Thursday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[not guilty]

It is reported that Donald Trump will accept a defense subpoena to testify in the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy trial. https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-proud-boys-january-6/ That should be interesting -- especially the prosecution's cross-examination of Trump.

I wonder what evidence the defendants hope to elicit from Trump. Perhaps this is an attempt to get a jury instruction on a public authority defense or an entrapment by estoppel defense.

[santamonica811]

I absolutely don’t believe it. (Rather, I absolutely don’t believe that Trump will willingly allow himself to be put under oath. In a public trial.) To quote “The Simpsons,”: Unpossible.

As a long-time person who slows down to catch a peek as I pass a gruesome car wreck, I can’t help but hope I’m wrong about this . . . it would be fascinating to watch. (I wonder if the judge would allow live–or slightly delayed–video feeds from the courtroom.)

[not guilty]

This being a federal court, the judge will not allow video feeds.

The safest course for Trump would be to appear at trial and assert his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination as to every question.

[Dr. Ed 2]

That may be the strategy -- only the guilty plead the 5th, QED the proud boys are innocent.

However, Trump *wants* to rail about the Democrats and this could be his forum to do so. Who knows -- he may have classified information that we haven't seen yet. Imagine if he reveals it in response to a prosecutor's question...

Can a Federal judge require a witness to reveal classified information? Say the AUSA asks Trump a question and Trump's response is that he can't answer because it is classified -- can the judge order him to do so anyway?

[Michael P]

Except for the FISA Court, US courts will typically go to great lengths to avoid asking a witness to disclose classified information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Also in 2001, George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13233 extending the accessibility of the state secrets privilege to also allow former presidents, their designated representatives, or representatives designated by their families, to invoke it to bar records from their tenure."

Hmmmmm....

That would apply during cross examination, wouldn't it?

This really is unprecedented -- has any former President ever been a witness at a criminal trial?

I can see jurors thinking "good question" and not forgetting that "national security" is why they didn't get an answer. Gotta wonder what an intrepid attorney could do with that to create "reasonable doubt."

[David Nieporent]

That would apply during cross examination, wouldn’t it?

No. It has nothing to do with court testimony.

[John F. Carr]

Disclosure of classified information in criminal cases is governed by the Classified Information Procedures Act. The government may have to choose between revealing classified information and losing the case.

§6(e)(2): "Whenever a defendant is prevented by an order under paragraph (1) from disclosing or causing the disclosure of classified information, the court shall dismiss the indictment or information; except that, when the court determines that the interests of justice would not be served by dismissal of the indictment or information, the court shall order such other action, in lieu of dismissing the indictment or information, as the court determines is appropriate. Such action may include, but need not be limited to—
(A) dismissing specified counts of the indictment or information;
(B) finding against the United States on any issue as to which the excluded classified information relates; or
(C) striking or precluding all or part of the testimony of a witness."

[not guilty]

Donald Trump here would be called as a witness by a defendant, in the hope that Trump has information helpful to the defense. It is unlikely that the DOJ would seek to preclude his testimony entirely -- cross-examining someone like him is about as much fun as a lawyer can have with clothes on. The prosecutors' cross would be by leading questions, which would likely steer far away from subject matter calling for classified information.

[John F. Carr]

I don't think the prosecution will ask for classified information. The case was already planned to be tried without any. There is a remote chance the defense could ask for information the government wants to be classified. The judge would be responsible for deciding what, if anything, the defense is entitled to. Then the prosecution would have to decide whether to try the case, drop charges, or appeal. The law requires that the prosecution be given time to appeal any rulings. The law does not anticipate the defense revealing classified information at trial with no prior warning. The law also does not anticipate a witness who can declassify records with his mind, but here we are.

[Dr. Ed 2]

But this is Trump, who has ADHD -- and may be more surprised at what he hears himself saying than anyone else. So what is the prosecutor (or judge) going to do if Trump is asked, say, why he wasn't worried about the proud boys and he blurts out "well, the FBI told me that the only troublemakers in the Proud Boys were their own agent provocutors." Is the government gonna want to follow up on that?

In all honesty, I don't know why ALL the Jan 6th defendants aren't subpoenaing him just in hopes he might say *something* interesting. Yes' it is a "hail mary" pass -- but with a system that rigged, what do you have to lose?

[not guilty]

If Trump blurted out “well, the FBI told me that the only troublemakers in the Proud Boys were their own agent provocutors[,]” [sic] that could easily be cured with the judge sustaining a hearsay objection and instructing the jury to disregard.

[Dr. Ed 2]

An official report to the POTUS, in his official capacity, is hearsay?!?

Notwithstanding that think political here -- were Trump to say that, do you honestly think it wouldn't be on the AP wire just as fast as the most nimble reporter could get to a computer?

The first paragraph would be "Trump Said" -- the third would be "FBI declines to comment" and somewhere at the bottom would there be mention of the judge's ruling.

[not guilty]

“Hearsay” means a statement that:

(1) the declarant does not make while testifying at the current trial or hearing; and

(2) a party offers in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement.

Fed.R.Evid. 801(c). So yes, an official report to the POTUS, in his official capacity, is hearsay (if offered to prove that the report in fact is true).

[not guilty]

"That may be the strategy — only the guilty plead the 5th, QED the proud boys are innocent."

Uh, no. A non-party witness asserting Fifth Amendment privilege in a criminal case is no evidence at all, let alone evidence exculpating the accused parties.

[Michael P]

Has Donald Trump ever shown a strong adherence to formal or (traditional / broadly accepted) legal logic?

[Dr. Ed 2]

To paraphrase Gerry Ford's definition of Impeachment, evidence is whatever the jury thinks it is.

I'm not sure how far defense counsel can go along this route, but the jury is going to remember what Trump refused to answer. Throw in national security exceptions and -- well....

[John F. Carr]

It is preferred in some courts to have the witness plead the fifth outside the presence of the jury. It is not always possible to arrange a private claim of privilege. A witness might testify to some matters and not others. Trump could authenticate his public statements at the pre-riot rally and clam up when asked about private communications.

[not guilty]

I suspect that Trump lacks the perspicacity to anticipate when answering some questions on direct examination by a defendant may operate as a waiver of the Fifth Amendment privilege, thus subjecting him to cross-examination with regard to questions that he has answered.

A blanket assertion of privilege regarding all questions on cross would likely result in an order striking the direct examination testimony.

[Nige]

When on earth does Donald Trump NOT have a forum to rail about anything?

[bernard11]

That may be the safest, but it's probably not one that appeals to someone like Trump, who will want to show off, and is not great at doing what his lawyers say.

[Brett Bellmore]

Why shouldn't he? Maybe he figures, "I had nothing to do with those yahoos, so what have I got to be afraid of?"

I mean, you seem to be tacitly assuming there are some incriminating facts hiding somewhere.

[not guilty]

It doesn't work that way, Brett. The instant conspiracy prosecution of the Proud Boys is not all Trump should be concerned about.

Trump would be a total fool to give DOJ prosecutors an opportunity to examine him about the events of January 6, 2021 and the preliminaries thereto.

[Kazinski]

I don't think he's got too much to worry about there, because the judge will keep the trial focused on the allegations against the proud boys, he won't allow the prosecutor to go off on a fishing expedition about other acts and other parties.

Cross examination is generally limited to matters raised during direct and I would expect judge to especially enforce this restrictions in this case.

So questions of alternate slates of electors, scheme for rejecting electoral votes, etc wouldn't be allowed.

Probably only questions directly related to any possible contacts with the defendants would be allowed.

[Dr. Ed 2]

OR what classified information he might have been told about the defendants.

Call me idealistic, but I *LIKE* to think that our government isn't *so* incompetent that it -- at least the USSS -- isn't doing a little bit of research into who the Proud Boys are and what they might be up to. Particularly with regard to the physical safety of *two* Presidents -- both Trump and Biden -- not to mention a whole lot of other protectees.

So who knows (a) what they knew, (b) what they told Trump, and (c) what he might blurt out.

[not guilty]

A question calling for what classified information Trump might have been told about the defendants would call for inadmissible hearsay. If Trump answered such a question without waiting for the judge to rule on an objection, the court would instruct the jury to disregard, and the examiner would have to move on.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It isn’t like he/she/it would word the question that directly…

And even if the judge threw the answer out, wouldn't there be Brady Rule issues if there was exculpatory classified material?

[not guilty]

If testimony references inadmissible hearsay, even though not directly elicited by the question, the hearsay response is subject to objection and a motion to strike, usually accompanied by an instruction to the jury to disregard the inadmissible testimony.

[Kazinski]

Well I think it's an unlikely scenario, but I don't think the contents of a government document are heresay. If someone read an official document they should be able to testify what they read.

But I think that should also compel production of the document if it's exculpatory.

[not guilty]

The contents of a government document may be hearsay, if offered to prove that the contents of such document are true. A record or statement of a public office is admissible hearsay under Fed.R.Evid 803(8) if:

(A) it sets out:

(i) the office’s activities;

(ii) a matter observed while under a legal duty to report, but not including, in a criminal case, a matter observed by law-enforcement personnel; or

(iii) in a civil case or against the government in a criminal case, factual findings from a legally authorized investigation; and

(B) the opponent does not show that the source of information or other circumstances indicate a lack of trustworthiness.

A former president is an unlikely custodian of such records, and Donald Trump in particular lacks trustworthiness.

Exculpatory information that is material to either guilt or punishment of the accused, which is or should be known to the prosecution, should be disclosed to the defense.

[Martinned]

If there's on thing Trump isn't incompetent at, it's PR. And willingly putting yourself in a position where you're going to be mentioned in the same breath as the Proud Boys for many many news cycles is terrible PR regardless of what the actual facts are.

[Brett Bellmore]

For Trump, given the MSM's inclinations, existing is being in a position where he's going to be mentioned in the same breath as the Proud Boys.

[Leo Marvin]

It's not as if, when tossed a softball opportunity to disavow the Proud Boys, Trump instead implicitly conceded they see him as their leader.

[neurodoc]

Leo, please email me.

[OtisAH]

The Proud Boys want Turnip to claim they acted under his orders. He is as likely to say that as he is likely to pay for their defenses. Not. At. All.

He will take the fifth and move on. And though there’ll likely be some hurt feelings, and it’s likely some will shift their doe-eyed gazes to DeSantis or one of the other kooks, most of his support won’t care.

[Nige]

Hasn't he promised them all pardons if he gets elected, not that he was never NOT elected since the election was stolen as any fule nos.

[OtisAH]

I seem to recall he made promises like that when he was still in office. And he’ll likely make similar “promises” this campaign. It’s a variation of his “in two weeks” dodge.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, he promised "them" pardons for certain values of "them", but I don't think the Proud Boys fall into that set.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And how is this different from what Carter did????

[bernard11]

WTF?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Draft Dodger Amnesty -- didn't Carter run on that?

[Nige]

Do the Proud Boys know that? Does Trump?

[Kazinski]

That wouldn't help them or him, they want him to testify their was no contact, or messages and nobody planned anything.

And that's almost certainly the case.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The videos being released shows what a complete disgusting fraud the Democrats and the Federals have been on this J6 thing.

Evil vile subhumans.

[neurodoc]

Care to explain your reasoning?

[Dr. Ed 2]

The retired former chief of the CHPD put it best -- something to the effect that the department had spent a lot of time and no small amount of money to ensure that what happened on Jan 6th wouldn't happen.

Or I will put it bluntly: where the heck were all the cops???

Every time I've been to DC, they are *everywhere* -- Jan 6th they weren't. Who ordered them to stand down?

[Nige]

Spot-the-cops

https://www.gettyimages.ie/detail/news-photo/trump-supporters-clash-with-police-and-security-forces-as-news-photo/1230454383?adppopup=true

[Nelson]

So your belief about criminal behavior is that it isn't the criminal's fault they acted criminally, it was the cops fault for not watching more closely?

Care to apply that to illegal immigration? Or the Portland riots? Or any other criminal act?

[Drbusybody]

The case of Paula Jones V Bill Clinton nearly upended Clinton’s presidency. As a result of defending against the Jones lawsuit, Clinton was required to give a deposition.

What would have happened if Clinton had simply defaulted on the Jones lawsuit? What kind of default judgment would have been entered against him? Jones was suing for six figures. Would the court have entered a default judgment that large? Some nominal amount? Would the court have declined to enter any default judgment at all?

[not guilty]

The plaintiff's complaint there sought compensatory damages of $75,000 and punitive damages of $100,000 on each of four alleged causes of action, a total of $700,000. If the defendant had declined to plead or otherwise defend, the plaintiff would have applied to the court for a default judgment. The court would have been authorized under Fed.R.Civ.P. 55(b) to conduct hearings or make referrals to determine the amount of damages and/or to establish the truth of any allegation by evidence. The defendant would have had the right to a jury determination of damages if he so chose.

[Davy C]

The plaintiff’s complaint there sought compensatory damages of $75,000 and punitive damages of $100,000 on each of four alleged causes of action, a total of $700,000.

Is that how it works, though? If the underlying harm is the same, I wouldn't think you'd get 4 times the money just because you have 4 theories on why you're owed it.

[Bored Lawyer]

No, you don't. NG made a common mistake by adding up what is requested in each count. If you are fully compensated on Count I, you get nothing on the other counts, if the harm is the same. (If the other counts are separate harms, you might get additional recovery.)

[not guilty]

I was describing what damages the complaint asked for. In the event of a default judgment per Drbusybody's hypothetical, the determination of damages would be determined separately by the judge or, if requested by any party, by a jury.

[Krayt]

Iirc after he left the presidency he settled for $200k, saying he just wanted to get it over.

As with Trump, it was all about hurting the political opposition, once the power was over, nobody cared anymore.

The only reason all this stuff with Trump, state and federal, isn’t winding down with a dead battery with dropped cases and tiny settlements is because he has the temerity to run again, so all attacks against a political opponent must be under full fire. Keep chucking logs into the engine boiler, lads! Full steam ahead! Ramming speed! (Sorry, just saw Chuck Heston at the oars.)

Psst. Don’t look like you’re doing it. Be facetious.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I suppose he could have simply told the truth, and he would still have been able to successfully argue that exposing yourself to an employee doesn't rise to the level of sexual harassment.

[not guilty]

On the merits of the lawsuit, Bill Clinton and Danny Ferguson (the Arkansas state trooper) were awarded summary judgment on all claims. Jones v. Clinton, 990 F.Supp. 657 (E.D. Ark. 1998). For purposes of the summary judgment motion, the district court was required to regard the non-moving plaintiff's facts as true, including all inferences drawn therefrom.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Yup. And having accepted those facts, the court accepted Clinton's argument that exposing oneself to an employee and ordering her to "kiss it" didn't constitute sexual harassment.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Speaking of "kiss it", there is this:

"A former staffer at CHEST told The Chronicle that he went with [Hunter College Professor] Parsons to a gay bar more than a decade ago to help recruit subjects for a research study. The unidentified staffer said he witnessed Parsons openly perform oral sex on a bar patron and then tried to force the employee to do the same on someone else."

https://nypost.com/2021/11/20/cuny-paid-more-than-1m-to-settle-claims-about-hunter-college-professors-assault/

[Dr. Ed 2]

See also: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1564846/download

[not guilty]

"Yup. And having accepted those facts, the court accepted Clinton’s argument that exposing oneself to an employee and ordering her to 'kiss it' didn’t constitute sexual harassment."

Right. The district court analyzed the plaintiff’s claims seriatim.

“To make a prima facie case of quid pro quo sexual harassment, this plaintiff must show, among other things, that her refusal to submit to unwelcome sexual advances or requests for sexual favors resulted in a tangible job detriment.” 990 F.Supp. at 669. Paula Jones failed to make such showing. “The Court has carefully reviewed the record in this case and finds nothing in plaintiff’s employment records, her own testimony, or the testimony of her supervisors showing that plaintiff’s reaction to Governor Clinton’s alleged advances affected tangible aspects of her compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment.” Id., at 671.

“[H]ostile work environment harassment arises when sexual conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment. . . . To prevail on a hostile work environment cause of action, a plaintiff must establish, among other things, that she was subjected to unwelcome sexual harassment based upon her sex that affected a term, condition, or privilege of employment. . . . The harassment must also be sufficiently severe or pervasive “to alter the conditions of employment and create an abusive working environment.” Id., at 674 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Again, Ms. Jones came up short. “Plaintiff certainly has not shown under the totality of the circumstances that the alleged incident in the hotel and her additional encounters with Ferguson and the Governor were so severe or pervasive that it created an abusive working environment. . . . [T]he Court finds that the record does not demonstrate conduct that was so severe or pervasive that it can be said to have altered the conditions of plaintiff’s employment and created an abusive working environment.” Id., at 675.

“In order to prove the existence of a civil rights conspiracy under [42 U.S.C.] § 1985(3), a plaintiff must prove, among other things, that another person was injured in his person or property or deprived of having and exercising any right or privilege of a citizen in the United States. . . . Plaintiff does not have a viable § 1985(3) claim in this case as the Court has determined that her § 1983 quid pro quo and hostile work environment sexual harassment claims are without merit and warrant a grant of summary judgment. Absent an underlying violation of federal law, there can be no actionable claim alleging a conspiracy to achieve that end.” Id., at 676. Ms. Jones again had bupkis.

Arkansas recognizes a claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress based on sexual harassment. . . . To establish a claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress, a plaintiff must prove that: (1) the defendant intended to inflict emotional distress or knew or should have known that emotional distress was the likely result of his conduct; (2) the conduct was extreme and outrageous and utterly intolerable in a civilized community; (3) the defendant’s conduct was the cause of the plaintiff’s distress; and (4) the plaintiff’s emotional distress was so severe in nature that no reasonable person could be expected to endure it.” Id., at 676 (citation omitted). Ms. Jones again failed to prove this claim. “While the Court will certainly agree that plaintiff’s allegations describe offensive conduct, the Court, as previously noted, has found that the Governor’s alleged conduct does not constitute sexual assault. Rather, the conduct as alleged by plaintiff describes a mere sexual proposition or encounter, albeit an odious one, that was relatively brief in duration, did not involve any coercion or threats of reprisal, and was abandoned as soon as plaintiff made clear that the advance was not welcome. The Court is not aware of any authority holding that such a sexual encounter or proposition of the type alleged in this case, without more, gives rise to a claim of outrage.” Id., at 677.

