Thursday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[Commenter_XY]

Good Morning Conspirators! 🙂

Q: When is it illegal for the federal government to use private companies to circumvent 1A, 2A, 4A, 5A protections?

What's the legal case to tell me when the line was crossed?

[Michael P]

Isn't that the subject of the "state actor" doctrine? Wikipedia lists a number of cases that define different modes of how a private entity becomes a state actor. Applying one of those is the easiest way to establish that government did something illegal, but each of those cases broke new ground at the time.

[Krayt]

Is "feed us stuff through a pipeline of your own free will, as if it were your idea, and we will ease off anti-trust. A little." on that list?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The Federals can do whatever they want to us since no one is stopping them.

[David Nieporent]

This isn't a 30-second question, but the 30-second answer is all you're going to get right now: when the private companies are acting as agents for the state.

[Commenter_XY]

You're right, David. Consider one example. Twitter is in the news. I get the politics angle; the optics are horrible. I don't want to get into the politics. Let's just talk law instead.

As a legal matter, in your opinion, did the Federal government cross the line and use Twitter to censor viewpoints the Federal government objected to (for whatever reason) in violation of our 1-A rights. What do you think personally? Is there a specific case you'd cite to support your personal view?

[Nige]

What specific acts of censorship are you talking about, though? It just emerged that while President, Trump made so many requests to Twitter they had their own database for them. But if all he was addressing were posts that were rude about him or asking for conservatives who were suspended for violating the tos back on, as seems to be the case, is he behaving any differently than any other private citizen? There’s no doubt that dealing with a head of state is different from dealing with an ordinary Joe Bloggs, that’s unavoidable. Same applies to the FBI, but that doesn’t mean neither have genuine interests flagging certain things or making certain requests on what is a global communications platform. The Biden campaign, which generated most of the outrage and got most of the focus in the twitter files, were NOT part of the government.

[Commenter_XY]

Nige, yes I get all that. Where is the legal line, for you personally? There is no wrong answer here. Where do you say, "Yep, sure as hell, you guys crossed the line"? And what would you cite to support your view?

We all get the politics. That is not what I am asking. I am asking where the line is for you.

[Ed Grinberg]

For some people (probably including the person you're addressing), "the legal line" doesn't exist. It's all politics. So, if he likes the administration that's "us[ing] private companies to circumvent 1A, 2A, 4A, 5A protections," he'll say it's perfectly legal / constitutional. And if not, he'll say the opposite. (Sadly, there are judges who use this approach in their jurisprudence.)

[Stephen Lathrop]

I am asking where the line is for you.

Commenter_XY, it is an easier question to answer than you suppose. Twitter, and all the big social media platforms, are publishers, protected by 1A press freedom. That means they remain free constitutionally to publish at pleasure, or not to publish at pleasure, anything which does not violate very limited laws which constrain publishing, such as libel laws.

Note that laws which constrain publishing do not have anything to do with terms of service, or any other policy about publishing which a publisher might choose to observe. Publishers might constrain themselves voluntarily to publish contributions from particular contributors, as a matter of personal contract. It would be a foolish would-be contributor who supposed a competent publisher would not leave itself room for discretion in any such contract.

If government pressures a publisher not to publish something, it is free to laugh, publish a story about the pressure, and then publish what government said it couldn't, all without fear of retaliation. If instead a publisher prefers cravenly to knuckle under to government pressure, it remains free to do that, and it is constitutionally protected for it to do so. I prefer the former publishers to the latter ones, but between the two there is not any legal distinction to be made.

That means that the line you mention will not be crossed short of overt government force, to compel publication, or to prevent it. And if that happens, it will not be the publisher at legal fault, but the government. Any claim for relief on the basis of forced publication, or non-publication, will be against the government, not the publisher.

As you can see, I count myself a rigorous advocate of press-freedom, and a protector of expressive freedom generally. Hope that clears it up for you.

[David Nieporent]

As a legal matter, in your opinion, did the Federal government cross the line and use Twitter to censor viewpoints the Federal government objected to (for whatever reason) in violation of our 1-A rights. What do you think personally? Is there a specific case you’d cite to support your personal view?

As a legal matter, I have seen nothing to suggest any wrongdoing. There is no evidence of any coercion on the part of the government, no threats by someone with enforcement power to punish social media companies, nothing to suggest that the social media companies didn't have complete freedom to decide how to handle any requests or suggestions by the government. In short: government jawboning is all there was, and it's constitutional.

(I've said that I would have done much less of this if I were in charge of the government. But that's not a legal argument.)

[Commenter_XY]

David, thanks for the explanation, it makes sense and this line was key for me = In short: government jawboning is all there was, and it’s constitutional.

[not guilty]

When action of a private person or entity is attributable to the government is a fact specific inquiry. There is a significant body of law regarding when a private actor is suable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for acting under color of state law. (I realize that Commenter XY’s inquiry was about the federal government’s use of private companies, but the § 1983 state action cases would seem to apply.)

State action may be found only if there is such a “close nexus between the State and the challenged action” that seemingly private behavior “may be fairly treated as that of the State itself.” Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co., 419 U. S. 345, 351 (1974). No one fact is a necessary condition for finding state action, nor is any set of circumstances sufficient, for there may be some countervailing reason against attributing activity to the government. Justice Souter summarized some of the applicable authorities in Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Assn., 531 U.S. 288, 296 (2001):

Our cases have identified a host of facts that can bear on the fairness of such an attribution. We have, for example, held that a challenged activity may be state action when it results from the State’s exercise of “coercive power,” Blum[ v. Yaretsky, 457 U.S. 991,1004 (1982),] when the State provides “significant encouragement, either overt or covert,” ibid., or when a private actor operates as a “willful participant in joint activity with the State or its agents,” Lugar [Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U.S. 922, 941 (1982),] (internal quotation marks omitted). We have treated a nominally private entity as a state actor when it is controlled by an “agency of the State,” Pennsylvania v. Board of Directors of City Trusts of Philadelphia, 353 U.S. 230, 231 (1957) (per curiam), when it has been delegated a public function by the State, cf., e.g., West v. Atkins, [487 U. S. 42, 56 (1988);] Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U.S. 614, 627-628 (1991), when it is “entwined with governmental policies,” or when government is “entwined in [its] management or control,” Evans v. Newton, 382 U. S. 296, 299, 301 (1966).

I hope this is helpful. Application of these authorities to any particular case is necessarily fact bound, with the burden of persuasion upon the proponent of attributing private action to the government.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Wow....

Thanks!

[Commenter_XY]

not guilty, that was really a great summary, esp the quote from Justice Souter's opinion. That really gave me a good overview on the different ways an entity can become a state actor. Very, very helpful! Thank you!

(I learned things today!)

[Stephen Lathrop]

not guilty, am I right to suppose that much of what you cited came from cases without notable 1A implications? If so, do you have any thoughts touching on how 1A-protected speech freedom or press freedom might affect the legal reasoning?

[not guilty]

Brentwood Academy was a First Amendment case. The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA) is a non-profit membership corporation organized to regulate interscholastic sports among its members (a large portion of the public and private high schools in Tennessee). The Association fined Brentwood Academy, a private high school, for recruiting violations by its football coach, placed the school on probation and banned it from participating in state playoff games for two years.

The school sued in federal court, claiming that TSSAA was a state actor and that enforcement of its rules violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The District Court ruled in favor of the school, but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, finding that the actions of the private association did not constitute state action. The Supreme Court found that the actions of TSSAA were attributable to the state because it was pervasively entwined with public institutions and public officials in its composition and workings.

After remand, the lower federal courts ruled in favor of the school, but SCOTUS reversed, concluding that the anti-recruiting regulation at issue did not contravene the First Amendment. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Assn. v. Brentwood Academy, 551 U.S. 291 (2007).

[Stephen Lathrop]

Thank you for that.

[AmosArch]

Its legal when it benefits Democrat/progressive causes. Its illegal otherwise. Simple isn't it?

[Nige]

It's so illegal when Republicans do it that Trump's demands and requests to Twitter while President barely got mentioned.

[santamonica811]

Don't take Amos seriously. No one else does. [Including Amos.]

[Sarcastr0]

You are not hiding your agenda here. Twitter was not a government agent. No rights were circumvented.

At this point, we’ve talked through this many, many times. It seems you don’t care about the actual facts or law.

Enjoy your made-up persecution complex. You have lots of inane company, though reality will not be joining you.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Lol.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, you have made it clear that your preferred narrative re: twitter is too attractive to your worldview, and basically unfalsifiable for you.

[bevis the lumberjack]

My worldview is that I support rights for everyone, while you only support them for people you agree with.

Simple question. Adam Schiff explicitly asked Twitter to deplatform a journalist that wrote an article that he didn’t like. Possible answers:

A. This is appropriate behavior for a senior government official.
B. Schiff is a censorious asshole.

My answer is b. Your answer is a, unless we were to substitute, say, “Ted Cruz” for “Adam Schiff”, in which your answer would change to b. Mine would still be b.

[Sarcastr0]

bevis, your issue is not one of principles, it is one of facts.

Like this Schiff story. Is it just using regular channels to report bannable behavior, or is it more? What was the behavior being reported?

Certainly you don't seem to know or care. Because you would prefer to burnish your principles to critical thinking.

[bevis the lumberjack]

It's in the articles that you refuse to read.

The reporter wrote a story that Schiff didn't like so Schiff had his staff ask Twitter to kick the reporter off of the platform. Pure retribution. All of the communication about this is in the public realm.

It's out there to be seen but you don't want to know. Your chiding of me for not wanting to know is pathetically loathsome given that you've ignored the whole twitter thing.

[Nige]

What didn't he like about it?

[bevis the lumberjack]

Fuck if I know. Call him and ask him.

That really isn’t the point here.

[Sarcastr0]

Dude, the factual context is the point here.

You've taken a cookie-cutter version of what happened, declared you've heard enough, and are off to the races.

No. That's not how you do this. Pause see what facts are missing. Read your media critically, knowing they have a point of view.

You haven't even established a proper factual predicate for your policy opinion. Which is Internet commenting 101, but you can and should do better.

A bright line rule against elected officials complaining to twitter is a legit thing to advocate for. Insisting that all who disagree are apoligists for tyranny is just right-wing nutjobbery.

[Nige]

'That really isn’t the point here.'

There's a big difference in trying to get someone banned out of pique or malice and trying to get someone banned because they were telling appalling lies about you, just to set out the possible extremes. Not sure I can or should judge without that information, sorry, and since you couldn't even be bothered to find out your outrage rings hollow.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Dude, there is no factual circumstance in which a member of Congress should be pressuring a private company to shut someone up.

[Sarcastr0]

So the pressure part is not established at all.

A great clue it wasn't very pressurefull is that twitter said no to him.

The narrative of inherent government pressure and weak scared corporations is over and over again shown to be untrue.

[Nige]

'Dude, there is no factual circumstance in which a member of Congress should be pressuring a private company to shut someone up.'

Really? What of the guy is, say, accusing him of being a pedophile? Is there something about being a member of congress that prevents them from objecting to that?

[Sarcastr0]

I read a number of articles on this - from the Washington Times, twitchy, Newsmax.

I did not read anything that provided any kind of balanced perspective or answered the questions I had.

[Stephen Lathrop]

bevis, you have not asked an either/or question. The answer to both questions is, "Yes." Hope that doesn't spoil your day.

[Nelson]

The answer is B.

To be fair, Adam Schiff is a thin-skinned blowhard, so is anyone really surprised he got his feelings hurt when reporters said mean things about him?

[David Nieporent]

My answer is C.

C. Schiff is a jackass.

He's not censorious, because he wasn't threatening them to try to force them to take down Sperry's account. (Sperry is a journalist only in the loosest sense of the word, but that's a side issue.) Simply asking them to do it isn't censorship. But it is stupid. "I don't like what he's saying; please get rid of him" is not something I think anyone should say, and even less so a government official.

I'd add that I'd be a bit more moved by Bevis's position if I had ever seen him condemn Devin Nunes, who has filed dozens of lawsuits to try to shut down speech he doesn't like. That's actually trying to use the coercive power of the state to silence critics. (Though use it in the same way a private citizen could, not in the way an elected official could.)

[santamonica811]

Judge in a Nunes case:
"Counsel, show me your moooooo-ving papers." [rimshot]

[Commenter_XY]

What agenda? Sarcastr0, just remember the shoe on the other foot thing, ok? I don't want it happening, period. It doesn't matter if it came from the Trump admin, Biden admin, Bush admin, Obama admin, Clinton admin or any admin.

But as a legal (not political) matter, in the case of Twitter, where would you personally draw the line? What set of facts would make you personally say, "Whoa there boys, you went a bit too far that time".

Michael P was helpful. But I am asking you for your personal assessment. Where is the legal line for you wrt Twitter?

[Michael P]

For the question as posed, my personal boundary is whether Twitter modified its policies or censored particular viewpoints because they thought either the federal executive branch or Congress would come down on them for keeping their previous policies. I suspect that happened, but I doubt there will ever be smoking-gun evidence of it.

A related but separate question is whether the federal government wrongfully pushed Twitter to censor people. This is essentially what the House is looking into as "weaponization of the federal government". I have a much stronger expectation that there will be clear evidence of this -- and we have already seen signs in the Twitter File reports, where the FBI was pushing Twitter to declare widespread Russian interference when Twitter's evidence disagreed. The challenges are how to redress and deter such wrongful acts by the government.

That challenge is why I mentioned that "state actor" cases break new ground: While I don't think Twitter obviously / provably falls into any of the existing lines, it seems reasonable that the doctrine should include platform cases like Twitter and Facebook.

[Commenter_XY]

That was a distinction I had not realized, Michael P =

whether Twitter modified its policies or censored particular viewpoints because they thought either the federal executive branch or Congress would come down on them for keeping their previous policies

and

whether the federal government wrongfully pushed Twitter to censor people

I see how those are two distinct things, and also how they could get conflated. I will now start reading more on 'state actor' doctrine. This is why I come here! I learn stuff! Thx for the explanation and background.

[David Nieporent]

I suspect that happened, but I doubt there will ever be smoking-gun evidence of it.

What the Twitter Files actually showed — if you look at the original source documents rather than the Musk toadies' descriptions of them — is that Twitter was free to, and routinely did, ignore requests from the government.

[Ed Grinberg]

Sarcastr0, just remember the shoe on the other foot thing, ok?

from a Reason.com comment-thread:
commenter1: "...What goes around comes around, and the progressives just don't get it."
commenter2: "Well, no. Leftists freely admit that they don't believe that the same rules apply to everyone."

[Nige]

This is an expression of frustration that threats don't work well enough.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Yeah, when Trump or DeSantis or whoever gets control and pulls this crap Sarcastro and Queenie and their ilk will be screaming "fascist!! fascist!!". Because they don't have principles. Rights accrue to their friends and their enemies can fuck right off.

[Sarcastr0]

Turns out I treat different things differently.

So do you.

I do think Trump is an authoritarian, and Biden is not. And that twitter mostly did a good job adjudicating government complaints, and was never an agent of the government, nor did they deny anyone their rights. Twitter sucks more now, but that is their right as a private company.

Yelling about how objective and bothsidsey you are and how bad everyone else is really becoming your thing, eh?

I've made arguments. Please address them rather than how partisan I am. I sure am partisan, but that's because *I think my side is right*. I try to be unbiased, probably fail.

But you're regularly really bad at actually calling me on it in any kind of sustainable way that doesn't dissolve into you yelling about how I want to hug and kiss Biden, or know all about energy markets so I should bow to your authority on the issue.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't need to pretend you're asking an anodyne question about the law of agency.

This is about the misapprehension regarding the facts on twitter that the right and Musk have labored to bring about.

[Bob from Ohio]

"It seems you don’t care about the actual facts or law."

He just disagrees with your interpretation of the facts.

[Krayt]

“You’d better censor harrassment or section 230 will get broken*.”

“Oh! And start with the harrassing tweets of our political opponents right before an election.”

* Including a loud, angry debate unit during the D primary on many channels live prime time.

[Sarcastr0]

I know you love to repeat this made up bit of blackmail cloak-and-dagger.

It didn't happen. One way to tell is that twitter routinely denied government requests.

[ducksalad]

The line is located precisely between Us and Them.

[shawn_dude]

When the government does more than ask or hint but takes a positive action to either enforce the request directly or punish the company through other means for failing to comply.

For example, Trump asking Twitter to censor someone who insulted him but otherwise doing nothing else. That doesn’t qualify.

Twitter’s team begging their management to censor certain tweets in the midst of the Jan 6th insurrection and the management team leaving the insurrectionists alone. That doesn’t qualify.

A corporation that speaks out against a government action or position only to have the government pass laws to financially harm the company as a consequence. That crosses the line.

[Commenter_XY]

Ok, I have one other question. Recently, a federal judge issued a ruling to the effect that marijuana use was not a reason to deny 2A rights (e.g. obtaining a gun permit, passing federal background check). How does that ruling impact that part of the federal background check form (if at all)?

What I am ultimately getting to....when will registered patients of a state medical marijuana program legally pass the federal background check to obtain firearms? It seems pretty silly to separate the stoner set from handguns; by and large, my experience has been the stoner set is more likely to offer you a bong hit than a bullet.

I also know reading blog posts here that just because a federal judge says it, it ain't necessarily so. 🙂

What do you think? How long will it take for MMP patients to be able to legally obtain firearms?

[Dr. Ed 2]

When the Federal Narcotics Act gets ruled unconstitutional.

[Reallynotbob]

I'll bite...
What you're suggesting would require gun legislation founded on some mature thinking about reform. That won't happen until the NRA set get past their fear that responsible regulation within the 2A framework is not the same thing as banning all guns forever for everyone. Yes, some on the left want that. But it's not where the country is. The country isn't where the NRA is, either. So my answer is that it could get done with proper compromise from both sides, but there's not indication that can happen on the right, let alone on the left.

[not guilty]

"That won’t happen until the NRA set get past their fear that responsible regulation within the 2A framework is not the same thing as banning all guns forever for everyone."

Upton Sinclair observed that it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. The NRA has built a fundraising juggernaut on scaring the bejesus out of its donors with the specter of government banning/confiscating their beloved popguns.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

That won’t happen until the NRA set get past their fear that responsible regulation within the 2A framework is not the same thing as banning all guns forever for everyone.

Actually, the thing that most prevents any sort of "reforms" is the sort of misrepresentational propaganda bullshit, like the comment above, that you and others like you are so pathologically addicted to. Drop the reliance on hyperbole and other dishonest rhetoric and you just might find most on the other side off the issue to be pretty reasonable.

[shawn_dude]

I would consider anyone who can agree that gun registration and mandatory training are public safety measures that can legally coexist with the 2A as "pretty reasonable." The NRA crowd largely doesn't agree as evidenced by their website.

[AmosArch]

A question for those who oppose the Electoral college.

Would you agree that China/India should get quadruple votes in the UN, WTO, and all other international bodies? With all nonmajoritarian subpanels like the Security council disbanded? And everything is by majority vote. Ie if US/China has a trade dispute its the US's 1 vote vs China's 4 votes so china will automatically win every dispute. If not why not?

If one day India decided to vote to merge with the United states (allowing votes from the States) and from there on in everything in the new merged country would take place by majority vote. People in Calcutta could vote on amending the US Constitution and environmental laws in California and vice versa of course. Would you accept it? Why not?

Should we disband the court system and just have every case decided by majority vote anywhere in the country? So if you have a divorce case in Michigan it can be decided by some random guys in New Mexico who dropped in to vote through the internet? Why not? Maybe we can even disband all the other branches of government except for the vote tabulation arm of course.

Thats not the way the law is? They lack geographical jurisdiction, standing, or expertise? But aren't these excuses what you are arguing against when it comes to the EC? Although there are other arguments against the form of the EC. The majority of rhetoric I see against the EC is simply due to it being nonmajoritarian.

So why is it fair that the US essentially gets >4x representation in the UN? Why can't Indians vote on California law and random New Mexicans vote on a Michigan divorce that would likely have some effect however small and indirect on them? Wouldn't it be fairer that Americans and Chinese, Indians, Michiganers, and New Mexicans got the exact same voice?

[Krychek_2]

Your premise is mistaken. The US may only have one vote in the UN General Assembly bit it has a veto on the Security Council, which is where most major decisions are made. And when it becomes a reasonable likelihood that India will join the US, get back to us. Someone should put your comment in a logic textbook as an example of bad analogies.

The courts serve a different function than Congress does, and the UN serves a different function than do national governments. Not only are you not giving apples to apples, you're not even giving apples to some other fruit.

[Nige]

Concept of a global democracy is an interesting one, though. Malka Older has a good sci-fi trilogy about one way that might (or might not) work - The Centenal Cycle, first volume Infomocracy. Rare modern sci-fi that deals with the near future, is about politics and governance, and isn't a dystopia.

[Dr. Ed 2]

A global democracy would truly become a tyranny of the masses.

[Nige]

Which is what the books explore - how to make it workable.

[Reallynotbob]

Unless the economic borders approximately match the political borders, global democracy has problems. The democratic project relies on giving constituents representational voting over all constituents' resources. Recall that the US amounts for a whopping % of global wealth, GDP, resources, food, fresh water, etc. Global democracy might be good for humans, but it's hugely risky for Americans.

[Nige]

'The democratic project relies on giving constituents representational voting over all constituents’ resources'

That's not even true within the US, or any number of other democratic countries. Which is to say, their borders contain fairly steep economic inequalities which representational voting has failed to redress. The concentration of wealth and control of resources nationally and globally is only making matters worse.

[AmosArch]

“Your premise is mistaken. The US may only have one vote in the UN General Assembly”

That is my point The US is overrepresented by the standards of the common EC opponent.

“And when it becomes a reasonable likelihood that India will join the US, get back to us.”

Hasn’t happened yet is not an argument…

“The courts serve a different function than Congress does, and the UN serves a different function than do national governments. Not only are you not giving apples to apples, you’re not even giving apples to some other fruit.”

I assume you are an EC opponent but if you’re not feel free to substitute a hypothetical average one. Would you/they accept ‘but its different’ argument from an EC supporter? EC positions are also 'different' from other nonEC positions.

PS if this appears multiple times blame Reason’s clunky commenting system

[Krychek_2]

The United Nations isn't analogous for multiple reasons. None of it is democratically elected, and its Constitution explicitly recognizes that the major powers are going to run things, and it serves a different purpose than a national government.

That aside, you seem to have fallen into the trap of "if some is good, more must be better." Like the patient who says that if taking two of these pills will make me feel better, then taking the whole bottle will make me feel really good. Or the morbidly obese person who says that if eating is good, then eating 20,000 calories a day must be really good. But that's not the way it works.

As an opponent of the EC, my position is that we would do better having more democracy than we currently have. It does not mean that I would go the next step and replace Congress with a voting machine in every home. There is such a thing as a reasonable mean.

And as for the EC being different, the real question isn't whether it's different; the question is whether it's good policy. I don't think that it is. I think that with no EC there would have been no war in Iraq or Afghanistan, and no January 6. I think giving a huge procedural advantage to one side is wrong, and so would you if it favored the Democrats.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Kyrchek,

Let's address your last statement for a second.
"I think giving a huge procedural advantage to one side is wrong, and so would you if it favored the Democrats."

It's worth re-evaluating that in terms of data. Here's the historical data (from 2016 and before), as to what party had an edge in the EC. In 2016, it did favor the Republicans. But in 2012, 2008, and 2004, the EC actually favored the Democrats. And in 2000, it favored the Republicans.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/will-the-electoral-college-doom-the-democrats-again/

So, it's worth thinking that there actually isn't a "huge procedural advantage" given to "one side". At least not consistently.

[Krychek_2]

Four times in US history the electoral college has elected a president who was a popular vote loser. All four times the popular vote loser who got the White House was a Republican. The procedural advantage comes in the instances in which the EC actually changes the outcome. In those instances in which the EC doesn't change the outcome, it doesn't matter.

[Armchair Lawyer]

1. Two of those times the Republican was from before 1900, while the Democrats were the party of segregation. You would've preferred the GOP candidate in those times.

2. You look at the data as a whole. Not just the times it hit a tipping point.

[Krychek_2]

1. Doesn't matter what my preference is; depriving the majority of self governance is a bad thing. If I had a magic wand and could change the results of any election I liked, it would be wrong of me to use it. The issue is not whom I would prefer to win an election; the issue is what is good election policy in general.

2. Depends on why you're looking at the data. The only times that actually matter are when it changes the result.

[Armchair Lawyer]

1. Your argument was it was a a "huge procedural advantage for one side". But...not really. If you define a "side" as a "liberal side" and "conservative side"...then it's even in the number of times it "flipped" an election. It's only happenstance the parties switched.

2. That's not a good way to look at the data, if you only take the outliers.

[Krychek_2]

You're missing the point that it only matters if it impacts the outcome. Period. If you don't see that, then there's nothing I can say to make you see it.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Krychek,

You're dealing with a fairly small n value here, and going only by past history. So "twice" it's occurred in the last 100 years and affected the election for a single party. There's literally a 25% chance of it coming out that way, just randomly.

[Krychek_2]

Armchair Lawyer, under your theory we should abolish the EC because it's pointless and unnecessary. Since it rarely changes the outcome, and it's evened itself out as to liberals and conservatives, then it's a pointless exercise that there's no reason to keep. Why should we spend money on something that, according to you, has only a negligible impact?

[Krychek_2]

Now, of course, you know that it does change the outcome -- it kept Al Gore and Hillary Clinton out of the Oval Office -- which is precisely the reason you want to keep it. So make that argument, rather than the BS argument that it really doesn't matter.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Krychek,

I never argued the electoral college was pointless. I argued that it was incorrect that it consistently gave one side or the other a large structural advantage.

I think the EC is important, in that it requires candidates to obtain support from a fairly broad swath of the country, in order to win the election. Without the EC, what you would observe instead is candidates "pumping up their margins" in areas that they would already be winning overwhelmingly. I believe that would be counterproductive towards the stability of the country as a whole.

[Sarcastr0]

I think the EC is important, in that it requires candidates to obtain support from a fairly broad swath of the country, in order to win the election.

This is just not true. Look at elections nowadays.

[Krychek_2]

But it does consistently give one side an advantage. And that aside, I'll bet that without it, you'd see Republicans campaigning in California and Democrats in Texas because every vote really would count.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

“It consistently gives one side the advantage. Statistics prove itself my side that wins more often than not, but I’ll pretend it’s the other side because my argument requires deception.”

[Armchair Lawyer]

Krychek,

1. I presented the data on the EC. "Consistently" is not an N of 2.

2. "I’ll bet that without it, you’d see Republicans campaigning in California and Democrats in Texas because every vote really would count."

That's not what you observe today though. Today, you observe Democrats pumping up their margins in the cities, while the GOP pushes for more in the areas they have larger majorities in.

Now, one of the advantages of the current EC system is that you can't win California or Alabama "more." You get your CA or AL electoral college votes, and that's it. But, under your system, you would see Democrats pumping up their margins in CA to obscene heights, to get an advantage...they wouldn't bother with swing voters or purple states as much. (Why do I say this? Because it's what they do now, within states). It would just be easier to push another 5% of the vote in a heavily liberal state to make up more.

And Republicans would respond in heavily GOP states. Rather than trying to appeal to the "middle" the parties would appeal to division and the wings. And that's not good.

[Krayt]

1. Doesn’t matter what my preference is; depriving the majority of self governance is a bad thing. If I had a magic wand and could change the results of any election I liked, it would be wrong of me to use it. The issue is not whom I would prefer to win an election; the issue is what is good election policy in general

Yet you run off to the courts whenever democracy does something you don’t like.

We love democracy. Until we don’t.

[Sarcastr0]

The principle of majority self rule is not destroyed by judicial review existing.

Unless you think we've not been a democracy ever.

[Dr. Ed 2]

John Quincy Adam was a Democrat. (Now it was the House who elected him, but he still was a DEMOCRAT!)

[Dr. Ed 2]

And do not forget that ballot box stuffing is really only effective in large cities, which tend to be Democrat. (Takes too many people knowing to be effective in rural areas.)

[Reallynotbob]

Not sure it's "really only effective in large cities."

https://apnews.com/article/voter-fraud-election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-7fcb6f134e528fee8237c7601db3328f

[Kazinski]

JQ Adams wasn’t actually a Democrat, he was in the Democratic-Republican party.

All 4 major candidates in the 1824 election were Democratic-Republicans, the party split after the election and the Andrew Jackson faction became the Democratic party. The Adams faction became the National Republican party (not The Republican Party formed in 1854) which dissolved by 1834 and was succeeded by the Whig party.

But Ed's point is correct Adams wasn't a Republican because the Republican party wasn't founded for another 30 years. However he was anti-slavery unlike the Democrats which were of course pro-slavery.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

The procedural advantage comes in the instances in which the EC actually changes the outcome.

Speaking of flawed logic...

The EC didn't "change the outcome". The EC is the constitutional mechanism by which PUTUS is elected, and winning the EC IS THE OUTCOME. Were the popular vote the prescribed mechanism that would change the way candidates campaign, which would almost certainly impact the result of the popular vote compared to a campaign strategy geared toward winning the EC. Remember how Hillary lost states that she largely ignored while campaigning (like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania) because she took their EC votes for granted? And pretty much all candidates mostly ignore states they have no chance of winning. Had there been no EC her strategy (and Trump's as well) would have been different, with a resulting impact on the popular vote result.

So saying that the EC "changed the outcome" is both factually inaccurate and grossly simple-minded.

[AmosArch]

Thank you for using the same major basic arguments EC supporters use and proving both sides want limits on democracy rather than democrats being the party of unrestrained democracy which is good vs the pure evil of nonmajoritarianism which is the bedrock of most antiEC arguments in the wild.

[Krychek_2]

Nobody is arguing for unrestrained democracy; that's a straw man. But a non-majority should not be able to impose a president on a majority that doesn't want him.

