Last night, I raised a few eyebrows with my support of the second amendment. Tune in to find out how.
The Second Amendment, the tea party, and me.
The other side of the opioid crisis
This abbriviated show will highlight what most people don’t talk about. The forgotten elderly.
The other side of the opioid crisis
This abbreviated show will highlight what most people don’t talk about. The forgotten elderly.
Don’t listen to this show, unless …
So, Since Putin helped Trump win the White House, our country is more divided than ever while Putin threatens America with nuclear war. Bernie Sanders had recently announced his campaign and the trolls have come out of the woodwork. My intention, from here on out, is to bring back this show, done live as a weekday show beginning tomorrow. I PROMISE I will flub my lines or mis speak, or maybe even stub my toe. Who knows. But it will get better the more I work on it. Oh, and tomorrow is my birthday. So please tune in. It might even be funny, as I may have the wierdest calls coming in. The only way to find out is to tune in.
Don’t listen to this show, unless …
So, Since Putin helped Trump win the White House, our country is more divided than ever while Putin threatens America with nuclear war. Bernie Sanders had recently announced his campaign and the trolls have come out of the woodwork. My intention, from here on out, is to bring back this show, done live as a weekday show beginning tomorrow. I PROMISE I will flub my lines or mis speak, or maybe even stub my toe. Who knows. But it will get better the more I work on it. Oh, and tomorrow is my birthday. So please tune in. It might even be funny, as I may have the wierdest calls coming in. The only way to find out is to tune in.
The American Anti Corruption Act
The other day, in the town of Allen, our 4 term mayor Ed Pawlowski was sentenced to 15 years in club fed, $93,000.00 restitution, and a whole lotta misery for 38 counts of pay to play. More info here https://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/pennsylvania/mc-nws-allentown-mayor-ed-pawlowski-sentenced-20181022-story.html
He should have listened to me
Several months before, on 1-21-15, my friend Robert and I celebrated the 5th anniversary of the #citizensunited Supreme Court decision that greatly expanded the role of money in politics. We did this by attending a meeting of Allentown city council in an effort to persuade them to adopt a symbolic resolution in support of the American Anti Corruption Act. While we failed that night, in time, we were able to assist council with adopting an anti pay to play law. That work is ongoing.
But there is much more to be done. Donald J Trump ran for President on a platform to “drain the swamp” yet has done the exact opposite by filling key positions with oligarchs. If you give me your write in vote as your Congressperson for the PA 7th district, one of my first order of business in DC is to compose and propose a version of the anti corruption act something like this:
“Proposed anti corruption act
Summary of Provisions
FIX OUR BROKEN ELECTIONS
Politicians prioritize big donors to get elected and redraw their districts to stay in office. By changing how our elections work, we can put power back in the hands of the people.
End Gerrymandering: Create an independent citizens commission for redistricting that follows strict guidelines to ensure accurate representation for all voters.
Change how elections are funded: Offer every voter a small credit they can use to make a political donation with no out-of-pocket expense. Set strict limits on campaign contributions.
Make candidates more accountable to their constituents: Allow political contributions only from the district where the candidate is running.
Equalize ballot access: Level the field for all party and independent candidates. Potential candidates should have to collect the same number of petition signatures regardless of political affiliation.
End closed primaries: Primaries are a function of the major parties but are funded by all taxpayers, though not all taxpayers can participate. Open primaries to all voters, or eliminate them altogether.
Let voters rank their top candidates: Ranked choice voting allows voters to support their top choice without fear of inadvertantly helping elect the other party’s candidate.
Allow early voting through absentee ballot: Lift the restrictions on the use of absentee ballots to make voting access easier for qualified voters.
Keep voter rolls up to date and secure: Allow all state agencies to register voters using positive identification and share that information with county boards of elections.
Make voting easier for working people: Allow voters to vote at voting centers outside their precinct or ward.
Make election day a holiday: Voting is the most important action for a citizen of a democratic republic. We should enshrine and encourage voting by making election day a holiday.
Make all elections accurately auditable: Votes must be recorded accurately and have an auditable paper trail.
Allow hiring as well as electing poll workers: Currently, poll workers are elected in Pennsylvania, leading to understaffing at the polls. By allowing county boards of elections to hire poll workers, elections can be fully staffed and poll workers can be properly trained.
