How Misinformation - and One Facebook Group - Threatened a Federal Investment in Montana (yahoo.com) 248
Ms. Grulkowski set about blowing up that effort with everything she had.
She collected addresses from a list of voters and spent $1,300 sending a packet denouncing the proposed heritage area to 1,498 farmers and ranchers. She told them the designation would forbid landowners to build sheds, drill wells or use fertilizers and pesticides. It would alter water rights, give tourists access to private property, create a new taxation district and prohibit new septic systems and burials on private land, she said.
None of this was true.
Yet it soon became accepted as truth by enough people to persuade Montana's leading Republican figures and conservative organizations, including the farm bureau, Gov. Greg Gianforte and Senator Steve Daines, to oppose the proposal and enact a state law forbidding the federal government to create any heritage area in Montana.
It is a ban that the state has no authority to enforce.
Some comments on the episode (via the New York Times):
- Ellen Sievert, retired historic preservation officer for Cascade County:
"We've run into the uneducable. I don't know how we get through that."
- Bob Kelly, the mayor of Great Falls:
"Misinformation is the new playbook. You don't like something? Create alternative facts and figures as a way to undermine reality." (In fact, it's now become an issue in the mayor's race.)
The episode was especially distressing for Richard Ecke, who spent 38 years at the town's local newspaper until being laid off in 2016 — and is also vice chairman of the proposed heritage area's board. The Times reports that "In the paper's place, information and misinformation about the heritage area spread on Facebook and in local outlets that parroted Ms. Grulkowski."
And meanwhile, "Ms. Grulkowski now has ambitions beyond Montana. She wants to push Congress not to renew heritage areas that already exist." [There are 55 of them, in 34 different states.]
Finally the Times interviewed Ed Bandel, who'd led the Montana Farm Bureau's opposition to the Montana heritage area. When asked for his supporting evidence, "Mr. Bandel said he trusted Ms. Grulkowski."
And when asked about the argument that it in fact posed no threat to property rights, Bandel remained unconvinced. "They say, 'Don't worry, we're going to do it right. Don't worry, we'll take care of you. I think Adolf Hitler said that, too, didn't he...?"
Relevant quote (Score:5, Insightful)
âoeStupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict oneâ(TM)s prejudgment simply need not be believed â" in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical â" and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.â
â Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
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Stupid people believe anonymous 'reporting' more than the words of people who were there. eg. Alex 'info wars' Jones describing the Sandy Hook school shooting.
Re:Relevant quote (Score:4, Interesting)
Socrates realized that thousands of years ago. He argued that voting was a skill, not something every person is innately capable of doing well.
You would not elect the captain of a ship, you would want someone skilled in seafaring to evaluate the performance of the various candidates and choose one based on their expertise, that you as a layperson are unqualified to judge.
He also noted that people are unlikely to vote for policies that are necessary but likely to be a burden to them personally, while they will support unnecessary waste and things that cause suffering for others if it helps themselves.
We sort of muddled through this far but climate change seems to have proven him right. It's only going to be once things get bad enough to make life difficult that many people start supporting doing something about it, by which point it will be too late.
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That's how they used to do it on the pirate ships back in the day.
And the pirates were about the most democratic gatherings in the world at that time.
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Socrates realized that thousands of years ago. He argued that voting was a skill, not something every person is innately capable of doing well.
"not something every person is innately capable of doing well" is rather understating what he actually thought. Socrates was associated with the Thirty Tyrants [wikipedia.org], who used mass violence to suppress Athenian democracy and put a repressive pro-Spartan oligarchy in its place. This is not exactly an attitude we are looking to recreate in the US.
Led by Critias, the Thirty Tyrants presided over a reign of terror in which they executed, murdered, and exiled hundreds of Athenians, seizing their possessions afterward. Both Isocrates and Aristotle (the latter in the Athenian Constitution) have reported that the Thirty executed 1500 people without trial.[8][4] Critias, a former pupil of Socrates, has been described as "the first Robespierre"[9] because of his cruelty and inhumanity; he evidently aimed to end democracy, regardless of the human cost.[10]
Socrates remained in the city through this period, which caused the public to associate him with the Thirty and may have contributed to his eventual death sentence, especially since Critias had been his student.[19]
Quick, call in the Heritage Foundation (Score:2)
... to defend that portion of the American Heritage comprising the deeds of the European-expat landowner class between 1776 and 1865 or so.
So lemme get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
People believe a businessperson who has zero reason to act in their interest rather than an elected person who at least nominally has reason to act in their interest.
How stupid are people, really?
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not stupid, simply distrusting distant source (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason I know that is that I participated in debunking stuff on forums, and was part of the randi forum community, participated in the eCat stuff as debunking and similar like steorn, and from all those I came to the same conclusion as per above : debunking does not matter because you are not an authority in the circle that people trust. Same shit with vaccine with all the anti vaccine folk, it does not matter how much clarification I do, no matter how calmly I explain it : Tante Judy said the vaccine was untested so it can't be trusted.
