Mike Moon and Controversy over Sheriffs' Salaries in Missouri

A deputy recently made a comment in an online forum that Mike moon is an enemy of Missouri sheriff's because he introduced a bill to cut sheriff's salaries. I am not going to name the deputy; calling him out is not the point of this post, nor is it merely to defend Mike Moon. Rather, my purpose is to provide information about a complex and tangled issue that we do need to discuss and solve. Many people may not even know how the salary of county sheriffs is determined in Missouri or why this conflict exists. I do not, myself, know what the solution ought to be, though I would venture a guess that what we are doing is not the best approach. I provide links to sources so that people can read further and decide for themselves.

The short summary is this: a major change to the way pay is calculated was pushed through in an unconstitutional multi-subject bill, provoking a lawsuit by various counties. Mike Moon introduced a targeted bill to reverse the change. This bill died in committee and went nowhere. The underlying issue is real: questions about how to ensure adequate pay for MO sheriffs and deputies are important and ought be debated.

(In the interests of disclosure, I have been a volunteer for Mike Moon for many years and I have also been a volunteer of my local Sheriff's Office. I get paid the same in both roles: Zero. The opinions here are my own: they are not opinions of any candidate or organization.)

How is Sheriff Pay Calculated?

As of the time of this writing, the pay of a county sheriff is set through Revised Statutes of Missouri (RsMO) 57.317. I am making an effort in this article to link to particular versions of the statutes, so, hopefully, these will remain stable as this page sits on the Internet and the statutes are revised over time. Each page of the Revised Statutes has a table at the bottom which allows you to see when it was last changed and switch between historical versions. For the version effective 28 August 2022, we see the following:

Except in a noncharter county of the first classification with more than one hundred fifty thousand and less than two hundred thousand inhabitants, the county sheriff in any county of the first or second classification shall receive an annual salary equal to eighty percent of the compensation of an associate circuit judge of the county. [emphasis mine]

 The law goes on to present a table setting different percentages for counties of the third or forth classification. Lawrence County, Missouri, for instance, is a third class county with a valuation of roughly $620 million in 2024 (PDF). Consulting the table yields a salary of 60% for Lawrence County. In Missouri, since 2010, Associate Circuit Judge salaries are tied to their federal counterparts. If I am reading this correctly, FY2023 salaries for Missouri Associate Circuit Court Judges were set at $150,035 (Missouri Judiciary FY 2023 Budget Request (PDF) pp 21). Again, using Lawrence County as an example, that would yield $90,021 ($150,035 x 0.6).

So, Who Really Controls the Sheriffs' Salaries?

This means that, effectively, the salary of a Missouri County Sheriff is tied to that of a federal official. The local county have no control over the federal budget and, the federal government being somewhat erratic in its behavior, no reason to trust that this amount will be stable in the future. This was a core point of contention when SB53 was passed to set this compensation:

     According to Skiles, it is pretty well agreed among county commissioners across Missouri that one particular part of the bill is disagreeable because it eliminates county control over a budget item that each county will have to pay.

    “And not a red cent from the state,. Local taxpayers will be left to pay for it,” he said.

    That budget item is sheriff salary, tying it to federal judge’s salaries, which in Dent County will increase the sheriff’s salary by more than $19,000. (The Salem News Online -"COUNTY COMMISSION: Veto of bill tying sheriff salaries to federal judge salaries urged")

 There were many other problems with SB 53, which was combined with SB 60 into a complicated and likely unconstitutional mess (violating at least the Single Subject Rule in the Missouri Constitution). There is at least one lawsuit over the change.

How Was Sheriff Pay Calculated Before?

Prior to this change, the version of RsMO 57.317 effective 28 August 1997 said:

"The county sheriff in any county, other than in a first classification chartered county, shall receive an annual salary computed as set forth in the following schedule.  The assessed valuation factor shall be the amount thereof as shown for the year next preceding the computation.  The provisions of this section shall not permit or require a reduction in the amount of compensation being paid for the office of sheriff on January 1, 1997."

This is comparable to how the pay of other county officials are calculated. Looking up Lawrence County's Assessed Valuation in the table yields $54,000, which is, clearly, much lower than $90,000. An additional $2,000 came from the state if the local Sheriff attended state-required training.

The salaries set by this system make it difficult to attract and retain qualified sheriffs if the base drifted too low. However, the upsides of the system were that it was a) predictable for the county budget and b) tied to the tax valuation of the county which ensured that the county ought be able to pay for it as its valuation forced a pay increase. Although forcing an increase in sheriff pay may be seen as a good, it can have perverse effects:

Clearly, it is not only the number of deputies that County Commissions might consider trimming: other emergency services, road repair, etc., all has to balance somewhere within the limited county budget. In many counties, including our own, our ability to pay and retain deputies was already very poor.

