Tuesday, October 04, 2022

** GOOGLE Google to Pay $85 Million to End Arizona Consumer-Privacy Suit **

 Hoorah! 

Google to Pay $85 Million to End Arizona Consumer-Privacy Suit

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"Alphabet Inc.’s Google will pay $85 million to resolve a consumer privacy suit by Arizona claiming the technology giant surreptitiously collects data on users’ whereabouts for targeted advertising.

The settlement comes as Google is facing similar complaints by a group of state attorneys general, including Texas, Indiana and Washington D.C., in their respective state courts, over user location data. . ."

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Arizona wins $85M in history-making lawsuit against Google - AZ Big Media

azbigmedia.com › business › arizona-win...
19 minutes ago · Google will pay $85 million to settle claims brought against the company under the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act in State of Arizona v. Google 

Bill "Quick Jab" Jabjiniak, Economic Director for City of Mesa Government







ALL THE OVER-HYPE

www.eastvalleytribune.com

Mesa lands big Google data center

Jim Walsh, Tribune Staff Writer
6 - 8 minutes

Technology giant Google is coming to Mesa, lured by a tax incentive agreement to build a massive data center in the emerging Elliot Road Technology Corridor.

In a major coup for Mesa, Google will join fellow tech heavyweight Apple, which already operates a large data center in the same area of southeast Mesa.

The Mesa City Council is primed to approve the Google development agreement at its meeting on Monday.

Steve Wright, a city spokesman, said he does not know specifically how many jobs will be created at the Google data center.

 He said the city is limited on how much it can say about the project and that more details may become available when the agreement comes before the council Monday night.

“They’re very guarded in what they say,’’ Wright said. “Obviously, building out the facility, there will be a lot of jobs in construction.’’

Google issued a statement acknowledging the company’s interest in the data center, but it provided few details.

“Google is considering acquiring property in Mesa, AZ., and while we do not have a confirmed timeline for development for the site, we want to ensure that we have the option to further grow should our business.. .

“In terms of a financial deal, this is home run. This is a great day,’’ Mayor John Giles said, after the council discussed the deal Thursday during an hour-long executive session.

Giles said there are still elements of the project that need to be worked out, such as Google buying the property, 186 acres located at Elliot and Sossaman roads in southeast Mesa.

Giles said Google’s decision to build the data center in Mesa means that the Elliot Road Tech Corridor will be anchored at each end by one of the world’s largest tech companies, Apple and Google.


“There’s no city that wouldn’t be envious of that,’’ Giles said.

He said the project has been known to insiders by a code name, “Project Red Hawk,’’ for more than a year because Mesa signed a confidentiality agreement with Google.

Vice Mayor Mark Freeman said that Google would be buying the property from the Morrison family, long time farmers in the southeast Valley who have been selling off parts of their holdings for different types of developments — including the Morrison Ranch subdivision in southeast Gilbert.

Bill Jabjiniak, Mesa’s economic development director, played a major role in the negotiations...


Jabjiniak said during his presentation that the data center would cover a staggering 750,000 square feet.

“Data centers are the engines of the internet,’’ Jabjiniak said. “We are talking about a $1 billion corporate investment.’’

He said Google would join Apple, AT&T, and Boeing as top Fortune 500 corporations with operations in Mesa.

The agreement also requires Mesa to make available 1,120-acre feet of water to Google initially, and that the amount of water can eventually grow to 4,480-acre feet per year if Google reaches certain development milestones.

Jabjiniak said data centers use the water for evaporative cooling. He said the availability of electricity from Salt River Project also was vital in Mesa’s efforts to recruit Google.

.."

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Meta Mesa Data Center (Spanish) - YouTube

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Duration: 3:12
Posted: Mar 1, 2022 

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Google to pay 85 million dollars to settle lawsuit with Arizona - FOX 10 Phoenix

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arizona google lawsuit from www.fox10phoenix.com
Duration: 0:35
Posted: 5 hours 
 


 
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Elizabeth Warren Makes a Lot of News: Oh Yes she does!


As a law professor for more than 30 years, Elizabeth taught courses on commercial law, contracts, and bankruptcy. She has written more than a hundred articles and eleven books, including four national best-sellers, This Fight Is Our Fight, A Fighting Chance, The Two-Income Trap, and All Your Worth. 

