[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Mail]  [Sign-in]  [Setup]  [Help]  [Register] 

Utopian Visionaries Who Won’t Leave People Alone

No - no - no Ain'T going To get away with iT

Pete Buttplug's Butt Plugger Trying to Turn Kids into Faggots

Mark Levin: I'm sick and tired of these attacks

Questioning the Big Bang

James Webb Data Contradicts the Big Bang

Pssst! Don't tell the creationists, but scientists don't have a clue how life began

A fine romance: how humans and chimps just couldn't let go

Early humans had sex with chimps

O’Keefe dons bulletproof vest to extract undercover journalist from NGO camp.

Biblical Contradictions (Alleged)

Catholic Church Praising Lucifer

Raising the Knife

One Of The HARDEST Videos I Had To Make..

Houthi rebels' attack severely damages a Belize-flagged ship in key strait leading to the Red Sea (British Ship)

Chinese Illegal Alien. I'm here for the moneuy

Red Tides Plague Gulf Beaches

Tucker Carlson calls out Nikki Haley, Ben Shapiro, and every other person calling for war:

{Are there 7 Deadly Sins?} I’ve heard people refer to the “7 Deadly Sins,” but I haven’t been able to find that sort of list in Scripture.

Abomination of Desolation | THEORY, BIBLE STUDY

Bible Help

Libertysflame Database Updated

Crush EVERYONE with the Alien Gambit!

Vladimir Putin tells Tucker Carlson US should stop arming Ukraine to end war

Putin hints Moscow and Washington in back-channel talks in revealing Tucker Carlson interview

Trump accuses Fulton County DA Fani Willis of lying in court response to Roman's motion

Mandatory anti-white racism at Disney.

Iceland Volcano Erupts For Third Time In 2 Months, State Of Emergency Declared

Tucker Carlson Interview with Vladamir Putin

How will Ar Mageddon / WW III End?

What on EARTH is going on in Acts 16:11? New Discovery!

2023 Hottest in over 120 Million Years

2024 and beyond in prophecy

Questions

This Speech Just Broke the Internet

This AMAZING Math Formula Will Teach You About God!

The GOSPEL of the ALIENS | Fallen Angels | Giants | Anunnaki

The IMAGE of the BEAST Revealed (REV 13) - WARNING: Not for Everyone

WEF Calls for AI to Replace Voters: ‘Why Do We Need Elections?’

The OCCULT Burger king EXPOSED

PANERA BREAD Antichrist message EXPOSED

The OCCULT Cheesecake Factory EXPOSED

Satanist And Witches Encounter The Cross

History and Beliefs of the Waldensians

Rome’s Persecution of the Bible

Evolutionists, You’ve Been Caught Lying About Fossils

Raw Streets of NYC Migrant Crisis that they don't show on Tv

Meet DarkBERT - AI Model Trained On DARK WEB

[NEW!] Jaw-dropping 666 Discovery Utterly Proves the King James Bible is God's Preserved Word

ALERT!!! THE MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION WILL SOON BE POSTED HERE


Status: Not Logged In; Sign In

Corrupt Government
See other Corrupt Government Articles

Title: How the Regalados Got Away From Criminal Prosecution (prosecutor in hot shower death case)
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://www.crespogram.com/index_pub ... ND_THEY_HAVE_IN_KATHY_2_2.html
Published: Apr 25, 2012
Author: Cresprogram Report
Post Date: 2017-03-19 15:10:29 by A K A Stone
Keywords: None
Views: 287
Comments: 6

If there was anything even remotely resembling justice, neither Tomas or Raquel Regalado would be holding public office today.

Both of them should have been charged with at least one, and possibly two misdemeanor criminal counts related to their actions in handling the campaign’s financial accounting and reporting during Regalados campaign for Mayor of Miami.

But they weren’t. Instead, the Regalados were allowed to avoid criminal prosecution and were allowed to get off by paying civil penalties of $5000 each for a case which really did involve a “willful disregard for the law.”

The process by which they were given a free pass reveals one of the ways that Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle’s office deals with high profile, politically connected cases involving individuals who Fernandez-Rundle either wants to protect, or who she does political favors for, expecting no doubt some sort of quid pro quo in return.

In this case, there is no question that Katherine Fernandez-Rundle’s intention was to shield the Regalados from any threat of criminal prosecution.

