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Thanks to an under-the-radar bookkeeping change at the Department of Education, hundreds of rural schools across the US are set to lose vital funds.
As reported in the New York Times, the department has changed the eligibility criteria for the Rural and Low-Income School Programme, which provides funding for school districts in some of the poorest parts of the country.
The change will make it harder for districts to demonstrate their eligibility, meaning hundreds of them will lose tens of thousands of dollars – and in some cases much more.
Nearly a seventh of the US’s public school pupils live in rural school districts, which have long been poor and underfunded. Many depend on the programme to fund everything from anti-bullying initiatives to counselling to language lessons for non-English speakers.
To qualify for the programme, school districts must prove that at least 20 per cent of their area’s school-age children live in poverty.
Officially, they are required to do so using census data, but because the census often leaves out many people living in rural areas, they have in practice been allowed to cite the percentage of their pupils who qualify for free or subsidised meals.
The department has now abruptly decided that it will only allow districts to use census data, meaning districts will struggle to account for all children in their local areas who would qualify.
A department spokeswoman told the Times that the move is simply a matter of following the law and that Congress can legislate to formally change the criteria, but the move has nonetheless met with condemnation from both Democrats and Republicans.
Even some of those sympathetic to Donald Trump and invested in his re-election are baffled as to why the department would withdraw the money from poor, rural districts, including core parts of the president’s electoral base.
Senators including Susan Collins of Maine are now scrambling to put together a fix that will ensure schools can still access the programme.
The Department of Education is led by Betsy DeVos, who was one of Mr Trump’s most controversial cabinet appointees at the start of his administration. She has drawn fire both for her lack of experience in schools and her past statements advocating a religious agenda for public education.
Eight percent of Iran's parliament — 23 out of 290 members — has been infected with the coronavirus.
At least seven government officials also have it, including one of Iran's vice presidents, and a key adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has died from the virus.
The government's efforts to suppress information about the scale of the outbreak has exacerbated its impact, and experts warn this is a cautionary tale for the rest of the world.
Iran is descending into chaos amid the coronavirus outbreak, with the government seemingly incapable of handling the scale of the crisis and going as far as to threaten the death penalty to those who hoard necessary materials or equipment.
At least 77 people have died in Iran from the virus so far, according to the official death toll, though the number could be much higher because of the government's apparent efforts to hide the extent of the outbreak. Iran has over 2,300 confirmed cases.
As of Tuesday, 8% of Iran's parliament has been infected, according to CNN, along with Iran's deputy health minister and one of the country's vice presidents. And a key adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mohammad Mirmohammadi, has died from it.
In total, at least 23 members of the 290-member Iranian parliament have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, CNN reported. The parliament has been suspended indefinitely, and lawmakers have been asked to stop meeting with the public.
Iran appears to have the highest number of government officials infected with the coronavirus. At least seven Iranian officials, including Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar, have tested positive for coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Iran has temporarily released 54,000 prisoners to combat the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, BBC News reported.
The coronavirus has caused such a stir in Iran that people are not leaving their homes, which has apparently eliminated pollution from the skies of the capital, Tehran.
Though the novel coronavirus originated in Wuhan, China, it appears that Iran is the new epicenter. The first coronavirus case in New York City was a woman who had recently been traveling in Iran.
The Trump administration on Saturday announced it was expanding a travel ban on Iran to any foreign nationals who had been in the country over the past 14 days.
Experts on public health and democracy have said that Iran's handling of the coronavirus, and the lack of transparency surrounding the outbreak, is a cautionary tale for the rest of the world.
"In China and Iran, both experiencing major outbreaks, early action has been undermined by efforts to halt and control free flow of information," which has limited the public's understanding and willingness to "share vital information with officials," Matthew Kavanagh, an assistant professor of global health at Georgetown University, told Insider last week.
Trump speaking at a MAGAt rally in North Charleston, South Carolina. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — President Donald Trump on Friday night tried to cast the global outbreak of the coronavirus as a liberal conspiracy intended to undermine his first term, lumping it alongside impeachment and the Mueller investigation.
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: Smart people will believe the scientists and medical experts while the MAGAts will believe Trump. More MAGAts will die than moral people. This is the silver lining.
He blamed the press for acting hysterically about the virus, which has now spread to China, Japan, South Korea, Iran, Italy and the U.S, and he downplayed its dangers, saying against expert opinion it was on par with the flu.