All that is an extension of trusting more your inner circle than a stranger. In the last 3 decades of skepticism has taught me anything it is that. They may even justify it by the vocabulary you chose, so you have to be careful of using THEIR meanings and words etc... (got burned enough 3 decades ago with trying to explain "theory" in science, that it isn't some random "theory" layman guess, that scientist like me were paid crap, and giving up nowadays).
At this point I have a pinacollada in hand and I am watching the younger generation hitting the same problem, and slowly but surely coming to the same conclusion.
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That kinda explains both how people can believe the harebrained bullshit conspiracy circles and religions produce.
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The sole reason people trust facebook post rather than proper factual information traced to some more good source, is because they trust their own "tribe" and circle far more than distance "tribe" and circle.
No, that's not the "sole" reason. (Though it is a reason.)
The federal government has a long history of trampling on the rights of private property owners. The feds have not earned trust in this area, and it is rational to be skeptical of them.
That doesn't make posting falsehoods in this case a good thing, but it does help explain why people are prone to believe them.
Re:So lemme get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
Politicians have no reason to act on the people's behalf, but businesspeople do.
In what world? Just one example, of many: artificially limited light bulbs. Ok, one more: John Deere tractors that can only be repaired by "authorized personnel." Busine$$people have ju$t a$ much rea$on to $crew over people. And, occasionally, they work with politicians so they both benefit at the cost of the rest of us.
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Politicians are the ones who extended copyright from 28 years to the effective perpetuity minus one year we currently have. They are also the ones who decided you could copyright binaries without publishing the source and patent code.
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Politicians are the ones who extended copyright from 28 years to the effective perpetuity minus one year we currently have. They are also the ones who decided you could copyright binaries without publishing the source and patent code.
But they certainly didn't do so on their own, this was pushed for - hard - by business. Disney, in particular - a lot of whose work builds on earlier created works (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs [wikipedia.org], to give one example). Ironically, a lot of Disney's work would not have been possible if Disney's wishes for eternal copyright were in place.
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Except big business is EXACTLY the type of business not going to be bothered with following most regs as they would have the spare dosh lying around to hire extra people to ensure any burdensome regulation that isn't bad enough to kill said business outright is followed. As well as lobby to have their bits of land excluded from any regulation burdensome enough to outright kill their business in the first place.
Re:So lemme get this straight (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's take a look how many of Disney's (animated) movies were actually drawing from original material...
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Grimm's Tales
Pinocchio: The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Fantasia: Main theme lifted from The Sorcerer's Apprentice, J.W. v. Goethe
Dumbo: Actually original (or at least based on a book that would even back then still have been in copyright, so I guess they had to pay for that).
Bambi: Based on Felix Salten's "Bambi, a Life in the Woods".
Cinderella: Lifted from Cendrillon ou la Petite Pantoufle de verre by Charles Perrault (also noted by the German authors Grimm in their version "Aschenputtel")
Alice in Wonderland: After "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll
Peter Pan: After the play "Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up" by J. M. Barrie
Lady and the Tramp: Actually original
Sleeping Beauty: Again Charles Perrault, La belle au bois dormant
One Hundred and One Dalmatians: Based on a contemporary novel by Dodie Smith, so I guess they actually did have to pay for this one.
The Sword in the Stone: Of course based on the legend of King Arthur, but the movie is based on the story of a contemporary book by T. H. White, so I guess that, too, they paid for.
The Jungle Book: After Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book (actually, more likely the second Jungle Book).
The Aristocats: Afaik original
Robin Hood: Based on a folk tale
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: Based on a contemporary book
The Rescuers: Original
The Fox and the Hound: Based on a contemporary novel
The Black Cauldron: Based on the contemporary "The Chronicles of Prydain" by Lloyd Alexander
The Great Mouse Detective: Mostly lifted from the Sherlock Holmes stories by A.C. Doyle
Oliver & Company: Based on Dickens' Oliver Twist, but I dare say original enough to not be considered a shameless copy
The Little Mermaid: Danish Fairytale by H.C.Andersen
Beauty and the Beast: French fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont
Aladdin: Arabic folk tale
The Lion King: Allegedly an original (c'mon, we've all seen Kimba the White Lion, stop pretending...)
Pocahontas: I'm tempted to give them this one as an original, because if "based on a true story" isn't permitted...
Toy Story: Original
The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Taken from a novel by Victor Hugo.
Hercules: I'm kinda torn because it has SO little to do with the Greek Mythology it abuses... but no.
Mulan: Taken from a Chinese legend
A Bug's Life: Technically based on a fable, but different enough to be considered an original
Tarzan: Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
That's all up to 2000 (and all I have, so if you feel like adding, please do). 33 movies of which 20 are either taken the whole story from a book they didn't pay for or at least enough that they'd lose if they got sued for copyright infringement.
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Politicians can cause the initiation of physical force legally while businesses cannot. Ultimately, businesses will need your agreement, and you theirs. Not politicians, unless you've got a majority agreeing to make your cause the number 1 priority.
The fact that someone gave you a great deal in the past should put them under no obligation to continue that deal in the future as they realize that the competitive landscape isn't quite as threatening. That's basically the case for your light bulb example. If
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You have that backwards. Politicians have no reason to act on the people's behalf, but businesspeople do.
Wait, what?
