My Vox Problem

Posted: December 17, 2019 by julietteochieng in economy, local, News/opinion, politics, Uncomfortable Truths
Tags: , , , , ,

So much for freedom of the press in CA

by baldilocks

The urge is to laugh. But I’m not laughing.

Hundreds of freelance writers at Vox Media, primarily those covering sports for the SB Nation site, will lose their jobs in the coming months as the company prepares for a California law to go into effect that will force companies to reclassify contractors [freelancers] in the state as employees.

“This is a bittersweet note of thanks to our California independent contractors,” John Ness, executive director of SB Nation, wrote in a post on Monday. “In 2020, we will move California’s team blogs from our established system with hundreds of contractors to a new one run by a team of new SB Nation employees.”

The law in question is California Assembly Bill 5.

Back in September, Vox thought AB5 was a good thing.

Pushing AB 5 through the legislature is perhaps one of the most significant labor wins in decades, if only because the labor movement has had very few victories in the past 40 years. But it’s particularly significant because of California’s position as one of the world’s largest economies and its outsized influence in national politics. If any state can start to reverse the trend of shrinking labor unions, it’s California. (…)

However, hundreds of thousands of workers — possibly millions — will see an immediate impact on their working conditions after the switch.

Emphasis mine and that last statement is certainly correct.

On January 1, 2020, it will severely limit all of my gigs. In short, AB5 limits me to 35 pieces of freelance work per year for an individual recipient.

This includes my blogging here at DaTechGuy Blog.

Most of you know that I live in Los Angeles. Back in 2013, Peter invited to me to be one of his Da Magnificent Seven. Initially, each of us contributed one blog post per week, but, a few years back, we upped the number to two  a week which, of course, means that I post here 104 times per year.

You can figure out the impact. By the way, Peter — who lives in Massachusetts — is an awesome boss and a great guy.

I told you about California’s new law – and its purpose – weeks ago.

I’ve been saying to any who will listen that the goal of California’s Organized Left (OL) is to drive out the middle class. The OL’s dream population will consist of the rich and the servant class, with the latter being composed mostly of illegal aliens. (…)

Freelance writers – even itinerant “street artists” like me – are considered part of the middle class by the OL because we all have the potential of upward mobility and, most importantly, we cannot be controlled by an employer.

Problem laid out.

In my next DMS blog post — this Saturday — I will tell you what my options are.

HERE ARE THE OPTIONS:  Why I Stayed in California.

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

Follow Juliette on Facebook, Twitter, MeWe, Patreon and Social Quodverum.

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Update DTG: Thanks Juliette for your kind words and thanks Glenn for the Instalanche. Hi folks, the template might be the same but the host is different so I hope you’re loading faster and without issue. While you’re here don’t forget to check out Juliette’s other pieces and

Hope to see you again soon

Shut down the FISA court

Posted: December 17, 2019 by chrisharper in crime, Uncomfortable Truths
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

It’s time to get rid of the secret court created under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, better known as FISA.

The approval of warrants to investigate the Trump campaign is the latest abuse of the court, which was created in 1978 to limit spying.

A FISA warrant is one of the most aggressive searches, authorizing the FBI “to conduct, simultaneous telephone, microphone, cell phone, email, and computer surveillance of the U.S. person target’s home, workplace, and vehicles,” as well as “physical searches of the target’s residence, office, vehicles, computer, safe deposit box, and U.S. mails,” as a FISA court decision noted. 

Even more important, the FISA court is extremely deferential, allowing about 99 percent of all warrant requests.

But there’s more. The FISA court has a long history of abuse. 

James Bovard, the author of Attention Deficit Democracy, provided some of the details:

–In 2002, the FISA court revealed that FBI agents made false or misleading claims in 75 cases.

–In 2005, FISA Chief Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly proposed requiring FBI agents to swear to the accuracy of the information they presented. That never happened because it could have “slowed such investigations drastically,” the Washington Post reported. FBI agents continued to exploit FISA secrecy to lie to the judges.

–In 2017, a FISA court decision included a 10-page litany of FBI violations, which “ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight.”

–Earlier this year, a secret FISA court ruling was released documenting the FBI’s illegal searches of vast numbers of Americans’ emails.

Keep in mind, the FISA court is closed to the public and the press, unlike almost every other court in the country. Therefore, there is virtually no oversight of the FISA court. 

The critics of the FISA court come from both sides of the political spectrum. Maybe there’s hope that this egregious example of injustice can be shut down.

Although many conservatives think the FISA court is useful in fighting terrorism, I think its abuses far outweigh its benefits.

Biden has one Trump Like Advantage

Posted: December 17, 2019 by datechguy in Uncategorized

This weekend old friend Kurt Schlichter wrote a piece about Joe Biden that is absolutely accurate:

The establishment narrative on Joe Biden is, to put it mildly, malarkey. Gropey J actually is everything the liberals accuse Donald Trump of being – bizarre, vulgar, dumb, corrupt, incompetent, and utterly unfit to be president. But yet the Creepy Veepy is so much more. In the last month, this totally not-senile, not-at-all-weird guy has assembled a track record of freaky behavior that would put mid-eighties Crispin Glover to shame. 

Like all of Kurt’s pieces it’s a lot of fun but there is something that this piece and others like it are completely missing concerning Joe Biden, something that given the last presidential election most conservatives shouldn’t be missing.

Biden’s weirdness is baked into Democrat considerations.

