֎ [Citylab] The Trump administration is proposing a new rule that would strip some 3.1 million people of food aid under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Specifically, the administration wants to restrict states’ ability to decide who is eligible for food assistance, yielding cuts that would fall primarily on poor working families, children, seniors, and people with disabilities.
Compassion does not runneth over in this administration.
֎ [New York Times] New York City to Consider Banning Sale of Cellphone Location Data. A bill would make it illegal for cellphone companies and mobile apps to share user location information collected in the city without a customer’s explicit permission. Telecommunications firms and mobile-based apps make billions of dollars per year by selling customer location data to marketers and other businesses, offering a vast window into the whereabouts of cellphone and app users, often without their knowledge.
Hooray!
֎ [NEWSY] FBI Director Christopher Wray is warning lawmakers that Russia is still adamant in its efforts to meddle in upcoming U.S. elections.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Wray said “Russians are absolutely intent on trying to interfere with our elections,” despite efforts by the U.S. to deter them otherwise. Former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation concluded that Russia did meddle in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion.”
This could be bad. Identity politics, racism and populism already are paranoid and can be sent over the top very easily.
֎ [NEWSY] The Justice Department is looking to see if big online platforms have hurt competition, among other things. The Department of Justice has launched an antitrust investigation into big tech companies. It wants to know if tech giants have “reduced competition, stifled innovation or otherwise harmed consumers.”
It’s about time!
֎ [Propublica] Richard Tofel wrote an inspiring email discussing the rules of journalism. A paragraph is reproduced below. Mariner urges the reader to review all three sources – especially the clip of Edward R. Murrow; no news source could make this statement today because of compromising agendas.
Tofel:
“As I said at the outset, our society as a whole has been grappling with such concerns occasionally as long as we have been alive — longer: Look up Huey Long if his name is not familiar. Read or watch “All the King’s Men” if you haven’t already, or haven’t recently. But if you have just a few minutes, please, please make time for this clip[1], the last two minutes of Edward R. Murrow’s takedown of McCarthy.
Here’s the good news: That Murrow soliloquy came 49 months after McCarthy’s reign of terror began. Today, McCarthy’s name has become an epithet. That is to say, these things pass. But they pass, as Murrow so eloquently reminded us, when we see that we — each and all of us — are responsible for what becomes of our cherished country.”
Ancient Mariner
[1] See the clip at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUMEq24tqtU