Video from Symantec on how to hack a voting machine

By Rubashov

We are constantly bombarded by the Media with assurances that our voting process is the best in the world. One can practically hear a chorus of “U.S.A… U.S.A…” as it is done. But if you do a little reading of court records and industry testimony, you find there is a great deal out there that is unsettling.

To demonstrate how vulnerable some of our digital election infrastructure really is, the cyber security experts at Symantec (which is part of the same organization that owns Norton and Broadcom cyber security brands) examined two voting machines. They were last used in State and Federal elections in 2012 and 2013.

In the video below, Symantec performed a cursory review of the vulnerabilities and found numerous deficiencies and ways in for hackers. Symantec claims that “elections are under assault across the globe” and states: “Well-resourced malicious cyber actors have tampered with our elections, whether it’s hacking voting machines or waging information warfare through social media.”

According to the state website, New Jersey uses the controversial Dominion Voting Systems:

Voting Systems Certified by the State of New Jersey

AVANTE International Technology, Inc.
70 Washington Road Princeton Junction, NJ 08550
(609) 799-8896

Dominion Voting Systems
717 17th St., Ste 310 Denver, CO 80202
(416)762-1775; Ext 271

Elections Systems & Software
11208 John Galt Blvd Omaha, NE 68137
(800) 247-8683

Hart InterCivic
15500 Wells Port Drive Austin, TX 78728
(512) 252-6400
Last Updated: 04/28/20

https://www.state.nj.us/state/elections/county-voting-equipment-vvpat.shtml

The Legislature has a duty to do its job and not continue to allow one-man rule by the Governor. It needs to closely examine the election process and its machinery to ensure the system’s integrity.

To date, the Democrat majority has been too lazy to do the job it was elected to do (they still take full perks and pay, however). The most recent example was its party-line vote to table A-4147, legislation that would require the Governor to work with the elected Legislature by limiting his executive power to 14-day increments.

New Jersey voters now face the bizarre reality that the Governors of other states have input into the decision process that affects the economic and physical landscape of their state. And that these elected officials from other states have far more input than the men and women New Jersey voters elect to representative them in the Legislature.

It begs the question of just what the Legislature is for? Through the connivance of Governor Murphy and the Democrat Leadership, the Legislature is being turned into little more than a mid-level holding pen for Democrat patronage appointees waiting for the really big plums. Proving themselves by doing what they’re told.

This is a story that the Media should be reporting. But, as Professor Noam Chomsky wrote in Manufacturing Consent, that might not be something they do anymore…

Summary of Chomsky's analyses on how the corporate media functions. Excerpt from the documentary "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" (1992). ...

“Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.”

Noam Chomsky

N.B. We welcome a conversation on this and all topics raised on this website.  Jersey Conservative is entirely open to your ideas and opinions.  To submit a column for publication, please contact Marianna at Marianna@JerseyConservative.org.

The Media: Manufacturing Consent (Noam Chomsky)

By Rubashov

Noam Chomsky has written more than 100 books. He is a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, and social critic. He is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has written extensively on war, politics, and the role played by the mass media.

Professor Chomsky rose to national prominence as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He was part of what was then called “the New Left” and was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard Nixon's Enemies List (an early form of “canceling” and not unlike what is now being proposed by Congresswoman A.O.C. and others).

Professor Chomsky worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, in contrast with such establishment Democrats as Josh Gottheimer (who once worked for the public relations firm that lobbied for the genocidal totalitarians who murdered upwards of 200,000 Roman Catholics).

Chomsky opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq (which, like the Gulf of Tonkin incident that began the Vietnam War, was based on a lie… Weapons of Mass Destruction).

In 1988, Professor Chomsky wrote Manufacturing Consent in collaboration with economist Edward S. Herman. In it, Chomsky articulated the propaganda model of media criticism, which explains the media’s ownership, motivations, biases, and methods. Here is a short video from a documentary based on the book Manufacturing Consent…

In contrast with those on the Establishment (aka “corporate”) “Left” – which includes elements of the Democrat Party – Noam Chomsky is a fierce defender of Freedom of Speech.**.Chomsky’s warnings in Manufacturing Consent should be required reading in every school district in America– right alongside the Church Report (aka The United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) which was a 1975 study, chaired by Senator Frank Church, that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Both major political parties have a checkered history of aiding and abetting abuses by these and other agencies. For three years, the media largely bought into and promoted the Russiagate conspiracy theory – just as it had the Weapons of Mass Destruction conspiracy theory and the Gulf of Tonkin conspiracy theory that led directly to our longest (undeclared) wars. In the election just concluded, key figures in both the Democrat and Republican parties worked with these agencies in a manner that has proved the warnings of Frank Church to be prescient.

As we move forward through the minefields of executive orders, abrogation of the Bill of Rights, and emergency edicts attendant with the COVID pandemic – we should use Professor Chomsky as a guide in examining the role of the media in promoting fear and compliance instead of asking tough questions of corporate Establishment types like Governor Phil Murphy. And we must always bear in mind the concerns voiced by Senator Frank Church, in 1975, about the technology available then and its deadly potential for democracy.

“If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology. I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

United States Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho)
Meet the Press
August 17, 1975

The Left asks: What happened to the Democrats?