END UNLIMITED GIFTS AND SECRET MONEY
Pennsylvania lawmakers are allowed to accept gifts and donations of unlimited value. Lax financial rules lead to open bribery of state politicians. Secret money groups funnel millions of dollars into state elections. Voters deserve to know who is buying political power.
Enact and enforce a gift ban on politicians: Politicans are influenced by money, lavish gifts, trips and fancy meals. We need a gift ban to stop this practice which is unlimited in Pennsylvania.
Immediately disclose political money online: Update disclosure laws on political donations and spending. Make public disclosure of all significant transactions immediate.
Stop donors from hiding behind secret money groups: Require any organization that spends money on political advertisements to file timely online reports disclosing its major donors.
Crack down on super PACs: Enforce the mandate that super PACs must be independent from candidates by making meaningful rules aimed at preventing coordination.
STOP POLITICAL BRIBERY
From lucrative job offers and unlimited gifts to campaign contributions, there are too many legal ways for special interests to bribe politicians. Exchanging money for political influence is corrupt and should be illegal.
Make it illegal for politicians to take money from professional lobbyists: People who get paid to influence politicians can either lobby or donate, they can’t do both.
Ban lobbyist bundling: Prohibit lobbyists from aggregating other people’s contributions and delivering them to political campaigns.
Close the revolving door: Stop elected officials and their staff from selling off their government power for high paying lobbying jobs. Prohibit them from holding or negotiating jobs with firms that lobby or do business with the state while in office. Bar former elected officials and staff from all lobbying for five years after leaving office.
Eliminate conflicts of interest: Make it illegal for sitting politicians to hold positions with lawfirms and companies that do business with the state.
ENFORCE THE RULES
Existing anti-corruption laws are weak and outdated, and agencies routinely fail to penalize the rulebreakers. Stronger enforcement will stop elected officials, lobbyists and super PACs from evading the law.
Eliminate lobbyist loopholes: Prevent lobbyists from skirting the rules by strengthening the definition of lobbying and penalizing paid lobbyists who fail to register.
Strengthen anti-corruption enforcement: Fix the State Ethics Commission and give prosecutors the tools they need to combat corruption.”
More information about this movement can be found at https://anticorruptionact.org/ and https://represent.us/
#sendmetotrump
A proposition for Facebook, as soon as Facebook straightens its act out.
Hello. My name is Lewis Shupe, and I’m a recovering Democrat. So, I am about to kick my write in campaign for Congress into high gear (see below) and I wish for help to communicate this idea to the Facebook higher ups. My main reason for running is to propose and institute an idea I believe whose time has come. PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY. Defined, it is my idea of a sitting and serving elected politician directly conferring ONLY with the registered voters in a given political district. No sock puppets, no outside agitators, no political parties, no Russian trolls, no lobbyists, no armchair power trippers, no spooks, and no bullshit.
If I am chosen to represent the PA 7th Congressional district, this group of registered voters is where I will draw from there collected wisdom in my day to day dealings with Congress within the confines of the law. I say this because, as a Congressperson, I will become privy to classified information that I cannot share. At that point, I would have to ask for your trust in my 30 years in cyber security and computer programming to make the right decisions. Outside of that caveat, I intend to depend directly on the voters to inform me on how I should conduct legislative affairs such as how to vote on legislation, proposals, etc. As I have a natural distrust of lobbyists, I would stream my meetings with them to the registered voters, much as I do now with Allentown city council meetings posted at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8TGc8vyVtO24LrwZ-5hXVA. If this special group is set up the way I wish, which is as securable as possible, this could solve the problems Facebook has been experiencing with all the political bovine manure that has, and will continue to transpire. If not, I will continue to chart my own course without Facebook, and I may even speak out against Facebook again. My website where all my words are is http://realchange.us/the-gist-of-it-all/
Around the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, I admin and / or moderate several different Facebook groups. One of which is REALCHANGE.US. You won’t likely see me post a page about my write-in campaign, because to put it as simply as possible I believe in dialogue. Watching these groups and a few others, I see the dialogue that goes on between the politically-connected people here in the Lehigh Valley. It has both educated me and enlightened me to what people can discuss on a daily basis. This can’t happen as well with a dedicated page.