Mike Moon and SB1036

This is where Mike Moon enters the picture. Compliance with the Missouri Constitution, including the Single Subject Rule has been among his primary issues in his legislative career. He has also pushed for the state (or local government) to have control over its own affairs rather than automatically tying Missouri law to federal law we do not control. He introduced SB1036 to undo the tying of the sheriff's salary to that of a federal official. It restored the original table and added the ability of a salary commission to increase the local salary schedule by up to $6,000. This change did not decrease the pay of sheriff except with a 2/3 vote of the salary commission.

SB1036 was killed in committee and never progressed. As far as I can find, that was the sum total of his involvement.

What Is the Correct Solution?

Once again, we have a complicated issue with no clear perfect fix. We end up with some basic points that need to be balanced somehow:

• There are serious concerns with being able to pay and retain good sheriffs in Missouri counties
• Many counties have great difficulty balancing their budget across the board
•  Tying budget items to actions of the distant federal budget can make the job impossible. Increases, as much as possible, need to be predictable and not disconnected from revenue
• Putting pay completely under the control of the local county commission can allow them to stifle or starve a sheriff's office
• shoving through significant changes in large, multi-subject bills makes them hard to vet, lawsuit prone, and hard to later fix; this is why the MO Constitution flatly forbids the practice
  

On the balance, I believe that the solution of SB53 was wrong and potentially dangerous. I am not certain that simply resetting the pay schedule to the status quo ante is the correct choice either, but it was at least a reasonable and rational option to undo SB53. Either way, we need a better solution going forward.
 

Eleven Hours: after the 2024 Missouri Republican Convention

Non nobis, Domine, sed nomine suo gam gloriam.

Yesterday was the most unusual-- bizarre even-- convention I have ever attended in 16 years of caucus/convention activism. None is even comparable. As a co-Parliamentarian for the Temporary, the replacement Temporary, and the Permanent convention Chairs, I got a view of it perhaps noone else could or did.

I am exhausted. Once I recover, I'll have time to organize my notes and refer to recordings but I'll give quick initial impressions.

Credentials was a complete disaster, wasting hours. Everybody has heard this. To quash some rumours, I'll describe a bit more below. The grassroots organizations had a near-complete victory: handily winning the Chair vote, seating Sophia Shore, passing a fix to the confused mess of the rules by near consensus, winning the slates and elections, and after the ruinous start, making real progress on the platform. This was marred by the steady drift of delegates out-- we had worked through lunch and were heading toward 11 hours on the floor-- and the loss of quorum. As a result of the failed quorum count (less than half of delegates elected per Robert's Rules on conventions), the amended platform could not be passed (effectively reverting to 2020).

The credentials fiasco was not done on purpose to wear out the grassroots. It was taken advantage of by some (two in particular) to engineer the later quorum failure, but the disaster was real. It was clear to me from my vantage point that the stress and panic of the Chair and convention committees was quite genuine. That does not necessarily let people "off the hook" for the colossal failure that clearly occurred, but a breakdown of exactly when and where the convention planning derailed is going to be a longer conversation where I only saw specific pieces, mostly the wreckage and victims.

Like any ethical responder to a trainwreck, I worked hard to respond to the emergency at hand. How it came off the track wan't my worry so much as immediate triage and care for victims. The State Chair, surprisingly and quite courteously had asked me to be there as parliamentarian. I wanted the grassroots to win, but I was in a position where I was required to be neutral and fair to the extent humanly possible (to some degree so that the grassroots could win fairly and above-board). My position gave me a duty to help the State Chairman fix the problems and put bandages on the bleeding. I did this to the best of my ability, and although some people may see that as "helping the enemy", I did it out of duty and-- to a fair degree as the event went south and as the Temporary Chair became exhausted, flustered, embarrassed-- out of human compassion. I do not have and will not accept any shame for that.

At the end, we won a great victory. The victory was not complete, but it was very good. Many people were responsible for it, including, to a substantial extent, our opponents themselves. God was gracious to us: be gracious, all, in our victory. Keep your eyes on the final goal in service to our state and communities.

"Not to us, O Lord, but to Your name be the glory."

P.S.: both Sophie and her "hired gun" parliamentarian, CJ, impressed me. Once she took over, the Chair was handled very well with an already cranky assembly and crafty opposition. More on that later when I start organizing my notes and my head hurts a bit less.

A Surfeit of Secretaries

In the practice session of a recent caucus/parliamentary law training I lead, the students ran into the issue of how to deal with more than two candidates nominated for an office, none of whom had majority support. It isn't an uncommon problem, but it can be tricky for first time chairs to facilitate and, often, for participants to understand how to navigate for their best- possible outcome.

My typical training day usually has a lecture in the morning, videos from actual caucuses during and after lunch (good and bad examples), followed by practice sessions in the afternoon. My own first caucus experiences were a bit less gentle: a small number of us taught ourselves and then were tossed in the deep end, sink or swim. I try to give my students a few more tools to work with than I had myself.

In any case, in the practice session at a recent class, I dealt playing cards to divide people up in support for different candidates (each suit represented a candidate). They had to come up with their own strategy. True to life, they did not necessarily know how many supporters they truly had until the caucus started. In any case, in this particular run, the chair vote went smoothly: the very first candidate got a majority on the first vote and I, dutifully, passed the gavel to the winner.