The story that follows is based on information discovered in the investigative reports that became available after the case was closed: reports that were collected and provided to the public ONLY by the Crespo- Gram Report.

Other than one story that originally appeared in El Nuevo Herald before the FDLE made their records available, no other news organization has attempted to obtain or publish any kind of story that included information other than what was in the press release issued by the Miami-Dade Ethics Commission.

Yet, in spite of not knowing, or obviously not bothering to learn about the facts of the case, the Miami Herald was quick to publish an editorial attempting to minimize the Regalados actions, focusing heavily on trying to excuse what happened by indirectly referencing a series of personal and family problems, including the death of her mother in February of 2008 and the discovery that her husband was having an affair that lead to a divorce later that year that Raquel Regalado interjected as an excuse during her deposition as to why she supposedly didn’t focus on her responsibilities as campaign treasurer. (See pages 17-22 of her deposition.)

Here’s how the Miami Herald’s editorial defended the decision not to charge the Regalados with criminal violations:

“In light of the family’s situation, the commission’s decision to fine the pair without criminal charges was appropriate.”

Really!?! How does one’s “family’s situation” ever justify a free pass on being charged with a crime?

Think of all the other political crooks in Miami-Dade County that would love to have the Miami Herald absolve them of responsibility for their sleazy, unprincipled or crooked behavior by claiming that their “family’s situation” was responsible for their misdeeds?

It is this kind of mindless, ignorant drivel that is selectively pedaled on the news and editorial pages of the Miami Herald that raises questions as to whether the leadership of the Miami Herald have cow shit for brains, or worse, are openly acting as enablers in foisting these corrupt public officials on an ill-informed and abused public.

The Regalados engaged in a willful pattern of misbehavior that in hindsight they attempted to claim was caused by their “family situation,” while at the same time attempting to place as much of the blame as possible on two underlings: Armando Rodriquez, a city employee who was rewarded with better city jobs after demonstrating his incompetence, and Jose Oscar Gonzalez, the husband of Regalados deceased wife’s sister, both of whom were entrusted with much of the actual accounting work for the campaign.

This was all a calculated ploy by the Regalados to deflect attention from the fact that one was stupid, and the other was a moron, and that together they conspired to hoodwink the public over the real financial activities associated with Tomas Regalados campaign for Mayor.

Consider that the “family situation” problems that Raquel Regalado described in her deposition as distracting her from her responsibilities as campaign treasurer occurred in 2008, while the most serious campaign violations took place at the end of 2009 and the first few months of 2010.

I do not wish to appear heartless or deny her the grief and pain that she faced with the death of her mother and the other dramas that year, including confirmation of her daughter’s autism and finding out she was married to a louse; but to attempt to justify the illegal acts that she engaged in almost a year and a half after most of these events occurred is taking real advantage of people gullibility.

YOU DON’T NEED TO STEAL MONEY TO COMMIT A CRIMINAL ACT

Even in the best managed political campaigns there are instances where shit happens. It’s just part of the process, and no one should be subjected to a lot of grief when these issues are discovered, because stupid shit sometimes just happens.

At the same time, there is a big difference between goofy math errors, and a demonstrable effort to create a Final Financial Campaign Report based on completely fake numbers.

When you discover that kind of behavior, it warrants criminal prosecution, because the issue is not whether any of the unaccounted for money was stolen or misused, but rather the issue is one of fundamental truthfulness in accounting for the money that you received and spent to get elected.

Contrary to what the Regalados, Joe Centorino, the Miami Herald or anyone else who supports their version of the events would have you believe, the criminal penalties associated with the campaign violations the Regalados were accused of violating DID NOT have as a prerequisite a requirement that the money collected by the campaign had to be stolen or misused before they could be charged with criminal infractions.

Here is the what the Regalados did, and why it went beyond any simple issues of math errors or sloppy bookkeeping.

THE PHONY FINAL FINANCIAL REPORT

On February 3, 2010, Tomas Regalado and his daughter submitted an unsigned Final Campaign Report with the Miami City Clerk that said that the campaign had collected $808,789.00, and had spent $657,330.92.

On March 15, 2010, after being notified of these errors by the City Clerk - the total contributions and expenditures didn’t match and the report was unsigned - a 2nd, signed Final Campaign Report was filed that increased the expenditures to $848,234.99, and to balance the numbers they claimed that they had collected $848,234.99 in contributions.