Businesspeople have a reason to act on unrelated people's interests? Since when?
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Now that's something you should probably explain.
A politician at least nominally wants to be reelected. All a businessperson wants is my money. Providing any kind of service is at best the necessary evil to my money.
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Biden won for the same reason Trump won before him: Not because people wanted him, but because people didn't want the alternative.
Story title is ass backwards. (Score:3)
This was not misinformation and one fakebook group, this was fakebook enabling misinformation, and, again, interfering with governmental processes as an outcome. I'm not saying that process is perfect, but it will never even be close with this bullshit going on.
The good thing about a soapbox is it only allows the crazy to propagate as far as the crazy can project. We have now allowed the soapbox to be replaced by an amplifier which has a speaker in the pocket of most humans, regardless of whether they are mature, smart, or cynical enough to process the message. What a chilling thought.
Facebook must be reigned in.
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Opposition to the heritage site designation could have been organized without Facebook. Easily.
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Opposition to the heritage site designation could have been organized without Facebook. Easily.
Not anywhere near as easily as with Facebook. I mean that's literally why people use Facebook, it makes communication easy.
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I agree FB needs some dealing with. However, the issue is somewhat broader than that. After all, a lot of this was done by leaflet drops through letter boxes.
I'm starting to wonder if we need to mandate that any prepared statement of a political nature needs to have a "fact check" added to it. Then, if you want to say "the virus is just the flu", or "you won't be able to build a shed" then you need to cite a source that corroborates what you're saying. Of course, you can cite a crappy source, but that's muc
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Well, while I don't necessarily agree with everything that happened here....I don't live there and don't know all the facts, so I'm not making a judgement..I do support citizen's being able to "interfere" with governmental processes they disagree with.
Unless you think every governmental effort and process is perfect and intrudes on no one or no g
The purpose of power.. (Score:3)
Ex:
I say: A will cause B, C and D.
I get followers.
Someone else proves that B, C and D are caused NOT by A.
My follower will then IGNORE B, C and D and the person who proved that they are not related at all costs.
I can then suggest different reasons of why B, C and D are not related to further my cause.
Mindless followers?
We do it to ourselves.
Not Misinformation (Score:2, Insightful)
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Land clearing and subdivisions will certainly be made harder. Planning approval fees and limits were there were none before.
Citation needed.
Take building regulations. You want to extend your house a bit. Nope, you have to re-do your switchboard, and electrical, because old house wiring does not meet standards.
Let me see I understand you: Your current house has electrical wiring that is grandfathered in but not up to modern standards. If you do not change it, you have to do nothing. But you want to change it in dramatic ways. The regulations require you to bring it up to modern codes. And this is your complaint?
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You cite nothing, you hand-wave, you say "I bet", and so on. You're like the woman in the article, except mostly harmless because no one will make policy decisions off your opinion.
The problem is that people WANT lies (Score:5, Insightful)
This reminds me of a weird viral set of lies that circulated before the UK election in 2019.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/10/woman-says-account-hacked-to-post-fake-story-about-hospital-boy
The initial lie was just some random person making stuff up. But 1000s of people repeated the lie by copy/pasting the text. Hundreds of thousands retweeted it. The lie went viral. No amount of fact checking made any difference and it became an election issue.
The only explanation I can think of is that huge numbers of people actively prefer stories that match their political preferences and if reality won't provide the facts to support these stories, they will happily accept fiction and righteously lie in order to support those political preferences.
Re:The problem is that people WANT lies (Score:5, Insightful)
The only explanation I can think of is that huge numbers of people actively prefer stories that match their political preferences and if reality won't provide the facts to support these stories, they will happily accept fiction and righteously lie in order to support those political preferences.
Put more formally, many people prefer simple falsehoods over complex truths that don't confirm to their prejudices.
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To add to your statement, being ignorant of knowledge is a source of pride for many people in the USA.
Not just Facebook (Score:2)
When [Rae] Grulkowski tried using [Jeni] Dodd’s [anti-heritage listing] group to push the idea that Montanans’ property rights were at risk, Dodd kicked her out for promoting lies.
The slashdot summary doesn't describe Grulkowski properly. She already believed "His Glory TV" and Seth Keshel's right-wing, pro-Qanon misinformation.
“It’s very easy to take fear and mistrust and make it work for you. It’s very hard to fight back against all of that,” [Jane] Weber said. “It’s kind of like trying to convince someone to get vaccinated.”
Propaganda 101
That is the key concept here: We should be alarmed that " Republican figures and conservative organizations, including the farm bureau [which published anti-heritage listing propaganda], Gov. Greg Gianforte and Senator Steve Daines" didn't know their job and respond to the proposal for heritage listing properly. But the key concept tells us th
Misinformation in a democracy (Score:2)
In this case it sounds really bad when a good thing has been stopped because of misinformation. Brexit may have been (depending on which side of the debate you stand) the same, that misinformation (which is uncontested) cause a lot of damage (debatable).
However, this is part of democracy. Voters have the right to make their decision for the most stupid reasons. When this has limited impact - like in this case - this is unfortunate, with worse cases people will suffer. This is the price of democracy!