Elizabeth learned first-hand about the economic pressures facing working families, growing up in a family she says was "on the ragged edge of the middle class." She got married at 19, and after graduating from college, started teaching in elementary school. Her first baby, a daughter Amelia, was born when Elizabeth was 22. When Amelia was two, Elizabeth started law school. Shortly after she graduated, her son Alex was born. Elizabeth hung out a shingle and practiced law out of her living room, but she soon returned to teaching.

Elizabeth is a graduate of the University of Houston and Rutgers School of Law. Elizabeth and her husband Bruce Mann have been married for 41 years and live in Cambridge, Massachusetts with their golden retriever, Bailey. They have three grandchildren.

--- (Official Portrait About Elizabeth)

Elizabeth Warren, a fearless consumer advocate who has made her life's work the fight for middle class families, was re-elected to the United States Senate for a second term on November 6, 2018, by the people of Massachusetts.

Elizabeth is one of the nation’s leading progressive voices, fighting for big structural change that would transform our economy and rebuild the middle class. 

✓ She has put forward bold, ambitious plans to: 

  • End lobbying as we know it and make other sweeping changes to eliminate the influence of money in our federal government through the most comprehensive anti-corruption legislation since Watergate;
  • Impose an ultra-millionaire tax on fortunes worth over $50 million to generate $2.75 trillion in revenue over ten years—enough to pay for universal child care, student debt relief, and a down payment on a Green New Deal;
  • Address the nation’s housing crisis by building more than 3 million new homes, cutting rents nationwide by 10%, and taking the first steps towards healing the legacy of housing discrimination through historic new investments in federal housing programs;
  • Extend criminal accountability to corporate executives who oversee and direct illegal scams;
  • Give workers a greater say in the decision-making process at the nation’s biggest corporations by empowering them to elect 40% of the board at the company where they work;
  • Require every public company to disclose climate-related risks;
  • Provide Puerto Rico with a path to comprehensive debt relief and rebuild the island’s infrastructure;
  • Allocate $100 billion to solve the opioid and substance use crisis; and
  • Address skyrocketing prescription drug costs, including through the public manufacturing of generic drugs.

Elizabeth consistently reaches across the aisle to deliver wins for Massachusetts, making her one of the most effective members of the Senate. She helped secure $750 million in debt relief for students who were cheated by predatory, for-profit colleges, including 4,500 Massachusetts students and more than 28,000 students across the country. Elizabeth has also helped pass legislation to double federal funding for child care, make hearing aids available over the counter, reduce out-of-pocket costs for high school students enrolled in career and technical education programs, and put over $6 billion dollars in federal funding towards the fight against the opioid epidemic.

Elizabeth has used her platform to hold some of the nation’s largest corporations and most powerful government agencies accountable for fraud, waste, and abuse. In the wake of the fake accounts scandal at Wells Fargo, her relentless public pressure led to the resignation of two Wells Fargo CEOs, John Stumpf and his successor, Tim Sloan. Elizabeth also launched an investigation to hold Equifax accountable for a data breach that exposed the personal financial information of over 140 million customers and wrote legislation to keep it from happening again. Through her oversight work, she has exposed fraud and abuse perpetrated by Trump Administration officials, including at the Department of Education, Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Defense, and has successfully overturned rules that harm consumers and students.


✓✓

Twitter

✓ (Excerpt: Brookings’ 2021 annual report says it received money from Australia, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, Finland, and France, as well as from the US government, in the preceding year.)

www.motherjones.com

A top DC think tank took millions from foreign governments. Now lawmakers want answers.

Ari Berman
6 - 7 minutes

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, questions witnesses at a Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022.Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

"Senators in both parties are taking aim at the Brookings Institution, demanding details on funding agreements that, according to the lawmakers, could have allowed foreign governments to secretly influence policy prescriptions produced by the renowned establishment think tank.


The scrutiny follows the June resignation from Brookings of retired four-star general John Allen after news emerged that the Justice Department was investigating whether Allen violated foreign lobbying laws by advocating for Qatar while seeking payments from the Gulf state. The alleged lobbying occurred in 2017, while Allen, the former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, was a fellow at Brookings. Brookings listed Qatar as one of its top donors that year, with contributions of “$2,000,000 and above.” Brookings officials have said they did not know of Allen’s actions. Allen, who has not been charged with any crimes, denies that he acted as a Qatari agent. But the scandal has drawn attention to the think tank’s decades of ties to Qatar, as well as its funding from other countries.

