Intro
Welcome to The Cameron Journal Newsletter. Each week, Cameron Lee Cowan wraps up the headlines with commentary, helping you navigate today’s media narratives, how they are affecting our Culture, Lifestyle, and Society.
The World is Hard, This is Not
If you’re new here, my name is Cameron Lee Cowan M.A. MFA, and I’m the Creative Director here at The Cameron Journal. You can learn more about me on the about page. I do research and commentary on politics, culture, and the world around us. Each week I send out the latest news narratives, the latest videos from The Cameron Journal and commentary about the week’s events.
Remember, The World is Hard, This is Not.
Update from Cameron
Hello from one exhausted Cameron. The week started so well too! Monday was a knockout and then things went off the rails on Tuesday and it just snowballed. Here in New England, it is cloudy and cold today, everything covered in snow is more more ice than anything else. I hear warmer temperatures are on the way for us which will help melt the snowy ice which covers our land.
It was a relatively quiet week in the news so I had a chance to catch up on some other stories which was really fun. If you aren’t familiar with my other podcast, The Living Joke, you should check us out. We’ll be playing a new board game called “Woke Word Wars” here soon and the creator will be on for March 4th. There’s also a movie watch along out, so make sure to click on the video in this newsletter and checkout the whole playlist, we broadcast to youtube right on The Cameron Journal youtube channel! For more videos and to subscribe to the Substack just go here.
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The News Narratives of the Week
Don’t forget to join me on Monday for The Cameron Journal Newshour!
More Drama with Your Vote This Fall
There is a new Supreme Court case up for consideration. The Republican National Committee has filed a brief on behalf of a case coming from Mississippi that would restriction mail-in voting nationwide, despite state law. The contention is that mail-in ballots, if received after election but post marked before, should not be counted. State law often allows properly postmarked ballots to be counted even if election day has passed. The story comes from Democracy Docket (follow them, subscribe!) and quotes the brief, “From its opening pages, the RNC frames the routine counting of legally cast mail ballots – which has been practiced for decades — as a dangerous modern experiment that undermines public trust. Most Americans remember a time when results came quickly after election day,’ the committee wrote. ‘Each election cycle dims that memory as States experiment with novel ballot-handling rules. One of those experiments is the prolonged receipt of mail ballots — three, five, fourteen, or even more days after election day….These post-election receipt deadlines invite ‘the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election,’ It’s hard to blame Americans for those suspicions when some States produce quick results, while others take days to even know how many ballots need to be counted. When news anchors remind voters, ‘It’s not over yet,’ they’re right under any ordinary understanding. As long as ballots are still coming in, the election isn’t over.”
Mike Johnson also echoed the comments of people who are questioning the election process and how people can be ahead on election night and still end up losing because mail-ballots are still coming in. As Democracy Docket states, “In other words, the RNC argues that states like Mississippi have wrongly centered voters in elections rather than the state-run process itself.”
In the recent past, before they were made unconstitutional in 1973, poll taxes (fees to vote) and literacy tests were common in many states as a way to restrict who voted. In the South, they were used to disenfranchise African-Americans and others who were too poor to pay, keep their voting record up to date, or were not up to answering opaque questions prepared by an election board. No accommodation was given for people who did not speak or read english either. In the past 50 years, we have worked to rectify this and make voting easier and more available. Trying to force everyone into an uncomfortable process that focuses on process and not voters is a way of disenfranchising certain people and groups, only this time, it isn’t a monolith like the race-based rules of the past.
The reality is that Republicans tend to win more when the electorate is smaller and more restricted. There have been several states who have changed the voting laws and rules since the pandemic and the incredibly open election of 2020. This is yet another way to use the process to keep the electorate smaller and make sure fewer people have their chance to vote. I’ll keep you posted on this decision.
AI is Everywhere but in the Productivity Numbers
In the 1990s as the personal computer was taking over both the office and the home, everyone anticipated a great leap forward (see what I did there?) in productivity after the introduction of the computer. The exact quote by Robert Solov is, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Point of fact, he said that in 1987 when personal computers were still in early development for business uses. Productivity never did really increase as a result of computers. All the people that used to work in typing pools or doing manual accounting or manual drafting eventually learned the technology or slotted into other jobs and productivity continued to increase at a modest 2% or so until 2008. The paradox seemed resolve in the 1990s when productivity accelerated but when you look at the numbers over time it’s concentrated in a few sectors without a big affect in others. It took time for technology like the personal computer to fully integrate within the economy.
In this new article from Futurism, the same conversation is popping up again about AI. An increase in productivity has yet to materialize and there’s still more to come as the technology reaches fuller adoption. However, AI isn’t replacing humans fast enough and often is being used to excuse other cost-cutting and outsourcing. So what’s the real advantage of AI anyway? If all it means is slow adoption, doesn’t do much and people are getting replaced and outsourced, what is all the hype about anyway? That’s the thing, these things aren’t linear. You can’t imagine a world today without the personal computer or the smartphone, these things took years to integrate into our lives and change how we live, work and more. As the analyst in the article points out, technology isn’t linear in the way we think of it.
I recently had a conversation with Mike Rochelle, he is new to the SOOP ecosystem and he is a current client of mine. He really put my mind at ease when he talked about all the technology transformations that he has managed as an IT executive since his career started in the early 1990s. He walked me through the 11 different transitions that he helped manage and later lead at major organizations. He looks at AI the same way, it is another evolution in how we use technology and it will take time to adopt and adapt and there may be evolutions within that process as well. He wasn’t nervous about AI at all, he was cool as a cucumber. He’s taking it in his stride.
And I suppose the lesson here in all of this and for all of us, is that we don’t yet know how AI will affect our lives. It is a structural change and there will be structural job losses, just like before, but it is another evolution in technology and one that we just might survive.
ICE, Immigration and Pam Bondi
This week, several new developments occurred regarding the situation around immigration and mass deportations. We say the first pictures of what can only be described as concentration camps with rumors of more being opened in disused factories and warehouses. Pam Bondi had a terrible week in front of Congress answering questions about her role in the Epstein files and the prosecution of people by ICE. I will say that for all her faults, Pam Bondi is no slouch when it comes to striking back at Democrats with an agenda and even a few Republicans. However, it looks like everyone, even people in her own party are starting to ask questions about her role in Epstein and what exactly is going in Minneapolis.
Meanwhile, Democrats in the Senate are pushing back on more funding for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. In light of recent events, it is no shock that Democrats are taking this stand on funding. It is what the party base wants, and anyone who is unhappy with the recent events (even Joe Rogan is complaining). I think it is the right thing to do both morally and politically. I’m not sure that causing a partial government shutdown is a good idea but it is a cost that goes along with using this particular leverage of power.
Back to our girl Pam, I think it must be very tough to be Pam Bondi right now with rumors circling around Trump’s influence over the files and their release, the delicate balancing act between trying to hold off congress on one side and the White House on the other while also managing the prosecutions of people around ICE protests and more. She’s in Congress more than most Congress people. As Trump people go, turn-over is very low this time around, Trump learned from the last time and hired loyalists and people who would play ball. But I wonder how long Pam Bondi is going to last.
At some point the delicate tight rope she is walking is going to wobble and I don’t know if she will survive. What’s worse is that unlike some before her, it won’t be an ethical or legal line, it’ll be convenient for her boss to throw her under the boss to get heat off of him. That’s how working for Trump goes, you’re great until you’re not convenient anymore.
Articles of Interest
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