Thursday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[Mr. Bumble]

What's on your mind?

[Krychek_2]

An interesting case:

https://julieroys.com/church-faces-closure-ordered-return-donations-businessman-ponzi-scheme/

The SEC went after someone for a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of millions of dollars. Over a ten year period he had donated a significant amount of money to a local church, which in turn used the money for charitable works.

The SEC filed a clawback action against the church, seeking the return of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, which the church no longer has since the money was already spent. The SEC is now threatening to foreclose on the church’s property, which would put it out of business.

The church appears to be screwed since it signed a settlement agreement with the SEC that it does not appear it has the resources to honor.

Something about shutting down a charity to clawback donations that were accepted and used in good faith sticks in my craw. On the other hand, they did sign a settlement agreement.

[Mr. Bumble]

Too bad the SEC didn't show as much interest in the money that vanished from Jon Corzine's MF Global fund.

[apedad]

Not sure about SEC involvement but the Commodity Futures Trading Commission definitely took action.

On Thursday (1/5/2017), federal regulators announced a $5 million settlement with Jon S. Corzine, who ran MF Global when it collapsed into bankruptcy in 2011 and lost more than $1 billion in customer money. The settlement, reached unanimously at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the waning days of the Obama administration and approved by a federal judge this week, caps a long-running spectacle that derailed Mr. Corzine’s career and spurred a number of congressional, criminal and regulatory investigations.

Just last year (2016), Mr. Corzine settled much of the private MF Global litigation. And a trustee has long recovered the missing customer money (much of it wound up at MF Global’s banks and clearinghouses) and made whole the farmers and hedge funds whose accounts were raided in the firm’s final days.

In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Corzine said, “As the C.E.O. of MF Global in 2011, I have accepted responsibility for its failure, and I deeply regret the impact it had on customers, employees, shareholders and others.” He added: “I remain gratified that several years ago all customer money was recovered and returned to MF Global customers.”

Against that backdrop, the agency extracted the $5 million payout from Mr. Corzine, a sum far greater than what it could have expected to win if he had been found liable at trial.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/business/dealbook/mf-global-jon-corzine-penalty-settlement.html#:~:text=Corzine%2C%20who%20ran%20MF%20Global,%241%20billion%20in%20customer%20money.

[Krychek_2]

Ignore him; he’s genetically incapable of having a conversation about anything without saying “But what about some Democrat?”

Krychek: Looks like Florida may get hit by another hurricane.

Bumble: Why didn’t Congress investigate Whitewater when Clinton was president?

Krychek: What does Whitewater have to do with Florida being about to get hit with another hurricane?

Bumble: Chappaquiddick! (Oh wait, that's Drackman.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

That hurricane can't hit Florida.

Now as to the so-called "Accella Corridor" (DC/NYC/Boston), there is a possibility that it might just...

[David Nieporent]

What I like about Dr. Ed is that he gets both big facts completely wrong and small ones, too. (It's "Acela," not "Accella.")

[John F. Carr]

A loving God would visit a plauge of frogs upon the SEC.

Does this happen often enough to justify splitting churches into two legal entities, one to own property and the other to handle money?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

A loving God would have closed the Catholic Church, imposed a mighty smiting on all faith healers, unleashed severe pestilence on all superstitious gay-bashers, banished racists to eternal hellfire, turned all antisemites into Jews and Islamophobes into Muslims (and then extinguished organized religions), sent locusts after religious fundamentalists of all stripes, healed the sick, eliminated modern country music, prevented child abuse, and delivered a new Rolling Stones album long ago.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Well, what is preventing them from doing what GM did in '08?

[John F. Carr]

Lack of government support.

[Nelson]

Bush used TARP to get around Congress after Republicans refused to sign a bill because it didn't screw the autoworkers enough.

My neighbor's dad was a GM factory worker for his entire career and he had to go back to work at 70 because his pension was cut almost 75%. When the C suite screws up, it's always the little guy that pays the price.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Sucks to be him -- he was lucky to get 25%.

The problem with GM is that management & labor conspired to screw the customers for 60 years -- more than all of your grandfather's career.

So sucks to be him....

[Martinned]

That seems like an odd story, although US criminal law and US securities law is certainly Byzantine enough that it could be true. But my starting position would be that a recipient in good faith of stolen money can't be required to give it back.

[Krychek_2]

Had I been representing the church, I would have advised them to fight it. The SEC would have to have proved that the church "knew or should have known" that the money was ill-gotten gains. The SEC would also have had to prove lack of consideration, and I don't think it could have done that either. (The donations resulted in a tax break, and also in the donor feeling good about himself for having given to a good cause. It would have been a jury question whether that was enough to overcome the lack of consideration requirement.)

But having signed a settlement agreement, they are now stuck.

[Martinned]

Can they sign a (settlement) agreement that they know they can't comply with? (And that the other party knows they can't comply with?) That's a tricky one on the intersection between company law and whatever special rules there are for churches, but in principle there are limits to what the board of a corporation can legally sign up to, particularly if the other party to the agreement knows (or should know) that the agreement is ultra vires.

[NOVA Lawyer]

I see nothing that makes this ultra vires. Signing a contract that you later cannot honor because you are broke does not absolve you of the debt.

Also, if the church has property to sell, it's not clear from the article that the property won't cover the debt to the SEC. At any rate, that portion that can be covered by church assets wouldn't be "ultra vires" under your implied definition of agreeing to a debt the entity doesn't have resources to pay.

The Board could have assumed church members would feel obligated to cough up the extra cash in donations, given they used the money and took credit for the good deeds they allegedly did with the ill-gotten gains.

(Which is not to say, there may have been some valid defense prior to signing the settlement agreement. But I don't see an ultra vires argument going anywhere. Yes, a board of a company could undertake debt obligations that exceed their current net assets. Happens all the time.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

Can the church claw back as well?

[Nelson]

I was assuming they spent it on their own charitable activities. If they didn't, I think that's a good question (but IANAL).

Would they be able to claw back donations they made to other organizations? So, for example, if they gave to Catholic Charities, Habitat for Humanity, and the Food Bank, would they be allowed to claw back those donations?