When the investigation into Regalados campaign was opened in 2011, and the Ethic’s Commission’s Auditor got through conducting her audit, she came up with total contributions of $876,669.99 and total expenditures of $874.587.99.

The $2082 difference is money that the Regalado claimed that they had kept in the campaign account to cover any potential IRS problems they thought might have from another bookkeeping error.

The difference between the Regalados first Final Campaign Report with mismatched contribution and expenditure totals, and the 2nd Final Campaign Report with entirely different contribution and expenditure totals, followed by the final audited totals generated by the Ethic’s Commission’s auditor pointed to only one conclusion: The Regalados had made up the numbers in the second final report as a way to try and make the numbers add up, and the problem go away.

On page 32, of the FDLE’s Investigative Reports, here is the way that this conclusion of dummy numbers was reached in a meeting held between Joseph Centorino, Executive Director of the Miami-Dade Ethics Commission, Howard Rosen, Assistant State’s Attorney, FDLE Special Agent William Saladrigas and Christine Seymour, Chief Auditor for the Miami-Dade Ethics Commission on October 27, 2011.

“COE Director Centorino and ASA Rosen, after being briefed on Ms. Seymour's findings and reviewing the charted violations, agreed that charge number four was the most egregious, in that the City Clerk had alerted the Regalado campaign to the fact that there were problems with the report. Instead of vetting the issues raised by the Clerk and correcting the problem(s), the Regalado campaign seemingly plugged an arbitrary number into the contributions column designed to force a balance with the expenditure column and submitted the report in apparent willful disregard for the rule of law.”

The difference between seeking civil and criminal penalties in a case like this is when defendants exhibit an “apparant willful disregard for the rule of law.”

It’s one thing to have done sloppy math, but an entirely different thing to not have done any math at all.

HOW THE REGALADO’S GOT THEIR FREE PASS TO GO PAST JAIL

The FDLE Investigative Report goes on to describe what happened after the above discussion took place.

“At approximately 3 p.m., Mr. Jose Quinon arrived at the meeting and was briefed on Ms. Seymour's findings and the opinions of Director Centorino and ASA Rosen. Mr. Quinon was informed that, while it was possible to work out the majority of the allegations with civil penalties, item number four would likely result in a criminal charge unless the Regalados were able to present evidence that would be somehow dispositive of the facts as presented. In light of the imminent statute of limitations issue that would affect several of the violations under Chapter 106, Mr. Quinon agreed to a waiver of the statute of limitation on the applicable charges to allow him to meet with his clients and discuss the various options. All parties agreed that any filing decision would be deferred, contingent on the waiver, to allow Mr. Quinon to meet with his clients.”

Sounds serious, right!

Jose Quinon, the Regalados defense attorney is informed that his clients face possible criminal charges, but in order to be fair, this group will let the Regalados argue their case as to why they shouldn’t be criminally charged, as long as the Regalados agree to sign a wavier because there were only 8 days left before the statute of limitations expired.

At that point, given the time constraints, a deadline on agreeing to the waiver should have been imposed. But no such time limit was imposed by Howard Rosen or Joe Centorino.

Instead of demanding that waivers be signed and delivered within 48 or 72 hours, and that the Regalados come in and give their side of the story BEFORE the statute of limitations ran out, which is the way the State Attorney’s Office would have behaved if they had even an iota of interest in charging the Regalados with a criminal count for this violation, NO TIME LIMIT WAS SET, and Jose Quinon, being the smart lawyer that he is, took complete advantage of that failure to wait until after 5:00 PM, on November 2, 2011, to send Joe Centorino an email telling him that the originals of the signed waivers were in his office. Notice that Jose Quinon cites “non-criminal violations” in the subject line of his email. He did that because the statute of limitations for the Regalados being charged with criminal violations effectively expired at 5:00 PM that afternoon.

The Regalados didn’t get around to showing up for depositions until January 4, 2012.

THAT’S HOW how the Regalados got a free pass from their friend Katherine Fernandez-Rundle! By not demanding that the waivers be executed in a timely fashion, Howard Rosen and Joe Centorino purposely allowed the statute of limitations on any criminal charges against the Regalados to run out!

HOW KATHERINE FERNANDEZ-RUNDLE TREATS HER NON-FRIENDS

The prosecution of political corruption cases by the Miami-Dade State’s Attorney’s office has always been very selective. With Fernandez-Rundle, it’s always been about going after her enemies and the enemies of her friends, and always protecting her friends and the friends of her friends.

