Sessions will focus on decisions to consider, tools to help with decisions

MANHATTAN – With every new farm bill comes new decisions for farmers to make that can have lasting implications for their businesses. The most recent legislation is no exception. To help agricultural producers determine the best course of action, Kansas State University’s Department of Agricultural Economics will host 10 Farm Bill meetings around the state, starting in late August.

The meetings will cover commodity programs, including the economics of the Agriculture Risk Coverage/Price Loss Coverage (ARC/PLC) programs, Supplemental Coverage Option and a new decision tool available for producers.

K-State Research and Extension agricultural economists, extension agents, USDA Farm Service Agency and Natural Resources Conservation Service representatives will provide a big picture perspective, as well as a more local view for each area.

Dates and locations include:

• Mon., Aug. 26 – Hill City – 1-4:30 p.m. – Graham County Fairgrounds.
• Tues., Aug. 27 – Goodland – 8:30 a.m.-noon MDT – Elks Lodge
• Tues., Aug. 27 – Leoti – 2:30-6 p.m. – Wichita County Fairgrounds
• Wed., Aug. 28 – Plains – 10:00 a.m.-3 p.m. – Plains Community Bldg.
• Thurs., Aug. 29 – Great Bend – 8:30 a.m.–noon – Great Bend Events Center
• Fri., Aug. 30 – Wichita – 8:30 a.m.–noon – Sedgwick County Extension Office
• Tues., Sept. 3 – Parsons – 1–4:30 p.m. – SE Area Research and Extension Center
• Wed., Sept. 4 – Ottawa – 8:30 a.m.–noon – Franklin County Fairgrounds
• Thurs., Sept. 5 – Seneca – 1–4:30 p.m. – Nemaha County Community Center
• Tues., Sept. 10 – Concordia – 1–4:30 p.m. – Cloud County Fairgrounds

More information and registration is available online or by contacting Rich Llewelyn at 785-532-1594 or [email protected] .

Alicia Boor is an Agriculture and Natural Resources agent in the Cottonwood District (which includes Barton and Ellis counties) for K-State Research and Extension. You can contact her by e-mail at [email protected] or calling 620-793-1910

In the past few years, social media companies have faced intense criticism for not taking a more active role in stopping the spread of hate speech and misinformation on their platforms. Meanwhile, the White House thinks those same companies are going too far in their efforts to regulate content and is currently drafting an executive order called, “Protecting Americans from Online Censorship,” which would give the Federal Communications Commission oversight over these decisions.

The order seems to be an outgrowth of the social media summit that President Trump held last month, where his 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale said, “At a time when social media platforms are banning conservative voices and supporters of the president, it’s important for President Trump to emphasize that he appreciates their support and wants to protect their First Amendment rights.”

The executive order hasn’t been released yet. If and when it is I’m sure there will be plenty of ink spilled over whether it’s constitutional and whether Twitter and Facebook are truly biased against conservatives. But let’s put that aside for a moment. At a time when people across the political spectrum are upset with tech companies, albeit for different reasons, I’d like to posit that the real problem with social media isn’t that it allows hate to spread or that it discriminates against users based on their points of view. It’s that we only become aware that those things are happening when they involve famous or powerful people.

The First Amendment prevents the government from censoring our speech, but it doesn’t apply to private companies. Social media companies actually have their own First Amendment rights and are free to create their own policies that ban whatever kinds of content they want. Most platforms do have rules or community guidelines that ban content that threatens or harasses other users. And in the wake of recent controversies, many platforms have gone further than that. Facebook currently bans hate speech, which it defines as a direct attack on someone because of characteristics like race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disease. YouTube bans content that promotes violence or incites hatred against individuals or groups because of these characteristics. Twitter threads the needle a bit, not banning hate speech but banning “hateful conduct,” meaning hateful messages that actually target specific people.

All of these content policies censor speech that would be protected by the First Amendment, but again, these platforms don’t have to comply with the First Amendment. Facebook is a private company and it has no more obligation to host you than a restaurant has to serve a customer who hurls insults at the waiters or refuses to wear shoes. What’s more troubling is how inconsistently enforced these policies are. A restaurant with a strict dress code isn’t necessarily controversial; a restaurant that bans some patrons for not adhering to the dress code, allows others to walk in naked and has an ever-shifting definition of what qualifies as a bowtie is infuriating.

To be fair, the sheer volume of content posted on social media platforms makes it difficult for them to consistently moderate content. They use a combination of algorithms and human moderators to identify posts that violate their policies — and it doesn’t always work that well.

Determining whether a post is hateful depends on context, but algorithms aren’t sophisticated enough yet to look at that — they have to use specific rules to weed out content. In 2017, an investigation by ProPublica into Facebook’s hate speech standards revealed that a post advocating for killing all radicalized Muslims didn’t count as hate speech because it targeted a subgroup of a protected category — radicalized Muslims, not all Muslims. The algorithm was programmed to designate speech attacking a category as a whole as hate speech, not speech targeting a subset.