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: Trump is a dumb fuck but he's smart enough to know that his MAGAts are dumber than he is. He wants those fat fuckers dead so they can be replaced with cheaper and more productive Mexican labor.
“The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. They're politicizing it,” he said. “They don't have any clue. They can't even count their votes in Iowa. No, they can't. They can't count their votes. One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That did not work out too well. They could not do it. They tried the impeachment hoax.”
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: Democrats are trying to save lives by presenting the science and the warnings of medical experts. Trump is the on politicizing this by running filthy lie hole. Trump and his MAGAts deserve the agonizing death of the coronavirus.
Then Trump called the coronavirus “their new hoax.”
Trump’s comments came as the White House has struggled to adequately respond to and contain the coronavirus’s increasingly sweeping path. At the rally — held here on the eve of the Democratic primary in South Carolina — he sought to manage Americans’ expectations about the White House’s ability to fight it.
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: Trump is already proving how incompetent the Whitehouse is by putting that science denying idiot Mike Pence in charge of fucking up things.
By undermining the news reporting on the virus and by trying to hold liberals responsible for a potential public health crisis that has little to do with politics, Trump did what he often does best: He sought to deflect blame at a time when many Americans sought leadership and scientific facts.
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: Trump knows his MAGAts hate science so he's merely jerking them off.
After Trump had downplayed the risks of coronavirus, he reassured supporters that the White House was “magnificently organized” in fighting it. In fact, Trump’s administration spent the week jockeying among themselves to lead the response, while the stock market tumbled with losses not seen since the global financial crisis in 2008. White House officials and the president grew so concerned this week that Trump put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the response effort, swapping out his beleaguered health secretary.
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: Pence is a science denying conservative cock sucking fake Christian who love to jerk off the MAGAts.
None of that came up on Friday night, as Trump trash-talked his Democratic opponents in 2020 and characterized the coronavirus as the latest issue touching on border security.
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: Trump will not be stopping cheap Mexican labor anytime soon. After the coronavirus devastates the MAGAt labor force, American companies will be begging for highly productive South American labor.
“Whether it is the virus that we're talking about or many other public health threats, the Democrat policy of open borders is a direct threat to the health and well-being of all Americans. Now, you see it with the coronavirus. You see it. You see it with the coronavirus. You see that. When you have this virus or any other virus or any other problem coming in, it's not the only thing that comes in through the border and we are setting records now at the border,” Trump said.
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: Trump has 1000's of illegal Mexican and South American workers working for him.
Earlier in the week, the Trump administration tried to allay Americans’ concerns about the virus by downplaying the coronavirus’s seriousness. Trump also congratulated himself for shutting down flights between the U.S. and China.
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: Trump wasn't the one who shut down the flights and even if he did, why would he? He's saying that the virus is a liberal hoax and no worse than the flu. MAGAts will die from this virus. Let's hope it's in the millions.
But by the end of the week, White House officials including the president had shifted to pushing back against anyone who expressed too much concern about the virus or its effect on the economy, repeatedly blaming the Democrats and the media for the growing concerns and the steep drop in the stock market amid the uncertainty.
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: Worldwide stock markets are dropping because worker in factories are getting sick and dying. Production of goods and services are falling and the markets are reflecting that.
“It’s the unknown, you know, they look at it, and they say how long will this last. I think they’re not very happy with the Democrat candidates when they see them, and I think that has an impact,” Trump said at the White House on Friday afternoon before traveling to the campaign rally.
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: Trump would be smart to shut his lie hole.
Top White House officials kept up the same mantra all day Friday.
The director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow told reporters that “people should not overreact” — from investors to everyday Americans. "Given what we know factually, it looks to me like the market had gone too far,” Kudlow said.
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: No douche bag, trash like you are using this as an excuse to manipulate stock prices and create a bear market.
Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney talked about the ongoing coverage of the coronavirus as an attempt by the media to politically damage the president during an election year.
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: Mulvaney is a know liar and his attempt to spin the reporting of this pandemic into something political is more reason why Mulvaney and other Trump henchmen be tried and executed for their treason.
Health officials, meanwhile, spent the last two days trying to determine how a California resident became infected with coronavirus and who else the patient may have exposed to it. This was the first potential case of coronavirus in the U.S. that had not been contracted from traveling abroad and potential sign it could spread throughout the U.S.