Get used
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Can you say "Five Gee"? (Score:2)
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Yeah well, luckily /. is different. We wear tinfoil hats not because of 5G but to defend ourselves against secret russian microwave weapons.
The F-35 can see into your home (Score:2)
I live in a community that is soon to host the F-35 jet in the Air National Guard base collocated with our local airport.
This is a "college town" with a leftish predisposition, not only at the U but even more so among the "townies." People are coming out of the woodwork as anti-F-35.
The F-35 has a more powerful, louder jet engine than the F-16 based here that it will replace, which in turn replaced the A-10 "Warthog", which was virtually silent on account of its engine design that was intended to snea
Shit like this (Score:2)
Is why you don't use social media for any time of factual research.
(Or any research.)
EditorDavid's continuing parroting of propaganda (Score:2, Insightful)
The people whining the most about misinformation are by far the biggest sources of it. Virtually the entire media lied about Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Venezuela...and then Russiagate. None of them have been deplatformed or banned from social media. Fauci is still on the news every night despite lying about masks, herd immunity and gain of function research. CNN hasn't been censored for spreading "medical misinformation" about Joe Rogan taking horse dewormer.
The answer to bad speech is more speech, no
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"They said we need internet censorship because Russia.
They said we need internet censorship because Covid.
They said we need internet censorship because 1/6.
Now they say we need internet censorship because Facebook whistleblower.
Who is they?
The great thing about a nebulous "they" is you can aggregate every opinion you disagreed with into a single persona to attack it. Reality is more complex.
I can also support free speech, and support businesses who support it as an explicit goal (I use Dreamhost, in part be
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Yes speech is a powerful tool for great good and great evil, which is exactly why people like yourself will never settle for anything less than complete control. "To protect our democracy" of course.
Well, if the facts don't support you, just tell lies. There is no finer use of free speech than just making shit up in order to falsely slur someone you're arguing with.
An idea: tangible one-liner guarantee (Score:3)
You cannot counter misinformation with facts, that just causes people to further dig in, plus many people don't have the attention span to dig into details. However, you could put some tangible guarantees behind it, say enact a law that says that if any of what went out in the fake newsletter turns out to be true, each resident gets $1M dollars a year for life. That will motivate people to try hard to collect this reward by trying to prove that at least some part of the fake news was true. If nobody collects it, that's a very convincing argument that it was all fake.
Saying "none of this is true" is an easy one-liner to say, but just as easy to rebut with a one-liner - he said, she said. Having the government tell people "we guarantee with $1M per year per resident for life that none of this is or will ever be true" is a much more convincing one-line argument, because the follow up argument is "prove it and collect a fortune", and nobody can say "it's not worth proving". Of course, if it turns out any of the misinformation was true (say water rights did change for example), well, that would turn into a very expensive fact check fail for the government.
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You know that, and I know that, but the misinformation-mongers would just twist such an offer into more "proof" that you're lying. For instance...
There are legal consequences to lying (Score:3)
https://www.lawfareblog.com/la... [lawfareblog.com]
A quote:
By far the broadest federal statute criminalizing lying is 18 U.S.C. 1001, which makes it a crime to “knowingly and willfully . . . make[] any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” in the course of “any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch” of the federal government. There’s no requirement that the statement be under oath.
end quote
I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if that statute applies to this case, but when possible people who tell lies that are harmful need to be sued or prosecuted. Reputation should mean something also, so hopefully everyone who lives near Rae Grulkowski now knows she is a lier and will not listen to her in the future as a result of this national news story. She has trashed her reputation by lying and should suffer the consequences.
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Now cite the relevant federal laws to Heritage designation. Without those, ALL of the comments here are off-topic.
Grass roots effort? (Score:5, Insightful)
Much ado about nothing. Knocking off a Federal heritage site designation is pretty far down the list of "bad things locals do". In the meantime, who organized the effort in the first place, and why? Central Montana is not exactly a hotbed of tourist activity. Seems like Grulkowski found enough local landowners that don't care enough about Federal dollars for tourist attractions to accept any kind of land designation.
Many Western landowners still actively distrust Federal control of any land. The Feds already control so much of it that way that it's a sticky issue.
https://webcache.googleusercon... [googleusercontent.com]
Re: Grass roots effort? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Many Western landowners still actively distrust Federal control of any land. The Feds already control so much of it that way that it's a sticky issue.
They weren't distrustful when the Feds originally purchased/stole/seized that land from its previous owners and handed it to them for homesteading.
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Hah! The natives certainly were!
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https://ballotpedia.org/Federa... [ballotpedia.org]
The Federal government already controls 29% of the state. If they want a heritage area they can have it on their own land.
Although there may be no great restrictions that go with being a heritage area today, the rules can change tomorrow, and those rule changes will be made by city dwellers from a completely different climate zone.
The people of Montana are well with their rights to be suspicious.
There's only two ways (Score:2)
There's only two ways, education or force. And education takes time, so the real criminals are those who have compromised our education system deliberately. There's scarcely an ill which cannot be laid at their doorstep, because every ongoing unsustainable activity is enabled by the uneducated.
Just a couple of thoughts... (Score:4, Insightful)
I read this article, and probably initially had the reaction the author wanted, but...no...