On the flip side, I have seen various tea party, republican, and even leftist groups filled with sock puppets, fake accounts, out of area trolls, and general assholes who must be spending all day and all night filling the groups with bad memes, bad facts, disinformation, and plain old fashioned BULLSHIT and Facebook does nothing to stop them. THIS MUST CHANGE. In particular, tea party groups like “Tea Party” “The Facebook Tea Party” “National Tea Party” among many more like it, wrap there hate in the flag and have been posting there hate for years, unchecked by Facebook. And if you try to enlighten them, not only do the trolls get mad, Facebook keeps popping up with posting reminders every time someone posts a response.
This is as bad as it was 2 years ago, when I ran the local Bernie Sanders campaign. And we all know what happened when the Internet Research Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency amplified the hate and discord
I was originally inspired in this idea by the coffee party, and its founder Annabel Park. Several years ago, in response to the paranoia of the national tea party, she had this crazy idea that people should get together and be able to talk about politics in a civil matter. Considering all the bovine manure that I’ve been seeing for the past oh 50 years or so, I thought this idea would be great for voters to get together and discuss what is in their best interest. Unfortunately, the organization that she founded eventually got corrupted with people who took over the board and tried to make money from it. She still chugs along with a core group of believers, and so do I.
So, it is with these thoughts in mind that I share my idea of a better world with the reading public. This is why I do what I do.
The trick is to verify the voters are in the PA 7th congressional district by uploading a picture of there photo ID with a photo of there voter registration card. Something Facebook has not gotten right yet. As some people might be a bit skittish on verifying there ID, special precautions must be put in place to put there fears at ease. For example, No Facebook marketing, tracking, or spying code in this specific type of group. People need to feel they are able to converse about potentially controversial subjects without fear from the American surveillance state you so willingly help. This whole endeavor should not be used to inconvenience voters of little means, such as myself. Another suggestion is that, withing the group, people should use nicknames, and not there real name. This is to prevent outside coercion, buying opinions, bullying, ect. More specifics can be discussed soon. Readers, suggestions welcome.
But wait, there’s more. Facebook is approving political advertisements by Islamic State? https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/wj9mny/facebooks-political-ad-tool-let-us-buy-ads-paid-for-by-mike-pence-and-isis
So Facebook, work with me here. I am posting all this here, rather than the group, because I worry my words may not reach as wide an audience as I seek. I would hope as many people as possible see this. Help me out and I can help rescue Facebook. Facebook already has a reach into the population far far greater than whoever is in second place. Failure to come to an agreement will simply mean I will look towards second place and beyond. Because at the end of the day, I CARE.
Dreamers town hall with DNC Deputy Chair Keith Ellison
On this day, I recorded video from the town hall held at the Resurrection Center at 9th and Turner in Allentown PA. In addition to sponsors Northampton County Dems, East Penn Dems, Indivisible Berks, Power Northeast and Make the road action PA, speakers included PA Governor Tom Wolf, Murat Guzel, as well as DNC vice chair Keith Ellison. Marcel Groen, PA state Democratic chairman, was absent. Video links are below:
part 1 = https://youtu.be/oiR2s1wxugg
part 2 = https://youtu.be/f23Urg2K_lk
part 3 = https://youtu.be/cUvmJNp5prU
part 4 = https://youtu.be/wNVK1RsjdYA
At the end of the event, Keith Ellison took 3 questions from the audience, visible in part 4. What I found very lacking is the questions about when the superdelagates would be removed, not just lessened? By the time I swapped batteries out of my smartphone, he was gone. But the big questions remains. What will become of the superdelagates that are left? And what guarantees do the American people have that the bovine manure forced upon us by Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wassermann Schultz do not happen again? To his credit, Keith Ellison answered that by refusing to endorse a democratic candidate in the audience before the primary, visible on part 4. There is hope. But will it be enough?
Facebook drama
Facebook continues to give me grief. From http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/04/technology/mark-zuckerberg-2018-goal/index.html I have come to find out that Mark Zuckerburg is feeling a tad bit of regret for all the bovine manure Facebook has been putting people through. As for me, I recently began posting to various election reform groups about the up and coming Federal election summit currently scheduled for January 10th. Shortly thereafter, I discovered someone had apparently marked one of my posts as spam. I found myself unable to post anything on Facebook for the rest of the day.
