I don’t blame the trolls. If anything I pity them. I blame their  enablers…  like the Sacramento Bee. I want some true change I can believe in. I want all media web sites to begin banning character assassins. I want media sites that work for everyone. I want progress. War is getting us nowhere.

Recently a panel of media experts met at Sacramento Bee to discuss “pay walls.” News content providers are struggling to turn a profit in the age of Huffpo and this was more-less a forum to exchange ideas and experiences. Personally I think they are getting ahead of themselves. To me their content is of marginal value while it is being sabotaged by trolls whose only purpose for patronizing them is to condemn and vilify their brothers and sisters for personal satisfaction.

Oh yeah I should give you some background. If you are new to my site I should tell you I believe we’re all brothers and sisters. I think we all come from the same seed. As such I think we have an obligation to treat each other with a high degree of respect, regardless of the topic we are debating. It’s called COMMON DECENCY. Granted, it’s a concept that has escaped many bigots, sexists, and criminals throughout the ages, but it’s been around since man became civilized, and it’s still every bit as critical to the health and welfare of the common good, societal order, growth, evolution, and good old human decency as it was back in the bronze age.

As stewards of the common good, I am of the firm belief we all have an acute responsibility to protect our public airwaves  from the reach of pirates. We work together in neighborhood associations and other groups to keep our children safe from thugs on the street, yet we don’t work together to keep them safe from thugs on the net.

Why the double standard? I don’t care if it’s porn, spoofing, fraud, phishing, trolling, slander, bullying, threats, extortion, or hate speech, ANYONE who deliberately seeks to hurt people or otherwise disrupt sensible debate or the flow of information should lose their privilege to participate on the web site where the offense(s) occurred. First there should be a suspension, then expulsion. Period. I’m very pleased Sacramento Press has taken a leadership position and started to enforce this very philosophy.

You needn’t have been the victim of slander on the internet to adopt this zero tolerance policy I am suggesting…. anymore than you need to have been the victim of a shooting to adopt a zero tolerance policy towards gangs. All you need is a little empathy towards your fellow man. I know that’s a tall order for people who have never learned how to empathize.  These are the same folks who, e.g., will not attend a neighborhood crime prevention meeting after an, e.g., string of home invasions, on the basis that they haven’t experienced a home invasion.

I’ll never forget some of the conversations I had in Natomas with residents last year. A few people actually had no clue there was a crime problem.

Me to a neighbor: “Are you going to the crime meeting tonight?”

“Crime meeting? No, I don’t have any problems with crime here.”

“But your neighbors are being robbed and raped and terrorized.”

“Well they probably left their garage door open or something. That’s their fault. Plus there is a game on tonight I don’t want to miss.”

I’m hoping you are shaking your head in disgust right now. If you aren’t, you might check  your empathy level and perhaps  find out why you aren’t concerned about what is happening in the world around you. You might also consider this: just because it wasn’t you THIS time, it damn sure might be you NEXT time.

Oh I know, you’ll deal with that if and when it happens to you. I know so many people like this. They only take action if something happens to them. Kind of like the way the government reacts . Some people are proactive, others are reactive. Some people like to focus on preventing problems, other prefer to clean up messes as they occur. The latter is far more expensive and damaging. Ask Katrina victims. Ask Gulf victims. As the families who have lost their children to gang violence. [Just yesterday I read about another anti gang initiative about to launch in Sac. Great thing, but where are the programs that keep vulnerable, at risk kids out of gangs in the first place?]

Sadly, we are a REACTIVE society, and so many people don’t get involved until something happens to them. The Sac Bee is a great example of reactive policy rather than proactive one. Personally I think the Bee and other companies should not even be considering charging for content until they clean up their virtual offices and make them safe environments for people of all ages, political persuasions, sexual orientations, intelligent quotients, ethnic backgrounds and so forth. As it stands, they are not. As it stands their web sites are being occupied by web pirates, and untiul they are purged, I wouldn’t give the Bee a dime of my money. I hope you wouldn’t either.

Ironically, Bee Senior VP Melanie Sill is a staunch opponent of anonymous blogging, yet at the same time her company is arguably the most prolific enabler of it in the region. No wait, that is not irony. That is good ol’ hypocrisy. (PS: when is the Bee going to stop posting anonymous editorials?). Even though Melanie Sill knows who I am she still gets on me if I don’t sign my name to my emails fr0m my Joe Sac account. “Mark is that you?? Why don’t you sign your real name?”  Hmmph. Why don’t your writers sign THEIR names to your editorials, Melanie?

I want to be clear. I think there is a place for anonymity on the net. Personal blogs is one such place. Personal blogs are like TV channels; if you don’t like one’s content, you have the OPTION of ignoring it. For instance I have never seen a moment of programming on Oprah’s ‘OWN’ network, and chances are I never will. Works for me.

There was a time when this blog was anonymous. I was unfairly vilified for it by local media personalities. Unlike other loudmouths who aren’t questioned for being anonymous, I was called a “chicken” in the SacBee for not divulging my identity–and I never once stated a single personal attack on a fellow citizen here.  I even had community members emailing me and threatening to  “out” me. (!)