[NOVA Lawyer]

Not my area, at all, but I think the consensus is that the SEC clawback from the church was far from certain to succeed, absent the agreement. Which means it's even more unlikely the church would be able to clawback from second order charities. At some point, good faith transactions cannot be unwound as it undermines the stability of the entire system if you can't rely and plan on courts and others honoring past transactions. That's why the circumstances in which you can claw back money are limited, usually to some degree of culpability or bad faith on the receiving party's part.

I'm not sure what the church knew or should have known and there is the consideration issue. If someone just gives you a Ferrari they stole, you are much less likely to be able to keep it than if they sold it to you for fair market value.

[Nelson]

Thank you, NOVA. That makes sense, at least to me.

[Drewski]

"The donations resulted in a tax break, and also in the donor feeling good about himself for having given to a good cause. It would have been a jury question whether that was enough to overcome the lack of consideration requirement."

Those are literally textbook examples of things that are not consideration, so no. Utterly frivolous.

[Krychek_2]

I'm not sure that's true; love and affection are considered consideration for purposes of some contracts, so why wouldn't good feelings? Or perhaps good feelings could be re-branded as love and affection. Do you have a citation to the contrary?

Assuming you're right, the jury is still going to hear about it, and given these facts nullification is still a real probability. I still would have told them to fight it.

[ReaderY]

I presume you feel happy somebody replied to your comment.

So that’s good and valuable consideration I just gave you. You now owe me. Pay up.

[Krychek_2]

What was the offer, and what was the acceptance? What were the terms of the contract?

[NOVA Lawyer]

Seriously, replying to a comment could be consideration for a contact. Russia troll farms operate on this principle. But nobody owes you anything for doing something they didn't ask you to do for a price.

[Drewski]

“love and affection are considered consideration for purposes of some contracts”

There’s the problem: You appear to be confusing some fictional story contract law with real contract law.

"Do you have a citation to the contrary?"

Go fuck yourself.

[Krychek_2]

I would never tell you to fuck yourself because then there would be twice as much of you in the gene pool. And your reaction when asked to support your argument is noted.

[Krychek_2]

Now that we've both gotten insulting each other out of our systems, here's the real issue: Over the course of a nearly 40 year legal career, I have occasionally had clients with their backs to the wall for whom I came up with - um - creative arguments on their behalf. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't. But if they had nothing else, at least make any argument that might stick. The client will be no worse off if I lose, and maybe it will bring the other side to the bargaining table. It's called giving your client the best defense you can. And one of the most delicious experiences I ever had was having a trial court judge tell me that my argument was the most ridiculous and frivolous argument he'd ever heard, only to then have the Court of Appeals agree with me. It happens.

I don't know if I could have weaved a consideration argument that would have withstood appellate review or not. I do know that you lose any shot you don't take. Had I lost that argument, the church would have been no worse off, and it may have brought the SEC to the bargaining table. If that's the hand I've got, that's the hand I'll play.

[David Nieporent]

The SEC would also have had to prove lack of consideration, and I don’t think it could have done that either. (The donations resulted in a tax break, and also in the donor feeling good about himself for having given to a good cause.

Huh? Neither of those represent consideration.

[Krychek_2]

Is there caselaw that says that? If love and affection is consideration for some contracts, and it is, then how is this different?

[Voize]

Krychek, neither the tax break nor the donor's vanity are provided by the other party.

[Krychek_2]

I don't think that matters. I think "if your sister does X for me, then I will do Y for you" is an enforceable contract. I think if you then show up at my office the next morning and say, "My sister did X," that I am then obligated to do Y. Do you disagree?

[Voize]

If you negotiate that agreement with my sister then you may have a valid contract with her, but my ability to enforce it against you would be as a beneficiary rather than as a party.

That said, there are problems substituting the IRS for my sister in this montage. 1) Is there evidence of an agreement between you and the IRS? 2) The IRS is obligated by statute to give you a tax benefit for a valid charitable donation, so the agreement would have to be for more than that because a promise to do something you already have to do is not consideration. 3) If their promise is not specific to me then I am likely only an incidental beneficiary and not entitled to compensation.

[Krychek_2]

I think "If your sister does X for me then I will do Y for you" implies that you are going to make an effort to persuade your sister to do X. Otherwise, why wouldn't I just talk directly to your sister and leave you out of it? Which is why I also think there doesn't need to be an agreement between me and the IRS; if giving money to the church is in consideration for the church giving me a receipt that I can then use to get a tax break, that is at least arguably consideration, and an argument I would be willing to try.

And of course there are problems with my IRS argument. I'm just not convinced it's clear that they're fatal, and if that's all I've got to work with, then that's all I've got to work with.

[Krychek_2]

Also, re the donor's vanity, there is a whole boatload of data showing that much of what we do is based on deep psychological needs. If I could find an expert -- and I'm quite certain that I could -- who would testify that the donor's giving was motivated at least in part by a compelling desire to be well thought of and to think well of himself, and he received this from the church, and receiving it was essential to his mental health and well being, I think we're well past "donor's vanity" and into something that has value as consideration.

Now, do I know for a certainty that that would be a winning argument? No, but I think it would be worth a shot.

[David Nieporent]

No, but I think it would be worth a shot.

No, it would not. What one derives from an act does not constitute consideration; what someone else exchanges for the act is.

[Krayt]

From a church that spent it, it sure seems so, even if they agreed, improvidently, and now what, will be foreclosed on?

Government and taxers and haters of religion (the last includes me) often fancy government doesn’t tax churches out of its own good will (and fear of voters).

Yet there was a case where the court tangentially touched on it, pondering what would happen if a church didn’t pay its property taxes.

Now the government seizes it and sells it. Yet that is a law interfering with the free exercise thereof. Shot across the bow.

Continue angrily pounding your shoe it is only by the good graces of government. Pound that shoe!

Same here. If the clawback shuts down the church, that’s a law impeding the free exercise.

The only monkey wrench is the improvident agreement. Oops, they goofed. Now government procedes to seize according to the law…oh no. Still a problem.

But they agreed! Something something inalienable rights. And in any case the seizure is still a law.

[hoppy025]

Somehow I suspect that if it was a Jewish fraudster who donated to a synagogue, the SEC wouldn't be coming down on them so harshly...

[Krychek_2]

Of course you suspect that.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Prof. Bernstein might even be tempted to say something about a fellow clinger in this context . . . but the record indicates he will summon the resolve to resist that temptation, so you're probably safe, as usual, hoppy025.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The synagogue would have had pro bono counsel and been told not to sign the agreement.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Howie Carr just gave an interesting similar case -- a Meyer Weiss engaged in fraud which he used for his son's law school education. (The son now being Hunter Biden's lawyer.)