There will always be eloquent, persuasive people out there. They may sometimes persuade people of something good. Sometimes, they will be mistaken. Sometimes, hopefully rarely, they will be malicious scammers.
This is nothing new. The current campaign against "misinformation" is dangerous, because it means that someone, somewhere wants to be granted the power to determine what is truth [enotes.com]. Such a power should not exist.
Back to TFA: If we believe, TFA, then this woman persuaded people not to accept federal money for a project they were not sure they wanted. This is not a tragedy, the world continues to orbit the sun. Taking away her soapbox would be a tragedy. If she really is wrong, all that needs to happen is for an equally eloquent, persuasive person to get up on their own soapbox and oppose her. If no one does, then the issue must not be all that important.
And, yes, I feel the same about the anti-vaxxers and all the rest. They can stand up and shout incorrect information, because taking away their ability to do so is far worse, in the long term, than allowing them to spread nonsense.
Erosion of trust (Score:3)
Call lies what they are (Score:2)
Dead argument already! (Score:2)
"... I think Adolf Hitler said that, too, didn't he...?"
Godwin's Law out of the gate.
Who's lying? (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's get a few facts clear. You may disagree with their politics, but I would assert that Heritage.org is pretty soundly researched and factual.
https://www.heritage.org/budge... [heritage.org]
It should be noted that there is NO federal statute in law authorizing these things. They are basically issued at the whim of Congress, and thus don't conform to a strict template. (There are also state-issued programs.)
The programs standards, implementation, etc are all relatively ad-hoc, but ends up with 'stakeholders' (whoever that may be) and the Nat'l Park service working in tandem to develop management and development plans in accordance with the goals of the NHA.
Importantly: "....NPS involvement "is always advisory," . "It neither makes nor carries out management deciÂsions."
Read the article. Essentially Heritage admits that their fears are anticipatory, not exampled.
HOWEVER.
Their example of the Blackstone Heritage Area seems to suggest a clear basis for this anticipation - the NPS role is supposed to be advisory only, but the BHA has basically been subsumed into the NPS and is staffed by NPS personnel, who act according to the directions of the stakeholder commission. That's pretty clearly in contravention of the principles of the NHA...whatever those are, since they're not actually a thing.
Dunno.
Superficially, it seems that the NHA is a fairly polite, restrained idea to 'conceptually' recognize areas of cultural or regional importance, and collect people to think about and manage that cognizant of it as a whole, as well as get federal resources to do so.*
OTOH, particularly in the west that saw an astonishing explosion of 'federally-locked-up-lands' in the last weeks of the Obama administration, it's fairly reasonable to see this as a 'government nose under the tent' precursor to state, regional, or local statutes which DO then threaten private property rights, esp when one sees how many environmental groups are involved in the designation of such places. Obviously THEY feel they can get some value from these programs; their presence ALONE in my view justifies much of the paranoia.
*Personally, I'd ask why the FUCK this is even a thing. Federal dollars don't just "fall from heaven". They come from SOMEONE. Does it make sense to take money from a business in Arizona or a homeowner in Oregon, to help fund biking trails in the Appalachians?
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Why? Chances are, all she did was tune in the wrong TV station. Republican brainwashing is very real.
Fox News has done more to destroy us than the Chinese and Russians could have done, ever, in their wildest wet dreams.
Re: Torture is the only way (Score:2)
The disease being... what exactly? One less area that the government has deemed worthy of being preserved for history? In the middle of Montana? Yes, such a malignant disease.
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Err - bear in mind that all the Russian and Chinese threat hoaxes are Democrat inventions.
[citation needed]
Even Trump acknowleged that some attacks originated in Russia [reuters.com].
The idea that the democrats invented these threats is fucking stupid. Don't be fucking stupid.
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Go do it yourself. Stop telling other people to break the law.
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Not really a Q-Anon type, but there is precedence for using things like federal historic preservation and/or natural resource conservation, to limit what land owners are allowed to do with their own personal property. Even if it isn't technically true in this particular case, doesn't mean that it won't be abused down the road.
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Not really a Q-Anon type, but there is precedence for using things like federal historic preservation and/or natural resource conservation, to limit what land owners are allowed to do with their own personal property. Even if it isn't technically true in this particular case, doesn't mean that it won't be abused down the road.
This argument is absurd. If the federal government really wanted to take your privately owned land and tell you to fuck off they could just use the 5th amendment's Takings Clause. It happened to a little book shop just down the road from me about 2 years ago, guy owned a lil shop, but local gov just forced the old man out to build a parking lot (just cause - the city was selling the block he was on to build a parking lot...which would be good for business or something of the like) so they paid him some low
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I am sure the heritage thing is all BS. But restricting property rights using something like a heritage zone (if it really did restrict property rights) would not be equivalent to taking the property, because when government takes a property it has to compensate the owner. In other words it is not free. But anyway the whole thing is obviously nuts. I am just pointing out your false equivalence.
Re: Waiting for the defense of the indefensible (Score:3)
If the federal government really wanted to take your privately owned land and tell you to fuck off they could just use the 5th amendment's Takings Clause.