[Commenter_XY]

Well, there is always the amendment process. That is how we change the constitution, right? Let's use the process we know works.

[Krychek_2]

The question asked was whether the EC is good policy, not whether the votes are there to change it.

[Commenter_XY]

I think it is, Krychek_2. The Founders were smart men. I was taught in civics class that the EC was a check against the people, so we don't have tyranny by the majority. I also like the fact that the EC forces candidates to canvass the entire country, not just 25-35 population metro areas.

The EC is an imperfect system Krychek_2, but the EC is a hell of a lot less imperfect than all the other systems I see out there. 🙂

[Krychek_2]

I would not argue that the majority always gets it right, but I think it gets it right at least as often as the minority does, and if you're going to deprive the majority of self government, you need to come up with far better arguments than the ones I've heard. Had there been no EC, Al Gore almost certainly would not have gotten us into war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there almost certainly would not have been an attack on the Capitol on January 6.

Sure, it's a beautiful theory that the minority gets a voice and the president has to appeal to a nationwide audience. I was also taught that the EC saves us from dangerous demagogues, which post-Trump is a laugh riot of an argument.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Al Gore almost certainly would not have gotten us into war in Iraq and Afghanistan"

Every possible US president would have attacked Afghanistan. That is where Bin Laden was. The people would have insisted.

Iraq? Who knows. Easy for Gore to oppose it because Bush proposed it. His career was over.

[Krychek_2]

There was no national security reason to go to war against Iraq. With respect to Afghanistan, I didn't say attack, I said gotten us into war. While I agree that we can't as a matter of policy allow another country to get away with sheltering bin Laden, that's not the same as getting bogged down in a 20 year quagmire on which we spent trillions for nothing. For that, you can thank the Republicans.

[Bob from Ohio]

[Tried to post a link in response, site still won't let me. So, i will paste the info so you can google]

"For that, you can thank the Republicans."

Obama "surged" in Afghanistan. He, not Bush, increased troop level to 100,000, a 4 fold increase from the level he inherited.

"Your Military
A timeline of U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan since 2001
By The Associated Press Jul 6, 2016"

[Dr. Ed 2]

According to the CIA — which probably would have provided the same information to any POTUS — there *was* reason to attack Iraq. In a post 9-11 world, with Saddam kicking out the UN inspectors, I think Gore would have done it.

Remember that Gore was more conservative than people remember -- it was he and his wife who wanted to censor rock music lyrics in the '80s.

[Krychek_2]

And can you please tell the class the specific facts that existed at the time Obama surged?

[Absaroka]

"While I agree that we can’t as a matter of policy allow another country to get away with sheltering bin Laden, that’s not the same as getting bogged down in a 20 year quagmire on which we spent trillions for nothing. For that, you can thank the Republicans."

The timeline here is:

2001: 9/11 attacks, we attack Afghanistan looking for bin Laden
2008: White house changes hands
2011: bin Laden killed
2016: White house changes hands
2020: White house changes hands
2021: We get booted from Afghanistan

So I'm trying to parse this on a D/R axis. What should we have done from 2001 to 2008? When Tora Bora proved to be a dry hole (Dec 2001) should we have evacuated Afghanistan and just kept looking for bin Laden? If we had and he returned, do we invade again? Would the Northern Alliance still be our friends after a few cycles of that?

If we did evacuate, when we found him in Abbottabad, what should we have done? Do the logistics of a raid work out without launching from Afghanistan? Abbottabad is pretty far from the ocean. Was the intelligence solid enough to just bomb that house into oblivion?

Once we got bin Laden in 2011, you can argue that we should have started an orderly withdrawal, having done what we originally came for. Which Republican commander in chief is responsible for not having done that?

FWIW, my take is: we were ruthless enough to invade to get bin Laden, but not ruthless enough to, once we had him, just walk away and say 'sux to be Afghanistan'. Whether those things are admirable or not, I suppose, is something people will differ about.

But given the timeline, I don't see how the blame/praise can exclusively accrue to one party or the other.

It's a tough problem, and in fact is example #98346736 why no one should want to be president.

[Bob from Ohio]

"And can you please tell the class the specific facts that existed at the time Obama surged?"

You said it was totally a GOP fault. So you hand waive away the fact that most troops were introduced by a Democrat. Most US deaths occurred under him as well.

[Nige]

‘According to the CIA’

They manufactured the evidence the administration wanted to justify a war.

‘So you hand waive away the fact that most troops were introduced by a Democrat.’

Oh that nasty Obama trying to actually win the stupid unnecessaty fucking war the Republicans started under false pretences.

'Once we got bin Laden in 2011, you can argue that we should have started an orderly withdrawal'

By then the utter incompetence of the Republicans had helped unleash fucking Isis onto the world, creating the quagmire Obama was stuck with trying to sort out in a way that didn't leave the countries the US had invaded even worse hellholes than before.

[Nige]

But of course that's not how invading other countries actually works, as the Republicans and their patriotic screaming supporters were told over and over again.

[bernard11]

I also like the fact that the EC forces candidates to canvass the entire country, not just 25-35 population metro areas.

How does it do that? Ever heard of "battleground states?"

To the best of my recollection no recent candidate has spent a lot of time here in MA, and I bet they haven't visited AL and MS very often either.

But when campaigning in battleground states they will concentrate on urban areas, because that's where the voters are. Narrowing the geographic scope of the campaigns, as the EC does, doesn't change the relative importance of metro areas.

[Krychek_2]

Bob, and Absaroka, the premise you're forgetting is that it's easier to get into a war than it is to get out; once Bush sent us to Afghanistan, Obama's options were somewhat limited. Which is why we should not be so quick to get into a war.

When it became obvious that Afghanistan had bin Laden and wasn't planning to release him, we should have used whatever force was necessary to institute regime change, kept a small number of soldiers there to provide cover when we found him, kept looking for him, and then otherwise gotten out. Anyone with any knowledge of the history of the region would have known that attempts at democracy there were a fool's errand. Obama's choices were to end the war and let the Taliban re-take the country, send more troops in the hope of defeating the Taliban, or maintained the status quo. He chose the second option, which didn't work out, but which choice he wouldn't have had to make in the first place if Bush hadn't taken us to war there.

Think of Bush as the drunk driver who hits someone, and Obama as the EMT who drops the patient on the stretcher. Yeah, the EMT worker did the wrong thing, but it wouldn't have happened if not for the drunk driver.

[Reallynotbob]

When you say "canvass the entire country" I assume you mean 5-6 battleground states.

If one gets rid of the EC, the overall importance of cites will surely increase, but both sides will have incentive to market their policies to more of the population. For Republicans, shaving off a small % of large city voters would have a massive effect on the net total popular vote. For Democrats, netting a few % across the South would help them significantly. The bases stay the same, but straight popular voting discourages polarization.

[Absaroka]

"When it became obvious that Afghanistan had bin Laden and wasn’t planning to release him, we should have used whatever force was necessary to institute regime change, kept a small number of soldiers there to provide cover when we found him, kept looking for him, and then otherwise gotten out."

So, post Tora-Bora, we fortify Bagram Air Base and just hold it against the Taliban attacks?

Although, you can't just hold the airport perimeter, you need to hold a perimeter big enough to keep the flightline from being shelled. And you have to worry about e.g. SAMs on the flight path taking out your C-141s, etc, etc. So maintaining a small outpost deep in Afghanistan is, I think, maybe not all that small a footprint.

How are you defining 'small number of soldiers'?

[Bob from Ohio]

"we should have used whatever force was necessary to institute regime change, kept a small number of soldiers there to provide cover when we found him, kept looking for him, and then otherwise gotten out. "

You just described the situation Obama inherited. He made the decision to pour in 4 times the troops and escalate.

"Obama’s options were somewhat limited"

Poor Obama. He's the EMT who poured gasoline on the wrecked car and lit a cigarette.

[Both Sides]

But the E.C. doesn't really force candidates to "canvass the entire country." It makes them compete in a handful of "purple" states (especially the bigger ones) pretty much non-stop.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Every possible US president would have attacked Afghanistan.

That seems wrong. A better judgment would have been to engage in a "hot pursuit" police action aimed exclusively at Osama bin Laden (and anyone else directly related to the attack), disregarding national boundaries and the like while avoiding the apparent temptation to engage in a broader, extended action. I consider it unlikely that no possible president would have apprehended and implemented that strategy.

[Krychek_2]

Absaroka, a small number of soldiers is the amount needed to defend themselves against the Taliban and no more. And if the Taliban attacks, then you use enough force to deter them from doing it again, even if it means leveling every Taliban controlled village in the country. Just because I don't want a 20 year war doesn't mean I don't believe we can defend ourselves.

Bob, that is not the situation Obama inherited, but of course you'll claim so regardless. Bush was trying to nation build.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

“ And if the Taliban attacks, then you use enough force to deter them from doing it again, even if it means leveling every Taliban controlled village.”

I don’t think anyone should be taking your input here seriously, given that you’re advocating mass murder and war crimes.

[Absaroka]

"

Absaroka, a small number of soldiers is the amount needed to defend themselves against the Taliban and no more. And if the Taliban attacks, then you use enough force to deter them from doing it again, even if it means leveling every Taliban controlled village in the country. Just because I don’t want a 20 year war doesn’t mean I don’t believe we can defend ourselves."

With the disclaimer that I'm only an amateur, I'm not sure that footprint is that much smaller than what we did. You may recall that we were only going to give Vietnam advisers and air support, but then we had to defend the air bases, and ...

"Bob, that is not the situation Obama inherited, but of course you’ll claim so regardless. Bush was trying to nation build."

So this gets back to the ruthless part. My sense is we try to 'nation build' because we don't want to appear immoral (whether to ourselves or the world) by just going in, smashing the place, and leaving. But if that was the right thing to do, why didn't Obama, as Nike says, Just Do It?

When you're the guy in charge, 'I just kept doing the dumb things my predecessor did for eight more years' is a bit lame. If Nixon got us out of Vietnam, why couldn't Obama get us out of Afghanistan?

[Nige]

It's yet another example of the intentions and actions of Republicans being treated with seriuosness and deference - here, a dumb war, a dumb effort at nation building which Obama inherited and felt obliged to pursue faithfully. Of course Republicans would have gone utterly fucking apeshit if he'd pulled out, but Democrats are astonishingly slow to learn the lesson that Republicans utterly going apeshit is not a good reason for not doing something.

[Sarcastr0]

Population representation is not always fit for all purposes. Hint: the UN is not World Government.

Look at why the UN was created. Compare and contrast with the purpose behind the Presidency.

And then, for good measure, look at the Senate, and it’s purpose.

[AmosArch]

Why is it unfair to give states overrepresentation for the Presidency which at the extreme end is roughly 3.5/1 if you go by California vs Wyoming but is usually much less given the population distribution no matter what, but its completely fair to give the US a massive 4/1 overrepresentation on matters which affect billions in ways which are arguably as significant as the Presidency?

[Krychek_2]

For the same reason it would be unfair to say that a Democrat vote counts for 3.5/1 for a Republican vote. And, if you think that the UN is unfair, feel free to say so, but it's a separate issue. It's basically another whataboutism. Is it fair that in North Korea only one man has a vote? No, but that has nothing to do with our EC.

[Sarcastr0]

I am not an EC hater, but you're managing to turn me into one by being so dumb.

The President's job is to represent the American People, not the states.

California is not an independent entity with a single will that is in tension with Wyoming. That's not the way to think about it.

By contrast, the UN's job is not to represent the world's population. It's a diplomatic space for countries, as independent entities, to interact.

[ducksalad]

“The President’s job is to represent the American People, not the states.”

Went and read the posted job description, it says the President’s job is to ensure the laws are faithfully executed.

[Don Nico]

"California is not an independent entity with a single will that is in tension with Wyoming."
But it likes to think that it is. Just ask Gavin.

[Krayt]

Ca. Has tons of tension. Other states are stealing the people we steal from, so we have to steal harder to teach 'em a lesson!

[Dr. Ed 2]

What percentage of the UN budget does the US pay?

That alone is justification...

[bernard11]

Huh? Where do you get 3.5/1?

CA has 67 times the population of WY and only 18 times the EC votes.

[Absaroka]

67/18 = 3.72 = 'roughly 3.5/1'

[AmosArch]

Maybe closer 3.7 but still around 3.5. I didn't feel like pulling out a calculator or a piece of paper. Sue me.

[bernard11]

I see. Thanks.

But I'd hardly call that a minor disproportion.

A lot of EC issues - not all of them - would go away if EV's were assigned in proportion to the vote in each state, rather than on a winner-take-all basis, which strikes me as especially dumb.

[Dr. Ed 2]

A better issue will be the DNV vs NH -- in starting with South Carolina, the Dems are essentially eliminating all small states.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out because NH *law* says that the NH Primary must be scheduled 2 weeks before any other state primary, and the (Republican) Secretary of State has the authority to move it on his own.

One possibility -- the NH primary is actually in early January, the DNC "punishes" NH by refusing to seat their delegates, and NH responds by refusing to put the Dem candidate on the NH ballot. (I can see NH actually doing that.)

But the larger issue is the relevance of small states like NH were the EC to be abolished in favor of a national vote.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

NH responds by refusing to put the Dem candidate on the NH ballot. (I can see NH actually doing that.)

Could California respond by refusing to place Republican candidates on the ballot? Kevin McCarthy could still be speaker, but removing every Republican member of Congress from California could improve the House of Representatives in a meaningful way.

On second thought, with a dozen Republicans replaced by a dozen Democrats in Congress, it is unlikely Kevin McCarthy could be speaker.

Make our day, New Hampshire Republicans!

[Dr. Ed 2]

Read the Constitution lately? Or ever???

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The Constitution indicates New Hampshire could refuse to put a Democratic presidential candidate on the ballot but California could not refuse to put Republican congressional candidates on the ballot?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Yep -- states don't even have to have a popular vote for President -- and before 1828, most didn't. But Congresscritters are different.
There's no national convention for them.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Who, in your judgment as informed by your reading of the Constitution, controls California's design of its ballots or California's decisions concerning structuring an election for its presidential electors?

[bernard11]

No. They are not eliminating the small states. SC, as a matter of fact has a somewhat below average population.

But the issue with NH is not just its size but also it's being unrepresentative.

There is, by the way, no issue with small states if the EC is abolished. Every NH voter would have just as much clout as every CA voter. No one who claims that's a bad idea has yet offered up a single sensible argument in support.

[EscherEnigma]

All of which would go away if states weren't involved in party primaries.

States should just stop hosting partisan primaries (which all presidential primaries are). If the GOP or DNC wants to hold a primary in New Hampshire to figure out what candiate the people of New Hampshire want to put forward, then they can figure it out. NH itself shouldn't be involved.

And yes, I realize that's pie-in-the-sky thinking.

[Krayt]

I just started watching The Expanse (pretty good so far, up to episode 5.)

There are several large factions: Mars, Belters, and Earth, which is ruled by the UN.

While the UN could represent democracy (I have no idea) in reality, certainly not, being heavy with votes from dictatorships.

And we do not want a one world government, because there's nowhere to flee to.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

I just started watching The Expanse (pretty good so far, up to episode 5.)

It's about time. TE is easily the best hard sci-fi series of all time...in my not-at-all-humble opinion.

[ragebot]

Lets keep in mind that the EC was created so that all the states would join the Union; without it NY, Penn, and Mass would probably be the entire US and the rest of the states would not have signed. Same goes for the UN the big boys would have told the little kids to eat shit if they were not allowed to run things.

While it may be fun to sit in an ivory tower and muse about the land of milk and honey sooner or later most peeps grow up and smell the coffee.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The big boys back then were MA & VT. Prior to steam tugs, Boston was bigger than NYC, way bigger -- better harbor for sail.

[David Nieporent]

As always, Dr. Ed makes things up. (And I'm giving him a mulligan on VT, assuming he meant VA.) In fact, Pennsylvania and North Carolina were both bigger than Massachusetts.

Moreover, Boston has never in the history of the United States been bigger than NYC. NYC passed Boston in population decades before the American Revolution.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

The reason I oppose the current electoral college is that it no longer functions in the way its creators envisioned. It was supposed to be a group of people with independent agency, who would select the most qualified candidate for president, because the framers clearly didn't want that power given to the people directly. They were afraid self-serving demagogues would be able to convince the voting public, but not the electors as a group. If we think there is still value in having an independently elected group of people select the president, we should continue with the electoral college. If not, we should come up with a different method. The current method has been electing some pretty crappy presidents, in my humble opinion.

[EscherEnigma]

If we think there is still value in having an independently elected group of people select the president [...]

Then there's a lot of structural and social work necessary to make that happen.

First would be convincing the American people what they're actually voting for. Because most people think they're voting for who will be president, not voting for which party will choose to send electoral candidates who will then vote however they will.

Second would be repealling all those laws that mandate how electoral voters vote. If we're returnign to the original concept, those folk should not be chained as they currently are (or at least, as they are currently threatened).

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Absolutely true. It would be a move away from direct democracy, and I'm just not sure how that would fly in today's politics. But it is a cumbersome and problematic way to apportion the popular vote for president. If we are going to elect the president directly, we should probably just do away with it and have a national popular vote decide, but there seem to be partisan reasons to fight that.

[Michael P]

Seattle's fire department responds to an increasing number of fires at homeless encampments. Is 6% of all calls too high a fraction? (Presumably much less than 6% of the city population is homeless.) https://komonews.com/amp/news/local/seattle-homeless-crisis-encampment-fire-interstate-5-chinatown-international-district-washington-unhoused-homelessness-firefighters-wsdot

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Another Democrat multicultural utopia.

It's so weird how their good intentions always seem to result in such bad outcomes for most (not themselves, of course, they get rich and powerful)

[Dr. Ed 2]

Fire departments have always disproportionately responded to low income neighborhoods, moreso for EMS calls which I suspect most of these are.

Now the real question ought to be what these calls tend to be for.

[Brett Bellmore]

Right. It would hardly be shocking if the fire department were making a lot of calls to extinguish small fires in a homeless encampment in the winter. If they're making calls for arson cases, that's completely different, and a lot more concerning.

[Michael P]

I agree it's not surprising -- it is a foreseeable result of encouraging that kind of mass encampment. I think the better question is whether the rate is high enough that government should revise policies to try to reduce the rate.

[bernard11]

Isn't it a foreseeable consequence of people lighting fires to stay warm?

[Michael P]

No, these are specifically for fires. The Seattle FD counts medical calls separately: https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/Fire/2021_Annual_Report_Web_FINAL.pdf (which is where I got the denominator for the 6%)

[Michael P]

$2 million bond seems like a lot compared to the flight risk of a relatively random person: https://katu.com/amp/news/nation-world/man-in-missing-lyft-driver-investigation-held-on-2m-cash-bond-human-remains-found-grand-theft-auto-larceny-stolen-property-ride-sharing-service-gary-levin-rutherford-county-north-carolina-kia-stinger-okeechobee-gainesville

... especially when he could just take a Lyft. (Too soon?)

[Noscitur a sociis]

Bail amounts in cases like this shouldn’t generally be parsed as “we think this guy will be safe and show up if he puts up a bunch of money”, but rather as “we think this guy should be in jail, and we’re pretty sure he doesn’t have that much money”. The amount of money used seems to vary widely between jurisdictions.

[David Nieporent]

But that's absolutely NOT THE PURPOSE OF BAIL. The purpose of bail is to get people out of jail. If you think the guy needs to be in jail either because he's an unacceptable flight risk or because he's too dangerous, then you should deny bail — not set a high bail.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I agree with you. Not every jurisdiction allows this outcome, but if they don't, they should.

[Michael P]

A Cochrane review says that wearing face masks probably doesn't help protect against COVID-19 or other respiratory illnesses, but hand washing helps somewhat: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full

[BravoCharlieDelta]

That won’t stop the maskholes and covidiots from wearing their face panties outside. It’s become part of their identity.

[David Nieporent]

Whereas being an asshole is your entire identity.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

It's the Paradox of Assolism.

You must be an asshole to the assholes.

[Frank Drackman]

Great comeback!

[Dr. Ed 2]

Fascists gotta be fascist.

[David Nieporent]

…says the man who wants the government to engage in mass murder.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It is not mass murder to use deadly force to enforce a law. Nor would it be "mass" because once you shot the first person, the rest would understand....

[shawn_dude]

Fascists gotta be fascist.

[David Nieporent]

It is not mass murder to use deadly force to enforce a law.

Yeah, it actually is.

[bernard11]

It is not mass murder to use deadly force to enforce a law.

"Stop, Mr. Jaywalker, or I'll shoot."

[Frank Drackman]

Define Fascism without looking it up "Dr"

[Dr. Ed 2]

"All sheep and no shepherd.
Everyone is the same, everyone wants to be the same.
Anyone who is different goes voluntarily to the madhouse."

As I *didn't* look it up, I'm not sure I have that quite exactly right, but it is at least close.

[Frank Drackman]

I had to look it up because in Med School we're taught not to use any words or abbreviations we can't explain without using the same word ("So Dr. Drackman, you said that the patient had no Borborygmi, can you explain what that is??"(the gurgling sounds in yo' belly)
from my favorite Worterbuch, Oxford Reference Dictionary,
Fascism: (N) "an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.2 (in general use) extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice. The term fascism was first used of the totalitarian right-wing nationalist regime of ...fascist n. fascistic adj.from Italian fascismo, from fascio 'bundle, political group,' from Latin fascis 'bundle.' ..."

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

I vehemently disagree -- Leonid Brezhnev was a fascist, and Nazi stood for National Socialism.

Fascism demands total conformity and total obedience -- that's why I use the Nietzsche quote. It has nothing to do with left or right.

[David Nieporent]

Nazi stood for National Socialism.

And the DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. That doesn't mean that it's a democracy.

[bevis the lumberjack]

That’s rich coming from Dr “shoot all the illegals” Ed. Self awareness is not a strength of yours, huh?

[BrotherMovesOn]

"I think we should shoot ILLEGAL aliens."

So what're your bagged and tagged stats so far Rambo Ed?

[Dr. Ed 2]

You fail to understand the difference between the lawful use of deadly force and "bagged & tagged."

[David Nieporent]

It is not a lawful use of deadly force to shoot a nonviolent person, whether that person is breaking the law or not.

[Nelson]

But what if you reeeeeeeally hate illegal immigrants? Then can you shoot unarmed adults and children?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Even if they're still on the Mexican side of the border.

[shawn_dude]

Huh. How about people who shoot a LEGAL alien by accident, thinking them to be ILLEGAL? Should we shoot them too?

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

Should we shoot them too?

Yes. That is how you encourage due diligence.

But since very few legal aliens cross the border at non-designated locations in the middle of the night, you probably wouldn't have to execute many enforcers.

[shawn_dude]

Asylum seekers are following the legally prescribed process even if they cross at night.

[Ben_]

"That won’t stop [some] from wearing [masks]..."

And they're 100% welcome to their preference. Now start acting like civilized adults and leave the rest of us to our own preferences.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Most civilized adults understand that it isn't always possible to act in accordance with your own preferences.

[Nige]

'The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions. There were additional RCTs during the pandemic related to physical interventions but a relative paucity given the importance of the question of masking and its relative effectiveness and the concomitant measures of mask adherence which would be highly relevant to the measurement of effectiveness, especially in the elderly and in young children.'

Ultimately the main reasons masks were ineffective is if people didn't wear them.

[Mr. Bumble]

Apparently you have not seen any pictures from China, where everyone was masked and Wuflu ran rampant well after it receeded to the background elsewhere.

[Nige]

But of course, masking alone is not sufficent, and no-one has ever claimed it was.

[Mr. Bumble]

When will you be applying for Fauci's open position?

[Nige]

And become a target for irrational right wing hate, lies and conspiracy theories and have Republicans demanding I go to jail just for doing my job? Not soon.

[Krayt]

When masks were first suggested people imnediately pointed out it wouldn't stop breathing in or out the virus. However, it would stop a good bit of sneeze or cough globules from landing on stuff, which could be touched and then conveyed to face. Also, it would stop touching the nose or mouth.

This was estimated to slow the spread by 40%, not great, but the goal was to slow the dangerous increase in hospital cases clogging intensive care units (and other lack of equipment, remember respirator shortages?)

[Nige]

Also, about 40% reduction is not, as it were, to be sneezed at.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

They made up 6ft for social distancing.

Just invented it. And you do it obediently.

[Nige]

Yeah, they came up with various strategies for dealing with a brand new highly contagious airborne virus and you stood on the sidelines and jeered while your politicians sabotaged every effort to protect lives and health, like a nasty little mob of overgrown brats.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

You think a person is supposed to obey the unelected bureaucratic dictats even when they are making up the rules and not ant science solely because these bureaucrats have good intentions?

What a perfect bootlicker you are. I bet you're genetically predisposed to be a serf and come from a long line of European peasants or Chinese peasants.

[Nige]

I think opposing public health meausres during a public health crisis, especially a developing health crisis when information is by its very nature unavoidably incomplete, beacuse doing so makes you feel like a big boy, is fucking dumb.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I know right? If it's an emergency then we should just obey the bureaucrats no matter the dictats! It's for our own good! Like when they order us to stay home for Xhristmas while they travel to visit family foe Xhristmas!

I think you've graduated from bootlicker to ball licker. You got the States balls firmly in your mouth and you come on these boards day after day to gently caress and tongue Authority's ballsack.

[Nige]

If it's a public health emergency it's an opportunity to spread conspiracy theories and whine about authoritarianism to your shrinking and increasingly paranoid base.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

You think more people trust our institutions or less people trust our institutions now?

Is that why you think my base is shrinking?

[Nige]

I think Republicans are trusted less as they have shown a willingness to actively sabotage public institutions and public health measures. I think it's shrisnking because of recent election results.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You think a person is supposed to obey the unelected bureaucratic dictats even when they are making up the rules and not ant science solely because these bureaucrats have good intentions? What a perfect bootlicker you are. I bet you’re genetically predisposed to be a serf and come from a long line of European peasants or Chinese peasants.

How do these disaffected, antisocial, delusional anti-government cranks -- the backbone of the Volokh Conspiracy audience -- manage to get through a day of stop signs, center lines, professional licensure, traffic lights, securities regulations, "no parking" signs, student vaccination requirements, street cleaning restrictions, "no nudity" rules, liquor licenses, burglary prohibitions, and other outrageous examples of government tyranny?

[David Nieporent]

The "dictats" [sic] came almost entirely from elected officials, not unelected bureaucrats.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The people at the CDC are elected?

[David Nieporent]

The CDC answers to the DHH, which is led by an official nominated and approved by elected officials.

True, but the larger point is that most of the things the pro-virus people like BCD whine about came from presidents and governors and mayors, not the CDC. The CDC largely — not entirely, but largely — did guidance, not orders.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

"Guidance"

That's all guys. It was all just guidance. The unelected civil servants were just bystanders in the pandemic and carry no fault!

[Life of Brian]

The CDC largely — not entirely, but largely — did guidance, not orders.

This might be a meaningful distinction if the vast majority of the actual orders had done something other than reference/incorporate the CDC's "guidance."

[Nige]

Elected officials should most definitely have been more foreceful about the recommendations, but they were and are frankly cowardly in the face of right wing malice and intransigence.

[Sarcastr0]

They found 6 feet had a benefit, and decided the benefit was sufficient.

No, they did not check the continuum between 0 feet and a mile. That doesn't mean the policy was bad.

Not that you actually care about this stuff enough to seriously engage; just another thing to be bitter and angry about.

[Michael P]

That's like how Congress "found" that mandatory insurance would help reduce medical bankruptcies: By pointing to a study that included out-of-pocket costs under health insurance, missing work due to illness, missing work to care for family members, and more, as "medical bankruptcies" -- because a more direct count of bankruptcies that might have been helped by having insurance came up with a too-small number in that very same study. That is, they picked a bad number even when they had a better number in the same source, because the bad number agreed with their priors.

[Sarcastr0]

a more direct count of bankruptcies that might have been helped by having insurance came up with a too-small number in that very same study
Dunno where you got this analysis, but it was not very good.

You coming after medical bankruptcies being a big deal? That will require a bit more support than this garbled story.
And you do know that out-of-pocket costs were something Obama care addressed, right?

This isn't even an important policymaking question to ask. Addressing the a reason for bankruptcies is still a good thing to do even if it isn't number one.

[bernard11]

Well, determining what is a medical bankruptcy can be tricky sometimes, but in many or most cases it's going to be straightforward. You are going along reasonably well, working, paying your bills, etc.

Then you get sick or have an accident and that strains your finances lots of ways. There are medical bills of course, but also lost wages for various reasons, care expenses. if all that pushes you over the edge then it's fair to call it a medical bankruptcy. And if insurance would have paid for some of that, so that you didn't go under, then yes, insurance would have prevented it.

[Absaroka]

Not really disagreeing, but I would raise an eyebrow a little if e.g. someone is living paycheck to paycheck but has a $70K Ford Raptor parked out front, then files for bankruptcy over a $10K medical bill.

That's not to say there aren't medical bankruptcies. During the Depression my grandmother almost died from beri-beri. Granddad was a mechanic but sold their only asset - his tools - to pay the hospital[1]. That moved the family down the socioeconomic ladder from skilled tradesman to sharecropper. Mom quit school at 15 and went to work to help. So I both A)agree there can be real problems and B)have seen people living paycheck to paycheck that wouldn't be if they were a little more careful with expenditures.

[1]Back then you didn't go bankrupt from medical bills, because the hospital could see you were poor and required payment up front.

[OtisAH]

And in this Raptor, are they eating lobster and having water-Gun fights with a case of Cristal?