Here’s an example of how Katherine Fernandez-Rundle and Joe Centorino dealt with an enemy of one of Fernandez-Rundle’s friends back in the 90’s.

His name was Bruce Kaplan, and he was just another in the long line of sleaze bags that have been members of the Miami-Dade County Commission.

His crime wasn’t that he was a sleaze bag, because if that was a criteria for going after all the crooked politicians on Miami-Dade County Commission they’d have to hold their meetings in the visiting room of the State Penitentiary.

No, his crime was he was that he was feuding with then Golden Boy, County Mayor Alex Penales.

The year was 1998, and Kaplan had been investigated for lying on his annual financial disclosure forms.

Sound familiar? That’s the same charge that I filed an ethics complaint against Tomas Regalado for failing to account for his assets in his 2009 and 2010 annual financial disclosure forms.

Only instead of getting a slap on the wrist like Regalado got, Fernandez- Rundle and Centorino went after Kaplan to force him out of office. The case is detailed in a Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel story, that ended this way:

“Assistant State Attorney Joe Centorino said his office looked at a number of possible charges against Kaplan, including allegedly falsifying his mortgage application. But the State Attorney's office focused on Kaplan's phony financial disclosure forms because they were linked to his public office.

Kaplan agreed to leave office and never seek re-election because he did not want to face possibly harsher penalties, Centorino said.

``He didn't want to fight a felony charge,'' Centorino said. ``He didn't want to do any jail time.''

I love it when guys like Centorino get all butch and start talking about “jail time,” especially since long before I came along, Joe Centorino had already earned the label of “Let ‘em go Joe,” for his treatment of high profile politicians accused of public corruption.

For Kaplan it was all about resign or risk going to jail. For Regalado on the other hand, it was a $1000 fine and a requirement that he file an amended financial report

The month following the Regalado agreement to pay the $1000 fine, when the Herald did their editorial about the campaign charges, they referenced Centorino’s continued sensitivities for Regalados well-being by writing, “According to Joe Centorino, executive director of the ethics commission, the Regalados faulty bookkeeping was tied to personal issues.”

Poor folks by the thousands go to prison from Miami-Dade County every year, and you never hear anyone from the Miami Herald or the State Attorney’s Office commiserate over any of their “personal issues.”

It’s only politicians and the rich and powerful in Miami that get the benefit of solicitous concern for their “personal issues,” before they are slapped gently on the wrist and let go.

Yes, it’s true that Centorino was the one quoted in the FDLE Report as describing the Regalados actions as an “apparent willful disregard for the rule of law,” but given what transpired, that’s like saying, “Looks like a crime to me, somebody needs to do something about it,” and then walking away.

As the Executive Director of the Miami-Dade Ethics Commission, Centorino had it in his power to require that the Regalados sign the waivers within 48-72 hours.

He didn’t, because when push came to shove, he did what he had always done as the Head of the State Attorney’s Public Corruption Unit: He became Katherine Fernandez-Rundle’s butt boy.

AFTER ALL THAT’S TRANSPIRED, THE Regalados FILED ANOTHER PHONY FINAL FINANCIAL REPORT

From the very beginning, when the Regalados case was transferred to the Ethic’s Commission, the fix was in. You would think therefore, that the Regalados might have shown some appreciation and repay the favor of skating out of harms way by at least complying with the measly requirement of submitting one last Final Campaign Report that made sense.

After getting a free pass from criminal prosecution, the Regalados were required to do two things. Pay a total of $10,000 in fines and file one last Final Financial Report.

You guessed it, on April 4, 2012, they filed their 3rd Final Financial Report and it’s as fucked up and bogus as the first two reports they filed.

You can’t make this shit up.

In the report they submitted they included another $37,131,66 in contributions and new expenditures of $2,797.95 - that finally removed all of the money from the bank account, including the $2092 that had been kept to deal with the possible IRS problem.

This new report now showed a total of $853,194.99 in Contributions and $851,032.95 in Expenditures.

Ignoring the $2000 + difference between the contributions and expenditures which has to do with the IRS money, there’s still, based on the Ethic’s Commission’s Audit of the campaign accounts, a total of $23,475.00 missing in Contributions and Expenditures between the Regalados latest $853,194.99 number, and the Auditor’s total of $876.669.99.