The new chair took nominations for secretary. There were four or five, but two withdrew from the nomination. This left three nominees, and, as it happened, none of them initially had a majority to support them.

Setting the Scene

In order to protect the innocent, let's call the three candidates John Smith (JS) , Pierre-Claude Wagonschlaus III (PCW3), and Sally Fletcher (SF). The chair started off from the beginning with a rising vote (as I recommend in caucuses). In the first round of voting, the ayes looked like this(*):

JS

13

PCW3

12

SF

2

The number of eligible voters is 28, but the chair is not voting. With or without the Chair, a majority is 14 or more and no one has it. Under Robert's Rules of Order (and most parliamentary systems), 50% + 1 is required to elect, not merely having the highest number of votes in a round (a 'plurality'). So, now what?

Sometimes, sets of rules for an event specify that a candidate receiving the least votes in a round drops away. The current 2024 rules published by the Missouri Republican State Committee (MRSC) has such a rule for other votes further into the process, but is silent on this topic. The MRSC document also forbids any local rule modifications and, at this point in the process, it is too early for a caucus (or convention) to pass its own standing rules. It is not a serious issue, however.

The MRSC states that the latest edition of Roberts' Rules of Order applies where it does not conflict the the MRSC document. In 2024, that would be the 12th edition of Roberts' Rules of Order, Newly Revised (RONR12). If you still have the 11th edition (RONR11), don't worry, the following process has not changed. Be aware, however, that RONR11 is cited by either page number or section, whereas RONR12 is cited only by section (because page numbers do not match between the printed and online editions).

What does Robert's Rules say?

OK, so what does RONR12 say to do with the 'extra' candidates? Nothing.

Let's explain.

When repeated balloting for an office is necessary, individuals are never removed from candidacy on the next ballot unless they voluntarily withdraw-- which they are not obligated to do. The candidate in lowest place may be a "dark horse" on whom all factions prefer to agree. [RONR11 pp 441, RONR12 §46:31]

(Be aware of the note on the bottom of the page regarding special rules and dropping candidates.)

This process flows from the fact that parliamentary law is designed to move forward the business of the majority while protecting the rights of the minority. Members have a right to nominate candidates and ought not have that arbitrarily taken away. Where there is no clear majority, Robert's Rules is designed to develop consensus for action.

So, the idea is for the Chair to simply represent the same set of candidates for a vote. The members of the assembly know what the count was and are free to change their votes. The candidates can make the same choice by choosing to drop out of contention and endorse another. But it does not simply have to repeat the same vote over and over. Various motions may be made to affect the voting process, including:

• reopen nominations and suggest a compromise candidate.
• vote by ballot if it is felt that members might be more free to change votes if they were private.

These are incidental motions (requires a second, no debate, majority vote [RONR11 pp 283, RONR12 §30]. Finally. a short recess may be requested for the candidates or their supporters to make a deal (privileged motion, requires a second, not debatable, majority vote [RONR11 pp 231, RONR12 §20]). The overarching principle is for the Chair to facilitate the process of reaching consensus without imposing their own will by arbitrarily removing candidates from consideration. As we will discuss below, these situations arise for different reasons and sometimes will resolve surprisingly quickly. Other times, it may be a long process.

Something else to be aware of is that members may change their votes even within the same round. This is perhaps best illustrated if we consider what might have happened if they had been nominated in a different order:

SF

2

PCW3

12

JS

15

Here, two voters for SF and PCW3, realizing that they have lost, transfer their votes. With 15 votes, JS ends the round with a majority and is elected. The fact that 2+12+15 adds up to more of the total available votes does not matter. It ought be clear, however, that order of nomination does matter for these reasons [cf RONR12 §38-39, RONR11 pp 443 par 1-10]. If the vote is conducted by ballot, this cannot happen, because each ballot may only contain one name.

If the two SF voters had immediately transferred their support to PCW3, then the 12+2=14 votes would have constituted a majority. PCW3 would win immediately and no vote would be needed for JS.

How It Came Out

So how did it come out in the actual class exercise? One of the members called for a 2 minute recess (without objection), the candidates left the room briefly, and two of them decided to drop out. The remaining candidate, now unopposed, was elected by acclamation. Remember, that it is important in any event of this kind to count every vote in an open and transparent manner, but if an election or motions is truly unopposed it requires no vote at all.

Chair: Without objection, we will have a 2 minute recess while the candidates discuss...
JS and SF have informed me that they are withdrawing from the contest. Seeing that we have only one candidate remaining, without objection, we will elect PCW3 by acclamation.
Seeing no objection, PCW3 is elected Secretary.

Clearly, if there is objection, the vote must be taken. It is possible, for instance, (though rather rare) for the assembly to reject a single nomination, at which point, the only option is to reopen nominations.