Apparently, they couldn't claw this money back...

[not guilty]

The son now being Hunter Biden’s lawyer?? Is that as true as everything else you have said, Dr. Ed 2?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/us/politics/hunter-biden-indictment-gun-charges.html

[Dr. Ed 2]

Fuck you -- I reported what Carr said and cited him.

If it is wrong, blame him!!!!!!

[not guilty]

Uh, having your head up your ass is no excuse.

[not guilty]

Is this the Howie Carr broadcast you refer to? https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/howie-carr-obama-drowning-weiss-not-so-nice-and/id1367527936?i=1000622190927

Carr clearly states at 06:41 that David Weiss is the U. S. Attorney for Delaware.

What else have you lied about, Ed?

[NOVA Lawyer]

"What else have you lied about, Ed?"

We don't have enough time. Even god doesn't. "What has he not lied about?" is a question that he might be able to answer in a comment on Volokh.

[Ed Grinberg]

https://reason.com/2023/09/04/brickbat-keep-it-down-in-the-library/

Compare:

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/attorneys-for-connecticut-high-school-runners-ask-judge-to-recuse-after-he-forbids-them-from-describing-trans-athletes-as-male/

[Tom for equal rights]

Those "trans" will always be males. Absolutely nothing can change that biological fact.

Isnt there sanctions for lying to the court -

[Davedave]

Ah, the green eyed monster...

[Mr. Bumble]

I think you have gotten a hold of a bad batch of the green fairy.

[Martinned]

What makes you think that biology is relevant here?

[Nige]

They've found a vulnerable minority and they're not going to stop until they're wiped from public life, as one charmer put it.

[hoppy025]

No, we're not going to stop when you demand we humor their delusions.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

No, we’re not going to stop when you demand we humor their delusions.

Humoring delusions is big business in America.

A freeloading business of gullible leeches, despicable faith healers, stale prudes, and disaffected greedheads, and delusional culture war casualties.

[Kazinski]

Its than trans men have found a vulnerable population to lurk among, and in many case prey upon.

According to this FOIA request there are 161 "transgender women" in Wisconsin prisons. 81, or over 50% have at least one conviction for sexual abuse, or sexual assault.

https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2023/Oversite_Project/WI-DOC-Transgender-women-FOIA-response.pdf

Men who claim to be transgender women, should be able to live their lives as they like, but should not have access to women's spaces, or compete in women's only events because it violates women's rights.

[Nige]

People in prison have committed crimes. Ask how many were sex workers and had sexual abuse or assault added on as a result.

If preying upon women was enough to wipe a group out of public life, all men would have been banished long ago.

[Kazinski]

They were banished from women's only spaces long ago.

[Nige]

Hasn't ever put a dent on the the sexual assault and sexual abuse by men of women, though.

[grb]

Nige : “They’ve found a vulnerable minority …..”

You have to see things from the perspective of your average right-winger: In the good old days they could loathe blacks, despise homosexuals, hate Jews, and sneer at women. They could do so openly, confident they’ll get a nod of approval or slap on the back.

Now all that is lost to them. They have to slink about in the shadows to say things they once proclaimed proudly and publicly. Then the Right found one tiny little group they can still target in an public orgy of hate. Is it any wonder they’ve become obsessed and consumed over this?

In just a few years this madness will seem inexplicable, like the satanic-daycare-craze a few decades back. Hundreds of new laws targeting this microscopically small group ?!? Nonstop raging invective? It will seem totally insane. Someone will need to explain it was just nostalgia for the Fifties, let off the lease one final time.

[not guilty]

Haters gotta hate.

[Tom for equal rights]

Martinned 2 hours ago
Flag Comment Mute User
What makes you think that biology is relevant here?

martinned - why would you think biology is not relevant.

[Martinned]

Because sport is all social, it's about groups of people playing a game based on arbitrary rules that are socially determined. If you're going to bring biology into it, you might as well exclude tall people from basketball.

[Tom for equal rights]

Martinned - quit being inane
The judge is forbidding the statement that males athletes are male.

The judge is forbidding the statement of a biological fact in his courtroom.

[Nelson]

"If you’re going to bring biology into it, you might as well exclude tall people from basketball."

I disagree completely. The competitive advantages inherent in going through puberty with male hormones is huge. The average post-pubescent male is in the 80th percentile or higher (often much higher) of women in muscle strength (particularly type II, aka fast twitch muscles), bone density, lung capacity, and other physiological categories. That is the definition of an unfair competitive advantage.

I don't have a problem if you want to qualify it so that trans women who went through puberty under a female hormone regimen are eligible.

The problem is that essentially no one transitions before puberty. So for all intents and purposes, trans women competing against cis women is inherently unfair competition.

[Joe_dallas]

Good comment - progressives have to ignore commonly known biological facts to justify their inane beliefs

[Nelson]

Don’t get me wrong, I think the feigned ignorance of cultural conservatives about the difference between chromosomes and gender is as ludicrous as it is pathetic. And the constant unfounded accusations of pedophilia are hateful and vile. People who engage in such dishonest rhetoric are morally bankrupt. Real pedophiles are out there, and they more often wear Roman collars than drag outfits.

Trans women competing against cis women, however, is a demonstrable competitive advantage and purely about biological processes that cannot be reversed once they’ve happened, even with hormones. There is no valid justification for such an unfair advantage.

[Nige]

Yes, the competitive advantage is clear given the total dominance of womens’ sport by trans women.

[Martinned]

The competitive advantages inherent in going through puberty with male hormones is huge.

So is the advantage of being tall in basketball.

[VinniUSMC]

Because sport is all social, it’s about groups of people playing a game based on arbitrary rules that are socially determined. If you’re going to bring biology into it, you might as well exclude tall people from basketball.

No.

Women's basketball is like a basketball league that bans people above a certain height, because of the advantage that height (generally) brings with it to basketball. And then later, people with no sense argue for allowing tall people who identify as short to play in the new league.

[Martinned]

I don't think we're going to resolve this. At some point, all the transphobes will be dead and buried, and we can all go on with our lives. Or maybe it will be like what happened to homophobia, and all the right-wingers pretend they were never homophobes, and insist we have to keep the foreigners out of the country because they are a threat to our beloved gays. Either way, this is not a productive argument to be having.