A plaintiff must plead and prove tortious conduct, not merely boorish behavior.

[Michael P]

to alter the conditions of employment and create an abusive working environment

The conditions of employment already included state officials demanding oral sex? In a way that was not considered abusive?

In a more modern era, that kind of environment would probably be deemed to discriminate on the basis of sex, but I guess Bill Clinton's Arkansas was pre-modern.

[not guilty]

Have you read Judge Wright's opinion? What, if anything, do you claim that she got wrong?

Judge Wright, a Bush I appointee, was no friend of Bill Clinton. She found him in civil contempt as a discovery sanction for giving false, misleading and evasive answers that were designed to obstruct the judicial process. Jones v. Clinton, 36 F.Supp.2d 1118 (E.D. Ark. 1999).

Her analysis of the tort claims asserted, however, was spot on.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Lol. You’re leaving off the 2nd half of the case. The public emergence of another incident (hint - it involved someone you called a fat whore a week or two ago). And if Clinton won such a decisive victory at trial why did he give Jones $800,000+?

You still believe that it’s ok for a superior to pull his dick out in front of a subordinate and tell them to do something to it, or have you grown? Or is it just Clinton that it’s ok for? Do you think what happened to Harvey Weinstein is a miscarriage of justice? And I’m sure you’re fine with Trump’s “grab ‘em by the pussy” joke.

I mean, boys will be boys!

[Krychek_2]

Jones ended up with 800k because that case is a textbook example of how not to defend a sexual harassment lawsuit.

I wasn't there, but if I had to lay money on it my bet would be that the lawyers were overruled by the politicians. The better legal strategy would have had terrible political optics, so Clinton opted to go with the strategy that he thought would do him the least amount of political harm. But with competent legal counsel (who would not have allowed him to be deposed, knowing up front that any deposition would be a perjury trap), the case should have been over in six months with a nominal settlement.

[OtisAH]

I know funny and *that* is funny.

[Krychek_2]

Please note that I said "that he THOUGHT" would do him the least amount of political harm. In retrospect, he was wrong.

[OtisAH]

No, I’m laughing at the “over in six months” bit. That might be true in an average circumstance but Jones v Clinton was not an average circumstance.

[Kazinski]

I'm laughing about any deposition would have to be a perjury trap.

Its only a perjury trap if Clinton was bound and determined to lie, which he was, and Clinton both set the trap and personally triggered it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/articles121898.htm

[not guilty]

Au contraire, bevis. I never called Paula Jones fat.

After losing on the merits in district court, Ms. Jones filed a notice of appeal to the U. S. Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit. She abandoned and dismissed that appeal for cash on the barrelhead. Ho! Ho! Ho!

Here is some interesting information provided by Ms. Jones’s relatives. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/pjones/stories/pj060994.htm

[bevis the lumberjack]

I know you didn't. You were referring to Monica Lewinski.

[not guilty]

Uh, no. I have not characterized Monica Lewinsky as a whore, nor have I commented on her weight. Stop making shit up.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Whatever you said, it was horribly misogynistic. I called you on it and you didn’t defend yourself.

But since you’re ok with bosses pulling their dicks out in front of subordinates maybe you are actually a misogynist.

[not guilty]

I have never said that I am okay with what Bill Clinton was alleged to have done. I have said that the district court correctly found that it was not tortious under any theory advanced by Paula Jones.

My own theory of what happened in that hotel room is that Clinton and Jones had a consensual sexual encounter of some kind. David Brock's article in The American Spectator reported that "the trooper said Paula told him she was available to be Clinton's regular girlfriend if he so desired." https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/08/opinion/journal-the-real-paula-jones.html#:~:text=Known%20only%20as%20%22Paula%22%20in%20Mr.%20Brock%27s%20article%2C,be%20Clinton%27s%20regular%20girlfriend%20if%20he%20so%20desired.%22 When Clinton declined to take her up on that offer, she became a woman scorned.

It speaks volumes that Paula Jones declined to sue Mr. Brock or The American Spectator.

[OtisAH]

“Whatever you said, it was horribly misogynistic. I called you on it and you didn’t defend yourself.”

I’m minting this quote as my newest NFT.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Consensual. Seriously?

There were witnesses to the trooper inviting her up to Clinton’s room. Under those circumstances there’s no way there was anything consensual. You’re a fucking joke.

[not guilty]

I was hypothesizing -- that's why I called it a theory. I suspect that Paula Jones put out voluntarily, and when her offer to be "available to be Clinton’s regular girlfriend" was rebuffed, she became angry and vengeful.

[Bob from Ohio]

"I never called Paula Jones fat."

Just a whore. But you're not a misogynistic.

[not guilty]

As James Carville cogently observed, "You drag $100 bills through trailer parks -- there's no tellin' what you'll find."

[Bob from Ohio]

Fat, drunk and James Carville is no way to go through life son.

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

The President said to the Ms.:
"Your mouth is a nice place for jizz,
And whether it's moral
For you to give oral
Depends on the meaning of 'is'!"

[Dr. Ed 2]

I know there are medical people here — Peyronie’s disease?

It would explain his preference for BJs, their tumultuous marriage, his never releasing his medical records, and Chelsea looking like Web Hubbell.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Experience seems a lackadaisical teacher. I wonder if prophecy can be more effective?

In last Thursday's open thread, I mentioned an approximately year-old link I had made to a survey of school districts' experiences after arming school personnel, including teachers. I mentioned that among what I recalled as several hundred school districts, the survey had turned up surprisingly common incidents of mismanagement of guns. Those included several instances where school personnel inadvertently left guns in a lavatory, where they were found by students or others.

I got back the usual skepticism, and demands for citations. I didn't have the link handy. Perhaps this link to today's NYT will do in its stead:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/22/us/texas-superintendent-resigns-gun.html

A few quotes:

Superintendent Resigns After Third Grader Found His Gun in School Bathroom — Headline in today's NYT.

Robby Stuteville, superintendent of the Rising Star Independent School District in Texas, left his gun in an elementary school bathroom, where it was discovered by a student.

“There was never a danger other than the obvious,” Mr. Stuteville said in the interview.

With Abilene, the nearest large city, an hour’s drive from Rising Star, Mr. Jones said, he and other school officials decided to take matters into their own hands to ensure that students were protected. The Uvalde shooting had prompted school officials across Texas to “reassess” safety practices and the role of guns in schools, he said.

“If we are going to take care of our kids and make them feel safe, we have to do it in house,” Mr. Jones said. “What if they pick us next?”

“It could have been a big deal, yes, but it wasn’t,” Mr. Jones said, adding that he believed parents were more upset that they were not formally notified about what had occurred than about the incident itself.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I am sure that you could find similar statistics regarding careless custody of motor vehicles as well.

[OtisAH]

And if you did it would prove that leaving a loaded weapon in an elementary school bathroom is no big deal?

[Noscitur a sociis]

You think there are a lot of teachers leaving their cars in the bathroom?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Buses are left running, unattended, more often than you realize -- particularly in cold weather.

[OtisAH]

And that proves leaving a loaded firearm in an elementary school bathroom is no big deal?

[Noscitur a sociis]

Stephen Lathrop didn’t give any statistics either so I’ll let you off the hook there. But even if we take the dubious step of accepting your premise—in what possible sense is leaving a bus running in the winter comparable to leaving a loaded gun in an elementary school bathroom?

[Brett Bellmore]

You do know that people have been killed with motor vehicles, right?

[Noscitur a sociis]

You’ll note that I never said otherwise.

What I said was that Dr. Ed’s suggestion that unattended motor vehicles posed just as much risk to kids as loaded guns was obviously not true.

I’m firmly in the strident gun nut camp, but that doesn’t mean that I have to pretend that guns aren’t dangerous. Indeed, they’re supposed to be dangerous. So the danger isn’t a reason to ban them. But it is a reason why people carrying them in elementary schools should do so responsibly.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I will not defend unsafe gun handling — ever. And let us not forget that cops do this — a member of the USSS did it once on Mitt Romney’s plane.

But let’s keep this in perspective -- one unattended gun versus a whole lot more unattended buses....

[OtisAH]

If you were capable of perspective you wouldn’t be making this stupid argument.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It weighs 12 tons, has an automatic transmission, and most elementary school students are bright enough to know that “D” stands for “drive” — just like with their parent’s cars.

All they have to do then is release the air parking brake, which they’ve seen the driver do, let alone it says on it “push to release” and most of these kids can read.

At this point, they can do an awful lot of damage, particularly if they have a few thousand yards to get up some speed. Step on the gas pedal and the vehicle is going to go….

School buses are designed to protect from head-on crashes -- the entire body comes loose from the frame. But not for sideways crashes and you get some kid running a bus sideways into another (occupied) one, you could easily have 40 fatalities, maybe more.

Now how many bullets were in that gun???

[OtisAH]

I was surprised he resigned. A few days back it seemed his “shit happens” and “important lesson for the children” and “the child did exactly what we teach them to do around firearms” stiff upper lip defenses were going to get him through it.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

I missed your previous missive, but I suppose one could rhetorically ask how many "mismanagement of guns" incidents equal one prevented mass school shooting?

10?

100?

Not that it would matter, of course. Mass school shootings are so rare (even in the USA) that it would be very difficult to say with any degree of certainty >what< had apparently prevented any from happening in schools where the staff were allowed to keep handguns at the ready.

[OtisAH]

Funny thing is school shootings are both rare and simultaneously common enough that we now have people who’ve survived at least two such events..

[Brett Bellmore]

They're probably not randomly distributed, I'd guess.

[Nige]

Which means...?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Atomic bombing of cities is also rare, yet there are people who survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I'd submit that it actually is even more rare...

[Nige]

Hey, they're no big deal, they're just a bit like entire cities wiped out by a single bomb each.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

If teachers are the sort of people who leave guns around, what does this say about teacher quality? Students might need some school choice to get out of the situation.

[Stephen Lathrop]

If teachers are the sort of people who leave guns around, what does this say about teacher quality?

It says that teachers as a group are numerous, and thus sometimes subject to the foibles, transgressions, and incompetencies which afflict others. You cannot have feckless people in society without adding a proportionate complement of feckless teachers. Rinse and repeat for every other personal characteristic which unsuits a person for wise and effective gun management.

Add to that the knowledge that the best possible gun management falls dangerously short of perfection, for reasons of happenstance that no one can predict or manage. A wise person who thought that through on his own behalf would rarely choose to go armed in public against mere non-specific contingency, while the choice to make himself safer by getting the gun out of the picture was available.

[Nige]

It says teaching skills have nothing to do with gun-handling skills.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

The “skill” of not leaving a gun in the school bathroom?

Also, do teachers who demonstrate an unfamiliarity with that "skill" get promptly fired?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Am I the only one shocked at the conduct of the ForeDaughter (not adult) of the Grand Jury investigating Trump?

Between the radio clips that Boston's Howie Carr was playing and the video clips that Drudge had of her saying that Trump will be indicted -- I didn't know that Grand Jurors were allowed to do any of that. I thought it was a secret proceeding.

Could Trump get an indictment thrown out because of this?

I think the whole thing is becoming a political show trial that Stalin would be proud of.

[apedad]

It was a fact-finding grand jury not a charging grand jury, so not illegal.

Maybe not smart but not illegal.

[not guilty]

"ForeDaughter (not adult)"???

Where do you get that? Emily Kohrs, the foreperson of the Special Grand Jury is 30 years old.

No, Dr. Ed 2, Trump cannot get an indictment thrown out because of this.

In her NBC interview (at least the portions thereof that were broadcast), Ms. Kohrs did not disclose evidence received by or deliberations of the Special Grand Jury. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/georgia-grand-jury-recommended-indictments-dozen-people-trump-probe-fo-rcna71675 She did not say that Donald Trump (or any other individual) will be indicted.

The Special Grand Jury recommended publication of its final report pursuant to O.C.G.A. § 15-12-80, and the Circuit Court ordered publication of excerpts of such report.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And AOC is 33...

[Ed Grinberg]

Did you see the video of her literally jumping up & down while speaking on the House floor (defending Ilhan Omar)?

[Bob from Ohio]

She really needs to cut down on the energy drinks.

[Frank Drackman]

she should be indicted for that annoying Vocal Fry

[Dr. Ed 2]

The Millennials are the children of the Baby Boomers, and I am reminded of what Bob Dole said about the Baby Boomers back in the 1994 election -- the generation that never sacrificed, never grew up, etc...

Well, these are their children...

[Nige]

Is this the generation who have been sent off to fight in utterly useless unnecessary wars from 2001 to the present? No sacrifice? Abraham wept because the angel got lost.

[David Nieporent]

First, he said that Baby Boomers, not millennials, were the no-sacrificers. Second, you know that there hasn't been a draft since before the millennials were born, right?

[Nelson]

So the generation that was drafted into the Vietnam War, where almost 60,000 US military personnel were killed, never sacrificed?

I'm Gen X. Everything that has been said about the Millennials, and Gen Z were said about us. I'm sure the Baby Boomers were labeled the same way when they were young.

It's basically a way to identify people who are the spiritual twins of the old guy shaking his fist and yelling for the damned kids to get off his lawn. When the same complaints are used over and over for 80 years, it's obviously not a valid criticism of a generation, it's a general criticism of young people.

[Bob from Ohio]

Emily Kohrs, daughter of "not guilty"?

[Dr. Ed 2]

See: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/georgia-juror-unsettles-trump-investigation-with-revealing-interviews/ar-AA17OGuh

[David Nieporent]

Could Trump get an indictment thrown out because of this?

No. This has been yet another episode of Simple Answers to Stupid Questions.

[John F. Carr]

She's like a kid playing "I've got a secret". Grand jurors usually have more discretion. Remember the Rocky Flats grand jury?

I had a coworker like her, always eager to tell me there are things he can't tell me but he can give hints about to show how much access he has.

Do Georgia rules impose a duty of secrecy on members of an investigative grand jury?

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Apparently not.

[Mr. Bumble]

Despite the number of lawyers posting here this still seems confused.
This "special" grand jury supposedly does not have the authority to issue indictments and has been reported to not be subject to the secrecy rules that would apply to a regular grand jury.
When will someone be compiling a study of "Trump Law" that seems to be growing every day?

[apedad]

Maybe doing a minute of googling would remove your ignorance.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/everything-you-ever-wanted-know-about-georgia-special-purpose-grand-juries-were-afraid-ask

[Mr. Bumble]

Learn to read and comprehend before accusing me of ignorance.
My comment was only referring to many of the comments that have appeared in this thread; not any confusion on my part.

[not guilty]

O.C.G.A. § 15-12-80 provides:

Grand juries are authorized to recommend to the court the publication of the whole or any part of their general presentments and to prescribe the manner of publication. When the recommendation is made, the judge shall order the publication as recommended.

The Special Grand Jury in this case did recommend publication of its final report.

[Mr. Bumble]

...but only part of it was published.

[not guilty]

The Circuit Court, citing Thompson v. Macon-Bibb County Hosp. Authority, 246 Ga. 777[, 273 S.E.2d 408] (1980), declined to publish the final report in full out of concern for the due process rights of the prospective criminal defendants. https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/02/EX-PARTE-ORDER-OF-THE-JUDGE-2-16-2023-Report.pdf

[Nelson]

And did she expose any information that was still unpublished? No? Then what's your grievance?

[ragebot]

All this is way above my pay grade in terms of how badly the loud mouth blabbing Emily Kohrs has hurt the case in a legal sense (I do think there is a real danger it could drag thing out if Trump's (or any of his minions') lawyers raise the issue even if they lose) but from the public opinion standpoint even hard core libturds are not happy about it.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Among the people who have done stupid things in the context of the Georgia election matters, Emily Kohrs barely makes the list. Plus, she has exhibited no un-American or criminal tendencies.

Clingers will continue to rail and flail, mutter and sputter about her, though, because they're delusional about the situation and angry about the reality-based bits they apprehend.

[John F. Carr]

An indictment would be thrown out due to prosecutorial misconduct, which is not present here. The grand juror's conduct is not the prosecutor's fault. The prosecutor is not trying the case in the press.

This situation is the media's fault. Not in the sense that they broke the rules. The effect on the defendants' rights to a fair trial is the result of reporting. The remedy for bad publicity is well established. The defendants, whoever they may be, can argue that widespread publicity has poisoned the local jury pool and suggest moving the case to a county with more Republicans. They will probably lose on this issue. Their attorneys will raise it anyway so appellate counsel has something to complain about.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Well, we now have herd the 2nd line in Trump's infamous "you gotta find me some votes" call -- he then says "you know that I have them."

That puts it into a very different context, doesn't it?

[Nige]

No, because they both knew he didn't have them.

[apedad]

Justice Sotomayor pens majority SCOTUS opinion saying Arizona can’t ignore federal law as Justice Barrett fiercely dissents

In a 5-4 ruling Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court found that Arizona was not justified in its refusal to follow federal law in the case of a convicted murderer who wanted a jury to know he would spend his life in prison if he wasn’t sentenced to death.

https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/justice-sotomayor-pens-majority-scotus-opinion-saying-arizona-cant-ignore-federal-law-as-justice-barrett-fiercely-dissents/

IANAL but am curious about this statement by Justice Barrett in her dissent where, "(s)he opened by claiming the high court is 'powerless to revise a state court’s interpretation of its own law' on the basis of the 'adequate and independent state grounds doctrine.'”

Is that true (and I'm asking a legal question not a policy question)?

[Michael P]

The states are independent sovereigns. The federal government doesn't get to decide what state law means; that is a question for their courts. So federal courts will sometimes ask the state judiciary how to interpret state laws: https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/certification-questions-law-state-supreme-courts-2021-06-22/

The US Constitution's Supremacy Clause says that federal law overrules state law (where the federal law is valid and the two conflict). This Supreme Court case says that the same thing applies to case law.

[MonitorsMost]

Largely, yes. The state Supreme Court has final say over interpretation of the state’s laws and constitution. SCOTUS can only overrule that to the extent that the state court’s interpretation of its own laws would violate the federal constitution or would that the interpretation (while final) be preempted by federal law in its operation.