In a letter Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she has “significant concerns about agreements that Brookings has in place with foreign governments” and questioned if those deals undermine the organization’s independence. She asked Brookings to give her details of those agreements.

 “Foreign governments, billionaire corporations, and the super wealthy should not be able to hide behind think tanks to secretly peddle influence and shape policy, and the Brookings Institution needs to fully disclose all of its funding agreements or it risks undermining its reputation,” the Massachusetts Democrat said in a statement to Mother Jones.

Think tanks have long offered foreign states a sort of backdoor means to advocate for their interests in Washington. Critics contend that by funding think tank programs, governments can effectively hire these organizations as lobbyists. The lawmakers’ scrutiny of Brookings is part of an intermittent effort by Congress to crack down on this practice.

Brookings has responded to criticism by noting it has internal policies aimed at ensuring that donors do not compromise the independence of its scholars. “Brookings will respond to Senator Warren’s inquiry to assure her of our full commitment to upholding the independence and integrity of our work,” a spokesperson for the organization said Monday. “As a leading global think tank, we remain interested and available to work with Members and Senators on important public policy questions in this regard.”


Warren and other senators have previously raised concerns about a 2007 agreement through which Qatar pledged $5 million to help Brookings set up an outpost in Doha. Politico reported in June on a memorandum of understanding between Brookings and Qatar that gave the Qataris substantial influence over that center. The agreement required the head of the center to “engage in regular consultation” with Qatar’s foreign ministry and gave the ministry power to approve the center’s budget and programing.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, last week introduced legislation that would require nonprofits working to influence US policy or public opinion to publicly report all funds received from foreign governments or organizations. It would also require them to make public “all written contracts, agreements, or memoranda of understanding…with any foreign principal.” The bill text cites Brookings’ 2007 agreement with Qatar to explain why such disclosures are needed. “Congress currently is unable to determine what other agreements that the Brookings Institution or other influential think tanks have with foreign governmental entities, a void which has already been exploited by at least Qatar,” the bill says.

Grassley, along with GOP senators Ted Cruz (Texas), Tom Cotton (Ark.), and John Cornyn (Texas), argued in an August 16 letter to the Justice Department that Brookings had violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, by failing to register as a lobbyist for Qatar following the 2007 agreement. Qatar exercised control over the center, which worked to influence US policy, the senators argued. “The Brookings Institution appears to be a foreign agent for the State of Qatar for purposes of FARA and should register as such with DOJ,” the letter said.

Brookings has said that it ended its connection to its Doha Center last year. A Grassley spokesperson, in an email, said Brookings should still register retroactively.

Warren wrote Brookings about Allen and Qatar in July, asking if the think tank had memorandums of understanding with countries other than Qatar. In an August 22 response, Amy Liu, Brookings’ interim president, said that Brookings does in fact have “funding agreements” with other foreign states. Liu said those agreements “require donors, including foreign governments, to acknowledge the Institution’s research independence.” But she did not say what the agreements require from Brookings, further delineate their terms, or name the countries involved.

✓

Top stories

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren - Campaign Finance Summary • OpenSecrets

www.opensecrets.org › summary
Fundraising profile for Sen. Elizabeth Warren - Massachusetts. 

Elizabeth Warren's Vision of a Foreign Policy for All

www.foreignaffairs.com › united-states
elizabeth warren from www.foreignaffairs.com
Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, outlines her vision for a foreign policy that works for all Americans.

Elizabeth Warren | C-SPAN.org

www.c-span.org › person › ElizabethWa...
elizabeth warren from www.c-span.org
Elizabeth Ann Warren is an American politician and former law professor who is the senior United States senator from Massachusetts, serving since 2013.

Elizabeth Warren - Forbes

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elizabeth warren from www.forbes.com
She was previously a law professor for more than 30 years and has written 11 books, including four bestsellers. Forbes Lists. 50 Over 50 - Investment ...