But then they'd have to compensate you. This is just one way they can take your property and weasel out of that.
Re: Waiting for the defense of the indefensible (Score:5, Informative)
The heritage thing is not BS. This is important stuff. So if we want to celebrate the old west, you need to preserve it. Otheriwse someone says "hey, there's oil here!" and then all the farmers and ranchers are kicked out and wells go up everywhere, never mind the historical stuff or the tourist traps.
All it is is money that can go to tourist sites and preservation groups. Ie, buy up land and proclaim it a preserve, nothing is being stolen, no one is being strong armed. If someone does not want to sell then they can't buy it, it is vastly weaker than the Takings Clause. All the Feds are doing is providing matching funds, nothing more, it's not a Federal issue and they're not getting involved, Instead this is all state and local.
But I'm sure it's the word "federal" that got the old lady into a panic. Or maybe she has some stock in major oil corporations that might want to use the Takings Clause in the future to put up oil wells on rancher land which a heritage would make more difficult.
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"If it isn't technically true in this case."
We call that a lie in these parts.
There is no truth to it whatsoever. But Republicans and Conservatives and the odd Trumper. Will believe it, and then trick the rest of them into believing it too.
Why didn't education work on these people?
How can we fix it?
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We call that a lie in these parts.
In politics it's called 'economical with the truth'. And things that are economical are good, right?
Re: Waiting for the defense of the indefensible (Score:5, Insightful)
Why didn't education work on these people?
Because formal education doesn't teach how to find truth, it only lists a huge amount of facts and asks students to believe in them on the basis of prestige. Prestige is how human beings roll most of the time, so that method kinda works when teachers, and the people listed in textbooks as the originators of the list of facts, are perceived as prestigious by students and their parents. If that prestige is lost though, people will ignore the facts listed as coming from nobodies they have no reason to listen to.
How can we fix it?
For this to change education would have to focus on rebuilding that lost prestige, which passes through teaching students how to create truthful knowledge from scratch, and then recognize those people mentioned in the textbooks as extraordinary examples of doing exactly the same.
Alas, merely having a few lab day classes per year isn't enough for that. The entire structure of knowledge transfer would have to be inverted, with lab day, and original research with demands for high quality data gathering, becoming the norm, and teacher lectures the exception. And that would cost a fortune, think classes with at most 10 students per tutor (not teacher, tutor). So no, unfortunately it won't happen. Or at least not in the foreseeable future.
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Because if you're taught to find the truth, then some people might decide that the Bible is not actually a set of lemmas from which you can derive other truths. You can't send the kids to just any old university, they might become atheists! Or communists (which is the same thing to some)! I mean once you have people start thinking for themselves then all our ability to control how they think will vanish!
It's been said before by others, but the real fallout from the Nixon Watergate scandal was the loss of
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There is no truth to it whatsoever."
We call THAT a lie in these parts. In this case saying it is untrue is a bit like claiming you aren't dictating what crops farmers can grow. But in an unrelated note you've imposed water restrictions and farmers that grow the crops you approve of have exemption and you'll buy their seeds.
While it is technically true that you haven't told farmers what to grow the bottom line is quite different. The money from these sites is funneled intro
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"Even if it isn't technically true in this particular case, doesn't mean that it won't be abused down the road."
This logic could be used for literally any law ever created in the whole history of the earth.
Why do anything at all then?
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These sliding scale arguments are absurd. As they often ignore the implementation and focus on the ideology, and focus on the fear what the extreme of the ideology you tend to not want to follow can lead to.
I tend to confuse a lot of people, because I don't like to debate ideology, but the practical aspects of a particular law or rule.
I can say, I want this or that better regulated, then a bunch ideologist of the conservatives persuasion call me a Libtard, and the liberal persuasion gladly welcome me to
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Both sides are the same !!
Fuck you morons are pathetic.
Re:Also critical thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really a Q-Anon type, but there is precedence for using things like federal historic preservation and/or natural resource conservation, to limit what land owners are allowed to do with their own personal property. Even if it isn't technically true in this particular case, doesn't mean that it won't be abused down the road.
Also of note, we're taking for granted everything stated in both the article and summary are true without hearing both sides. The NYT has a well known liberal bias and degraded journalistic integrity.
I'm starting to not-believe stories unless they can post both sides of an argument (with their response for the other side of course, but both sides nonetheless).
It's easy to cast one side of an argument in a positive light, and it's even easy to punch-up the language to provoke outrage and contampt.
Why are we not hearing from the other side?
Taking what NYT says as true would be prudent. In the US these days, truth has a liberal bias - meaning that you're very unlikely to find outright lies there. And I say that as a conservative - as an an actual European conservative, not a mislabeled right wing populist party which is what the Republican party has degraded into after the Tea Party.
Mainstream (these days often called "liberal" media) has always striven for truth - and if they are wrong, they issue corrections. But the US right has, with Fox news as a starting point and with Trump as the ultimate example, just gone to war against facts and truth. This is insane.