But alas, when I “came out” none of these people were anywhere to be found. Wonder why. I know why. They THOUGHT this web site was some sort of specious political storefront. When they found out it was nothing more than a colorful, passionate, pathological weirdo flexing his opinions, they were like, “Oh.” Nothing follows. Haven’t heard from a single one of them. My monthly hits have continued to rise ever since.

But again, this is my site. I pay for it. Furthermore I only criticize public figures here.. public figures who are making life and death decisions on a daily basis.  I have every right. Conversations about public figures SHOULD be spirited, and even caustic. I am not thwarting progress here. I’m promoting it by challenging ideas. I have promoted civil debate here since day one. I have banned multiple offenders for attacking others and I don’t tolerate personal attack and never will.

The public forum, such as on the SacBee’s web site, on the other hand.  is a completely different situation. Here we have people from all walks of life trying to weigh in on important decisions and they are getting torn apart by blood thirsty trolls whose only agenda is to force feed the world their opinions… without ever giving them the OPTION to turn the channel.

On Sac Press’s web site one commenter (I stand corrected, I thought it was Fifth Generation but it was  Cogmeyer) stated he is ok with offensive posters because he can simply pass over their comment if he wishes.

But frankly we are all adults here. Every single one of us could have simply ignored [the offender's]  comments and continued the conversation as if she wasn’t in the room.

I totally disagree.  He is ignoring the entire dynamic of nested comments. One person replies with a nasty post, then twenty people respond and the rest of the entire thread is devoted to that one comment. In order to “ignore” the offensive comment, one would have to skip the responding twenty comments, too.  So this whole “ignore them if you don’t like them” business is not the answer.

This is also why an “IGNORE USER” option would  not work. Because comments are “nested” in strings and even if you ignore the assailant who made the original offensive comment, you’ll still see all the replies to it, and often times you end up seeing the comment anyway because people will quote it in their replies.

The bottom line is that no matter how much value a troll adds in his or her non offensive comments, the damage they cause with the offensive ones overshadows any good they are doing.  The most brutal mafia dons in history went to church on Sunday and gave hundreds of thousands to charity by day, but bludgeoned their enemies with baseball bats by night.We didn’t give them a pass because they were doing good on Sundays. We penalized them for breaking the rules. In those cases we banned them from society by sending them to prison. In the case of internet offenders we should simply ban them from the public conversation.

A friend of mine posted a message to Facebook yesterday: “If you have something to say, say it to my face.” Yeah, Polly I could not agree with your more. That is some old school grown folk talk right there. What happened to that? Even when this site was anonymous I still was willing to meet in person with any of the public officials I criticized on this site.

I also met with readers whenever they asked me to. I never “chickened” out. I was even out in the community with John Dahilig and Jim Knapp shooting video. Matter of fact I even met with the organizers of the Fort Natomas rebuild to discuss their frustration with my criticism of the project. We shot a bunch of video of the project and were going to post a very critical article about it here. The organizers asked me not to. I honored their request and never posted the video or article… out of respect for them.

So don’t humor yourself . I have always manned up and stood behind my words. I even tried to interview Heather Fargo and she wouldn’t reply to me (she nixed the Natomas Buzz’ interview request, to0). I will meet with anyone who wants to talk to me, and you can rest assured I will be nothing but 100% respectful and professional no matter how much I disagree with your viewpoints. It’s called COMMON DECENCY.

The truth about character assassins is that they are ignorant. They use racial slurs, they attack people’s physical and mental dispositions, they discriminate against people for their sexual preference and ethnicity, they vilify people who are the victims of accidents (on the grounds they are “stupid”), and they generally do everything in their power to drag people down to the sewer with them.  They have their reasons. I’m sure they are miserable people. That’s fine. I won’t judge them. But let’s stop kidding each other;  these people don’t want to see progress. They want to block it. Those that enable them are no better.

Think about it. If  one is truly committed to PROGRESS and EVOLUTION and PERSONAL GROWTH, why the heck would they call  people names and assassinate their character?  Stop defending vulgarity, profanity and hate speech as passion. Name calling is only a filler for gaps in one’s knowledge. It is a desperate measure used by those who have nothing else of substance to add to a conversation.

In conclusion, if your goal is to EDUCATE and ENLIGHTEN people, if you are really part of the solution, why would you do it with a baseball bat? You wouldn’t. Sorry but anyone who thinks you can enlighten someone by hurting their feelings has no idea what the $#%@ they are talking about. That’s how drill sergeants operate.  It only works for them because if you don’t do what they say they’ll throw you in a stockade!

So how should we act when we are offended by someone’s position or when they disagree with us and it gets us hot under the collar? Well, we DON’T act like the good mayor Kevin Johnson did the other night. That was a 30 minute expose on what NOT to do. For an example of how we SHOULD act, I think we turn to one Dr Martin Luther King for an example…

Dr King was a dignified man who respected human dignity. He sought to educate, enlighten, inspire and ENCOURAGE people to aim higher. He did it without ever even muttering a profane word. Quite the contrary in fact. He preached PEACE and quoted Jesus! Not only that, unlike other people who didn’t want to get involved because they themselves were not victims or racism, Dr. King exercised one of the greatest examples of EMPATHY in history when he stood up for ALL people who had been discriminated against.  In other words, Dr. King didn’t have to be a lynching victim to empathize with those who had been lynched… just like I don’t need to be Mexican to disapprove of discrimination..