[Joe_dallas]

Martinned - you are falsely accussing people who are opposed to the current fad of transgender medical treatment as being transphobe's

That is completely false. virtually no one opposed to the current fad of medical treatment are transphobes. The objection is the treatment of permanent , irreversible damage to a human body in an attempt to cure / alleiviate a mental disorder.

Your falsely calling any one objecting to your embracing the treatment as transphobes is used to hide the barbaric treatment to those suffering from a mental illness which you embrace.

[Martinned]

No, you clearly don't come across as a transphobe. Just as someone who wants to make the lives of transgender people as difficult as possible.

[Joe_dallas]

Martinned - Again you are making false statements
Myself and most other opposed to the current fad of transgender treatment prefer to prevent the permanent damage done to those afflicted with the mental illness. The treatment which you embrace which creates the permanent irreversible damage.

[Nige]

The current 'fad' of transgender treatment goes back decades and has extremely high success rates and extremely low regret rates.

[Nige]

‘virtually no one opposed to the current fad of medical treatment are transphobes.’

You just want to deny them access to health care based on your own entirely spurious and false ideas about them and react with extraordinary hostility towards them.

I'm pretty sure you're all transphobes.

[Tom for equal rights]

We are only opposed to barbaric medical treatment disquised as "gender affirming care" for the mentally ill.

Those high satisfaction surveys are deeply flawed as has been pointed out to you multiple times. Though not surprising that you fail to recognize the obvious flaws.

questions designed to acheive preferred response
low response rates
short term followup period
responses during periods when patient is still under medication

All of which are problematic in any survery and especially in surveys that significant portion of the affected population which requires constant medical due to the treatment .

[Tom for equal rights]

virtually every medical procedure is designed to return a person to normalcy. Yet you embrace a medical procedure that is specifically designed to permanently prevent any possible return to normalcy.

[Nige]

Those satisfaction surveys contradict everything you claim to believe therefore they have to be wrong, but there’s no actual data to show they’re wrong! Here’s some new research:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321258

'For many transgender people, quality of life improves after they transition. Gender reassignment is often essential for their well-being, with better psychosocial functioning, more stable relationships, and higher levels of contentment and happiness being reported by men and women who have transitioned.'

‘Yet you embrace a medical procedure that is specifically designed to permanently prevent any possible return to normalcy.’

You can tell by this you have actually never once even bothered to go see what trans peoples’ actual opinions and experiences of treatments are. You probably shouldn’t, if you stay deliberately ignorant you can hardly be accused of lying, eh?

[Tom for equal rights]

Nige
You are completely incapable of recognizing how patherically flawed those are.

Regret after Gender-affirmation Surgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Prevalence
Pablo Expósito-Campos, MAcorresponding author* and Roberto D’Angelo, PsyD†‡
Besides these methodological inaccuracies, data in this field are often of low quality because of “lack of controlled studies, incomplete follow-up, and lack of valid assessment measures,”5 as well as the long amount of time regret can take to manifest (the average and median are estimated at 8–8.5 years2,4). Many of the included studies had participants with follow-up periods of only 1 or 2 years postsurgical transition. None appear to have a long enough follow-up period to reliably identify regret. The study contributing almost half of the participants4 explicitly noted their inclusion of participants with short follow-up time, relative to time to regret, and their large 36% loss to follow-up as limitations. These shorter studies only provide an estimated lower limit, as the large numbers of patients lost to follow-up add correspondingly large uncertainties to any quoted number.

Bustos et al1 acknowledge “moderate-to-high risk of bias in some studies.” Actually, this affects 23 of the 27 studies. The majority of included studies ranged between “poor” and “fair” quality: only five studies—representing just 3% (174) of total participants—received higher quality ratings. However, even these had loss to follow-up rates ranging from 28% to more than 40%, including loss through death from complications or suicide, negative outcomes potentially associated with regret.

A last and major concern involves sample selection. The cohort presenting with gender dysphoria today is substantially different from the cohort presenting during the research periods of the included studies. Further, there has been a significant liberalization over time of the criteria assessing readiness for surgery. Thus, the outcomes reported may be of limited relevance for estimating current surgery outcomes. Additionally, the generalization to “TGNB” populations seems unreliable, as it is based on an explicit sample size of only one “non-binary” patient. The authors do not address these issues.

[Tom for equal rights]

Nige from the article you cited
However, the authors also note some limitations to their study. "These include a high dropout rate (from a total of 610 people who underwent the surgery, only 156 were included in the study) and the fact that the data were collected from a single center."

Gotta to be seriously mentally deficient to believe that study is even remotely robust.

[Tom for equal rights]

The Myth of “Reliable Research” in Pediatric Gender Medicine: A critical evaluation of the Dutch Studies—and research that has followed
E. Abbruzzese,Stephen B. Levine &Julia W. Mason

[VinniUSMC]

Either way, this is not a productive argument to be having.

You haven't yet produced a coherent argument. You merely toss around stupid words like transphobe and homophobe which are garbage words that pathetic simpletons use to demonize others and dismiss them out of hand.

It's ok though, I dismiss you out of hand for just being generally of below average intelligence.

[SRG2]

Which biological fact is determinative, sexual genotype, sexual phenotype or sexual cerebrotype?

[Sarcastr0]

Slack Technologies v. Pirani
Topic: Statutory Interpretation
Background: Piriani, who purchased 250,000 shares in the software and communications company in 2019, alleges that Slack’s registration statement was misleading because it did not disclose the generous terms of Slack’s agreements to compensate customers for service disruptions. But Slack never did an IPO. Rather, they used a 'direct listing' method approved by the NYSE only in the past decade, where Slack sold no shares at all. Rather, some of its existing shareholders registered their shares with the SEC, and then all the shareholders started selling (some of whom did not need to register). Because registered and unregistered shares were sold at the same time, it is not obvious that the shares that Pirani purchased were registered. The question is whether he has statutory standing to sue under the Securities Act of 1933.
Losing side: Pirani relied on the prospectus in purchasing the shares, whether or not they were registered. This new direct listing thing should not be a dodge of liability.
Winning side: A statute imposing liability for a suit complaining about the falsity of “any part of the registration statement,” and offering recourse to “any person acquiring such security,” is referring to a security covered by the registration statement, not to a security exempt from registration. And the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 has a private action for fraud not tied to a registration statement, but imposes a much higher bar, requiring proof that the defendant knew about the fraud.
Upshot: 9th Circuit decision vacated and remanded.
Court's reasoning: Context clues, citation to 'the registration statement' not 'a registration statement', and the plain language all cut towards no standing. And a bunch of lower court decisions on similar nonregistered sales since Judge Friendly in the 2nd Circuit's Barnes v. Osofsky (67) all cut the same way, until the 9th C.