[Absaroka]

More Bud Lite, I think. If you have never driven through an Appalachian holler and seen expensive trucks parked outside singlewides with blue tarps on the roof, you should take a field trip.[3]

Or, to be evenhanded about it, we could talk about our next door neighbors in the Section 8 house who blinged out their Mercedes (admittedly, an older one) with the gold plate[1] treatment – gold door handles, gold hood ornament, gold wire rims, etc.

If you think poor people are never poor because they are spendthrifts …. you haven’t lived in many poor neighborhoods.[2]

[1]I was going to say it probably wasn’t real gold, but a moment’s googling shows actual gold plating is actually a thing. ETA: I also don't think they were poor ... I think they were running an...ahem...cash based business.
[2]The same is true if you think people are always only poor because they are spendthrifts. You spend 20 years in the steel mill, where the previous generation lived good lives, then the steel mills go into decline. It’s easy to say you should move to SF and learn to code, but you have family obligations, yadda. I was really lucky to get into programming when the elevator was going up, but that’s luck, not skill.
[3]I wonder about the psychology. Is it “I’ll never be able to afford a nice house, but by God I can get a nice truck no money down, and I’m going to have one nice thing in my life”? I just dunno.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Whatserfaces book has that confession where she said they literally made it up.

Why are you lying?

[Brett Bellmore]

It's always an arms race between pathogens and the human immune system. The problem with masking is that, if you can't in the meanwhile stop the pandemic, the pathogen keeps evolving, and your defenses don't keep up with it.

And then when the fabric dam breaks, you've got an unprepared population facing a leveled up pathogen. Which is what we saw in China. Sweden took the exact opposite approach, and things worked out pretty well there.

Now, some pathogens are down evolutionary dead ends, and aren't capable of substantially evolving; Smallpox, for instance. And in cases like that, masking is a pretty good strategy. Other pathogens are highly seasonal, and if you can get through the season you're good until next year. The flu is like that.

But Covid was hardly such a virus.

Unfortunately for the Chinese, they're ruled by professional control freaks who are psychologically incapable of recognizing situations where the amount of control available to them is simply not enough, and a more nuanced approach is necessary.

[Nige]

China is the result of a global failure to deal with a global crisis. Keeping your population in permanent lockdown while most of the rest of the world gives up and lets it run unchecked developing multiple variants with absolutely no effort to effectively contain it? Yeah, that dam is going to break sooner or later with disastrous consequences. Global total covid deaths stand at over six and a half million, and I expect there are countries whose figures undersell it. Total US deaths are at one point one million. That's after two years.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The entire world shutdown for two weeks because that's what your idols said will solve the problem.

I loathe bootlicking liars like you. Even more so if you're not on some commie payroll doing this for a few remnabi and a bag a rice but instead are doing this because you genuinely worship the people of the State.

[Sarcastr0]

The entire world shutdown for two weeks because that’s what your idols said will solve the problem.

Didn't happen.

You don't seem to have a healthy relationship with Internet message boards. If you're not having fun, I recommend logging off.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

There wasn't a two weeks to slow the spread shutdown?

What credentials do you have to diagnose me?

[Nige]

The entire world shut down because pandemic preparedness was allowed to lapse, and then because responses were shambolic and inconsistent across the world lockdowns ended and the virus was still circulating, while cynical populists fed on lies and conspiracy theories and seized on every lapse and mistake to undermine even that, because that's how the right keeps its ravenous base fed.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

So the public health bureaucrats failed us by not being prepared?

[Nige]

It's government that enact and support policies and intitiatives like pandemic preparedness.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Who inside the government does the work of preparedness and did they fail us?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Those functions not done anywhere else?

[Nige]

'Who'

Nobody if the government doesn’t authorise and fund them.

[Nige]

They didn't say it would solve the problem. They said it would protect people and reduce spread while it was in effect.

[Brett Bellmore]

Look, what happened in China is not everyone else's fault. They didn't actually keep Covid contained in China, with the outbreak being a result of it returning from outside. The Covid numbers China has been publishing all along have been bad fiction, it was rampaging through large parts of the country all along. They just kept it suppressed enough in much of the country to retain an immunologically naive population. The dam would have broken in China eventually even if the rest of the world hadn't existed.

Sure, if the rest of the world had, impossibly, managed to beat Covid down, the Chinese might have gotten away with their total lockdown strategy. And the entire world would have gone into a global depression that would have made the Great Depression look like a hiccup. That sort of total lock down strategy is an economic and human disaster, and only a total police state like China can do it in the first place!

You can imagine a situation where governments all over the world have enforced rules requiring people to have several months of supplies in their homes, and set up everything so that you could put everybody into total and complete lockdown for an extended period; Major changes to the way utilities operate, for instance. In such a world you could have curb stomped Covid in a month.

We don't live in that world, I hope you realize. Nobody is actually in a position to lock down hard enough to actually stop a pandemic in its tracks, and doing it locally just leads to the consequences I pointed out above.

[Nige]

The world failed to beat covid down because despite warnings and predictions that sooner or later something like this was going to come along, governments ignored, neglected and underfunded national and international pandemic preperations, and had no contingiencies prepared to deal with an airborne virus, having to start from scratch and mostly make it up as they went along. But of course, pandemic preperations are just some sort of secret authoritarian plot, like preparing for the effects of the climate crisis.

[Brett Bellmore]

Government can be underprepared for real problems, and then use real problems as an excuse to let their inner dictators loose. In fact, the two are both expressions of the people in government doing something other than their real job.

[Nige]

They can, in theory and with mind-reading and bad-faith inferences, but unless you’re making a serious argument that this is the case with covid, then you’re just making excuses not to preparefor or respond to crises. Given that government has literally given up while thousands continue to die every week, I find this ‘inner dictator’ thing unpersuasive. It is just as dictatorial to claim that a crisis is not occurring and everyone should carry on as normal and pretend people aren’t dying by the score and anyone who claims otherwise is out to undermine your freedoms, which has been the right wing approach to this entire thing.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, I would make a serious argument for this in regards to Covid, in two particulars.

1) Covid was used as an excuse to force changes to election practices the Democratic party had wanted for years, and force them extra-legally in many cases. Long after most of society had adapted or returned to normal practices, so entirely unnecessarily.

2) The eviction moratorium hugely favored tenants over landlords, a political preference of the left. The basis for it was mostly pretextual, and it went on long, long after there was any excuse for it.

What the heck, a couple more

3) Covid was used as an excuse to permanently increase federal spending, and make massive direct handouts to the public. I ought to know, I got thousands in Covid checks myself, though I never needed the help. And it was a real pain turning down that advance on my tax refund, too. (Procedurally, I mean; They did NOT make it easy to avoid getting it.) I expect a lot of people were shocked when they did their taxes, and found out it was an advance, not free money.

4) Covid excused restrictions on gatherings were very subject to political bias.

[Nige]

1. I'd say a deadly virus was a perfectly valid reason to make election practices safer.

2. You;d have to be pretty Victorian to think that allowing more people to become homeless during a pandemic is good policy.

3. Itr makes sense that federal spending increses to help the same people you claim to care about in difficulties because of lockdowns, but let's not forget it was fucking jared Kushner who pissed away the most federal funding on pals amd donors and supporters.

4. So everyone keeps saying, but a gathering of people who observed safe distancing and wore masks is going to get more leeway than one that doesn't, and since you decided that not doing either was now your political purpose, that's on you.

[bernard11]

Covid was used as an excuse to force changes to election practices the Democratic party had wanted for years, and force them extra-legally in many cases.

No Brett. There was nothing extra-legal about it, your deep understanding of the PA constitution notwithstanding.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

So the people in government failed us?

[Nige]

Fuck yeah, but you helped them do it. .

[BravoCharlieDelta]

How so?

[Nige]

Every single baseless conspiracy theory you pushed or lie you told about masking, social distancing, the vaccine helped kill people.

[Ben_]

Even after suffering for years of lockdown, everyone in China got Covid anyway.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

I find it surprising that the epidemiologists didn't get the same information you did at your engineering school regarding epidemiology.

I guess they should've gone to engineering school instead eh?

Oh, my mistake. This is you believing yourself to be an expert on everything again.

Just like your flu statistics last week which I corrected you on. I don't recall you ever coming back to that comment and acknowledging your mistake though?

[Dr. Ed 2]

asks are like screen doors on submarines -- the virus is 1/10th the diameter of the mask mesh.

[Brett Bellmore]

Dr. Ed, if the virus were utterly aerosolized as individual virons, that might matter. As it's actually suspended in bodily fluids, in droplets that are much larger than the virons, that's not the real problem.

The real problem is actually the fit; Really only medical professionals wear masks tightly fitting enough to be more than cosmetic in the face of a virus.

The other problem is that the virus has enough other routes for transmission that just masking effectively wouldn't do much anyway. That's why medical professionals also wear eye protection and gloves, and do enough hand washing that they're perpetually fighting dry skin.

[Don Nico]

Brett,
There are no confirmed cases of non-airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Certainly, there must have been some, but air-borne transmission was the strongly dominant pathway

[DaveM]

If people want to wear masks, that’s fine by me, it used to be a free country and it still could be one again. Speaking for myself, once I learned the facts of how physically small each virus particle is, what the difference in scale is between water droplets and water vapor, and how many billions virus of particles are distributed in the water vapor of each infected person's breath over the course of a day, it was immediately obvious to me that masks were only going to offer incidental protection.

I found all this out in an afternoon, about two weeks after the national lockdowns were imposed. It wasn't hard or difficult to understand. I stopped wearing a mask any time I could choose to do so from that time until now, because I had concluded that a respiratory viral infection is simply not going to be stopped with physical barriers whose gaps are thousands of times larger than the particles themselves. Rocket science, it isn't.

[Sarcastr0]

once I learned the facts of how physically small each virus particle is, what the difference in scale is between water droplets and water vapor, and how many billions virus particles are distributed in vapor by each infected person over the course of a day, it was immediately obvious that masks were only going to offer incidental protection.

I mean, Covid doesn’t transmit as a naked virus, so this is wrong. But America did decide that letting people be wrong and act accordingly was what we would do, public health burden aside.

The outcome was not great, deaths-wise, but our economy did quite well relatively speaking. I wish we'd made that policy choice with our eyes open, not because of idiots screaming tyranny. But here we are.

[DaveM]

Quite so, it transmits in each breath you take and then hangs around in the air, so its reach is much greater, obviously.

Your comment that "we did quite well, actually" probably wouldn't go over very well in the parts of the country where people lost their livelihoods, their parents, and their education. Not all suffered equally, that's for sure.

[Sarcastr0]

You seem to have wandered from your original point about virus size here...

[DaveM]

The size of the particle is the physical fact that made all the non-medical interventions rather pointless. That's the connection.

[Nige]

The particle doesn't actually fly about on its own, you know.

[Sarcastr0]

It would, if you had the relevant size right. Which you do not.

[Life of Brian]

What's the relevant size, then?

[Life of Brian]

Yeah, that's what I figured.

[David Nieporent]

The relevant size is the size of the droplets in which the virus floats through the air.

[Sarcastr0]

Covid doesn’t transmit as a naked virus, so this is wrong.
Do you deny this is true?

No new goalposts.

[Life of Brian]

The relevant size is the size of the droplets in which the virus floats through the air.

That'd be correct if droplets were the only carrier. But as OP correctly said, the virus is also carried in much smaller vapor/aerosol particles. Faced with that, Sarc was left to... erm, "misread" OP to say the virus traveled through the air on its own and declare his own straw man not to be the "relevant size."

He (and I presume you) won't put a number on the "relevant size," because then that would simply reinforce OP's point that masks ain't gonna make a meaningful dent in the problem.

[Sarcastr0]

as OP correctly said, the virus is also carried in much smaller vapor/aerosol particles

Not what the OP said ("how physically small each virus particle is").

And also what do you think vapor and aerosol particles are?

He (and I presume you) won’t put a number on the “relevant size,” because then that would simply reinforce OP’s point that masks ain’t gonna make a meaningful dent in the problem.
Masks are established to be effective as a layer of defense. The very fact that you need to sit here and play bullshit semantic games rather than discuss the actual nut of the issue shows that.

It also shows your usual bad faith.

[Life of Brian]

Not what the OP said (“how physically small each virus particle is”).

Speaking of bad faith: you crop-quoted OP's "and how many billions virus particles are distributed in vapor by each infected person over the course of a day."

His statement was plenty clear to those wanting to understand it. Your feigned ignorance is tiring.

Masks are established to be effective as a layer of defense.

Not in the real world, unless you're diluting the meaning of "layer" to make it essentially meaningless. So the assumptions they made in the lab experiments (particle size, fitment, etc.) are incorrect, and thus the results are irrelevant to real-world policy.

[Don Nico]

David,
"droplets" denotes something differenet from and larger that the aerosol sizes

[shawn_dude]

The airborne transmission of humanity is measured in size based on the airplane and not a single person inside of it.

[Don Nico]

As sensible as other things that you post

[Nige]

'Not all suffered equally, that’s for sure.'

Cnsequence of profound societal inequalities, obviously, but viruses don't care about that. Bit like Republicans, really.

[DaveM]

No, I'm not talking about the virus, I'm talking about the non-medical interventions. The virus affected everyone equally. The lockdowns did not. That's the point.

[Nige]

I was talking about those, too. If you have massive social inequalities and you allow them to fester, using them as an excuse not to respond to a public health crisis is cynical in the extreme.

[Nige]

'it was immediately obvious to me that masks were only going to offer incidental protection.'

Depends on the masks, but wearing masks was supposed to be one of a number of measures which combined to reduce the risk of spread.

[DaveM]

Was "supposed to be one of a number of measures to reduce the risk of spread", but physically it could not do so. That's the thing to ponder.

[Nige]

Of course it could only do so if people actually wore masks.

[David Bremer]

This is the thing that the anti-maskers still seem incapable of understanding. The issue isn't about stopping vs. not stopping. It's about the rate of transmission.

By wearing masks (of various levels of effectiveness), we could at least reduce the number of particles that floated about in the room. That would affect the likelihood that you would breathe in a sufficient number of particles to get sick (getting exposed to too few meant your body's defense could step in before getting sick). It also meant that even if you were exposed, the level of exposure could be lower (since higher levels of exposure correlated with severity of illness).

Were masks perfect? No. Do masks reduce viral loads and spread? The studies on this says they do, albeit with varying levels of effectiveness depending on the mask and user. Had we paired that with other measures, such as better filtration and air turnover, we would have done even better.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"The studies on this says they do, albeit with varying levels of effectiveness depending on the mask and user."

Not according to this analysis:

"Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI)/COVID‐19 like illness compared to not wearing masks..."

[Nige]

That's the same study I quoted above.

[Don Nico]

From your analysis: "The use of a N95/P2 respirators compared to medical/surgical masks probably makes little or no difference for the objective and more precise outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza infection"
That conclusion is highly suspect if one has any idea of the transmission through properly worn N95 respirators. When one compares the transmission efficiency in rigorous physical tests that do not allow for improper wearing procedures, the results are vastly different.

[Life of Brian]

properly worn N95 respirators.

This very much reminds me of "of course true socialism works -- it's just never been tried." If N95s don't work in the real world as worn, it really doesn't matter what researches purport to measure on mannequins under lab conditions.

[Sarcastr0]

I guess you're not arguing in bad faith. You buy your own pettifogging.

I don't know if you're a lawyer, but you sure aren't a scientist. Hint - efficacy is not a step function.

Same shit as the 'it's not a vaccine if it's not sterilizing immunity.'

[Life of Brian]

Hint – efficacy is not a step function.

Hint — cutesy straw men don’t advance the discussion. There are all sorts of interventions that have non-zero efficacy but also have downsides vastly disproportional to that efficacy. The benefits of masks were oversold to get over that threshold — you know that and I know that, so no need for the coy posturing.

Same shit as the ‘it’s not a vaccine if it’s not sterilizing immunity.’

You might occasionally stop, count to 10, and think before you click the submit button — it could cut back on particularly silly stuff like this. The question here is not what label to apply to masks, but whether they meaningfully work. So yes, Virginia, “they don’t meaningfully work if they don’t meaningfully work.”

[Social Justice is neither]

So evidence of NO effectiveness is just blithely ignored because it's inconvenient to the leftist religious tenets.

[Nige]

Claims of such evidence are blithely ignored, or treated skeptically, because we're used to the lies.

[shawn_dude]

You keep saying the mask could not impact transmission of COVID and yet every hospital in the country used them to effectively protect their medical staff.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

it used to be a free country

Disaffected, virus-flouting right-wing misfits who pine for illusory good old days are among my favorite culture war casualties.

These clingers can't be replaced -- by better Americans -- soon enough.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

r/confidentlyincorrect would like to hear your story, lol.

I notice that you've avoided all the remarks about your ignorance regarding the size of the water droplets that carry covid versus the size of the holes in your understanding of things - I mean, masks.

[Don Nico]

Dave, listen to what S_O said. He is correct you are mistaken.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Covid has only exacerbated something which has been building for the past 20 years -- Health Departments bypassing both due process and civil rights with their fiats.

[Sarcastr0]

Did polio write this comment?

[David Bremer]

It is funny just how many stories about masking from 1919 were recycled 100 years later.

[Ben_]

Anti-polio measures weren’t undertaken to intentionally make Americans' lives worse.

And diseases that cripple and kill toddlers aren’t the same as something that threatens 96-year-olds.

[Sarcastr0]

You continue to argue with the liberals in your own fevered brain. Apparently you're also making up your own Covid stats, and even so cannot hide how you are okay with grandma dying for your inchoate freedoms.

No one is intentionally making anyone's lives worse. Your obsession with this narrative remains deeply weird.

[Ben_]

Intentional actions that are taken knowing the result will be worse lives for Americans.

[Sarcastr0]

You can repeat your nonsense; doesn't make it more true.

[Ben_]

It’s definitely true though.

[Nige]

Over six and a half million 96 year olds have died worldwide.

[Ben_]

Also, look for polio to make a big comeback now that public health officials have established themselves as enemies of the general public.

[Sarcastr0]

That will not be the fault of public health officials, but of the right using anti-vaxx bullshit as red meat.

[Ben_]

A direct consequence of public health officials deciding to lie to everyone.

[Sarcastr0]

Ben you have agency to not be an asshole and make threats about letting polio become a thing again because you hate the Dems so much.

You have the power, you can do it!

[Ben_]

Public health officials can begin to get their credibility back by admitting they were wrong, apologizing unreservedly for all the lies, and asking forgiveness for their purposeful wrongdoing and all the harm it caused.

People won’t listen to them otherwise. We learned our lesson. (Democrats didn’t learn, of course. Habitually denying reality and substituting phony narratives means you can’t learn from events.)

[Sarcastr0]

It's not their credibility that's actually damaged - it's purely right-wing partisans that have decided it is.
That's not the same thing. That's on you and your ilk.

That you demanded groveling says a lot about what kind of person you are.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Health" has actually been a long standing excuse for dictators to exercise unreviewable power. Usually it's been mental health, though.

But, yes, there's a real problem here, which is that pandemic measures actually ARE a traditional hole in civil liberties protections, going back a long, long time. They didn't invent that hole for Covid, they just drove a wedge into it and started hammering like mad.

But the actual, demonstrable existence of that hole makes it hard for the courts to engage these sorts of abuses.

[Nige]

'“Health” has actually been a long standing excuse for dictators to exercise unreviewable power. Usually it’s been mental health, though. '

If they're dictators they already have unreviewable power though, and pretty much everything they do is an exercise in unreviewable power and singling out 'health' just because you don't want to acknowledge a public health crisis is disingenuous.

[Brett Bellmore]

Nige, even most dictators don't have God Emperor levels of control. They have to provide excuses for what they do, to avoid a critical mass of outrage. They're constantly suppressing proto-rebellions, that's what having a secret police is all about, after all: Catching the rebels BEFORE they do something public and it starts snowballing.

Stop thinking of dictators as having absolute control. They're more like somebody riding a unicycle while juggling; They're coping with radically unstable situations that could blow up in their faces if they ever miss something.

Dictators don't have absolute power, they survive by maintaining the illusion of it.

[Nige]

Yeah, and? Unless you are claiming that there was no covid pandemic, no global public health crisis, no necessity for public health measures, then you're just masturbating.

[Sarcastr0]

Brett, if anything has been the perennial dictatorial excuse, it’s pointing at the other side and saying they want to dictate you harder.

Sound familiar?

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, stupid, but familiar, if only because I read your comments.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm an institutionalist incrementalist. Not going to find a dictator here.

You're the one yelling about secret tyrannical liberal cabals that require government intervention to keep us free all the time.

If the weird military uniform and sunglasses fit, wear them.

[Commenter_XY]

I'd buy institutionalist; but not incrementalist. Sorry Sarcastr0, an incrementalist you ain't. No sir.

[Sarcastr0]

I could be wrong. Self categorization is not free from error.

What sweeping changes do I advocate for?

[Commenter_XY]

Obamacare.

[Sarcastr0]

That's the status quo, Commenter.

Calling existing, now longstanding, policy radical is...much dumber than you usually operate.

You know what would be radical at this point? Repeal.

[Commenter_XY]

A policy rooted in controversy and constant litigation since 2011. Not exactly longstanding, Sarcastr0. But it did prove my point about you not being an incrementalist. 😉

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think you're right.

A policy "rooted in controversy and constant litigation since 2011" is not necessarily radical. Controversial != radical.

The GOP has also shown that their supposed opposition is just playacting many times, so controversial is even questionable.

[bevis the lumberjack]

The New Green Clusterfuck.
Massive Student Loan Forgiveness.

Take your pick.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't even know what's in the GND.

And I've said many times I like the student loan forgiveness as a policy, but I also think it lacks authority.

You have a bad habit of rewriting my positions into less nuanced and thus easier to argue against points.

[bevis the lumberjack]

The GND is essentially Biden’s energy policy, although he has yet to shut down air travel. It’s a massive change and you defend it wholeheartedly.

[Sarcastr0]

The GND is essentially Biden’s energy policy.

So essentially made my antenae go up.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/green-new-deal-joe-biden-climate-change-plan/
The bottom line is that while many of the concepts in the Green New Deal are also addressed in Biden's climate plan, generally speaking the Biden plan is more narrowly focused and less expensive.

[Nige]

‘It’s a massive change and you defend it wholeheartedly.’

It doesn’t go anywhere near far enough. This is like if you were getting mad at rather modest proposals for global pandemic preparedness in early 2019.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I don't want to post the actual facts here, but I know of a case where "health" (not "mental health") was grounds to break into someone's house and literally steal everything of value.

Apparently looting is now legal.

And an Eagle Scout will be burning the US Flag on the Fourth of July -- which will be legal because as the boy scout troop is permitted to burn them to "retire" them, they have to permit *anyone* to burn the US flag in that venue (for any reason) -- something I don't think they have thought about.

Simple things like "Due Process" are meaningless -- and of what merit does law have when the state has such an easy end-run around it?

[Sarcastr0]

So a vaguer than usual story from Ed.

Followed by an off-topic discussion of the Flag Code, with the requisite jumping to conclusions.

Kick ass, dude!

[David Nieporent]

I don’t want to post the actual facts here,

Yes, we've noticed that over the years.

[Nige]

Seems to have actually exacerbated a political movement that has decided it is against preparing for and responding to disasters at scale, even refusing to acknowledge those disasters as real until it’s too late, preferring to suggest they are somehow engineered as pretexts for power grabs by assorted groups.

[Moderation4ever]

Good response. The fact is we knew an event like the COVID19 pandemic was possible and yet were unprepared. The Trump administration in 2018 restructured group designated to prepare for pandemic, effectively eliminating the group. Worse yet we had an incompetent administration unable to handle the situation as it developed.

[Mr. Bumble]

You mean the CDC and NIH and Fauci and company?
And of course the FDA.

[Michael P]

Fact check: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/10/fact-check-white-house-didnt-fire-pandemic-response-2018/3437356001/

(Obama created the team, his administration agreed it was bloated, it was always redundant and overhead, and the productive members of it continued to coordinate from other public health teams in other agencies.)

[David Nieporent]

"He didn't fire all of the individual members of the team; he just disbanded the team itself" is kind of a weak defense.

And, no, the Obama administration did not agree that the pandemic team was bloated. You need to read more carefully. They — actually, some officials, not the administration — said that the NSC as a whole had gotten too bloated. Not necessarily because of this particular unit.

[Michael P]

When the original accusation was "effectively eliminating the group", the difference between having pandemic preparedness and response as part of an integrated function versus the Obama approach of a silo is an important distinction to keep in mind. Apparently you guys are fans of silo organizations.

[Nige]

I wouldn't even single out Trump for that. At least he got the vaccines moving. The whole world failed.

[Moderation4ever]

What I am singling out is that fact that all the hindsight analysis of the pandemic overlooks the fact that the Trump administration's incompetence with regard to the epidemic. Blame is casually thrown around but rarely at former President, who certainly deserves his share. The American people better understood this and fired him in the 2020 election.

The develop of the vaccine was a plus, but we also know that they had never develop any plans to distribute the vaccine. Taking that vaccine and getting to the public fell completely to the next administration.

[Michael P]

The left howled endlessly that Trump's response was incompetent, usually between saying people should continue to go out to crowded public places like Chinatown before the lockdowns started and that we needed to be prepared for years of lockdowns before a vaccine was ready.

[Brett Bellmore]

What you're actually complaining about is that Trump actually took federalism seriously, and thought that states were responsible for a lot of things, and so left them to states to do.

[Moderation4ever]

This is kind of hindsight analysis I am complaining about, "Trump left if up to the states". No, the Trump administration was incompetent and states were stepping up to deal with the fact they were getting poor support from the Federal government. You are mistaking chaos for federalism and they are not the same.

[Nige]

An utterly irresponsible approach to dealing with a highly contagious disease, but then again there wasn't even a NATIONAL pandemic preparedness plan, let alone an international one. Trying to turn that into some sort of virtue is a fucking joke.

[Nige]

Trump was incompetent and Kushner was corrupt and incompetent, but actually even they weren’t as corrupt and incompetent as the UK government. The only thing they got right was the vaccine rollout, which they then screwed up by lifting restrictions too soon.

[ducksalad]

For once Nige said something I can agree with.

Countries run by erratic blowhards got Covid. Countries run by progressive technocrats got Covid. Countries run by brutal dictators got Covid. Countries run by faux communists got Covid. Countries run by real communists got Covid. Countries run by nativist populists got Covid. Countries ruled by traditional monarchs got Covid. Countries run by clerics got Covid. Failed states not run by anybody got Covid.

Government just didn’t have a lot to do with the disease itself.

[Brett Bellmore]

Some countries failed less than others. I'd say that Sweden hit the sweet spot.

But "failed" tends to suggest something it was possible to succeed at, and in this case "success" was only a theoretical possibility, not a practical one.

China, when they realized they were screwed, made sure that the rest of the world would be screwed with them, and saw to it that the bug got out in a big way before anybody was warned. Expedited foreigners leaving, without warning about the virus, while controlling internal travel to slow its spread in China.

And, yeah, there are things everybody in the developed world could be doing better, to prepare in advance for pandemics. I'd definitely agree with that. But success wasn't possible with Covid thanks to China. It was already in basically every country of any size by the time we knew it existed.

[Nige]

'I’d definitely agree with that. But success wasn’t possible with Covid thanks to China.'

No success wasn't possible because there was no international or national pademic preparedness and an entire political movement clustered itself around a rejection of emergency measures during an emergency while spreading the most appalling lies and disinformation.

[Ben_]

But once it was all over China it probably couldn’t be contained there. Maybe it could, but not likely.

Anything anyone did just changed the timing of when people got Covid. Every argument that someone should have done something more —well, every population where they did more, all the people there got Covid anyway.

[DaveM]

I'd say this differently, that our response to COVID has only exacerbated something which has been building: our public health agencies are incompetent and politicized.

[OtisAH]

I’m going to throw caution and prudence to the wind and declare yours the stupidest post of the day. Congrats.

[AmosArch]

Weird, the commenting system seems to be broken in a way that I can post and reply to some posts but not others.

[AmosArch]

testing, interesting so I can reply to some of my posts but either I can't for others for some reason or its simply not appearing in specific posts.

[Mr. Bumble]

How long before Nige yells "I've got blisters on my fingers" and has to quit posting his BS responses to everything?

[Moderation4ever]

Hopefully a long time. You can quit anytime you like.

[BrotherMovesOn]

Bumble, the effiminate, annoying little troll.
She's not a girl who misses much.

[Nige]

How dare you assault muh freeze peach like this.

[Sarcastr0]

Congrats on acquiring an Internet commenting enemy.

It's a very lame thing to do; please don't track that in here.

[Frank Drackman]

I got your Helter Skelter reference, just flew in from Miami Beach BOAC.

[Armchair Lawyer]

So, about that Chinese Spy Balloon....

To review.
1. A Chinese spy balloon, the size of "3 school buses" overflies the continental US, including close or overhead of several critical national security installations.
2. Biden "doesn't" order it shot down, until it's completed the entire route. He blames the military for this?
3. The Biden says "Oh, that happened multiple times under the Trump administration, and they did nothing"
4. Multiple Trump administration officials say "No, we never saw anything like this"
5. Then Biden goes "Oh, we didn't discover it until you all left your jobs".

I mean...this baffles any reasonable judgement. The Spy Balloon, and not shooting it down until it was too late...that's a dumb Biden mistake. But then blaming Trump, because something "similar" happened? That takes this to a whole new level of stupid.

[Moderation4ever]

Shooting the balloon down is merely an exercise to appeal to one's pride. The fact is that the military has known about the balloons for a long time and has used that time to study the strategy. I suspect they would have allowed this balloon to pass by also had it not been spotted.

We know in WWII that when the British broke the Enigma code, they did not rush out and use that knowledge openly. We have stories of Churchill allowing Coventry to be bombed rather than revel that Enigma was broke. Spycraft is not as simple as politics.

[Armchair Lawyer]

"The fact is that the military has known about the balloons for a long time"

But then....didn't tell the civilian leadership under the Trump administration? Is that your viewpoint?