Elizabeth Warren | Facebook

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Elizabeth Warren, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 3324298 likes · 41476 talking about this. United States Senator from Massachusetts, former teacher....
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Commentary How to get away with insurrection: The techniques of denial and distraction that politicians use to manage scandal

 


WHOA!

Jared Del Rosso is an associate professor at the University of Denver. During his time at DU, Del Rosso has researched the politics of torture in the U.S. His scholarly articles and first book, "Talking About Torture" (Columbia University Press, 2015), reveal the forms of denial and acknowledgment used in debates about waterboarding, force feeding, and other forms of torture employed during the war on terror. A new book on the sociology of denial, "Denial: How We Hide, Ignore, and Explain Away Problems," was published by NYU Press in July 2022.

MORE FROM AUTHOR

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www.azmirror.com

How to get away with insurrection: The techniques of denial and distraction that politicians use to manage scandal

Jared Del Rosso
8 - 10 minutes

"The U.S. House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection intends to hold another public hearing, likely the last before it releases its official report. The hearing had been scheduled for Sept. 28, 2022 but was postponed because of Hurricane Ian.


Through earlier hearings this past summer, the committee has shown how former President Donald Trump and close associates spread the “big lie” of a stolen election. The hearings have also shown how Trump stoked the rage of protesters who marched to the U.S. Capitol and then refused to act when they breached the building.

The hearings have aired in prime time and dominated news cycles. Still, polling conducted in August by Monmouth University found that around 3 in 10 Americans still believe that Trump “did nothing wrong regarding January 6.”

As a sociologist who studies denial, I analyze how people ignore clear truths and use rhetoric to convince others to deny them, too. Politicians and their media allies have long used this rhetoric to manage scandals. Trump and his supporters’ responses to the Jan. 6 investigation are no exception.


 

✓ Stages of denial

Commonly, people think of denial as a state of being: Someone is “in denial” when they reject obvious truths. However, denial also consists of linguistic strategies that people use to downplay their misconduct and avoid responsibility for it.


These strategies are remarkably adaptable. They’ve been used by both political parties to manage wildly different scandals. Even so, the strategies tend to be used in fairly predictable ways. Because of this, we can often see scandals unfold through clear stages of denial.

✓ In my previous research on denial and U.S. torture, I analyzed how the George W. Bush administration and supporters in Congress adjusted the forms of denial they used as new allegations and evidence of abuses in the global “war on terror” became public.

✓ For instance, after photographs of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were released in the spring of 2004, Abu Ghraib was described as a deplorable but isolated incident. At the time, there wasn’t serious public evidence of detainee abuse at other U.S. facilities.

✓ Later revelations about the use of torture at Guantánamo Bay and secret CIA black sites changed things. The Bush administration could no longer claim that torture was an isolated incident. Officials also faced allegations that they had directly and knowingly authorized torture.

A museum display shows a wooden board the size of a person below the words 'What is torture?'
An exhibit on torture includes a section on waterboarding in the International Spy Museum in Washington in 2019. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin


Facing these allegations, Bush and his supporters began justifying and downplaying torture. To many Americans, torture, once deplorable, was rebranded as an acceptable national security tool: “enhanced interrogation.”

As the debate about torture shows, political responses to scandal often begin with outright denials. But rarely do they end there. When politicians face credible evidence of political misconduct, they often try other forms of denial. Instead of saying allegations are untrue, they may downplay the seriousness of allegations, justify their behavior or try to distract from it.


It’s not just Republican administrations that use denial in this way. When the Obama administration could no longer outright deny civilian casualties caused by drone strikes, it downplayed them. In a 2013 national security speech, President Barack Obama contrasted drone strikes with the use of “conventional air power or missiles,” which he described as “far less precise.” He also justified drone strikes, arguing that “to do nothing in the face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties.”

Scandal strategies in play


Americans watched the Jan. 6 insurrection on TV and social media as it happened. Given the vividness of the day, outright denials of the insurrection are particularly far-fetched and marginal – though they do exist. For example, some Trump supporters have claimed that left-wing “antifa” groups breached the Capitol – a claim many rioters themselves have rejected.

Some of Trump’s supporters in Congress and the media have repeated the claim that the insurrection was staged to discredit Trump. But given Trump’s own vocal support for the insurrectionists, supporters usually deploy more nuanced denials to downplay the day’s events.