So how did this get to the Court but end up not being a close question: I get this one. It is a hard case on tha facts; the SEC didn't appear, and the lower court analyzed section 12 of the Securities Act of 1933 as well as 11, which the Court held it did not need to reach because 'the lower court’s ruling rested on the view that Section 11 and Section 12 “necessarily travel together.” Which reads to me like a narrow holding to get to 9-0. Now back to the 9th to see how that Section cuts.

[Ridgeway]

This one seems like a pretty easy one to me too. The '33 Act has always been viewed narrowly, unlike the '34 Act. Moreover, IIRC, the remedy for '33 Act violations is rescission, which does not make sense in a situation where there is no transaction to rescind.

[ducksalad]

That petition filed with the SC about Trump's eligibility:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-117/274783/20230808142352813_20230808-142037-95760458-00000596.pdf

It's asking the court to declare that Trump gave aid and comfort to insurrectionists, and is thus ineligible. OK, that's a widely held point of view. But then it goes on to request the following:

1. Declare that "Trump [could] be enjoined from campaigning as that would be knowingly fraudulent misrepresentation"

2. Declare that "Trump [could] be enjoined from the unconstitutional act of submitting a state ballot access application"

3. Declare that "petitioner [has] standing to enjoin the Republican party from nominating Trump"

This is the Baudeist position taken to extremes. I can see reasoning behind rejecting Trump's ballot access application. But preventing him from submitting it, or campaigning?

[Tom for equal rights]

There is plausible/decent argument that Trump was involved in an insurrection (albiet with a stretch of the meaning of insurrection).

However any claim that trump provided aid and comfort to the enemy is inane. The claim that a person provided aid and comfort to the enemy would be apply to Obama, Hillary or Biden, with their various transgressions, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which is basically a agreement to facilitate Irans nuclear program or the money paid to Iran.

[Drewski]

1. Yeah, I don't think so. Non-qualified candidates and even fictional characters campaign routinely.

2. Seems like they probably could? I don't know, that seems like a highly technical question.

3. Very likely, at least to the extent of a state GOP declaring him to be the nominee uner state law, often automatically placing him on the ballot.

[Krayt]

It is the government who decides to reject. I suppose a 34 year old could apply, and be rejected. As long as they didn't lie on the form, there's no fraud to it.

If you stand in line for a roller coaster for 2 hours, and you're an inch under the min height bar, that sucks for you, but your waiting in line doesn't become fraud.

[ducksalad]

Yes. It seems like the petitioner doesn't just want the court to disqualify Trump. He wants the court to force him to shut up and go away.

[Drewski]

Eh, what you overlook is that it's somewhat routine to enjoin someone from applying for benefits they aren't eligible to receive. This would be little different.

[ducksalad]

On (2), I don't see how the private act of a citizen submitting papers can be unconstitutional, which is the word the petition uses. The constitution applies to government.

I could see the state rejecting the application, refusing to even look at the application, or at a stretch even making it illegal for a person to knowingly apply when disqualified.

[not guilty]

To my surprise, the petition for writ of certiorari before judgment is non-frivolous. The lawsuit was dismissed by District Judge Aileen Loose Cannon in a conclusory order wholly bereft of analysis. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.626418/gov.uscourts.flsd.626418.33.0_1.pdf

[John F. Carr]

Not surprisingly, a judge sided with the United States in the battle over Abbott's barrier in the Rio Grande. I don't think it was a close call. The case was reassigned to a senior judge, David Ezra formerly of the District of Hawaii.

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67630985/united-states-v-abbott/

Under the Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1899 it is illegal to build navigable waters without a permit from the Corps of Engineers or in some cases without an act of Congress. Unlike the Clean Water Act, which was for a while interpreted to apply to swamps and puddles, the RHA is based on navigability. If a waterway was ever navigable or could be improved to become navigable, the United States has authority. The Rio Grande was said to have been navigable long ago and appears on an official list of navigable waters, despite not being presently useful for commerce. The judge observes that Texas used boats to help build the barrier, demonstrating some present capacity for commercial navigation.

Ilya Somin has posted on the "invasion" aspect of the case.

Texas has already appealed.

Unless the Fifth Circuit intervenes the state has one week to move the barrier to the Texas side of the river to await further order of the court.

[Martinned]

David Ezra formerly of the District of Hawaii.

That's interesting, how did he end up in the Western District of Texas?

[Sarcastr0]

In January 2013, Ezra was designated by the Chief Justice John Roberts to the Western District of Texas, San Antonio and Austin Divisions, to help ease the heavy workload for the federal judges in that state. Ezra has a Chambers and Courtrooms in both San Antonio and Austin, Texas.

[Martinned]

Interesting that that's possible so easily. Must make senators and their blue slips annoyed.

[John F. Carr]

It's not common and Ezra is a senior judge so he is expected to have a lighter caseload.

The case was reassigned to him by Judge Pitman who is notable for handling the Texas abortion case a couple years ago. Like I wrote, I don't think this is a close case and I wouldn't ascribe any political motive to the assignment.

[Tom for equal rights]

the barrier of bouys is less than a mile long, so it couldnt be much of an impediment from crossing the river. approximately 1,000 feet.

[Martinned]

It's almost as if the governor of Texas likes to spend tax money on political stunts!

[Bob from Ohio]

"political stunts!"

The migrant buses to Dem cities stunt has been remarkably successful.

"Mayor Eric Adams says asylum seeker crisis "will destroy New York City"
By CBS New York Team Updated on: September 6, 2023 / 11:30 PM / CBS New York"

"Mayor Brandon Johnson warns city would be unable to support more migrants without federal help
By Alice Yin and Dan Petrella
Chicago Tribune Published: Aug 30, 2023 at 4:45 pm"

[LawTalkingGuy]

If by successful you mean: successfully demonstrates that certain GOP governors are immoral sociopaths who treat fellow human beings like garage then sure.