[Michael P]

He is just making shit up. The military's public statements have been extremely evasive about how long they have recognized these spy balloons. The political appointees' public statements have been extremely misleading about it, to encourage hot takes like M4e's.

The Biden administration planned to ignore this balloon so that Blinken could go on his junket to China -- but when some random American revealed it, we would have lost face by pretending it was a tolerable event. That is as important to remember as the fact that the military apparently didn't recognize these as spy balloons until Biden took office.

[Bob from Ohio]

"The fact is that the military has known about the balloons for a long time"

LOL You believed those very convenient lies!

[John F. Carr]

It's a Gary Powers moment. China will have to change strategies.

[Nige]

'4. Multiple Trump administration officials say “No, we never saw anything like this”
5. Then Biden goes “Oh, we didn’t discover it until you all left your jobs”.'

So it did happen multiple times but was so inconsequential nobody noticed or cared?

[Longtobefree]

I just love the premise that after Trump left, they invented a balloon detecting technology that could even tell where a balloon went in the past.
Multiple 'on the record' quotes from identified, verifiable, sources .vs an anonymous source in a publication documented to lie and make shit up; I know who I believe.

[Nige]

'they invented a balloon detecting technology that could even tell where a balloon went in the past.'

Or they just checked the records.

[AmosArch]

Everyone could see the Biden balloon vs the supposed trump balloons so even if you buy everything Biden said detecting taking a balloon everyone else notices too does not exactly prove you are stronger than the guy who had balloons nobody noticed.

[David Nieporent]

"Too late" for what?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Too late to prevent it from gathering intelligence about our ICBM silos, among other things.

[Absaroka]

I'm genuinely curious - what intelligence do you think a balloon can gather about the silos? It's not like the location is secret; you drive right by them out there.

I'm not saying they weren't having a look - the flight path apparently went over them. But I'm at a loss what intelligence you could gather.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

ELINT would be useful from that altitude. Not just capturing the signals, but also able to triangulate their origin to various degrees.

[Absaroka]

ELINT in general is the speculation I have heard, but ELINT about silos?? They aren't real big emitters, AFAIK. And if you want to sniff them, you can just drive your pickup out into the National Forest and park by one.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

For various reasons, it is unlikely that they were specifically interested in the bunkers.

There are other services involved in the Missileer field that use electronics (support services, including security and other things). There are also other things that a balloon can capture while lingering over the area that a satellite can only make educated guesses on related to the deployment, travel times, and routes of those other services.

[Absaroka]

Maybe. But if you could also just rent a house or park on the side of the road to learn when the crews rotate or whatever. It's not like the missile fields are some big off limits area. We have relatives in Great Falls, and you see them all the time.

Wikipedia has helpfully mapped them. They aren't 60000 ft off the roads, or 60000 ft away from houses.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You are approaching this as though there is only one intended target here, and that it's nice and easy to smuggle in sophisticated spying equipment into an Air B&B.

[Absaroka]

"You are approaching this as though there is only one intended target here"

I am approaching this as though I was asking what they could learn about silos. That's why I said "I’m genuinely curious – what intelligence do you think a balloon can gather about the silos?" right up there at the top.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

As I answered above, it is unlikely that they were focused on the bunkers.

[shawn_dude]

Thank goodness they have balloons and not satellites with high powered cameras that swoop overhead regularly!

Oh... wait.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Are you really dumb enough to suggest that a camera taking photos from 70,000ft can’t have better resolution than one taking photos from 50x further away?

[shawn_dude]

What level of resolution is required to identify military facilities with massive missile doors dotted around them? With acres of fencing, guards, etc? If identifying missile silo locations was the goal (the comment I responded to), then you don't need anything closer than your standard spy satellite.

But, you know, don't let that take the air out of your strawman.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I have no idea what the Chinese could or couldn't discover with these balloons. But there they were, floating over the country. Do you think there was a purpose for them other than spying? The whole thing is quite puzzling to me.

[Sarcastr0]

I, for one, welcome our new Chinese Balloon Overlords.

[Michael P]

Of course you do.

[Armchair Lawyer]

He does prefer the Chinese overlords. They've got lot to admire for Sarcastro.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, I'm a big giant pinko commie.

You are very smart.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Nah you just like hating on religious minorities like the Chinese do.

[Sarcastr0]

Fuck dem Zorastrians.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Nah, with you it’s typically the Christians and Jews. Chinese don't like them Christians either. You've got that in common with them.

[Sarcastr0]

I am a Christian.

[shawn_dude]

Nothing says "religious minority" like a Christian in the USA.

[Bob from Ohio]

"size of “3 school buses”

How many penguins is that? I only recognize the Penguin System

"2 asteroids the size of 22 penguins to pass Earth this weekend - NASA
Both asteroids 2023 AT and 2023 AE1 are as much as 22 meters wide, meaning 22 emperor penguins. They won't hit us though – penguins are more likely to. By AARON REICH Published: JANUARY 19, 2023 16:04

[ragebot]

5. Then Biden goes “Oh, we didn’t discover it until you all left your jobs”.

I have seen posts claiming that what Biden's overlords who control him discovered was that old fashion spies in China provided intel that for some time (including during the Trump administration) China had been using balloons to spy all over the world but were sorta careful to not do it too close to the US where the chance of being discovered was higher than over third world countries. Note that the powers that be keep blabbing about a balloon sorta crossing/coming close to Florida but are vague about the details. Thing is Cuba is close to Florida and there is a massive China presence in Cuba (last time I flew from Havana in 2016 to Nassau it was on a plane owned by China on a regular flight) so if a balloon was over Cuba it would be close to Florida. Also keep in mind that the US still has Fat Albert; in fact several Fat Alberts keeping an eye on the Florida Straights for as long as I can remember.

https://bigpinekey.com/blimp-fat-albert-history/

[ragebot]

If this is so top-secret then why is the road it’s on named Blimp Road? (as seen below) OK, at one time it was top-secret but you know what… having two Blimps bigger than the Goodyear Blimp in the air at one time a mile or so off of the busiest road in the Florida Keys tends to give away any secrets you might have had! Drive down the aptly named Blimp Road at Mile Marker 21 to the very end and you’ll pass the world’s smallest US Airforce Base that houses these out-of-place occupants.
https://shoestringweekends.wordpress.com/2021/05/26/top-secret/

[gVOR08]

1. The balloon shows up in the press and GOPS start screaming about the yellow menace and Biden better shoot it down.
2. Biden shoots it down and GOPs scream he waited too long, or he shouldn’t have, or otherwise yeah he did it but he didn’t do it right.
3. Then it turns out this has happened before, on Trump’s watch. So naturally there’s a charge that they didn’t care then but they do now.
4. Then it comes out that there were earlier balloons but they weren’t recognized as such until later. Later being undefined.
5. So now the Trump guys are off the hook for not acting at the time.
6. But now the Bulwark’s William Saletan has quotes from Trump admin people saying not only did they not know about the earlier balloons but the earlier balloons never happened. https://www.thebulwark.com/the-balloon-blindness-of-team-trump/. So they’ve gone from being in the clear straight to delusional. They should have stopped while they were ahead.

Also, the three busses thing was a great example of issues with reporting. Some DOD person said “three busses” without saying whether that referenced diameter of the balloon, length of the payload and solar array, mass of the payload, height of the balloon or balloon and payload together, or something else. And are we talking a 20’ church bus or a 60’ city bus? And everybody kept mindlessly repeating “as big as three busses”.

[Michael P]

It being The Bulwark, of course, they ridicule the idea that Americans are competent at anything (seeing balloons, communicating national security incidents to the National Security Advisor, recognizing that the Biden administration lies like a rug, etc.) without anything to corroborate the ridicule.

[Moderation4ever]

The January 6th Select Committee showed that President Trump was repeatedly told that he has lost the election and that there was no election fraud. Last week audio tape reveled that administration official knew they lost Wisconsin and yet Republicans to continue to "fan the flames" of fraud.

After two investigations found nothing, the Republican legislative leaders used taxpayer money to fund a third investigation under Michael Gableman, which again found nothing, and which end with Mr. Gableman being fired. Yet Wisconsin taxpayer continue to pay out for this third audit because the legislature will not, or likely cannot account for the investigations funding. Checks were simple doled out. This money wasted on the vanity of a former President. By government waste standards it is little, but the waste of $2 million dollar should not be overlooked.

[DaveM]

You can't use one act of political theater to disprove another act of political theater. The theater-goers know it's just for show. And yes, they are astonished at how much they are paying to see actors get up and deliver their lines, it seems like pretty easy work.

The one thing it doesn't do is change minds.

There is a way one could do an investigation that isn't theatrical, but we haven't seen that yet from either side.

[Moderation4ever]

Yes, politic and theater are similar, but it is not hard to see difference between good theater/politics and bad theater/politics.

[David Nieporent]

So a couple of open threads ago the Usual Suspects were touting some ridiculous claim about Hunter Biden paying Joe Biden $50,000 per month in rent based on a document that they didn't understand that was circulating through the right wing media ecosystem.

Predictably, the story has fallen apart, as even most of that ecosystem has noted.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/jan/19/facebook-posts/hunter-biden-paid-50000-rent-office-space-dc-not-h/

[Armchair Lawyer]

Politifact?

I think I'll wait for the official investigation instead.

[AmosArch]

Progs say progs didn't do anything wrong. Thats it...case closed.

[David Nieporent]

Great mindless response by both of you.

[Sarcastr0]

Ad hominem is a fallacy.

Read the article and explain why it is wrong.

[David Nieporent]

Ad hominem isn't really the problem here. The problem is that neither of them read the thing; if they had, they'd have seen that it cites directly to the NY Post reporter who sparked the story in the first place admitting that it was wrong.

[Sarcastr0]

Isn’t that the thing with ad hom? It lets you skip reading the article.

[Brett Bellmore]

Even at the time I said that it wouldn't have been absurd if he were doing a land contract on the house, and trying to get it paid off fast.

There are much more incriminating communications than that, so I guess it's only natural to focus on this one.

[Sarcastr0]

There are much more incriminating communications than that, so I guess it’s only natural to focus on this one.

'Yes, but nevertheless.'

What naked toolishness.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, it's only natural that when your guy is multiply implicated, you'll focus exclusively on the complaints you actually have a valid counter to.

Heck, that's SOP for fact checkers!

[Sarcastr0]

Brett, who do you think focused on that dumbass housing thing?

[Life of Brian]

"If you don't pay rapt and sole attention to my chosen handful of confetti, you're just a... a... TOOL."

LOL

[Sarcastr0]

This was the right wing's chosen story to push some weeks ago, chief.

Not going to be able to blame the vast left wing media conspiracy on this one.

[Life of Brian]

the right wing’s chosen story

Of course, that was my point: cherry-pick the silliest example you can find, pretend it's the only issue, and use it to distract from everything else. Thanks for reinforcing it.

[Nige]

'more incriminating communications'

Now that's damning, considering what they're claiming is incriminating.

[ragebot]

Thing is Hunter does seem to have paid $US50,000 for something which raises the question how did he get that much money given that he was a degenerate drug addict. Not to mention that Hunter was pissing away big bucks on hookers and crack yet still was raking in who knows how much money (something that is being investigated since his lawyer who he is not paying ponied up a cool two million bucks to pay his back taxes. How much money do you have to make to have a two million dollar back tax bill and how much political pull do you have to have for your lawyer who you are not paying to front you two million dollars. Fifty grand is a drop in the bucket compared to a tax bill of two million dollars.

It is really hard to grasp just how corrupt the Bidens are.

[Nige]

There are high social and financial circles where being a degenerate drug addict, or worse, doesn't preclude anyone from having lots of money. Not saying Huinter Biden is actually in those circles, I just think your premise is dumb.

'It is really hard to grasp just how corrupt the Bidens are.'

Yes, since it involves a lot of vague insinuations and inferences, speculation and outright lies, and not much actual evidence.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Joshua Browder(AI lawyer guy) appears to be at it again; this time creating scripts so people scammed by FTX can commit bank fraud:

https://twitter.com/eodyne1/status/1623043461116006451?s=46&t=bmKnFQ7wA6-3Ndt8-W6W_g

Unfortunately it’s just screenshots and the original
has been deleted. I can’t find anyone referencing it with a QT. So I can’t confirm authenticity, but I have no reason to doubt this is real.

Plus he’s actually advised this before:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ftx-account-holders-money-back-165544383.html

He’s going to be charged with something at some point. I can feel it.

[Noscitur a sociis]

He’s going to be charged with something at some point. I can feel it.

Thereby creating the perfect opportunity to showcase the AI in court!

[LawTalkingGuy]

Browder tweeting through his federal indictment with the scripts he plans to use at arraignment would be darkly hilarious.

[Armchair Lawyer]

A recently retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst told Congress in a whistleblower disclosure that agents in Boston were improperly pressured by Washington to open criminal cases on 140 people who had simply taken a bus ride to the Jan. 6 rally in Washington. The agents refused because there was no evidence the attendees engaged in any criminality, the whistleblower said.

George Hill's testimony to the House Judiciary Committee also raised new civil liberty concerns about the FBI's Jan. 6 probe, including whether the Bureau mined Americans' bank records without court authority and whether the agency possesses video footage it is refusing to release because it identifies undercover agents and human sources who were at the U.S. Capitol that fateful day.

Hill, a military veteran and longtime analyst for the National Security Agency (NSA) and FBI who retired last year from the Bureau's Boston field office, told Just the News on Wednesday night that he disclosed concerns earlier this week to the House Judiciary Committee during a transcribed deposition, including that the Bureau analyzed banking data without evidence of a crime -- simply to find Americans who traveled to Washington around the time of Jan. 6 or who owned a gun.

Hill said supervisors in the Washington field office pressured to open cases, first on seven individuals who came up in a sweep of bank records provided by Bank of America, and then on the larger group of 140 Americans who paid to take bus rides to President Donald Trump's now infamous rally on Jan. 6, 2021, the day a mob overran police lines and flooded into the Capitol as Congress met to certify the 2020 election results. He credited his supervisors in Boston for resisting the pressure.

"There's no evidence of a crime being committed here," he said during a wide-ranging interview on the "Just the News, No Noise" television show. "We cannot open up preliminary investigations on someone for using a financial instrument in the District. And so they pushed back, and Boston did not take any action on those names."

[David Nieporent]

If you're going to post propaganda, you should at least provide a link to the source instead of holding it out as your own.

But I see after googling why you didn't; that's from disgraced ex-journalist John Solomon.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Congressional testimony from a retired FBI agent.

But...to use your response "Great mindless response"

[David Nieporent]

It's… not congressional testimony. It's John Solomon spinning what the FBI agent told him.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Also it’s not like these guys haven’t said the FBI is a bunch of liars before.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Do you see any problem with the FBI opening investigations into people when there's no evidence of criminal behavior?

[LawTalkingGuy]

Yes. And if you think that’s bad wait until I tell you about local police.

[Armchair Lawyer]

So, you're prepared to condemn the FBI for their actions, and demand more congressional oversight about illegally politically motivated investigations under false pretenses?

[LawTalkingGuy]

Lol why are you talking to me like my “condemnation” matters as if I’m a prominent politician where that would matter?

Here’s what I’ll say: I’m prepared to give a shit about any of this when some prominent MAGA conservative ties it to the wider problem of law enforcement abuses.

[Armchair Lawyer]

I see.

[Armchair Lawyer]

It's "reporting" on Congressional Testimony from a retired FBI agent, with direct quotes from the FBI agent in question.

Are you saying the direct quotes are in error? The FBI agent didn't actually say those things?

[OtisAH]

What is wrong with you? His meaning is quite clear. And it’s only two sentences! But since you’re so dense:

Solomon is not reporting from the congressional record. Solomon is reporting what the fbi guy told him he said in his congressional testimony,

[Armchair Lawyer]

So...one would think the FBI guy who just testified in Congress might be a reliable source when asked about....what he just testified in Congress about.

Arguing that it's not the direct Congressional record of a person, but the reporting on the Congressional testimony from interviewing the person who just testified is....tedious.

[shawn_dude]

You mean the FBI Guy that thought to himself, "Sure! I'll be interviewed by a disgraced reporter known for violating just about ethical standard of reporting and being an integral part of the Trump-Ukraine disinformation campaign. That sounds like just the person I should tell all my very real and reliable facts to!"

And given FBI Guy's very silly decision to associate with someone with so terrible a reputation in journalism that even FOX didn't want to associate with him, no one should be surprised that serious people stop taking him at his word.

[Sarcastr0]

An actual reporter would check into the background of what is being claimed.

At least check into what Congress is doing here and talk about that.

This is just stenography of the opinion of one dude. And given the track record here I can’t even trust the accuracy.

[Armchair Lawyer]

What was that about ad hominem arguments again?

Sarcastro: "Ad hominem for me, but not for thee!"

[Sarcastr0]

I’ve explained what ad hominem is to you like 3 times. Criticizing how something is badly reported is not ad hominem.

[Bob from Ohio]

"I’ve explained what ad hominem is to you like 3 times."

You don't understand it, so how can you "explain" it?

[Armchair Lawyer]

"And given the track record here I can’t even trust the accuracy"

It's practically the definition of an ad hominem argument.

"You can't trust what he says on this issue!"

[Sarcastr0]

Also not ad hominem, which addresses arguments not factual assertions.

Credibility determinations are seperate. I am allowed not to believe a word Project Veritas puts out as true.

[David Nieporent]

Once again, it's not reporting on Congressional testimony. It's reporting on what the former agent told him about the testimony. The couple of direct quotes are quotes from Solomon's interview with the former FBI guy, not quotes from the actual testimony itself.

[Armchair Lawyer]

No David,

That is actually reporting on the testimony. By using as a source...the literal person who just gave the testimony.

You're being tedious to the point of insanity.

[David Nieporent]

Do you not understand the difference between "Here's what he told Congress" and "Here's what he says he told Congress"?

[Armchair Lawyer]

Like I said, you're being inane and tedious.

If a reporter goes to the scene of a crime and interviews a witness, and the witness says "I did this, and heard that". You're seriously going to argue the reporter isn't reporting on the crime, but merely reporting on what the witness said about the crime?

If a reporteres watch a court proceeding via video or reads the transcripts, then reports on it, you're going to argue they aren't reporting on the court proceeding? They're really just reporting on the transcript or video of the court proceeding...

It baffles belief. But tell you what. I'll cede your stupid point. And any time in the future you reference anything, I'll point out that according to your logic, it's not actually about the issue at hand. It's a recording or what a witness said.... Because you've got a damn dumb definition.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

If a reporter goes to the scene of a crime and interviews a witness, and the witness says “I did this, and heard that”. You’re seriously going to argue the reporter isn’t reporting on the crime, but merely reporting on what the witness said about the crime?

Anyone else who has worked as a professional editor (or even reporter) for a legitimate newspaper is welcome to chime in, but on behalf of professional journalism I declare that Armchair Lawyer is an uninformed fool who knows nothing about journalism and probably is incapable of using a legitimate newspaper.

How does the Volokh Conspiracy attract so many ignorant -- belligerently ignorant -- fans?

[David Nieporent]

If a reporter is covering a trial and files a report about what witnesses testified to that day, and then his editor later learns that the reporter didn't actually bother to attend the trial, but instead just stood in the courthouse hallway and asked people what the witnesses had said on the stand, the reporter would expect to be fired.
​
​
N.B. I'm not saying that disgraced ex-journalist John Solomon lied about it in this case; he was very clear that he was interviewing the guy rather than reporting on his testimony.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Noted. I'll be sure to remind you of your tedious nature whenever you mention anything in the future.

[OtisAH]

For the last time, David, no. He does not understand that. Or much of anything. Quit asking.

[Stephen Lathrop]

No, Armchair. A difference is that a report on the testimony is a report on what people in Congress heard. A report by a third party on what the testifier told the third party is not about what people in Congress heard. Unless you think what people in Congress heard is unimportant, you are missing the point.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You're acting like you have no idea what hearsay is (hopefully acting, though you continue to...amaze), and call other people tedious?

LOL.

[David Nieporent]

Armchair law works very differently than real law.

[Life of Brian]

ex-journalist John Solomon

First several search hits say "investigative journalist John Solomon," so I'm curious what definition I might find for "ex-journalist" in the DMN Somewhat-Abridged Dictionary. He was excommunicated from the priesthood? His TrueJournalist™ badge was revoked? You just don't like him?

[Kazinski]

Disgraced how?

Obviously The Hill wasn't happy having a conservative on their staff, so they cut ties, but they didn't retract any of his reporting.
https://apnews.com/article/7814805de14a44dff97a447933ab01c9

"The Capitol Hill publication, in an internal review, found fault with how its own journalists failed to point out distinctions between news and opinion pieces and didn’t disclose conflicts of interest to readers.

The Hill stopped short of retracting or apologizing for Solomon’s work. It has not erased the pieces from its website but added editor’s notes that questioned the credibility of some of his sources and what they told him."

“The Hill did not contact television producers to label Solomon as an opinion columnist,” the newspaper wrote. “It should have.”

It seems like a difference in opinions, not ethical or journalistic lapses.

[David Nieporent]

No, the Hill did not cut ties because he was conservative. The Hill showed him the door because he was unreliable. They first tried to mitigate the harm by moving his stuff from 'news' to 'opinion.' But then they decided that even that wasn't good enough, because he was so unethical — the "didn't disclose conflicts of interests" refers to the fact that he was still purporting to report news about Biden/Ukraine while failing to mention that his sources were all part of the Trump inner circle on that topic, including his own lawyers, some were under indictment while he was using them as sources, and that he was allowing them to vet his pieces before they were published.

There's a reason he's at his own vanity site now rather than working at an actual media outlet.

[Kazinski]

"There’s a reason he’s at his own vanity site now rather than working at an actual media outlet."

The mainstream media hates conservatives?

But really, without retraction I got to say it's quite a stretch to call him disgraced. Is the Hill disgraced too?
Because all of his reporting is still up on their site.

[shawn_dude]

Dude, even FOX News sent him packing. You cannot get more "mainstream" than FOX, sure, but they're conservative turned up to 11 and they don't mind outlandish lying from time to time (hiya Tucker!) but even Solomon was a lie or two too far for FOX.

And yeah, among his peers, he's disgraced. Maybe among the horn-wearing MAGA Shaman crowd he's still considered reliable, but that's about it.

[Kazinski]

Speaking of disgraced journalists, does anyone know what to make of Seymour Hersh's claim it was the Biden Administration that blew Nordstream 2?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/us-bombed-nord-stream-gas-pipelines-claims-investigative-journalist-seymour-hersh-s730dnnfz

It's not being reported on except NYPost, RT, Pravda, and London Times which makes me think it's probably true, but only if it was a NATO decision.

[shawn_dude]

Because the Russian Times and Pravda report it, it must be true?

LOL.

[Kazinski]

And the London Times.

But lets not forget who Seymour Hersh is, he is the Pulitzer winning reporter that broke the story of the My Lai massacre.

[David Nieporent]

And has been coasting on that for 50 years.

[David Nieporent]

It's based on anonymous sources only, and by anonymous sources I mean anonymous source. One, single source.

Hersh has broken some stories before, but he has given us some real stinkers before. I see no reason to take it seriously until there's some corroboration.

[Sarcastr0]

It’s not being reported on except NYPost, RT, Pravda, and London Times which makes me think it’s probably true

Amazing you're not crazier than you are.

[Kazinski]

Well more snark than anything else.

Those are about the only outlets that reported on the Hunter Biden laptop story too, which was true.

But I do stand by my other point, in if it is true then it was a NATO decision, not just US, because otherwise it would have come out before this.

[Sarcastr0]

You say you take the fact that something only occurs in the partisan media as an indicia of truthfulness.

There is not much more to say about that.

And you're flat wrong about the Hunter Biden laptop story. Which truth depends on what the exact story you decide that is.

[Kazinski]

You are flat wrong about that.

Just this week they had the "discraced" Twitter executives up in Congress, and they flat out admitted they were wrong censoring the Hunter's Laptop story, none of the tired excuses I hear here:
"Former Twitter executives acknowledged to lawmakers Wednesday that the social media company erred when it temporarily suppressed a New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020".

Nor does CNN in the story try to say 'not every document has been verified'.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/politics/twitter-hearing-house-oversight/index.html

It looks like the last refuge of Laptop denialism is here in the Volokh comments.

[David Nieporent]

Just this week they had the “discraced” Twitter executives up in Congress, and they flat out admitted they were wrong censoring the Hunter’s Laptop story, none of the tired excuses I hear here:

Setting aside your misuse of "censoring," I don't know why you're saying that like it's a begrudging concession years later. Twitter said that the very next day.

Nor does CNN in the story try to say ‘not every document has been verified’.

Why would it, since that's not relevant to the story?

[Sarcastr0]

Twitter blocked on NY Post story. Wrongfully. That's it.

It says a lot about your media diet if you think that was the only source outside of the right-wing outrage-bait rags by then.

[David Nieporent]

I just want to be clear on one point, though: it was "wrongful" solely because the tweet didn't actually violate Twitter's announced policies (and if it did, such policies would be unworkable).

Otherwise, it's Twitter's property, and Twitter can do what it wants. It can't be wrongful just because it might have helped one side or hurt another. That doesn't make it wrong, any more than me not inviting Kazinski to my next dinner party is wrong.

Everyone who cares about the facts is very clear that the government did not tell them to do it, did not make them do it. That would be wrong — on the part of the government, not Twitter — but it didn't happen.

[Sarcastr0]

Fair. Wrong as a matter of internal thinking, but not like illegal or unconstitutional or any of that nonsense.

[Sarcastr0]

So I looked into this a bit. Not my area, but I got some Googlin'

This is part of a back-and-forth that's been going on since November regarding the FBI's internal guidance regarding the required factual predicate to open an investigation.

It's quite in the weeds, and it's not about improper pressure. Washington is allowed to refer investigations to it's field offices.

I'm all for clarifying the FBI's investigatory boundaries. But this isn't about that; this is special pleading, like all the Jan 06 'revelations' are.

[Michael P]

Washington is allowed to refer investigations to it’s field offices.

And concentration camp guards are allowed to follow orders, eh?

Try being less disingenuous in the future.

[Sarcastr0]

So your counterargument is 'FBI are Nazis' and then saying I was lying.

You suuuuck.

[Michael P]

Assuming arguendo that the residents of Central didn't pressure the exiles in outer districts to run sham investigations, it's still fair to point out that riding on a bus to a rally is an unconscionable basis to open an investigation in the first place.

Your argument that "Washington is allowed to refer investigations" has exactly the same valence as "they were just following orders".

[Sarcastr0]

Persecution for merely going to DC on Jan 06 is not actually established though.

There is disagreement about the required factual predicate. But no one claimed there was not probable cause a crime was committed.

You, as usual, haven't done your homework. Why bother? You know what answer you want, and that's enough for you!

[Michael P]

Maybe you should go back and read the first paragraph in this thread, and then read what I said about being less disingenuous.

[Kazinski]

"But no one claimed there was not probable cause a crime was committed."

Maybe you don't know what probable cause is.

Probable cause isn't based on whether a crime was committed, its based on whether there is probable cause the individual under investigation committed the crime.

And the FBI headquarters being able to refer investigations doesn't mean they can request investigations on an insufficient predicate.

Maybe those details are further down in the weeds than you want to get.

[Sarcastr0]

the FBI headquarters being able to refer investigations doesn’t mean they can request investigations on an insufficient predicate.

This is, of course, begging the question.

This guys says there was insufficient predicate (careful not to say jack about probable cause). Others, apparently, disagreed.

This guy wants it to be a scandal. But he's really not saying much, is he?

[Kazinski]

Once again you are so deep in the weeds you are over your head.

Probable cause is a higher standard than a predicate to investigate.

A predicate let's you develop probable cause for an arrest, or a warrant.

[Sarcastr0]

Probable cause is a higher standard than a predicate to investigate.

Boston disagrees with you. At least with respect to internal FBI guidelines.

[Kazinski]

Oh come on, Probable Cause is a term of art:

"Definition: Probable cause is a requirement found in the Fourth Amendment that must usually be met before police make an arrest, conduct a search, or receive a warrant."

A predicate is less precise but it's the required basis to open an investigation to establish probable cause, or clear a suspect.

[Sarcastr0]

It's a quantum of evidence, like clear and convincing and preponderance and reasonable doubt.

The Nov testimony indicates the Boston held that that the FBI required substantial evidence a crime occurred to open an investigation on an American Citizen, and Washington either disagreed on the facts or the regs on that.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I would gladly give pardons, a parade, and money to everyone charged in January 6th if in exchange we got real reform of American policing.

The vast majority of Trumpist conservatives would never take that deal, of course.

Seriously: imagine if Biden offered Jan 6th pardons in exchange for Congress appropriating tons of money to make DC jail conditions (something that has routinely been complained about by Jan 6th people) the same as those in Norway. Would Republicans in Congress take the deal? No. To them pretrial detention is supposed to be a brutal and horrible place. It's just not supposed to affect people like them.

[Ben_]

Whenever anyone says anything like that, it’s always bullshit. If you could get absolutely everything you could possibly dream of, you might allow the other side something too. You’re not getting everything you could possibly dream of. The world never works that way for anyone.

Stop with the inane fantasy talk and suggest something that might actually happen and something that’s a reasonable compromise. If you mean it.

If you just want to pretend and rationalize, then keep it up.

[LawTalkingGuy]

The point of this exercise wasn’t that I actually think something will happen. Because I know it won’t. That’s the point. Jan. 6th complainers don’t actually care about law enforcement abuse…they care that they’re the ones being “abused” even though they’re treated the same as anyone else in the system (if anything it’s kids’ gloves).

[Ben_]

I completely support jail reforms. Rights matter and treating prisoners badly serves no legitimate purpose.