He’s the Mayor of Miami, and she’s a lawyer and a member of the Miami-Dade School Board. Together they are not as smart as a 5th grader flunking math, and they are a team that have demonstrated that they’re not to be trusted to tell the truth.

But none of that matters because they’re friends of Kathy, and the Miami Herald thinks that they deserved a break. In the end, the thing to remember is that in the world of real politics, stupid politicians who lie and cheat will always be beholden to their protectors.

It’s Miami, Bitches!

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

#1. To: A K A Stone, Tooconservative, misterwhite, Deckard, hondo68, All (#0) (Edited)

Source: Cresprogram Report.

I have never heard about Cresprogram Report….so I did some checking. I looked no further than this …

From: www.facebook.com:

Biography
The Crespo-Gram Report is an webzine dedicated to divulging the hidden agendas orchestrated by Miami's rogue officials. We are committed to providing the community with vital information that will expose the corruption that has plagued our city. We also believe that sites like ours are part of the new media that is helping to expand the concept of a small "d" form of democracy.
Al Crespo

I find it’s definitely just another variant of a sleezy agenda driven webzine like the The Free Thought Project and I will be happy to believe what is said about Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle’s office given proof….but I am damned well not going to believe it from reading something in the Cresprogram Report.

Just scroll down their facebook.com page and see what a personal vendetta they are undertaking …

I read a lot of innuendos and personal opinions on their FB page, but I don’t see where anyone was ever tried and convicted because of an “expose” they did. Maybe I missed it, and there was one….I would be happy to be so informed if that happened.

Sorry, but no offense to you personally, when I say that I find the Cresprogram Report just a lot of bullshit.

Exactly what is the bullshit?

In his well-known essay On Bullshit, Harry Frankfurt defines bullshit as speech that is designed to impress but lacks a direct concern for the truth. Under such a definition, a large portion of what we read online today is likely to be bullshit.

Some types of bullshit are political in nature, such as the misleading claim that only 16 mass shootings took place under President Bush’s tenure, compared to a whopping 162 under President Obama. Such claims are valued for their persuasiveness in making a point, rather than for their connection to reality. Other bullshit, such as clickbait, is motivated by the commercial mandates of the digital age, in which companies endlessly chase more page views, likes, followers, subscribers and customers.

Still more bullshit springs from vanity and hunger for attention. Reddit rewards users with “karma” for popular comment and link contributions, a system that can compel people to share bullshit or create their own. Twitter, with a 140-character limit, seems exceptionally conducive to the spread of bullshit, as the brevity of the medium demands vagueness disguised as pith.

Considering that the internet has greatly increased our access to unreliable information, and that bullshit still passes through more traditional channels such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio, and face-to-face conversations, it seems reasonable to suggest that people today are inundated with more bullshit now than ever before. The internet has ushered in the Age of Bullshit.

Yet despite the prevalence of bullshit, it has only sparingly been discussed from an academic perspective. Frankfurt’s famous essay effectively explored the essence of the bullshitter. But it seems no research to date has explored the characteristics of the bullshittee. That is, what type of people are most likely to believe in bullshit? Given the ubiquity of bullshit online, this seems like an especially important issue to address sooner rather than later.

To begin studying the bullshittee from a psychological perspective, some of my colleagues and I, led by Gordon Pennycook, undertook a systematic empirical analysis of the reception and detection of a particular type of bullshit: the pseudo-profound. Pseudo-profound bullshit refers to statements that are meant to imply deep meaning but are actually vacuous. With opaque language, one can imply much while saying little.

To assess the reception of such bullshit, we presented approximately 800 participants across four studies with statements ranging from the mundane to the meaningful. We included some bullshit too. To produce the bullshit, we relied on websites that arrange buzzwords into arbitrary but syntactically valid sentences. For example, some buzzwords were drawn from sources such as New Age icon Deepak Chopra’s Twitter feed, and arranged into pronouncements like “Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty.” We asked participants to tell us how profound they found these statements, and correlated these ratings with other psychological variables.

A clear pattern emerged in the types of people who were more likely to find profundity in the meaningless. People who were more religious, more likely to believe in the paranormal, and more accepting of alternative medicine were more receptive to the bullshit. People who were less analytic and intelligent were also more likely to find the bullshit statements to be profound than their more reflective and intelligent counterparts. Our research also suggests that people who are generally biased toward finding things profound are more receptive to bullshit.