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: For every known case of infection there are probably many unknown cases. That means their could be millions of carriers who have no or minimal symptoms. It's could be the Typhoid Mary scenario. She was asymptomatic.
That wasn’t the message on Air Force One on the flight down to South Carolina, with the televisions turned to Fox News. In the bubble the president travels in, the TV headlines told the world the president had a “firm grasp” on the coronavirus and that Democrats tried to score “political points” on it.
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed: there is one thing Trump has a firm grasp on and that is Putin's dick when he's blowing him.
BEIRUT (AP) — The leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said Sunday that Iran's missile attacks on two bases in Iraq housing U.S. forces was only the start of the retaliation for America's killing a top Iranian general in a drone strike.
Hassan Nasrallah described Iran's ballistic missile response as a “slap” to Washington, one that sent a message. The limited strikes caused no casualties and appeared to be mainly a show of force.
The leader of Hezbollah, which is closely aligned with Iran, said the strikes were the "first step down a long path" that will ensure U.S. troops withdraw from the region.
"The Americans must remove their bases, soldiers and officers and ships from our region. The alternative ... to leaving vertically is leaving horizontally. This is a decisive and firm decision," Nasrallah said.
“We are speaking about the start of a phase, about a new battle, about a new era in the region," he added.
His 90-minute televised speech marked one week since the killing of Iran's Gen. Qassim Soleimani.
Nasrallah praised Soleimani for his steadfast support for Hezbollah. Iran's Revolutionary Guard has provided training for Hezbollah, which fought in the war in Syria alongside Iran-backed militias that Soleimani directed.
Nasrallah said that the world is a different place after Soleimani's death, and not a safer place as some U.S. officials have declared.
Iran had for days been promising to respond forcefully to Soleimani's killing. But after the ballistic missile strikes, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that the country had “concluded proportionate measures in self-defense."
Nasrallah also praised the Iran's leadership for admitting to accidentally shooting down a Ukranian passenger plane on the night it launched the missile attacks. He called the acknowledgement “transparency that is unparalleled in the world.”
The plane crash early Wednesday killed all 176 people on board, mostly Iranians and Iranian-Canadians. Iran had initially pointed to a technical failure and insisted the armed forces were not to blame.
Hezbollah is one of Iran's main allies in the region and is a sworn enemy of Israel, with which it has had a series of confrontations, lastly in 2006.
Op Ed: Dear Hezbollah,
All decent Americans hate Trump and his lies and crimes. Please don't harm any good Americans. If you kill bad Americans good American won't be upset about it.
I write about the broad intersection of data and society.
The Twitter logo. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
The past month has seen a flurry of high profile announcements chronicling just how all-powerful social media companies have become in their control over what we see online. From Twitter’s nonchalant reminder of its ability to ban world leaders and their posts, to Facebook’s actual deletion of a head of state, Silicon Valley has been on the move to remind the world that it and it alone decides what we are permitted to see in its walled gardens that define our modern web. As we take stock of a new year, what does 2017 teach us about what to expect in the coming year?
The power of social media companies to determine what crosses their digital borders has been in the headlines this week with two major stories: Facebook’s redesigned News Feed that deemphasizes commercial and news content in favor of friends and family and a set of undercover videos by Project Veritas that claim to show several Twitter employees openly discussing how the platform limits or deletes posts or entire user accounts.
Project Veritas is known for selectively editing its videos and the manner in which the most recent videos were filmed and edited makes it difficult to fully assess their contents and the veracity of the claims they appear to make. The broader question, however, is why such films received the attention they did in 2018. The short answer is that they address a topic that the social media platforms themselves have been immensely reluctant to discuss publicly: how they make the myriad decisions each day of who and what to delete or restrict on their platforms.
When asked for comment on several specific claims made in the videos, a Twitter spokesperson issued a statement saying “The individuals depicted in this video were speaking in a personal capacity and do not represent or speak for Twitter” and that “Twitter is committed to enforcing our rules without bias and empowering every voice on our platform, in accordance with the Twitter Rules.” However, when asked about the specific claims made in the video regarding content moderation, Twitter would provide comment only regarding “shadowbanning,” saying “Twitter does not shadowban accounts. We do take actions to downrank accounts that are abusive, and mark them accordingly so people can still to click through and see these Tweets if they so choose” and referred to its Help Center regarding “Limiting Tweet visibility."