We need to get rid of the unions before any funding changes or all the money will go to union featherbedding and conditions at jails won't change at all.

[LawTalkingGuy]

“ We need to get rid of the unions before any funding changes or all the money will go to union featherbedding and conditions at jails won’t change at all.”

Correct.

[Ben_]

Dems won’t do what you want any more than Republicans. Dems care about union money far, far above everything else.

[Ben_]

"imagine if Biden offered Jan 6th pardons in exchange for Congress appropriating"

Literal hostages.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Again completely missing the point.

[Ben_]

The fact that you're fantasizing about using Americans as literal hostages to be literally ransomed seems worth pointing out.

[LawTalkingGuy]

See this is what I’m talking about. You think they’re hostages. They’re not. They’re just like every other defendant on a BS charge. You are missing the broader picture.

[Ben_]

They’re hostages if you ransom them.

[Frank Drackman]

make DC jail conditions the same as those in Norway??
First you'd have to replace all of the DC Inmates (the correct term for occupants of a "Jail") with Norwegians.
Don't think the Norwegians will go for that.
Maybe try not doing things that get you put in jail?? Haven't been in jail since 1983 when I got a DUI, and not like I'm some Mormon or something.

Frank

[Ben_]

The Good Guys in action.

[Frank Drackman]

Can anybody in this August company explain (simply) the NBA Foul "Bonus" rule? Wikipedia was no help. I get that they don't enforce the traveling rule.

Frank

[apedad]

1. August is with a lower a in this sense.

2. To follow up on Queen's response, only defensive fouls count against the Bonus; offensive fouls do count against the player, but not the team for the Bonus.

[Frank Drackman]

Thanks!!! now how about the "Illegal Defense" rule??

[David Bremer]

Didn't they get rid of that rule several years ago? I didn't think it was still a thing any longer.

[Both Sides]

They did get rid of the illegal defense rule in the NBA some years ago, but Queen almathea gave a decent short description of it.

[Mr. Bumble]

From Instapundit:

FINALLY, SOME GOOD NEWS: Wholesale Egg Prices ‘Collapse.’ “New data from Urner Barry, a market research firm that tracks wholesale food prices, shows its Urner Barry Egg Index has plunged 57% since peaking at $4.65 per dozen on Dec. 19. Wholesale prices are now at $2.01.”

[bernard11]

So egg prices have cracked?

[John F. Carr]

The local Costco has a two carton limit to prevent panic buying. These are Costco-sized cartons. I ran out of fingers and toes trying to count the eggs.

[Brett Bellmore]

60. We passed on them, being aware that the shortage was ending, and honestly not eating enough eggs to get through them all before they spoiled. (Which store bought eggs do a lot faster than your own, on account of having been washed.)

I'll be buying eggs until this fall; Couldn't convince my wife to refresh our flock while they were still laying, last year, and now that they've all gone through henopause, it will be fall before the new girls are laying. Well, stewed chicken when I've got the time to process them...

I must say, I'm impressed at that Kirkland bacon. Not only is it decent, (Just wish it were sliced thicker.) but it's actually cheap enough that I can't make it myself cheaper. Which is more than you can say for the bacon at regular grocery stores.

[Kazinski]

They have thick sliced Kirkland Bacon too.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Kirkland is a reliable, high-quality brand

Elite, some might say.

But nearly always a winner at the marketplace.

[John F. Carr]

Macron and Zelensky had to get from Paris to Brussels, under 200 miles. They took a plane despite French plans to ban short distance air travel in the name of environmentalism. Zelensky takes the train in Ukraine. He has a personal car that looks normal.

I remember when the governor of Massachusetts proclaimed a car-free week and still had State Police chauffeur him around in a big car. We only had one governor in my memory who preached the anti-car sermon and also lived by it. Dukakis rode the subway.

[Mr. Bumble]

I thought he used a tank.

[Frank Drackman]

that was Do-Cock-us??? thought it was Snoopy

[shawn_dude]

If only state visits from heads of state were like totally normal trips and didn't require additional security, vehicles, and other concerns. The cost/benefit analysis may have suggested the plane was the better environmental choice compared to a massive motorcade or scheduling a special train. Then there's the whole Russian assassination thing to worry about and how that might impact innocent people. So yeah, it looks bad but it may have been the best option regardless of the optics.

[Commenter_XY]

So….Who will win the Super Bowl? I say Philly by 3.

(on the theory that defense wins championships)

[OtisAH]

Defense *does* win championships.

[SRG]

Missouri executes another probably innocent man.
https://theintercept.com/2023/02/05/missouri-leonard-raheem-taylor-execution/

Am I sure of Leonard Taylor’s innocence? No. But should Missouri have been so certain of his guilt that they executed him? Also no.

Missouri’s conduct here is not only from the authoritarian school of “we never make mistakes” but also, IMO, of the schools, “it’s so important to keep the citizenry afraid of us, it’s worth occasionally executing people who may be innocent” and “the defendant is a scumbag so killing him is kinda okay”

I note that this is not the first time in recent memory that an executed prisoner had a possible alibi owing to the uncertainty of time of death. Larry Swearingen, of whose innocence I am sure, was executed despite strong forensic evidence that the time of death coincided with his being in jail. In Swearingen’s case, the original forensic analysis was flatly wrong – but that was what the jury heard.

In this case, the original forensic analysis showed Taylor to be innocent – but the pathologist then conveniently adjusted his estimate to a time that made the alibi worthless.

[bevis the lumberjack]

I didn’t look at this case closely so I don’t have a basis for an opinion on it, but it’s certainly possible he was innocent and if so he’s not nearly the first innocent guy to get the needle.

You’d think the “Government is Incompetent” branch on the conservative side would notice that this is the work of the government too, but for some reason cops and prosecutors are above reproach. The irrationality of politics I guess.

[SRG]

You’d think the “Government is Incompetent” branch on the conservative side would notice that this is the work of the government too, but for some reason cops and prosecutors are above reproach. The irrationality of politics I guess

The circles of trust idea - concentric circles going outwards from most trustworthy to least - explains apparent inconsistency. You trust on a relative basis, that is, in any situation, you trust the person or group on the inner circle. So as you are in the centre, you trust yourself but not say the local police - but as the local police circle is closer to the centre than say the FBI, you'd trust the local police over the FBI. Here, you may not trust cops and prosecutors where they're going after close friends or family or other trustworthy group, but when they're going after evident scumbags, who are in one of the outermost circles, then you can trust them.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, I've already said that, if it were up to me, I'd abolish capital punishment in favor of real life in prison. I just object to claims that it's unconstitutional, and the stupid lawfare aimed at preventing constitutional and apparently popular laws from being actually enforced.

[SRG]

I agree that the DP is not inherently unconstitutional. However, unlike Rehnquist, Scalia and others, I think that it's also unconstitutional to execute an innocent person, The US justice system - particularly post-AEDPA (though Herrera was before AEDPA) - agrees with them as it is more concerned about process than guilt/innocence.

[Brett Bellmore]

It is absolutely unavoidable that if you have fines, you will occasionally fine an innocent person.

It is absolutely unavoidable that if you have prisons, you will occasionally imprison an innocent person.

And it is absolutely unavoidable that, if you have the death sentence, you will occasionally execute an innocent person.

And the founders who established a government under which the death penalty was constitutional were not such fools as to fail to understand that.

The fact that human institutions are not perfect doesn't render explicitly constitutional acts unconstitutional. Inadvisable, maybe, but not unconstitutional.

[Sarcastr0]

The fact that human institutions are not perfect doesn’t render explicitly constitutional acts unconstitutional.

I don't think that's true. Inevitable consequences of a policy are and should be part of the judicial reckoning of said policy.

[Bob from Ohio]

SRG, opponent of the penalty, or multiple juries. Who to believe?

"A significant amount of circumstantial evidence made Swearingen a likely suspect.
Trotter had last been seen leaving a college library with him the day she vanished. Her car was later found parked in the library lot.
Cell phone records showed Swearingen had made a call from the vicinity of the forest on the day Trotter was seen with him." source: " Larry Swearingen: Executed despite defense contention “provably innocent” By Rob Warden and John Seasly | October 21, 2019"

Dude was guilty.

[SRG]

According to the best forensic analysis of time of death, Swearingen was in jail when the woman was murdered. And the cops didn’t find incriminating evidence until they’d searched his cab about three or four times. Nobody denies that Swearingen knew the woman.

That you think that what juries hear is the truth, is part of the problem.

[Bob from Ohio]

"best forensic analysis of time of death"

You watch too much CSI or NCIS. Exact date of death is not a science.

He was the last person to be seen with her. Her car was found in the parking lot where he was seen with her, so you have to believe that she was kidnapped by someone else immediately after he left her. He called from the area where she was found, did he live or work there?

[SRG]

You watch too much CSI or NCIS. Exact date of death is not a science.

I never said it was. However, the first pathologist gave a flatly erroneous time of death, which contributed to his conviction, and later better analysis came up with a range which exculpated Swearingen. You're deliberately confusing precise time of death with range.

BTW do you think Cameron Todd Willingham was guilty?

[Bob from Ohio]

"I never said it was. However, the first pathologist gave a flatly erroneous time of death,"

If you agree one cannot determine an exact time, how was it "flatly erroneous"?

"better analysis"

You agree so its "better.

[SRG]

12.15 am on 12/20 is a time of death. Between 12/15 and 12/17 is not a time of death.

You agree so its “better.

So you've not actually looked at the case.

[Bob from Ohio]

I did, I quoted from an article about it. No one made you the oracle of guilt and innocence.

The circumstantial evidence proves the guilt. Glad the dude is dead. RIP to his victim.

[SRG]

The circumstantial evidence did not prove his guilt - particularly given that we know that the police "salted" his cab.

And as you have implicitly conceded that you're aware that the original pathologist changed her mind about when the death occurred and that other pathologists agree that death occurred while Swearingen was locked up, why do you reject this evidence?

[Bob from Ohio]

Why do you reject this?
“A significant amount of circumstantial evidence made Swearingen a likely suspect.
Trotter had last been seen leaving a college library with him the day she vanished. Her car was later found parked in the library lot.
Cell phone records showed Swearingen had made a call from the vicinity of the forest on the day Trotter was seen with him.” source: ” Larry Swearingen: Executed despite defense contention “provably innocent” By Rob Warden and John Seasly | October 21, 2019″

[Nelson]

Circumstantial evidence is just that. If they knew each other, why wouldn't they be seen together? I have no idea about the cell phone record, but mostly because I'm not interested enough to dig out the details of where it was, when it happened, and what explanation there may have been for his presence in the area. For that matter, what is the definition of "innthe vicinity"? A mile? Two?

I am against the death penalty. Floruda, for example, has slightly more than a 20% chance of executing an innocent person. That is well beyond my comfort level for something as final and irreversible as killing someone.

If we're talking about the death penalty, a case built on circumstantial evidence with a credible piece of hard evidence that refutes it seems like taking a huge risk of killing someone who didn't do it. Life in prison is just as effective at protecting society without the possibility of a gross miscarriage of justice.

[SRG]

Why do you reject this?

Because there are many situations where much circumstantial evidence points in one direction but other evidence points in another.

Most DNA exonerations occurred despite there being circumstantial evidence pointing to guilt. I commend to you the case of Kirk Bloodworth as an obvious example.

Your position appears to be that the DNA evidence should be ignored because of other circumstantial evidence. You’d make an excellent judge down in Texas or on the 5th Circuit.

[bernard11]

It's a long way from "likely suspect" to "Dude was guilty."

[SRG]

Yup. You'd think it would be obvious to people like Bob that the people who are tried for a crime had been suspects beforehand, which means that, almost by definition, anyone wrongly convicted must have previously been a suspect.

[Sarcastr0]

If it's not clear to you now, Bob sees defendants as a less human class of people, and is into killing and jailing them for their inherent lack of virtue.

[Bob from Ohio]

"their inherent lack of virtue"

Murdering does show an inherent lack of virtue.

Swearingen wasn't just a "defendant, he was convicted after a fair trial where his lawyer contested all of the state's evidence.

Convicted murderers need to die.

[Bob from Ohio]

"It’s a long way from “likely suspect” to “Dude was guilty.”

The jury took the journey, you didn't.

SRG flatly said he was innocent, I disagree and presented reasons. But I have 12 other people who heard all the evidence who agree with me.

[SRG]

They did not hear all the evidence. Stop lying.,

[SRG]

Vitali Klitschko, PhD, mayor of Kyiv, today announced the renaming of a number of streets and the removal of Soviet monuments.

From his post (lightly edited):

• Victory Avenue ➡️ Beresteysky Avenue

• Victory Square ➡️ Galicia Square

• Michurina Lane ➡️ Bolsunovsky Lane

•Brest-Lithuanian highway ➡️ Brest highway

• Petrívsʹka Street ➡️ Voznesensʹkij Yar Street.

Along with receiving legal grounds – the decision of the Ministry of Culture – yesterday at Kyiv dismantled the monument to the Soviet pilot Chkalov. And today removed the monument to the Soviet war chief Vatutin.

The capital is also awaiting the decision of the Ministry of Culture, which will allow the removal of the monument to one of the Bolsheviks military leaders, Nikolai Shchors, which Kievans have long been insisting.

—

I am sure that Putin and some Russian separatists oppose this. How dare the Ukrainians destroy their heritage? Nobody will remember that the Soviets once controlled Ukraine, etc etc.

[Kazinski]

Shouldn't that be "Vitali Klitschko, PhD, former Heavyweight Champion of the World"?

[bernard11]

I heard George Santos beat him.

[SRG]

Indeed! Two different kinds of bravery on show in his case.

[SKofNJ]

Anyone else bothered by this? In State v. Scott, ___ N.J. Super.___ (App. Div. 1/31/23) (Docket No. A-0529-21), the New Jersey Appellate Division held that “implicit bias” can be a basis for establishing a prima facie case of police discrimination. Reasoning that the problem of implicit bias in the context of policing is both real and intolerable, the court held that evidence that supports an inference of implicit bias shifts a burden of production to the State to provide a race-neutral explanation.

[John F. Carr]

Opinion here: https://www.njcourts.gov/sites/default/files/court-opinions/2023/a0529-21.pdf

"The BOLO described the robber as a Black male wearing a dark raincoat. However, the victim did not provide the race of the perpetrator when she reported the crime. The State acknowledges it does not know why the police dispatcher included a racial description of the robber in the BOLO alert."

[Dr. Ed 2]

Has anyone bothered to ask her if he WAS Black?

[Noscitur a sociis]

The dispatcher did ask the victim if the robber was “Black, white, or Hispanic," and she said she couldn’t tell.

[Nelson]

C'mon. Everyone knows that all criminals are black. Or Democrats. Or both.

[ReaderY]

The Alliance Defending Freedom has filed a lawsuit against the FDA in federal distrrict court in Amarillo. The lawsuit contends that the FDA’s approval of abortificients is invalid as a violation of the FD&C Act and should be overturned. It appears to be raising something similar to the argument I raised in an earlier comment on another post on this blog, that prior to Roe it was clear the FD&C act prohibited abortifacients as unsafe for human life, Roe partially set aside this aspect of the FD&C Act, Dobbs restored the FD&C Act’s pre-Roe interpretation, and accordingly the FDA cannot continue to ignore the FD&C Act’s prohibition on drugs that are unsafe for humans, and must enforce the FD&C Act’s ban on them.

[ReaderY]

I haven’t read the complaint yet, just a news article about it. Its standing argument is going to be interesting.

[ReaderY]

A couldn’t find the complaint in a quick search. If anyone has a link to it, it would be appreciated.

A news article quotes the ADF’s counsel as saying the FDA never had the authority to approve abortifacients in the first place. I don’t think this is a good argument. Roe, while it was in effect, struck down laws restricting abortion. And that undoubtedly would have included the FD&C Act’s prohibition of abortifacients if the FDA had attempted to continue to enforce it. It was legal at the time, and I think the ADF would be making a mistake if it made its legal argument depend on claiming otherwise. The question should be limited to what’s legal now.

[John F. Carr]

I think this is the case: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65768749/alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine-v-us-food-and-drug-administration/

The plaintiffs cite to abortion precedent for standing, but abortion precedent is distinguishable. If your patient can't get an abortion you can sue on your patient's behalf because she can't get what she wants. If your patient can get an abortion but doesn't want to, then there is no controversy. She is free not to get one and she is free not to take an abortion pill.

[ReaderY]

The complaint seems very poorly written. Just from a brief read, it seems more like a fund-raising document intended to convince donors one is doing something with their money than a legal document intended to convince a judge one has a valid legal case.

Standing may be the least of their problem. The tendency to preach and speak their truth makes it a difficult read. It makes their case harder to win.

[David Nieporent]

The concern is that they judge shopped for that one Texas federal judge again. Not only is he a wild card, but then… the fifth circuit.

[ReaderY]

I read more of the complaint. This lawsuit is nonsense and isn’t going anywhere.

Its basic premise is that the FDA got the science totally wrong and mifeprestone actually injures pregnant women, and as doctors they might someday treat a woman who was injured by it. They claim they have third-party standing on behalf of those hypothetical patients, and a kind institutional standing on tjeir own behalf because if they ever get such a patient treating her would divert them from things they’d rather be doing, But they never claim any of them has ever actually treated or even met such a patient! As a standing claim this is about as lame as it gets. Their claim mifepristone is a lot more injurious to women using it than the FDA found seems pretty bogus as well.

They throw in some claims why the FD&C Act shouldn’t cover it. They claim pregnancy is a normal condition and not a disease. They claim that it violates laws on the books prohibiting using mails, common careiers, etc. to transport abortifacients, and interpreting the FD&C to cover it conflicted with those laws.

I think their core merits problem here is that, if they can get past standing (and they can’t), they really are arguing the FDA’s approval was illegal at the time it occcurred, and their case seems to depend on that claim. But I don’t think the claim has any merit. The FDA was entitled to act on the law as it stood at the time it made its decision, and the various anti-abortifacient statutes were clearly unenforcible at the time. Claims mifepristone is wildly dangerous to women taking it have been circulating in right-wing circles for decades and have generally been considered nonsense by serious scientists. Absent a source of law saying otherwise, courts have to look to doctors to determine what constitutes a disease.

The plaintiffs never argue that Dobbs changes the meaning of the FD&C Act, what would seem the obvious legal interpretation argument. Their whole argument is that approving mifepristone was illegal In 2000, and that President Clinton and the FDA conspired to engage in a series of patently illegal acts under of the law of the time. It argues for example that the FDA conspired to violate the Comstock Act in the 1990s, when it couldn’t possibly have been in effect. The tone treats the FDA as a bunch of criminals.

There might be a viable case to challenge the legality of mifepristone. But this is definitely not that case.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Why would an “Alliance Defending Freedom” attempt to enlist the government to prevent an American adult from obtaining mifepristone?

Other than the superstition, backwardness, authoritarianism, and misogyny of the right-wing culture war casualties who operate and fund that misnamed (lying) group, I mean.

Carry on, faux libertarian clingers. But only so far as better Americans permit.

[ReaderY]

Why would such an alliance have attempted to enlist the government to prevent a white person from obtaining laboring property prior to the 13th Amendment?

You articulated the reasons very well. Superstition, backwardness, authoritarinasm, misaustralism, and right-wing cilture war causalties.

Substitute misaustralism for mysogyny, and you’ve channeled John Calhoun almost perfectly. It’s pretty much his style, very close to his own vocabulary. John Calhoun presented himself as the voice of reason, civilization, science, and enlightenment pitted against the backward superstitious bigotry and dark savagery of his day. He would be proud of you for keeping up his good work.

[Kenneth Almquist]

Do Barr's statements to Fox News constitute an admission of an ethics violation? According to Barr, the Durham investigation was intended to do two things: prosecute criminal wrongdoing and promote a narrative favorable to Trump. “Favorable to Trump” is my characterization; Barr says the goal is to put out information in order to advance the “public interest.”

Generally speaking, the DoJ isn't supposed to release information that it uncovers in the course of an investigation. A major exception is that if it decides to bring charges, it presents information in the course of prosecuting the case. Durham did bring charges in this case, but according to Barr, getting the information out was “far more important” than obtaining a conviction against Sussmann. Given the weakness of the case against Sussmann, one wonders whether he would have been charged at all if the primary goal of the investigation had been to prosecute wrongdoers.

In short, Barr conceived of the investigation as a way to advance a political narrative favorable to his boss. It seems to me that that should be unethical even if he also hoped that the investigation would uncover and prosecute some actual crimes.

Here are the relevant Fox News appearances. After the Sussmann acquittal:

Fox News - Jesse Watter Primetime
June 1, 2022 7:23 PM EDT

Barr: While [Durham] did not succeed in getting a conviction from the D.C. jury, I think he accomplished something far more important, which is he brought out the truth in two important areas.

First I think he crystallized the central role played by the Hillary campaign in launching, as a dirty trick, the whole Russiagate collusion narrative and fanning the flames of it.

And, second, I think he exposed really dreadful behavior by the supervisors and the FBI, the senior ranks of the FBI, who knowingly used this information to start an investigation of Trump and then duped their own agents by lying to them and refusing to tell them what the real source of that information was. And that was appalling.

...

Part of this operation is to try to get the real story out, and I've said from the beginning, if we can get convictions, if they're achievable, then John Durham will achieve them. But the other aspect of this is to get the story out, and I think that the Danchenko prosecution is going to further amplify these themes and the role that the FBI leadership played in this, which is increasingly looking fishy and inexplicable.

After the Danchenko acquittal:

Fox News - America's Newsroom
Oct 19, 2022, 9:52 AM EDT

Barr: But, as people say, I think Andy McCarthy said, the real public interest was being served here by exposing the full extent of the corruption that was involved in the Russiagate, and the abuse by the FBI in that whole episode. And I think Durham is going to get a report out that is going to lay out all the facts.

Dana Perino: And that could come before, if Republicans take over, at least in the House, and maybe in the Senate, there could be hearings that ask the FBI to come in and explain themselves.

Barr: Right. I think it will leave a very good foundation for pursuing it further on the Hill.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Barr auditioned for a chance to squander his reputation and polish his wingnut credentials by kissing Trump's ass, got that chance, and made the most of it.

In the end, though, he's just another disaffected, doomed, discredited culture war casualty.

[Kenneth Almquist]

Barr was always a right winger (in 1992 he released a paper arguing that the U.S. incarceration rates were too low), but his confirmation hearings for the position of Attorney General under Trump suggest that he was respected by both Democrats and Republicans. Not any more.

[Bob from Ohio]

"he was respected by both Democrats and Republicans. Not any more."

Democrats only respect weak Republicans. The last thing I want is an AG who is respected by Democrats. Barr learned and was much better this time.

[Nige]

Where 'weak' means 'not corrupt.'

[David Nieporent]

The NYT story a couple of weeks ago revealed how corrupt the Barr/Durham investigation was; you're just gilding the lily with these comments. I mean, it revealed how Barr and Durham — pursuing an absolutely loony, should-be-committed-to-an-asylum conspiracy theory about the Italian government — actually found information suggesting criminal conduct by Trump. And they leaked that they were pursuing a criminal investigation, but made it sound like it was of Clinton and the FBI.

[Kenneth Almquist]

I can't argue with that; I was just surprised at what Barr was willing to admit to.

[Drbusybody]

RE: Jones v. Clinton

President Clinton fought the Paula Jones case and his presidency nearly unraveled; and he was required to testify at a deposition, at which he was charged for perjury in impeachment (the ground lost in the House); and which caused other causes of action to become known; and which required Clinton to testify before a grand jury, for which he was charged with perjury in impeachment (and the ground passed the House); and which caused Clinton to be disbarred. Finally, Clinton paid a high-six settlement to Jones and just imagine what he paid lawyers.

What if, on the other hand, Clinton had not fought the Paula Jones lawsuit. What kind of default judgment would have been issued against him if he had not fought the case?

[not guilty]

Paula Hound Dog's complaint sought $75,000 compensatory and $100,000 punitive damages on each of four claims, a total of $700,000, plus attorney fees. https://www.upcounsel.com/lectl-paula-jones-complaint-against-president-clinton-danny-ferguson

Bill Clinton was impeached (and acquitted) for perjury in his grand jury testimony. An article of impeachment for perjury in his deposition testimony was recommended by the House Judiciary Committee, but failed in the full House. He was found in contempt by the District Court in Arkansas for giving intentionally false deposition testimony.

As part of a global settlement with Special Counsel Robert Ray (Kenneth Starr's successor), Clinton agreed to a voluntary surrender of his Arkansas law license for five years; he was not disbarred.

On the merits of the damages suit, the District Court granted summary judgment in favor of the Defendants and dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice. Jones v. Clinton, 990 F. Supp. 657 (E.D. Ark. 1998). The unsuccessful plaintiff sold her right to appeal this dismissal for cash on the barrelhead.

I suspect one of Bill Clinton's major regrets is not having held out for a girlfriend who swallowed.

[Estragon]

“Girlfriend who swallowed”

Far be it for me to tone police around here what with the usual huckleberry denizens, but is this joke really funny enough to tell repeatedly?

[not guilty]

Tweaking the Clinton haters is enjoyable.

[bevis the lumberjack]

What a misonygistic person you are, not guilty. Almost Trumpesque.

[Kazinski]

Paula Hound Dog?

What kind of a sick asshole are you?

Here you have a low level state employee who is summoned to the governor's suite by a state trooper, and then the governor exposes himself and makes a gross proposition which she refused.

Then he uses the power of his office to try to drag her through the mud and avoid any consequences. This the same Bill Clinton who raped Juanita Broderick when he was the AG, the chief law enforcement officer of the state.

She finally got paid and it was well deserved.

What's next for you sliming Harvey Weinstein or Bill Crosby's victims?

[David Nieporent]

You mean the Juanita Broadderick who swore under oath that this never happened?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

"Don't interrupt, he's on a roll."

[ducksalad]

A side question, NG:

The Clintons eventually agreed to pay $850K to Paula Jones in mid-November 1998. Although the settlement was timed just to fall just after the 1998 midterms, it is obvious that Hillary Clinton was planning her run for US Senator from New York.

Was this an illegal expenditure of personal funds to influence an election, unreported to the FEC?

Or did they report it to the FEC, in which case it would been an illegal use of campaign funds for personal business?

Because the argument I’ve heard about the Stormy Daniels payment was that those are the only two possibilities when a politician pays off a woman: illegal influence if not reported, illegal expenditure if it is reported.

[Voize]

I doubt the FEC would have much trouble distinguishing hush money paid by a candidate from a non-hush settlement paid by the spouse of a non-candidate.

Trump had Daniels paid just weeks before the election. She was paid in secret and he required her to abide by a non-disclosure to keep her story out of the news.

Hillary though didn't run for the Senate in 1998, she campaigned for Chuck Schumer in that election. She announced her candidacy on Feb. 6, 2000, almost 15 months after the Jones settlement. The terms of that settlement are public and don't include any promise of silence on her part.

[not guilty]

Ducksalad, assuming your questions are sincere, you may find this of interest. https://checkyourfact.com/2018/12/19/fact-check-bill-clinton-paula-jones-hush-money/

[hoppy025]

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/3851641-jan-6-rioter-who-carried-confederate-flag-sentenced-to-three-years-in-prison/

Violent black criminals get slaps on the wrist, but this patriot gets 3 years in prison for flying a flag of traditional American values. Blatantly unconstitutional.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Jogger Privilege

[hoppy025]

Pretty much.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

These bigoted assholes are your core audience, Volokh Conspirators . . . and the reason your colleagues and deans hope you leave -- and soon -- for Regent, Liberty, Ave Maria, Brigham Young, or some other conservative school.

[hoppy025]

The only bigots are you people who hate middle-class whites.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The Republican Party, the Heritage Foundation, the Volokh Conspiracy, and the Federalist Society thank you for your service, hoppy025.

[Sarcastr0]

Just say nigger, dude.

You aren’t fooling anyone.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I assume Prof. Volokh looked at that comment and thought, 'What's wrong with this guy?'

[Frank Drackman]

Nigger

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I figure the response to that one was, 'now that's more like it!'

[Frank Drackman]

Sarcastro said it first

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Yeah, but Sarcastro isn't Prof. Volokh's kind of guy. You are.

[Sarcastr0]

That's not how that works, Frank.

But everyone already knows what your deal is, so it's not like you had anything to lose.

[not guilty]

“Violent black criminals get slaps on the wrist, but this patriot gets 3 years in prison for flying a flag of traditional American values. Blatantly unconstitutional.”

Can you identify any black defendant prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and found guilty by a jury of obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, who received a lighter sentence that this defendant? Please be specific.

If not, what do you perceive to be the constitutional infirmity with the instant defendant's sentence?

[hoppy025]

No, but I can identify numerous violent blacks (the 1/6 protesters were not violent) who have been released with no charges.

He can be punished because he trespassed. He can't be given a enhanced sentence because the judge didn't like his constitutionally protected speech.

[not guilty]

The 1/6 protesters were not violent???

Is that as true as everything else you have said?

According to the article you linked, Capitol police Officer Eugene Goodman testified during Mr. Seefried’s trial and said Seefried jabbed at him with the end of his flagpole multiple times. If and to the extent that Mr. Seefried's handling of the flag (including his usage thereof as a weapon) carried any expressive component, the First Amendment is not offended by criminally punishing conduct that combines "speech" and "nonspeech" elements if it is within the constitutional power of the Government; if it furthers an important or substantial governmental interest; if the governmental interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression; and if the incidental restriction on alleged First Amendment freedoms is no greater than is essential to the furtherance of that interest. United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 377 (1968).

Surely a criminal prohibition of corruptly obstructing a proceeding of Congress (or attempting to do so) meets the O'Brien criteria.

[hoppy025]

Officer Eugene Goodman is a black, so his testimony regarding the whole incident, including the flag, is suspect.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Not Ashli Babbitt. Not anymore.