[Bob from Ohio]

NYC has a mandatory housing program, the migrants are better off no? Rather better than living in Neo-Nazi Bible Thumping Hot as Heck Texas.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Still treating humans like cattle. I mean it’s not like there is a sordid history of transporting people across continents that escalates into worse things

[ducksalad]

Have a hard time seeing what is wrong with offering adults free bus tickets.

Do you reject the distinction between consensual and non-consensual acts? Do you have a (factually incorrect) belief that these people were forcibly placed onto the buses? Or are you the one that thinks Central Americans are cattle and thus incapable of deciding whether to accept a free bus ticket?

I suspect that if an immigrant aid organization offered the same people the same ticket to the same place on the same day, you’d think it was fine. You’re perhaps less concerned with the effect on the immigrants and more concerned with whether you like person organizing it.

Although many of the people who enter here (McAllen area) end up liking the area and staying, most of them arrive with aspirations of going further north.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Except we know they’ve been lied to in certain circumstances like the desantis Martha’s Vineyard stunt. (Which the freak also sent a videographer to record)

[Ben_]

"Have a hard time seeing what is wrong with offering adults free bus tickets."

Yeah, "...if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table."

Some people have rage issues and can't discuss certain topics rationally. Do you think LTG offered any migrants a place to sleep in his home? No, I don't think so either.

[LawTalkingGuy]

“Some people have rage issues and can’t discuss certain topics rationally.”

You’re right. See for example most republicans when discussing migrants or other vulnerable populations.

“Do you think LTG offered any migrants a place to sleep in his home? No, I don’t think so either.”

You’re right again. But I also don’t have a problem with shelters in my neighborhood or them living and working in my neighborhood! This is always a dumb example
They weren’t asking to live in any specific home or lot. They are trying to exist in some of the largest states in the 3rd largest country by area!

[ducksalad]

LTG, it’s wonderful (seriously) that you are welcoming to immigrants, and would not object to having them working and living in shelters in your neighborhood. I favor mostly open borders and feel the same.

Now I’d ask you to consider: how do these people get from South Texas to these opportunities in your state?

Do you expect them to walk? Buy a Mercedes?

It seems to me a bit rich for someone whose whole schtick is “you’re not as empathetic as me” to have not considered that to get to your shelter and take the jobs in your neighborhood might want some transportation.

I’d wager tha tI've talked with 5X as many undocumented immigrants as you. Abbott is a piece of shit with bad motives; however, that’s irrelevant to whether or not offering people transport to where they want to go is bad idea. The undocumented I’ve known aren’t “cattle” as you labeled them. They’re adults capable of making decisions for themselves, and understand their own situation better than you will ever be capable of.

[Ben_]

"But I also don’t have a problem with shelters in my neighborhood or them living and working in my neighborhood! "

Everyone else in your neighborhood less capable or industrious than someone who walked 500 miles across Mexico is welcome to permanent joblessness and hopelessness. No reason for anyone to ever hire someone struggling when there are 22-year old migrants with no attachments who will work from 6AM to 8PM for the lowest amount possible.

What will the many permanently unemployed people in your neighborhood do with no job all day? What an awesome neighborhood it will be!

[Nige]

Capitalism!

[Voize]

What will the many permanently unemployed people in your neighborhood do with no job all day?

High-volume commenting on VC posts seems to be a popular choice.

[David Nieporent]

Everyone else in your neighborhood less capable or industrious than someone who walked 500 miles across Mexico is welcome to permanent joblessness and hopelessness. No reason for anyone to ever hire someone struggling when there are 22-year old migrants with no attachments who will work from 6AM to 8PM for the lowest amount possible.

"Lazy stupid Americans have the right to keep other Americans from doing business with industrious people" is certainly a take.

(One that, as always, depends on the fallacy that there's a fixed amount of work.)

[Ben_]

David Nieporent says your neighborhood will be an awesome place when everyone below average is relegated to permanent unemployment and hopelessness. What will they do with all their time off, all day, every day? That never leads to problems, does it?

Democrats hate on struggling people and call them "lazy" and "stupid". It's OK for Democrats to harm that single mom who can't work the same hours as a 22-year-old migrant. Permanent unemployment for her.

Same with that guy who made mistakes and went to prison for 2 years. He's out. No one will ever hire him because migrants are safer and there's an unlimited supply of them. He's got all day free every day, and no hope of ever getting a job. And he lives in your neighborhood. Awesome for you and your neighbors!

Same for that guy who is actually a little lazy. He might have gotten a job and improved things for himself. But there are migrants who will work a lot harder, so no. David Nieporent says fuck that guy and everyone with any issues. Troubled people will be permanently unemployed and hopeless in Democrats' America. Plenty of fentanyl for them though.

[Sarcastr0]

Does this style of xtreme strawmanning and calling everyone Democrats even if they are not work well for you?

[Ben_]

Do you think it’s great to make it even more difficult for struggling people in your neighborhood to ever get jobs, Sarcastr0?

Some people have issues and aren’t very employable. But if there’s a big unfilled need, employers will accept less than ideal workers. If migrants fill that need, then struggling people in your town get left without any hope of getting a job.

Lots more hopeless people living in your neighborhood with nothing to do all day. Is it good for you and your neighbors?

David Nieporent wants to trash those people. But telling them they’re trash doesn’t make them go away. They still live in your neighborhood.

[David Nieporent]

David Nieporent says your neighborhood will be an awesome place when everyone below average is relegated to permanent unemployment and hopelessness. What will they do with all their time off, all day, every day? That never leads to problems, does it?

For years, when Ben_ thought about struggling black people, he said, "Fuck them. Abolish welfare and food stamps and medicaid for those lazy n-words. I don't want my tax dollars going to support those criminals and bums and sluts."

But when Ben_ thinks about struggling white people, he thinks, "It's a shame that there isn't more government help for them."

[Ben_]

Dumb rhetorical finger-pointing doesn’t get struggling people jobs. Nor does "government help".

Filling all the openings with migrants makes it completely hopeless.

Trash people all you want, David Nieporent. It doesn’t help struggling people get jobs and it doesn’t make them disappear.

[Sarcastr0]

You don't care about struggling people; the cloak of empathy wears poorly on someone as angry and hateful and eager to dehumanize as you, Ben.

