; coal-state senators scuttling vital climate bills while the world drowns and burns is a dead-bang existential threat.

There is no bargaining with a storm like this, especially one whose effects will be felt globally. There are only two ways to handle such a storm: Either run away, or build up strong and dare it to knock you down. The Democrats have been running away for months. Its time for a new tactic.

The interminable delay of an up-or-down Senate vote on President Joe Bidens agenda serves no one other than Sinema, Manchin, and their corporate donors who want the bill gutted or killed, writes David Sirota for The Daily Poster. Every day Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer stalls a vote on an already-scaled-back $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, Senate Democrats become more complicit in the betrayal of their partys campaign promises, the evisceration of the working class, and the destruction of the climate. They can make a different choice and hold a vote right now.

Schedule a vote on the bill immediately, and announce there will be no further subtractions made. With the lid closed, Democrats can finally share concrete details about the bill with the public, and beat back the barrage of nonsense offered by the Republicans, and by Manchin. And to really up the ante, suggests Sirota, Democratic leaders could add a bunch of programs that will target aid and investment to West Virginia and Arizona.

Make Manchin and his crew defend themselves against that, make them explain their opposition to elderly dental care, child care, tuition-free schooling, cheaper prescription drugs, and the fact that the ocean is coming for us all, and maybe we should try to do something about it. Manchin has not been made to do this yet, and I would love to see him try.

and if Manchin jumps, so be it. The Senate with Manchin as a Democrat has not been a hell of a lot different from a Senate with him sporting a different letter after his name. Additionally, his decision to leave could come to amount to voluntary irrelevance.

Manchin was hardly there anyway, and his defection could rob the Republicans of basically everything they planned to run on next year. The whole tumbling mess would then be McConnells problem, and he could enjoy explaining it away while fighting off the slobbering machinations of Donald Trump, who would probably see a switch of party control in the Senate as a signal that his destiny is at hand.

Trump may go off like a burning fireworks factory, and the GOP will almost certainly be forced to run with him or away from him. Either choice could tear the party apart and thoroughly horrify a stout majority of voters in the process. The 2022 midterms, if Manchin jumps, could very well be a bloodbath for Republicans entirely because of him.

Enough of this patty-cake bullshit. Call the vote.

UPDATE 5:30pm EST Sen. Manchin has vehemently denied to Politico that he had told associates he would leave the Democratic Party if he did not get his way on the social infrastructure bill. I cant control rumors, he told Politico reporter Burgess Everett, and its bullshit, bullshit spelled with a B, U, L, L, capital B. If I were in the political analysis biz (wait, I am!), Id hazard a guess that a not-so-subtle message has just been sent by the senator from West Virginia.

UPDATE 6:00pm EST An earlier version of this article stated that control of the Senate would immediately revert to the Republicans if Manchin becomes an Independent. This was inaccurate; in the event of a Manchin party flip, Republicans will retain control only if Manchin chooses to caucus with them. The article has been edited to reflect this.

Continued here:
Manchin Threatens to Leave Democratic Party Over Social Infrastructure Bill - Truthout

Democrats are targeting Texas and are focusing on one group.

HOUSTON So why do Democrats think they know the secret to flipping Texas blue?

Turning Texas from a reliably red state has come up the last few election cycles, but predictions of a blue wave sweeping over the Lone Star State have proven to be a pipe dream.

Probably not surprising since in the past the Democratic Party has dedicated very little time and money to the project. In some election cycles they havent even bothered to run a candidate against some prominent Republicans. But all that is starting to change.

According to the New York Times, in Texas, Republicans had a margin of victory in 2020 of 631,000 votes. And for Democratic groups the key to covering the spread comes down to one important demographic young voters.

Now, they are spending millions of dollars in Texas targeting close to two million young voters.

If they can get just a third to turn up and vote Democrat, it would be enough to overcome that Republican margin.

And they might have a chance.

Texas is the second largest state in the country with a population that is one of the youngest and most diverse, according to census data. But some election watchers and Republicans scoff at the idea.

The GOP continues to outraise and outspend their Democratic counterparts across the state.

KHOU 11 on social media:Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube

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Why Democrats think they have the secret to turning Texas blue - KHOU.com

A house bill that passed this spring is now coming under fire by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) over concerns it censors some topics in public schools.

When House Bill 1775 went into emergency effect this summer, it was unclear what impact the legislation would have on Oklahoma classrooms.

The bill was passed along party lines by Republican lawmakers who sought to limit conversations about race or gender at public schools.

Now the ACLU cites specific examples in its lawsuit against the state saying the broad language in the law chills free speech and violates the states education standards.

The harm is coming from how broadly the bill is written, how confusing the language is, and how steep some of the consequences are for violating that very broad language, said Megan Lambert, ACLU of Oklahoma Legal Director.

