The U.S. Census may be the most consequential data set in America. It determines how political representation is apportioned in Washington and how trillions of dollars in federal funding are allocated. But the data contained in the Census shouldn't always be taken at face value. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Galen Druke speaks with historian Dan Bouk about his book, "Democracy's Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and how to Read Them."
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Thwarting conflict profiteers to save the republic
Dec 20, 2024
Over several decades, fringe ideas have grown in popularity to reach the crescendo of noise we have today. Truth and facts are routinely dismissed by half the country (progressive and conservative!) and societal trust is very low. We may be witnessing the decline of the American Empire, or on a more optimistic note it could be the clearing we need for the United States to live into the promise of the founders — a multiracial, pluralistic democratic republic.
At the heart of the matter there lies a disjointed group of savvy marketing people who have created a highly profitable business by dividing society against itself. This “business of breaking” was perfectly timed to take advantage of many societal-changing innovations like the internet, email, social media and most recently artificial intelligence. Ironically It is the democratization of information where discerning truth from lies became more difficult.
The business of breaking (us apart) first came into public view as a talk-radio phenomenon in the 1990s with entertaining rhetoric. It was then supercharged with email, social media and news platforms that shape our world view. With the arrival of the digital age, fringe believers and societal cynics who would otherwise have remained isolated from each other were connected, allowing them to amass formal power and change society. As a result, we have witnessed a growing community of misfits and malcontents become mainstream, while most community members are everyday Americans trying to get by with a little help from their friends. A few are the social influencers and content creators, which we will call conflict profiteers, who are shaping the stories we tell about ourselves and dividing us to “win” at a game of money and influence.
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Conflict profiteers have found willing followers for their messages of grievance, victimhood, blame and shame, righteous indignation, condescension, and flagrant disrespect for institutions like the government, police, corporations and social services. They are laughing all the way to the bank with their profits and influence. Most conflict profiteers share a pearl of truth in their storytelling, but their rhetoric is carefully crafted to attract and keep their audience’s attention through unsavory means. A 2009 expose from a talk show producer reveals the dark underbelly of what he learned in the 1990-2000s.
The First Amendment is often used as a shield from accountability with claims of “censorship” protecting content that would accurately be called disinformation or propaganda. Conflict profiteers are defending their right to lie to their audience. This perversion of our First Amendment is only now seeing accountability in civil cases against Alex Jones, Rudy Giuliani and Fox News. Despite these landmark awards to those harmed by disinformation, the business of breaking us apart is alive and growing in profitability. It’s time to disrupt their business model, using coordination, education and disincentives.
The business of breaking has interrelated components that are woven through our American lives. The primary three components are:
- Conflict profiteers who generate mis-, dis- and mal-information (MDM) to generate revenue and do so under the guise of First Amendment protections.
- Big tech uses algorithm programming and AI integration to optimize and rapidly spread popular information to gain attention and subsequent advertising revenue without consideration of context, facts and truthfulness.
- Adversaries of the United States, specifically Russia, China and Iran in the 2024 election cycle, who provide MDM and funding for conflict profiteers to spread their propaganda and take advantage of the algorithms.
Together, these three proponents are weakening Americans' belief in democracy and willingness to participate in civic life. While we have spent a decade (or more) hand-wringing and building strategies to blunt the effects, we have not yet considered how to solve our shared challenge through economic means.
It is time to be proactive and approach the business of breaking with business solutions
When considering the economics that have allowed the conflict profiteers and big tech to prosper, several points of impact are needed to change incentives and eliminate profiteering.
- Monetary: Change the incentive. Conflict profiteers are in it for the money and influence. How could they make money by strengthening democratic principles, increasing social cohesion and providing truthful information? An example in Africa paid poachers to guard the animals they formerly hunted for profit.
- Health: Work with big tech to increase healthy human factors into algorithms and AI interfaces that also provides financial benefits to their companies. Disincentivize “attention” economy drivers.
- Security: Publicize government sanctions to foreign states and nationals for their participation in and allowance of disinformation campaigns around U.S. politics. Prosecute individuals as a deterrent to others.
- Societal cohesion: Promote and reward media literacy, developing networks of “Trolls4Good” to counter any lingering MDM.
Who is working on these or other plans to disrupt the business of breaking? When asked a series of questions, Perplexity AI offered these answers:
Several organizations and initiatives are already working on implementing strategies to disrupt the business model of divisive content creators:
- Algorithm adjustments: Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have made efforts to adjust their algorithms to reduce the spread of divisive content.
- Demonetization policies: YouTube has implemented stricter content policies that demonetize certain types of controversial content.
- Transparency in sponsorships: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the United States requires influencers to disclose sponsored content clearly.