You are eager to project some awful things at other people, but all your cries for struggling people end up being excuses to shit on someone or other.

You are one of the least caring people I've ever interacted with. All you really care about is stoking your resentment. Mostly on behalf of nameless other people you make up, because it seems like you are pretty comfortable, except for being addicted to anger.

[Ben_]

Neither caring about struggling people nor trashing them (like David Nieporent does) makes them disappear.

Love them or hate them, having more permanently unemployed, hopeless people living in your neighborhood is bad for everyone living there. Dumb rhethoric is irrelevant.

And, yes, there are barely employable people that go on the bottom of employers' stack of applicants. Obviously. Pretending they don't exist isn't any better than trashing them.

[Bob from Ohio]

DOJ also buses them. Or more often just releasing them into small border towns.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Oh wow. The DOJ busses people. That must make it morally okay!

[Mr. Bumble]

So you oppose the Feds transporting people from the border to places all over the country?

[Nige]

DOJ has probably arranged whatever's necessary in advance of arrival.

[Ben_]

"...GOP governors are immoral sociopaths..."

Name calling means you have no arguments.

[Sarcastr0]

Coming from Ben this is incredibly funny.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I do have an argument. And that’s it: this policy is bad because it’s immoral and sociopathic.

It’s immoral because it violates our duties to treat other humans with dignity. (It’s also arguably immoral on utilitarian grounds because bussing people around doesn’t improve the general happiness of society in anyway and actively makes it worse)

It’s sociopathic because it displays such a callous disregard for the feelings of these people they’re moving that it seems to be caused by a genuine personality disorder.

Therefore the leaders of this policy are immoral sociopaths.

Any argument to the contrary from
You that is purportedly “rational” will inevitably be dehumanizing and fall into one of these descriptions.

[Nelson]

"without federal help"

That's the part that's going to piss off all the people who think it's a good idea to "stick it" to big cities. Watch the screeching and whining start when federal funding gets diverted from the states that are shipping out migrants to the ones that are receiving them.

Texas and Florida will cry like babies when they lose millions in funding.

[Tom for equal rights]

The busing stunt to cities that actively campaigned for the border invasion finally woke up the progressives that their policy of encouraging the border invasion may not have been such a great idea.

[Nige]

It certainly woke everyone up to the fact that Republicans love their performative cruelty and reckless disregard for human beings.

[windycityattorney]

“Invasion” To quote the great Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

The governor of Texas is blatantly wasting millions of tax payer dollars on publicity stunts and possibly hundreds of thousands more on legal fees losing court battles when the stunts are called out and legally challenged. I have a feeling for most conservatives, the fact that the river balloons with saw blades attached ‘only killed a few mexicans' is the only thing to complain about.

The fiscally conservative party of life, everybody.

[Ben_]

See Tom? Nothing matters because some republican somewhere doesn't live up to some pretend standard.

[Ben_]

"...finally woke up the progressives..."

Except for a few politicians (who have huge problems to deal with) and a few others directly affected, no it didn't. Being a Democrat means you can create devastating problems for others and then name-call them when they complain.

Democrat elites can leave their gleaming office towers, drive past squalor and decay in their luxury cars, and arrive home to their gated neighborhoods. No need to wake up. No need to consider anyone. They can always make up a new story about how they're the hero and everyone else is bad.

[Nige]

'Being a Democrat means you can create devastating problems for others and then name-call them when they complain.'

Being a Republican means everyone but you is responsible for your failings and incompetence.

[LawTalkingGuy]

“Democrat elites can leave their gleaming office towers, drive past squalor and decay in their luxury cars, and arrive home to their gated neighborhoods.”

What do you think republican elites do?

[Ben_]

I think they mind their own business instead of creating problems for others.

Republican elites probably wanted immigration to be orderly and lawful.

[Nige]

The Republican elites in your head are as imaginary as the Democratic ones.

[John F. Carr]

New England used to have a word "shunpike". It referred to a bypass road around a toll gate on a turnpike. A company went to a lot of effort to get the toll road franchise only to find people were bypassing the tolls. The river crossers could have gone around.

The most important motivating factor for the federal government is complaints from Mexico. Abbott successfully trolled Mexico, but technically Mexico's complaint is legitimate. The Biden administration thought, and I agree, that it was worth annoying Abbott to keep AMLO happy.

[OtisAH]

This might be a reasonable argument if the entire Rio is safely crossable. It is not. The barrier is where it is because that is apparently one of the safer stretches.

[Tom for equal rights]

its only a 1,000 ft - the rio grande border with mexico is 1200 miles. I bet there are other places to cross

[ducksalad]

As Tom says there are many safe places to cross, and it is mostly political stunt (or test case for doing more of it).

The location however, wasn't totally arbitrary. It was an area with a very high rate crossings. The effect will be to move the traffic to the second-most-convenient spot.

[OtisAH]

Yeah but, Tom doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s just subtracting a thousand feet from 1200 miles and declaring the remainder passable. Same as you are. But even if the entire 1200 mile border is easily crossable what Texas has done remains illegal.

[ducksalad]

I live within a few miles of the river, near McAllen, have crossed the river at places other than bridges multiple times, and most definitely know what I’m talking about. No, it’s not 1199.8 miles of passable, but that one spot with the floats is an utterly insignificant fraction of the passable points. There are many, many places where the river one can cross relatively easily, either by wading or with any simple improvised flotation device or even (upstream of Big Bend) with a long ladder. I've done it on an inflatable from Walmart, I've crossed on a schoolbus frame dropped across the channel.

Which is why I classify Abbott’s barrier as a stunt.

I agree that the Texas barrier is illegal under current law. I don’t like the feds declaring everything navigable waters, but preventing states from blocking international traffic was the whole point of foreign commerce clause.

[Bob from Ohio]

“David Ezra”

Same judge as on the recent porn age verification case in Texas. Weird he keeps getting hot button cases 3000 miles from home.

[Sarcastr0]

Nominated by President Ronald Reagan.
Designated so in 2013 by Roberts.

Really a long and deep conspiracy.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Ummmm, Texas is not a party to the suit -- and why Abbott didn't make a fuss about that is beyond me because the case otherwise would have original jurisdiction.

But if you want to argue "navigable waters", fine -- Texas has a right to put boats into "navigable waters", even if they are dropped into the mud by cranes.