Carry on, clingers . . . . well, not so fast, Ashli.

(Too bad that Where We Go One We Go All line was pure bullshit.)

[hoppy025]

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Not George Floyd, Thugvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Not anymore.

Carry on, groomers. . . . well, not so fast.

[Frank Drackman]

you left out the latest chucklehead in Memphis

[hoppy025]

In his defense, he didn't have a long line of arrests like the rest. Still a bastard child, but that is 75% of the black community.

[Noscitur a sociis]

And I think we’re done here.

[not guilty]

Since when is a Confederate battle flag a flag of traditional American values? Do you claim that treason in service of chattel slavery is an American value?

[shawn_dude]

I read an article over the weekend (name escapes me) that pointed out that Bill, the fictional Confederate soldier in the TV series True Blood lasted longer on television than the actual Confederacy did at just 4 years.

Nothing says "tradition" like a 4 year flash-in-the-pan secession movement to break away from America and American values.

[hoppy025]

The Confederate Flag today has nothing to do with the political entity that existed in the 1860s. It's about rebelling against the modern "anti-racist" globalist Marxist order.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The Volokh Conspiracy likes the way you think, brother.

[hoppy025]

And your friends at NAMBLA and the gay bath house like the way you think.

[Frank Drackman]

Hey, give Reverend Rev.olting Jerry props, he was responsible for "Linebacker U" (and "Fudge-packing U" but thats a different story)

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You guys are just sucking up to Prof. Volokh shamelessly now.

[EscherEnigma]

We've had nation-wide gay marriage for twice as long as we had a Confederacy. So I think it's fair to say that gay marriage is more of an American Tradition then the Confederacy ever was.

[Estragon]

I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess hoppy here is a big Alexander Stephens fan:

“ Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. [Applause.] This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It is so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North who still cling to these errors with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind; from a defect in reasoning.”

[hoppy025]

I've never even heard of this guy, but he speaks the truth about the races.

[Estragon]

“Never even heard of this guy”

Wow, a history buff too! Where can I subscribe to your newsletter?

Eugene!! These are your people.

For the record, I absolutely did have “Alexander Stephens was right” on my VC huckleberry bingo card.

[hoppy025]

If blacks are intellectually equal to whites, why do they fail in every society where they exist? From Brazil to South Africa to America to England to China and everywhere in between, they are incapable of a civilization. Why is that?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Sometimes you just can't hit that 'Mute User' button fast enough.

[hoppy025]

You can't handle the truth.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Gray box says what?

[Estragon]

Undoubtedly you have many theories. However, you also agree with this statement:

“…that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.”

Does that follow from what you wrote above? What other groups would it be moral to enslave, in your mind? Is “intellectual equality to whites” the test?

[hoppy025]

No. I don't think slavery is a natural nor moral condition. I do think the great integration experiment has failed, and that peaceful separation is the only solution.

[Estragon]

Alex Stephens: “ Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. [Applause.]”

Hoppy: “ he speaks the truth about the races.“

Also Hoppy: “ No. I don’t think slavery is a natural nor moral condition.”

Can you please update your chatbot algorithms? These statements are incompatible.

[hoppy025]

I was referring to his statement about them not being equal.

[Estragon]

Oh, really? How much less equal? 3/5th equal or what?

[hoppy025]

IQ wise, about 85%.

[Estragon]

You’re about 25% off from what your new pal Alex thought. But hey what’s a few percentage points when we’re talking about the relative worth of human beings, amirite?

But hang on a minute— surely there are other groups that have “85%, IQ-wise” of whites. Are they less equal too? What about low IQ whites?

[hoppy025]

Yes. Low IQ people are less valuable than high IQ people. It's just that most non-East Asian non-whites are low IQ.

[Estragon]

“Less valuable”

To whom?

[hoppy025]

To the world.

[not guilty]

"No. I don’t think slavery is a natural nor moral condition. I do think the great integration experiment has failed, and that peaceful separation is the only solution."

Poe's Law?

[shawn_dude]

You give him too much credit.

[Frank Drackman]

Somebody has to come in last in the "Race Race"

Frank

[Estragon]

[hoppy025]

Do Thugvon supporters even know the facts of the case? I don't think they do. What it boils down to is that Thugvon felt "dissed" by some "creepy ass crackuh" following him at night, and he wanted to show his "girlfriend" (in reality, his future baby momma) that he wouldn't let said diss go unpunished! He violently chimped out, and George Zimmerman shot the piece of crap through the heart. End of story.

[Estragon]

“Chimped out”

Oh mamacita save some content for your newsletter!!!

These are your people Eugene!

[Frank Drackman]

Who you calling "Your People"??

[Estragon]

You, frank! You are a great example of a milepost in the journey this project has taken from its humble beginnings! Kudos!

[Kazinski]

Now why would you blame Eugene?

I don't blame him for you.

I'm pretty far to the right, but I muted him the 1st or 2nd post I read.

And you see almost as much racism on the left here as you do the right.

[Estragon]

Because I think his editorial decisions have led to the degradation of the discourse around here. Cmon you’ve been around long enough— it didn’t actually used to be like this. In a way you should blame Eugene for me, 15 years ago I lurked and read informative and well-thought out comments on posts that, frankly, were a lot more technical and way less hot buttony. YMMV.

[Brett Bellmore]

Might be an impolite way to put it, but he has the general details right. Travon attacked Zimmerman, who killed him in self defense.

[Sarcastr0]

No, Brett, you do not need to hand it to the explicit white supremacist.

And we have no idea what the actual details are. Your usual unearned certainty is taking you to some bad places.

[David Nieporent]

To explain it to Brett: the jury found (correctly) that it wasn't proven b.a.r.d. that it wasn't self-defense. That is not the same thing as finding that it was self-defense.

[hoppy025]

Just like a jury of 11 non-whites, including 8 blacks, acquitting OJ to stick it to whitey wasn't finding him innocent, just that he was not guilty.

What's your point?

[not guilty]

Mike Pence reportedly has been subpoenaed to testify by Special Counsel Jack Smith. https://abcnews.go.com/US/mike-pence-subpoenaed-special-counsel-overseeing-trump-probes/story?id=97018886

That should be interesting. I would expect Pence to be asked about, among other things, Donald Trump and John Eastman corruptly importuning him to disregard the Electoral Count Act when Congress convened on January 6, 2021. Can anyone say smoking gun?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

He was subpoenad by that Russian Collusion hoaxer because he announced he was running.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

He might have been subpoenaed because his representative(s) requested a subpoena.

Anyone want to wager on whether (1) Prof. Volokh or (2) another Volokh Conspirator counsels that disgraced, un-American insurrectionist John Eastman after indictment or (3) Prof. Volokh provides testimony as a character witness on Eastman's behalf with respect to a sentencing hearing?

[Estragon]

It truly pains me to say this… but the huckleberries are right— Trump will face judgement at the pearly gates— but not in this mortal world.

[not guilty]

If Donald Trump dies outside of custody, he will have gotten away with serious misconduct. Prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 793 should be a slam dunk, just as prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) should be.

[Estragon]

I completely agree with you, particularly as to 1512c2.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Dismissing the prospect of personal criminal prosecution seems imprudent, but another course would be to hold Trump's businesses scrupulously to account for varied wrongdoing, bankrupting him, consuming his attention and energy, and destroying his family's finances.

That would be a feel-good story, too.

[Estragon]

However sound the legal case(s), however morally right it might or might not be, the guy is never going to spend a single day behind bars. As you say, the greater exposure might just be civil. Of course, now with the LIV golf tour he is never gonna run out of money. In a different time, there was an elegant solution: exile. That seems fair, to me, for the former guy.

[not guilty]

I don’t know about that. The criteria for bail pending appeal in the federal court system are pretty stringent, requiring a finding by clear and convincing evidence in the trial court, inter alia, that the appeal is not for the purpose of delay and raises a substantial question of law or fact likely to result in (i) reversal, (ii) an order for a new trial, (iii) a sentence that does not include a term of imprisonment, or (iv) a reduced sentence to a term of imprisonment less than the total of the time already served plus the expected duration of the appeal process. 18 U.S.C. § 3143(b)(1)(B).

[OtisAH]

Turnip is not getting anywhere near the pearly gates.

[Estragon]

I am admittedly not an expert— but doesn’t everyone get to the gates? Then you have the exit interview with St Peter and he decides if you get in the club

[EscherEnigma]

I certainly hope not.

If I had to rank afterlifes by preference, it'd be pretty low on the list.

[David Nieporent]

When do the 72 virgins get assigned?

[Michael P]

Can anyone say smoking gun?

"Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?"

[Nige]

Not after you've burned them down to protect Trump.

[not guilty]

A recent survey indicates that more than half of Florida families headed by same-sex or gender-nonconforming parents are considering moving out of the state, and 17% have taken steps to do so. https://www.the74million.org/article/survey-more-than-half-of-lgbt-florida-parents-are-thinking-about-moving/

It seems to me that Ron DeSantis is to hatred of LGBT people what George Wallace was to racial segregation sixty years ago. Each was/is a hatemongering, opportunistic Southern governor on the wrong side of history. Each picked a despised majority for his followers to look down upon -- both groups being defined by immutable characteristics. Each had the background to know better -- Wallace started out as a well regarded, liberal trial court judge, while DeSantis is a Harvard educated lawyer. Each had/has presidential aspirations. Each was/is doomed to fail in his demagogy.

Governor Wallace, to his credit, eventually repented of and repudiated his racial pandering. Time will tell whether Governor DeSantis will do so.

[Ben_]

Canada is nice.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Canada is nice. Bigots are not. And bigots -- including DeSantis -- don't have much of a future in modern America. Better Americans have been diminishing the influence of the bigots for so long as anyone reading this has been alive, and that trajectory is going to continue, the preferences of Republican racists, superstitious gay-bashers, deplorable immigrant-haters, old-timey misogynists, chanting antisemites, and obsolete Islamophobes notwithstanding.

[Brett Bellmore]

Aside from terrible weather, and the fact that it's rapidly becoming a police state, sure.

[Sarcastr0]

Way to devalue the term police state.

[Kazinski]

As one well known gay man once said:

“I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses.”

But unfortunately a lot of people want their sex lives to be practiced not only in the street, but in the curriculum.

There is no need for people to hide who they are in public, as long as they remain fully clothed.

[EscherEnigma]

And as we've seen coming out of Florida for almost a year now in response to this law, it is requiring that teachers closet themselves, it is requiring that age-appropriate books are removed because many of the most vocal anti-gay voices falsely believe (and are willing to complain to schools) that any mention of gay people existing isn't age-appropriate, and so-on.

Y'all keep trying to defend this law, but you can only do so by ignoring the on-the-ground consequences.

[hoppy025]

Throw these deviants off roofs, and then you don't have to worry about whether books discuss their existence.

[Estragon]

This is an ugly sentiment, to put it mildly

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Throw these deviants off roofs, and then you don’t have to worry about whether books discuss their existence.

This is an ugly sentiment, to put it mildly

That is comment content at the Volokh Conspiracy, which is an ugly, bigot-hugging, low-quality blog, to put it accurately. It is difficult to determine who is worse — (1) the proprietors (who are educated and therefore more culpable for hypocrisy, intolerance, and stale, ugly thinking), or (2) the ignorant, disaffected, and bigoted right-wingers the Conspirators have cultivated as an audience.

That “throw gays from rooftops” comment prompts me ask anew: How are those (ostensible) civility standards you claimed to be enforcing when censoring liberals and libertarians coming along, Prof. Volokh?

[Estragon]

It’s not even “throw gays from rooftops” because they pose some sort of existential crisis to the country or something.

It’s “throw gays from the rooftops so that I won’t be inconvenienced to have to think about them”

[David Nieporent]

You’re responding to someone who’s a pure troll.

EDIT: Well, I was referring to hoppy025, but technically this comment of yours was a response to Kirkland, who is also a pure troll. hoppy025 just keeps changing his handle — I don't know if that's because Prof V is blocking him, or because it makes him even more trollish — and posting under the persona of a neo-Nazi.

[Kazinski]

The NY Times on DeSantis:

What Liberals Can Learn From Ron DeSantis What Liberals Can Learn From Ron DeSantis

[Nige]

Does it say they can learn that DeSantis is coming for your books, your academic freedom and anyone who isn't straight?

[Ben_]

Today we see Biden telling everyone he has zero intention to serve the public, tell the truth about anything, or unite the country:

https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2023/02/09/president-joe-biden-tells-republicans-in-congress-that-im-your-nightmare/

[Sarcastr0]

You spew bile at Dems *daily*. And now are mad they won't just do what you want. You know, for unity.

Fuck off.

[Ben_]

Biden never had any intention of even trying to be President of all Americans. Today he shows us all that he’ll lie and divide and accuse and purposefully cause as much damage to America as he can. Unable to actually appeal to anyone, instead he’ll fracture the country and try to slide through the cracks with phony ballots in a few key counties, just like last time.

[OtisAH]

You’re confusing your refusal to accept Biden as the President of the United States with his intentions as President of the United States, of which you know fuck-all about.

[Sarcastr0]

Biden isn't lying. He's not going to fracture the country. He's not popular, but neither is he hated, except for tools like yourself.

You just hate America these days, is all.

[Sarcastr0]

I know that for a lot of Republicans on the Hill their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Well, let me say this.

If that’s your dream, I'm your nightmare.

Yeah, truly a call to fracture the country, Ben. You're really spinning around out there Ben. Just don't shoot anyone, eh?

[Ben_]

So you're saying Biden will use this as a starting point and ramp up the lying and hatred of Americans from here.

[Nige]

It means he's gong to oppose cutting social security and Medicare you massive bawling baby.

[David Nieporent]

People like Ben_ are amazing. They will accuse everyone they don't like of being child molesters ("groomer") but then get upset that someone might suggest that they support something they've said they support.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

People like Ben_ are the target audience of this right-wing blog.

[Michael P]

He's probably one of those bitter clingers who get upset that Dems call him names, huh.

There's a funny thing about slippery slopes and bad examples: they spur more bad behavior in the future. Yet you want to hold random Internet commenters to a higher standard than a US president who campaigned on unity.

[Sarcastr0]

No, you and Ben are being disingenuous.

You don’t want unity. It’s just another partisan cudgel to you.

Your extremism stands in the way of anything like unity.

Don’t insult our intelligence by pretending otherwise.

[Ben_]

Biden doesn't have to try to tell the truth or be President of anyone who didn't vote for him because Michael P may not be perfect.

[Kazinski]

At Wattsupwiththat they have a rather modest proposal that someone establish a fully functioning electrical grid based on renewable energy.

Doesn't seem out of bounds for someone to prove it works before we all dive in. After all the Wright brothers didn't start out with a moon launch or build an747.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kazinski, a sensible-sounding proposal which is likely to be obviated by need for too many mutually-dependent inventions which depend also on scale to be economically justifiable. For instance, to build that kind of grid it might prove helpful to have available near-universal battery-driven electrical vehicles, with capacity to store wind energy off the grid during off-peak hours.

A larger grid-stabilizing capacity might become available from dispersed energy storage in home batteries, notably larger than the vehicle ones. For another level of backup you might look to non-battery energy storage technology which does not yet exist in practical form, such as hydrogen generation driven by renewable energy, and tapped as needed by gas turbines for peaking power.

Wind turbines probably could benefit by at least one more generation of enlargement, but practical methods of construction have yet to be invented to match that scale. Figuring that out could advance the project.

Part of the necessary work would also involve mass conversion of home heating to electrical energy, supported by improved conservation in the form of energy saving renovations for existing homes, and architecturally more-efficient homes for new construction.

Industrial transportation has barely begun to be electrified. That too is a potential grid stabilizer, partly because it could become customary to do more travel during periods of lesser electrical demand, perhaps at night and on weekends.

You need at least developments of those sorts, and likely others, to make a renewables-based grid practical. Economic efficiencies to put them in place will have to scale up gradually, making the kind of demonstration you suggest impractical except as an engineering demonstration, probably built at costs notably higher than fully-scaled and mutually supportive manifestations would prove to be.

I would be interested to see some engineering futurism, with presumptions about energy storage, and realistic needs to over-specify the size of a renewables-based generation capacity built in.

And of course it could make all that easier if you could get nuclear into the mix. Problem is that to make that politically feasible you have to devise some test which the nuclear industry could pass to demonstrate it could be trusted not to keep lying about its practical problems. My suggestion for that has been to withhold all nuclear construction approvals pending complete clean-up of radioactive wastes now in, "temporary," storage at power plants across the nation. Let the nuclear industry find the political means to make that happen, and actually do it, and experiments with better-founded nuclear engineering might become feasible policy to add to the mix.

[Michael P]

You "need" things that "might prove helpful"?

Think more about what you are saying and less about how to dress it up in fancy words, please.

[OtisAH]

The words need, might, prove, and helpful are “fancy words” to you?

Actually, that makes sense. And it clears up a few questions I had.

[ThePublius]

"Let the nuclear industry find the political means to make that happen, ...."

Isn't it interesting that folks are fine with the government promoting, subsidizing, and even mandating wind power and solar power, but nuclear is on its own.

[Stephen Lathrop]

The nuclear power industry is not, "on its own." Nuclear is in self-imposed limbo. It got there by the twin expedients of lying about every conceivable public-facing nuclear concern, and by underperforming on essentially every public responsibility it ever took on. So finally, nuclear lost the political support necessary to keep it going.

It would be helpful to have a viable, trustworthy, and reliable nuclear capacity to address climate change concerns. Too bad we can't have it. Nuclear managers and political boosters took it out, when they comprehensively dismantled public willingness to trust the industry on anything. Until the nuclear industry shows willingness to clean up both its reputational and its literal messes, not many folks will be willing to trust it again.

[Brett Bellmore]

It got there by virtue of the regulators being captured by anti-nuke activists, and seeing their job as gradually winding the industry down without admitting what they're up to.

Promulgating utterly insane levels of safety compared to any other industry, (Fossil fuel plants can legally emit more radiation than nuclear plants!) taking money to build a waste repository and then canceling it, thrashing the regulations so that nobody can get anything built.

Nuclear power was actually quite economical before they insisted it had to be enormously safer than any other source of energy. Back when the plants were being built frequently enough that they were being built by people who had practice building them, to standard designs, instead of each one being a bespoke nightmare that kept getting changed in the middle of the build.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bellmore, that comment examples the kind of trust-eroding advocacy which put the nuclear industry into limbo. You position yourself as a nuclear advocate blaming others for the industry’s problems.

Most folks do not want anymore to hear nuclear advocates telling them about solutions which could work if only no one objected, and tsunamis never happened. Folks instead want nuclear advocates responsible enough not to advocate at all, unless they can propose solutions which can be implemented safely under realistically complex conditions—conditions which take into account factors such as public resistance, contractor reliability (or unreliability), technological uncertainty, waste disposal challenges, ongoing economic changes, long-term competitiveness, and even threats of terrorism or war-time destruction. If all that seems too much to ask, then just concede the anti-nuke side has made its point, and start looking for something else.

[Brett Bellmore]

You want to ignore that EVEN WITH THE ACCIDENTS, nuclear power ends up being safer than other sources of power. The accidents get tremendous publicity; The fact that in general they kill practically nobody? That gets passed over.

Death rates per unit electricity production. It stacks up slightly differently depending on how you count things, but nuclear is always near the bottom, if not at it, and tens to hundreds of times safer than burning ANYTHING; Coal, oil, gas, biomass. It's in the same general range as solar and wind, except that you can actually depend on it!

On an average day coal kills more people than nuclear does in a year, adjusted for the amount of power produced. (And basically all those nuclear deaths are mining accidents, NOT nuclear accidents.)

All the deaths at Fukushima were due to a hasty evacuation from an area that wasn't even dangerously radioactive, for instance.

A single dam failure can kill more people than nuclear power has killed in the history of mankind. But who is trying to abolish hydropower?

[Nelson]

I rarely agree with Brett. Probably because his posts on cultural issues are often based on uninformed opinion, personal cultural and moral beliefs, and questionable sources. So, despite the almost physical pain caused by doing so, I have to agree with Brett.

Nuclear power is highly efficient, continuous, and has an impressive history of safe operation. The distrust that you reference exists, but it isn’t as deep and wide as you present.

The two biggest challenges with nuclear energy are related to radiation. Namely the inherent danger in both the fuel for and waste of nuclear energy.

But the multiplier for most people regarding their concerns about nuclear energy isn’t the vast majority of times when everything went right. It is the few times, and the massive ecogical and medical disaster that results, when things fail. Fukushima and Chernobyl are prime examples.

When something goes wrong with a coal plant, it is a toxic nightmare that hurts the surrounding ecology and citizens for years. When something goes wrong with nuclear, it is decades or centuries. That is the elephant in the room.

Nuclear proponents downplay it with safety data to try to ignore the fact that nuclear pollution isn’t like other pollution. There is no middle ground between “no ecological damage” and “huge ecological damage for a long, long time”. There isn’t a small amount of radiocative pollution that is safe or only presents a short-term threat to the health and safety of the people nearby.

So instead of insisting that people are overwrought in their concerns, the nuclear industry should face it head-on. Grab the most horrifying disasters in nuclear history and detail what went wrong, what damage was caused, how it was mitigated, how long the cleanup took, and who lost what as a result of the disaster. Then build out solutions (or mitigation, if it isn’t possible to fix things) for those scenarios and make them publicly available. Whether it is decontamination processes, an escrow account with funds to buy out property owners in the case of contamination, realistic danger assessments (earthquakes in Nevada, tornados in the Plains, hurricanes on the East Coast, etc.) for each proposed waste holding/processing location or production facility.

Steven is right that people don’t trust energy companies to be honest. That isn’t a nuclear-specific distrust, it is industry-wide. The way to combat distrust is transparency, not secrecy.

If we want to move to clean/green/carbon-zero energy soon, nuclear has to be part of the equation. Like it or not, the only way coal (filthy), oil (dirty), or natural gas (the best of the three) is eliminated any time soon is if there is an efficient, cost-effective, reliable, constant source of power to replace it.

That is nuclear. The other option is to keep fossil fuels supplying our energy need for the forseeable future. You don’t like nuclear? OK. What is your alternative if coal, oil, and natural gas aren’t acceptable? What is wrong with allowing nuclear to take the load from fossil fuels and then, if better technologies emerge in the future, advocate for phasing out nuclear?

No fossil fuels with nuclear is vastly preferable to fossil fuels with no nuclear. At this point there isn’t another possible scenario, especially with the electricity needs of the world growing so quickly.

Am I wrong?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Deleted, SL.

[Stephen Lathrop]

What is wrong with allowing nuclear to take the load from fossil fuels and then, if better technologies emerge in the future, advocate for phasing out nuclear?

Nelson, as I am sure you understand, nuclear does not realistically, “phase out,” at least not in time frames relevant to energy policy outcomes. I reckon that a major part of the dilemma.

At nuclear power plants around the nation, at both active plants and decommissioned plants, there remain stores of high level nuclear waste with potential to contaminate extensive areas, and make them uninhabitable for decades, or perhaps for centuries. For instance, 34 miles southeast of Boston is the decommissioned Pilgrim Nucler Power Station. Like the Fukushima plant in Japan, Pilgrim occupies a seaside location.

At Pilgrim now, there remain many giant casks of nuclear waste stored in the open air, apparently housing spent fuel. You can see those casks in overhead photographs. You can see them from a regularly traveled public road. Between the casks and the road lies a bit of weedy terrain, a chain link fence, and whatever unknown security measures get provided by the company in charge of managing a facility which has become a deadweight economic loss. That loss seems seems destined to become a near-permanent economic goad to encourage neglect and mismanagement.

That may help explain why the company now managing the decommissioned plant has proposed to get rid of some presumably lower-level nuclear waste liquids by simply dumping one million gallons of them into Cape Cod Bay:

The Environmental Protection Agency issued another stern letter to the company cleaning up the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, warning them not to dump contaminated wastewater into Cape Cod Bay. In the letter to Holtec president Kelly Trice, the EPA reaffirmed that unauthorized discharges into the Bay would be violation of the Clean Water Act.

The EPA letter followed a public meeting where Holtec Senior Compliance Manager David Noyes said the company would seek a new wastewater permit from the EPA, but might also dump water without one. The 1.1 million gallons of water was used to cool spent nuclear fuel rods, and contains both radioactive and non-radioactive pollutants. — WBUR, 12/8/2022

That water is at least not spent fuel, but Holtec has refused to disclose what the water does contain. Perhaps it is worth noting that the sea waters immediately adjacent to the plant are habitat for critically endangered northern right whales, humpback whales, pilot whales, grey seals, harbor seals, and federally protected great white sharks. They also comprise a key link on a migratory route used twice annually by striped bass and bluefish. That area is part of one of the most productive and intensively used resources for sport fishing nationwide. The species which inhabit that area, and migrate through it, do have the ability to concentrate pollutants in their flesh. Many of the anglers who catch them use them for food. During the autumn migration, the most intensively fished season, they are typically large fish, yielding as much as 8 – 15 pounds of edible meat per fish, sometimes more.

Of course any environmental concern about dumping contaminated cooling water into the sea fades to near insignificance compared to the far less probable—but incommensurately more dire—threat of an open air release of radioactivity from spent fuel. Average wind speeds along that coast are among the highest in the nation. Inland areas which risk contamination are inhabited by ~ 6 million people, and encompass among other assets the Massachusetts cities of Boston, and Cambridge, plus Providence, RI.

I suppose the answer to your question, "Am I wrong?," depends on subjectively difficult assessments of potential risks vs the value of the assets imperiled. In my estimate, you are wrong. I may give more weight than you would to the long-term risk of mismanagement which an anti-profitable facility presents, and add to that a likelihood that such arrangements will not last indefinitely. At some point I expect all decommissioned nuclear plants to become ongoing public charges, unless the industry which built them cleans them up first.

Add to that the incalculable risks of war, terrorism and natural disaster, which will be ever-present, and I do not like the odds. If I took such bets repeatedly, I would expect to win almost all of them. But if I lost even one of them, I would expect to be wiped out.

[Nelson]

"Nelson, as I am sure you understand, nuclear does not realistically, “phase out,” at least not in time frames relevant to energy policy outcomes."

Nuclear is being phased out as we speak. Our nuclear production capacity has diminished constantly since the 90s. It is possible to phase out anything through legislation, but it happens much quicker once new technology becomes cheaper to produce. If nuclear power could replace coal, oil, and natural gas in the next 20 years, isn't that preferable to the continuation of fossil fuels?

With 20 more years of research, what new technologies could emerge? If you want to force a periodic reassessment of nuclear, issue 20 year licenses. Focus on safety and storage regulations and clear out the tripwire regulations that make it hard to build and make a profit with nuclear. As emerging technology becomes cost-effective, nuclear will be abandoned. The free market is brutally effective at abandoning outdated technology.

"At nuclear power plants around the nation, at both active plants and decommissioned plants, there remain stores of high level nuclear waste with potential to contaminate extensive areas, and make them uninhabitable for decades, or perhaps for centuries."

Yes, and that's where legislation should focus. Safety (storage and disposal of radioactive material), escrowed accountability funds (to provide cleanup and compensation in the case of a disaster), and a carrot/stick incentive structure (some sort of yearly benefit, perhaps tax credits, for a completely clean matrial safety record and fines and penalties, perhaps increased tax rates, for violations of safety protocols). Using the tax code would circumvent the typical "cost of doing business" budget line item by making violaters less competitive in the market and impacting every dollar they make.

You can't believe that nuclear proponents aren't horrified by the idea of dumping radioactive material into the bay. The regulatory structure on nuclear these days is damned near a mandate to skimp all over to turn a profit. I'm 100% in favor of sensible regulation, but it can't be a 283rd level of redundant protection against an accident. That just makes it less likely, not more, that companies will do the barest minimum.

"I suppose the answer to your question, “Am I wrong?,” depends on subjectively difficult assessments of potential risks vs the value of the assets imperiled."

True, but it also has to factor in the alternative sources of energy. If you were just considering the liklihood of a disaster (tiny, and even smaller with less regulatory costs and a penalty system that increases taxes on violators) your abundance of caution might be reasonable. But the two main counterarguments I see are these: without nuclear we will have to wait for a new clean technology to emerge and become cost effective (possibly fission?), which will require a couple decades or more of fissil fuels, and the ability to locate plants away from heavily populated areas. We have the space 8n America to do that, although it would be easier in the West, Plains, and Southeast than in the Northeast.

No one is claiming nuclear doesn't have unique an potentially catastrophic dangers. But considering the alternatives and its strong safety record, nuclear makes more sense than fossil fuels. We woukd have to remove some regulatory redundancies that make profitability difficult, but in my opinion it is the better (not perfect, but better) choice.

[Stephen Lathrop]

The free market is brutally effective at abandoning outdated technology.

No point in taking that tack with me. I thought I had already made it clear that I consider abandoned nuke plants unacceptable risks.

You are sanguine about the risk/utility ratio you get with nukes. Using that Pilgrim nuke plant I mentioned as an example, what do you suppose is the likelihood from all causes that it would during the next 100 years suffer some catastrophe causing release of most or all of the radiation in its spent fuel casks?

If that happened, assuming no fatalities at all, at what dollar cost do you put consequent property loss and cumulative economic damage throughout the New England region? How far do you suppose the radiation release would spread before contamination levels fell to insignificance?

Compute that number, and make it a denominator beneath a numerator to represent the net economic benefit of electricity from lifetime use of the plant. Note that I am not asking for the total value of electricity from the plant, but only for the value of the increment of improvement we get from making it nuclear vs. any other technology you care to name.

With that ratio in hand, you will be equipped to discount it by that likelihood of 100-year catastrophe which I began with. See how that comes out for you.

Of course, I do not expect you, as a nuclear advocate, even to entertain that kind of thinking. But if by some weird affinity for critical thinking you decide to do it, please tell me how it comes out. I want the chance to add a critique to whatever estimates you come up with.