- Promote quality over quantity: Organizations like the Stevens Initiative focus on fostering cross-cultural understanding and developing critical skills through virtual exchanges.
- User education: MediaSmarts, Canada's not-for-profit centre for digital media literacy, advocates for digital literacy education to address the digital divide.
- Alternative monetization models: Platforms like Patreon and Substack offer alternative ways for creators to monetize content based on subscriptions rather than engagement.
- Collaborative content initiatives: The Reunited States Project (RSP) uses various media to showcase organizations and thought leaders who embody the principle of "out of many, one".
- AI-powered content moderation: Companies like Cortico, in cooperation with the MIT Media Lab, are building systems to analyze and connect community conversations at scale.
These initiatives demonstrate ongoing efforts to address the challenges posed by divisive content creation and promote more constructive online environments.
You can see thesources that Perplexity AI used to create a list of actively engaged entities working to disrupt the business of breaking. Upon reviewing the list, only one organization in strengthening democracy space, via Bridge Alliance and The Fulcrum, is listed: The Reunited States Project, a documentary film that references the bridging community and was filmed in 2018-2019 and released in 2021.
I end this essay with two questions, for which I’d love to hear from you.
- Do you know anyone who is actively working to disrupt the business of breaking?
- Are you willing to invest effort or resources to support disrupting the business of breaking?
Please be in touch, as our nation depends upon us. Email debilyn@AmericanFuture.us.
Molineaux is the lead catalyst for American Future, a research project that discovers what Americans prefer for their personal future lives. The research informs community planners with grassroots community preferences. Previously, Molineaux was the president/CEO of The Bridge Alliance.
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A man treads on a picture of Syria's ousted president, Bashar al-Assad, as people enter his residence in Damascus on Dec. 8.
Omar Haj Kadour/AFP via Getty Images
With Assad out, this is what we must do to help save Syria
Dec 20, 2024
This was a long day coming, and frankly one I never thought I’d see.
Thirteen years ago, Syria’s Bashar Assad unleashed a reign of unmitigated terror on his own people, in response to protests of his inhumane Ba’athist government.
Over the course of the civil war, he unabashedly committed the worst atrocities imaginable — barrel bombing schools and hospitals, torturing children and the elderly, releasing sarin gas on toddlers and infants. His war on his own people is estimated to have killed 500,000 Syrians, 50,000 of them children. Upwards of 35,000 have been “disappeared” or imprisoned. Millions more have been displaced.
For 13 years, a small cohort of journalists, war reporters, aid groups, and lawmakers tried everything we could to not let these atrocities go unnoticed or forgotten. But it often felt like screaming into a void of indifference.
That indifference is the world’s burden to share, and will always be a tragedy on top of a tragedy — inexplicable, indefensible, unforgivable.
But now that Assad the Butcher is finally gone, we owe it to the Syrian people to correct our moral failures.
The unexpected fall of Assad has brought Syrians hope for the first time in more than 50 years, but it also opens the door to some potentially dangerous unknowns that must be addressed by world leaders. There are two immediate concerns: Assad’s chemical weapons and the state’s Captagon production.
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Assad used chemical weapons, including sarin and chlorine barrel bombs, against his own people on multiple occasions. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has spent more than 10 years trying to determine exactly which ones the regime still possesses, with no luck. Now is the time to find them and hold Assad accountable for their use, and more importantly, dispose of them properly so they don’t end up in the hands of terrorist factions circling Syria.
Similarly, Captagon is a dangerous synthetic stimulant that’s been mass-produced and trafficked in Syria by the Assad regime since the war began and Syria’s economy imploded. The drug brought in billions for Assad. But Syria cannot rebuild as a narco-state, and containing Captagon is a national security and public safety must.
Then, Syria will need, well, everything — the rebuilding of schools, roads, and hospitals; a functioning government; the means by which to welcome back millions of refugees; protection from vulture groups looking to exploit the new vacuum.
We not only have a role to play in all of this; it’s in our own economic and national security interests to ensure Syria’s rebirth as a democratic partner in the region. And we have the leverage to do it.
In April 2011, the U.S. issued its first sanctions against Syria and many more followed. Eventually, the U.S. would prohibit any new investment in Syria, embargo its oil, impose travel bans, freeze the assets of a number of Syrian entities and persons, and prohibit the export of any U.S. goods and services. The European Union, Australia, the Arab League, Turkey, as well as multiple non-EU countries would follow suit, plunging Syria into economic darkness.
Along with our allies, we should engage in talks to lift these sanctions, and in fact pour resources back into Syria under a checklist of conditions. Syria must draft a new constitution. It must conduct democratic elections. It must release all prisoners of war. It must allow refugees to return home. It must allow outside agents to dispose of its chemical weapons and Captagon.