Why It May Happen

It may seem odd that you would end up with a large number of options for secretary with no majority. If the Chair was elected by a majority, why would the Secretary not follow as a matter of course. There are several reasons this might happen, however. In a caucus where the delegates to a higher level convention depend on careful paperwork, it may be highly desirable for a faction to try to elect a Secretary they know and trust, not just to be honest but careful and thorough. The Secretary position might also be used as a test vote where a faction does not wish to contest the Chair vote. As I mention above, you do not know in advance how many people will actually show up for a caucus and how their support will be divided. A test vote acts as a physical verification of the numbers for your group and can then be used to determine overall strategy ("Do we introduce our own slate?" "Do we try to introduce this platform amendment?"). In this case, whether the election is actually won is not as important as simply getting the firm count. If the election is merely a test vote, it is common for a faction to withdraw their candidate once it realizes it does not have a majority and will not win.

When I talk about 'faction' here, most people think in terms of candidate blocks. In the 2012 Lawrence County Republican Caucus, for example, their were five candidate blocks who showed up, two of which voted together. This left a four-way split of votes with no majority and, eventually, a four-way split on the delegate slate. The faction split does not have to be by candidate, however, and in 2024, there is unlikely to be any such split by presidential candidate. In some cases, this may result in a rapid caucus with votes by acclamation as occurred in Lawrence County in 2016. In other cases, local groups, such as a grassroots coalition or a strong pro-life group, for example, may wish to present their own Caucus officers and slates in order to secure delegate representation, particularly if they want to participate in platform debates or other Convention business at higher levels of the process. If this occurs, Caucus Chairs and group floor leaders ought to understand how to handle the votes fairly and smoothly. The ultimate goal is to come together as a party to win in November. Unnecessary strife detracts from that goal.

Conclusion

If our goal is to avoid unnecessary strife which may hurt us in November, it is worth spending the time to understand the rules and the different scenarious we may encounter. Prior to 2008 in Missouri, caucuses were rarely contested. This lead to waning parliamentary skills which, in turn, lead to avoidable conflict when participation dramatically increased and the process suddenly became contested. Some of these events-- as I show in my classes--- were ugly, others less so. The presence of conflict itself is not the problem: the entire purpose of a caucus/convention structure is to make difficult decisions between competing interests. It is well worth fighting over some of these things; we just need to be able to get through it fairly and come together afterwards.

* Ayes and Nays

When I say I am listing just the ayes for each vote above, keep in mind that when a voice vote, rising vote, show of hands, etc., is called, the Chair calls for the ayes first and then the nays, even in an election:

Chair: As many as are in favor of John Smith, please rise. [count]
You may be seated.
As many as are not in favor of John Smith, please rise. [count]
There are 13 in favor, 14 opposed, and 1 abstention. John Smith does not have a majority.
Now, as many as are in favor of...

This can seem odd to people. Why vote against a candidate instead of simply voting for your chosen candidate? This is possible when using a ballot vote because the voter can just list their choice out of all possible choices. There is no need to count nays. With a voice vote (see viva voce in Robert's Rules) or any other non-ballot vote, the nays must be counted for a crucial reason: any member may abstain from any vote. If a candidate must win by 50%+1 of votes cast, then one must know how many votes are actually cast in a given vote and separate it from the nays. In our example, one vote, the Chair. abstained leaving 27 votes cast each time and a majority of 14 or more. If even one other member had abstained on any vote, the threshhold needed for majority would have changed.

As noted in Robert's Rules, this means, effectively, that if you want to vote for a later candidate, you must vote against the earlier ones. A no vote must not be taken, therefore, as any special animus toward a particular candidate, but only that the member intends to hold their vote for someone else (that round). The only other way to make the math work is to count the abstentions and subtract them from the seated total. I have seen a few Chairs specifically count abstentions, but it is often done to check tally committee math when the count seems off. I am not aware of any inherent unfairness to counting abstentions.

The futility of action and speech: Arendt and "The Inner Light"

Hannah Arendt in "The Human Condition" (first published in 1958) notes that human language has a deeply-embedded distinction between 'labor' and 'work' in terms of the durability of what they produce: labor producing consumable goods of no real duration and work being oriented toward tools and other 'use objects' of a more lasting sort. As she develops in her work, this distinction has critical significance in the nature of human beings and the shape of social structures which we, in 'modern' society and theory, often muddy and ignore to our dissatisfaction. Setting that aside for the moment, what of human action and speech? Are they simply another kind of labor to be organized and tuned (as e.g. Marx lumps them), more like works oriented toward a goal or end-product, or something different?

"Distinguished from both, consumer goods and use obects, there are finally the 'products' of action and speech, which together constitute the fabric of human relationships and affairs. Left to themselves,they lack not only the tangibility of the other things, but are even less durable and more futile than what we produce for consumption...

"In order to become wordly things, that is, deeds and facts and events and patterns of thoughts or ideas, they must first be seen, heard, and remembered and then transformed, reified as it were, itno things--- into sayings of poetry, the written page or the printed book, into paintings or sculpture, into all forms of documents, records, or monuments." --Hannah Arendt, "The Human Condition", 2nd ed., University of Chicago Press (via Scribd). 2019. Section 12.

