Also on today’s menu:
TurboTax Settlement Money To Be Distributed
The Truth No Longer Matters To News Media
Censorship Of History When It Suits
And you thought May Day already took place. It turns out, according to Atlas Obscura, that the early inhabitants of the British Isles celebrated the start of summer midway between the spring equinox and summer solstice — which, astronomically speaking, falls around May 5 or 6 — in other words, today. Instead of dancing around Maypoles or bonfires, those early inhabitants focused on moving cattle from their winter locations to the summer pastures and getting their gardens planted in order to grow enough food to survive the following winter.
Known today as Beltane and considered a Celtic tradition, the holiday actually dates back 6,000 years and was considered the most important day of the year for early farmers. Folklorist Patricia Monaghan suggested that the fires of Beltane, now associated with purification, “may have originated simply in the need to burn off brush before the fields and pastures were put into use.”
Beltane’s other rituals around fertility came in later and were layered on top of its original purpose on the agricultural calendar. As calendar systems including the Julian and Gregorian calendars were codified across Europe, Beltane became fixed on April 30/May 1, bringing it into closer alignment with other flower-and-fire festivals, such as the ancient Roman Floralia and Central Europe’s Walpurgisnacht, or Čarodêjnice.
TurboTax Settlement Money To Be Distributed
About 4.4 million consumers whom TurboTax owner Intuit deceived into paying money to file their federal tax returns will begin receiving checks this month through a $141 million multi-state settlement. New Hampshire will receive more than $728,920 for more than 23,675 affected consumers who will be contacted by email about the settlement.
“Taking advantage of low-income New Hampshire residents and convincing them to pay for free tax services is unfair, unethical, and a business practice that will not be tolerated in New Hampshire,” said Attorney-General John Formella. “Paying taxes is hard enough. People should not also have to worry about being deceived by their tax preparers.”
Eligible consumers include those who paid to file their federal tax returns through TurboTax for tax years 2016, 2017, and 2018 when they were eligible to file for free through the IRS Free File Program. Rust Consulting will serve as administrator of the settlement fund. The amount each consumer receives will be based on the number of tax years for which they qualify. Most consumers are expected to receive between $29 and $30.
The Truth No Longer Matters To News Media
Michael Shellenberger reported in a #TwitterFiles thread that the Aspen Institute sponsored a “Hack-and-Dump Working Group” exercise in the summer of 2020 that led to redefining how to deal with information that, like the Pentagon Papers, had been obtained through “leaks”. After Daniel Ellsberg copied the military’s secret 7,000-page history of the Vietnam War and gave it to the New York Times and the Washington Post in 1971, the government sued to stop publication, but the United States Supreme Court defended the First Amendment right of a free press against prior restraint. Since then, news organizations have operated under the principle that, once information is authenticated and is newsworthy, it should be published.
A paper co-written by two Aspen tabletop attendees, journalist Janine Zacharia and former Cybersecurity Policy Director Andrew James Grotto, suggested abandoning the “Pentagon Papers Principle,” insisting, “authentication alone is not enough to run with something.” They argued that newsrooms also must consider the source of the information and why it was leaked. Even information that proves to be authentic, if it comes by way of “foreign or other adversarial entities,” should be ignored, they argued.
It’s the basic rhetorical trick of the censorship age: raise a fuss about a foreign threat, using it as a battering ram to get everyone from congress to the tech companies to submit to increased regulation and surveillance. Then, slowly, adjust your aim to domestic targets. You can see the subtlety: the original Stanford piece tries to stick to railing against “disinformation” and information from “foreign adversaries,” but the later paper circulated by Aspen slips in, ever so slightly, a new category of dubious source: “foreign or other adversarial entities.”
These rhetorical devices are essential. It would be preposterous to form (as Stanford did) an “Information Warfare Working Group” if readers knew the “war” being contemplated was against domestic voices. … But if you start by focusing on Russians and only later mention as an afterthought “other adversarial entities,” you can frame things however you want, from espionage to warfare. As reader O’Neill correctly pointed out, “they are now getting close to being explicit about the fact that their motivation for suppressing news is to fight domestic political adversaries.”
That is how the two newspapers most closely associated with the Pentagon Papers became willing to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story when published by the New York Post. It didn’t matter that the laptop story was true (even though subsequent analysis of the contents of the computer proved to be less significant than anticipated)'; it had to be labeled “disinformation” and ignored because it might be embarrassing for President Joe Biden.
That is what we have come to: Legacy media — whose role in reporting the truth has been affirmed by the Supreme Court — have embraced the argument that the truth should be suppressed if, in their opinion, it does not serve “American democracy”.
Some of us still believe that the truth always serves American democracy, even if the truth comes by way of Edward Snowdon or Wikileaks. In a democracy, we all benefit by knowing the facts, making us better equipped to protect our other democratic rights.
Censorship Of History When It Suits
A historical marker noting Concord’s connection to 20th century labor activist and Communist Party leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, which had been approved by both the Concord Heritage Commission and the City Council last year, was unveiled on Monday. By Wednesday, top state Republicans were calling for its removal and for changes to how such markers are approved in the future.
Commissioner Sarah Stewart of the New Hampshire Department of Natural and Cultural Resources sent a letter to Concord officials Thursday “to inform the City of the opportunity to reevaluate your approval of this marker.” Stewart noted that the state “is available to remove the marker at your request.”
Arnie Alpert, one of the people who had petitioned the state for the erection of the marker, said it is important to understand the historical context of figures like Gurley Flynn, who were involved in the movement for the rights of workers, women’s equality, and protection of civil liberties in the early 20th century.
Those calling for the marker’s removal happen to be Republicans, but Democrats have likewise put politics over history in their support of the removal of statues of historically significant Confederate leaders. For both sides, history is something to be suppressed unless it can serve current political agendas. An understanding of the background behind historical figures and events can only confuse the narrative they want to promote.
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