There is so much more that a new Syria will have to do to regain its stability and economic footholds, to rebuild its infrastructure, to heal its people. It has a long road ahead, after suffering down a long road of Assad’s terror.
We don’t need to send troops, nor do we need to envision our role as nation builders. This isn’t a heavy lift for the U.S., nor will it put incoming President Trump in a politically compromising or “interventionist” position. We have a golden opportunity to help give the Syrian people what they’ve long been demanding and deserve — a free and fair democracy. That’s good for Syria, and good for America and our allies.
We can’t go back and intervene when perhaps we should have. We can’t bring half a million innocent people back to life. We can’t undo the torture and horrors Bashar Assad brazenly unleashed on his people for years. And we can’t wash the stain of indifference off of our hands.
But we can help Syria rebuild. And after years of inaction and apathy, it’s quite simply the least we can do.
Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
©2024 S.E. Cupp. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.Keep ReadingShow less
Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, with his son X, depart the Capitol on Dec. 5.
Craig Hudson for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Will DOGE promote efficiency for its own sake?
Dec 19, 2024
This is the first entry in a series on the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory board created by President-elect Donald Trump to recommend cuts in government spending and regulations. DOGE, which is spearheaded by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, has generated quite a bit of discussion in recent weeks.
The goal of making government efficient is certainly an enviable one indeed. However, the potential for personal biases or political agendas to interfere with the process must be monitored.
As DOGE suggests cuts to wasteful spending and ways to streamline government operations, potentially saving billions of dollars, The Fulcrum will focus on the pros and cons.
We will not shy away from DOGE’s most controversial proposals and will call attention to dangerous thinking that threatens our democracy when we see it. However, in doing so, we are committing to not employing accusations, innuendos or misinformation. We will advocate for intellectual honesty to inform and persuade effectively.
The new Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory board to be headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is designed to cut resources and avoid waste — indeed to save money. Few can argue this isn't a laudable goal as most Americans have experienced the inefficiencies and waste of various government agencies.
However, any administration, whether Republican or Democrat, that wants to implement measures to improve federal efficiency needs some account of how efficiency is related to other moral values that are central to democracy and what the trade-offs are between different values and policies.
Efficiency is best regarded as an instrumental value, whereas liberty (and equality) are best regarded as intrinsic values. If the federal government strives to promote a particular view of economic liberty, then there are clearly more or less efficient ways to do so. Yet the public deserves to know what precise view of economic liberty is being promoted — and what concept of economic equality is also being promoted.
Given recent comments by Musk and Ramaswamy, it is difficult to not be skeptical about the personal bias and extremist view of economic liberty that is implicit in what they are proposing. In an interview with Maria Bartiromo last month, Ramaswamy said DOGE will pursue major reductions in the federal bureaucracy that could result in some agencies being shuttered. "We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright," Ramaswamy said. "We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated. We expect massive cuts among federal contractors and others who are over-billing the federal government."
Rather than starting with bold conclusions before the process has even started, the parties involved should acknowledge that different moral conceptions give different places to the value of efficiency. Moral conceptions do not all have the same structure, in the same way that houses do not all have the same structure. The public needs to know what moral values underlie the purpose of DOGE.
Some meat and potatoes political and economic theory would help the roll out.
Very conservative economic positions in the liberal tradition — classical liberalism and laissez-faire economics, Robert Nozick's political philosophy, and Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman's economic philosophy — put efficiency on a pedestal. That’s because free markets and basic economic liberty are promoted, and promoting these values relies heavily on efficiency.
Thus implementing a laissez-faire economy requires that the federal government plays a modest role in the economy overall. Above all, it ensures that contractual rights are upheld and individual political and civil liberties are not denied. For the economy to lead to full employment and economic growth, in this view, it is therefore necessary for wages and prices to be determined by the free market without intrusive government rules, regulations and a system of redistributing income and wealth.
The government needs to be efficient and so too do businesses in particular need to be efficient. Products need to be produced and services need to be rendered in efficient ways.
Liberal democratic views on the progressive side, on the other hand, hold that efficiency does not achieve the same level of importance and that the federal government should be called upon to intervene in the private sector. This intervention is necessary in order to redistribute income, wealth and power so that the least advantaged improve their economic position and those in the middle do also.
To the progressives — like John Rawls, whose 1971 book “A Theory of Justice” is a landmark statement of a broadly egalitarian democratic system of government — although civil and political liberties are to be promoted equally, economic goods are not. Social and economic inequalities, Rawls argued, would be "arranged so that they work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society" and also "attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity."
For the progressive, or even centrist, we must be watchful that efficiency doesn’t become the end of actions by the federal government. In truth, even Donald Trump and his team must regard efficiency as a means to an end. Still, the public, and presumably Congress and possibly the courts, needs to know what the end of the federal government is.
