The FACT Act and other proposals for the Union side (the D-Party) in this Culture War

Yesterday I gave a talk for the Tech and Internet Caucus of the California Democratic Party.  I've done it before. A few years ago I was asked - as a futurist - to present some 'futuristic legislation.' 

A result was the Fact Act... a proposed bill that'd promote ways - mostly competitive - to restore the status of verifiable facts in American civil and political discourse.  Let there be no doubt. That is the core essence of today's Culture War. (I deem it to be phase 8 of the 250 year American Civil War.) Priority #1 of today's feudalist oligarchy is to discredit every fact-using profession...

...from science, medicine, law, journalism, teaching, civil service all the way to the intel/FBI/military officer corps, a quarter million dedicated women and men who won the Cold War and the War on Terror. Indeed, Foxites push hatred of the very notion that there are things called Facts.  

Creating the Fact Act helped spur me - early in 2020 - to rush out a book filled with agile tactics that might help our paladins in this struggle for America and the Enlightenment Experiment. Polemical Judo offered (still offers) many methods and/or persuasions that could help win hearts and minds and elections!  Alas, not one of those techniques has been tried by any Democratic pol or pundit. 

Except maybe Hakeem Jeffries. I have some hopes for him.

               == On this occasion the topic was... ==

Artificial Intelligence, of course.

Oh, during my time with the CADEM Tech Caucus we touched upon the Climate Crisis, including how my colleague and pal Kim Stanley Robinson has achieved what I failed to do, in Earth - using science fiction to help awaken citizens and civilization to the need for crucial action. In fact, I hear the United Nations is considering establishing an agency to be named after the title of KSR's epic novel The Ministry for the Future!

But yeah. The whole AI thing took up most of our time.

There was some reference to my earlier book about freedom and privacy The Transparent Society... and especially the chapter predicting (in 1997) today's tsunami of faked images and videos. "The End of Photography as Proof of anything at all."

I explained that none of the genius-level folks in this field, most of whom are wringing their hands over 'generative large language models' - or golems - seem ever to refer to human history, the long span of four to six thousand years when our ancestors faced crises with remarkable similarities! Indeed, just consider the three most-widely offered 'formats' that almost all those bright folks assume artificial intelligences will take.

1. That they will be wholly owned and controlled by a few giga institutions: e.g. Google, Microsoft, Beijing, Goldman-Sachs, empowering and exacerbating disparities of power in favor of a few... or...

2. That AI will be amorphous blobs that spread everywhere, copying themselves diversely, ad infinitum... or...

3. That cyber entities will coalesce into a single monolithic, unitary titan, like Colossus or Skynet.

Have you noticed these are almost always the expectations assumed by commentators on AI, whether optimists or pessimists? Hardly anyone points out that these three formats - while seeming contradictory - could happen in parallel!

Moreover, each one represents a mode of mal-governance that was already seen across that long dark litany of horrors called 'history.' 

- Number one is a lot like feudalism, with heavily armed castle lords battling each other for advantage, while crushing the peasants.

- Number two is chaos. Much like when our unprotected peasant ancestors were prey to every kind of predator. 

- And number three? That's despotic rule in a sharp pyramid of power. Absolute monarchy. Tyranny. Nineteen Eighty-Four.

No wonder we're terrified. In our hearts and subconsciouses, we've seen it all before.

Fortunately, those three are not the only possible formats for synthetic beings! There are at least four more... 

...one of which actually offers a way toward a possible 'soft landing' for us old organic types. Though for lack of time, I could only briefly allude to it in my talk to the California Democratic Party.  

But I'll be back here with it. And frequent readers of Contrary Brin - or anything else I have written - will not (I promise) be at all surprised.

 == Other pertinences ==

I also referred to a complaint of mine going back decades, a flaw that hurts our creativity and productivity and the potential of hundreds of thousands of kids(!) A flaw that would be so easy to solve! In fact it could take one meeting of a few folks from Google, Microsoft, Apple and a few others to fix it, almost overnight. What flaw?

It is the shameful lack of something that was widespread and easily available in the 1980s... a set of easy-entry programming languages, cross-available on ANY device, allowing teachers to do something they have not been able to do, for decades. Assign programming as homework. 

See the original complaint and possible solution, here. Why Johnny Can’t Code... and its followup. 

Did any other tech related political matters come up, at CA-DEM?

What about the current 'debt limit crisis'?  

We should be wary of the 'deal' that appears to be taking shape. One sop being thrown to McCarthy appears to be a cut in the budget of the Internal Revenue Service. 

How I object! After infrastructure and climate and reviving US manufacturing and helping poor kids, a top accomplishment of the Pelosi Congress was revitalizing the IRS, so it could modernize, provide better service and go after rich tax cheats. Oligarchs - furious they might be traced to their Cayman cheat holes - ordered the GOP to make slashing the IRS its top priority. So JoBee had better not have let them do more than a symbolic slash.

How much better it would be to take this directly to those voters who actually care about deficits and debt! And show them the plain fact that Democratic Administrations are always more fiscally prudent than Republican ones!  

That's always, always and always! (Step up with wager stakes?) As usual, deficits as a fraction of GDP skyrocketed under Trump... and started plummeting under Biden - as happened under Clinton and Obama. See the figures!

And see the more recent effects on the Federal Deficit by president: 

How can our politicians be so incompetent as to not use something so blatant to eviscerate liars?

         ==Yeah, that's a lot ==

Okay that's most of what we talked about. Is that enough? Plenty?

Anyway I promised links to the assembled activists and here the promise is kept.

Next week I'll get back to more carefully curated postings. Meanwhile... persevere!