[apedad]

So. . . Justice Barrett is incorrect in THIS particular case?

[mse326]

This case, the question was pretty complicated.
1. SCOTUS makes a legal ruling on a case
2. Arizona Supremes say it isn't applicable to Arizona's system
3. SCOTUS rules that it is
That isn't a single case but the background.
Arizona's post conviction appeal statute (for later or successive appeals) requires there be a significant change in the law. Arizona in this case ruled that a change in application is not a change in the law. So point 1 was a change in the law, but point 3 was a change in application and so the requirement wasn't met to allow this appeal.

The question that SCOTUS was answering isn't whether that is right or wrong, but whether it was so unpredictable and unsupportable that it it isn't considered and "adequate" state law. The majority said yes, based on Arizona precedent. ACB and the dissent disagreed that it got that far. There is a line that they might not agree if they had to rule on the actual meaning of the statute, which is basically their way of saying they would, but ultimately it didn't reach the really high bar necessary to say it wasn't adequate.

[not guilty]

The majority opinion states:

This Court will not take up a question of federal law in a case ‘if the decision of the state court rests on a state law ground that is independent of the federal question and adequate to support the judgment. . . . Here the Court focuses on the second of these requirements: adequacy.

The question whether a state procedural ruling is adequate is itself a question of federal law.. . . Ordinarily, a violation of a state procedural rule that is firmly established and regularly followed . . . will be adequate to foreclose review of a federal claim. . . . Nevertheless, in exceptional cases, a generally sound rule may be applied in a way that renders the state ground inadequate to stop consideration of a federal question. . . . This is one of those exceptional cases. [Citations and internal quotation marks omitted.]

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/21-846#writing-21-846_OPINION_4

The dissent disagrees that the state law underpinnings of the Arizona Supreme Court decision are inadequate in this case.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Best justice that money can buy."

[Sarcastr0]

Talked to some of my DEI colleagues a bit about what they do on DEI when it comes to research grants.

Diversity includes first time college attendees, folks from underserved states, disciplines who may not think they are addressed by a given topic statement at first blush.

Equity includes lowering barriers, like less burdensome application and reporting requirements, and making a grants proposers guide so having experience is not as required.

Inclusion includes finding ways to engage with communities that don’t apply for grants but would be competitive, and building capacity with targeted spends to institutions who don’t.

DEI does not mean lowering our selection criteria, though I personally wonder about that - I’ve been looking at whether the top 10% of grants are indistinguishable in subsequent impact. In which case maybe lottery once a threshold is reached. The data is hard to suss out though.

[Michael P]

I asked some of my castle defense colleagues what they do for strategy. They use the bailey for markets, fairs, and similar events. The motte is terribly hard to keep warm in winter.

[Sarcastr0]

So you're saying what I posted is all lies, and the real stuff is what the right-wing media tells you is going on?

This is how people end up believing Portland has been burned down.

[Michael P]

No, I'm saying that you might have gotten a rather one-sided perspective. An 11th century castle probably did use the bailey for a bunch of innocuous activities, and the motte would have been hard to keep warm during winter.

You take selective gullibility to amazing lengths.

[Sarcastr0]

Ah yes, the part where I said all DEI offices are like the one I work with was absolutely overstepping.

As QA said, this is some quite pure projection.

[Michael P]

Are you sure the two of you graduated from kindergarten? "I know you are, but what am I?" goes out of fashion around then for most people.

I pointed out why you might want to be skeptical of the answers you got. I didn't extrapolate at all; that is one of your inventions. It's really fucking tedious how quickly you haul out straw men to shift attention from your awful arguments.

[bevis the lumberjack]

The right wing media like Reason?

The right-wing media thing is your bogeyman. Your crutch. You use it to avoid actually needed to defend the excesses of your side.

[Sarcastr0]

Reason has some examples of bad DEI officers or even departments.

Taking that and generalizing, to the point you don't care to hear about other DEI offices?
That is on you.

Right wing media comes up because that's the only place some of the nonsense you take as utter truth comes from. For all you claims of being nonpartisan, there are some areas where you have clearly drunk deep.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Once again, I don’t pay attention to “right-wing” sites. I avoid them for the same reason I ignore left-wing sites - because I don’t find them credible and don’t want to waste time figuring out how much, if any, truth is in their report. I avoid going to their websites because I don’t want to benefit them at all - even to the extent that I don’t want to increase their traffic count.

If you’re having trouble remembering that, maybe you need to take notes or something.

Ask your DEI comrades if they’re comfortable with having people they don’t agree with on campus or in their company. Ask them what they’re doing to make those people comfortable expressing an opinion contrary to the orthodoxy and if they say yes ask them if it upsets them that they’re failing in that effort. . Ask then what “inclusion” means when 60% of a particular population is cowed into silence.

Ask them if they’re familiar with the first amendment.

[Sarcastr0]

I work in an office with many different viewpoints. I don’t need to ask my “DEI comrades” how they handle that – I see it daily.

There isn’t an orthodoxy, only messaging. Big agency and all that.

You hew to this narrative that stereotypes a whole swath of people, and won’t hear any evidence against it. Quit that.

[Voize]

Ask your DEI comrades if they’re comfortable with having people they don’t agree with on campus or in their company. [...] Ask them if they’re familiar with the first amendment.

The First Amendment demands tolerance, not comfort.

[bevis the lumberjack]

It demands that they not be afraid that they'll be punished.

[Stephen Lathrop]

bevis, well, not sent to jail. Scorned and excluded is fine, at least for disrupters and time wasters, who repeatedly insist everyone pay attention to crazy hoaxes. That’s how a marketplace of ideas is supposed to work. You figure out which ideas are crazy, and you stop listening to them.

Today’s so-called movement conservatives are historically unusual. They have taken crazy to unusually high levels of insistence, and unified around that as an identity principle. Nothing in American constitutionalism demands deference for that, at least so long as it remains minority behavior.

Mind you, I don’t regard you as fully enlisted. I take you at your word that you are not a media partisan. But you do show signs of fellow-traveling so advanced that sometimes I have to remind myself consciously.

[Don Nico]

I'm glad you dredged up that old McCarthyite term.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Ask your DEI comrades if they’re comfortable with having people they don’t agree with on campus or in their company.

Superstitious bigots and delusional culture war casualties have rights, too.

[Don Nico]

If one has truly competent HR departments DEI offices are unnecessary increases to non-productive overheads and fuel a compliance mentality in organizations.

[Ed Grinberg]

“That’s not happening, and it’s good that it is!”

[M L]

This. So much this.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Yes, and what are they charging for fire insurance in Portland these days?

[Don Nico]

"*cannot* include"
Do you actually believe that?
Or is it just that things work out that way in the Federal Government?

[Don Nico]

How did you get that from what Michael posted?

[bevis the lumberjack]

I asked some cops who work in minority neighborhoods what the do and they said that they worked hard to protect residents, particularly the elderly, from being victimized by crime. And make sure that schoolchildren get to school safely. And they try to influence impressionable young men to avoid the temptation of crime.

[Sarcastr0]

Ah yes, accusation of bad faith.

No, they were not lying or in any way failing to describe their secret hatred against white males. You have not met these people; I have. What the fuck is wrong with you?

You have an awful and frankly ideological crusade that requires you to close your eyes to the fact that there is not just the type of DEI officer who makes it into reason.

Look up confirmation bias, and then perhaps rethink your stereotypes.

[bevis the lumberjack]

You are an order of magnitude more ideological than I am. Maybe more. The plank in your own eye, asshole.

[OtisAH]

It’s true, Sarc. Bevis has no ideology. He’s just a contrarian. So ipso fatso, deligo delicto, you are more ideological than Bevis.

[Sarcastr0]

Your post above where you argue without evidence that people I know and you don’t to be bullies and zealots? That’s pure ideology.

Im not getting into a discussion about you or I generally (at least not on their thread). Your plate above is straight from an ideologue, and also bad.

[bevis the lumberjack]

There is a weekly story in the news about DEI abuse in different situations but there's no evidence. Sure. Because it's all right-wing fascists like Robby Soave and David Lat.

[Nige]

So you castigate the media for its 'Russia hoax' coverage and applaud it for its 'diversity: threat or menace?' coverage.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Note that y’all weren’t busting on me for my being an ideologue yesterday when I was defending Justice Jackson. Wonder why?

No, actually I don’t. I’m not the ideologue here. My ideas aren’t tied to a hardline political philosophy. Yours are.

[Sarcastr0]

Here you have an unsupported narrative. There, you were pointing out someone else's unsupported narrative.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Actual, real world DEI advocates both openly proclaim their noxious ideology and implement concrete policies that make things worse.

Now some anonymous guy on the internet says that it’s actually fine, because he talked to some of his friends who do DEI work and they said that they stuff they’re doing isn’t a big deal. And no one can question the bona fides of these friends’ claims, or see whether they match up with what their work actually looks like, because of course we don’t know who they are or where they work.

I’m not knocking your for not doxing yourself (look at me!), but can you see why we might not find this terribly persuasive.

[Sarcastr0]

Noscitur,

Real world DEI advocates both openly proclaim their noxious ideology

And plenty of them do not. You know better than to argue an entire profession shares the same ideology. This is the same All Cops are Bad nonsense the left has but revectored.

By offering a different perspective, I'm not arguing all DEI offices are peachy. I think it says a lot you think that's where I was coming from, since there is no indication that was my argument.

DEI offices are many and varied on what they do and who they are. Anyone trying to make a blanket statement about them is wrong.

As with police departments having shared broad wide-scale issues, I don't think it is beyond the realm of possibility that there is some broader systemic issue with DEI offices.

But a bunch of anecdotes won't get you there. And I've seen no further attempt to prove anything. Just nutpicking over and over again. Why dig for more - look at the comments here - that clearly works!

[Dr. Ed 2]

Reminds me of German railroad engineers, circa 1942.

[Sarcastr0]

DEI is basically doing a Holocaust.

This is why no one wants you arguing for their side.

[M L]

"Ah yes, accusation of bad faith."

Wow, where did he accuse anyone of bad faith?

Incredible case of projection and inadvertently revealing your own biases.

Go back and read the comment you replied to several more times.

[Sarcastr0]

Examine the analogy. Consider what policing minorities looks like.

Not such an incredible case of projection after all, eh?

[Don Nico]

The job of a DEI officer is typically to be a compliance cop rather than a highly effective HR employee with top quality personnel marketing and recruitment skill.
The best being in that role are the members of search and employment committees who have broad networks that reach into unusually searched corners.

[Bob from Ohio]

Talked to some of my DEI colleagues a bit and they said the check was in the mail and they'd respect me in the morning.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

How many DEI colleagues did you find in Outhouse Trench, Ohio?

[Commenter_XY]

DEI does not mean lowering our selection criteria, though I personally wonder about that – I’ve been looking at whether the top 10% of grants are indistinguishable in subsequent impact.

Do you have reason to believe selection criteria was lowered? And if so, in what manner?

[Sarcastr0]

That could have been drafted better. *I* am considering whether it would be a good to change that policy about selection criteria being an optimization effort not a threshold one, given the top is all about the same in impact.

[ragebot]

"Equity includes lowering barriers, like less burdensome application and reporting requirements, and making a grants proposers guide so having experience is not as required."

What a joke. You do realize that there are literally hundreds of graduate level courses at dozens of universities that include the words "grant writing" in their title. As a grad student I worked doing automated accounting in "The Office of Contracts and Grants". Truth be told the worst grant writers were often those applying for NSF grants as the STEM peeps thought a lot of the 'dotting Is and crossing Ts was a lot of bullshit while the HEW grants from the college of social sciences always seemed to follow the rules to the letter of the law.

What worries me most is the majority of contracts and grants are awarded to rent seekers and DEI seems little more than rent seekers trying to create more rent seekers.

[Sarcastr0]

ragebot - not all universities are R1.

Don't mistake your own experience for something universal.

STEM education engagement grants are the worst ones, BTW.

the majority of contracts and grants are awarded to rent seekers
I can personally tell you this is not true as a blanket statement. Knowing folks matters more than it should, but in the end you have to deliver.

[ragebot]

ragebot – “not all universities are R1.”

were you able to figure this out all by yourself or did you need help.

SNIP

“STEM education engagement grants are the worst ones, BTW.”

If you mean stuff like math is racist I agree.

the majority of contracts and grants are awarded to rent seekers

“I can personally tell you this is not true as a blanket statement. Knowing folks matters more than it should, but in the end you have to deliver.”

I am not saying rent seekers don’t deliver, just that what they deliver is a pile of shit.

In his annual report on wasteful government spending, The Festivus Report 2022, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) highlights 31 items of “waste” totaling $482,276,543,907, approximately $482.3 billion.

“Some of the highlights” from the report “include the National Institutes of Health spending $2.3 million injecting beagle puppies with cocaine, and separately spending $187,500 to verify that kids love their pets,” reported Paul’s office in a statement.

“The Department of Health and Human Services spent $689,222 to study romance between parrots, the NIH funded a $3 million annual research project to watch hamsters on steroids fight, and the U.S. Census Bureau spent $2.5 million on Super Bowl Ads,” said Paul’s office.

But my favorite is this one:

$118,971 to Research if Thanos Could Snap His Fingers Wearing the Infinity Gauntlet. Thanos is a fictional character in the Marvel movie Avengers: Infinity War. In the movie, “Thanos sports an ‘Infinity Gauntlet,’ which gives the wearer extraordinary powers merely by snapping one’s fingers,” reads the report. “Inspired by the film, researchers at Georgia Tech convinced grant reviewers at the National Science Foundation (superhero fans themselves, one assumes) to give them $118,971 to study if a real-life Thanos could actually snap his fingers while wearing the Infinity Gauntlet.”

“The study ultimately determined wearing metal gloves while attempting to snap does not generate enough friction between one’s fingers to successfully create a snap. In their own words, ‘[o]ur results suggest that Thanos could not have snapped because of his metal armored fingers. So, it’s probably the Hollywood special effects, rather than actual physics, at play!'”

obligatory link

https://cnsnews.com/article/washington/michael-w-chapman/sen-paul-report-4823-billion-wasteful-government-spending-2022

[Sarcastr0]

R2s don’t have courses in grantmaking, asshole.

And no, I didn’t mean the ‘math is racist’ ones, asshole.

Gonna need more proof than ipse dixit for ‘the majority of contracts and grants are awarded to rent seekers’

“I am not saying rent seekers don’t deliver, just that what they deliver is a pile of shit.” I don’t call that delivering. Federal Acquisitions Regulations are not some rent-seeker’s paradise. Not that you seem to know anything about that.

Yeah, I know all about the bullshit Republican reports on government waste. Some stuff is waste, plenty of it is just contextless bullshit selectively quoting from grant statements.

Your Thanos example: https://chbe.gatech.edu/news/2021/11/oh-snap-record-breaking-motion-our-fingertips Check out the actual
media writeup. It’s inspired by the movie, but is actually studying the basic mechanics behind snapping, specifically the role skin plays. That’s foundational research with plenty of potential applications I can think of (prosthetics, human-machine interfaces, robotics).

Check out the Golden Goose awards to see how the right lies to you about our research enterprise.

[Brett Bellmore]

"DEI does not mean lowering our selection criteria"

Purportedly, neither did affirmative action, at first.

[Sarcastr0]

Read my comment. It goes through a number of things none of which touch selection criteria.

[Don Nico]

And that list of yours is a distortion.
I took the refresher course two weeks ago. None of the items was described anything like the way you did.
I also took the course ago year ago. Same comment.
I am frequently asked to be the "DEI" watchdog on proposals and search committees at my university. I know what is expected in procedures and results.

[Armchair Lawyer]

This is just dishonest.

Every reasonable interpretation of "Diversity" under DEI have included categories such as race, gender, and sexual orientation.

To just blatantly ignore what is typically meant by "DEI" is dishonest, but is Sarcastro's MO. He shouldn't be trusted.

[Sarcastr0]

I work for the federal government, AL. Our diversity initiatives *cannot* include race, gender, or sexual orientation.

But even if they did, I was pointing out how diverse diversity initiatives were, not giving an exhaustive list.

So no, I'm not lying. You're just ignorant and would prefer insults to any kind of reading comprehension. As is your MO.

[Armchair Lawyer]

"Our diversity initiatives *cannot* include race, gender, or sexual orientation."

Another lie. There are literally entire Federal government programs that do this.

https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/grow-your-business/minority-owned-businesses

[Armchair Lawyer]

And again…

https://diversity.nih.gov/building-evidence/racial-disparities-nih-funding

You're just a dishonest hack Sarcastr0, with false claims easily disproven.

Go be a shill elsewhere.

[Don Nico]

S_O,
My experience that your "includes" are frequent effects rather than the obligations that agencies or research institutions impose on would-be Principle Investigators>
1) Diversity seeks to expand the demographic/cultural ranges of grantees.
2) Inclusion stretches the diversity goals by considering gender identity, sexual practices, economic background, geographical background.
3) Equity seems to aim to drive the percentage of awardees toward the percentage in a specified population sample. It includes discounting individual achievement as attributable to privilege of one sort or another. The underlying assumption is that some peoples' pain is more important than other peoples' pain.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm gong to be at a conference most of today, but for whatever reason I'm inspired to throw some topics out there to discuss.

Something struck me on a thread yesterday. A poster said that supply and demand was an inviolate law. ReaderY disagreed in a way I think is pretty insightful about the limits of economics as currently practiced.

Ever read “Nickel and Dimed to Death?” If the law of supply and demand was less easily violable, there wouldn’t have been periods of labor shortages with no wage increases because employers collectively just didn’t think low-wage workers were worth more and were willing to go without rather than break social solidarity. On the other end, luxury brands of nof much better real quality than cheaper brands wouldn’t flourish as much as they do if lots of people didn’t believe more expensive equals better.

The law of supply and demand may be inviolable in your head, but it doesn’t do a very good job of explaining how real people hehave in real economic situations. In the real world, it’s about as inviolable as speeding laws.

[Moderation4ever]

Hope the conference is interesting, some are and some are not.

I believe in supply and demand but accept that there are many things that influence supply and demand. Several months back I purchased a cheap air frier and notice that the identical frier was available for $10 dollar more with the name of the famous chef printed on item. The chef's name creates more demand.

