Tuesday, November 03, 2020
Two Words of Plain Political Language > Ditch Mitch!
He's blocking the Halls of Congress. He's standing in the way. Times are changing throughout the land for those of us who want a swift change of direction—or anything akin to a new New Deal
This just appeared in The Nation at 05:45 a.m. written by John Nichols, National Affairs Correspondent
Don’t Just Dump Trump, Ditch Mitch McConnell
Ending Donald Trump’s presidency isn’t enough. Democrats also have to take McConnell’s position as majority leader
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, from Kentucky. (Jon Cherry / Getty Images)
"This is the day that should mark the beginning of the end of the torturous presidency of Donald John Trump. But replacing Trump with Joe Biden is an entirely insufficient goal for a moment in history so perilous as the one in which the United States’ 59th quadrennial presidential election is being conducted. This is also the day when Mitch McConnell’s vice grip on the United States Senate can be broken. . . So on this Election Day and in the days that follow, I’ll be watching the presidential contest that has, necessarily, taken center stage—and that will not be settled until Trump and his supporters stand back. But I will be keeping just as close an eye on the Senate races that will define the scope and character of a Biden or Trump presidency. . . Of course, I’ll watch tonight to see if, in the upset of upsets, Democrat Amy McGrath might actually convince a sufficient number of Kentuckians to toss McConnell out of the Senate. But that’s not the only way that McConnell could be derailed this year.
Ending Trumpism is vital for the country’s future. But so is ending McConnellism.
Mesa Moves Question 1 >> Expanding The Promised Land In The Kingdom of Deseret & The New Zion
That is Question #1 first revealed as something else, then this blurb "The City is proposing the approval of a $100 million 2020 Bond Program that leverages $62 million in reimbursements from the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) to go towards Regional Roadway Improvements, for a total of $162 million available for the Mesa Moves program".
WHAT IS IT REALLY? Highway Robbery paving-the-way for more Fields of Schemes to accelerate private wealth-creation fueled by the burden of more public debt obligations. Make the developers pay - Saints Holdings (and all its hard-to-track for-profit affiliates) have plenty of money!
25 August 2019
Take-Me-Out To The Mesa Council's Ball Game & Photo Opp: Paid In Full
If you missed the show on Monday, there's a post on this blog to view it.
There are 15 people in the image: a crowd. Some of that is explained below in an article from AZ Big Media.
Please don't even dare to ask who bought-and-sold some 11,442 acres in carefully-crafted land transfers that follow the usual development playbook to make fortunes off former agricultural lands all with water-rights that run with the land.
The end buyer of the acreage?
Time for readers to do some digital work - use the Search box on this blog. Suggestion: type in Mesa Water Farm, Pinal Land Holdings, Natalie Lewis, or Jacob Andersen. Game on!
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Trading hands, holding companies and joint ventures.
There are some details about the buyer missing, including 'pay-offs' all along the way for what's called "now obsolete water-rights" - the most precious commodity here in the desert.
Business News | 20 Aug | AZ Business Magazine
19 March 2017
InThe Cubby-Hole @ Sloan Park: Big Biz or Big Bad Debt for Mesa Taxpayers?
2020 Mesa Moves Bond Program | City of Mesa
Scurry-In-A-Hurry: Quickly Sifting Techdirt
Your MesaZona Blogger goes meekly into anything Tech - it's intimidating and bamboozling all at the same time. But hey, let's go there > FEAR NOTHING. New To Techdirt? Explore some core concepts:
- If Intellectual Property Is Neither Intellectual, Nor Property, What Is It?
- Infinity Is Your Friend In Economics
- Saying You Can't Compete With Free Is Saying You Can't Compete Period
You can always dig deeper if you want.
That's the point > always go to the source for Mis - Uses of Technology
From the Please Don 't Department
Bethesda, Microsoft Make Conflicting Statements About Game Exclusivity After Studio Purchase
Several weeks ago, Microsoft bought Zenimax Media, the parent organization of Bethesda Softworks for over $7 billion. Bethesda is a celebrated studio best known for its Fallout and Elder Scrolls titles. Both series have long histories of being published across a wide range of gaming platforms, including the PC, PlayStation, and Xbox markets. Almost immediately after the deal, however, many gamers openly worried that Microsoft would warehouse the properties to either the PC or Xbox markets exclusively.
The worry didn't cease when Kotaku interviewed Xbox chief Phil Spencer about the implications of the deal and Spencer's remarks were decidedly noncommittal. . .
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From the you-don't-own-what-you-buy Department
From the you-don't-own-what-you-buy dept
Three years ago, Google jumped into the home security market. After a troubled development cycle it launched Nest Secure, a $500 home security system that competes with the likes of Abode and Simplisafe. But things didn't go quite as planned. Last year, the company took some deserved heat for failing to mention the system's "Nest Guard" keypad control base included a hidden microphone, creating ample paranoia among owners. Google also took heat for failing to really deploy updates at the same pace that other Nest products had seen, and for making changes that locked you into the Google ecosystem at the cost of interoperability.
Last week the company quietly told Android Police it would be killing the Nest Secure completely. The company didn't really explain why, or what happens next, only to state that the product will still work. For now. Of course when Ars Technica pressed the company as to how long existing users can expect their expensive security service to get support, the company apparently couldn't be bothered to answer:
"We tried asking Google about all this a few days ago when we got a tip that the Nest Secure was listed as "no longer available" (thanks, Bill!) but the company wouldn't answer. . .