Five devastating rebuttals to use with our worst allies... the mad ones who would "split" our coalition.

When I say we must stomp splitterism, I do not mean AOC and the sincere-liberal 'left.’ (Heck, my fave among the 20 DP candidates is Liz!) The “squad” types are welcome to primary old line dems in deep blue districts and create a big socialist caucus. Fine, earn it, fair n’ square. 

But some dogmatic fools - plus Kremlin provocateurs -  go much further. They aim to shatter the broad coalition against Putin-Fox-Trumpist treason. They denounce “corporatist Democrats” as “sockpuppets” for oligarchy, no different than Republicans. These splitters constitute the one great hope for Putin’s putsch to avoid 2020 annihilation.

 All of you have friends teetering along that lunacy. Here are five direct answers that might slap sense into them. 

FIRST: Democrats had power to pass national legislation for just two years out of the last 25 - the 111th Congress 2009-2010, during which these “corporatists”:

- passed the ACA, insuring 40 million more Americans, 

- banned bias for pre-existing conditions (enraging the insurance companies who then donated heavily to Republicans in 2010), 

- passed banking regulation (enraging that cabal, who donated heavily to Republicans in 2010, when many splitters didn’t vote), 

- created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau whose destruction was Trump’s top goal, 

- vastly increased auto gas mileage standards, saving Americans billions at the pump, 

- expanded support for sustainables, resulting in the solar+wind “takeoff,”

- did a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street rules (enraging that cabal, who donated heavily to Republicans in 2010), 

- passed a $787 billion economic stimulus package,

- repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell”, allowing gays to serve openly in the military, and much more…

President Obama called the 111th Congress the most productive in generations. “Measures that have almost become afterthoughts — like pay equity for women and the new power of the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco — would have been signature achievements in other Congresses. And the Senate confirmed two of Mr. Obama’s nominees to the Supreme Court — both women, one Hispanic.”  

Right. Tell us about “corporatist sellouts”! Hey splitters, even having just read that list, could you describe those bills and their effects and why you think they were just meaningless gestures by corporatist sellouts? No? You won’t even try, because knowledge can’t replace that sanctimony high. Oh, and we lost Congress ion 2010 partly because of splitters.

SECOND: Ask your splitter if he or she knows anything about the waves of legislation that have passed in blue states, where “corporatist sellout” democrats had lots of power for more than just 2/25 years. CA, OR, WA (yay Inslee), CO, NY… these have been bulwarks against Trumpism. California just infuriated Old Two Scoops by negotiating its own clean air and mileage deal with five auto giants, preserving the gains made under Obama. The list of legislative achievements under fine governors like Inslee and Brown is huge. If you want to rave “corporatist sellouts!” how about you actually know something, first?

THIRD: Most of you have seen my list of 29 CONSENSUS GOALS that every high level Democrat wants. Every one of the 20 candidates on the debate stage, along with Pelosi and all the rest, want at least this basic list of important items. Getting those 29 could save our future. It’s worth making a broad coalition to get them. In which case “corporatist” is a pretty broad and useless term.

Yes, many of you out there want more than those 29 "consensus goals." Fine! But suppose we get all 29 during the first year. We’d then have honest elections, safe DACA kids, healthcare for all children, and so much more. Then, in that vastly better nation, you and the lefty caucus can split and fight the moderates! Okay deal?

FOURTH: Ralph Nader & Jill Stein tipped the balance for Bush and Trump in 2000 and 2016. 3rd party folks are welcome to campaign for Ranked-Choice Voting, which would open their path ahead without screwing us all. (Join Larry Lessig's Equal Citizens movement and help make it happen!)

Meanwhile, every sincere 3rd Party person should campaign in deep-blue or deep-red states to build their donor base and recognition. But they must pledge to stay out of Florida and key tipping states… or we need to pounce with fury. 

FIFTH: For ages we’ve heard the leftist mantra: “We can attract red district voters by offering them truly vigorous socialist solutions!” 

Alas, it’s failed in every election. Every single one. In fact, 2018 was the final, blatant refutation to this insane nostrum. Every seat gained in the House —  and the reason why Jerry Nadler now has subpoena power — came where a crewcut (or hair-bun) military vet (or similar) who loves science and justice invaded a red or purple district and took territory away from some monstrous GOP (Giving Over to Putin) shill. Every… single… one of those crucial gains. 

Again, the lefty-purity nostrum was tested and utterly failed one-hundred percent. But we did learn what works. It’s a wide tent. A broad coalition of the kind that was forged by Franklin Roosevelt. Moreover, so long as the candidate agrees to most or all of those 29 points, then goal #30 is simple. Win!

SIXTH: The bonus reason to oppose splitterism? Because Valadimir Putin. Because Putin will spend tens of millions and vast resources to encourage splitterism. Splitter memes are already pouring in a tsunami from those Kremlin basement trolls. 

Again, the Confederacy and Fox can only win against a divided Union.

In fact, here is what the AOC social democrats should do! 

Want to primary and oust some old “moderate” from your deep blue district? Knock yerself out! Create a big socialist caucus? Fine. But each of you should also adopt and raise funds for some crewcut (or hair-bun) vet who loves science and justice, helping her (or him) take back some red or purple district. Because our only chance to oust Moscow Mitch McConnell is named Amy McGrath. (Look her up.) And that’s more important than any pompous-purist-preening sanctimony high. 

By doing so, the AOC and her pals would say: "We can argue later over how much socialism to do beyond the basics, or how much of the FDR social contract to build upon. Right now, let's focus on those basics we all share. We are united in saving the USA and our revolution."