I suspect you, like almost everyone who thinks nukes are a good bet, greatly over-estimate the long-term safety to expect if you store the depleted fuel anywhere except in a secure repository, very deep underground, surrounded by reliable geology.

Of course the current scheme, dispersed storage, on the willy-nilly locations plan, is about as bad as it can get. If you intended to find a means to maximize risks and consequent damage together, you could hardly invent on purpose anything worse.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Nuclear proponents downplay it with safety data to try to ignore the fact that nuclear pollution isn’t like other pollution. There is no middle ground between “no ecological damage” and “huge ecological damage for a long, long time”. There isn’t a small amount of radiocative pollution that is safe or only presents a short-term threat to the health and safety of the people nearby."

This is nothing but irrational hysteria. Really, that's all it is.

For instance, radioactive iodine, the main thing released in nuclear accidents, has a half life of 8 days. In a year, over 45 half lives, the concentration is down by 14 orders of magnitude, which is not measurably different from zero. How is that NOT short term? And just taking dirt cheap iodine supplements for a few weeks shuts down that threat. I've got some in my pantry, in case of nuclear war. (Grew up during the Cold War, of course I got some as soon as the Ukraine war heated up.)

And maybe you should check out the ecological findings in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. It's doing great. Nature doesn't freaking CARE about the radiation levels from a nuclear accident. Nuclear power isn't an ecological disaster even when Russians do something mind blowingly stupid with an obsolete plant. And the increase it caused in human cancer rates was too small to be statistically measurable, outside of the immediate area. For the worst nuclear accident in history, the perfect storm of an obsolete plant, totalitarian disregard for public safety, and Russian stupidity, we literally can't measure the public health consequences beyond the local zone. And only notice them there because we're looking very carefully for them, it's not like people have been dropping in their tracks.

Now, people care anyway, because we're long lived organisms, and have learned to effectively beat back most causes of death, but cancer scares us. So we get irrational about nuclear radiation, and take chemical pollutants in stride.

But all that is, IS irrationality. Nothing more.

[Nelson]

But all of the radioactive material isn't iodine, is it? Uranium and plutonium are problematic to your argument.

My point is that there is a danger, if the worst happens, that shouldn't be ignored or waved away by nuclear proponents. That behavior is what gets nuclear energy companies the side-eye from the people living around their plants.

It sounds like bullshit combined with a complete lack of concern, with a strong odor of condescension. It isn't the highly-paid executive who flies in to sell the company line that has to worry about their kids, is it?

And saying that the ecology springs back isn't reassuring, either. "Hey, your plants and animals will get right back to where they were before. Just give it a few decades. And it's only nearby (definition to remain vague) that will be effected anyway. So, see? You idiots don't know anything." is a terrible sales pitch. Adding, "Sure, cancer rates go up, but since we can't really measure cancer rates in a normal population, how big a jump is it, really?" makes it even worse.

Radioactivity is frightening. Potential exposure to radioactivity is really frightening. Cancer is frightening. Your arguments are like the nuclear industry's, which is why people resist plants and support ridiculous, redundant, and unnecessary regulations.

Energy companies (like you were above) are dismissive and condescending about people's fears. Almost no one is a nuclear scientist, able to understand and assess the danger for themselves. Almost no one is willing to trust their health and safety to the pooh-pooh dismissals of an energy company. Energy companies are have a long history of lying about community impact to get what they want. They have no credibility.

Which is why transparency, not dismissiveness, is the only way to rebuild trust. Stop telling people they have nothing to worry about. They don't know the math, so they can't do it for themselves, and anyone who believes what an energy company tells them deserves the unpleasant surprises they get.

For nuclear to expand, proponents (and I am a huge proponent of nuclear energy) have to accept the fears of the community and present a completely transparent, detailed plan with money, untouchable by the company without community agreement, set aside so they know they won't get Exxon Valdez-ed and multiple third-party verification of the math, the assessment of risk, and the viability and cost of the cleanup procedures.

They have to be completely transparent. They have surrendered community trust ove the decades by lying, hiding risks, backing out of payment agreements, and generally acting like slimy opportunists. They have to act like the concerns of the community are valid (even if they have a "yeah, but" reason they don't agree), set aside money (even though they claim they'll live up to their obligations in the event of a disaster), and present a detailed, realistic plan to contain and decontaminate or, if that proves impossible, make whole anyone effected by an accident.

They don't have trust, but they do have a lot of very smart employees who can create such a document and do it in such a way that third parties can verify its feasibility.

[Absaroka]

I tend to stay out of nuke debates, because I don't know enough to comment intelligently. But I suppose anyone can comment on public perceptions, and I think Nelson is correct that Brett is a little tone deaf here.

The wikipedia article says about the exclusion zone:

"Some sources have estimated when the site could be considered habitable again:
320 years or less (Ukraine state authorities, c. 2011)
3,000 years (Christian Science Monitor, 2016)
20,000 years or more (Chernobyl director Ihor Gramotkin, c. 2016)
Tens of thousands of years (Greenpeace, March 2016)"

That's a lot of time to write off 1000 square miles.

As far as wildlife, other wiki articles say (paraphrase) "wildlife is doing great overall because the benefit of the people being gone outweighs the ongoing harm from radiation". That's a little more nuanced than Brett's "Nature doesn’t freaking CARE about the radiation levels from a nuclear accident. "

[Nige]

'But who is trying to abolish hydropower?'

You'd be surprised, given the environmental destruction and land-grabbing that goes with their construction.

[Kazinski]

I guess your point is that the technology isn't there yet to depend on renewables to provide 90% of the power on a grid.

But your suggestion that converting transportation and heating to run on electricity first just increases the chances of failure. Converting a current grid to a renewable backbone first is plenty ambitious enough without doubling down to cripple transportation and letting people freeze when it fails.

As for a nuclear power grid, that's tried and true, France for one has done it.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Conservation increases reliability. Increased storage capacity increases reliability. Dispersed storage capacity increases reliability. A more extensive grid increases reliability. Those principles run counter to your assertion that to increase reliance on electricity reduces reliability.

It is pointless to assert that renewables are not dependable now. Nobody says they are.

To take on the challenge to show renewables cannot be reliable ever would require engineering projections at a level of detail which no one has yet attempted. If those projections were done, and showed feasibility, I doubt it would do much to reduce denials. Present denials cannot now be any better founded than present projections; no one has dispositive analysis in hand. So present denials come from some other source. Such denials would continue despite a detailed showing of feasibility.

[Brett Bellmore]

Right, it's only the absurd insistence on using intermittently available power sources with low reliability that we object to.

You want to make a case for storage to cope with peak loads in the context of reliable baseline generation, have at it.

[Nige]

It's the insistence on using sources that are pretty much destroying the planet that we object to.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's funny, then, that you object to nuclear, but don't mind windmills dicing up birds, or the dirty mining necessary for your solar panels.

[Nelson]

Really? Birds? There is a strong argument for nuclear (or at least nuclear to decrease fossil fuels). Why trot out Trump's favorite untrue thing about windmills?

The mining is a valid point about the underlying dirtiness of solar, but it cuts the same way against nuclear. Nuclear is capable of replacing fossil fuels for our energy needs now, not in some hypothetical future where storage is abundant and cheap.

[Nige]

Funnily enough I've never objected to nuclear, just your infantile assertions that it's in its current state because of environmentalists, many of whom do object to nuclear, but I can think of a vastly more powerful, wealthy and influential group that might be directly threatened by nuclear power who are far more likely to be the culprits, can you?

Oh Brett wait till you find out how many birds die because of all human activity that isn’t windmills. Wait till you find out how dirty mining for any resource is and how tiny the mining for renewable-related resources is by comparison. You’ll be so upset.

[Kazinski]

You don't know what your talking about Lathrop.

Adding enormous loads to the grid decreases the reliability.

Adding loads to the grid that can't be curtailed without catastrophe decreases grid reliability.

The Texas grid failure during the polar vortex should make that clear:
"At least 246 people were killed directly or indirectly, with some estimates as high as 702 killed as a result of the crisis."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis

[Stephen Lathrop]

I am astounded Kazinski included the link to the Texas power crisis, which he must not have read. It time and again confirms what I have been saying, and refutes what he apparently believes.

Everyone who has any inclination to believe the Texas power crisis demonstrated potential trouble with renewables should read that link. It could not be clearer that the crisis in Texas was a malign stew brewed up out of: purposeful neglect of well-understood long-standing grid deficiencies; politically-motivated refusal to expand the grid (to enable avoidance of regulatory standards which would have ensued); deregulatory ideology taken to foolish extremes; abysmal conservation practices; catastrophic mismanagement while the crisis was in process, with the worst of it a decision made deliberately by the Texas governor to help political cronies profit more as the crisis got worse; price gouging opportunism on the part natural gas suppliers; and other chronic lying by Texas political figures. Just one quote among dozens to illustrate the embarrassments the political lies attempted to obscure:

Five times more natural gas than wind power had been lost.

Note that for its catastrophic failure, the Texas natural gas industry reaped a multi-billon dollar windfall during the crisis.

Really, read Kazinski’s link. It is practically exhibit A to show the advantages for electrical reliability to be had from grid expansion, improved conservation, distributed energy storage, and increased reliance on renewables. It also stands as a critique to make clear the rent-seeking motives which lie behind fossil fuel advocacy to stifle increased reliance on renewable energy.

Thank you, Kazinski.

[Absaroka]

" It is practically exhibit A to show the advantages for electrical reliability to be had from grid expansion, improved conservation, distributed energy storage, and increased reliance on renewables."

I am just fascinated to read your explanation of how more solar and wind would have helped during that outage. See the graph in this article from the NYT (sorry, paywalled).

NatGas plants produced the bulk of TX's electricity. And their terrible reliability practices resulted in losing (eyeballing) an inexcusable 40% of NatGas generating capacity.

But look at the lines for solar and wind. You may notice that solar, for some reason, seems to go offline pretty regularly, almost like it's on a 24 hour cycle or something. The watts are great when it's up, but as Kazinski says it can't support the base load.

Now look at wind. It declined by (eyeball again) 50% - more than NatGas - during the storm.

Texas lost more megawatts of NatGas, because their generation is primarily by gas, but lost a higher percentage of wind. Plus wind also can't support the base load.

You can't spin that into 'things would have been better with more wind and solar'.

There are encouraging possibilities afoot in e.g. grid scale batteries. I hope they pan out. But they might or might not; fusion has been 5 years out for most of my life. You can't schedule or mandate developments like that.

Remember how planes/cars/transistors/cell phones/personal computers/radio were all developed according to government schedules and predictions? Me neither!

It's kind of silly to have political debates about the future of the grid. Innovation will drive what happens, not politics, because people simply will not stand for an electricity free society.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Absaroka, note the date of the NYT article and chart, very close in time to the events reported, and of course prior to any detailed analysis, let alone any opportunity to debunk claims made to deflect political blame. Did you read Kazinski's Wikipedia link?

An "electricity free society," would not be even close to a realistic expectation in any scenario. I expect intensively developed conservation could readily deliver an entirely livable, "less electricity society," while paving the way for a, "modestly-more electricity society," with vastly reduced reliance on fossil fuels.

And of course, a demand to replace fossil fuels all at once, with comparably reliable performance immediately available, cannot be taken as good faith effort to take seriously foreseeable energy challenges.

[Absaroka]

"Did you read Kazinski’s Wikipedia link?"

Yes. If you consider wiki articles more authoritative than the NYT, the wiki article has a similar graph[1], titled 'Hourly net generation by energy source...". It's just smaller and harder to read unless you embiggen it. I suppose it's easy to kiss on a skim.

"Absaroka also failed to note that after an initial dip, wind energy came back on line"

This is a real head scratcher. How can you look at the area under the curve for wind power pre and post storm and think that? Are you noticing that the post-storm maximum got up as far as the pre-storm minimum and somehow thinking that's a good thing?

Look at the blue wind line pre-storm, and mentally average it to a flat line. That will be a little above the purple nuke line - maybe 6 or 7 MWh. Then do the same after the storm hits - it's now below the (now lower as well) purple line - maybe 3 MWh or so.

"Texas wind dramatically outperformed Texas natural gas during that crisis" is a dramatic demonstration of innumeracy.

[1]It covers the same date range around the storm, but starts a few days earlier. Looking at the longer interval of data nicely showcases how variable wind and solar are, which is why you need other sources capable of carrying the entire load.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Absaroka, I never disputed that wind power output averages more variable than fossil fuel output. But this was a discrete crisis with a discrete starting point, on Monday, April 15. Following that date, gas energy tanked and stayed down until the curve ran off the chart on Thursday morning. During that same interval, wind power behaved variably in its customary way. Probably, because of that customary variability, you could not prove with that chart that wind power was affected at all by the storm. If it was, the effect was dramatically less post-storm, during the crisis, than it was for natural gas. It would have been helpful if the plots had continued a few more days. But there is no point to include pre-storm data in this comparison, except to deliver obfuscation.

Anyone who wants to judge the relative merits of what I have said vs what Absaroka says can judge for themselves. Look at the Wikipedia article, read the text, and enlarge the energy graph for a closer look.

[Absaroka]

"the effect was dramatically less post-storm, during the crisis, than it was for natural gas"

I gotta say, it's just fascinating to me from a psychological point of view that you can say that. The graphs are right there in front of you!

"It would have been helpful if the plots had continued a few more days."

Your wish is my command. Here is the same data for all of February[1].

And what do we see there? Wind is going great - it's supplying about as much power as gas, right up until about 9Feb or so. You see the classic pattern - they use wind when they can, and switch to gas when wind dies off. But on 9Feb or so, wind production drops by roughly 50% until roughly 20Feb or so. The total load is rising sharply, presumably because the temperature is dropping, and gas generation doubles or triples to carry the increased load. It copes until the 15th or so, when gas drops from 43k to maybe 28k MWh. Wind is dropping almost to zero at times. The storm breaks on about the 20th, load and gas generation drops, and the wind finally picks up and it's back to the normal mix of power sources.

[1]That's a custom chart. If it has timed out or something, you can do your own by noting that the NYT article cites 'U.S. Energy Information Administration Hourly Electric Grid Monitor'. Google for that and they have a spiffy tool where you can do your own charts - pick the TEX region, your own dates, say you want a chart, etc.

[Nige]

'You can’t spin that into ‘things would have been better with more wind and solar’.'

Why would you? It's nothing to do with the source of the power but with the negelct of infrastructure and drive for profits. Why would you expect hated wind and solar to be properly managed or developed when they can't even do it for their beloved oil and gas?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Absaroka also failed to note that after an initial dip, wind energy came back on line, and then continued to deliver pre-storm levels of power, while natural gas got knocked out for days. No matter how you spin it, Texas wind dramatically outperformed Texas natural gas during that crisis. The wind power did that even while the governor was lying about it. Kazinski's Wikipedia link:

Texas Governor Greg Abbott and some other politicians initially said renewable energy sources were the cause for the power outages, citing frozen wind turbines as an example of their unreliability. Viral images of a helicopter de-icing a wind turbine said to be in Texas were actually taken in 2015 in Sweden.

[EscherEnigma]

Sounds good.

I assume you aren't interested in looking at houses that have their own solar, battery packups, and inverters so that they can keep the lights on when the lines go down? So we need a real "grid" to test this on.

Well, the only candidate in the continental US that is both large enough to satisfy you, and separate enough to be able to "prove", is... Texas.

You know, the place where the governor blamed renewables for their gas and coal plants not being sufficiently winterized and freezing.

Not sure the test would get a fair shake there.

And if Texas is out, then I think there's a bit of a logistical problem on where to perform this test. Without solving that, the suggestion is not actually "reasonable".

[Brett Bellmore]

The problem in Texas is a fairly common one: They have a pseudo market in electricity production, but the utilities are required to buy whatever is cheapest at any given moment, they’re not allowed to just stick with something that’s available 100% of the time, and averages out OK.

If the sun comes out from behind a cloud, they have to tell the nuclear plant, “Sorry, chump!” and buy the sudden influx of power.

Since they can’t pay any premium for reliability, guess what they don’t, in practice, get?

Yeah, reliability. Producers can’t invest in making systems reliable if it increases the cost of their power at all, because they won’t get paid back for making it reliable, they’ll just get downgraded on the price.

So, anyway, why exactly did Texas desperately need gas power on that day? Oh, yeah: Because the solar and wind plants went offline, and all they had left to rely on was the reliable sources they'd been underfunding because they had to buy solar and wind.

[EscherEnigma]

You know, I'm just gonna block you.

You think 2015 happened before 2003, you think Fox News isn't conservative, and you think Texas underfunds coal and gas because of renewables.

You're just delusional.

[Kazinski]

Run away, Run Away!

I'm actually a big fan of muting but I only mute people who never can bring a serious argument to bear to support their position.

Like Kirkland, or Nige who can post 60-75 times on a thread without saying a single thing worth reading. But I've probably muted a lot more from the right as left for the same reasons or racism, I even had Not Guilty muted for a while because he's a racist.

But say what you will about Brett he makes substantive points, but if not being able to refute them upsets you then go ahead.

But Brett's absolutely right about the disencentives for reliable power affecting the reliability of the grid.

[EscherEnigma]

Cool story bro.

False, but cool.

Because, even if renewables had crowded out so much money that the coal and gas utilities were barely scraping by (which they didn't. Those companies were and are doing fine)... those same companies new about the danger to their infrastructure for years before the renewable boom in Texas happened, and decided that instead of improving their infrastructure, they would pocket the profit.

But hey, feel free to blame the new kid on the block for the old guy not maintaining his systems. Which were already degraded and failing *before* the new kid showed up.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

A guy who claims to mute racists but defends Birther Brett Bellmore?

Carry on, clingers.

[Brett Bellmore]

"You think 2015 happened before 2003"

You keep raving about that. I'd look it up, but Reason has things set up so that comments aren't indexed by search engines. You got a link?

[apedad]

Rioter who carried Confederate flag while chasing Black police officer inside U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 gets years in prison

In his sentencing memo, Seefried said that he was raised to believe that the Confederate flag — which was adopted by pro-slavery forces in the Civil War — was simply a “symbol of an idealized view of southern life and southern heritage,” and that he lacked “even average intellectual capacity” to understand what it actually means.

https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-riot/rioter-who-carried-confederate-flag-while-chasing-black-police-officer-inside-u-s-capitol-on-jan-6-gets-years-in-prison/

Dumb fuckers. . . .just ask them!

The problem is there's millions still out there (and plenty here at the VC too).

What's it going to take to unfuck yourselves?!?

[Kazinski]

Is 'reverse cowgirl' 'unfucking'?

[Estragon]

No.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

In his sentencing memo, Seefried said that he was raised to believe that the Confederate flag — which was adopted by pro-slavery forces in the Civil War — was simply a “symbol of an idealized view of southern life and southern heritage,” and that he lacked “even average intellectual capacity”

Anybody know this Seefried's screen name here? This guy is a born Volokh Conspiracy fan.

[Brett Bellmore]

There are plenty of idiots who go around wearing Che shirts, or waving Antifa flags. Do they get to unfuck themselves, too?

[apedad]

So....you don't know the difference between first amendment activity and criminal activity?!?

[Brett Bellmore]

Your "unfuck" remark seemed to be directed at the Confederate flag, not the breaking and entering..

And plenty of the idiots wearing Che shirts or waving Antifa flags break laws, as you must know after the last few years.

Should these yahoos "unfuck" themselves? Should said 'unfucking' involve denouncing the Antifa flag?

[EscherEnigma]

So any guesses on how long McCarthy is going to drag it out before he actually says what cuts he wants in exchange for raising the debt ceiling?

'cause so far all he's said is "wokeism", but (surprise, surprise!) he's unwilling to say what he means by that.

[Brett Bellmore]

A very long time indeed, because I doubt he really wants any specific cuts. He's just playing to the members who do, to keep them from calling a 'no confidence vote', which ability to do was one of his concessions to get the Speakership.

He's in a tough position, because of the diffuse costs and concentrated benefits problem; Identify a specific cut, and, wham, you have a highly motivated constituency made, and a lot of other people only slightly pleased.

A systematic, not piecemeal, solution is needed. Like a balanced budget amendment, or a 10% cut of EVERYTHING until the budget is balanced. Something that makes the costs and benefits equally diffuse.

[Nelson]

Fuck me. I have to agree with Brett twice? Shit.

The only way that the budget gets balanced is for the goal to be a balanced budget, period. That has to be the starting point, not some wishcast “goal” for the future.

Then you can horse trade about what stays and what goes. Otherwise it’s just whack-a-mole because Republicans claiming to be fiscally responsible hasn’t been true since the 90s, so neither party is going to do it.

Republicans need to accept that deficit-expanding tax cuts have to happen AFTER the budget is balanced. Democrats need to accept that deficit-expanding new programs have to happen AFTER the budget is balanced. And both of them need to be forced to sacrifice spending elsewhere if they want new spending.

When you’re in a hole, the first step is to STOP DIGGING.

If you want to address the insolvency of Social Security without expecting paybacks from the programs that were established back when there was a surplus, the first step is to allow Social Security (hell, the entire federal government) to negotiate drug prices with manufacturers. Part D was an unfunded boondoggle that George W foisted on everyone. The second step is to remove the FICA income cap and have it apply to all income, not just earned income. Blue collar workers shouldn't be the main funding source of Social Security. The third step is to means-test benefits. The fourth step is to gradually raise the age of investiture over the next 10 years from 65 to 70. Those reforms will mitigate the deficit while the Boomers are drawing benefits and could eliminate it when their population spike had passed.

[Brett Bellmore]

You were going so good, then you had to pull out the price controls... That's a BAD path to do down. You don't make costs go down by price controls, you just destroy market feedback.

Instead, get rid of Medicare. If you want to subsidize medical insurance for people who can't afford it, don't start up an insurance company with the government's guns behind it. Just subsidize their insurance.

Anyway, "The fourth step is to gradually raise the age of investiture over the next 10 years from 65 to 70."

That's done. In my age bracket you don't get full SS until 66 and 10 months, they some time ago passed a law that made it gradually go up.

[Nelson]

“then you had to pull out the price controls”

I didn’t suggest price controls.

“Instead, get rid of Medicare.”

Eliminating Medicare isn’t a good idea, besides the obvious fact that it’s a non-starter politcally. Medicare only pays 80%, so it had a market-based control built in. While Medicare isn’t perfect, it could be a better and more efficient system without the legislative prohibition on negotiated drug prices. Would a private insurance system be better? Unlikely unless it was nonprofit. I am not a fan of privitizing Medicare or Social Security. There are too many downsides.

“they some time ago passed a law that made it gradually go up”

I knew it was proposed, but I didn’t realize it had passed. I guess I was too cynical and assumed it was dead in the water once AARP cranked up their lobbying. Did they put in a maximum age? I assume they would have to, but I also assumed it wouldn’t pass.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Republicans need to accept that deficit-expanding tax cuts have to happen AFTER the budget is balanced. Democrats need to accept that deficit-expanding new programs have to happen AFTER the budget is balanced. And both of them need to be forced to sacrifice spending elsewhere if they want new spending.

Nelson, I like your comments, but that third sentence is mistaken. You made sensible proposals. It is also long past time to cut federal deficits by undoing previous income tax cuts for the rich. That is another way to enable needed new spending.

Rs and Ds agree that government needs more money—although the Rs right now refuse to be specific about it. They prefer a more-destructive mode of engagement—opportunism to exploit the need for more money, by threatening the credit of the United States. That they cannot mention forthrightly, so they dodge all the questions.

When government needs more money, there is no alternative except to get more money from people who have money. Every other approach proves self-defeating. To make that point, and make it stick, will be the first step toward solving federal deficit problems. It is not possible to do it any other way.

The politics to make it stick should begin now. Ds must chorus in unison that threats to block a debt ceiling increase, without accounting and specifics about what programs the Rs plan to cut, mean that the Rs plan to target Social Security and Medicare.

Until deficit ceiling blackmail ends, that should be the answer every Democratic Party politician provides, no matter what questions get asked:

Reporter: "Mr. Congressman, did the Biden Administration make a mistake to let the Chinese spy balloon transit the nation before shooting it down?"

Democratic Party Congressman: "I will not be distracted by trivia and nonsense while Republicans execute a covert plan to cut Social Security and Medicare. The nation cannot afford to lose focus while Republicans in Congress plot in secret to undo the most important programs government administers, and then lie about their plans to the public."

Alternatively, closer to election time:

Democratic Party candidate for Congress: "Remember, no matter how moderate your district's Republican candidate for Congress seems to be, to elect that candidate is a vote to empower a crazy Republican majority which always wants to cut Social Security and Medicare. Republicans have shown they will keep trying to do that as long as their dark money donors demand it. Until Congress acts to end dark money political influence, Social Security and Medicare will not be safe. To make those programs safe, please give me your vote."

[Brett Bellmore]

"Rs and Ds agree that government needs more money"

News to me. I mean, Republican office holders at the federal level probably think this privately, but the general consensus of Republicans is that you could roll back inflation adjusted per capita federal spending to where it was back in, say, 2006, (About half of 2019!) before TARP blew the roof off, and everything would be peachy.

Why not? The country wasn't a 3rd world hellhole in 2006.

[Nelson]

Rs don't believe that any more. Even Reagan was a deficit spender. Rs will only advocate for fiscal responsibility when Ds are in control because they have their own hogs to feed when it's their turn at the trough.

No one actually supports fiscal responsibility. The simple path of step one, stop digging, step two, cut redundancies, step three increase efficiencies (for example, negotiate drug prices), and step four stop (or severely curtail) budget growth will NEVER HAPPEN. Because no one wants it.

Rs had all three under Trump and the deficit grew. Ds had all three under Obama and the same thing happened at roughly the same level. If you believe thete's a party of fiscal responsibility you are fooling yourself.

[Brett Bellmore]

I explicitly distinguished "Republicans", and Republican federal officeholders. And I think you're not taking into account just how fast and far federal spending has jumped in the last 16 years.

Conservatives who objected to TARP warned that any massive 'emergency' spending would be transformed into the new normal. And that is exactly what happened, federal spending, per capita and adjusted for inflation, is more than TWICE what it was in 2006!

There's simply no good reason to maintain this bloated level of spending. It's utterly unsustainable.

Now, politicians? Yeah, the problem there is that it's an arms race of buying votes, and as soon as buying them with borrowed money was on the table, nobody could refrain and keep their seat. So you can't expect federal politicians to fix this problem.

That's part of why I want a constitutional convention. It's our last chance as a nation to force a balanced budget, before this dynamic takes us off a cliff.

[Nelson]

“I explicitly distinguished “Republicans”, and Republican federal officeholders.”

Since the GOP officeholders haven’t done jack shit to contain spending or balance the budget when they hold both houses of Congress and the White House, who cares? Until voters turn on them for deficit spending (which is what the culture war is there to prevent), neither party will be fiscally responsible.

“So you can’t expect federal politicians to fix this problem.”

And yet, that’s the only way federal deficit spending will end. Politicians whose voters claim to care about a balanced budget have to punish candidates if they don’t vote the constituents’ priorities.

“That’s part of why I want a constitutional convention.”

That’s never going to happen, nor is it necessary. We will get past this period of insanity where the fringes are driving the party agendas. It’s happened before. It sucks now, but patience is a virtue.

The Constitution is an amazing, and amazingly resilient, document. What changes would be needed? Not specific policy desires or small-minority beliefs like fetal personhood. What actual, broadly applicable foundational ideals would you include that aren’t there already? What would you remove? And could those be included (or removed) through the Amendment process?

I mean this in all sincerety. If you could rewrite the Constitution, what would it look like?

And please be aware that the Articles of Confederation, with a weak central government and dominant states, was a complete failure. That’s why we have the Constitution.

[Brett Bellmore]

If I could re-write the Constitution with a free hand, (Obviously I'd never in a billion years get that chance.) I'd restore the structural, rather than explicit, limits on the growth of federal power, that have been defeated over the years by efforts to make the Constitution more 'democratic'. Primarily, the judiciary are confirmed by the Senate, which originally was to be composed of people appointed by the state legislatures; This was supposed to produce a judiciary that was mindful of state prerogatives, as well as making it hard to enact legislation hostile to the interests of state governments.

The 17th amendment finally defeated that structural provision which states choosing to directly elect Senators had undermined. I'd try to restore that structural safeguard by creating a constitutional court composed of the chief justices of all the states. As actual state office holders, they would be expected to show less deference to the federal government than the insane level of deference it currently enjoys.

Aside from that,

1) A balanced budget amendment.
2) Single topic for legislation amendment.
3) A requirement that all new legislation sunset if not reenacted after the passage of an election.
4) A series of "Simon says" amendments, underscoring that various constitutional provisions actually mean what they say.
a. That state AND federal prosecutions violate the double jeopardy clause.
b. That civil forfeiture is prohibited unless a consequence of the owner of the property being themselves convicted.
c. That warrants are required for ALL searches, and formalizing the exclusionary principle.
d. Clarifying that the N&P clause does not permit the exercise of substantial non-delegated powers.
e. Clarifying that the right to a jury trial adheres to ALL criminal prosecutions whatsoever.
f. Can probably think of a few others when I have time.

[Brett Bellmore]

5) Congressional reforms.
a. Mandate that ALL votes, without exception, be roll call votes. Voice votes accomplish nothing but concealing the absence of a quorum, and permitting leadership to pretend something passed when it was actually rejected.
b. Require all legislation to pass by a majority of authorized seats, not of members present or seats filled, to prevent gaming who is present during a vote.
c. Explicitly reject the Enrolled Bill doctrine.
d. Require all legislation to be publicly available in searchable form for a minimum of a week before it can be voted upon, barring a super-majority vote to act on an emergency basis.

6) Regulatory reform: Require that agency regulations do not take legal effect until reported back to Congress and enacted as legislation.

