The New York Sun's Anna Phillips has covered the shut down of this and other anti-Obama blogs last week. Google has posted a general apology here. The Google text follows the Sun article.
Google insists that the problem is purely due to their computer algorithm. I do not know enough to argue, but it seems too coincidental that the Hillary Clinton campaign was having a similar problem several months ago when Hillary was running against Obama, and now I and other Republican anti-Obama bloggers have had the very same problem.
Just by way of self-defense, although it may look like I spend more time on the political diatribe-type blogs, the academic-type blogs such as my write-up of Howe's book on the Whigs take up 4/5ths of my blogging time. Thus my claim to Ms. Phillips about the blog being two thirds academic stuff is probably an understatement, although it may appear to be an overstatement.
Anna Phillips's Sun Article:
>Anti-Obama Bloggers Say They Were Silenced
Web loggers who are campaigning against Senator Obama's presidential run are accusing Google and Obama supporters of silencing them after their Web logs were marked as spam and their accounts temporarily frozen.
On Thursday, hours after publishing a post about an online petition demanding that Mr. Obama publicly produce his birth certificate, an associate professor of business administration at Brooklyn College, Mitchell Langbert, found that he could no longer access his Web log.
Google's Blogger hosting service had suspended "Mitchell Langbert's Blog," which Mr. Langbert describes as "two-thirds academic stuff I'm working on and one-third politics," until it could verify the Web log was not a "spam blog," or a site designed solely to increase the page views of associated Web sites.
A day later Google lifted the block on the account, but the incident and earlier Web log freezes in late June have led Mr. Langbert and other anti-Obama bloggers to accuse the Illinois senator's supporters of intentionally identifying their blog addresses to Google as spam blogs. They also say the company has reflexively suspended the sites.
"These tech-savvy smart alecks have figured out that if you report a blog you don't like, you can do some damage to a person," Mr. Langbert said.
A spokesman for Google, Adam Kovacevich, said in a statement that an overzealous antispam filter was responsible for the blocks.
"We believe this was caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the 'Just Say No Deal' network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam," he said. "We have restored posting rights to the affected blogs, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression."
Several of the blogs that were blocked, including hillaryorbust.com and comealongway.blogspot.com, are part of the "Just Say No Deal" network of anti-Obama blogs. But Mr. Langbert's blog is not, leading him to conclude that Obama supporters had targeted him.
On her right-leaning blog "Atlas Shrugs," Pamela Geller keeps a list of blogs that Google has temporarily blocked. "The blockings do come in waves," she said. "The last wave was this past week, and now it got very quiet."
Some writers have had their blogs unblocked, while others have moved them to WordPress, a rival blog host.
"I don't think" Google has "malicious intentions at all, it's just that spammers can literally overrun a service if you're not careful, so their defenses have become overzealous," a spokesman for WordPress, Matthew Mullenweg, said in an e-mail.
"We always have human review before turning off an active blog," he said. "People invest so much time into their blogs, to treat it with anything less than the utmost respect is criminal."
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Two Google Apologies (h/t Phil Orenstein):
Google Apology
Spam Fridays
"While we wish that every post on this blog could be about cool features or other Blogger news, sometimes we have to step in and admit a mistake.
"We've noticed that a number of users have had their blogs mistakenly marked as spam, and wanted to sound off real quick to let you know that, despite it being Friday afternoon, we are working hard to sort this out. So to those folks who have received an email saying that your blog has been classified as spam and can't post right now, we offer our sincere apologies for the trouble.
"We hope to have this resolved shortly, and appreciate your patience as we work through the kinks."
AND
You Are Not Spam
You knew that already, and now we do too. We have now restored all accounts that were mistakenly marked as spam yesterday. (See: Spam Fridays)
We want to offer our sincerest apologies to affected bloggers and their readers. We’ve tracked down the problem to a bug in our data processing code that locked blogs even when our algorithms concluded they were not spam. We are adding additional monitoring and process checks to ensure that bugs of this magnitude are caught before they can affect your data.