I know a number of people that have good paying job and who started working right out of High School. All have told me that they could not get their own jobs today, because they lack a college degree. Nothing changed but the employer now feel that for the wages they pay they want the person to have a college degree. Again, demand is influenced an outside idea. BTW - this eems to be changing.

[Martinned]

Even in neoclassical economics, there's Giffen Goods where demand increases with price: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good

And then of course there are Veblen goods like the example you give.

[Kazinski]

But Veblen goods don't contradict the law of supply and demand, they confirm it.

The demand is for status, and they are willing to pay higher prices for the goods that confer that status. The good they are trying to obtain isn't available at a lower price, the higher price they pay the more status they get, thus more value.

[Sarcastr0]

Are you broadening the definitions of supply and demand into tautology?

We like things we like for whatever reason we like them, and things that are hard to get are harder to get than things that are easy to get.

[Kazinski]

Not at all, the good being obtained in Veblen goods is status, that is what is being bought. The luxury good that is sold is just the medium of exchange.

If that same status could be obtained at a cheaper price then they would go that route, like say going for a supermodel girlfriend rather than the 300 million super yacht.

[bernard11]

No. He's not.

Again, it's about preferences, not cost-efficiency or financial rationality or anything like that. People like luxury goods, even if the only "luxury" is the label on the product.

Remember that not many ads focus entirely on functionality.

The richer we get the more we are buying things that are a long way from being necessary. And we, by which I mean comfortably well off Americans, are plenty rich.

[Noscitur a sociis]

This seems like a pretty strong overstatement. Certainly it's true that people don't graph out a supply and demand curve when they go to the supermarket, and real prices don't instantaneously reach the intersection point you'd get if they did . Like the joke about the hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk, it's helpful to remember that microeconomic models are just that. But, pace ReaderY, the models in fact do an excellent job of both explaining past events and predicting future ones, especially when sufficiently large numbers of people are involved.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Noscitur, the models do a good job on trivial predictions. Turns out that on more-useful predictions the entire corpus of modern mathematical economics is so unreliable that it becomes indistinguishable from unfalsifiable ideology.

Posit me one non-trivial economic prediction I can count on to deliver a notably odds-on investment over the next 5 years. If anyone could actually do that, responses would skew and upset the prediction.

[bernard11]

Posit me one non-trivial economic prediction I can count on to deliver a notably odds-on investment over the next 5 years. If anyone could actually do that, responses would skew and upset the prediction.

There is no such thing. For the very reason you cite, so I don't get your point.

[Sarcastr0]

Noscitur -

I think it's all in the definition of what is an inviolable law. Economics has never been a law of physics. But it is only now departing from the initial assumptions that make it a poor predictor of real world behavior, both write small and writ large.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"I think it’s all in the definition of what is an inviolable law. Economics has never been a law of physics. But it is only now departing from the initial assumptions that make it a poor predictor of real world behavior, both write small and writ large."

You're going from "inviolable law" to "poor predictor" pretty fast.

Supply and demand might not be inviolable law, but it's an excellent predictor. If I tell you that a blight is destroying this year's banana crop and ask you what effect that will have on the price of bananas, the answer isn't, "Gee, it's hard to say..."

[Sarcastr0]

I've taken arms against the anti-social science folks on here a lot. You won't here it from me that economics isn't a science. And it's getting better at predicting, as I noted above when I said look at the recent Nobel prizes in econ.

But I think you're still overstating where we are in this science: supply goes down means price goes up is a fair heuristic, albeit with plenty of exceptions, some known some not yet understood.
But the supply-demand curve says a lot more than that. And that's where we begin to have some irrationality issues.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Twelveinch, if it takes an extreme example to make your rule work reliably, you are positing a trivial rule.

Instead of blighted bananas, consider supermarket prices for milk, in normal times. Business considerations among producers, wholesalers, and retailers can make practically anything happen in that market. That includes paradoxical results to affect oppositely retailers who operate in close proximity.

Give some thought to the possibilities a wholesaler controls if it chooses from time-to-time to extend rebates for milk sales to retailers. It could for a particular week choose to rebate on the basis of total volume of milk sold. It could choose instead to base a weekly rebate on dollar volume of milk sold. It could choose to do the former in the case of Retailer A, and do the latter in the case of Retailer B. The former might be incentivized to lower prices, while the latter might be incentivized to raise prices. Both retailers might agree that was a convenient and useful system. And the wholesaler might choose to reverse the incentives the following week, also with the approval of the respective retailers.

That is a real-world example which years ago became the basis of a news story, by the way.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Don't most states have laws against doing this with milk?

[John F. Carr]

Real markets have friction. I call it friction. You can say transaction costs, barrier to entry, and so on. The labor market has a lot of friction. In the short term not many workers quit or get fired. If you demand burger flippers get paid $20 per hour the fast food restaurant will have to eat the cost for a while. In the long term the business will buy a robot and the burger flipper will be out of a job.

[bernard11]

Of course they do.

They have a lot of other things going on as well. It's pure ignorance to claim that economics overlooks these issues.

[OtisAH]

And if we keep fast food workers at $7.25/hr the restaurant will have to eat the cost for awhile. In the long term the business will buy a robot and the burger flipper will be out of a job. Because business has looked to replace workers with automation since automation was invented. “Increased wages” is merely modern pretext for doing what they’re already going to do.

[John F. Carr]

More business will buy robots to replace $15 per hour humans than will buy robots to replace $7.25 per hour humans.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Yup. Buying robots is really paying guys to make robots.

Robot makers make more than burger flippers, and if you artificially increase the cost of low end labor, you push down the threshold where it becomes cheaper to substitute high end labor for low end labor.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The fewer human hands touching my burger, the better.

[OtisAH]

Arguing that businesses be allowed to pay poverty and near-poverty wages because that will *maybe* protect jobs from automation for a slightly longer period of time is cruel and ludicrous. Perhaps your time is better spent scheming out solutions to the post-automation future for humans rather than arguing in defense of penury wages to protect the current profit margins of businesses, which will grow under automation (the point of automation) and keeping poor people poor.

[David Nieporent]

Businesses should be allowed to pay whatever wages people are willing to work for. If the wages are too low for people to survive on them, then people won't accept them, pretty much by definition.

[Brett Bellmore]

In practice, restaurants won't replace $7.25/hr burger flippers with robots until the total amortized cost of burger flipping robots is less than $7.25. Because, yeah, they've been looking to do it since RUR and Metropolis, but not if it's at a loss.

[bernard11]

Well, you're right that they won't do it until it's profitable, but, to nitpick, "total amortized cost" is not the right measure. That's more an accounting item than a basis for an investment decision.

[ducksalad]

The observation is like citing a particularly cold February as "proof" that global warming is fake.

[Sarcastr0]

More like citing stuff slowing down to show your physics model of an infinite frictionless vacuum isn't quite complete.

[ducksalad]

Then there are people who say there's friction and wind resistance and therefore Newton was all wrong. They jump out of third story window and find out his laws were a pretty decent approximation after all. Or they commit the economic equivalent of jumping out of third story window, on the idea that supply and demand can be overcome through 5-year programs and a willingness to use strong enforcement measures.

[Sarcastr0]

Check my thesis - I'm not saying economics isn't predictive, nor that it doesn't have some good heuristics.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Economics isn't a science; it's an attempt to explain human behavior using arithmetic.

[Stephen Lathrop]

More like a means to predict how people would behave if people were numbers.

[SRG]

As I have put it, economics is that branch of psychology that thinks it's physics.

[bernard11]

Economics is indeed, (mildly) famously, a branch of the biological sciences.

This is one reason why the simplified "Econ 101" models often fail to describe reality.

[Sarcastr0]

Now *that* is not true. Behavioral economics is a thing.

But if you really want to see some legit economics with robust real-world upshots, check out the Nobel prizes. The one a couple of years ago on auction theory has changed public policy and gotten demonstrably better outcomes.

[bernard11]

Of course economics is a science.

It's not physics or chemistry, but it does attempt to describe a set of phenomena through logic and observation.

This turns out to be quite difficult, especially as it is hard to conduct controlled experiments, and the phenomena of interest involve the behavior of human beings rather than inanimate objects, but the difficulty doesn't disqualify it from "sciencehood."

[M L]

That's not insightful.

Hint: "not much better real quality" is subjective and beside the point.

Demand doesn't have to be rational, it can be irrational, and supply and demand still works.

[bernard11]

Demand doesn’t have to be rational, it can be irrational,

This is sort of true, but “irrational” is probably too strong a term.

Remember, we are analyzing human behavior, not studying the tactics of some game.

What matters is preferences, not money. Now, it happens that the vast majority of people like money a lot, so desire for money is a good proxy for preferences, but it’s still preferences all the way down.

This is obvious if you think about why someone might buy a certain cut of meat rather than a less expensive one.

[M L]

Right.

It's like saying, ya know what, beanie babies aren't much better quality than other stuffed animals! Supply and demand destroyed!

Or with meat, I've heard that at one time lobster was among the cheaper foods you could eat, those sea bugs weren't considered very classy and they were a working class food. I don't know if that's true, but it could be.

[BrotherMovesOn]

I’ve also heard that about lobster, to the extent that in early colonial NE they weren’t even elevated to a food, but used as fertilizer. I also don’t know if that’s true, but it could be.

One professor had a definition that has stuck with me – Economics as the study of competing alternatives.

[bernard11]

Another way to say that is that it is the study of how resources are allocated.

[BrotherMovesOn]

Sure. Works as well.

[Dr. Ed 2]

As a boy in the 19th Century, my grandfather was told to always wear rubber boots when walking through tidepools lest the lobsters bite his toes. There were that many lobsters back even then.

We *way* overfished them, and it was the canneries that nearly made them extinct a century ago -- there was no minimum size back then, while (in theory) the legal sized lobster of today has had the chance to reproduce at least once. What saved us is that they migrate counter-clockwise around the Gulf of Maine and hence the harder-to-reach areas had a population that repopulated.

But they could have gone extinct.

The other thing is that you can get sick from eating too much lobster -- either at one setting or too many times a week. I don't know medically what it is, but if you eat too much of it, you really do not feel good... (I tell people that half of what you eat, by volume, must be something other than lobster -- even if there is an unlimited supply at the meal.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

And dead lobsters would litter the beaches after a storm -- the sand messes up their gills and they suffocate, and fresh water causes them to bleed to death. As does being smacked against rocks.

And you do not want to eat a lobster that was dead when cooked -- never, ever, ever do that! If the tail of a boiled lobster isn't tightly curled up, the lobster went into the pot dead and do not eat it! (Baked lobsters are killed as part of the stuffing process.)

They start decomposing so fast that all they were good for was fertilizer, as was (is) the seaweed that also litters the beach after a storm. And in the 18th Century the beaches would be littered with them -- it happens even today, to a much smaller extent.

[Sarcastr0]

Saying the demand curve can be irrational is...well, that is like modeling friction by saying gravity can be wonky. It's not really a useful thing to introduce, unless you want to reduce your science to a tautology.

[Stephen Lathrop]

In New England, there were at times rules (meant as protections) against feeding too much lobster to servants. Other folks mentioned becoming, "cloyed," with it.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Yes, it'd make them sick. Same symptoms as food poisoning, including vomiting.

[bernard11]

I agree that it is far from inviolate.

Consider, for example, that during economic downturns, the response to lack of demand is generally unemployment rather than lower wages.

[ragebot]

Can anyone define the term elasticity in the economic sense?

[bernard11]

Can anyone define the term elasticity in the economic sense?

(Raises hand)

Elasticity is the response of one variable to a change in another, related variable. For example, "Price elasticity of demand" is the change in quantity demanded resulting from a change in price. It is often described as the percent change in quantity demanded due to a one percent change in price.

Mathematically, if Q=f(P),

then the elasticity of Q with respect to P is (dQ/dP) x (P/Q).

Note that when talking about demand, the response to a price increase will be negative, even though the elasticity is sometimes expressed as a positive number

There are all sorts of elasticities that economists think about - demand and supply in both the short and long run, others. Responses to price changes are an important topic.

[Krayt]

Adaptation is slow. We live spikes of a year or two, which irritates the holy hell out of everyone (and politicians in office hide, and those out of office beat the incompetency drum).

A 10 year granularity is iffy enough. The long term trends show benefit. Politicians can only screw this up by intervening.

[Sarcastr0]

You are cherry picking your economics very hard in order to keep your market worship clean.

One of the absolutely clear things economics has shown in the modern era is the utility of government intervention. All but a small school of very loud economists agree with that. All serious policymakers do.

[Kazinski]

Yeah policymakers like making policy and are convinced their policies are absolutely essential.

That proves a lot.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, there are no conservative policymakers.

You're being pretty foolish.

[ThePublius]

"On the other end, luxury brands of nof (sic) much better real quality than cheaper brands wouldn’t flourish as much as they do if lots of people didn’t believe more expensive equals better."

This is flawed reasoning. This completely ignores the perceived value of brands and logos. There is real value to a label like YSL, et.al., even if the "real" value may be equal to or even less than that of an unbranded item of equivalent utility and construction. It's not the expense, it's the image.

[Moderation4ever]

My newspaper today reports on a British study that finds that people working a 32 hour workweek are a productive as people in the tradition 40 hour week. Worker are less stressed and more productive.

I do think this is in the future, but think the limit here is government mandates on employers. As one HR person noted when a company hires an employee they take on taking care of that employee and their family. Too many social safety nets are tied in with the employers. These include health care, retirement, disablity. If we can shift those from the triangle of employee, employer, and government. To employee and government we could cut the employers responsibility to mostly focus on wages and make it easier to hire more people for shorter workweeks.

[bevis the lumberjack]

I don’t see how that’s possibly true, particularly in a manufacturing sense. There’s no way you can make as many widgets in 32 hours as you can in 40 hours.

We are compensated as workers for our time and expertise. If the workweek evolves to your vision does that mean that salary levels are going to drop by 20%?

[Michael P]

I'm also curious what kind of workplace has that characteristic. I've never thought my jobs (as software coder, line manager, or systems engineer) could get done in 32 hours per week. I've only sometimes thought that my per-hour productivity was much lower for working 40 hours rather than 32; when I did, it was because I didn't have enough work assigned to really keep me busy for 40 hours.

That's especially true right now. My main job is to coordinate between teams and keep things aligned in a technical sense. That's about two-thirds communication and one-third technical work (reviewing or writing documents). Most of what feels productive is in the latter third, but my backlog there is huge because it's s lower priority than the two-thirds work -- the two-thirds is almost purely administrative overhead from having a larger team. So if I worked 32 hours rather than 40, I would feel much less productive because I would have less time for the one-third; and in practice, I work 50 hours rather than 40 because I can spend 6 or 7 of the extra 10 doing the technical work that I enjoy more.

I get the argument that some workplaces can gain efficiencies by having fewer and more focused meetings, but I haven't lived in that kind of environment. I've had the opposite problem instead.

[Longtobefree]

How much time do you spend in meetings about why the schedule is so far behind?
The main advantage of a shorter workweek is that (eventually) the useless meetings and reports are what goes away.

[Illocust]

These studies aren't taking into account different types of labor. They don't for example take into account minding a shop, where you need a earn body at the counter to take someone's money, and how fast they take someone's money didn't really matter.

Jobs where you pay someone to problem solve or be creative might get well benefit from lower hours, because after a while you just don't think as fast and may solve issues with less time if you come back the next day.

[ducksalad]

"We are compensated as workers for our time and expertise."

That's one theory of employment out of many.

Another theory is that you're compensated for results and whatever time and expertise you need to expend is your own problem. 32 vs 40 vs 48 depends on how intensely you decide to work* and how much time you blow on mistakes.

Another theory is that the "right" compensation is whatever you can extract from the other guy. If you, or you in concert with some co-workers, can force the employer to accept 32 hours for the same pay then more power to you.

---
*A wise employer doesn't object to an engineer that spends 60 hours at the office and can sometimes be seen playing Tetris or watching football at work. Or to the engineer that is steely-eyed missile man for 32 hours but wants every Friday off.

[Sarcastr0]

I don’t see how that’s possibly true, particularly in a manufacturing sense. There’s no way you can make as many widgets in 32 hours as you can in 40 hours.

Presumably productivity is not constant.

I don't find this study's result at all improbable. But it is also only one study - I'd want a lot more before I started making policy based on it.

[OtisAH]

So shift the entire responsibility for the social safety net, education, infrastructure, defense, et al. to employees and then we can work fewer hours? And this will also result in higher wages and not just soaring profits and additional stock buybacks for employers?

Is this a new approach to trickle down theory, an addendum, or just trickle down in a newer package?

[Life of Brian]

M4E: "If we can shift those from the triangle of employee, employer, and government. To employee and government we could cut the employers responsibility to mostly focus on wages . . ."

Otis: "So shift the entire responsibility for the social safety net, education, infrastructure, defense, et al. to employees"

Drop-dead careless reading, or deliberate distortion? Stay tuned....

[OtisAH]

From where, exactly, do you think “the government” gets “its’ money?

[Life of Brian]

I suppose if you're not just going to wipe the egg off your face and move on, that's about the best you could do.

But I'm afraid your salvage attempt just made it worse: From where, exactly, do you think businesses get THEIR money?

[OtisAH]

Hey, it’s not as if I didn’t already know you’re an idiot. I have only myself to blame for your tediousness.

[Life of Brian]

And Otis finally takes the L, if a bit noisily. It's a real shame we didn't make any progress on the malice/incompetence question, but there's always next time.

[OtisAH]

What “L” am I taking?

[Life of Brian]

Now two: one for your initial ill-considered rant, and a second one for playing dumb about it.

[OtisAH]

Look, I’m sure back home you were the best chess-playing pigeon in the region. But this is the world stage dude. So either tell me what I’ve lost or what you’ve won, or go strut and coo somewhere else.

[Life of Brian]

Now three: for playing dumb about playing dumb. And no, Sparky, I won't be placing the rattle back on the high chair again. Fortunately for the rest of the sentient universe, the thread is clear enough.

[Noscitur a sociis]

If the study is correct, why do we need to make it easier for companies offer shorter workweeks? Isn't he extra productivity incentive enough?