The bottom line on my proposals is that I wouldn't reduce the powers the Constitution grants the federal government, but I absolutely would roll back the usurpations that followed, as well as all the accumulated procedural tricks that have defeated various safeguards against abuse.

The founders actually gave us a pretty good Constitution, not perfect, but pretty good, before we broke it. I think it can still be repaired. Just not by the people in whose interest it is that it remain broken. Thus a Constitutional convention. Which brings to mind,

7) Amend Article V so that all amendments ratified with identical language by the requisite number of states take effect without further action, utterly without regard to how they originated. This would allow popular amendments to be made without Congressional action. And impose a 7 year rolling expiration of ratification, while permitting states to rescind ratification in the same manner they ratified, to assure that the super-majority necessary to ratify is actually contemporaneous.

The only sense in which Article V is 'broken' is that Congress no longer WANTS formal amendments, and will not originate any. Why would they think they need amendments, when the Supreme court is this deferential to them?

Permit states to bypass Congress, and the Constitution will be able to be updated on a regular basis.

[Nelson]

"When government needs more money, there is no alternative except to get more money from people who have money."

Yes, there is. You find inefficient or duplicative programs and cut (inefficient) or combine and shrink the budget of (duplicative) those programs. You cannot endlessly tax your way to a balanced budget. There isn't enough rich-people-money to make that possible.

Do you want to get innovative without endlessly increasing taxes? Institute a second-generation inheriance tax so that the amount of money you inherit from others will be heavily taxed uopn your death. That allows people who are successful to enjoy more of their well-earned income while generating revenue from those who merely won the parent lottery and didn't earn any of it. Everyone can pass on their wealth to their children, but a multi-generational American aristocracy would be heavily reduced and revenue would be generated. But that's an instead-of, not an in-addition-to. You have to allow people to enjoy most of the fruits of their labors.

Also, FWIW, I support a flat tax with no deductions and no income excluded except for retirement accounts. No personal deductions, definitely no child deductions, nothing.

"threats to block a debt ceiling increase"

The debt ceiling isn't about the upcoming budget, it's money already spent. That ship has sailed and default isn't an option. Let the wingnuts bleat all they want, the majority of Rs and Ds know that it has to be raised and they will raise it. There isn't any other choice. It's performative pandering, whether from the left or the right, to appeal to voter bases that are too ignorant to understand what the debt ceiling actually is.

And your brinksmanship scenario where Ds refuse to discuss anything except the debt ceiling is idiotic. You want Ds to act like petulant children over a debt ceiling that will always end up being raised? This is why Ds are so repellant to me as a party. Not that Rs are better, but they're all performative table-thumpers, arguing about things that largely aren't things that should be argued about because arguing shows that they are "fighters" and gets them attention and donations. It's first-order idiocy and we, as citizens, deserve better.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nelson, I am no fan of the Democratic Party. I agree with much of what you said in that comment, but not this:

There isn’t enough rich-people-money to make that possible.

Sure, not under an unlimited spending scenario. No-limits is, trivially, by definition, an unlimited scenario. But with that exception, in a realistic fiscal policy context, the majority of Americans have been pressed to the wall.

Do you think aged Social Security recipients ought to have that insufficient mite reduced by your proposed flat tax? They are in a desperate situation, not one from which existing economic supports can reasonably be withdrawn, and certainly not one from which they can make additional economic contributions for any public purposes at all. They are without resources to solve their own desperate financial problems; they can hardly become a resource to solve national fiscal problems. They don't have money.

And what the aged Social Security recipients are now is what the vast majority of this nation is destined to become, only more so. Almost nobody beneath the upper middle class gets any kind of private pension anymore. Many present retirees still have those to rely upon.

Note also, the baleful prospect for retirement which widespread automation threatens to create. Every job automated represents a loss of presently-ongoing Social Security contributions from erstwhile workers and their employers. That creates national fiscal stress which will be felt immediately; it will not wait even until the newly unemployed workers begin desperate filings for bogus disability benefits—let alone until their retirements. How much discussion of that looming catastrophe have you seen?

The majority find themselves without discretionary income. They have nothing more to give. They do not even have reasonable prospects anymore to support themselves economically to the ends of their reasonable life spans.

Which means what you call, "rich-people-money," construed broadly to include the upper middle class, really is all the money politically available.

Problem is, plunder of the majority in America has been ongoing for so long, that the upper tiers now hold a great deal of the nation's wealth as wealth. They do not need income, which is what out system of taxation was built to rely upon. And it is only in that frame of reference that it is possible to say, almost in good faith, that there is not enough there to solve ongoing fiscal problems. If accumulated wealth also became taxable, there would be multiples more there.

After notable increases in taxation for the rich have been implemented, including taxes which reach their accumulated wealth, there will come a realistic possibility to estimate what resources this nation can use to get out of whatever fiscal jeopardy alarmists suppose the nation has fallen into. A return to taxing the rich must come first.

[David Nieporent]

Note also, the baleful prospect for retirement which widespread automation threatens to create.

Was this comment posted in 1970 or something?

[Stephen Lathrop]

It does seem pretty obvious, doesn’t it? I wish I could find something anywhere to show responsible planners—and especially fans of automation—have a plan to grapple with immediate cessation of social security payments from both employees and their employers, after automation takes those workers out of the job market. Is there some schedule I do not know about, which reckons into future prospects for Social Security solvency an accelerating decline in lawyers’ Social Security contributions after AI software starts passing state bar exams?

[David Nieporent]

It seems pretty obvious… how foolish you are. The point of my comment is that people have been saying things like this for decades — longer, even, but I was being conservative — and they remain stupid.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nieporent, want to tell me what is stupid about it? Your, "You are stupid," approach to commentary leaves stuff out.

I will assume unless you say otherwise that you insist on some kind of economic ideology that to adapt the national economy to technological advance reliably delivers in the long term more jobs and more prosperity. I don't buy into that anymore. But it could even be true, and yet remain intelligent to insist that the long-term has not proved a helpful time frame. Its advocates fail to notice two points which by now ought to be obvious—first, the short-term comes ahead of the long-term, and, second, these days, the short-term appears to have lasted for about 5 decades, with nary a glimpse of the long-term yet on the horizon.

Since the 1970s you mention, I have watched as those two points complicated the professional lives of close friends who began as professed technological optimists. One worked on policy to implement nationwide assistance and retraining for workers displaced technologically. Her career was spent at the headquarters of the AFL-CIO. The other was a tenured professor of economics at a top-tier university, an MIT-trained labor economist with an international reputation.

Neither of them was stupid in the 1970s. Neither is stupid now. Long experience convinced the former friend that reliance on technical advance to deliver general economic prosperity has proved disastrous. The latter friend, with a career practiced at a more-abstract remove from day-to-day labor market practicalities, merely transformed from a confident advocate into a somewhat baffled skeptic. His numbers still work, but they don't seem to describe what went on while his career unfolded.

Perhaps your perch in the legal community affords you a view to untangle complications which give pause to not-stupid experts who struggle beneath you in the underbrush. Do you care to explain?

[Nelson]

"But with that exception, in a realistic fiscal policy context, the majority of Americans have been pressed to the wall."

That would be an indication that the government is spending too much, not that you have to get more money from somewhere else.

"Do you think aged Social Security recipients ought to have that insufficient mite reduced by your proposed flat tax?"

I think that Social Security was never meant to be (and shouldn't be treated as) enough money to live on by itself. That said, I wouldn't be opposed to a diminishment in the flat tax at older ages (so something like an additional point deduction for each year over age 65, for example). Of course, that raises the danger of other groups saying, "Well if old people get to pay less, what about [insert special interest here].".

"A return to taxing the rich must come first."

If you want to get more money from the ruch you have to change the tax code either by eliminating loopholes or raising the rate. Considering they couldn't even get a change in the carried interest loophole, I don't see that as happening. Of course, U don't see a balanced budget law passing either, but I still don't see "tax everyone until they don't have any more to give, then cut spending" as a reasonable approach. If you don't think there are programs that are completely ineffective or completely duplicative in the federal budget, you are living in a fantasy world. And that's not even doing something simple like getting rid of something like the federal flood insurance program, where the federal government essentially artificially lowers flood insurance rates while simultaneously paying for most of the cleanup as well. A mind-boggling waste of billions of dollars a year so people who build houses in disaster zones don't have to pay for it themselves.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nelson, thanks for engaging. One point about your commentary challenges me. Whenever you get down to specifics, I tend toward agreement. The more general your view becomes, the less I tend to agree.

As an aside, where you suppose to eliminate government waste and duplication will deliver practical abatement of fiscal stress, I agree in principle, but with perhaps more caution than you seem to have about the extent of relief available. It may be that you include entire programs you regard as ill-founded, which might bring me yet closer to your advocacy. But I wonder if we would agree on which programs.

I agree completely on the federal flood insurance program, by the way.

[Stephen Lathrop]

And your brinksmanship scenario where Ds refuse to discuss anything except the debt ceiling is idiotic. You want Ds to act like petulant children over a debt ceiling that will always end up being raised?

Nelson, you misunderstood. I did not say Ds should concentrate their remarks on the debt ceiling. I said they should dodge that evasion, and insist instead to discuss the topic actually salient, however tacitly, behind debt ceiling threats. Absent specific spending cuts set forward forthrightly, Rs must be presumed to intend reductions to Social Security and Medicare. Ds would be right to say so. R denials which did not include the missing specifics on cuts should be denounced as the evasive cover stories they actually would be.

Or do you insist that if there is a debt ceiling default, the resulting constraints on borrowing, including higher interest rates, will leave Social Security and Medicare unimpaired? How could that be?

I get that it is extremely likely that after some kind of crisis the debt ceiling will be raised. Problem is, the form of the crisis could include default, or not. If it is default, even after correctives, Social Security and Medicare stand to be fiscally impaired for a long time.

What would you say if Biden announced tomorrow that the federal debt cannot constitutionally be questioned, and therefore no legislative failure to raise the debt ceiling will be permitted to impair the Treasury’s commitment to make every scheduled payment in full and on time? Given a possibility that Rs will balk at least temporarily on a debt ceiling increase, what alternative would work better to protect the fiscal integrity of the nation, and the government’s ongoing credit standing?

I confess I am unhappy with every prospect, including the one I just mentioned, which I regard only as a possible best among bad choices. It has the advantage to be something which could begin now, and thus be testable before other alternatives need be tried. It shares the disadvantage that every counter-measure to frustrate R extremism has—the unanswered question what to do when Rs double down with yet greater extremism?

[Brett Bellmore]

"What would you say if Biden announced tomorrow that the federal debt cannot constitutionally be questioned, and therefore no legislative failure to raise the debt ceiling will be permitted to impair the Treasury’s commitment to make every scheduled payment in full and on time?"

This would be a curious position. Of course the Treasury can not constitutionally fail to make all payments on the debt, but this in no way whatsoever requires that the debt ceiling be raised. All the debt ceiling not being raised implies is that we stop borrowing MORE, and spend only within our means.

It's as though the possibility of just spending less and not increasing borrowing is literally unthinkable by you.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bellmore, you didn't notice? What I suggested leaves the debt ceiling right where it is. And ignores it. Because to take action which impairs any scheduled payments of the United States will in reality impair faith and credit in the debt, which is constitutionally forbidden. Mere legislation cannot be taken as valid to force the executive to defy the Constitution.

Creditors of the United States will not be oblivious if the United States reduces or ceases Social Security payments, for instance. Or withholds military pensions. On the contrary, any such defaults on relied-upon routine payments would be read by credit markets as de facto credit default by the United States. The executive can foresee that, and therefore cannot let it happen.

I am pretty sure you understand that. You seem determined to model right-wing policy nihilism, because like members of the right-wing in Congress, you cannot presently think of anything more destructive to demand.

My worry is that if my suggestion came to pass, congressional right wingers' rage and frustration would goad them to yet-more-imaginative destruction, amounting to mass insurrectionist defiance of their oaths of office. It seems to me that any such prospect, and at least a suggestion of the executive counter-measures which would then legitimately follow, ought to be known to everyone in advance.

[David Nieporent]

Bellmore, you didn’t notice? What I suggested leaves the debt ceiling right where it is. And ignores it. Because to take action which impairs any scheduled payments of the United States will in reality impair faith and credit in the debt, which is constitutionally forbidden.

No, it isn’t. Reading is fundamental. Nothing in the constitution remotely says anything even a tiny bit like that.

On the contrary, any such defaults on relied-upon routine payments would be read by credit markets as de facto credit default by the United States.

I thought you couldn't top your first dumb comment, but this makes that one look like the work of Blackstone. No, those aren't "defaults" in the first place, let alone "De facto credit default," which by definition isn't a thing.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nieporent, I suppose I ought to rely on you for a to-the-letter legal interpretation. I also suppose you ought to rely on Krugman, or at least some economist competent to understand the activities your legal insistence purports to govern, for an economic interpretation.

[Brett Bellmore]

" On the contrary, any such defaults on relied-upon routine payments would be read by credit markets as de facto credit default by the United States. "

On the contrary, the credit markets would say, "Huh, they're actually serious about putting us first. Didn't see that coming!"

[Nelson]

[Nelson]

[Brett Bellmore]

Of course you suggested price controls. You suggested that Medicare negotiate drug prices. Medicare is the GOVERNMENT. The government negotiates in much the same way as the Godfather does.

It’s maxing out at 67 for those who turn 62 in 2022 or later. Me, I would have explicitly linked it to longevity tables, so that the percentage surviving to get SS would remain constant.

[Nelson]

"Of course you suggested price controls."

Nope. Price controls happen through legislation. I am not suggesting and do not support price controls. I do support cost reduction. Right now the government is legally barred from negotiating volume discounts for drugs.

Think about that. The largest single purchaser of drugs in the country pays full wholesale price. Roughly twice as much as Walmart or CVS or Walgreens. That's rampant waste, legislated by Congress. That's insane and a collosal waste of taxpayer dollars. There is a point at which what the government offers to pay and what the drug company is wiiling to sell for meet. That's what we should be paying, not full wholesale like some ignorant first-time (and soon-to-be bankrupt) retail shopowner who doesn't know any better.

"Me, I would have explicitly linked it to longevity tables, so that the percentage surviving to get SS would remain constant."

I think that's a great idea. The more that such decisions are automatic relative to a reasonable standard rather than subject to Congressional (in)action, the better.

[Stephen Lathrop]

EV was quoted today in a NYT article about NYT v Sullivan, and a De Santis call to have that decision rolled back. EV does not seem to endorse the De Santis position. More the opposite.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Neat so you disobeyed the public health officials during a global pandemic.

Did you try going for a walk by yourself on the beach? Apparently that drew alot of heat from the cops and expert health officials.

[Sarcastr0]

you disobeyed the public health officials during a global pandemic.

You seem confused even about federal versus state policies.

Anger is no substitute for knowledge.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Are you for real? In your universe there wasn't a two week nationwide shutdown?

[David Nieporent]

Are you for real? In your universe there wasn’t a two week nationwide shutdown?

That is correct. No such event ever happened.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

All those videos of people getting arrested alone on beaches or singing in public or walking their dogs were CGI?

[Nelson]

“All those videos of people getting arrested alone on beaches or singing in public or walking their dogs were CGI?”

I didn’t see any of those videos, but I was running a swim team at the time. Not only did we not have a mandatory lockdown, I ran competitions. Granted, we had to keep out spectators, livestream the meets, and keep everyone distanced, which was a total pain in the ass, but we weren’t prevented from doing them. And we were directly working with the Department of Health to make sure we were following best practices.

[Armchair Lawyer]

You're saying this isn't direct testimony before Congress by a retired FBI agent?

[Moderation4ever]

That is my understanding of the free throw rule.

Traveling is like holding in football, I have to leave it to the officials because I don't think I would see it most times.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

So nowhere else in the entire government did that mission and those people didn't just reorganize and still perform the same role?

I mean in the entire federal government that was literally the only place where that work was being performed and Trump shut it down amd literally no where else was pandemic preparedness being done?

Is that what you believe?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

What point where you trying to make with your comment?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

How was that a failure?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Haha yeah we saw under Trump how the Federal Bureaucrats were just following orders and didn't undermine him at every turn.

[Mr. Bumble]

So when would the play clock start?

[Commenter_XY]

Start the game in the mid-afternoon.

[John F. Carr]

Drama attracts viewers and ad slots are valuable. Drama is also why have the "everybody gets a trophy" regular season in major sports. Teams play 17 or 162 games to determine seeding for the playoffs.

[Frank Drackman]

Basketball games are shorter (48 minutes of regulation, 40 in College, duh) but with the intentional fouling the endings are interminable, but hey (man!) we get to watch exciting Free Throws!!!
How about, as in Football, if its not in the fouled teams favor to shoot Free Throws, they just decline the penalty and keep the ball??
and how about moving Free Throws back to top of the key? like NFL did with extra points a few years back (still most boring play in football, except for the Cowboys)

Frank

[Estragon]

Don’t waste your time. Australia-India test instead

[OtisAH]

Nah, they actually call holding in the nfl.

[SRG]

Difference is, holding doesn't lead directly to crowd-pleasing scoring. The travelling dunk is a staple of the modern game, it seems to me.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Deborah Brix's book on the pandemic was her tell-all.

I forgot what a controlled bubble you people live amd you never heard about the confessions she made in her book.

[Mr. Bumble]

The repeated use of problematic is problematic.

[bevis the lumberjack]

It’s not scams or child porn that’s being blocked. It’s political opinions that people in power don’t like.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Holy hell. It's been all over the media the last month. I guess you've got a filter that blocks news you don't like, but google only takes a second. Here you go, lazy ass:

https://www.ocregister.com/2023/01/10/rep-adam-schiffs-un-american-effort-to-silence-critics-on-twitter/

If you don't like this one there are hundreds of other stories covering this.

[Mr. Bumble]

Do away with the half time show.

[Moderation4ever]

I have to agree here. The game is played on a Sunday, there are no other football games to be played, so there is no need to wait until prime time.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Move west a time zone or two and you’ll be set.

[OtisAH]

But it does. Touchdowns and big plays are called back due to holding calls every week. And more often than not it was the hold that sprung the play. Unfortunately sometimes they get called back on holds that had zero effect on the play. In those cases the flag *should* stay in their pockets.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Yeah, I figured you'd pull that lame ass stuff. There are a thousand stories on this. Pick one.

But you don't care. You just want to dodge the question. You're actually fine if one of your side abuses their power. Fucking pathetic.

Every time I take you off of ignore I end up regretting it.

[Bob from Ohio]

Ah, the Washington Monument syndrome in action at a lower level.

[bernard11]

They banned a lot of other books also, including one about Henry Aaron.

No complaints forthcoming from the freedom of expression warriors around here.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It would reduce conflicts.

[Brett Bellmore]

In practice, yeah. One of the revelations when Musk took over Twitter was that they had been taking people off the child porn censorship duty, to go after political speech.

[bevis the lumberjack]

https://www.google.com/search?as_q=schiff+reporter+twitter&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=&as_occt=any&safe=images&as_filetype=&tbs=#ip=1

Take your fucking pick. Pages and pages of stories. You don't care because of Schiff's politics.

Don't bother to respond because you're going to frankieland. You're as worthless for discussion as those clowns are.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Is there evidence of any opinions being blocked by government? If so, it would be helpful if you presented that evidence.

Twitter remains free to block whatever opinions it wants to, and it remains free to do so in response to government pressure if it judges that to be an expedient way to do business. Mind you, I do not approve of a publisher which enjoys press freedom to do a thing like that, but Twitter enjoys the protection of 1A press freedom.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

They made you forget who Deborah Brix was, didn't they?

[Life of Brian]

No complaints forthcoming from the freedom of expression warriors around here.

If and when you say you're cool with hardcore porn in school libraries, I'll entertain "freedom of expression" as something other than the tired red herring it is. The Clemente book is freely available to all who wish to expose their children to it.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Particularly noxious, not to say suspicious, are the not infrequent calls of holding where it had zero effect on the play, and the flag was tossed after the whistle stopped the play.

[OtisAH]

Nope, “Washington Monument Syndrome” is just another topic you completely misunderstand.

[Bob from Ohio]

Its cutting popular programs to discredit cuts. Here, its picking a benign book and making a showy display of pulling so as to discredit the law. Same thing.

[Bob from Ohio]

No. Do you need new glasses?

[Frank Drackman]

Great rule, NBA doesn't have enough Offense.

[Nige]

That's not what that link says, and he's contradicted in the post he's replying to which describes a fairly committed child safety team resigning over concerns about the future of things like child saftey under Musk.

[David Nieporent]

What is the pathology with you, Brett? You routinely do this: you respond with a link that doesn't remotely support the claim that you cited it for. Nothing in that link says anything about them taking people off child porn duty.

[bernard11]

Drama attracts viewers and ad slots are valuable.

At what point does the marginal value of the next ad slot go to zero? At some point the game gets so long that people stop watching, or, more likely, watch only intermittently, missing a lot of ads. ISTM that should reduce the value of ads in general, so at some point the revenue from the incremental ad should be less than the loss on all the others.

Maybe this accounts for the strategy of trying to make spectacular - one way or another - Super Bowl ads, so viewers will actually want to see them, rather than going to the bathroom.

[bernard11]

Wow. Talk about red herrings.

This has nothing to do with hardcore porn. It has to do with the fear that kids might learn something about the effect of racism in American life. CRT hysteria.

[Nige]

Hardcore porn:
At the Mountain’s Base, by Traci Sorell and Weshoyot Alvitre
Before She Was Harriet, by Lesa Cline-Ransome and James E. Ransome
Chik Chak Shabbat, by Mara Rockliff and Kyrsten Brooker
Cow on the Town: Practicing the Ow Sound, by Isabella Garcia
Dreamers, by Yuyi Morales
Dumpling Soup, by Jama Kim Rattigan, and Lillian Hsu-Flanders
Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story, by Kevin Noble Maillard and Juana Martinez-Neal
The Gift of Ramadan, by Rabiah York Lumbard and Laura K. Horton
Grandfather Tang’s Story, by Ann Tompert and Robert Andrew Parker
Hush! A Thai Lullaby, by Minfong Ho and Holly Meade
Islandborn, by Junot Díaz and Leo Espinosa
Little Night/Nochecita, by Yuyi Morales
Looking for Bongo, by Eric Velásquez

[Nige]

More hardcore porn:
Lost and Found Cat : The True Story of Kunkush’s Incredible Journey by Doug Kuntz, Amy Shrodes and Sue Cornelison
Love to Mama: A Tribute To Mothers, by Pat Mora, Paula S. Barragán M.
Lubna and Pebble, by Wendy Meddour, Wendy and Daniel Egneus
My Two Dads and Me, by Michael Joosten and Izak Zenou
My Two Moms and Me, by Michael Joosten and Izak Zenou
Neither, by Airlie Anderson
Never Say a Mean Word Again: A Tale from Medieval Spain, by Jacqueline Jules and Durga Yael Bernhard
Nya’s Long Walk: A Step at a Time, by Linda Sue Park and Brian Pinkney
On Mother’s Lap, by Ann Herbert Scott and Glo Coalson
One Green Apple, by Eve Bunting and Ted Lewin
The Rough-Face Girl, by Rafe Martin and David Shannon
Running the Road to ABC, by Denize Lauture
Sulwe, by Lupita Nyong’o and Vashti Harrison
Uncle Jed’s Barber Shop, by Margaree King Mitchell and James E. Ransome
Yoko (Yoko Series), Rosemary Wells
Zen Shorts (Zen Series), by Jon J. Muth
10,000 Dresses, by Rex Ray and Marcus Ewert
14 Cows for America, by Carmen Agra Deedy, Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah and Thomas Gonzalez
Abuela, by Arthur Dorros and Elisa Kleven
All Around Us, by Xelena Gonzalez and Adriana M. Garcia
Alma and How She Got Her Name, by Juana Martinez-Neal
Amina’s Voice (Amina’s Voice Series), by Hena Kahn
And Still the Turtle Watched, by Sheila MacGill-Callahan and Barry Moser
Any Small Goodness: A Novel of the Barrio, by Tony Johnston and Raul Colon
Ashes to Asheville, by Sarah Dooley
Barbed Wire Baseball: How One Man Brought Hope to the Japanese Internment Camps of WWII, by Marissa Moss and Yuko Marissa Shimizu
The Berenstain Bears and the Big Question (The Berenstain Bears Series) by Jan and Stan Berenstain

[Nige]

So much hardcore porn:
The Best Man, by Richard Peck
Between Us and Abuela: A Family Story from the Border, by Mitali Perkins and Sara Palacios
Big Red Lollipop, by Rukhsana Khan and Sophie Blackall
Black Frontiers: A History of African American Heroes in the Old West, by Lillian Schlissel
The Boy of the Three-Year Nap, by Dianne Snyder and Allen Say
The Bracelet, by Yoshiko Uchida and Joanna Yardley
Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, by Chief Seattle and Susan Jeffers
Carter Reads the Newspaper, by Deborah Hopkinson and Don Tate
A Case of Sense, by Songju Ma Daemicke and Shennen Bersani
Celebrating Different Beliefs, by Steffi Cavell-Clarke
Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa, by Veronica Chambers and Julie Maren
Climbing Lincoln’s Steps: The African American Journey, by Suzanne Slade and Colin Bootman
The Color of My Words, by Lynn Joseph
Coolies, by Yin and Chris K. Soentpiet
Crazy Horse’s Vision, by Joseph Bruchac and S.D.Nelson
Dad, Jackie, and Me, by Myron Uhlberg and Colin Bootman
Daddy, Papa, and Me, Lesléa Newman and Carol Thompson
Dash (Dogs of World War II Series), by Kirby Larson
The Day of Ahmed’s Secret, by Florence Parry Heide, Judith Heide Gilliland, and Ted Lewin
Day of the Dead, by Tony Johnston and Jeanette Winter
A Day’s Work, by Eve Bunting and Ronald Himler
Dear Juno, by Soyung Pak and Susan Kathleen Hartung
Dim Sum for Everyone! by Grace Lin
A Dog Named Haku: A Holiday Story from Nepal, by Margarita Engle, Amish Karanjit, Nicole Karanjit, and Ruth Jeyaveeran
The Double Life of Pocahontas, by Jean Fritz
A Dream Come True: Coming to America from Vietnam-1975, by M. J. Cosson
The Drinking Gourd: A Story of the Underground Railroad, by F.N. Monjo and Fred Brenner
Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music, by Margarita Engle and Rafael López
Eagle Feather, by Clyde Robert Bulla and Tom Two Arrows
Eagle Song, by Joseph Bruchac and Dan Andreasen
Early Sunday Morning, by Denene Millner and Vanessa Brantley-Newton
Encounter, by Brittany Luby and Michaela Goade
Extra Credit, by Andrew Clements, and Mark Elliott
A Family Is a Family Is a Family, by Sara O’Leary and Qin Leng
Fatty Legs: A True Story, by Christy Jordan-Fenton, Margaret Pokiak-Fenton and Liz Amini-Holmes

[Nige]

Etc, etc. The hardcore porn goes on and on. Those children's libraries were really packed with the stuff.

[Nige]

You have curious way of claiming that actual outcomes of particular laws are done deliberately to discredit those laws.

[OtisAH]

No, dummy, that’s not what’s happening. And the law discredits itself.

[Armchair Lawyer]

I see.... So, the FBI agent who just testified before Congress is going to lie, on the record, to a reporter about what he just testified about?

And I'm the conspiracy theoriest?

[bernard11]

Not to mention it's just barely conceivable that Solomon's reporting is not 100% accurate.

His reputation for veracity is not exactly sterling.

[Bob from Ohio]

People opposed to the law are removing unobjectionable books to fool low IQ rubes into think that the law is bad.

It looks like they found such a low IQ rube in you.

[Kazinski]

Yeah, its 4:30 local time, seems fine to me.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

You would be arrested if you tried to give that trash to kids on a street corner,

[shawn_dude]

That way, the bad outcomes of the law are attributable to its detractors and not its authors. It's a twisted but elegant micro-conspiracy.

[shawn_dude]

Are you saying the law, as written, doesn't support the removal of these books? Or that the law, as *intended*, shouldn't be used to remove these books even if, as written, they qualify?

If it's the former, then the governor can smack this down in a heartbeat. If it's the latter, then the law is badly written and you're complaining about proper enforcement.

[OtisAH]

You’re a low IQ rube, Bob, and you’re not fooled. If they can’t fool a dope like you what makes you think they think they can fool others like you?

[David Nieporent]

Correct. Insurance doesn't keep one from missing work. (Or compensate one for missed work. Unless we're talking about disability insurance rather than medical insurance.)

[Nige]

In Florida you'll soon get arrested just for posessing them.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Good...

[Noscitur a sociis]

How do you figure?

[Sarcastr0]

Censorship. For the children.

Except for when those children are illegals. Then GUN THEM DOWN.

[Nige]

Be sure to hide your stash of dangerous children's books under your hard-core porn, Dr Ed.

[Life of Brian]

This has nothing to do with hardcore porn.

If my point wasn't clear, that's the endpoint of wailing "freedom of expression" as a rationale for why some arbitrary work you happen to like should be included in a school library. It's not a freedom of expression issue. Period.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Are you saying the law, as written, doesn’t support the removal of these books?

Yes.

[Nige]

They're hard-core porn, apparently, posing as children's books, sounds like the sort of thing that Florida would ban.

[Nelson]

Only if you believe freedom of expression would ever be taken to such a ludicrous degree. It's not just a slippery slope argument. It's a slippery slope, then a not-slippery plateau, then a slightly uphill (also not slippery) stretch until you arrive at the point you'e trying to reach.

It's also called fearmongering.

[Nige]

'Freedom of expression' is a perfectly good rallying cry in opposition to people like you lying about books you want to ban.

[Noscitur a sociis]

So in other words, you made it up. Good to know.