This 'reification' is necessary to bring things of the mind, which are inherently other-worldly, into the world and give them a place: to make them 'real'. Without it, they--- thoughts, dreams, people, even whole societies--- disappear as if they had never been.

"Without going out of my door

I can know all things on Earth

Without looking out of my window

I could know the ways of Heaven

The farther one travels

The less one knows

The less one really knows" --- Beatles, "The Inner Light"

Contrary to the Beatles, or the Tao te Ching verses they based that song on, that kind of 'knowledge' means very little. One must commit oneself, paying with risk and pain, to understand anything, to grok in its fullness and make it a part of oneself. One must then pay a further cost to reify that experience, to make it a part of the world. The reflection of meditation may be necessary--- the digestion of the soup--- but it is not sufficient, is neither the beginning nor the end of the process.

What was the "product" of the Ressikan community in "The Inner Light" [Star Trek Next Generation episode, Season 5, 1992]? How did Picard (or anyone else!) know that his experience of a long dead alien civilization was 'real'? Picard could not merely view a world from afar and understand its inhabitants; he had to commit something to them, risk with them, share their joys, suffer alongside them. The experience had to change him, as it clearly did, in a way visible to others. Likely one of the best Star Trek episodes ever, it disproves the very premise of the song that inspired it and of the Tao te Ching verses.

It is not possible to 'understand' the world without being a part of it: even God Himself seemingly could not stand at a distance without experiencing, suffering, sharing, and reifying in exactly this way.

The FBI Entrapment Craze: the wrong people for the wrong reasons

There is another very good in-depth piece I came across today, talking about the FBI's facilitation of would-be radicals in order to 'catch' them. This one comes from C.J. Ciaramella at Reason, "It's (Almost) Always the Feds: How the FBI Fabricates Schemes To Entrap Would-Be Radicals". It deals with the Whitmer kidnapping plot particularly. There are (at least) two core problems with this approach: the first is that in spends enormous resources on investigating, charging, and prosecuting people, who, in the words of the author, "have little to no ability to actually carry out a terror attack." Second, however, is equally grave, that the FBI's misallocation of resources frequently ignores and misses the people who are capable and actually do carry out attacks, even when tipped off to it. The author spends most of the effort on that first problem, but we must not forget about the second. There is no difficulty in coming up with a list of assailants in recent years who fit in that latter category. Both problems undermine our self-government.

<<The FBI has typically portrayed these investigations as efforts to thwart domestic terror, but all too often, the result has been to encourage or invent plots that were unlikely to succeed. In the Whitmer case and others, the feds weren't stopping terror: They were helping bumbling defendants plan and enact it.>> ibid.

As the author develops, this is a long-standing problem:

<<The sort of informant-led investigation that resulted in the arrests of the Wolverine Watchmen is largely due to the rollback of Watergate-era restrictions on the FBI following 9/11. The Whitmer case wasn't just a poorly conceived investigation; it was the direct result of a strategic internal policy change that allowed the FBI to begin targeting people who had done nothing illegal in order to prosecute the war on terror.>> ibid.

It is also clearly non-partisan. When we are talking about post-9/11 changes, we are talking about the War on Terror under Republican George W. Bush. As Dempsey and Cole point out in "Terrorism and the Constitution" the Clinton Administration was actually responsible for cutting out many of the 1st Amendment protections in DOJ/FBI policy, but no subsequent administration of either party has restored them. Those authors also demonstrate that when these protections are not in place, the FBI frequently targets surveillance and investigation on the basis of religion or protected speech with no identified criminal nexus, frequently while letting investigations into identified criminal conduct slide to lower priorities.  [James X. Dempsey and David Cole. Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties In The Name Of National Security. The New Press. Scribd ed. 2005. https://www.scribd.com/book/251562727 ]

Clear, firm, and sensible rules limiting FBI conduct therefore not only protect the rights of US citizens, they promote efficient criminal investigation:

<<The FBI is at its best when it does criminal investigations. It is at its worst when it acts in a counterintelligence, monitoring mode, secretly pursuing an ethnically, religiously, or ideologically defined target without the constraints and focus of the criminal code and without the expectation that its actions will be subjected to scrutiny in the adversarial context of a public criminal trial...>> [ibid. pp 292]

To be clear, the use of informants per se and the interruption of criminal conspiracies which have not yet resulted in an attack are not the problem. There is no reason that bona fide investigation of violent conspiracies would not be compatible with the constitutional protection of fundamental rights, not for Dempsey and Cole, not as far as I understand Ciaramella, not for myself:

"Inside the United States, we favor another vision of intelligence, one rooted in the concepts of the criminal law. 'Intelligence; in this context means the collection and analysis of information about a criminal enterprise that goes beyond what is necessary to solve a particular crime...

"The FBI routinely conducts 'intelligence' operations of this second type against organized crime families and drug cartels. It does so subject to the ordinary rules of criminal procedure. The goal of such investigations is to arrest the leaders and to put them on trial for specific crimes. And one of the most important constraints on such criminal intelligence is the public trial—everything done in the name of criminal intelligence must ultimately bear scrutiny in a court of law.