[bernard11]

It should be, but:

Productivity, especially of office workers, is hard to measure, so companies may be reluctant to believe it actually increased.

As others have said, this will only work for some types of jobs, though it would generate coordination problems where plant workers, say, needed to communicate with office staff, not to mention squabbling and jealousy.

Inertia. Or call it caution.

[Sarcastr0]

A lot of our policy infrastructure assumes 40 day workweeks. Holidays, for instance. Not that I think one of the policy incentives should be to mess with our Holidays. (Though I take a day in March and April because oy).

But the point is that there are probably impediments to examine. Though as I noted above, I think it's way premature to move based on one study.

[John F. Carr]

A large American company was known for having 29 hour work weeks to avoid its employees being classified as full time.

[ducksalad]

Yeah. Our labor laws were designed for people wearing floppy flat caps and coveralls, marching into factories where they did paced labor in which time = product.

There's also a remnant of feudal type thinking, in which the lord was responsible for the workers, and expected to make sure tenants had minimum food, housing, doctoring, and defense against marauders.

We need to move toward the model of consenting adults exchanging cash for service, and no particular government-favored number of hours per week.

[ragebot]

I am calling bullshit on this.

First off the 40 hour work week is an arbitrary number that came about due to some type of social/political bullshit that has no other basis.

Maybe more to the point the 32 hour work week is simply the 40 hour work week with one day off. Maybe peeps would be more productive working four six hour days and one eight hour day instead of four eight hour days; who the hell knows.

As an aside my nephew is a welder in the pipefitters union and has often worked seven twelves (twelve hour shifts seven days a week) for six weeks straight then with four weeks off. Of course this schedule is when building nuclear power plants where paying massive overtime is justified to quickly get the plant up. My other nephew works for Duke Energy mostly doing 40 hours five days a week using an xray machine to check QC on the welds his brother (and other welders) make. Any welder who fails an xray test of their welds is off the job so there really is very harsh QC.

When I was an undergrad during the summers I was a rocker who hung drywall. The going rate was $US1.25 a sheet and you could work 40 hours a week or more or less. Thing was at the end of the week the general contractor came around and you got paid for how many units you finished. If you had any partial units that were not completely finished you got run off the job.

Point is a 32 hour work week is just as much bullshit as a 40 hour work week. I can't remember the last time I worked only 40 hours a week.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I can’t remember the last time I worked only 40 hours a week.

An overdue vacation might improve your perspective across the board.

[Moderation4ever]

First you are entirely correct that 40 hours is arbitrary, but it is a common standard. I was a salaried employee most of my working career and while my salary was based on a 40 hour week, I routinely worked more than 40 hours. What the study found is that shorter work hours can result in no loss of productivity. Any who works knows that there are periods of high and low productivity. If an employer structures the job so that an employee is doing more high productivity and gives the employee off for low productivity times the employer gets a happier employee with the same productivity. This will not work for all jobs, but it may make sense for many of today's jobs.

[bernard11]

I was a rocker who hung drywall

Not much luck getting gigs for your band?

[Both Sides]

Mods never needed to hang drywall!

[bernard11]

I don’t know about the five-day work week, but the eight-hour day was a major union goal in the late 19th century. See the Haymarket Affair.

[Life of Brian]

As an aside my nephew is a welder in the pipefitters union and has often worked seven twelves (twelve hour shifts seven days a week) for six weeks straight then with four weeks off. Of course this schedule is when building nuclear power plants where paying massive overtime is justified to quickly get the plant up.

It doesn't seem like "massive overtime" would be necessary if they didn't set things up where 40% of their crew not working at all on any given week. 84 hours a week for 6 weeks over a 10-week span is just over 50 hours per week for any given welder. That would be 10 hours a week of overtime, versus 44 hours a week of overtime under the current system. And if it's really critical to run 12-hour shifts, 4 on/3 off per week gets you to 48 hours.

[ragebot]

I don't pretend to understand union contracts but working seven twelves seems to be some type of benefit/whatever you want to call it not all workers get and as a rule even then it does not last forever. As a rule everyone working seven twelves is travelling from their local union location often out of state and not only getting overtime but also travel pay and housing allowance. The normal hourly pay is around $US50 and normal overtime rules apply for time and a half and double time. Like I first posted union rules are the result of what the union has bargained for; something I can never quite figure out.

[Stephen Lathrop]

A seven twelves work schedule affords 10 hours a week of time-and-a-half, plus 34 hours a week of double time. Workers can’t get that kind of pay without either emergency employer needs to meet contract deadlines, or deliberate distortion of work schedules (which seems to be what you describe) to make it happen. You seem to be talking about ~ $6,000 per week.

As an aside, the notion that a pipe fitter could work seven twelves for more than a couple of weeks without productivity loss and adverse quality control results seems preposterous. I speak from experience doing very similar work (fabrication of stainless steel distillation columns) on that same schedule. Anyone who thinks that kind of production push can be accomplished without sacrifice of hourly productivity, plus QC corner cutting, would be a candidate to buy a museum-quality (riveted) bridge somewhere.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"My newspaper today reports on a British study that finds that people working a 32 hour workweek are a productive as people in the tradition 40 hour week. Worker are less stressed and more productive."

If that's true, companies can make a lot of extra money shortening their workweeks. I wonder how many people will get rich by shortening their employee's work weeks?

[apedad]

Alex Murdaugh, the 54-year-old disgraced legal scion – disbarred soon after murder allegations and various alleged financial improprieties came to light – is scheduled to take the stand in his defense sometime today.

He is accused of shooting and killing his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, 52, and their youngest son Paul Murdaugh, 22.

https://lawandcrime.com/live-trials/live-alex-murdaugh-will-take-the-stand-on-day-21-of-double-murder-trial/

I've been loosely following the trial and I'm not sure there's enough direct evidence to find him guilty; lots of circumstantial though.

[apedad]

He just testified he didn't shoot his wife or son anytime.

[apedad]

Now he testified he would never "intentionally" hurt them.

[Frank Drackman]

He's got OJ looking for the real killers

[Ben_]

Another close associate of Bill and Hillary committed suicide: https://nypost.com/2023/02/22/death-of-clinton-aide-tied-to-jeffrey-epstein-ruled-suicide/amp/

This time it was by tying himself to a tree and shooting himself in the chest. No gun was found at the scene so he must have used one of those ghost guns that magically disappear.

This particular Clinton-connected death was a guy who might have been able to shed some light on Clinton's Jeffrey Epstein related activities.

Despite the evidence, you are instructed to not doubt that it was a suicide. Continuing to toe the party line as the death toll mounts is part of being one of The Good Guys. (See also Covid vaccines for young people.)

[Noscitur a sociis]

Don’t be coy. What do you think really happened?

[Ben_]

It’s bad form to suggest that official accounts of anything aren’t the whole truth and the only truth when they might benefit Democrats.

You may be forgiven for your suggestion if you apologize right now and say you were only joking.

[Mr. Bumble]

Seems pretty obvious that as in the case of Epstein it was an "assisted" suicide.

[Sarcastr0]

You're a moron who has given themselves paranoid delusions to own the libs.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I'm not so sure -- if he was as used to having as much sex as he was, I'm thinking autoerotic asphyxiation. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_asphyxiation

[Longtobefree]

Well, Ben, let me be the first to say how much we will miss you when you're gone.

[Longtobefree]

https://babylonbee.com/news/cdc-people-dirt-clintons-843-greater-risk-suicide

[Ben_]

I never met the Clintons.

[Nige]

Lots of people who never met the Clintons ended up 'meeting the Clintons' ifyouknowhatimean.

[Life of Brian]

I'm not sure actually meeting them is required. Don't you just have to be... troublesome?

[Ben_]

I can’t imagine what you might be talking about. The Clintons are reportedly saddened by the many many many tragic, untimely deaths of their associates.

[Estragon]

This comment needs more Vince foster to really shine

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The switch from the Clinton Murder Spree to birtherism turns out to have been a poor choice for this blog.

[David Nieporent]

Sigh.

Shotgun discovered near body of former Clinton aide Mark Middleton: report.

Why is it that stupid people are so gullible?

[M L]

Well, you have to admit the original report --- "no weapon at the scene," was quite a head fake.

From the link:

"A shotgun was discovered near the body of the former Clinton aide with links to Jeffrey Epstein who died by suicide last year — despite initial reports to the contrary, officials said this week.

A new set of documents obtained by the Daily Mail states that a Stoeger 12-gauge coach shotgun was 30 feet from the body of Mark Middleton when he was found dead on Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas, on May 7, 2022. . .

Based on an initial report released yesterday, the outlet previously claimed there was no weapon at the scene. . . .

Carter’s report states that officers determined that the gun was flung away from Middleton’s body due to the recoil and angle off the ground. . .

The Daily Mail’s initial claims that Middleton’s death was self-inflicted despite there being no weapon at the scene immediately ignited suspicion related to the far-right “Clinton Body Count” conspiracy theory.

The far-fetched idea that Middleton was targeted by the Clintons was amplified by his ties to pedophile Epstein: Before he left politics in 1995, Middleton signed the sex fiend into the White House seven out of the 17 times he visited the residence, the Daily Mail said.

He also reportedly rode on Epstein’s infamous “Lolita Express” jet."

[Bob from Ohio]

"Carter’s report states that officers determined that the gun was flung away from Middleton’s body due to the recoil and angle off the ground. . . "

Get smarter officers.

This is why conspiracy theories spread.

[OtisAH]

No, Bob, you and people like you are why conspiracy theories spread.

[Jmaie]

Well, I for one would like to see the MythBusters look into whether a shotgun would be thrown 30 feet under these circumstances. Presumably, the muzzle would’ve been placed against his chest and no appreciable force keeping it there. So equal and opposite reaction, etc.

[Ben_]

You should just blindly believe it. If you don’t blindly believe every official story on everything then you might not be one of The Good Guys.

[Sarcastr0]

Ben, you utter sheeple, you blindly believe this guy is dead??

[Ben_]

Alive? Dead? Unavailable to tell anyone about Clinton and Epstein is the important thing.

[Sarcastr0]

Says you, you gullible fool.

Many are saying he's talking right now, but you'll never hear him because you don't have enough tin foil on your head!

Wake up, Ben!

[David Nieporent]

Well, you have to admit the original report — “no weapon at the scene,” was quite a head fake.

Sure. And since 30 7 seconds of thought would reveal how ludicrous it was that a shooting victim would be classified as a suicide if there weren't any gun, the logical thing to do would be to say, "Hey, one of these things probably isn't true."

So then one should take another 7 seconds to google to find out more information — all I did was use the guy's name, nothing esoteric — and came up with the subsequent report.

(Even without the obvious ludicrousness of that situation, the desperate attempt to find some way to link it to Bill Clinton based on things from 30 years ago was even more of a red flag.)

[Ben_]

Why does anyone believe the second report and not the first one?

Do suicides tie themselves to trees and shoot themselves in the chest? Are suicides often associated with changing stories about whether weapons are or aren’t found?

[Sarcastr0]

Why does anyone believe the second report and not the first one?

Because waiting till the facts come in is a thing normal people do.

Cherry picking is a thing people with something to sell themselves do.

Believing the Clinton Death list in this day and age is something unbelievably lame people do.

[Ben_]

He died last year.

[Sarcastr0]

So it wasn't a correction by the NY Post, they *got* to them!

[Ben_]

So it wasn’t a fast-moving breaking story and there was no reason to wait to see if it would magically improve in the Clintons' favor after a few days.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, the NY Post is generally perfect in it's reporting when not rushed, and later reporting should therefore be weighted the same as the initial story.

[ragebot]

Forget the improbability of the gun being 30 feet away; I can't figure how he tied himself to a tree.

[Estragon]

Oh really? The link is right there!! All you have to do is read. This comment is a real gaffe.

“The additional papers, written by Sgt. Keenan Carter, also detail the lengths Middleton, 59, went to to ensure his suicide attempt was successful by standing on a bench and tying an electrical cord around his neck before finally shooting himself in the chest.“

Truly a mystery that will never be solved! What’s Hillary’s alibi?!?!?

[ragebot]

Let me rephrase my question, I can't figure out why he put a noose around his neck before shooting himself in the chest; and lets not forget about how the weapon was 30 feet from the body and there was a delay in it being found.

[Estragon]

I thought we were “forgetting about the improbability” of the gun.

Really? You can’t imagine how you might stand on a bench, toss a cord over a branch and tie it around your own neck?? That’s just too improbable for you to imagine— it’s much more likely Hillary showed up, tied him to a tree like the princess bride or something, and shot him in the chest to keep him quiet about comet pizza, Epstein, and the Clintons’ other various Satanic misdeeds? Because, be honest, that’s the picture you had in your mind before you posted and even read the article, right?

[Estragon]

“Can’t figure out why”

Sgt. Carter had an opinion, in the section quote above. Call it the belt and suspenders approach.

And if you think that’s improbable— I had a horribly disfigured law school classmate, because he had shot himself in the face and survived.

[Ben_]

"I had a horribly disfigured law school classmate, because he had shot himself in the face and survived."

Cool story.

[Estragon]

Here you go:

https://talkingaboutsuicide.com/2013/07/14/talking-with-jay-johnston/

Maybe deploy that skepticism a little more broadly, eh?

[Ben_]

No one should ever doubt "official" accounts of anything though. It’s like treason or something.

[Estragon]

Hey doubt the official accounts all you like! It ain’t treason brother! All I’m suggesting is you turn that same gimlet eye towards your theory that the former President and his wife and their myriad enablers have engaged in a decades-long murder spree in service of covering up their satanic misdeeds.

[Ben_]

I can’t believe you’d even suggest that about the many many many untimely deaths of Clinton associates.

[Sarcastr0]

Ben, look up how confirmation bias works.

Just sitting alone in your internet cave sure Dems love to make people miserable for the hell of it, and the Clintons have been employing untraceable assassins for decades, eh?

[Nige]

it's not either/or. You can be skeptical about official reports AND find the Clinton-linking-chin-stroking laughable.

[Ben_]

"22 Chicago schools had zero students who could read at grade level, while 33 reported the same for math"

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fifty-five-schools-in-chicago-say-students-cant-do-math-or-read-at-grade-level/ar-AA17O13J

Teachers' pay and union contributions to politicians were not affected.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Clearly they are failing because they are underfunded. If only they had more money then the students would flourish.

[Sarcastr0]

22 out of 55. Is that an improvement from last year? What is the baseline? How does this compare to other jurisdictions in the US? What about other countries?

Oh, you don't care. Chicago means liberal to you so this is just another barely thought out attack.

How unserious.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

There shouldn't be a single government school with a 100% rate like that.

You're trying to argue about something else that ignores that obvious fact.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Regardless of the trend, it’s appalling.

This is the point in the system where poor “marginalized” groups are being failed. They enter adulthood so far behind they have zero chance to thrive.

You should be condemning this, not looking for reasons to say it’s not that bad. It’s really that bad. Or worse.

Just because Ben posted it doesn’t mean you need to look for ways to minimize it. You and I and everyone should be demanding better. Much, much better.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

This is the equity the Democrats seek for us all.

[Ben_]

"You and I and everyone should be demanding better. Much, much better."

The unions contributed the same amounts to the politicians. That’s the only thing that matters to some. The only way it could get better is to add more payroll to capture more money for the blue team.

[Sarcastr0]

Regardless of the trend, it’s appalling. I honestly don’t know if that’s true, since it’s pegged to an arbitrary standard.

Do you think I’m saying our educational system is perfect lets not invest or look for reforms and improvements? Come on – I think education is the silver bullet!

Ben isn’t talking about any of that stuff. He's just saying liberals bad because Chicago. I’m saying Ben wrote a bad comment, not minimizing anything.

[bevis the lumberjack]

You didn’t even condemn it. You and your side are always complaining about not enough black doctors/lawyers/engineers/everything, and this shit is far and away the biggest contributor to their inability to get there because they aren’t equipped to meet the necessary qualifications. “Systemic racism” barely has the chance to operate because not enough of them can get there.

What fucking difference does liberal or conservative make here? Who cares?

And yet instead of talking about that point you’d prefer to argue with Ben who simply posted a wider published fact. Easier to own the cons, I guess. Or the one con.

[Ben_]

There’s zero incentive for anyone in the school system in places like Illinois to improve anything related to whether kids learn more/better.

It’s a one party controlled state and the teachers' union is a huge contributor of money and labor to the party.

The only chance a (not rich) kid has is to move.

[bevis the lumberjack]

It’s not just Chicago. Similar data came out of Baltimore a couple of weeks back.

And I don’t hear any Republicans demanding this be fixed either. They’re too caught up their own ideological tunnels. Or they’re willing to let minority kids rot because they don’t want to help their political opponents. Shame on them too.

This should be a crusade among all of our leadership. A goddamn holy war for black leadership, but I guess they don’t want to criticize teachers and inner city administrators. Or black parents. The honest truth is that admins and teachers (and parents) that are looking away from this clusterfuck should be shamed.

[Ben_]

"I don’t hear any Republicans demanding this be fixed either"

What does any of this have to do with any Republican? Do Republicans have any power in Chicago or Baltimore?

You also don’t hear comments on it from Tokyo salarymen or Panamanian sea captains.

(Not that you go out of your way to seek out any of their input.)

[bevis the lumberjack]

Governors do too. Maryland has a Republican governor and the largest school system in his state can’t seem to teach anybody anything. Generations lost to this abject incompetence. Why isn’t Hogan raising hell?

Betsy DeVos was Secretary of Education until years ago. Not a peep from her about it.

Wonder what Houston looks like under Abbott or Atlanta under Kemp.

Sarcastro is right, you’re only interested in owning the libs, but your team sucks on this too.

In order to make it better, someone that matters needs to care enough to try.

[Ben_]

"Maryland has a Republican governor…"

Incorrect.

DeVos hasn’t been around for years. Why should she say anything? It would just be for show if she did. You want a show?

You’d just say she was trying to own the libs if she said anything.

What will actually happen: a few people like me will remark on the failures. No one will do anything except in red states where they already did it and already avoided these outcomes. Teachers will all still get their paychecks, unions will pay Democrat politicians, repeat the same thing next year with a new crop of kids. And the year after.

Everyone knows the schools can’t improve until the unions lose power over them. How’s that going to happen? With you playing the "both sides" game?