As DOGE moves forward, the architects should heed the words of management guru Peter Drucker: “I am not in favor of big government. I am not in favor of small government. I am in favor of effective government.”
Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework," has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016. Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
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Invest Appalachia supports community economic development projects and businesses across the Appalachian counties of six states.
Sean Pavone/Getty Images
A new blueprint for financing community development – Part III
Dec 19, 2024
In Part 2 of this three-part series focused on why and how the community development finance field needs to reframe the role of capital technicians and the market, rebalance power relationships, and prioritize community voice. Today we continue that discussion.
Invest Appalachia
Invest Appalachia (IA) is another strong example of how to rebalance power between financial expertise and community voice. On the surface, IA can be described in traditional finance terms—a community investment fund similar to a CDFI that has raised $35.5 million in impact investments and nearly $3 million in grants for flexible and risk-absorbing capital. IA officially opened its doors at the end of 2022. In its first year of operation, it deployed $6.3 million in blended capital (flexible loans alongside recoverable grants) to support community economic development projects and businesses across the Appalachian counties of six states: Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio. Another $6.5 million was deployed in the first eight months of 2024.
However, IA has chosen to operate in a new and interesting way. As a nonprofit, it serves as the manager and general partner for the IA fund. Rather than becoming a CDFI itself, IA, like LTR, contracted with a CDFI, Locus, as the IA fund’s investment manager. Locus supports back-office functions of the IA fund, including portfolio management, underwriting, and coordinating third-party service provision (e.g., servicing, accounting, and administration).
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IA also holds itself to a high standard regarding both collaboration and community governance. IA’s partnership-first approach and robust network of relationships taps into the existing community investment ecosystem of philanthropy, CDFIs, and community development nonprofits. A self-described regionally representative organization, IA relies on an interlocking set of stakeholder governance structures to set strategic direction, make funding decisions, approve investments from the IA fund, and provide direct community accountability for adhering to IA’s mission and values. Its board of directors includes regional stakeholders with a diversity of identities and perspectives representing CDFIs, foundations, and community organizations. A grassroots CAC includes community leaders and grassroots community organizations that represent diverse populations. The investment committee is a group of values-oriented investment professionals that includes board members, CDFI partners, and national perspectives. Board members and members of the investment committee are approved by the board, with input from staff, while current members of the CAC nominate and approve new members.
IA’s website states, “Our investment strategy, pipeline, impact goals, and governance are guided and grounded by place-based community stakeholders.” This power shift in who directs capital strategies—from technically expert lenders to those who focus on community priorities—is crucial for moving away from the traditional paradigm of market, scale, and sustainability. Innovative financial structures can meet community needs that traditional capital investors cannot, while the sort of formalized community governance that IA has offers an added layer of assurance that community voice has an equal and enduring place at the table.
In less than two years, IA’s funding has served 115 counties, aided more than 50,000 people (most of them in rural, coal-impacted, or low-income areas), and helped secure an additional $33 million in grants and loans from other funders and lenders. Almost 80 percent of its loans were possible only because of IA’s flexible terms and funding structures—without IA, those projects would have struggled or failed to move forward. Looking ahead, IA has plans to pilot new innovative investment approaches (including collaborating with the federal government and nonprofit intermediaries to use money from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund), launch a regional initiative to support community-driven downtown development, collaborate with regional partners to increase climate resilience, and continue to create new investment vehicles and raise capital for local needs that are not being addressed by the current investment ecosystem. Under this new model, investment in Appalachia will be grounded in Appalachia.
Ushering in the New
Patient, flexible leadership and funding will be needed for the field of community development finance to evolve from the principles of market, scale, and self-sufficiency and fulfill its promise of increasing equity and opportunity in historically disadvantaged communities. Philanthropy will be essential for this move, but so will public and private developers, other public- and private-sector partners, and, most important, the empowered community residents and organizations who will be in the driver’s seat.
As this transformative arc unfolds, community quarterbacks like LTR and IA will translate the wishes of community residents into creative, flexible local and regional plans to attract financial resources and enable residents to play a meaningful role in how capital is deployed. Leadership development and training organizations, like the Center for Community Investment (whose programs have provided critical support for the leaders and work of CORE, LTR, and IA), will build local capacity and share innovative models with the field to advance the paradigm shift.
Leaders in community development across sectors will need to help the field change deep-seated ways of acting and attitudes, test new approaches, make appropriate incentive and policy changes, and move from a narrow problem-oriented point of view to a systems-change perspective. The technical and political barriers to this shift are indeed substantial, but they can be overcome, as the innovative projects discussed here, from Appalachia to Southern California, demonstrate. By following these new models, the field has an opportunity to build a consensus around a new approach to financing community development, so that it can finally tackle the problems it was created to solve.
This article was first published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Read the original article
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