Consider this paragraph from my re-endorsement of Donald Trump when everyone from Paul Ryan to Stacy McCain were cutting and running:

To those who have endorsed Donald Trump, the idea that he is both boastful and vulgar has been a given, it has been factored into the equation concerning him.  Furthermore his public persona has been out there for decades and he has never pretended to be anything other than what he is.  I further suspect the voting public has already factored this into their image of Trump and it is unlikely that this revelation is going to move those who haven’t made up their minds one way or the other despite the shocked faces at CNN.

While it’s true that thanks to media efforts and the ignorance of many liberal voters there may be a few exceptions to this rule, on the whole people know who and what Joe Biden is. If you might recall during the Obama years when I was watching Morning Joe and Mr. Scarbrough was still on the side of conservatives he used to declare the the show was a zone that would be free of critiques of Joe Biden, although the put it better than I did.

Democrats know that Biden’s habits are contrary to current culture, they were even iffy twenty or thirty years ago, but when it comes to what he does he’s the political version of Sheldon Cooper. Kurt again:

Understand that Biden sees nothing wrong with this. Nothing. And that means there will be exponentially more of it. Hell, the useless DoJ under Trump won’t prosecute obvious graft. Do you think a DoJ that’s thrilled to have a fellow traveler back in the White House is going to root out Biden’s business badness? You do? Well, then meet my unicorn Chet.

You must remember that Joe Biden was 1st sent to the Senate when I was 9 years old. He is operating out of political rules that were written before the parents of most of the voters were burn, an area when if you were a liberal like Ted Kennedy you could even leave young girls to die and the media would be there to cover for you.

Moreover the actual corruption of Biden vs imagined corruption of Trump means nothing to the left. Just as in Boston they saw Nazi’s where there where none they will see nothing and/or justify everything when it comes to Biden because as far as they are concerned he is the best chance to beat Trump. And seriously do you REALLY expect the cultural left to forget that it was the supposedly devout Catholic Biden and NOT Barack Obama who forced the Democrats into a full throttled push for Gay Marriage realizing when both Obama and I did not, that when the chips were down the Black Church, like the Church of England was a cultural organization rather than a religious one and when the chips were down would choose Obama over Christ seven days a week and twice on Sunday.

Make no mistake the odds are long for Joe Biden against Trump. You have a strong economy, a president who has reached out to the black community, a record that can be directly compared to the Obama’s and a pattern of both violence and excesses that swing voters are recognizing. Biden will have a tough time and I’d not be surprised if Trump didn’t expand his Electoral victory against him

But anyone who thinks that Biden’s corruption, his creepy behavior or his seeming indifference to realty or competence is going to cost him a single vote from a left that has managed to push Nancy Pelosi into impeachment against her better judgement. Every man jack that is currently cheering for Bernie and Warren et/al will run RUN to vote for Joe Biden when the chips are down.

Trump may hit and ridicule old Joe as a person but the rest of us would be better served to be pushing his record. That is the real star of the show.

Report from Louisiana: High School Newspaper Staff Sends Message with Blank Front Page

Posted: December 16, 2019 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

By:  Pat Austin

BOSSIER CITY, LA – They say a picture “is worth a thousand words,” but perhaps sometimes no picture at all says so much more.

The front page of last week’s edition of the Airline High School newspaper was completely blank. Normally this would be a publisher’s nightmare. It is the equivalent of several minutes of dead air time on the radio.

In this case, the blank page was intentional.

The student produced newspaper originally featured a photo of students decorating a Christmas tree; one student was hanging an ornament that said “I love Jesus.” The ornaments were made by students who were describing what Christmas means to them.

The student newspaper is printed, basically at cost, by the Bossier Press-Tribune, for the school. When the faculty advisor realized that the central photo contained a religious message, a call was made to “stop the presses” until the school board attorney had been consulted.

The Bossier School system has learned to be cautious about such things. In 2018, the system was sued by Americans United for Separation of Church and State for “widespread unconstitutional promotion of Christianity throughout Bossier Parish, La public schools,” including, but not limited to student led prayer at graduation ceremonies, choir performances that include Christian songs, and promotion of Christianity through the athletic programs. The school system had to remove advertising from ChristFit gym from the endzone of the football field because their logo includes a cross and a scripture citation.

The lawsuit was settled in March, 2019, after the Bossier School Board agreed to revise its policy regarding religious expression.

After the Bossier Press stopped the presses on the Airline High newspaper last week, the attorney advised that the first page of the paper with the offending photograph should be replaced. Rather than replace the photo, or the entire page, the newspaper staff elected to send a message by running an entirely blank front page. No masthead, no explanation, no nothing.  Blank. Silent.

Randy Brown, publisher of the Bossier Press-Tribune, brought the matter to the public’s attention when he wrote an opinion piece in his own newspaper about the incident. Brown, saying that he was “brought to tears” by this, wrote, “In the Airline school newspaper situation, the bottom line is that while someone else’s First Amendment rights were upheld, the rights of the majority of the students were violated. In this case, the voice of Christianity was silenced.”

It is clear that the students wanted to send a message with the blank page. Other solutions were available such as replacing the photo, revising the page, or even blurring the message on the ornament. Many in the community applaud the blank page statement while others contend that the students were not censored, calling it “preemptive self-victimization.”

That may be a little harsh given the recent lawsuit and the microscope under which the system now operates.

Randy Brown was even criticized on social media by some people for his “emotional and propaganda filled” op-ed.

The Christmas season is obviously a Christian holiday and there are a lot of people who feel like that is under attack.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being tolerant and inclusive but that is a two way street, and many Christians feel persecuted, including, perhaps the student newspaper staff at Airline High School.

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

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