Lambert said educators are removing content on race and gender out of an abundance of caution, because community members can have their credentials pulled for violating the law, through a complaint process thats open to the public.

Edmond Public Schools is named in the suit for cancelling diversity trainings and changing its booklist to follow guidance from the bill.

The district removed books by women and Black authors, like To Kill A Mockingbird, A Raisin In The Sun, Their Eyes Are Watching God, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, and Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas.

Anthony Crawford, an English teacher at Millwood Public Schools,is one of the plaintiffs. He said the law is unclear to teachers and contradicts the Oklahoma Education Standards.

Everything they are telling us we cannot teach is in the Oklahoma Standards, he said.

Crawford said he is concerned about the harsh penalties to teachers.

I was scared. Im not going to lie to you. I was petrified, I got a daughter on the way, so I was really scared, he said.

But, without being able to teach about themes like systemic racism or diversity, he said students will be unprepared as adults.

Without that piece of information, without that history, then they will go into the real world blindsided, Crawford said.

At the Capitol, some are standing by the law.

Secretary of Education Ryan Walters said in a statement the bill ensures students are taught an honest depiction of the past and knows teachers can teach that without prejudging those who are responsible for our future.

There were several other states that passed similar bills during spring of 2021 seeking to ban a concept called critical race theory, even though the concept isn't taught in K-12 schools or well-defined in K-12 settings.

The ACLU said Oklahoma's restrictions are the most severe.

Read the complaint in full below.

Read the rest here:
Oklahoma Sued By ACLU Over Concerns Of Censorship On Critical Race Theory Topics - news9.com KWTV

Amnesty International has released a report documenting how the pandemic affected freedom of expression and the impact of misinformation.

According to its findings, some countries have used censorship and punishment to reduce the quality and quantity of information reaching the public domain, thus damaging people's ability to understand how to deal with COVID-19.

Speaking to Euronews, Amnesty International researcher on human rights defenders Lisa Maracani said COVID-19 only aggravated a problem that had existed for years.

"We know that there is a shrinking civic space all around the world. This has been going on for years. But I think the pandemic precipitated this process," Maracani said.

She urged lawmakers to do more to regulate social media, pointing to their responsibility in spreading misinformation.

"We need digital regulations on them, and this can be done by looking at how they operate and their business model and how that algorithm functions because they are driving a certain type of information that is damaging," she told Euronews.

Maracani believes governments have enacted free speech restrictions that were unnecessary.

"We want states to stop going after people sharing information, going after journalists, going after human rights defenders. They really need to step back from that sort of censorship," the researcher said.

Watch the full interview in the video player above

Read the original here:
Amnesty report reveals use of censorship to reduce quality of public information - Euronews

Viktor Tron is the founder and team lead of the Ethereum Swarm project. The Swarm project aims to provide an infrastructure for a global digital society. Tron: Decentralized storage is needed for the future of the internet. He also shared insights about the inner workings of Swarm, its strong points, and how the project is crucial for the future of decentralization. Swarm requires payment for the retrieval, upload and storage of content, and allows users to share their data with advertisers in the process of earning income.

Under the guise of "stopping health misinformation," online censorship has increased throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

Big tech companies like Facebook and Google are censoring a wide range of information from being published and shared on social media channels like Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and Facebook.

Social media companies have accumulated unprecedented power, and their lack of transparency and integrity as gatekeepers of information is worrying.

As we continue to spend more of our time online, either working remotely or consuming content, the need for freedom of expression on the internet is crucial.

At the forefront of the shift from digital supremacy to a more democratized landscape stands Blockchain technology, a crucial element that has impacted countless industries. Cryptocurrencies are not only changing finance, they are also allowing decentralized incentive models to surge, leveling the playing field between large corporations and common people.

I spoke with Viktor Tron, founder and team lead of the Ethereum Swarm project. Having been involved with the Ethereum foundation at its early stages, Viktor kick-started his career early on and is recognized by his peers as a computer programming expert. During the interview, Viktor walks us through his personal journey and professional career. He also shared insights about the inner workings of Swarm, its strong points, and how the project is crucial for the future of the decentralized internet.

Decentralized storage is needed to provide an infrastructure for a global digital society. Lets start from the viewpoint of a future social ideal.

More and more these days, economic activity is based on data. The impact of this economic shift into digitized data and data transmission will increase the demand and prevalence of infrastructure solutions.

In a global digital society, data and content will be persistent and readily available for anyone and at any point in time. Blockchain and other decentralized solutions will ensure data will remain constant.

Another upside of decentralized storage is that data becomes permissionless, accessible to anyone, and uncensorable, meaning no gatekeepers decide which content can or cannot be uploaded to the network.

