Guest Post: Election Results-The Next Ten Years

Originally posted by Mark Orton http://currentmatters.markorton.com/2016/11/election-results-the-next-ten-years/ on November 9, 2016

– The Morning After –

The election of Trump and the continued Republican control of both Congress and Senate guarantee that the rich will continue to get richer at the expense of the shrinking middle class and further aggravate conditions for the poor. Trickle down economics and tax subsidies will flow for the rich and corporations. The financial sector will buy its way out of the weak regulations of Dodd/Frank and lurch towards new adventures in gambling; a financial disaster will once again require the socialization of their risk at taxpayer expense.

Our infrastructure will accelerate its decline. Think bridges closed and falling down; airports with bigger delays; transit systems overcrowded and unreliable. Immigrants will be plagued if not deported. Xenophobia will be fanned regularly with extra dollops of religious persecution tossed on like whipped cream. Women, particularly poor women, will find it more difficult to access abortion and reproductive healthcare services; an outright ban could be in place by the end of the period.

Our healthcare sector will take an ever larger portion of our incomes to deliver absolutely developing world results; currently we are 34th in longevity and 38th in infant mortality despite spending more than twice per capita compared to our developed country cohort; the portion of the population without health insurance will rise as the Republicans further cripple if not eliminate the failing Obamacare.

The US military and our empire overseas will continue to consume more resources than all of our enemies and allies combined; the domestic security apparatus, already fattened by 9/11 hysteria, will become more costly, intrusive, and oppressive, especially to minorities and political activists.

All of this will happen in the name of free markets and the withering away of the state. This is, after all, what conservatives mean by “small government”.

All of this is virtually guaranteed by the stranglehold Republicans have on 30 state legislatures and the gerrymandering tools available to assure that they will run from safe seats in election after election. The results are already in on this strategy and barring some seismic shift this fix will be in when the next decennial redistricting follows the 2020 census.

Looking to the Democratic Party to be a countervailing force is not encouraging. They have been unable, perhaps more accurately unwilling, to mount an effective rallying of the majority of the poor and middle class to programs to serve their interests. They remain largely in the thrall of the same free market policies that brought Bill Clinton to power and they continue to largely mimic the free market policies of the Republicans. Clinton famously declared that “the era of big government is over” in his 1996 State of the Union. Clinton signed the Republican authored “reform” bill Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 to “end welfare as we have come to know it”. In 1999, Clinton signed several laws deregulating the financial sector; these lead directly to the mini-depression (the so-called Great Recession) of 2009 – 2015.

These are capstone events in a twenty year transformation of Democratic policy from representing at least some of the interests of the poor and middle class to largely being competitors to the Republicans for money from the rich and corporations. Democrats have not put forth a program of government action to fight for and protect the interests of the poor and middle class for decades. This is most obviously noted in their appointment of Wall St. insiders to all of the important economic management jobs in the Clinton and Obama administrations. Neither administration was able, or even sought, to face down the healthcare industry. Its share of our national income goes up every year while producing reprehensible results. Though Obamacare brought millions of people into the healthcare tent, it is now failing because it is unable to control the costs of the most expensive and least productive healthcare system in the world.

The Democrats also failed to alter US foreign policy, continuing the militaristic approach that has brought us disastrously costly wars with equally disastrous results in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor have the Democrats ended America’s longest war, the War on Drugs, started by the race baiting Richard Nixon over 40 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost or ruined by the so-called justice system while the drug industry continues to produce profits on a global scale. Nothing like persisting in a policy that has only reinforced the positions of the drug producers and distributors.

Bernie Sanders’ campaign showed that it is possible to mobilize people around their own economic and social interests. The question at the moment is where is the party that can take up this quest and conduct the long campaign necessary to overcome the political and institutional barriers over the next ten years.

Of course, given the instability of the capitalist system and the likelihood that its speculative risk taking behaviors are not under sufficient control (around the world, not just in the US) to prevent another even worse financial disaster, an upheaval of broad social disorder could easily occur. In that case, we will most likely see that the rich and corporate interests will deploy fascist solutions to remain in power. There simply are no popular political parties or forces that can compete with them.