If we want progress we should exercise one of Dr King’s most stirring quotes ever “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” AMEN!  This is the same reason I am dead set against the AZ boycott law (but not a fan of boycotting AZ because of it)…. but that’s another long, rambling article entirely.

Have courage, use your real name and stand behind your convictions and beliefs–especially if you are going to attack someone’s character. Say it to their face if you feel that strongly about it.  Set the example.  Be a leader. Stand your ground and respect people as you want them to respect you. Exercise the GOLDEN RULE (do unto others..). Don’t let people run down and bully your fellow citizens and attempt to silence them (even if yu are in agreement with their politics). Everyone’s voice should be heard.

And whatever you do, don’t feed the trolls. We have fed them enough (I know I have fed them far too much already).

• $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico – and the violence along with it.

• $33 billion in marketing “Just Say No”-style messages to America’s youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have “risen steadily” since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.

• $49 billion for law enforcement along America’s borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.

• $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.

• $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses.

Get the whole story HERE. You don’t want to miss this.

Worst part is  that Obama is now spending record amounts on the so-called “war” too and has promised to get driug addiction treated as a “public health problem.”  ACK!

What are your thoughts?  Tell me

I know it is complete buffoonery to believe everything a politician says. I know only an idiot would fall for a politician’s promises. But I gotta tell ya I was hoping for more from Obama. Maybe that was my problem this last election… I was HOPING too much.

These bank bonuses are outrageous. Despicable. Disgusting. With millions losing their jobs, 20% unemployment in some places, forclosures at an all time high and so forth and so on these mother#$@%@  are giving each other bonuses? ? I’m sorry but to me that should be considered Treasonous. Mutinous. A spit int he face of every laid off American worker and family booted out of their home because they couldn’t make the balloon payment!

I wonder how Obama is going to react to this. I wonder if he even knows the banks’ love affair with democrats is officially over with the Daily Beat reporting they have begun shifting all their money to Republicans again (2 to 1 in 2009, but now back to half to Republicans). What a bunch of greaseballs!

Obama needs to get real and stop blaming this increasingly scary economic situation on Bush. I think it’s time we all concede that while the Bush team stood by and did nothing while the banks relaxed their lending standards and lent money to every Tom, Dick, Jane, and Mary in America, the Obama team has done nothing to improve the situation, and given news of these banks bonuses this week, it appears they are only exacerbating the problem with their hands off policy towards the banks.

And get THIS from Newser today: ” Banks tightened credit last year at what the Wall Street Journal calls an “epic pace,” recording their biggest full-year decline in loans outstanding in 67 years. The figure comes from a new FDIC report that paints the picture of a banking industry that, apart from a few top-tier players, is in dire straights. The number of banks at risk of failing jumped to 702, a 16-year high.”  !!

Yes we can !  Yes we can do WHAT?? What are we doing again? Someone refresh my memory.

Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheet/item/bank-bonuses-boom-by-17-percent/bonanzas/?cid=cs:headline1

Where are these people going to live? Work? Get educated??  CSUS is turning people away by the thousands. Schools are closing. Unemployment is at 12%. Inflation is out of control. What is the U.S. thinking? As president of a a university that can’t even serve the current population, Gonzalez should be protesting immigration, shouldn’t he?? Here is the article from ABC News. Beware, it’s depressing…

With a fiscal year 2010 budget gap of nearly $52 billion, or 56 percent of its total general budget, California is hands down the poster child of fiscally imperiled states. It also enjoys the dubious distinction of having the single worst credit rating (A-) of any of the 50 states, as measured by Standard & Poor’s.

Factor in an above-the-national-average unemployment rate of 12.4 percent, severe political dysfunction – a two-thirds majority is required to pass a budget, making any semblance of shared political sacrifice practically a nonstarter – as well as the fact that California consumes three times more energy than it produces, and it becomes painfully clear that the Golden State is hurtling toward a very dark place.

“It’s revealing, and probably not a coincidence, that the states in the most trouble are the ones that have energy-consuming populations that dwarf the energy the states are able to produce,” said Gregor Macdonald of Gregor.com and an Amherst, Mass.-based energy sector analyst and noted financial blogger.

California also has the country’s second largest food stamp program, pointed out Elizabeth McNichol, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“The recession is causing state and local tax revenues to fall steeply at the same time that high unemployment and rising poverty are increasing the need for state services such as Medicaid and other programs that serve the poor and near-poor,” McNichol said. “The change in the number of food stamp recipients is the single best early warning measure of what is happening to poverty in a state.”

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/california-illinois-florida-new-york-michigan-states-financial-crisis-unemployment-poverty/story?id=9856552