There is a new book out by Thomas Frank, a journalist who writes for Harpers magazine.  His book was recently reviewed by the magazine In These Times. 

In These Times was founded in 1976 by author and historian James Weinstein to "identify and clarify the struggles against corporate power now multiplying in American society."  Weinstein was joined by noted intellectuals Daniel Ellsberg, E.P. Thompson, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Julian Bond and Herbert Marcuse, all of whom were among the original sponsors of the magazine.

Thomas Frank's new book is titled:  Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?  The title In These Times chose for its column on the book is even more explicit:

HOW DEMOCRATS WENT FROM BEING THE ‘PARTY OF THE PEOPLE’ TO THE PARTY OF RICH ELITES

The column is in the form of an interview of Thomas Frank, conducted by Tobita Chow, chair of The People’s Lobby, an independent progressive political organization based in Chicago. Below are some excerpts from the column:

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WAS ONCE THE PARTY OF THE NEW DEAL and the ally of organized labor. But by the time of Bill Clinton's presidency, it had become the enemy of New Deal programs like welfare and Social Security and the champion of free trade deals. What explains this apparent reversal?

...According to Frank, popular explanations which blame corporate lobby groups and the growing power of money in politics are insufficient.

Frank instead points to a decision by Democratic Party elites in the 1970s to marginalize labor unions and transform from the party of the working class to the party of the professional class... The end result is that the party which created the New Deal and helped create the middle class has now become “the party of mass inequality.” 

***

The book is about how the Democratic Party turned its back on working people and now pursues policies that actually increase inequality. What are the policies or ideological commitments in the Democratic Party that make you think this?

The first piece of evidence is what’s happened since the financial crisis. This is the great story of our time. Inequality has actually gotten worse since then, which is a remarkable thing. This is under a Democratic president who we were assured (or warned) was the most liberal or radical president we would ever see.  Yet inequality has gotten worse, and the gains since the financial crisis, since the recovery began, have gone entirely to the top 10 percent of the income distribution.

This is not only because of those evil Republicans, but because Obama played it the way he wanted to. Even when he had a majority in both houses of Congress and could choose whoever he wanted to be in his administration, he consistently made policies that favored the top 10 percent over everybody else. He helped out Wall Street in an enormous way when they were entirely at his mercy.

He could have done anything he wanted with them, in the way that Franklin Roosevelt did in the ’30s. But he chose not to.

Why is that? This is supposed to be the Democratic Party, the party that’s interested in working people, average Americans. Why would they react to a financial crisis in this way? Once you start digging into this story, it goes very deep. You find that there was a transition in the Democratic Party in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s where they convinced themselves that they needed to abandon working people in order to serve a different constituency: a constituency essentially of white-collar professionals.

That’s the most important group in their coalition. That’s who they won over in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. That’s who they serve, and that’s where they draw from. The leaders of the Democratic Party are always from this particular stratum of society.

... Money in politics is a big part of the story, but social class goes deeper than that. The Democrats have basically made their commitment [to white-collar professionals] already before money and politics became such a big deal. It worked out well for them because of money in politics. So when they chose essentially the top 10 percent of the income distribution as their most important constituents, that is the story of money.

It wasn’t apparent at the time in the ’70s and ’80s when they made that choice. But over the years, it has become clear that that was a smart choice in terms of their ability to raise money. Organized labor, of course, is no slouch in terms of money. They have a lot of clout in dollar terms. However, they contribute and contribute to the Democrats and they almost never get their way—they don’t get, say, the Employee Free Choice Act, or Bill Clinton passes NAFTA. They do have a lot of money, but their money doesn’t count.

All of this happened because of the civil war within the Democratic Party. They fought with each other all the time in the ’70s and the ’80s. One side hadn’t completely captured the party until Bill Clinton came along in the ’90s. That was a moment of victory for them.

***

Do you think there’s a connection between the fact that the Democratic Party has turned against workers and the rise of Donald Trump?

Yes. Because if you look at the polling, Trump is winning the votes of a lot of people who used to be Democrats. These white, working-class people are his main base of support. As a group, these people were once Democrats all over the country. These are Franklin Roosevelt’s people.

These are the people that the Democrats essentially decided to turn their backs on back in the 1970s. They call them the legatees of the New Deal. They were done with these guys, and now look what’s happened—they’ve gone with Donald Trump. That’s frightening and horrifying.

But Trump talks about their issues in a way that they find compelling, especially the trade issue. When he talks about trade, they believe him.

... Millenials’ take on the world is fascinating. Just a few years ago, people thought of them as very

different. But now they’re coming out of college with enormous student debt, and they’re discovering that the job market is casualized and Uberized. The work that they do is completely casual. The idea of having a middle-class lifestyle in that situation is completely off the table for them.

Every time I think about these people, it burns me up. It makes me so angry what we’ve done to them as a society. It really gives the lie to Democratic Party platitudes about the world an education will open up for you. That path just doesn’t work anymore. Millenials can see that in their own lives very plainly.

 READ THE FULL COLUMN HERE:

HTTP://INTHESETIMES.COM/FEATURES/LISTEN-LIBERAL-THOMAS-FRANK-DEMOCRATIC-PARTY-ELITES-INEQUALITY.HTML

 OR BUY THE BOOK:

http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Liberal-Happened-Party-People/dp/1627795391