Meanwhile, many users were banned for uploading screenshots of racist or sexist messages they had received in order to raise awareness of hate speech. This isn’t dissimilar to Twitter’s decision last week to freeze the campaign account of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for tweeting out a video showing several protesters shouting violent threats against McConnell outside his home. Twitter’s rules ban users from posting content containing threats of violence, even if it’s the target of the threats doing the posting. (Twitter quickly reversed its decision after rampant criticism from Republicans.)

Social media platforms can and do fine tune their content rules when controversies arise. For instance, Facebook’s policy does allow for hate speech that’s shared with the intention of educating others. Twitter made an exception for McConnell’s tweet because of its “intent to highlight the threats for public discussion.” But case in point, these changes usually occur when celebrities or public figures create negative publicity for the companies. Another way that business interests factor into how content rules are enforced? According to a group of former and current YouTube content moderators, high-profile content creators who draw the most advertising revenue “often get special treatment in the form of looser interpretations of YouTube’s guidelines prohibiting demeaning speech, bullying and other forms of graphic content.”

Which means that while certain people have a disproportionate amount of power to change, challenge and skirt content rules, the average person has none.

Lata Nott is executive director of the First Amendment Center of the Freedom Forum Institute. Contact her via email at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @LataNott.

SALINA – The executive board of the Silver Haired Legislature held their annual mid-summer issues meeting on Wednesday, July 31 in Salina.

The Executive Board is composed of the SHL chairperson from each of the eleven PSA (Planning and Service Area) districts across the state of Kansas, plus the officers of the overall membership of the organization. These include the Speaker, Speaker Pro Tem, and the Floor Leader. Jay Rowh, Mitchell County SHL representative who is the out-going president of the Executive Board, chaired the meeting.

The meeting began with the bi-annual election of the officers of the Executive Board. Newly elected officers were Bill Otto, PSA 7 (Coffey County – Leroy), who will take over the reins from Rowh as the new President, and Ross Boelling, PSA 8 (Dickinson County – rural Junction City), who replaces Thomas Gordon, PSA 1 (Wyandotte County – Kansas City), as the new Vice-President of the Executive Board. These two officers will serve in their new capacity for a two-year term. Rowh will continue on the Executive Board as the Immediate Past President, and Gordon will also serve as the current chair of PSA 1 (Wyandotte County). Donna Lehane, PSA 2 (Sedgwick County – Wichita) was then appointed by new President Bill Otto to serve as the Secretary of the SHL.

In the spring and early summer, the SHL members within each of the eleven PSA districts meet to decide what issues are important to Senior Citizens in their district. These issues are then brought to the state issues meeting, where they are discussed, debated, and whittled down to a select few. The resulting finalists will subsequently be presented to the entire SHL membership for their consideration at the annual conference in Topeka on October 1-3.

A total of 26 local issues were initially brought to the Executive Board. From this list, a total of seven issues were selected to be presented to the full membership in October. These issues will be forwarded in the form of resolutions, as they are carryover bills from the 2019 Kansas Legislative Session. A SHL resolution indicates support from the organization for that legislation should it meet with approval when voted upon by the entire SHL body in the fall.

Six of these measures were SHL carryovers from last year: 1) Support for Medicaid Expansion; 2) Continued support for the KDOT Rural Public Transportation program; 3) Support for the State of Kansas to fully fund KPERS as the law stipulates, and to pass a Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) for KPERS beneficiaries; 4) Protect Grandparents Rights in Child Custody and Visitation cases, plus providing financial assistance in Guardianship matters; 5) Support for the Removal of Sales Tax on Food; and 6) Support for Legalizing the Sale of Medicinal Cannabis in Kansas.

The one new resolution deals with Support and/or Expansion of the Senior Care Act in Kansas, the act that allows qualifying Seniors to stay in their own home with just a minimum of financial support. This financial aid averages approximately $240 per month, and helps in such tasks as cleaning, washing clothes, meal purchase and/or preparation, and medication assembly for the week. If the Senior does not get this help, they often must move to a nursing home, where typical costs average around $4000 per month. The Senior Care Act is definitely a money-saver for the state of Kansas.

The next step in this process is for the entire SHL membership to discuss and debate these resolutions in committee work at the annual session of the full Silver Haired Legislature this coming October in Topeka. Those measures successfully passed out of committee will then face deliberation by the full SHL body, and if subsequently approved, will then be forwarded on to the Kansas Legislature in their 2020 Legislative Session for consideration with SHL support.

The Silver Haired Legislators represent the over 600,000 Kansas Seniors over the age of 60, most of whom vote in local, state and national elections. The SHL is just one of the ways their collective voice can be heard.

For this, and other information on the Silver Haired Legislature, you are invited to view our website Kansas-shl.org.

– SUBMITTED –