When I don't like something of a leftist newspaper here or someone to the left of me politically, we very, very seldom disagree on facts. Mostly, it is the angle of which something is presented, the weighing of different factors and outcomes, values, and the belief in what outcomes will be. Often even prioritizing different parts of it. The debate can be described as "you are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts". In the US, the populist right has just gone to war [scientificamerican.com] against facts [theguardian.com].
Re: Also critical thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
Taking what NYT says as true would be prudent.
Not really. Take a look at that nice national monument map. New York City seems to have a dearth of monuments. While advocating for encumbered other people's property. Why isn't the entire WTC site a national monument?
It's easy to talk tough when it's someone else making the sacrifice.
Thanks Trumper (Score:2, Insightful)
That used to be true, it no longer is. Now, the mainstream media just blatantly lies in order to serve the agenda.
Thanks Right winger for that textbook example of the parent post...
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Fox is the mainstream media now. https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... [forbes.com]
Re:Also critical thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
The Right in America is not actually politically Right anymore. There is no ideology that people follow. For example, the Republican conservative wing used to be all about fiscal conservatism. That is, be prudent about how government money is spent because it's really the people's money. Then suddenly for four years being a True Republican was all about agreeing with whatever whim Trump had that day - such as supporting tarriffs that hurt hurt the economy but it's ok because he sent a tiny pittance to the farmers out of the tax payers' money, even though all the farmers wanted was to sell their goods. None of that was fiscal conservatism in any possible way.
The Right in America is now a populist and nationalist movement based upon the ramblings of a rich elitist ignoramus. Conspiracy theories run rampant on the right now, because the truth is irrelevant. Now everyone who is not them is clearly a Marxist, Communist, Socialist, and they all Hate America. So you get bizarre hypocrisies going on - they Love Trump for signing a peace deal with the Taliban, but they Hate Biden for following through with the peace deal. The most conservative member of Congress, Liz Cheney, gets kicked out of her post not for being liberal but for not kissing Trump's ass - that right there is proof that the Republicans are not conservative but in actuality are just pandering to the populists.
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(Invoking Hitler in the case was quite questionable. After World War II, it became more and more clear that Adolf Hitler did exactly as he announced.)
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Invoking Hitler in the case was quite questionable
Godwin's Law says it's not questionable but inevitable.
Re: Also critical thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Because there are no "sides". There is fact, and there is fiction. One particularly vocal group has created a fiction they are purporting to be fact, and claiming that anyone defending the actual facts is against them. That sums up our national policitcs too, and is a perfect example of why our democracy and our race is doomed to fail. This may also be the Fermi paradox in action. Human beings are fucking trash and we deserve this dumpster fire we're living in. Hopefully a big ass rock will come annihilate us before we pollute the rest of the universe with our effluence.
I don't quite agree. (Score:2, Interesting)
Because there are no "sides". There is fact, and there is fiction. [This] is a perfect example of why our democracy and our race is doomed to fail. This may also be the Fermi paradox in action. Human beings are fucking trash and we deserve this dumpster fire we're living in.
I don't quite agree. Given, the problem of our time is that we have prehistoric emotions, medival institutions and god-like technology (in some areas). But that does not mean the problems arising aren't solvable. Votes based on actual IQ
Voter qualification(s) (Score:4, Insightful)
IQ is not an adequate predictor of malice, delusion, or gullibility. Or even education.
If you want to qualify voters, a test on relevant objective facts (notably absent in this Montana issue, pretty much the current Republican playbook approach) would be the thing to consider inasmuch as that could actually, you know, qualify voters.
However, in the US, voter qualification has an odious history of being misused to disqualify the poor, the disadvantaged, the non-white, and women, so it's not at all likely that any kind of legitimate qualification can move forward here. The very people who would benefit from this the most — the Democrats — would fight it tooth and nail in the fear that such qualification would be, or lead to, more of the same.
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Because there are no "sides". There is fact, and there is fiction.
There are "sides", both "sides" engage in deception, though one side engages in a lot more of it. If one political party never used lies to manipulate voters then you'd be right, but you aren't because that's not how it works. The moral high ground is something you either have or you don't, and you don't get to claim it by doing less of the disingenuous, deceptive stuff than the other. All you can say is that you're the lesser of evils. The Democratic party won't clean its own house because corruption is en
Re:Also critical thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Because there aren't two sides here. In fact, you don't have to hear anyone's side, you can just look up what national heritage areas are. It takes half a dozen seconds to google the national heritage area act: it's basically a way to get federal funding, which will be distributed by a local coordinating entity. No ownership of lands changes hands, and no land use controls are imposed.
The act specifically says that nothing in it can abridge the rights of property owners, require property owners to permit public access to their property, etc. These things are explicitly excluded from the act.
As a general observation, I highly dislike the notion that we have to hear "both sides" of every argument. Personally, I'd prefer to hear the actual facts, rather than people's opinions. What the national heritage area act is not some unknowable thing that can only be gleaned by hearing everybody's opinions. It's a very specific thing that can very easily be looked up. Nobody's opinions actually matter here.
This also applies to other areas: in many of them, we value opinions unjustifiably high, particularly if these opinions are very easily disproven. There is absolutely no need to advertise people's unfounded opinions. It just makes everybody dumber.
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I think the idea of hearing both sides has to do with trying to decide who is telling the truth.