BTW – I think I would have written substantially the same commentary if Hillary Clinton had won the election. She would have clearly had better policy positions on many social issues, but she would have faced the same situation in the Federal and state legislatures. Her economic policies, even should she really abandon her connections with Wall St. money, would be thwarted in Congress. Her track record on foreign policy, the military, and domestic security has not been encouraging of a shift to a less militarist interventionist approach.

–Mark Orton

For many years, Mark Orton was a business executive who lived in Cambridge, MA. He currently resides in Hudson (AKA Cambridge on the Hudson), NY.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award winning public relations and digital marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA. Guest commentators’ opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.

Guest Post: Mark Orton Reviews Greenwald, No Place To Hide

Joe, My friend got back to me. Her contact left the Review five years ago. Sorry. Mark

We are within days of the anniversary of the first revelations from Edward Snowden’s archive of NSA documents. The drum beat of new stories emerging from this trove continues even to this moment.¹ So, Glenn Greenwald’s book, No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Surveillance State might be greeted with a yawn, what could be new?

In fact, there is much that is new about how these stories have come to light and a very good overview of what we have learned about what Greenwald calls the US Surveillance State. This is a book in two parts. The first 89 pages read like a cross between a detective thriller and a spy story. There are hand offs of thumb drives at airport boarding gates, virgin computers, cell phones sealed off from the reach of the NSA by removing batteries or stuffed in freezers, meetings with a yet to be identified Snowden by an unsolved Rubik’s cube in hand. This part of the book also establishes who Snowden is and how he thinks and views the world and his place in it. This latter introduction of Snowden is completely consistent with the person we have already come to know through his video interviews broadcast a year ago.²

The second half (really it is 170 pages) is a well organized exploration of what has been revealed so far of the NSA’s goals and programs.

THE GIANT SUCKING SOUND – “COLLECT IT ALL”

It is chilling to understand that the internal ethos of the NSA is summed up by the phrase “collect it all” where “it” is all of the information flows in the telephone and internet in the world. As expressed in the presentation slide “New Collection Posture” from 2010, this is implemented through six strategies: “Sniff It All”, “Know It All”, “Collect It All”, “Process It All, “Exploit It All, and “Partner It All”. Even if you have been following the revelations as published in the various news sources favored with direct access to the Snowden documents, it was hard to envision quite how comprehensive the vision of the NSA is.

BUREAUCRATS DRESSED UP AS JUDGES

Greenwald reiterates the well-known fact that so-called court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, set up by congress to oversee activities of the NSA, FBI and others engaged in intercepting communications is not even an effective administrative element. He notes that in 2012 the “court” did not deny a single on of the 1789 applications. As i have argued earlier³ this so-called court lacks most of the important features that our tradition requires of a court – openness, representation of the plaintiff by a lawyer, and ability to confront accusers. The FISC is just a bunch of bureaucrats dressed up as judges.

BENIGN META DATA

Another issue that Greenwald deals with is the claim by the government and its apologists in the media and academia that the collection of meta data is not really an intrusion on privacy – the NSA is not collecting the content of the communications.(( earlier I have twice commented on this issue: “NSA Vacuuming, Meta Data, Mistaken Misleading Metaphors” and “The Uses of Metadata – an experiment you can conduct with your own life’s metadata“)) In a very telling note Greenwald repeats other privacy activists challenge to those claiming that meta data is benign that they release the meta data for all of their phone calls, emails, and other electronic communications. None have thus far taken up this challenge.

Greenwald touches on many other topics: the role of corporations, surveillance of US allies, many NSA software tools to exploit their data warehouses, privacy in human identity, and more.

In closing, Greenwald’s book is an excellent overview of the issues presented to date by the work done to understand the Snowden documents. And, it is actually a great read with its detective/spy thriller opening that engages the reader so effectively in the drama of the early days of the Snowden whistle blowing.