The following day, I found I was able to post some video links to “Let’s Build a New Allentown Together” Facebook group that I admin. But I am not alone. There seems to be an organized attempt by unknown actors to hack into Facebook accounts of various elected officials, political activists, and other well followed accounts. Please be careful out there.
And finally, I wish to alert the reader that I have formed a Facebook group called REALCHANGE.us for the purpose to give voice to those who may have something to say and desire to give feedback on what is posted here. The address is https://www.facebook.com/groups/realchangedotus . Please contact me and let me know if you may be interested in joining and making constructive posts. Thank you.
Updated – Wake up and protect yourself
Greetings all. I have decided to update the “Protect yourself” post below to impart new and relevant information while the Republican regime is threatening to end net neutrality and murder millions of people by kicking them off of health care, and the DNC plots to remove all the good that Bernie Sanders has done. More recent news will be near the top, while updated actionable items will follow below.
To begin, here is a relatively neutral article that explains the concept of Net Neutrality, https://www.consumerreports.org/net-neutrality/here-s-the-fcc-plan-to-undo-net-neutrality/
The current head of the FCC, Ajit Pai, formerly a corporate lawyer for Verizon, wants to tear down Net Neutrality to please Trump and his minions. If anyone would like to send him any thoughts on the matter, his address is 4868 Old Dominion drive, Arlington VA 22207-2743 and his home phone number is 703-533-7359. Otherwise, there is a day of nationwide protests being organized by http://verizonprotests.com/ on December 7th at various locations. Please consider searching for and attending a protest near you, as this will present you with the opportunity to network locally with like minded people. But wait, there’s more. You could also consider emailing the members of the FCC. Below, are the FCC members and their email addresses:
- Ajit Pai – Ajit.Pai@fcc.gov
- Mignon Clyburn – Mignon.Clyburn@fcc.gov
- Michael O’Rielly – Mike.ORielly@fcc.gov
- Brendan Carr – Brendan.Carr@fcc.gov
- Jessica Rosenworcel – Jessica.Rosenworcel@fcc.gov
For whatever it’s worth, there are also petition drives at https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/do-not-repeal-net-neutrality and https://www.savetheinternet.com/sti-home
Petitions work when there are many signatures, please consider signing those above. Also, please consider contacting your Senators and Representatives to voice your concerns about Net Neutrality, the current tax plan, Trump’s threat to derail the Russian investigation, ect. You can find your Senator here https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=state
And your Representatives can be found here https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
On Friday December 8th, the unity commission of the DNC will meet for one last time. More information can be found here http://my.democrats.org/page/s/unity-reform-commission-washington-dc-
If I can, I hope to attend. More information on the fifth Unity Commission meeting:
When: December 8-9, 2017
Where: Marriott Wardman Park
Marriott Wardman Park
Washington, D.C. 20008
Also, please consider filling out this survey for the Unity commission, http://my.democrats.org/page/s/2017-unity-survey
https://democraticautopsy.org/ discusses what happened with the DNC by issuing an autopsy report, which can be downloaded from that location. After reading it, it really amazes me that the DNC still has so much corruption that they are very little better than the Republican Party teaming up with American Nazi’s. Please consider using the above information to tell Tom Perez and the other crooks how you really feel.
Part 2:
Glen Greenwald is a reporter for The Guardian, a large daily newspaper based in the United Kingdom. . He is the reporter that Edward Snowden turned to in order to leak out all Edward knew about the NSA vacuum cleaner from when he formerly worked as a technical assistant for the CIA, and as a subcontractor at the NSA for both Dell, and Booz Allen Hamilton. This link should provide the gist of what Glen reports, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/series/glenn-greenwald-security-liberty
Information on PRISM can be found at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data
Want to see some other links related tp PRISM? Check these out.
http://prism.arl.army.mil
http://prism.ogden.disa.mil
http://prism.sd.spawar.navy.mil
http://prism.nrlssc.navy.mil
Most likely they won’t work, but hey.