Facts and Truth are two very different things. I have just finished reading the https://www.congress.gov/bill/... [congress.gov] - which I guess is the text of the Act. I see that it indeed explicitly protects property owners.
BUT, what I want to know is, are there any examples of property owners being denied such protections after a site (area) has been so designated.
Maybe Ms. Grulkowski knows about some such cases.
Re:Also critical thinking (Score:4, Informative)
"But, back in the 1990s, those living on houseboats were moved off the river. Certain other boat traffic and river activities were also curtailed. It was all in the name of environmental protection, of course. In addition, the traditional flood plain designations were moved back to an extreme distance from the river, making it impossible for existing homes built inside the original flood plains to get flood insurance, thereby stopping any further building along the river. This was called land-use planning...
In West Virginia we find the National Coal Heritage Area. Introduced in 1996 by former Congressman Rahall, it was sold as a way to honor the coal industry. Apparently, Rahall thought that since the miners had lost their jobs due to environmental regulations on the coal industry, perhaps, he could make up for it by throwing a few extra bucks their way by giving tours of their bankrupt area and closed mines.
I will make this challenge – just try to mine a single lump of coal inside the National Coal Heritage Area. Not on your life. Restricted."
"Written into each and every Heritage Area bill is this line: “Nothing in this subtitle…abridges the right of any property owner… including the right to refrain from participating in any plan, project, program, or activity conducted within the National Heritage Area. .
That language is nothing but a flimflam to keep you calm and ease your concerns, because it is physically impossible to opt out of an official government boundary that has been created by federal legislation and federal funds. It is also impossible to simply declare that you are going to opt out of any of the land-use regulations, down-zoning, or other restrictions that result from the Heritage Area designation."
"The federal designation, made through congressional legislation, creating federal regulations and oversight by the National Park Service, require a form of contract between state and local governmental entities and the Secretary of the Interior. That contract is to manage the land-use of the region for preservation. That means federal control and zoning, either directly, under the terms of the “management pact”, or indirectly.
Such “indirect” control is the real danger. In spite of the specific language in the bill which states property rights will be protected, the true damage to homeowners may well come from the private non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and preservation agencies which receive public funds through the Park Service and then use those funds to promote their own private agendas.
The experience with many existing National Heritage Areas clearly shows such groups will convert this money into political activism to encourage local community and county governments to pass and enforce strict zoning laws, which enforce their own radical environmental agenda and have no real association to the stated goals of the NHA."
https://www.conservativehq.org/post/national-heritage-areas-locking-up-american-property-rights
Re: (Score:3)
My summary of your link:
1) A lot of the bad things that happen that NHA doesn't address can count as a bad side of NHA.
2) Don't believe what the law says it's flimflam.
3) It's the bad things that can be done in the name of NHA that are a problem.
(1) and (2) are misdirection, and though that kind of rhetoric can be used to attract some voters it certainly isn't a sign you're making a valid argument, often the opposite. (3) is interesting, and a lot of his generalizations are certainly plausible, still he doe
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That is entirely misleading. It is like claiming that federal education programs are just a way to get money out there to
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The money comes with strings attached.
What strings?
There is a reason the state government of Utah just strongly opposed Biden's recent renew of heritage land in their state
Yeah, Biden's name was attached to it.
Is this the same Utah that is opposing vaccine mandates while their Covid cases are going through the roof [deseret.com]? Because I don't really give two fucks what they "think".
Re: Also critical thinking (Score:2)
What strings? Just the entirety of federal regulation.
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What strings? Just the entirety of federal regulation.
That is a hand waving non-answer; if you meant it seriously you are batshit bananas. The majority of federal regulation already applies throughout their entire state. Now cite the additional regulations you think would apply in this case, or hush up while people have an honest and genuine debate.
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Not every issue has two sides.
Re:Also critical thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Also of note, we're taking for granted everything stated in both the article and summary are true without hearing both sides. The NYT has a well known liberal bias and degraded journalistic integrity.
Any sources to back up your bullshit about degraded journalistic integrity? These days liberal bias is anything left of Fox News.
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I know I lost faith in the NYT when they pulled their Tesla shit.
I don't even like Elon Musk personally, I think he's a spectacular asshole, though I do approve of SpaceX in general and appreciate Tesla's influence on the auto industry, again in general. Although they have been pretty shitty about the Right to Repair.
But the NYT not only published a willfully fraudulent hit piece against Tesla which can reasonably be seen as an attack on all EVs (a necessary and valuable step in CO2 emissions reduction, eve
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first, the intelligent progressives invent social media
Intelligent progressives didn't invent social media, a bunch of nerdy geeks invented it because it seemed like an fun thing to hack around on, and threw it out there to see what would happen.
Sort of like throwing a bunch of loaded assault weapons into a kindergarten and seeing what happens. The kids will have fun, and I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong.
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Facebook was created to scrape information on college students.
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The point you overlooked in your righteous wrath is that your version of a better life may not match their version of a better life.
And yes it is Biden's fault, just like everything was Trump's fault when we was in office. And the incomplete pass is charged to the quarterback when a receiver drops the ball. It goes with the job.