[bevis the lumberjack]

Larry Hogan was the governor of Maryland for eight years ending a month ago. He is a Republican. This happened on his watch.

All you political guys just use this crap to try to make political points. WTF do you think you’ll accomplish? If you successfully pin it on liberals will people in Baltimore start voting for Republicans? Are there actually any Republicans in Baltimore?

You don’t give any shits at all about any of the people hurt by this garbage, you just want to do pointless political bitching. Fucking worthless.

[Ben_]

Versus you. Look at all your accomplishments on this subject.

[Sarcastr0]

A goddamn holy war for black leadership, but I guess they don’t want to criticize teachers and inner city administrators.

Good lord, if educational reform was that simple it would have been done ages ago.

[Stephen Lathrop]

bevis, I hope you agree with me that teachers and educational administrators are to blame not so much for incompetence, but for being overly-compliant. However it got there, American society has an abiding, tough-to-crack problem with race and class. There is only so much that educator competence can accomplish to remediate that, and it isn't even much.

Problems which educators' skill sets cannot address are not properly educators' problems to solve. If professional educators deliver satisfactory results for students who arrive properly prepared to be taught, what more should we ask of the educators?

What we do ask of them, actually demand of them, is that they take responsibility for practically every social problem no one else can solve. And the educators have for decades been compliantly, Quixotically, trying to do the best they can, while knowing it can't work. That has proved bad for the system.

We do that because we elect gutless politicians who refuse even to look at the neglected problems. And we give the politicians a pass. They are opportunists, who treat every education budget as an infinitely expandable slush fund to divert blame away from themselves. Of course that has been a disaster.

Sometimes, I wonder what would happen if educators got together en masse, to draw a line. Kid shows up in 6th grade without fundamental reading skills? Send him to the principal's office on day one of the school year, with a note to get him into a remedial program elsewhere, empowered to address what will obviously be much more than reading deficiencies, and funded by some other budget.

Announce to the world that educators will no longer take the blame for politicians' neglect of political problems. Let the politicians solve those.

I know it's a fantasy. My hope might be that giving it consideration would at least reduce vituperative blame directed at the educators.

[Ben_]

Teachers can't do anything to make anything better because ... reasons ... but we still have to give them 100% of society's resources available for child education. And then they use up those resources, fail at their mission of teaching, and the kids are left with no hope.

Schools' failing means no one else ever gets a chance to try. Only the same people, doing the same things every year, failing year after year after year. Always with a reason there's no way they could ever be expected to succeed.

[Stephen Lathrop]

QED

[Ben_]

You obviously won’t change anything. Sorry kids, you get excuses instead of an education.

Most importantly union contributions to politicians will continue. Selling out kids' future for a few pennies on the dollar, year after year, generation after generation.

[Sarcastr0]

bevis, some things go without saying.

2 things are true at the same time:
-I want out education system improved across the board, everywhere.
-I don't want an ambiguous stat about a particular city used as a petty partisan target by small partisans.

I don't think condemning the latter requires I mention the former.

[Nige]

‘You didn’t even condemn it’

Oh, now who’s playing partisan games? Sarcastro is the one guy who ISN'T posturing and grandstanding in this thread.

[Nige]

'“Systemic racism” barely has the chance to operate because not enough of them can get there.'

That IS systemic racism. Congratulations, you're woke.

[Frank Drackman]

Just shows that old saying about a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters would eventually produce the entire folio of William Shakespeare is total BS (man!)

[Ben_]

"Is that an improvement from last year?"

You think fewer than zero students in those schools could read at grade level last year? The teachers couldn’t be bothered to show up at all last year, remember?

"How does this compare to other jurisdictions in the US? What about other countries?"

Most schools in the US and other countries have more than zero students capable of reading at grade level.

"… this is just another barely thought out attack."

Pointing out simple facts about these schools' performance is an "attack". For any school that’s any good, pointing out the same facts about the schools' performance is a nice compliment. It’s almost like these facts are entirely neutral and the problem is that some schools are just terrible and destructive.

Union contributions to politicians are unaffected.

[Sarcastr0]

Didn't want to do any more work, I see. Just blame Dems is all you wanted to do.

You're not even really pointing out a problem - your stats are trash. You're certainly not looking for solutions. Because you're a comfy boy who only wants to attack Dems, not actually improve anything.

[Ben_]

And that’s how you dismiss the educational needs of all the children at 55 schools.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Nobody has addressed the point that Sarcastr0 made.

[Ben_]

Which was? Something about … maybe it’s actually not a problem because… baseline?

[Dan Schiavetta]

"How does this compare to other jurisdictions in the US? What about other countries?"

[Ben_]

You think it’s totally cool if every kid in 50 Chicago schools is behind grade level as long as some kids are also doing bad in Toronto?

[Ben_]

Here’s a link to the report and the raw data.

https://wirepoints.org/poor-student-achievement-and-near-zero-accountability-an-indictment-of-illinois-public-education-system-wirepoints-special-report/

Doesn’t contain data for every school in the world though. So I guess you can dismiss it on that basis. If only someone would make a comprehensive report on every school kid in history, then we might have the info we need to start drawing a few conclusions. Alas.

[Dan Schiavetta]

OK, so you admit that you're actually on the same page as Sacastr0. A problem to be dealt with, we all agree.

[Ben_]

Except we all know that it won't be dealt with. Because of union money.

[Ben_]

Democrat research firm commits what looks like wire fraud to get private military records of Republican candidates:
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/21/gop-lawmakers-air-force-records-00083694

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Nothing will happen to them because the Democrat DOJ doesn’t charge Democrats unless it's politically convenient for them.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The article you link to actually refutes the point you think you’re making.

[Ben_]

What point do you imagine is being made?

Dems misled the armed forces into releasing private military records under false pretenses. To use against candidates in political campaigns. Seems like bad, maybe criminal behavior. But that’s what we’ve all come to expect from Dems.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The officers interviewed say the records were released for employment purposes. Which is legitimate.

[Brett Bellmore]

Which would have been legitimate if that wasn't the precise thing that was fraudulent.

"Air Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek said “virtually all” of the 11 unapproved releases were made to the same third party “who represented himself as a background investigator seeking service records for employment purposes.” "

Fraudulently represented himself as such. Did you not pick up on that?

[SRG]

Arizona’s top prosecutor concealed records debunking election fraud claims

PHOENIX — Nearly a year after the 2020 election, Arizona’s then-attorney general, Mark Brnovich, launched an investigation into voting in the state’s largest county that quickly consumed more than 10,000 hours of his staff’s time.

Investigators prepared a report in March 2022 stating that virtually all claims of error and malfeasance were unfounded, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post. Brnovich, a Republican, kept it private.

In April, the attorney general — who was running in the GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat — released an “Interim Report” claiming that his office had discovered “serious vulnerabilities.” He left out edits from his own investigators refuting his assertions.

His office then compiled an “Election Review Summary” in September that systematically refuted accusations of widespread fraud and made clear that none of the complaining parties — from state lawmakers to self-styled “election integrity” groups — had presented any evidence to support their claims. Brnovich left office last month without releasing the summary.

I'm shocked, shocked, to find that a GOP pol covers up evidence of lack of fraud.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Trump is poison, example #3,652,433.

[Ben_]

"Virtually all" means not actually all.

[SRG]

Evidently sufficiently small that your man didn't want to release the numbers, nor large enough to affect the result. Keep grasping at straws, why don't you?

[Ben_]

Election integrity matters.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

This is only the first part of the parable of the Boy Who Cried Wolf.

In the next part, a real wolf comes on the scene, but the people will be in a "won't be fooled again" mood, so the wolf of fraud will start feasting on republican (small "r") institutions.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The Federals pay $850B in debt service each year and climbing.

And burn 100s of billions each year in fraud, abuse, duplicate departments, and unnecessary programs.

Yet they demand you sacrifice more and more and more so they can continue their lifestyle without making a single sacrifice. And whenever they are made to sacrifice they intentionally do it in a way that hurts the most people so there will be public outcry to give the Federals more money. They will give a hundred billion dollars to foreign countries and pay illegals thousands of dollars a month but demand you sacrifice l, suffer, and even skip meals.

Has there ever been a more evil and vile institution in human history? Is there a single thing about the Federal Class that can be redeemed?

I say no.

[SRG]

Did you ever vote for a politician who campaigned to reduce defence spending? Or to increase oversight of the Pentagon?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I voted for a politician who spent decades saying he was going to build a wall and campaigned on repealing Obamacare and then when he finally had a chance to fulfill those was the deciding vote against both. Donating to his presidential campaign even got me on the IRS "naughty list" and cost me years fighting them.

Fortunately that songbird piece of shit is burning in Hell right now.

Now I do not donate to any federal politician. On principle and I want to avoid being harassed by Democrats in the IRS.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The only way to reduce deficit spending is to (gasp) raise taxes.

Only two politicians in my lifetime had the courage to say this and for both it was political suicide.

Walter Mondale, 1984
Bruce Babbitt, 1988

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Why can't they cut spending?

[Brett Bellmore]

Because people like him are absolutely determined that spending levels never return to what they routinely were prior to 2007. They got their emergency spending, repeatedly, and aren't giving it up.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bellmore, baby boomer retirement needs are the main thing driving deficit panic. That is a baked-in, unavoidable need to increase federal spending. When the government needs more money, it has no choice. It has to get it from folks who have money. Any other choice is self-defeating.

[ragebot]

It is only speculation but it was interesting to me to see how widely opinions differ on when and if the war in Ukraine will (or will not) end.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-and-when-the-war-in-ukraine-will-end/ar-AA17QYuc

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Can anyone point me to a good article, or maybe just a blog post, that attempts to give an originalist basis for our current expansive interpretation of free speech?

Also, unrelatedly, I'm currently reading Stacy Schiff's book "The Revolutionary Samuel Adams." It got great reviews, but I'm kind of disappointed. Seems more style than substance. She is a highly regarded history writer, but this one doesn't do it for me.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Originalism doesn’t seem to work to establish a liberal interpretation of free speech and press.

But Michael Kent Curtis makes an attempt, with regard to the Fourteenth Amendment, in his book No State Shall Abridge, where he argues for an expansive interpretation of the 14th including in the area of free expression, based on the Republicans wanting to constrain the states.

On the other hand…

Leonard Levy’s book Legacy of Suppression – later updated to the more optimistic title Emergence of a Free Press – gave its focus not on the colonial courts but on the colonial assemblies – the popularly-elected houses of the legislature. These assemblies were in the habit of punishing their critics by locking them up until adjournment – and due process was, shall we say, often lacking.

Levy had been commissioned to write a triumphalist history about how the Founders intended a broad meaning of free speech and press, so the grantmaker was peeved.

Levy himself wasn’t an originalist, so he professed himself unconcerned – he thought the modern courts should defend free speech on general principles, without being slavishly bound by colonial precedents.

Going from first principles, I’d say we need more free expression in a republic than in a monarchy. Monarchists could say that, given an unelected king, stirring up the people against the ruler even with true reports would be dangerous since it would incite rebellion. Presumably, in a country where all officials can be peacefully removed from office by the voters, publishing true information (or opinion) wouldn’t lead to insurrection but simply to the replacement of some elected officials with others.

Now we come to slavery, where the slavers argued that circulating antislavery literature, even to voters, would lead to slaves hearing criticism of the Peculiar Institution and getting them discontented and rebellious (at the same time, the slavers talked about the slaves’ contentment and good treatment). So that was the next frontier in censorship.

Then there’s censorship in wartime, where the censors say criticism of the government aids the enemy and demoralizes the people who should be focusing their attention on obeying and fighting.

Regarding war and slavery, there is so much room for abuse (in the case of slavery, the institution itself is an abuse) that there should be broad criticism.

Still, I’d be hard put to finding proof that the Founders believed all this. At least not unanimously. In 1798 the Republicans (i. e. Democrats), on the receiving end of censorship, took a more liberal view of the First Amendment which lasted for a time while they were in power – until slavery raised its head…

[The Margrave of Azilia]

One thing the Founders were clear on was no prior restraint. Which is what the current regime of social-media censorship seems to resemble. Giving warnings to the social-media giants ("nice company you have there, by the way, there's a lot of talk about this thing we say is bad, I hope you won't give it a platform...")

[Stephen Lathrop]

Margrave, whatever clarity you attributed to the founders in your first sentence did not make it into your subsequent ones.

Samuel Adams defended jealously his own liberty to use media during the run-up to Bunker Hill. British government in Boston was to him something to be intimidated, not something which could intimidate him. He and others scoffed at attempts to do it.

The Boston Tea Party, for instance, was carried out under close observation by British warships anchored in the harbor. They dared not fire on the crowds at the wharf, or do anything else to try to intervene, for fear of colonial reactions.

Afterwards, when an enraged King George demanded punishment for Adams and others, the King at first got militant support from Parliament. But upon consideration, Parliament then slipped back to considering that any such punishment would require extremely persuasive evidence to identify specific miscreants—evidence which did not exist. It then slipped further, to more or less saying, “Never mind.”

That was not at all like what you term, “the current regime of social-media censorship.” That has today’s right wingers quailing from government. Or worse, demanding that government equip them by law with specific liberties to say specific things. Which is more pitiful than formidable. Not to mention being a heedless demand for government constraint of expressive rights held by others.

The principal difference, as Adams enunciated in various ways from his own point of view, is that a presumption of liberty freely exercised simply precludes and defeats would-be government abuse. Popular sovereignty was thus hard at work before it was formally announced.

Right wingers today remain free to do what Samuel Adams did then. Start your own media. Use them at liberty, and win support to your cause if you can.

Adams did not quail. The people quailing were mostly his majesty’s governors and tax collectors, who for years felt themselves isolated, unsupported, and impotent—to the point that they dared not say in public what they thought ought to be done to preserve British rule over rebellious colonists.

Today’s right wingers play the parts of those quailing Tories of the founding era. They likewise demand government support for their preferred expressions, and then sneak around in private to demand government suppression of their rivals.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I’m not sure if your comments are really responsive to what I said.

Does freedom of speech and press mean freedom from prior restraint, or not?

The stuff about private platforms is a talking point from before the revelations about what the government was doing.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Margrave, of course it means freedom from prior restraint. If instances of prior restraint by government show up to shackle the liberties of social media publishers, I will denounce the government.

My point, which you say you missed, was that right wing complainers about social media seem to be more advocates of prior restraint by government than defenders against it. Their complaint, viewed accurately, is that private publishers might exercise a liberty of their own, to choose not to distribute right-wingers' opinions, or perhaps their factual allegations. So right-wingers pray that government will restrain private publishers from exercise of any such liberty.

Of course, prior restraint is generally a term for government action against a publisher. It is not the same as viewpoint censorship directed against a would-be opinion contributor. Censorship is a different and separate problem, for which I will also denounce government, if it happens. At present, I do not see it happening.

Can you identify any opinion, or otherwise-legal factual allegation, which government has punished anyone for publishing? In short, what, "revelations about what the government was doing," do you have in mind? Please try to mention a specific example.

Also, I am not trying to be cute here. I do understand that right wing internet fans believe and assert that somehow technology has endowed them with rights they could not previously exercise. Problem is, those are rights literally no one on earth had ever had before—to accomplish anonymous, cost-free, world-wide publication, without prior editing, of anything at all.

Please note that to deny empowerment for right wingers to exercise that supposed liberty is not to single them out, or to treat them unfairly, or to treat them in any way at all. No one else has any such power either, or ever has had it.

It is not because government is standing in the way. It is because no one can make it happen for anyone. Practical means to accomplish such a thing have never been invented, and probably cannot be invented. The obstacles to overcome involve contradictions which would have to be built into the publishing methods, making it impossible for such a machine to maintain itself in operation.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

OK, moving past the references to "they" and "right wing internet fans," are you familiar with the Twitter files?

[David Nieporent]

Sure. They show the opposite of what everyone on the right claims they do.

[Stephen Lathrop]

. . . are you familiar with the Twitter files?

Margrave, I asked politely for a specific example. Pick the most persuasive example you can find, and I will try to deal with it. My guess is that you could probably write already pretty nearly what I will say. But an exchange focused on something specific might help everyone.

[David Nieporent]

I’m not sure if your comments are really responsive to what I said.

I don't have to look past the name of the poster to determine that.

But you have to remember that to Lathrop, the 1A only protects (what he calls) publishers, not ordinary people.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Stop lying, Nieporent. The 1A protects no one in particular; it protects everyone alike. To do that, the 1A protects activities, not some people to the detriment of others. Some of them are speech activities. Some of them are publishing activities. Which is why the 1A features both a free speech clause, and a press freedom clause.

As I have said every time—while you repeatedly lie about what I said—anyone who practices those protected activities gets identical protections—"ordinary people," no less than anyone else.

It is not often that I call someone out for lying on the internet—for so many internet commenters it is second nature to lie, and a habit on par with the quality of their commentary. But to you I have made myself crystal clear repeatedly. And you continue to lie. I am out of patience.

I think I know why you lie. You want to pander to foolish hopes entertained by internet utopians—which you may share. Internet utopians know nothing about how publishing is accomplished. Ignoring the process of publication entirely, they suppose so-called, "ordinary people," could somehow be empowered to publish anything at all, anonymously, world-wide, liability-free, without prior editing, at no cost.

That is an impossible power, a power which no one, ordinary or not, has ever enjoyed. No publisher has ever enjoyed such power. No editor has ever enjoyed such power. No reporter has ever enjoyed such power. No speaker in the public square has ever enjoyed such power.

The internet utopians who want that power cannot make it happen. There is no one with ability to bestow that power upon them. Internet technology has not enabled it. Nor does government block the way to having it.

That power is impossible because it cannot be accomplished in the real world. The means to do it have not been invented, and probably never will be. The various desires demanded for simultaneous satisfaction remain mutually exclusive. They are at war with each other. Those conflicts inevitably dismantle whatever publishing means are attempted to accomplish them.

Like other internet utopians, you do not understand that because you know nothing about publishing activities, how they work, and how publishing enterprises can be sustained. I have outlined the publishing problems in more detail. You have ignored what I told you.