When asked whether the company unilaterally denied the allegations of “unwritten rules” and political bias in its content review teams that determine what content is considered a violation of its rules, the company responded to several other questions, but did not issue a denial or any other comment regarding the bias statements beyond denying the existence of “shadowbanning,” nor provide further comment regarding the question of bias or reviewer composition. Unfortunately, this appears to be the standard practice today of Silicon Valley companies when confronted with questions of how they decide what is permissible speech online: simply remain silent and wait for the story to pass, rather than take the opportunity to provide their users with more detail about how the online world they call home works.
In particular, when confronted with questions of bias, whether relating to political affiliation in the US or government pressure internationally, companies have remained largely silent, refusing to provide any significant detail as to their moderation policies. Why is it that in 2018 the platforms we use to communicate with each other operate as opaque black boxes into which we have absolutely no insight or voice and simply accept that a handful of people in Silicon Valley will decide what a third of the earth’s population have the right to talk about?
When asked whether Twitter would consider releasing its full set of guides, manuals, documentation, tutorials, training materials and all other materials given to its reviewers or a justification for why it believes this material cannot be released, the company did not respond. In the past companies have claimed that releasing such material would enable bad actors to know just what they can get away with, but such arguments hold little merit in that every day bad actors post material looking to see just how close to the line they can tread without consequence.
Setting aside the specifics of its training manuals, it is also noteworthy that the companies have similarly steadfastly refused to provide aggregate demographics regarding their content review staff. Releasing basic top-level statistics as to gender, race, languages spoken, countries they hail from, self-identified political, social, religious and other affiliations and other demographics would go a long way towards refuting the bias claims that regularly surface regarding the companies’ review staff.
Understanding the composition of the review staff used by major social media platforms would help shed light on the languages and cultures that might be underrepresented and the kinds of hidden biases that can lurk unnoticed. After all, as I showed in 2016, Facebook’s News Feed was indeed extraordinarily biased, but in a way that others weren’t talking about: geographically.
Twitter also declined to respond when asked whether the company would be open to convening an external panel of academics and other experts from outside the company, providing them a large dataset of tweets and accounts it has limited, deleted or otherwise taken action on, and allowing them to produce a summary report for public distribution that would assess Twitter's accuracy and biases. In the end, even if the company felt that releasing any information regarding the aggregate demographics of its reviewers or any detail of its review process would harm its operational security, it is unclear why the company will not commit to allowing an independent external panel to assess its work. After all, if a blue ribbon panel of top scholars and data scientists from across the world were granted unrestricted access to its review materials and the actual records of what it has and has not taken action on to analyze them, it would go a long ways towards either confirming or finally refuting once and for all the myriad questions of bias that naturally occur when companies operate in strict secrecy.
Even simple questions like the percent of Twitter's accounts that are bots and how much of its content is automatically generated are complete unknowns. External groups routinely provide their own assessments, but beyond vague statements, the company has to date declined to provide firm hard numbers on just how much of its content and viewership is made of carbon rather than silicon. When asked whether the company would permit external auditing of its numbers, a spokesperson said they had nothing to add beyond the company’s previous statements.
Twitter’s opaque moderation policies also make it more difficult for the company to fight “fake news” and misinformation campaigns that leverage the anonymity of their platform. Parody accounts look and act very similar to the real accounts they satirize, but if they look too close to the real thing and aren’t clear enough about their satirical role, it can be difficult for users to tell the difference. For example, in the leadup to last year’s election, the Russian government is believed to have operated a troll account designed to look like the Tennessee State GOP. The Twitter account used the State Seal as its logo, “@TEN_GOP” as its handle and “Tennessee GOP” as its title, with its bio saying “I love God, I Love my Country.” Only later did it change its bio to “Unofficial Twitter of Tennessee Republications,” which could still easily leave unsuspecting users thinking it was operated in some fashion by or with the knowledge of the state GOP.