At Blogger, we strongly believe that you own and should control your posts and other data. We understand that you trust us to store and serve your blog, and incidents like this one are a betrayal of that trust. In the spirit of ensuring that you always have access to your data, we have been working on importing and exporting tools to make it easier to back up your posts. If you'd like a sneak peek at the Import / Export tool, you can try it out on Blogger in Draft.
Our restoration today was of all blogs that were mistakenly marked as spam due to Friday's bug. Because spam fighting inherently runs the risk of false positives, your blog may have been mis-classified as spam for other reasons. If you are still unable to post to your blog today you can request a review by clicking Request Unlock Review on your Dashboard.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Monday, August 4, 2008
Letter to Chuck Schumer Re Death Tax
PO Box 130
West Shokan, New York 12494
August 4, 2008
The Honorable Charles E. Schumer
313 Hart Senate Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Schumer:
I oppose the inheritance or death tax and urge you to vote to repeal it. There are many New Yorkers, to include the Ochs Sulzbergers, the Rockefellers and the Goulds, who are wealthy but have never paid any inheritance tax because they put their money in trusts. Congress has never seen fit to tax trusts, leaving the big fish to eat the remains of small.
There is one estate tax I do favor: an estate tax on trusts that hold family-owned newspapers. Your patrons at the New York Times ought to practice what they preach, and I am sure that you will see to it that they never will.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
West Shokan, New York 12494
August 4, 2008
The Honorable Charles E. Schumer
313 Hart Senate Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Schumer:
I oppose the inheritance or death tax and urge you to vote to repeal it. There are many New Yorkers, to include the Ochs Sulzbergers, the Rockefellers and the Goulds, who are wealthy but have never paid any inheritance tax because they put their money in trusts. Congress has never seen fit to tax trusts, leaving the big fish to eat the remains of small.
There is one estate tax I do favor: an estate tax on trusts that hold family-owned newspapers. Your patrons at the New York Times ought to practice what they preach, and I am sure that you will see to it that they never will.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
Ochs Sulzbergers and the Estate Tax
The New York Times has been in the same family's hands since 1896. Adolph Ochs purchased the New York Times and, since then, the Ochs Sulzbergers have retained control of the family business through inheritance via a family trust. The Ochs Sulzbergers are the wealthiest of the wealthy, among the top one thousandth of one per cent in terms of assets, yet the inheritance or death tax has not affected them, nor do they seem to think it should. Recently, shareholders of the Times complained, alleging mismanagement on the part of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Adolph Ochs's great grandson, but the Ochs Sulzberger family asserted privilege of ownership. I wonder if Arthur Ochs Sulzberger would lead the most powerful newspaper in the country if he did not inherit this position via a family trust.
Despite the fact that the Ochs Sulzbergers have inherited their assets, live off an inheritance, and the current generation has done little of importance other than be born to the right great-grandfather, the Ochs Sulzbergers preach an inheritance or death tax for others, but not for themselves.
On June 21, 2005 in a baldly hypocritical editorial, the Times wrote:
"This is not about saving mom-and-pop shops or the family farm, as President Bush and his allies would have you believe. Repealing the estate tax would cut taxes for the top 2 percent of Americans at an estimated cost of $745 billion during the first 10 years of repeal. That is more than the United States is projected to budget for homeland security. Many supporters of a repeal say the cost would be $290 billion over the next 10 years. But that lower estimate includes five years in which the estate tax is still on the books. Properly done, estate tax reform would be welcome."
In other words, if you're a family of sharpies like the Ochs Sulzbergers then you get to inherit and drive a billion dollar family fortune you did not earn into the ground, but if you're a small businessman who doesn't think in terms of legal niceties and trusts, inheritance is a selfish and reactionary proposition, a matter of budget balancing for the elite to ponder. After all, the inheritance tax is targeted at grimy small businessmen, not virtuous aritocrats like the Ochs Sulzbergers who utilize trusts to avoid the taxes that they wish to impose on others.
Although I oppose the inheritance tax, I do favor a special inheritance tax for families who own newspapers in trusts. Let the Ochs Sulzbergers practice what they preach, frauds that they and the New York Times be.
Despite the fact that the Ochs Sulzbergers have inherited their assets, live off an inheritance, and the current generation has done little of importance other than be born to the right great-grandfather, the Ochs Sulzbergers preach an inheritance or death tax for others, but not for themselves.