NSA Collecting Millions of Faces from Web Images http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/us/nsa-collecting-millions-of-faces-from-web-images.html accessed 06012014 [↩]
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-interview-videoand http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/jul/08/edward-snowden-video-interview both accessed 06012014 [↩]
“FISA Court – Not a Court – an Administrative Rubber Stamp – Bureaucrats Dressed Up as Judges” http://currentmatters.markorton.com/2013/07/fisa-court-not-a-court-an-administrative-rubber-stamp-bureaucrats-dressed-up-as-judges/ [↩]

–Mark Orton

This review was originally posted at

Current Matters

thoughts on the passing scene from Mr. Wonderful’s World

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA. Mr. Orton is a HarrisCom advisor.

Guest Post: Mark Orton on Metadata, the Government and You

Mark Orton, our friend and former Cantabridgian, now living in Hudson, NY (aka Cambridge on the Hudson), suggests that the government is not being straightforward about how the multitude of data it is collecting is being used. He recommends a new tool called “Immersion” with which you can check out just how easy it is to compile and understand your own metadata.

Mark first posted the following on July 9 at Current Matters as “The uses of metadata: an experiment you can conduct with your own life.”

—AMH

With the recent revelations of the NSA vacuum cleaner collecting metadata about every aspect of our lives1 we have been subjected to calming incantations, “We are only collecting metadata, we aren’t looking at the content”. As I (and many others) have pointed out earlier, this is complete nonsense.

Now three fellows at MIT have provided us with a web tool to visualize metadata from our own lives. If you have a Gmail account, you should trundle over to Immersion and take a look at your own metadata.

I have been using my Gmail account as my main email system for a number of years. There are four other email addresses connected to it so the graphic below presents much more than just my Gmail email address’s activity.

(click on the graphic to see it full size)

Immersion: a people-centric view of your email life

Keep in mind that the Immersion site offers a great deal of interactivity. You set sliders to see different chunks of time, pick out particular people and see how they connect to others, and much more. There are three mysterious sliders on the left, “charge”, “node”, and “link” that change the organization of the chart. I have been unable to determine exactly what they do and the MIT guys have, to my knowledge, provided no explanation. Perhaps in their cocoon on Mass Ave, they assume that everyone will know or immediately intuit the uses of these sliders.

In my case it was very easy to identify the basic clumps of my life: family and friends, Hudson business community, and the library. Then you might notice floating around the periphery are a lot of nodes without links (or only occasional ones) to anyone else. These are my clients. I don’t email most of them very often. And, excepting a referral by me for some specific business purpose they never know about the existence of others amongst my client base, therefore no links between them.

Now, having played with this a bit one gets a much more visceral sense of how important and useful metadata is. And, imagining a pool of metadata that adds telephone contacts, location data from cellphones, text messages, Facebook, LinkedIn, and financial transactions, it is easy to see how fine grained and comprehensive a picture could be constructed.

So, as noted in an earlier post, NSA Vacuuming, Meta Data, Mistaken Misleading Metaphors, the government is being disengenuous, to be mild, to describe metadata as only metadata.

Here is a view of my data for just the last year. Some people have disappeared, new ones added, and the shape of the intensity of the interactions changed. Immersion: a people-centric view of your email life=last year

We are forced to assume that they are collecting everything, emails, telephone calls, financial transactions, text messages, anything digital which is virtually every aspect of life unless you took to the woods before 2000 and have been subsisting in an entirely cash economy without any communications that re not face to face. The tangle of lies by every government official involved will not support any other sensible interpretation. [↩]

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning public relations and marketing firm located in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA.

Davis-Orton “Cambridge on the Hudson” Photo Show Adds Depth To Field

Dropped by last night’s opening at the Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, NY, where former Cantabridgians Karen Davis and Mark Orton featured photographers John Chervinsy, John Cyr, Elaine Mayes, and David Torcoletti –each making powerful statements about photography, art, perception, human emotion and the passage of time.

Gladiolas, Painting on Door by John Chervinsky

In “Studio Physics,” Chervinsky’s images challenge traditional photography by depicting not a single instant, but the passage of time. He begins by composing and photographing a still life. Then, he crops a subset of the image sends it as a file digitally to a painting factory in China, waits weeks for an anonymous artist in China to complete an oil painting of the cropped section and send it back in the mail, and, finally, he reinserts the painting into the original setup and rephotographs.