"...criminal intelligence can be fully compatible with the Constitution. The First Amendment does not require the FBI to be deaf when someone advocates violence. The Constitution does not require the government to wait until a bomb goes off or even to wait until a bomb factory is brought to its attention—it does, however, require the FBI to focus its investigations on the interdiction of violence and other criminal conduct. " [Dempsey and Cole, supra, 289-291]

Without a clear focus and bright line rules, the temptation to run amok is great. Our history concretely demonstrates-- to our shame-- that the temptation is too great, that no Department of Justice, no President, whether under Republicans or Democrats, may be trusted with a blank check.

Sasha Stone's Thoughtful Substack Awakening

A very good, thoughtful piece here by a Biden supporter and long-time pro-Democrat left writer who... "took a conscious effort on my part to reprogram my brain to be able to see both sides clearly and fairly. Once I did that, I was horrified by what I saw on the Left. The hypocrisy, the inhumanity. Worse than all, I could suddenly see what was true and what wasn’t true and how much the media and politicians lie daily. They tell themselves what they want to be true, not what is true."

She was horrified by Biden's recent speech telling "MAGA Republicans" that they are a threat to democracy by participating in democracy.

<<Why did Joe Biden give that speech? Who thought that was a good idea? Obviously, Joe Biden and his administration know that the “MAGA Republicans” are not a dangerous threat to the country. Otherwise, the Democrats would not have meddled in primary elections, spending upwards of $46 million pushing those very same MAGA candidates towards a win, blocking the more moderate GOP picks.>> How Joe Biden Lost My Vote, Sasha Stone

And there she puts her finger on the exact problem: the people pushing this rhetoric prove by their own actions that what they are actually after is something very different, that proponents of Democracy are being used for anti-democratic ends. We (Republicans) are no stranger to that: we regrettably watched the Bush-Cheney wing of our own party push us down rather contorted, non-republican roads, justifiably criticized by Democrats, 3rd parties, and independents for the hypocrisy in that. Now that same Cheney faction is behind the DNC and Biden instead.

But, as she says, people get caught up in the feedback loop until the hyper-partisanship is all they know, until the partisan narrative becomes the end in itself:

<<It’s nearly impossible to escape it. It’s everywhere and in everything. What motivated me to climb out of it was the dust-up between Twitter and Tom Cotton’s essay at the New York Times. They wanted the Times to be on point, not to tell any objective truth. They bullied them for days until they offered some withering correction and fired editors. That is how Bari Weiss ended up revolutionizing alternative media here on Substack.>>

It's also how Glenn Greenwald, liberal crusader, civil rights attorney, ended up on Substack after being blocked from doing investigative journalism +for his own masthead+, the Intercept, investigative journalism since proving to have been entirely accurate. That is the reason I seek out a variety of Substack authors and the tattered remnant of the independent writers left outside it. News, actual news, simply doesn't come to us these days: we have to hunt it down, club it, drag it back to our lairs, and dissect it, messy bits and all. Sometimes the answers are not readily apparent, but, like this author does, we can figure out what the answers may NOT be because they are self-conflicting and make no sense.

But then we still need to try to find real answers-- and better questions. What is wrong becomes apparent, but we still need to find the best right path that we messy squishy fallible humans are able to find. That's harder, and sometimes it often takes more than one try:

<<How did we ever get here? And is there any way out?

There is a line in Citizen Kane where the character of Gettys says to Kane, “you’re going to need more than one lesson. And you’re to get more than one lesson.”>>

Joe Rogan (or his guests) must be free to speak whether I agree with him or not

Glenn Greenwald recently posted a piece on his Substack discussing the attempts to cancel Joe Rogan's podcast. In that piece, he does not weigh in on whether Joe Rogan's opinions (or those of the guests on his show) are right or wrong. I don't know that Glenn Greenwald cares whether or not Rogan is correct. I do not know that I do either. I have not honestly watched Rogan's podcast and had no intention to do so prior to this controversy. The substance of Rogan's podcast is largely irrelevant to a much deeper and more disturbing issue illuminated in GG's piece which I will also poke at here, taking his commentary in what I intend to be a complementary direction. Either reading GG's lengthy(*) piece or watching Rogan's podcast may therefore be helpful but should not be required before continuing. I am also going to link some different material or presentations of the issue than the GG piece.

(*) I suppose I'm not one to talk...

[Updated 2021/01/01 typo fix, link about White House pressure to censor.]

Background:

Joe Rogan's podcast is the most popular on a platform called Spotify. There is no argument, either from Rogan or anyone else, that he deals with controversial topics and often in controversial ways. He hosts a variety of guests and interviews them or facilitates discussions. Recently, Rogan and his podcast came under fire by musician Neil Young for promoting "fake vaccine information". Neil Young threatened Spotify that if Spotify did not remove Joe Rogan's Podcast, Young would remove all his own material from the platform:

<<“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” fumed the 76-year-old Grammy winner in the note. “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.”>> [as quoted in the NY Post.]