The correlation between lower levels of analytic thinking and receptivity to bullshit is particularly important when it comes to helping us understand why people can find meaning in meaningless statements online. Intuitive thinkers— those who are more likely to rely on their initial impressions when reasoning— rated meaningless statements as more profound. Reflective thinkers, who are more likely to reconsider their initial impressions after giving a subject analytic thought, saw through the bullshit.

In other words, the participants in our study didn’t seem to be thinking deeply about seemingly vacuous statements and constructing meaning from them. Instead, they were uncritically accepting the (rather blatant) bullshit as meaningful based on how it felt when they first encountered it. Therefore one’s tendency to believe bullshit might well be considered a mental shortcut. When intuitive thinkers are presented with seemingly impressive words, they may assume deep meaning without engaging in analytic thinking to reflect on whether there is something more to it.

The very nature of the internet may encourage a shallow kind of information processing that facilitates belief in bullshit. Nicholas Carr, for example, has argued that the internet is transforming us into skimmers. Rather than dive into the world of words, we prefer to superficially skip along the surface, darting between open tabs and blinking messenger windows.

Empirical research supports the idea that using the internet shapes the way we think. Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University, and co-authors have found that people use the internet as an external memory storage system, making them less likely to remember the information they look up. And researchers at Yale University recently demonstrated that searching online for information leads us to over-estimate how much we actually know and understand. Our tendency to offload cognitive functions to our computers forecasts a future in which we think less about what we encounter online, which could have consequences for our receptivity to bullshit.

Interestingly, in other research exploring the relationship between people’s thinking styles and the way they use technology, we have shown that more intuitive thinkers are relatively more likely to rely on search engines for information. Reflective thinkers seem less prone to offload their thinking to devices. Thus, intuitive thinkers may not only be more prone to accepting bullshit, they also might be more likely to find it.

But while less analytic types are more prone to buy into bullshit, all of us frequently fail to engage in reflective thinking. Decades of psychological research clearly shows that people tend to be cognitive misers, only thinking hard about things when they must. Thus, we are all likely to fall prey to bullshit at some point.

Sometimes believing bullshit might be relatively inconsequential. Being overly impressed with an exaggerated story of how a Facebook friend shared a meal with Johnny Depp on a big night out is unlikely to ruin anyone’s life.

However, our susceptibility to some kinds of bullshit may be more costly.

For example, presidential candidates in the upcoming US election are slinging bullshit at an alarming rate (perhaps some more than others). Their bullshit can easily spread online, where legions of supporters take to Twitter and Facebook to talk politics despite the fact that many of them are likely ill-informed.

Donald Trump, for instance, has repeatedly claimed that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the tragedy of 9/11. Many of his supporters took to social media to back his view, despite abundant evidence that this was bullshit. Trump displays callous disregard for the truth in order to impress certain demographics of voters. The spread of this kind of bullshit serves to further ostracize a marginalized group. It is but one manifestation of the potentially severe consequences of bullshit in politics.

Also worrisome is the prospect of the spread of bullshit related to health and medicine. For example, research has shown that the internet has played a key role in the rise of the anti-vaccine movement. Anti-scientific sites that argue vaccines are ineffective and dangerous are common and influential. Researchers have found that convincing anti-vaxxers that this information is bullshit is extremely difficult. But people who refuse to vaccinate their children risk dire consequences for themselves and the rest of us.

Research also suggests that some bullshit information regarding alternative treatments found online can pose significant harm to cancer patients. Many have experienced complications or died because they rely on alternative health treatments of the sort readily found online. (High-profile examples of cancer patients who avoided mainstream medicine for alternative treatments include Penelope Dingle and Steve Jobs.) Even relying on such treatments as complements to traditional medicine is risky, since these approaches can interact with more effective treatments in dangerous ways.

It’s not only people on the fringes who may be tempted to accept advice from less than reputable sources online. Deepak Chopra has amassed millions of Twitter followers, despite a multitude of scientists and skeptics calling his views on even the most basic aspects of biology and physics unscientific and inaccurate. These views include the denying of evolution and misrepresenting quantum theory. (See here, here, here and here for examples of scientists taking issue with Chopra’s claims.)

In our research, we discovered that people who found Chopra’s tweets to be profound also tended to think that bullshit (here defined as random buzzwords arranged into syntactically valid sentences) was profound. When Chopra learned of our research and this unflattering result on Twitter, rather than counter with evidence that his arguments are based in truth, Chopra thanked us, as it is “getting [him] more speaking engagements and new book offers.” This response exemplifies the desire to persuade and profit, rather than to be precise, which characterizes the Age of Bullshit.