So, what can be done about this, besides complaining to your elected officials? You can check out https://prism-break.org/en/all/ which lists various programs and platforms that empower individual users and groups to communicate in a securable manner. Some of the better known options are discussed below:
TOR, or The Onion Router, is a popular method of surfing anonymously by appearing to have a constantly changing IP, or Internet Protocol address. However, not all web sites and services work with TOR. Also, there are people who set up malicious exit nodes that can sniff all incoming and outgoing traffic on there exit node. More information can be found at https://www.torproject.org/
Tails is a live, bootable DVD which can be installed to a usb flash drive. Using Tails, it allows you to use the internet anonymously using both TOR and I2P and leaving no trace on the host machine while using state of the art cryptography. This open source project has a very active development cycle, and comes out with a new version roughly every couple of months. It can be found at https://tails.boum.org/
GnuPG, or GNU Privacy Guard, is a free, cross platform, and open source replacement for PGP or Pretty Good Privacy. Invented in 1991 by Phil Zimmerman, PGP is still the standard used throughout the world for encrypting email. More information can be found at http://www.gnupg.org/ or for PGP, http://www.pgp.com Please be aware that PGP is now owned by Symantec, of Norton Antivirus fame.
Veracrypt is a free, cross platform, and source code available software package that can encrypt files on your computer, and offers full disk encryption. It is intended to replace Truecrypt and can even handle and convert Truecrypt volumes. More information can be found at https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Home.html
Microsoft Skype has also been named, along with other video chat and IM or Instant Messaging programs. For a free, cross platform, securable, and open sourced chat and video chat application try https://jitsi.org/ Jitsi uses an encryption algorithm called ZRTP. Developed by Phil Zimmerman, the same fellow who invented PGP back in 1991, this is the actual method used to encrypt video chats.
OpenVPN is an open source software application that implements virtual private network techniques for creating secure point-to-point or site-to-site connections in routed or bridged configurations and remote access facilities. It is capable of traversing network address translation (NAT) and firewalls Considering what we DON’T know about the NSA’s spying on American citizens, I would suggest not trusting any US based providers as well as doing your homework on the others. Some links to check out are as follows:
http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-that-take-your-anonymity-seriously-2013-edition-130302/
http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/readerpicks/tp/The-Best-VPN-Service-Providers.htm and
If you are using the Android operating system on your smartphone, look on Google Play for apps by “The Guardian Project” that could help make your online activities a little more secure. If you are using Blackberries, they offer some security natively for a little while longer. Apple and Windows mobile users, SOL. Sorry. All phones have a hidden software package called CarrierIQ, which is not easily removable. This is spyware installed by the major carriers on over 150 million smartphones throughout the world. More information can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_IQ
Dropbox was specifically named as one of the internet companies that are in the PRISM program. As with other cloud providers, when anything is uploaded to dropbox, or any other cloud provider, the user forfeits any and all rights to any data uploaded. More info can be found here, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/governments-attack-cloud-computing A free alternative has been created by Bittorrent labs called Resilio. This application allows the user to sync all files within a pre selected set of folders across 2 or more computers. This application does not involve a cloud or hosting provider of any kind. More information can be found at https://www.resilio.com/
When you are on Facebook, Instagram, or wherever type of forum you may encounter, read up on how they can be manipulated here https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm Once you read this, you will be forewarned, forearmed and knowledgeable on how to spot trolls and manipulations in almost any forum or Facebook post.
Below, I post a few links that will allow the reader to explore their options further. Enjoy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/06/13/1632210/ask-slashdot-how-to-bypass-govt-spying-on-cellphones
And last, consider supporting this group because they fight for all of us, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/what-we-need-to-know-about-prism
The best tool out there that you can use to secure your internet usage is COMMON SENSE. Since asking spooks to be honest in today’s America is a sad joke, you should safely assume everything you do on the internet is monitored, logged, and analyzed in triplicate, at 7 different locations simultaneously, with off-site backups 12 times a day, and twice as often on Sunday, all on the NSA’s watch board by Monday. I can’t stress this enough, DO YOUR HOMEWORK when it comes to using any internet security product. Stay safe out there, and please don’t do anything stupid. Because I will not be held responsible when you get caught. Having said that, I believe if everyone using the Internets uses these tools with common sense, the NSA’s snoopers and vacuums would bog down under the weight of it all. Have a nice day.