Despite 11 months of the real Tennessee GOP formally complaining to Twitter about the impersonating account, the company took no action, removing the account only after the company faced substantial scrutiny for the role its platform played in Russian influence campaigns. When asked for comment a spokesperson referred to its impersonation policy, which requires that such accounts “clearly stat[e] it is not affiliated with or connected to any similarly-named individuals.” In this case, the @TEN_GOP account did not include such language and in fact could easily have been confused for the real account, but Twitter did not respond to a further request for comment, including the use of the Tennessee State Seal as the account’s avatar.
This of course played out again last year with the rise of the “rogue” US Government agency accounts, from NASA to the National Park Service. As the accounts began attacking each other and even launching fundraisers, there was little for the average person to be able to know just which accounts, if any, were actually run by current or former US Government employees from the agencies they claimed to support.
Moreover, this lack of transparency can have very real consequences. When the official Twitter account of the President of the United States was briefly deactivated last fall, Twitter released precious little detail about how a single contractor could allegedly shut down the Twitter account of a head of state. In response, a Twitter spokesperson offered by email only “We won't have a comment on a former employee. We have taken a number of steps to keep an incident like this from happening again. In order to protect our internal security measures we don't have further details to share at this time.” Yet, once again we are left in the dark as to how much has really changed.
It is a remarkable turn of events that the company that once congratulated itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party and famously informed Congress it would not stop alleged terrorists from leveraging its services has evolved to slowly and steadily distance itself from its free speech ethos. With each update of its terms of service, the company has moved a bit further towards prioritizing commercial reality over the anything-goes mentality upon which it was founded.
However, the ideal of unfettered free speech still factors prominently into the company’s public ethos. In an interview last year, the company’s Head of Global Public Policy Communications offered “I am passionate about protecting and empowering all people to freely express themselves, even when that can lead to challenging conversations, because ultimately it is only through connecting with others that we can learn, grow, and evolve. Twitter has revolutionized the way people communicate and learn from one another, and I am proud to represent a company that both has such a strong commitment to free speech and approaches this issue with such care and thoughtfulness.”
Putting this all together, is Twitter actively censoring certain political views or are Project Veritas’ videos the result of selective editing and employee bravado? We will simply never know. Yet, the fact that we will never know is the problem. Whether it is claims of conservatives being censored on Twitter, allegations of governmentinfluence on Facebook, or very real geographic biases, the platforms we communicate through are no longer neutral. Here in the United States, your cellular provider doesn’t actively monitor your phone calls and mute out the topics they don’t like. The USPS doesn’t inspect every letter for adverse political views. Your ISP doesn’t block access to sensitive topics like Tiananmen Square. In other countries such censorship is a routine and accepted part of daily life, but here in the US we have grown accustomed to neutral communications mediums that connect us to others without actively moderating what we are permitted to say. In their place, the online world that was supposed to bring us together and tear down the last bastions of censorship has instead created the greatest censorship and surveillance infrastructure the world could ever imagine.
President Donald Trump concocted a blatant lie in a tweet Saturday morning, accusing Democrats of “defending the life of Qassem Soleimani” who he called “one of the worst terrorists in history.”
There is no evidence that any Democrats have made such a defense. After Trump ally and suspected Republican pedophile Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) made a similar assertion earlier this week, he apologized soon thereafter.
Writing on Twitter, the president asked, “Where have the Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats gone when they have spent the last 3 days defending the life of Qassem Soleimani,” adding, “He was also looking to do big future damage! ‘Dems are “unhinged.’”
Earlier in the week, Nikki Haley, Trump’s former Ambassador to the United Nations, claimed on Fox News that Democrats were “mourning” the loss of the Iranian general. When pressed on what she meant, she doubled down.
“Mourning comes in different forms,” Haley’s office said in a statement. “It doesn’t have to be literally crying over the casket like Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei. Leading Democrats are aggressively arguing that we would be better off if Qassem Suleimani was still alive today. That is effectively mourning his death.”
Democratic presidential candidates have been explicit about Soleimani’s legacy. “No Americans will mourn Qassem Soleimani’s passing,” Democratic presidential hopeful and former Vice President Joe Biden said. “He deserved to be brought to justice.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also called the Iranian general “a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans” even as she questioned the strategic reasoning behind the timing of the strike that took him out.
The mistruth aka filthy fucking lie follows a barrage of other eyebrow-raising claims by the president. On Friday, he claimed that four embassies were under threat from Iran. But, as the Washington Post reported, “that was at odds with intelligence assessments from senior officials.”