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From the Now-That's-Influence Department
Three TikTok Influencers Influenced A Judge To Block Trump's TikTok Ban
Remember Trump's ridiculous executive order to ban TikTok if it wasn't sold to an American company? Then there was a grifty non-deal in which Oracle agreed to host TikTok's new American subsidiary, though nothing about that deal appears to have been finalized, and the executive order was still somewhat in place. The first stage of the ban on the app was blocked by a judge in a lawsuit from TikTok itself. But that ruling did not (yet) block the second stage of the executive order which was set to go into effect this month.
So some good news: that too has been blocked thanks to a lawsuit from three TikTok influencers: Douglas Marland, Cosette Rinab, and Alec Chambers. The three of them filed their lawsuit in September, right after the details of the executive order came out. I don't know much about these influencers, but I will note they had some high-powered, big time lawyers working the case for them (including the firm the judge in this very case worked at prior to being put on the bench...).
The lawsuit noted that the three influencers were a comedian, a fashion creator and a musician "each of whom has developed a significant following by creating and posting content on TikTok." They argued that the executive order violated their 1st Amendment rights, creating prior restraint of their speech. As they correctly note, even on the flimsy "national security" basis that Trump, Wilbur Ross, and Mike Pompeo made in pushing through this executive order, you can't just ban speech broadly like that. . .
SPOILER ALERT ENDING: There had been some chatter a few weeks back that since Trump got all the headlines he wanted out of his TikTok ban and the Oracle deal, he no longer much cares about it. The assumption was that the administration would likely just let the issue fade away, and now the court is helping that process move along. Of course, this also demonstrates what a preposterous, vindictive, unconstitutional, garbage move this whole thing was in the first place.
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From the So-Good Luck-With-That Department
"Everyone wants to do something about Section 230. It’s baffling how seldom we talk about what happens next. What if Section 230 is repealed tomorrow? Must Twitter cease fact-checking the President? Must Google display all search results in chronological order? Perhaps PragerU would finally have a tenable claim against YouTube; and Jason Fyk might one day return to showering the Facebook masses with his prized collection of pissing videos.
Suffice to say, that’s not how any of this works.
Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, Section 230 isn’t what’s stopping the government from pulling the plug on Twitter for taking down NY Post tweets or exposing bloviating, lying, elected officials. Indeed, without Section 230, plaintiffs with a big tech axe to grind still have a significant hurdle to overcome: The First Amendment. . . Or, as TechFreedom’s brilliant Ashkhen Kazaryan wisely puts it, the First Amendment protects Twitter from Trump, but not Trump from Twitter. . ."
THE FINISH RUNS LIKE THIS:
With that, it seems that Americans haven’t fallen out of love with Section 230, rather, alarmingly, they’ve fallen out of love with the First Amendment.
In case you’re wondering if you too have fallen out of love with the freedom of speech, consider the following:
If you're upset that Twitter and Facebook keep removing content that favors your political viewpoints,
Your problem is with the First Amendment, not Section 230.
If you're upset that your favorite social media site won't take down content that offends you,
Your problem is with the First Amendment, not Section 230.
If you're mad at search engines for indexing websites you don't agree with,
Your problem is with the First Amendment, not Section 230.
If you're mad at a website for removing your posts - even when it seems unreasonable
Your problem is with the First Amendment, not Section 230.
If you don't like the way a website aggregates content on your feed or in your search results,
Your problem is with the First Amendment, not Section 230.
If you wish websites had to carry and remove only specific pre-approved types of content
Your problem is with the First Amendment, not Section 230.
If you wish social media services had to be politically neutral,
Your problem is with the First Amendment, not Section 230.
If someone wrote a negative online review about you or your business,
Your problem is with the First Amendment, not Section 230.
If you hate pornography,
Your problem is with the First Amendment, not Section 230.
If you hate Trump’s Tweets
Your problem is with the First Amendment, not Section 230.
If you hate fact-checks,
Your problem is with the First Amendment, not Section 230.
If you love fact-checks and wish Facebook had to do more of them,
Your problem is with the First Amendment, not Section 230.
And at the end of the day, If you hate editorial discretion and free speech,
You probably just hate the First Amendment... not Section 230.
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Monday, November 02, 2020
Mesa Moves on Question 1 Before Taxpayers Approve > An Issuer Default Rating Assigned by Fitch October 29
At least for $46MM of the proposed $100,000,000 General Obligation Debt Bonds - even before we know the results of tomorrow's election
Fitch Assigns Initial 'AA' IDR to Mesa, AZ; Rates $46MM GO Bonds 'AAA'
Thu 29 Oct, 2020 - 10:34 ET
Fitch Ratings - Austin - 29 Oct 2020: Fitch Ratings has assigned an initial 'AAA' to the following general obligation (GO) bonds of the city of Mesa, Arizona:
--$22.1 million general obligation bonds, series 2020;
--$24.1 million general obligation refunding bonds, series 2020.
Both series of bonds will be sold via negotiation the week of Nov. 9. Series 2020 new money proceeds will finance parks, public safety and streets improvements, while the series 2020 refunding proceeds will refinance a portion of the city's outstanding tax-supported debt for interest savings.
Fitch has also assigned an Issuer Default Rating of 'AA' to the city. . .
SECURITY
Both series of bonds are payable from an unlimited ad valorem tax levied against all taxable property in the city.
The Arizona legislature in its 2016 and 2017 sessions (52nd and 53rd legislatures) approved amendments to various sections of the Arizona Revised Statutes that provide ULTGO bondholders with a statutory lien on ad valorem taxes of cities, towns, counties, school districts, community college districts and various special districts in the state. Fitch believes the statute provides bondholders with a substantial preferential right in a bankruptcy proceeding, warranting a GO bond rating up to two notches higher than the entity's IDR. The statutory lien applies only to ad valorem tax revenues and applies both to GO bonds previously issued and to be issued in the future. The legislation does not affect Fitch's IDR for the city.
READ MORE >
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