Category Archives: Uncategorized

Treat Government Like an App?

Uncategorized,

Thinking out loud:

Try thinking about law as the “source code” of an app called “government”.

It’s difficult to make a “hard fork” of the source code or write a new app from scratch that does “the same thing but better” with similar resources, but if the source code is a mess, the app is not going to work for all, or even most users.

The background, intention, language and timing of a contribution of source code and its contributor matters greatly in how that piece of source code is written and how it functions in the app. Trash in, trash out.

If one doesn’t plan out the goal or vision for the app and program the app with this vision in mind, you get an app that is messy and resource-intensive.

Just because the app presently attracts a commanding number of users doesn’t mean that the app is still the best in it’s class, only that it attracted its greatest number of users when it was the most viable compared to the other options. Now, most may only use it because it is what most of their friends and family may use or have used for a long time.

That app can always fail its users in some way, even if it’s a one-time massive screw-up. And if another app offers a better system at that moment, the formerly-dominant app will lose users and market share to the newer, better-featured app.

From Digg to Reddit. From Friendster to Myspace to Facebook. From IE to Chrome. From this government order to the next constitutional order.

A bit of a background: there’s a city council special election in LA today, pitting a biking rights activist, Josef Bray-Ali, against incumbent Gil Cedillo. It came out today that Bray-Ali, who has touted his progressive bonafides in the run-up to the election, has been a frequent poster to far-right and racist forums on Voat and the misogynist “Red Pill” forum on Reddit.

But this article from an activist in this council district talks about his past problematic behavior, both online and offline, against those who advocate for intersectional justice in biking rights advocacy.

African-Americans and the Eternal War Between the States and the Feds

Politics, Uncategorized,

Vent:

I wish White conservatives and libertarians could understand that African-Americans are perhaps most skeptical to this constant tug of war between federal and state governments.

We don’t really see state governments as the arbiter of liberty against the federal monster that they’re made out to be by White conservatives and White libertarians.

People like us have never been in the position of a majority clinging jealously, desperately to their corner of regional power against federal will.

I wish they could explain to us why state government autonomy should be as important and obsessive to us as it is to them, even at the expense of healthcare and other human services which are taken for granted elsewhere but which horrify the sensibilities of federalist ideologues in this country.

We can understand the role of cities, counties and federal governments. You have Black mayors, aldermen/councilmembers and county execs and commissioners all over the country within the limit of your typical majority-Black municipality. We have Black congressmembers from numerous regions of mostly-urban and some rural import.

But states? Governors? States usually do their damnedest to screw us over. States have never been the friend of Black people in this country. States don’t have much of a purpose to us except as a double-enforcer of government violence, as an expression of suburban and rural anxiety about the “crime-infested” urban locales, as a burdensome middleman between us and the federal government. States lease the majority of prisons in this country to the highest bidder and execute the vast majority of death row inmates.

If all states were abolished tomorrow and this country became a centralized, unitary republic, Black Americans wouldn’t miss the states nor their power over our lives. Not Georgia, not Alabama, not California, not Illinois. No more Electoral College to placate the rural areas.

We’d have to deal with a much closer relationship between the federal government and cities, between feds and counties. Mayors wouldn’t have to go through the state to receive federal help, nor would feds have to go through states to intervene in municipal affairs.

this may yield some unintended consequences, but I think I can live with those better than this terrible system we have now.

But in the meantime, I simply can’t sympathize with, nor understand, this constant need for distance between state and federal government when it comes to the governance of individual citizens. It’s harming the American working class as a whole, and minority suspect classes (like those of us who did not “immigrate” to this country) in greater intensity. It is harming the accountability of this federal government to the citizenry while hiding the hand of state-level fiefdoms in depriving the citizenry of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

You know what I saw a lack of last year?

1-on-1 video debates/discussions between the most hardcore of both Hillary supporters and Bernie supporters.

We continue to litigate last year in remote textual debates, but not in person, not in real time.

We’re talking about impeachment when we don’t even have fully-acceptable candidates to lead Dems to a majority in Congress.

Get your shit together, progressives and liberals. talk to each other! Reach out!

Legalizing Weed Leaves the Glass Half-Full

Politics, Uncategorized, , , , ,

I think the states where initiatives and referendums are legal – most of which are out West – will see the greatest advancements against criminal justice abuses in the coming years.

I can’t see Georgia or most other Southern states legalizing recreational marijuana anytime soon. Florida could, since they almost did not long ago.

I’d say that legalizing marijuana and de-felonizing state drug laws is the great cross-racial, cross-religious, cross-class criminal justice struggle of the moment.

But even as more states out West legalize possession and regulate distribution, the racial disparity has persisted in Colorado and Washington with police now targeting predominately young Black/Latino male street dealers for felony distribution instead of possession. I expect a similar report from California in the near future now that weed is legal there.

If racial justice, economic justice and marijuana legalization can intersect anywhere, it’s at this location. Street sales need to be decriminalized, amnesty should be granted to past arrestees, taxes should be temporarily reduced to undercut the underground market, and arrestees should be provided job counseling.

I want to see 0 arrests for anything marijuana-related, 0 people denied jobs for anything​ marijuana-related, 0 people having to sell weed on the street to feed their family.

For a minute after Sessions announced his Drug War ramp-up, I was thinking that this would be a good time for us descendants of slaves to flee America.

Then I saw that this is targeted to federal prosecutors. Meanwhile, the sort of guidance he’s giving at the federal level is the statutory guidance given at the state level to put the majority of drug offenders in state prisons (both for and non-profit).

For the vast majority of drug offenders behind bars, I’m thinking that not much will change except for a more yawning dearth of federal help toward release or exhoneration.

At Furry Weekend Atlanta this year, there was a panel on character psychology in #Zootopia. During Q&A, someone in the audience mentioned that the way that #GideonGrey, the fox who abused #JudyHopps as a kid, gave his apology to Judy as an adult sounded like someone who graduated from a 10-step anger management program and was reciting his apology from a script.

that’s something I think we’ll see from #AlexanderDowning in the future after he’s been shaken enough from the aftermath of his rage on South Padre Beach. He has a rap sheet with domestic violence and violence against seniors.

I’m FB-friends with so many movers and shakers, people with interesting opinions, people who I haven’t met yet but might someday, people who are new to the structure and layout of politics, people who are (or will be, or have long been) present at the tables of power but not letting it get to your heads, friends who don’t even like my other friends (or me?) due to seemingly-minor political differences and beefs, people who’ve employed or worked with me in multiple campaigns or have yet to do so.

And all at a time and situation like this.

I don’t know what will happen in the coming weeks or months. I don’t know if I’m ready to see all of this play out, or the mess that we’ll end up having to clean up. I’ll have to be part of a generation which experienced early adulthood under such a regime as this, and we may not see anything like this for decades afterward.

I still feel young to all of this, like I’m not able to walk in shoes of any of your sizes.

But I’m glad to be connecting with ya’ll, whenever or wherever it matters.

#vent