According to the Davis-Orton Website, “Chervinsky is interested in the tensions expressed in the comparison between reality vs. representation while adding, in this series, an unusual collaboration process with an anonymous artist half way around the world and subtle changes over time that we might otherwise take for granted.”

Aaron Siskind's Developer Pan by John Cyr

John Cyr’s photos of developer trays memorialize the specific, tangible tools used by photographer for a century–before the advent of digital media.

By titling each tray with its owner’s name–some quite renowned–” Cyr references the historical significance of these objects in a minimal manner that evokes thoughts about the images that have passed through each artist’s tray.”

While a few of the photographed trays appear relatively clean and empty, others frame beautiful abstract patterns and formations.

Park Slope Beauty by Elaine Mayes

Elaine Mayes “Photographs of Photographs”

Elaine Mayes, former chair of the photography department at New York University, takes photos of artistic and advertising images in their context–usually through glass–to include not only the surrounding scene but also environmental particulars of the world beyond as reflected in the glass.

“While thematically, the project is about how photographs and advertising imagery permeate our lives; it is also about how the flattening of space in a photograph can produce a collage filled with unexpected content. ”

Untitled #2 from Soldiers by David Torcoletti

Especially moving were David Torcoletti “Soldiers”, a small portion of hundreds photographs of U.S. soldiers that, during the Vietnam War, were mailed to a South Vietnamese radio and television personality known professionally as “Mai Lan.” For hours every day, Mai Lan broadcast to American troops stationed there. She also spent much time visiting wounded soldiers in hospitals all around the country. English was her second language, but she was able to communicate very directly with her audience Often the photos were inscribed with simple, touching and sincere declarations of appreciation for giving comfort to the subjects of the pictures. When the North overran South Vietnam, Mai Lan had to leave quickly; she chose a small box of photographs to bring along, leaving hundreds behind.

According to the Davis Orton Web site, ” Years later, Mai Lan, now Denise, and a colleague of David Torcoletti’s at a private school, showed him the images”–many of which were not well preserved. Torcoletti photographed all of the images and, with her permission, digitally adjusted twenty-four that he found most powerful for exposure, contrast, burning, dodging, color balance and saturation. All of these decisions were emotional and aesthetic. “For Torcoletti, the power of these objects was in the way they were disintegrating, barely holding on to the original image while becoming something else entirely. They were now less specific to the individuals depicted and more about war and hope and a peculiar, distant “love” that sustained these men in impossible circumstances.”

The show closes November 11, 2012.

–Anita M. Harris

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a public relations and online marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.

Davis Orton Gallery Opens: Cambridge on the Hudson?

Karen Davis and Mark Orton–Cantabridigians until this summer–invite all to a reception and opening celebration for their new gallery on Saturday, September 12, 5:30 to 7:30 pm at 114 Warren St. in Hudson, NY.

Called–not surprisingly–the Davis Orton Gallery, it’s located on an architecturally rich street famous for its antique shops, galleries and restaurants.

The first Davis Orton exhibition will feature Meg Birnbaum’s series of black and white photographs of county fairs throughout New England made using a plastic toy camera.

These evocative images with their antique quality and timeless subjects present a wistful look back while revealing clues that remind us of their contemporary origins.

Birnbaum is an award-winning fine art photographer and graphic designer based in Massachusetts. She has work in the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the corporate program of the DeCordova Museum and other private and corporate collections. ‘Corn Dogs and Blue Ribbons …’ has recently been exhibited at the Griffin Museum of Photography.

The exhibit will also include photographs by Moira Barrett, Karen Davis, Ellen Feldman, Cassandra Goldwater and Frank Tadley.

The Davis Orton Gallery exhibits contemporary photography, mixed media and a growing number of artist-published photobooks, Davis said. The goal of the gallery is to present mid-career artists and emerging artists whose work deserves a broader audience.

Davis and Orton have taught at Lesley College. While I miss having them close by, I’ve visited them in Hudson and am excited that they’re moving through art into action.