Infrastructure that tracks the origins and aggregation of data is also crucial for the future of a global digital society. Decentralized systems, like the one Swarm is building, are ideal and provide all the necessary requirements for this kind of society. But in order to understand a little better, lets take a step back.

Since the early rise of the internet, it became clear that there was a huge demand for the democratization of content and free flow of information. Before that, publishing content was a huge bottleneck, as there were several intermediaries and restrictions one would have to go through.

The same that happened with content and data is now happening in the world of finance.

Thanks to the blockchain, the bottleneck for transacting value has been severely diminished by cutting out banking institutions and other middlemen.

The problem was, as access to publishing was open to anyone, the prevalent server-client infrastructure made it impossible for content creators to scale. Nowadays, big corporations have made scaling possible through solutions like cloud storage.

Also, the content publication is somehow left void if the publisher does not provide easy access to consumers. In order to be discovered, data must be searchable and present in diverse platforms, including search engines, social media channels, and content aggregators.

Unified service companies like Google provide both the infrastructure and platform services, handling both the storage and distribution of data all in one place. However, a big problem arose when these large unified companies, like Facebook, started to own users' data.

In the Web 2.0 phase, several big tech companies realized that user profiling, together with tracking online behavior, provided a way more lucrative value proposition than selling the platform features.

One of Swarms strongest propositions and selling points is that it puts the settlement and accounting of data back in the base layer infrastructure, where it belongs originally. To put in less technical terms, Swarm requires payment for the retrieval, upload, and storage of content.

Swarm will also allow users to share their data with advertisers directly, earning income in the process. The cost of these services is settled in a transparent way.

It is also important to mention that decentralization systems are superior in many ways. It makes the components of the system homogenous and thus easily replaceable. In turn, centralized systems have several bottleneck issues and are vulnerable to censorship, server downtimes, and single points of failure.

I would have to say that if there is mass adoption of Swarm, it's a great indicator that there arent any major problems. Instead, I believe Swarms toughest challenges will be faced on the way towards reaching mass adoption.

The largest hurdle will be educating people on why they should pay for content they are currently getting for free. Users will first need to be convinced about the advantages of Swarm. Alternatively, decentralized systems which are advertisement-based can help users have access to content for free as long as they share their data.

Of course, there are other challenges as well. The project is still in its infancy, and we are currently faced with scalability issues, which, until solved, will prevent the mass adoption of Swarm. We must make gradual progress, reaching new developers and creating new tools for users.

A: I usually say what sets Swarm apart from Filecoin, for example, is twofold. The first is that, in Swam, the storage model is directly distributed.

In systems like BitTorrent and IPFS, users become part of the network by sharing whatever content is on their hard drives, which will be made available for anyone to download.

In Swarm, however, users store only the data that the network tells them to. When you open your storage, specific tasks are assigned to you and you must serve chunks of data belonging to your neighborhood. In other words, you become a node operator and take responsibility for a partition of the network.

Users can also contribute to the network by sharing hard drive space for forwarding messages or sharing bandwidth. Users are always compensated for any contribution they make to the network, receiving tokens in the process.

The financial incentive is designed to convince more people to join the network. And once more and more people join a decentralized network as contributors, it becomes more resilient and cheaper to use.

The second reason Swarm is different is that it is a much stronger affiliation towards confidentiality, which allows for anonymous browsing and very strong messaging and privacy features.

They will only get paid for uploading content that users want to see and access. The incentive system also provides a fair distribution of storage revenue for contributors, balancing itself through automatic price setting and careful incentivization. Prices change according to supply and demand.

Swarms vision is to provide a comprehensive backend for the decentralized web. To give all the tools from the server-side, thus giving programmers all the components necessary to create interactive applications, such as decentralized database banking and data aggregation.

Thats a funny question because I was initially involved in the early-stage development of Ethereum. Swarm is at the forefront right now, but it started quite a while ago, just like Ethereum.

The choice to use Ethereum was due to the fact that there were no other viable options back when Swarm started. However, I still consider Ethereum my blockchain of choice and the most complete smart contract ecosystem.

Swarm actually started as a subproject of the Ethereum foundation, but we have become independent since then. In its conceptual structure, Swarm is blockchain agnostic. This means that Swarm can be implemented into any network, and our development team has plans to integrate cross-chain compatibility into our incentivization structure.

However, at this current stage, Swarm can not function without Ethereum. The code was written to be compatible with Ethereum, and significant changes would be needed in order to function without it.

There is definitely long-term viability of adopting other networks. Especially if these other networks support similar language or EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), which makes the process of translating code much easier.

An important thing to note is that having long-term storage is, most of the time, a real pain in the ass for token volatility. Storage services are negotiated and placed into contracts, meaning that both parties commit to a specific price beforehand.