Ordinary Americans—no matter how much they demand it—cannot reasonably expect to do what no one else has ever been able to accomplish. Their mistake has been to assume technology has transcended obstacles it never had power to address, and thus gave them power that no one can have for reasons mostly unrelated to technology.

You cannot reasonably demand a court to rule that the 1A protects expressive activities which no one can do. But go ahead and make the demand anyway. Insist the 1A does do that. My response will be that in any such case the 1A must protect everyone alike, in mutual futility.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Margrave, thanks for the response, I will look for Curtis' book. It does seem like a problem area for originalists, and I was surprised that their hasn't been much writing about it by the more prominent originalist scholars. There are a number of commenters here who profess to be originalists, and I wonder what their thoughts are, or if they are aware of some good writing about it. I remember that you don't really consider yourself an originalist.

[M L]

I don't have a good answer handy, but I'm wondering what "our current expansive interpretation of free speech" means exactly. I doubt that protecting a right to publish pornography, for example, is very supported by original meaning. The federal judiciary's preemption of the entire field by incorporating the first amendment against the states may also be questionable. You probably have something else in mind, or all of the above?

[M L]

Here is how George Washington responded to an anonymous letter circulating among the army at a time of growing frustration and distrust, condemning Congress and calling for a revolt. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-10840

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Basically any protection granted by the amendment further than prohibiting prior restraint, I suppose. A great many framers had no problem with the 1798 Sedition Act, for example. Also the notion that expressive actions are protected, or monetary donations to campaigns. A whole slew of things we take for granted as enjoying 1A protection. I'm interested in the originalist position on this stuff. If I understand originalist thinking in general, this would seem to be problematic. So I am interested in reading an originalist take on it.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Drinkwater, is it possible your reaction to Schiff's book reflects surprise or disappointment at not finding in it an account to confirm the sort of past you expected? Or is it something else? Can you say more?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

That's possible, I suppose, but I don't think so. She writes in a style that is very different than what I usually find in biographies. My impression is that she leaves out a lot of detail in order to improve the flow and readability of the book. Perhaps this is because of a lack of source material, after all Samuel Adams was much less concerned than others of his generation with his place in history, and did much of his work behind the scenes. But I've read other accounts of parts of Adams' life that had much more detail. I think Schiff is a good writer, but not quite as good an historian. I intend to read one of her other biographies by way of comparison.

Have you read this book, or any of her others? I would be curious what your thoughts were. I mean we are talking about a Pulitzer Prize winning author.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Drinkwater — As it happens, I had just completed reading her Samuel Adams book last week.

She is a writer, not a historian, of course. I understand your critique that there is focus on stylish, easy-to-read presentation. I also noted points where she seemed a bit unfamiliar with (mostly tangential) parts of the historical record. For instance, I don't think she gets what a Puritan was at all—but that is true of so many folks that I find it easy to forgive unless the subject is Puritan history—and that pretty much ended before 1700.

Nevertheless, I completed reading the book with a general impression that I was notably better informed about the run-up to the revolution than I had been previously. And I also got information which seemed to reflect original research touching on topics I knew nothing about. So it seemed to me to be a good contribution.

If I noted any omission which troubled me, it might have been a near absence of anything about the role of Franklin. In my own catalog of the authors of the Revolution, Franklin and Samuel Adams have long been on a par, and ahead of others.

If you have any good books about that period to recommend, please let me know. Thanks for answering.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Alex Jones claimed that at a hearing today the Democrat DOJ is trying to seize his cat.

I hope China or Russia goes to war against the Democrats. That would be sweet and I would lol

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

While you are fantasizing in those directions, your betters will continue to stomp* the everlasting, bigoted shit out of you and your fellow wingnuts in the glorious American culture war.

The losers get to whine about it at the Volokh Conspiracy as much as they like, of course! In posts and comments.

* figuratively and comprehensively

[Brett Bellmore]

(Some, to be fair.) Democrats are groping around for a match, without noticing that they’re standing in a pool of gasoline.

Disqualification From Office: Donald Trump v. the 39th Congress

There are two occasions on which Section 3 has been invoked.

The first was the Civil war, where in virtually every case that the people subject to the action were guilty of insurrection was largely uncontroversial, as they’d been on the other side of a genuine war with the federal government.

And, pointedly, they had lost that war, were beaten, conquered, and subject to being executed if they resumed resistance. So they were in no position to object.

The other occasion was Socialist Victor Berger, who had been criminally convicted of espionage, and whose disqualification was lifted when the conviction was overturned.

Have we just had a civil war, and the states Trump carried in 2020 are under military occupation by the Democrats? Not so far as I have noticed.

So, does the essay propose to charge Trump criminally with insurrection, convict him in regular trial, and THEN disqualify him? Nope.

It’s thought sufficient that the House January 6th committee, all of whose members were chosen by the Democrats, declared him guilty.

I wonder how the Democrats would enjoy having every member of Congress with a comparably vague connection to the BLM/Antifa riots and ‘autonomous zones’ disqualified by a vote of Republicans? Would they think they ought to roll over and play dead? I’m thinking they probably wouldn’t.

I wonder how somebody argues themselves into a position where a move like Graber suggests looks remotely rational?

[Martinned]

That's an interesting policy question. Some instances are easy, but in other cases you might have a genuine discussion whether a vegam product should be allowed to refer to itself by the name of the non-vegan original. It's not always farming lobby rent seeking.

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

Most of the arguments against this seem rather silly. 'Milk' is a classification. A multitude of products obtained from various sources and subjected to various processes. My main concern would be if the product can be substituted into a recipe with similar results.

For example: if you use almond milk to make biscuits, you get biscuits. If you use 'cheese product' to make a lasagna, you get a nasty surprise.

The thing that should be regulated is the use of yogurt on cereal.

[ragebot]

Obligatory comment.

Soy milk is just regular milk introducing itself in Spanish.

[Bored Lawyer]

And to cap off this absurd linguistic debate:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aHGy61g_8Ro

[Bored Lawyer]

No, it's straightforward. The only governmental interest here is avoiding deceptive or misleading labelling. Everyone with an IQ over 11 knows that "Oat Milk" means milk that comes from oats, not from a cow. Ditto "Almond Milk"
So, yes, it's rent seeking by the milk lobby.

[David Nieporent]

It’s not always farming lobby rent seeking.

Yeah, it is. The notion that the vegan manufacturers are trying to mislead people is absurd and nobody believes it, though some pretend to. Vegan goods, by definition, are aimed at vegans. Their manufacturers therefore have no interest in confusing people into thinking their goods are made of real meat; they'd be sacrificing the majority of their extant customer base in exchange for possibly tricking a small number of non-vegans, once.

[Ed Grinberg]

opening paragraph:

The battle between Chicago and Atlanta over hosting the 2024 Democratic convention is heating up with a new claim from Illinois that Georgia’s lenient open-carry gun laws — already an issue with several public events in Atlanta — could make security a nightmare.

Hmmm ... Well, Chicago definitely doesn't have "lenient open-carry gun laws." But, for some mysterious reason, there's like a dozen people shot there every single day. Amazing!

[Dr. Ed 2]

No, there’s another issue here — does it contain the same nutrients (e.g. calcium) that milk milk does?

If not, then it should not be because “milk” itself is a fungible product which one consumes to obtain specific nutritional benefits which is part of the fungible nature of milk.

In other words, there is whole milk, skim milk, chocolate milk, blueberry milk (seriously) and a few more — and almond milk should be milk flavored with almonds, not made from it. Much as “milky almonds” should be an almond product with a milky texture, not one made from milk.

I know that I am not using the word “fungible” correctly — but my point is that unless you have an identical chemical mix to what is in cow's milk (regardless of how you obtain it) you can't call it milk.

(Blueberry milk is actually delicious when made from Maine wild blueberries.)

[Mr. Bumble]

Then why call it "milk"? Why not oat juice or almond juice?

[ducksalad]

Then someone decides to market sweetened cow's milk flavored with almond extract. Are they allowed to sell it as "almond milk" on the same theory as strawberry milk, or do the producers of the vegan product have prior rights to the term?

[Mr. Bumble]

How do you milk an oat or an almond?

[Bored Lawyer]

Because it looks and tastes like milk, not juice. And people use it as such. They put oat milk or almond milk in their coffee and on their cereal.

[Dr. Ed 2]

No they don't use it as such -- the use of food is nutrition.

They use it as a milk SUBSTITUTE -- and you will see potassium chloride labeled as a "salt substitute" and not "salt."

I didn't even know you could make a beverage from oats...

[Life of Brian]

Because it looks and tastes like milk, not juice.

IMO "like" is doing a good deal of work there. Regardless, under that logic Kraft Singles could just be labeled "cheese" rather than the currently mandated "pasteurized process cheese food product."

And for that matter, just to take a fanciful example, cow's milk cut with water and fortified with melamine still looks and tastes like milk. So we can cut vast swaths out of our entire consumer protection system!

[SRG]

Almond milk not only doesn't taste like milk, it has negative flavour, that is, it reduces the flavour of anything you add it to.

[Dr. Ed 2]

How would you feel about bars of lard being commingled with butter in the same display case?

I wouldn't object as much if it were segregated as lard is.

[Mr. Bumble]

Could never understand why true Vegans would be in the market for "meat" made from plants and which is engineered to taste like meat.

[David Nieporent]

but my point is that unless you have an identical chemical mix to what is in cow’s milk (regardless of how you obtain it) you can’t call it milk.

Your point is stupid and wrong.

[Longtobefree]

They DO carry the federally mandated nutrition label.
Any consumer that isn't aware of the nutrition in (whatever) 'milk' is just too lazy to turn the carton around.

[Voize]

Goat's milk isn't milk?

[Nelson]

"does it contain the same nutrients (e.g. calcium) that milk milk does?"

That depends. What do you mean by "milk milk"? Goat's milk? Cow's milk? Yak's milk? Sheep's milk?

So no, that isn't an argument that it isn't rent seeking. "Milk" isn't reserved for the nutritionally-defined substance that comes from cows.

[David Nieporent]

No they don’t use it as such — the use of food is nutrition.

False.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

And people use it as such. They put oat milk or almond milk in their coffee and on their cereal.

No they don’t use it as such

Belligerently ignorant misfits and disaffected contrarians are among my favorite culture war casualties . . . and the meticulously cultivated target audience of the Volokh Conspiracy.

I didn’t even know you could make a beverage from oats…

For more revelations from the modern world, visit a grocer within 20 miles of a traffic light or paved road.

[David Nieporent]

Because many of them used to eat meat, and liked it, and stopped doing so for what they perceived to be moral reasons. So they want something reasonably similar, but that doesn't pose the same moral issues.

[ducksalad]

Some vegans.

I know others that object to imitation meats. Had a long discussion with one, she said they were acceptable only as a temporary “transition food” for new converts but that the moral end point had to be elimination of the desire for meat.

The other danger is being fooled into eating real meat on the pretense that it’s imitation. I was at a dinner where this same vegan ate a plate of real meatballs after her aunt lied to her and said they were Impossible meatballs. The aunt thought she was going to “prove” something but it backfired badly.

[Bored Lawyer]

They are not commingled, they are displayed one next to or near the other. IF they did that with butter and lard -- one next to or near the other, the one labelled "butter" the other labelled "lard," then what's the problem?

[ducksalad]

I say label it "pig butter". Definitely would make me more inclined to buy it.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Caveat emptor?

[Bored Lawyer]

Why don't you try reading the thread before you comment. Would save you sounding like a fool.

The products at issue are labelled "almond milk" and "oat milk," not "milk." Consumers know what they are getting, and there is nothing deceptive or misleading about such labelling. Unlike your two examples.

[Nelson]

"Kraft Singles could just be labeled “cheese” rather than the currently mandated “pasteurized process cheese food product.”"

I believe they have to do that because, legally, if your product is less than 50% cheese it can't be called "cheese".

[Dr. Ed 2]

ROTF,L….

When the Democrats came to Boston in 2004, the USSS literally shut down half the city — and wanted to shut down the rest. If you lived north of the city, you couldn’t get there.

Memory is that they shut down* half of the Commuter rail, two of the four subway lines, Amtrak’s Downeaster, and a major Interstate highway — just to establish a security perimeter which was definitely a no-gun zone.

Part of this was geography — the Boston Garden (then officially known as the Fleet Center and since renamed) is built on top of North Station the end of all railroad tracks going north or west of the city. (The rest, including the NEC, end at South Station, over a mile away.) The orange and green lines go underneath it, and I-93 abuts it.

And unlike other cities (e.g. NYC, Chicago, LA, Atlanta) there was no way around this area because you have the ocean on one side and rivers on the other. Boston essentially is an island surrounded by a lot of filled-in mudflats — that’s part of why the Big Dig was so expensive, and it’s *still* leaking… (It’s below sea level…)

Contrast this to Atlanta that has six interstate highways or Chicago which is a grid — the USSS could establish a perimeter without almost igniting a second Boston Tea Party — state gun laws will be irrelevant.

* The lines weren’t completely shut down, they just terminated in the outer suburbs. And the USSS backed down on a total 24 hour closure of I-93, only closing it during the main convention events.

[Mr. Bumble]

So chocolate milk isn't milk but a drink derive from cocoa and the same for strawberry milk; it is "milk derived from strawberries?
Milk is the fluid produced by mammalian females as food for their offspring. Oats and almonds are not mammals.

[Life of Brian]

Consumers know what they are getting, and there is nothing deceptive or misleading about such labelling. Unlike your two examples.”

You were arguing the noun so I addressed the noun, and since that's apparently problematic you now flutter back to the adjective. So be it.

Ipse dixit is just that. Your ethereal "consumers" surely know what "American cheese" is too, yet the slices you pick up at the supermarket these days aren't allowed to be labeled that way because they're not... wait for it... actual cheese. Just as almond, oat, and soy beverages aren't actual milk.

[Noscitur a sociis]

That is a good idea, and actually seems to have a positive effect when people do it.

Telling “BLMers” that they should chill out because you talked to some cops and they said that actually the stuff they’re doing is good, on the other hand, seems unlikely to be very productive.

[Noscitur a sociis]

And unlike other cities (e.g. NYC, Chicago, LA, Atlanta) there was no way around this area because you have the ocean on one side and rivers on the other.

Yes, those notoriously landlocked cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

I mean, how could people in New York ever understand what it’s like to live near rivers and the ocean?

[Bored Lawyer]

Language is not mathematics. It's not always completely logical or consistent. So long as people understand what they are getting, there should not be a legal problem.

[Estragon]

I can just imagine bumble at his local grocery store… handing out flyers:

“WAKE UP SHEEPLE!! ITS NOT REALLY MILK!!!”

[David Nieporent]

Peanuts aren't nuts! False advertising!

[bevis the lumberjack]

Yeah it only happens a handful of times in a couple of places. That explains why survey after survey after survey shows that half or more of the people on college campuses everywhere - professors and students - choose to self censor rather than face the wrath of the inclusive diversifiers.

It does explain that, right?

[Voize]

It's Soylent White.

[Estragon]

Soy milk! Another thing that’s NOT REALLY MILK! Quick— bumble! To the Safeway! The people must know the truth

[Mr. Bumble]

What an empty life you must lead if that's what you're reduced to imagining. Also, note that I didn't start the thread and only commented about the ambiguous use of language; something that may not matter much in this context but can be more of a problem in another.

[Estragon]

Yes it’s pretty obvious the “other context” you huckleberries have in mind. In fact I’m pretty surprised you haven’t brought it up yet.

Why you feel compelled to pedantically breeze in here to remind us that strawberry milk isn’t actually derived from strawberries while accusing other people of having an “empty life” is another question entirely, of course.

Others have said it, I’ll repeat it. If nobody is fooled into thinking it’s “real” milk… the labeling is not deceptive.

Did you know there are mushrooms where I live that produce what is referred to as “milk”? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactarius

[Estragon]

I mean seriously, the only thing missing from these stupid rants is the Animal Farm quote you’re all so enamored with.

[Estragon]

Bumble: now do peanut butter

[Noscitur a sociis]

You cannot possibly be serious.

[Mr. Bumble]

Not what I said or meant.
As for the "Trump Law" comment it was an observation of the large number of cases initiated against and by Trump which would seem somewhat unprecedented.

[Bored Lawyer]

Actually, I have been told that goat's milk must be labelled "goat's milk" and not "milk." THe thinking is, consumers associate the word milk, with no qualifier, as cows milk

[Mr. Bumble]

I think there is a difference between referring to something as a certain thing and marketing it as such. Also, I've noticed that as in the case of Trader Joe's it is now sold as coconut beverage and almond beverage, which is more accurate.

[Mr. Bumble]

Per the labels:
2% milk; ingredients: reduced fat milk, vitamin A palmitate, vitamin D3

Almond beverage (formerly milk); ingredients: almond base (filtered water,almond), tricalcium phosphate, sea salt, natural flavors, gellan gum, sunfower lecithin, locust bean gum, vitamin A palmitate, ergocalciferol (vitamin D2), dl-alphatocopherol acetate (vitamin E).
And of course the required CONTAINS NUTS warning.

[David Nieporent]

To the extent that consumers know that American cheese isn't "actual cheese," that's an argument against those labeling requirements, not an argument in favor of forbidding people from calling oat milk, oat milk.

Also, I don't know what the difference between American cheese and other cheese. (I mean, I can tell them apart, duh. But I don't know why the former isn't cheese.) On the other hand, it's pretty darn obvious that oats are not mammals and therefore oat milk is something different than cow milk.

[David Nieporent]

You can milk anything with nipples.

[Bored Lawyer]

"How do you milk an oat or an almond?"

With a very small pair of hands and a very small pail.

[Mr. Bumble]

...and tomatoes are a fruit not a vegetable.

[Estragon]

David it’s even worse than you think:

Peanut butter ISN’T ACTUALLY BUTTER! Butter is churned milk that came from a mammals nipples! This years-long deception on the American public cannot be allowed to continue! Libs will no longer be allowed to deceive true patriots into consuming their wretched nut butters under false pretenses.

[Bored Lawyer]

AND, peanuts have no peas in them.
And peanut butter has no butter.

So -- peanut butter has THREE lies in it -- peas, nuts and butter!

Does the FDA know about this?

[Nige]

Everything you think of as a vegetable is in fact fruit - they're all the fruiting parts of vegetables with the seeds and stuff in them. Except turnips which are basically cannon balls.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nonsense, Nige. Spinach is a vegetable.