The Rolling Stone reports on an open letter from a group of doctors also demanding Spotify deplatform Rogan and his podcast. Spotify has thus far responded by removing Young's material as requested, but keeping Rogan. As the Verge reports, this was likely an easy decision for Spotify because it would have made absolutely no financial sense for Spotify to choose Young (or any dozen like him) over Rogan.

Joe Rogan's Response:

Joe Rogan himself has responded to the controversy, describing the content, not just the "couple of episodes where he had on medical professionals and scientists who challenged the mainstream narrative on matters related to the COVID-19 pandemic" [ibid, above DWlink] but the series of episodes of which it is a part. In those episodes, Rogan hosted Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullogh and microbiologist Dr. Robert Malone who, among other things, holds patents in technology that was crucial to the development of mRNA vaccines. Both are controversial figures. Both have made statements elsewhere I know I would disagree with, but it simply cannot be argued that they are not eminent scientists, well-published in their fields, and that their opinions are not noteworthy. Even if one or both were provably wrong on any number of individual topics, they are inextricably part of a larger public debate of paramount public importance.

But neither of these two controversial figures were hosted in a vacuum, rather as part of a larger pattern of covering the pandemic and its controversies overall:

<<"...And I’m interested in having interesting conversations with people that have differing opinions. I’m not interested in only talking to people that have one perspective. That’s one of the reasons why I had Sanjay Gupta on, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who I respect very much, and I really enjoyed our conversation together. He has a different opinion than those men do. I had Dr. Michael Osterholm on at the very beginning of the pandemic, he is on President Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board. I had Dr. Peter Hotez on, who is a vaccine expert. I’m interested in finding out what is correct and I’m also finding out how people come to these conclusions and what the facts are.”>> [ibid, DW link]

Indeed, you can see from any index of the podcast episodes that his guest list is diverse, including figures from left and right, multiple sides of issues. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, in particular, was in fact interviewed on 21 October 2020 in episode #1718, Dr. Osterholm on 10 March 2020 in episode in #1439. That particular index I link is searchable and it also links to books mentioned in a given episode (if any). Glancing through the episodes demonstrates that the bibliography, too, is quite varied. Rogan further states that many facts which have been presented or taken for granted by some of these people-- people who are not provoking a backlash over "misinformation"-- have been provably wrong, that in fact mainstream media has consistently cancelled information opposed to "facts" we now know were false. I know myself that a number of my social media posts or comments touching these issues have mysteriously disappeared over the last couple of years, particularly on potential origins of Bat Soup.

<<"...for instance, eight months ago, if you said, ‘if you get vaccinated, you can still catch COVID and you can still spread COVID,’ you’d be removed from social media, they would they would [sic] ban you from certain platforms. Now, that’s accepted as fact. If you said, I don’t think cloth masks work, you would be banned from social media. Now that’s openly and repeatedly stated on CNN. If you said I think it’s possible that COVID-19 came from a lab, you’d be banned from many social media platforms – now that’s on the cover of Newsweek. All of those theories that at one point in time were banned, were openly discussed by those two men that I had on my podcast that had been accused of dangerous misinformation.”>> [ibid, DW link]

This is indisputably true. The truth of Rogan's statement does not mean that Malone or McCullogh are automatically right any more than it automatically justifies legions of information on covid-19 over the past several years (on all sides) that was known to be garbage at the time or that we know to be garbage now. Information has been so flatly contradictory that it is probably fair to say that the overwhelming majority of confident pronouncements on this virus, some by shysters, opportunists, and snake oil salesmen, some by government scientists and officials, has indisputably been wrong-- pretty much no matter what viewpoint you wish to take. These respected outlets-- it turns out-- dutifully echoed at times and actively promoted propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party which even China has since had to back away from. So, although this does not mean that any given controversial view must be right, it shows beyond a doubt that the self-appointed or generally accepted gatekeepers of debate have done a lousy job and have at times been actively suborned (wittingly or otherwise) as distributors of 'misinformation'.

So What Is This Really About?

Now we come back to Glenn Greenwald, who first talks about the development of the idea of "hate speech", the idea that it somehow was thought to represent a Constitutional exception to Free Speech/Free Exercise despite clear tradition and jurisprudence to the contrary, and then predictably blossomed into an authoritarian catch-all to suppress, effectively, "any speech that offends me". Glenn Greenwald, in particular, having started as a civil liberties attorney, has been writing pursuasively about free speech and free press issues for many years as first one party and then another was in power; his stubborn non-partisan consistency on free speech is one of the reasons I have followed his writings throughout that entire time. But even this malignant doctrine of 'hate speech' is not the limit of a larger cancerous growth:

<<Constitutional illiteracy to the side, the “hate speech” framework for justifying censorship is now insufficient because liberals are eager to silence a much broader range of voices than those they can credibly accuse of being hateful. That is why the newest, and now most popular, censorship framework is to claim that their targets are guilty of spreading “misinformation” or “disinformation.” These terms, by design, have no clear or concise meaning. Like the term “terrorism,” it is their elasticity that makes them so useful.>> [ibid, GG link at top.]