The contracts then require users and operators to have a good model that carefully calculates the price of storage years into the future. If you mispredict the future, it can cost you.

However, Swarm has an automatic price mechanism so users wont need to worry so much about the volatility of BZZ. In other words, the network is responsive to price changes and the price of storage services is kept low due to the competitive landscape.

The two can co-exist and complement each other. Some services are better suited for centralized systems while others are a perfect fit for decentralized infrastructures like the blockchain.

Certain server base solutions will remain in use due to being technologically superior in certain aspects. But in the future, storage will no longer be dependent on any companies, but rather on the incentive system that keeps decentralized networks running.

Lets look at the example of flight aggregators like Momondo and Skyscanner. This type of business model can actually benefit from leveraging both centralized and decentralized systems.

By having flight aggregators on Swarm, users will be able to transparently verify the authenticity of any flight offer. The system will be trustless, meaning users wont have to worry about the reputation of the traveling agencies.

However, some of these services may suffer from latency challenges due to the nature of redundant storage. Therefore, in order to not compromise the speed of the services, flight aggregators might still elect to use centralized solutions in conjunction with blockchain technology.

Generally say that its not worth making distinctions between these solutions. Usually, the perceived stability and resilience of the individual projects are what count the most. However, long-term aspirations are also important.

Our modular solution is meant to make Swarm viable in the long term. It also makes work easier to coordinate, facilitating the creation of much more complex features.

Its also worth mentioning that web 3.0 is a paradigm. Its currently in a position equal to most 2.0 solutions, which will assist Swarm and promote decentralization.

As for the features that set Swarm aside, these include being a full cloud solution, having strong privacy features and a solid incentive system, which takes care of prices automatically through supply and demand.

In a way, companies are also people. So, Im not sure I agree with this distinction, especially since the premise behind decentralized systems is to break down barriers of entry and any type of discrepancy between network participants.

Of course, Swarm is built with end-users in mind, be it companies or individuals. However, since Swarm is a base layer infrastructure, built with a large focus on fair and incentivized data distribution, its main target group is developers.

Its hard to say when my professional career started. I believe in personal integrity, in my life, there isnt much separation between work and non-work activities.

In other words, the lines between the personal and professional have become blurred. I also share the opinion that its inefficient to make strong distinctions between work and life, and people who do that usually do not enjoy their work.

Years later I started to get heavily involved with the study of mathematics and linguistics, which led to aspirations of becoming a teacher. I then started a career in linguistics research and moved more and more to natural language processing and speech technology. I had the privilege of making contributions to Siri and Swipe.

Afterward, I gradually shifted towards being more of a computer guy. I started working as a programmer for several projects, including a semantic web-based portal for the BBC.

I then got involved in crypto, and it didnt take for me to get fully immersed. When I discovered Ethereum I was completely blown away, which ultimately led me to drop everything else to become the first paid employee of the Ethereum foundation.

Within the foundation, Swarm emerged as a promising project, part of the holy trinity that aimed to completely decentralize the internet. The holy trinity included Ethereum, as the CPU, Swarm, as the hard drive for storing data, and Whisper, as the decentralized messaging protocol.

As time passed, Whisper started to lose relevance and Swarm took its place. Expanding its mission to offer a complete blockchain-based solution, Swarm allows interactive global applications to run in the decentralized web.

Since Swarm parted ways from the Ethereum foundation, it has grown immensely. We now have between 40 to 50 paid employees and contributors. Its worth mentioning that Swarm is not just my idea. Its father is Daniel Nagy, who is a long time friend of mine and colleague since the beginnings of my career in the Ethereum foundation.

I have been working on Swarm 24/7 for the last 7 years. I am extremely pleased with the release of mainnet 1.2, as it represents one of the greatest achievements in my career.

If we take the whole decentralized paradigm into account, Swarm can be a major social impactor.

Todays trend is basically to achieve global free data. A global planetary consciousness where there is unimpeded and uncensorable interaction between people. I trust that any voluntary and informed transaction between individuals will lead to value creation. Thus, by maximizing interaction between people we are, in fact, contributing to a better world.

Therefore, any infrastructure solution that prevents obstacles to interaction, be it impeding regulation, intermediaries, or monopolistic corporations, will be highly beneficial for humanity. I believe platforms like Swarm, which breaks down the barriers for social interaction and value creation, are the next evolutionary step after the internet provided free access to information.

Now it's the time to have coordination, free economic interaction, and consensual standards to emerge. I believe decentralized solutions can help bring a new era of prosperity, and thats why I am optimistic about the future.

The author does not have any vested interest in the projects mentioned above.

The opinions in this article belong to the author alone. Nothing in this article constitutes investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before making any investment decisions.

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