The task ahead is to help people understand how to separate the signal from the noise online. After all, although the internet has exposed us to more bullshit than ever before, it has also given us more access to accurate information. The public has the potential to participate in the political process at an unprecedented scale, and to make use of the incredible access to information in all areas of life. We have at our fingertips the sum collective knowledge of the world’s many experts, and the opportunity to freely share insights from these experts instantly and freely.

Thankfully, the most consequential types of bullshit seem to be the easiest to refute. Though it may be difficult to determine whether your Facebook friends are as socially in demand as they suggest, finding the answers to issues of real consequence has never been easier. Rather than rely on the word of a person we know or simply decide the truth for ourselves, we can draw information from a variety of sources online to best cut through the bullshit.

Based on the preliminary research we have conducted so far, two general remedies for being overly receptive to bullshit are to receive more education—especially about what constitutes a good argument and evidence—and to more frequently engage in reflective critical thinking.

Because people naturally wish to limit analytic thought, which is costly in both time and effort, these remedies are likely insufficient in the battle against bullshit unless they can be made palatable. An increasingly important challenge for those who have access to truth, whether it be expertise in politics, science, or other subjects, is to find ways to convey the truth in impressive ways that both inform and entertain.

Accurate but overly technical or otherwise inaccessible copy is unlikely to compete with catchy clickbait and cyber snake-oil salesman, no matter how much truth may be found therein. Translating complex ideas into digestible content will play an important role in encouraging people to read and share reliable information.

There are positive trends in this direction, whereby the same platforms that often spread bullshit are being used to disseminate the truth. Reddit’s askscience subreddit, for example, affords people an opportunity to ask experts about issues of interest or concern. Many popular scientists and academics are tackling bullshit via Twitter. The internet is a double-edged informational sword.

We all bear responsibility in the war against bullshit. We should discourage bullshitters by resisting the temptation to cave to the clickbait and contribute to page views. We should hesitate to spread articles that provoke immediately strong emotional responses but lack reasoned arguments. Bystanders with knowledge of a given area must continue to call bullshit on charlatans in a way that encourages reflective critical thinking. And simple awareness that intuitive assessments can lead to us to fall prey to bullshit may help us to check our instinctual reactions to what we read online, encouraging us to think again–and more deeply.

So rather than lament that we live in the Age of Bullshit, we should strive to make best use of the internet, with the hope of eventually finding our way into a more sensible age. It is crucial that our positions regarding social, political and scientific issues be rooted in evidence, of which more is available now than ever before, rather than the emotional impressions that bullshit seeks to evoke. And we should all strive to avoid, wherever possible, spreading our own bullshit.

… by Nathaniel Barr.

Gatlin  posted on  2017-03-19   17:48:30 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Gatlin (#1)

The Crespo-Gram Report is an webzine dedicated to divulging the hidden agendas orchestrated by Miami's rogue officials.

Heaven forbid someone make an effort to root out corruption and criminal activity by government entities.

This long-winded screed once again displays your pathetic need to defend criminal politicians and your refusal to to consider any source that does not conform to your warped sense of truth.

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.

Deckard  posted on  2017-03-19   17:59:16 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: Deckard (#2)

TRUTH is TRUTH ...

Gatlin  posted on  2017-03-19   18:06:41 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: Gatlin, yukon canaries (#1)

lshit, Harry Frankfurt

by Nathaniel Barr - Quartz Africa Weekly Brief

yukon loves the hairy wieners packed in mud too, what a coincidence!


The D&R terrorists hate us because we're free, to vote second party

"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul

Hondo68  posted on  2017-03-19   18:24:01 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: hondo68 (#4)

well, the internet's biggest poster of lies just arrived ...

Have you been banned AGAIN lately for still postint LIES?

Gatlin  posted on  2017-03-19   18:27:25 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: Gatlin (#5)

BREAKING: Canary troll quits lying


The D&R terrorists hate us because we're free, to vote second party

"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul

Hondo68  posted on  2017-03-19   18:39:09 ET  (1 image) Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Mail]  [Sign-in]  [Setup]  [Help]  [Register] 

Please report web page problems, questions and comments to webmaster@libertysflame.com