Nor is this 'merely' busybody censorship, an overzealous attempt to keep the public debate pure or reasonable or factual or unoffensive. As Joe Rogan points out above and GG methodically documents in the article being discussed and elsewhere, the escalating attempts to silence debate are pointed, direct, and overwhelmingly partisan.

<<When liberals’ favorite media outlets, from CNN and NBC to The New York Times and The Atlantic, spend four years disseminating one fabricated Russia story after the next — from the Kremlin hacking into Vermont's heating system and Putin's sexual blackmail over Trump to bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, the Biden email archive being "Russian disinformation,” and a magical mystery weapon that injures American brains with cricket noises — none of that is "disinformation” that requires banishment. Nor are false claims that COVID's origin has proven to be zoonotic rather than a lab leak, the vastly overstated claim that vaccines prevent transmission of COVID, or that Julian Assange stole classified documents and caused people to die. Corporate outlets beloved by liberals are free to spout serious falsehoods without being deemed guilty of disinformation, and, because of that, do so routinely.>> [ibid]

Private or Public?

One might make the argument that pervasive and now routine partisan censorship by corporations in Silicon Valley and major media is not 'censorship', in the sense that it does not implicate the First Amendment. The First Amendment, as conservatives (myself included) have often pointed out over the years, only limits government conduct, not free association (or by extension disassociation) of purely private actors. This is true, and I continue to stand by that in principle. It is another example of Hannah Arendt's principle (cf. her "Origins of Totalitarianism" books) that it is inherently dangerous to mix the Private, Social, and Public spheres, by moving, for instance, conflict which is permissible (even if unsightly or hurtful) in the Social Sphere under government control. Such boundary-confusion inevitably promotes Totalitarianism. But the private/public distinction is not currently useful for precisely this reason of boundary confusion.

Among these sources, including the GG article, you will find that the Biden Administration was among those pressuring Spotify to deplatform Joe Rogan. [2021-02-01: see this Townhall piece for press briefing video where White House continues pressuring Spotify for more censorship.]

This is not even-- not remotely-- a new phenomenon. We know, for instance, that former, prospective, and current government officials now routinely participate in distribution of misinformation and suppression of dissent in ostensibly private media. Just off the top of my head, we have Senator Elizabeth Warren acting officially in an attempt to coerce Amazon to censor a book on the virus in search results and Anthony Fauci's collaboration (the quid pro quo of which is still undisclosed) with Zuckerburg to supress discussion of potential covid origins. The Left (whatever you wish to call the elitist authoritarian progressive portion of politics epitomized by current DNC leadership which is not universally shared by 'liberals', especially when using 'liberal' in the classic sense) is not only using this kind of coordinated quasi-governmental control over debate frequently: as GG argues, it has now become the principle tool.

Those of you who know me long enough may recall that I, along with GG and others from among both liberty-minded Republicans and Democratic, 3rd Party and Independent (3P/I) allies, have been discussing the worrying potential of quasi-governmental prior restraint since before it became the principle tool of the Left. It was, in fact, a rather handy tool in the Bush/Cheney Administration. I was not silent on that issue when Republicans were involved. It ought be kept in mind, however, that the former Cheney contingent of authoritarian Republican elitists many of us fought against in the day became strident Never-Trumpers who threw their lot in with Biden and the DNC. Liz Cheney, the daughter, has become Pelosi's go-to tool and the father has been quite literally embraced by the Democratic power players along with open acceptance of his authoritarian censorship ideals by Democratic leadership, Big Media, and the America Civil Liberties Union. Recognition that this unholy alliance is deeply disturbing should not pivot on one's opinion of Trump, pro or con. In this time, the FBI and CIA have gone from being professed enemies of Democracy to its saviors. The far-left defund-the-police "Squad" directly enabled the extra-territorial expansion of the Capitol Police. There is a well-trafficked revolving door between former surveillance-state operatives and Big (primarily Democrat-aligned) Media. So, although government surveillance and suppression of speech coordinated with "industry partners" has been both a Republican and Democrat issue, it is almost exclusively a leftist disease at the moment.

First they came for...

Of course, among the stated reasons I opposed Bush/Cheney policies at the time and endured backlash to partner with Democratic and 3P/I activists to do it was for precisely this reason: what goes around comes around. This is no less true of liberal constituencies today who enable Cancel Culture. In fact, it is not difficult to think of left-leaning figures who have already been cannibalized-- or, it wouldn't be difficult to think of them if they had not already been cancelled. Totalitarianism, once it begins to churn, rattles and clanks in a parody of life. It chooses victims of its own volition, not according to the will of those who switched it on. It continues running even after those hapless fools are well-digested.

The Niemoller Principle eventually grinds the compliant with the contrary; the bones of cowards will lie with the courageous.

The prudent start reaching for the plug before the plug reaches for you.