So what happens when outright denial fails? From ordinary citizens to political elites, people often respond to allegations by “condemning the condemners,” accusing their accusers of exaggerating – or of doing worse things themselves, a strategy called “advantageous comparisons.”


Together, these two strategies paint those making accusations as untrustworthy or hypocritical. As I show in my new book on denial , these are standard denials of those managing scandals.

“Condemning the condemners” and “advantageous comparisons” have been central to efforts to minimize the Jan. 6 insurrection, as well. Some critics of the committee downplay the insurrection by likening it to the Black Lives Matter protests, despite the fact that the vast majority were peaceful.

“For months, our cities burned, police stations burned, our businesses were shattered. And they said nothing. Or they cheer-led for it. And they fund-raised for it. And they allowed it to happen in the greatest country in the world,” Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz said during Trump’s second impeachment. “Now, some have cited the metaphor that the president lit the flames. Well, they lit actual flames, actual fires!”

Similar comparisons reappeared amid the House select committee’s hearings. One NFL coach called Jan. 6 a “dust-up” by comparison to the Black Lives Matter protests.


These forms of denial do several things at once. They direct attention away from the original focus of the scandal. They minimize Trump’s role in inciting the violence of Jan. 6 by making the claim that Democrats incite even more destructive forms of violence. And they discredit the investigation by suggesting that those leading it are hypocrites, more interested in scoring political points than in curtailing political violence.

A small group of protesters in a circle, with a man holding a 'Trump won' poster in the middle.
Trump supporters and members of the far-right group Proud Boys gather during a ‘Justice for January 6th Vigil’ in New York on Jan. 6, 2022. AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura


Trickle-down denial

These denials may not sway a majority of Americans. Still, they’re consequential. Denial trickles down by providing ordinary citizens with scripts for talking about political scandals. Denials also reaffirm beliefs, allowing people to filter out information that contradicts what they hold to be true. Indeed, ordinary Americans have adapted “advantageous comparisons” to justify the insurrection.

This has happened before. For example, in a study of politically active Americans, sociologists Barbara Sutton and Kari Marie Norgaard found that some Americans adopted pro-torture politicians’ rhetoric – such as supporting “enhanced interrogation” and defending practices like waterboarding as a way to gather intelligence, even as they condemned “torture.”

For this reason, it’s important to recognize when politicians and the media draw from the denial’s playbook. By doing so, observers can better distinguish between genuine political disagreements and the predictable denials, which protect the most powerful by excusing their misconduct."

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Here in Mesa AZ...if U Want to Vote Early

FIRST - Get Informed! 

This press release says NOTHING about four issues on the General Election ballot

www.mesanow.org

Early Voting for the City of Mesa General Election

2 minutes

The City of Mesa Clerk's Office is prepared for the 2022 General Election. Through continuous education, staff members strive to uphold election regulations, establish innovative process improvements, promote transparency to citizens and provide responsive and reliable information.


Early voting for the General Election begins on Wednesday, Oct. 12 and ends on Friday, Nov. 4. 

In-person early voting at Mesa City Plaza is not available this election year; however, the City Clerk's Office will be providing a secure ballot Drop Box in the Mesa City Plaza lobby, 20 E. Main St., Monday through Thursday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., beginning Oct. 12, and 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 8.

Maricopa County Election Department will offer "vote anywhere" Vote Centers, which allow voters to choose from any open location, instead of one assigned location. 

Voters can visit https://elections.maricopa.gov/voting/where-to-vote.html to find the nearest location.


The City of Mesa has four issues on the General Election ballot:

Question 1 - Alternative Expenditure Limitation (Home Rule)
Question 2 - General Obligation Bonds
Proposition 476 - City Charter Section 205 (D) (Meet and Confer)
Proposition 477 - City Charter Section 609 (:Purchasing Requirements)

✓ District 4 residents will also be deciding on their representative on the Mesa City Council.

The last day to register to vote is Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022. 

For more information, please contact the Mesa City Clerk's Office at 480-644-4868 

or 

visit https://www.mesaaz.gov/government/city-clerk/election-information/general-election.

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Zelensky Calls for a European Army as He Slams EU Leaders’ Response

      Jan 23, 2026 During the EU Summit yesterday, the EU leaders ...