[Mr. Bumble]

You have nipples. Can you be milked? What would be the product?
Also, where are the nipples on almonds?

[David Nieporent]

I can't tell if you're trying to play straight man or if you're actually culturally illiterate.

[M L]

Show me the tit on an almond!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YnD-C21Hiw

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

backfired badly

That's a delicate way to put what typically happens to someone that has not eaten meat over an extended period.

[Commenter_XY]

David, I personally have an issue with companies labelling those products 'Oat Milk' and 'Almond Milk' or 'Soy Milk'. No, it is not 1A. It is a practical objection. We have a huge immigrant population in the US, with lower acculturation to English. They can (and do!) very easily misunderstand; I know because I taught ESL English and observed the confusion non-native speakers have at advert phrases that are very misleading.

It might not be intentionally deceptive, but there is a growing subset of our population who simply will not understand the distinction.

How to address that?

[Life of Brian]

To the extent that consumers know that American cheese isn’t “actual cheese,” that’s an argument against those labeling requirements, not an argument in favor of forbidding people from calling oat milk, oat milk.

My point was actually the opposite. BL posited a consumer class with perfect knowledge that needs no protection from deceptive use of nutritional language. If that's really true, then there's no need for a regime (21 CFR § 133.173) that requires "a homogeneous plastic mass" containing "not less than 51 percent" actual cheese to be labeled "pasteurized process cheese food" rather than "cheese."

If, on the other hand, it IS important to split those sorts of hairs, then you really can't just shrug off the notion of potential harm that could come from consumers who encounter highly conventional nutritional advice that "milk" is important for growing children, strong bones, etc., but at the store are confused into thinking that can just as readily be accomplished with almond-flavored water (see my other post above).

[Estragon]

I love the idea of the consumer that is savvy enough to know about the finer points of RDAs and nutrition but drinks almond milk for years without realizing. Or reading the label. Or looking at the picture of the friggin almond on the bottle. Or realizing it’s in a different case than the “real” milk.

Otherwise this was excellent concern trolling and yes we should be very concerned about the poor benighted consumer who just wanted a cold glass of real bona fide mammal nipple juice

[Life of Brian]

I love the idea of the consumer that is savvy enough to know about the finer points of RDAs and nutrition

Exactly backwards. People who are "savvy enough to know about the finer points of RDAs and nutrition" will already understand they can't expect nut/seed drinks to nutritionally substitute for milk, regardless of what is printed on the label. People who don't understand the nuts and bolts but are trying to follow high-level guidance like "feed your growing children milk" are the ones at risk. Labeling regulations generally exist for the sake of the latter group, not the former.

And zoom out for a minute: if deliberate consumers of these products know what it is/isn't and are cheerfully buying it with its current labeling, there's no reason whatsoever for producers to push for this change. The only rational explanation is that they're trying to grow their customer base and are seeing the current labeling requirements as a barrier to doing so.

[Estragon]

“ The only rational explanation is that they’re trying to grow their customer base”

Yes. By trying to fool people into think it’s animal derived milk? No. Just look at the way they advertise the product. Spoiler: no cows and lots of nuts.

Stepping back, as you suggest, I have an observation to make. Why are the huckleberries jumping all over this? Well, I think the answer is twofold

1) these products are viewed or coded as “liberal” and therefore are wrong, fake, bad.

2) they have backed themselves into this corner because of another subject. I mean think about it, why the adherence to this ridiculous formality with zero consideration of context, popular usage, etc? Peanut butter isn’t really butter! Copy machines don’t make true copies! Etc etc ad nauseam. It’s unclear to me which of the commenters actually view the entire world this way, without any consideration of extrinsic meaning. However, I am certain some, like you, use it merely as a rhetorical device because you are clearly able to appreciate context in other situations. And if you have to consider context in some situations (what exactly is conveyed by the use of “milk” here?) then— UH OH— there might be nuance in other situations that you want to consider black and white as well.

[Life of Brian]

Yes. By trying to fool people into think it’s animal derived milk? No. Just look at the way they advertise the product. Spoiler: no cows and lots of nuts.

Oh come on. Most milk doesn't have pictures of cows on it, and it's exceptionally common for flavored products to show pictures of the flavoring agents.

Again: if they're not trying to benefit from consumer confusion, there would be no -- nada -- zero -- reason to push for this vocabulary grab. As noted elsewhere in this thread, people who choose not to drink milk go to this stuff precisely because it's not milk. I've not yet seen you try to address this....

Why are the huckleberries jumping all over this?

and instead you go full-on ad hom. This is apparently the end of any thoughtful discussion on the subject.

[Estragon]

I can definitely think of reasons they would want it to be called milk. The idea that this is part of some nefarious deception perpetrated on unwitting consumers rather than trying to broaden the appeal of their product is… well I don’t think you actually believe this. Why doesn’t skippy call its product ground peanut paste? They must be trying to fool consumers into thinking they are eating “real” animal-derived butter!

[Estragon]

Again: this is like the definition of concern trolling.

You’re positing there is some sub set of consumers in this country who are fooled into thinking that almond milk is “real” milk. This set of people is concerned about health and nutrition— but not enough to examine the bottle in more than a cursory fashion (in your theory- merely assuming that the picture of the almond denotes flavoring) or to read any— literally any— of the words on the nutrition info or any of the fine print. And these people were fooled for years— so much so that they were unable to get their nutrients! Won’t someone think of these poor hapless consumers who were snowed over by deceptive nut conglomerates!

I realize it is possible, in a metaphysical sense, for people like this to exist in great numbers. I do not think in reality they exist in any meaningful number.

[Life of Brian]

This set of people is concerned about health and nutrition— but not enough to examine the bottle in more than a cursory fashion (in your theory- merely assuming that the picture of the almond denotes flavoring) or to read any— literally any— of the words on the nutrition info or any of the fine print.

What in the world is this super-contrived group of people you keep trying to introduce? Are the only consumers we're to deem worthy of protection from deception over basic nutritional concepts those already concerned about nutrition? That makes zero sense -- less than zero, actually. I'm thus left to think it's just a deflection.

[Estragon]

Here’s a question: We have cow milk. Sheep. Goat. Heck, even horse. Why no pig milk?

[Life of Brian]

And back of the napkin, about 2% actual almonds. (Typical almond beverage has 30 kcal/8 oz serving; whole almonds have roughly 580 kcal/100g, so ~5g in a serving.)

If they just listed the ingredients individually the almonds likely would be near the end of the ingredient list, or would have to be explicitly listed as "2% or less" -- neither one particularly good optics. So they skirt that by bundling up the token almonds with the 90ish% water, in a made-up substance they call "almond base."

Which shenanigans of course wouldn't be remotely necessary if consumers are fully aware of what they're getting, as posited by BL.

[Estragon]

If you think this is crazy, wait until you hear about things that are labeled “zero calories”

[ragebot]

"You cannot possibly be serious."

You lose one point for not posting "Shurley you cannot possibly be serious".

Where is Chumbley when we need him.

[Voize]

That's 21 CFR §131.110 that says "milk" without a qualifier means pasteurized whole cow's milk.

Whether the regulation reflected a pre-existing convention is hard to establish. It might have been effective dairy lobbying a century ago that led to the practice rather than the other way around.

[jb]

Beside the point, though. No one is arguing you can't use the word "milk" as part of the name for goat milk, despite it having different nutritional qualities than cow's milk.

Seems reasonable for "milk" as a standalone term to mean cow's milk, and stuff like goat milk and almond milk to mean milk-ish liquids from those other sources. Other than rent-seeking dairy farmers and people trying to own the libs, this really isn't even a tiny bit confusing or controversial.

[Nelson]

And the same would go for oat milk or cashew milk or any other substance that creates a creamy liquid, whether it comes from animals or not.

[Krayt]

Many social conservatives are angry public ostracism and firing cancellation is on the other foot for the first time in thousands of years.

Time was, being gay could get you not just fired or never hired, but thrown in jail.

Not just ancient times, but living memory.

Now, suggesting that should still be the case merely gets you fired, and they don't like it.

[OtisAH]

#cosigned

[Estragon]

My experience after being off meat for a while was more akin to a traffic jam than a backfire, but bodies are different

[M L]

Yuck.

[Magister]

Lasts longer than any other milk, dog's milk.

Why?

No bugger'll drink it. Plus of course the advantage of dog's milk is that when it goes off, it tastes exactly the same as when it's fresh.

[bernard11]

I wonder if pig milk would be kosher.

[jb]

Turns out pigs have lots of really tiny nipples so they're hard to milk.

[ragebot]

Obligatory comment.

New Orleans is a city filled with Democrats that is below sea level in a hurricane zone bordered by a river, a lake, and the Gulf of Mexico; what could possibly go wrong?

[Dr. Ed 2]

The streets of Boston were laid out by cows traveling to the Boston Common to graze. Seriously.

It was not a planned city with rectangular grids, eg New York and Chicago. And the Shawmut Peninsula is both smaller (789 acres) and narrower than Manhattan. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawmut_Peninsula

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

That explains why survey after survey after survey shows that half or more of the people on college campuses everywhere – professors and students – choose to self censor rather than face the wrath of the inclusive diversifiers.

If you think conservative bigots constitute half the student body or faculty, you must be thinking solely of Liberty, Franciscan, Wheaton, Regent, Grove City, and the like (low-quality, nonsense-teaching, conservative-controlled campuses).

[Sarcastr0]

bevis, it is you making the causal connection between the (fewer than you think) surveys about campus atmosphere and DEI offices.

There is nothing supporting that causal link. Has it occurred to you that campus culture for better or worse may come from the faculty and student body, not this evil and powerful DEI office you have conjured?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Let's make it a double feature (hat tip to Mr. Nieporent).

[OtisAH]

What obligated you to post that?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

It has grown to include the New York Post and Mr. Nieporent . . .

[Estragon]

If the facts don’t fit the theory— discard the facts!!

[Estragon]

I agree, it sounds gross but any more gross than, say, yak yogurt? Does it have something to do with a pig’s diet?

[Nige]

It's weird, every form of milk other than cow's milk draws a 'yuck,' including human milk which is, y'know, the milk we're biologically adapted to consume. Hence, by the way, the attraction of oat and almond milk, since we're also adapted to consume various vegetable-derived products better than the milk of a different species of animal.

[Estragon]

Annnnd now I can’t stop thinking about the simpsons episode with the rat milk

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tafO54XRXG0

[bernard11]

Thanks for getting that out of the way.

[Bored Lawyer]

Wouldn't that be soy leche?

[Ben_]

Or just change the story to add a weapon.

[Bored Lawyer]

Which was my point. There is no confusion, so the FDA should allow it, as it has indeed done. Everyone knows what "milk," "oat milk," "almond milk" and "goat milk" refer to.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Actually, even if you are selling a product that comes straight from a cow's udder, you cannot label it "milk" unless it has been fortified with vitamin d oil. A local dairy in Frederick County Maryland (South Mountain Creamery) was selling unfortified milk, and many people who thought they were allergic to dairy could drink their milk. The FDA stepped in and gave them the choice of either fortifying their milk, or calling it dairy drink or some other label.

So apparently. the government has more interest than just consumer confusion.

[Bored Lawyer]

Not.

[Bored Lawyer]

Thanks for sharing.

[bernard11]

I'm confident that would be the answer from most or all rabbis, but the relevant Torah passages only refer to the meat of the pig (and other animals.)

Would the logic be that the milk might contain some tiny bit of meat, acquired either internally or during the milking process?

[Bored Lawyer]

It's in the Talmud. Whatever comes out of something not kosher is itself not kosher. For the same reasons, eggs from a non-kosher bird or fish are not kosher.

[David Nieporent]

No; it’s that anything derived from a non-kosher animal is itself non-kosher.

(You may ask about honey, since bees aren't kosher. The reasoning is that honey is actually made from nectar; the bees just process it, rather than make it the way animals make milk.)

[bernard11]

BL and DMN,

Thank you.

[Commenter_XY]

This was a helpful exchange and clarification. Appreciated that.

[Brett Bellmore]

I do recall using "I can't believe it's not butter!" to make a pie crust.

Reinvented linoleum...

[Kazinski]

Supply and demand applies to natural systems as well as human systems.

Take for example Brown Bears, when the supply of certain foods is high their cost of obtaining that food drops dramatically and they stock up on it, like say a salmon run. But when that food may be still obtainable like say the tail end of the run, but the supply is low enough to make the cost too high they switch to other less desirable foods that are obtainable at a lower cost. And then when the supply of all food, drops so it can't profitability be obtained, like when edible plants are under 6 feet of snow then they don't participate in the market at all and live off their savings until the snow melts.

Same thing with birds that migrate 6000 miles, or monarch butterflies, when their supply of food goes below the point where it can be profitability obtained then they spend their time and enter to obtain a greater and more reliable supply of food.

[Sarcastr0]

Maybe economists should model bear behavior. Because humans as it turns out are a lot weirder than most beasts.

[Kazinski]

Well because economists study mainly human economics, but that certainly doesn't mean economists don't think the law of supply and demand doesn't apply to animals too in expending time energy and blood in obtaining food shelter and mates.

The classic definition of economics is the science of the allocation of limited resources in a world of unlimited wants.

Obviously that applies to bears seeking she bears, berries, warm dens, salmon, or even a place to swim on a hot day. All of them have a limited supply, and a cost to obtain even if the swimming hole is just down the creek and the opportunity cost is the choice of eating berries instead of swimming.

[Jmaie]

Annnd now I can't stop thinking about an episode of "Fear Factor" (I think) where the contestants had to fill up a glass with goat milk. Pint glass on a table nearby an immobilized goat, couldn't move either one and no hands allowed...

[Jmaie]

Too soft even if frozen....

[Sarcastr0]

'when the supply of certain foods is high their cost of obtaining that food drops dramatically and they stock up on it' is not the usual supply and demand curve - you described demand going up when supply goes up.

Bottom line, if you abstract supply and demand into 'scarcity often breeds value' then OK. But that's hardly a law, and hardly something we needed to wait to be graphed to understand.

[bernard11]

you described demand going up when supply goes up.

No, sarcastro. Kazinski describes quantity demanded going up when supply goes up, which is a normal prediction of supply-demand analysis.

Put it in human terms. I happen to like berries, as bears do. If there is a bumper crop of berries the price drops, and I buy more more berries than otherwise.

This does not mean my demand for berries has increased.

Sounds odd, but that is because you misunderstand the definition of "demand."

Demand, like supply, is a relationship between price and quantity, not a quantity. It is a function, not a number. Q=f(P), and dQ/dP < 0. IOW, the function slopes downward. So if P2 Q1. But the function itself does not change.

[Kazinski]

“when the supply of certain foods is high their cost of obtaining that food drops dramatically and they stock up on it’ is not the usual supply and demand curve – you described demand going up when supply goes up.”

And I always thought cherry farmers sold most of their cherries during cherry season when supply was the highest.

Scarcity only breeds value when there aren’t suitable substitute goods, otherwise it leads to lost sales.

For bears if the salmon run is sparse they aren’t going to spend much time fishing if there is a bumper blueberry crop, but if there aren’t any berries they are going to be fighting for the prime fishing spots.

It’s just fantasy to think supply and demand isn’t natural law, and it could just be abolished with the right policies.

[Voize]

That's almost correct, but it was about skim milk.
The FDA doesn't require added vitamins in whole milk, but vitamins A and D are fat soluble and when you remove the cream from milk you remove those vitamins too.

South Mountain Creamery wanted to sell skim milk without adding vitamins to replace the missing A and D. Initially the FDA told them they would have to call it "imitation milk", but they later changed their minds and required only that the milk be clearly labeled so consumers would understand they weren't getting the A and D that milk normally provides.

[BrotherMovesOn]

Is it true that people who were allergic to dairy could drink their milk?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Yes, they add fish oil to milk, and some people are allergic to it.

[Dr. Ed 2]

See United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144 (1938) -- the "Filled Milk Act" of March 4, 1923.

Whole milk has to have a certain (minimum) milkfat content and can't have other fats added to replace the milkfat (which is what "filled milk" was -- and it kept much better.

I think the case was wrongly decided -- but also would object to this product being called anything other than "filled milk" -- and you can buy it today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filled_milk

[Nige]

It's not a law, it's a process, and processes can be managed, otherwise there'd be no such thing as monopolies.

[Nige]

Ooh, non-falsifiable speculation, classic.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Thank you for the clarification. Interesting letter, I wasn't aware of that. We got delivery from SMC for years, and usually just whole milk. It was the best milk I've ever had, by a large margin.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Brother, I personally know two people for whom that was the case. Just anecdotal, but apparently for some people who believe they are lactose intolerant, it is the additives and not the milk.

[Kazinski]

That's like saying gravity isn't a law but a process because airplanes prove it's not a law. But it does make a point other forces can overwhelm the force of the law, like subsidies, rationing, and jet engines.

Monopolies control the supply, so they confirm the law of supply and demand, however regulation can modify the equilibrium price in a monopoly, however you there will always be the point at which the monopoly reduces the supply, like when the price of electricity is set below the production cost.

[BrotherMovesOn]

Thanks AWD.

[Nelson]

Cases initiated by Trump have been legion since he hired his first lawyer as a kid. How do you think he screwed over so many contractors who built his buildings? He loves suing people, especially if the person he's suing doesn't have the money to fight back. He's always been litigious.

[Nelson]

I'm a health vegetarian (my dad gifted me with the gene for sky-high cholesterol) and I love straight vegetarian food. I'm also one of those people who mostly says, "This tastes great, but it doesn't taste like meat" a lot.

That said, the meatlike-flavored stuff is getting a lot closer and it is a welcome addition to my diet. Beyond Meat is so meat-like it's freaky.

As an aside, it helps that I love Italian and Middle Eastern and they both have a lot of vegetarian dishes.

Also, if you like the taste of chocolate (and if you don't, WTF?) the best chocolate cake I've ever had is a vegan chocolate cake. Apparently the butter* in the batter interferes with the taste the chocolate, so leaving it out makes the cake taste more chocolatey.

*Don't be sad, butter. Nothing can always be the best and you are still one of the elite culinary substances ever!