On June 21, 2005 in a baldly hypocritical editorial, the Times wrote:
"This is not about saving mom-and-pop shops or the family farm, as President Bush and his allies would have you believe. Repealing the estate tax would cut taxes for the top 2 percent of Americans at an estimated cost of $745 billion during the first 10 years of repeal. That is more than the United States is projected to budget for homeland security. Many supporters of a repeal say the cost would be $290 billion over the next 10 years. But that lower estimate includes five years in which the estate tax is still on the books. Properly done, estate tax reform would be welcome."
In other words, if you're a family of sharpies like the Ochs Sulzbergers then you get to inherit and drive a billion dollar family fortune you did not earn into the ground, but if you're a small businessman who doesn't think in terms of legal niceties and trusts, inheritance is a selfish and reactionary proposition, a matter of budget balancing for the elite to ponder. After all, the inheritance tax is targeted at grimy small businessmen, not virtuous aritocrats like the Ochs Sulzbergers who utilize trusts to avoid the taxes that they wish to impose on others.
Although I oppose the inheritance tax, I do favor a special inheritance tax for families who own newspapers in trusts. Let the Ochs Sulzbergers practice what they preach, frauds that they and the New York Times be.
Letter to Governor Rod R. Blagojevich (D-IL) Re Obama Birth Certificate
PO Box 130
West Shokan, New York 12494
August 4, 2008
The Honorable Rod R. Blagojevich
Office of the Governor
207 State House
Springfield, IL 62706
Dear Governor Blagojevich:
This is an inquiry as to why Dan White’s Board of Elections has failed to investigate the eligibility of Senator Barack Obama to hold the office of Senator for the State of Illinois. Under the Constitution, a Senator must be a US citizen for nine years prior to becoming Senator. Proof of citizenship is an authentic birth certificate. But in recent weeks Mr. Obama’s supporters have posted a fraudulent birth certificate on a Web site, and Mr. Obama has failed to respond to my and others’ requests for a copy of his birth certificate. The issue of whether Mr. Obama was actually born in the State of Hawaii is heightened by his birth’s having been recorded in two unrelated hospitals, both in Honolulu, and by persistent questions about his mother’s whereabouts at the time of birth. Because of its culture of secrecy, the State of Hawaii has refused to make the presidential candidate’s birth information public.
Some observers have suggested that, like Hawaii, Illinois’s famously corrupt and secretive political culture ensures that Mr. White will fail to do his job and investigate the propriety of Mr. Obama’s holding the office of Senator. I urge you to oversee a thorough and open investigation of Mr. Obama’s place of birth.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
Cc: Dan White, Executive Director
Illinois Board of Elections
1020 S. Spring St.
Springfield, Illinois 62704
West Shokan, New York 12494
August 4, 2008
The Honorable Rod R. Blagojevich
Office of the Governor
207 State House
Springfield, IL 62706
Dear Governor Blagojevich:
This is an inquiry as to why Dan White’s Board of Elections has failed to investigate the eligibility of Senator Barack Obama to hold the office of Senator for the State of Illinois. Under the Constitution, a Senator must be a US citizen for nine years prior to becoming Senator. Proof of citizenship is an authentic birth certificate. But in recent weeks Mr. Obama’s supporters have posted a fraudulent birth certificate on a Web site, and Mr. Obama has failed to respond to my and others’ requests for a copy of his birth certificate. The issue of whether Mr. Obama was actually born in the State of Hawaii is heightened by his birth’s having been recorded in two unrelated hospitals, both in Honolulu, and by persistent questions about his mother’s whereabouts at the time of birth. Because of its culture of secrecy, the State of Hawaii has refused to make the presidential candidate’s birth information public.
Some observers have suggested that, like Hawaii, Illinois’s famously corrupt and secretive political culture ensures that Mr. White will fail to do his job and investigate the propriety of Mr. Obama’s holding the office of Senator. I urge you to oversee a thorough and open investigation of Mr. Obama’s place of birth.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
Cc: Dan White, Executive Director
Illinois Board of Elections
1020 S. Spring St.
Springfield, Illinois 62704
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