And International Law is clear about persons boarding boats without permission -- it's called "piracy" and the boat owner/operator has the right to shoot them. So you mount machine guns on the Mexican side of said boats-in-the-mud and shoot the "pirates"....

[John F. Carr]

The case is captioned

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. GREG ABBOTT, in his capacity as GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF TEXAS, and THE STATE OF TEXAS.

[bevis the lumberjack]

And so Biden announces another stupid energy policy, version 15 or so. We're gonna stop shipping LNG by train. Supposedly this is for safety, but of course that's not the real reason because in the real world the impact will be just the opposite. (Ask yourself how that LNG will now get to where it needs to go).

And once again, energy prices will creep up just a little, life will get a bit tougher for those that are scratching by, and Biden's admin and the crazy activists will have a back patting orgy congratulating each other over being such superb Savers of Humanity.

Meanwhile the sacrificers sacrifice more without really understanding what's being done to them, which makes them angrier, and the Elites causing this misery are clueless and totally out of touch. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Y'all think we can't have another revolution (not a civil war, a revolution) like we're immune from history or something. We're not. Remember when progressives and the left were the people upset about the increasing income inequality? lol. Those days are gone like Elvis.

[apedad]

"Y’all think we can’t have another revolution (not a civil war, a revolution) like we’re immune from history or something."

Elections work nicely too.

[shawn_dude]

Elections don't work. Just ask Trump.

[StonewallDeSoto]

Revolutions are the exception in history. Far more common is a long, slow decline deep into mediocrity.

[bevis the lumberjack]

They are. It sounds crazy even to say it. I still don't think it's likely.

But we've in a period now where the elites (government officials, media, business leadership, academic leadership) have been giving a certain group a long, slow screwing. That group is visibly angry and slowly getting angrier, and not too many folks are paying attention.

[Martinned]

Is that the same group who are experiencing higher living standards than ever before in human history?

[VinniUSMC]

That's every group, so you'll need to narrow it down.

[Martinned]

My point exactly.

[bevis the lumberjack]

No, martin that's not that group at all.

But thank you for making my point perfectly.

[Martinned]

O, so it's a group that only exists in your imagination?

[Nige]

Depends what they’re angry about. We’ve already heard from the Trump cohort who believe they’ve a God-given right to be in charge no matter what the election outcome. Before that we heard from the people who didn’t like people being unjustifiably shot by cops. The latter crowd include the poor people who suffer most from various forms of pollution. So: which group do you think is the one getting(sic) angry about being actually screwed?

[SRG2]

That group started voting GOP in the late 60s. In the last 50 years, GOP policy has led to sharply widening income inequality, exporting of jobs, increasing labour and class immobility, the real reason that this group have received a long slow screwing. But as long as they buy that their being screwed is due to wokeness, affirmative action, pro-choice, the war against Christmas, and black presidents, they will blame the wrong people and vote loudly and aggressively against their own interests.

[Bob from Ohio]

"against their own interests"

Man does not live by bread alone. Non-economic interests are important to people too.

[Martinned]

Sure, but in practice those "non-economic interests" mostly seem to amount to taking away other people's freedoms.

[shawn_dude]

Yes, that's the core of the phrase "bread and circuses." GOP voters are currently enjoying the Republican circus.

[Ben_]

Democrats love money and don't care who gets hurt in the process of the acquisition of their money. That's the root of "against their own interests". Dems don't understand why you would ever choose not to (hire a politician to) steal your neighbors' paychecks if you could ever get part of the stolen money.

[bevis the lumberjack]

That group was heavenly unionized and there was no way they were voting GOP in the late '60s. Or the '70s. You're just fabricating history to fit your political narrative.

And telling people "we're fucking you over because we don't like the way your grandfather voted" isn't the most calming message out there. Might need some more work on that message, chief.

[Martinned]

What "that group" is being told is "you're being fucked over because of how you yourselves vote today". Big difference.

[bevis the lumberjack]

So you’re admitting that my point is correct. Biden and his folks (like you) are happy to screw these people. We agree, so nothing more to discuss.

[Magister]

Or they are screwing themselves by not voting in their own interest. The south wasn't heavily unionized, and they shifted toward Republicans starting in the late 1960s. More of the country followed in the late 1970s; that got Reagan elected and since then a steady agenda of tax cuts for the rich while slashing social programs.

[Life of Brian]

Or they are screwing themselves by not voting in their own interest.

I'm genuinely curious when this "why aren't [arbitrarily defined group X] voting to get what's theirs" meme first became a thing. It's an incredibly cynical perspective that seems calculated to amplify and perpetuate societal rifts and define people down to some sort of single-issue caricature of themselves. Feels a lot like a variation on the broader intersectionality garbage that thankfully is starting to lose momentum in the real world.

[SRG2]

I’m genuinely curious when this “why aren’t [arbitrarily defined group X] voting to get what’s theirs” meme first became a thing.

To be accurate, this particular group is voting to deny others what's theirs at their own expense. It's a real-world behavioural economics experiment. Possibly they think the world is zero-sum, a form of thinking encouraged by their leaders, so they believe that anything that benefits 'those people' means they're losing out. This explains the opposition to the extension of rights that don't actually cost them anything. How does gay marriage cost anyone, for example? It doesn't, but if you believe in a zero sum world, then if someone else gains a right, why then, you must be losing out. This attitude is irrational and stupid, but it does explain observed behaviour.

[Life of Brian]

To be accurate, this particular group is voting to deny others what’s theirs at their own expense. It’s a real-world behavioural economics experiment.

I'll wait to hear from Magister, but from the very construct and context of his argument I responded to I'm very comfortable he was referring to the group's own personal benefits.

As to the dimension you want to explore, in a two-party system it's pointless and generally wrong to attribute voting for party X to an explicit desire to deny other people whatever their own specific pet issue happens to be. Channeling Sarc is the last thing imaginable I want to do, but you have to be a world-class mind reader to pull that one off.

[Magister]

I wasn't talking about a narrow view of their interests, like "vote for the candidate who promises more $$$", but rather that their interests would be in improving the country generally, not being suckered by culture war propaganda and promises that aren't kept, and what they get is usually cutting off their own noses so that "those people", whoever they may be, will get it worse.

Ronald Reagan asserted that a rising tide lifts all boats, but his administration was not at all interested in seeing that everyone had a life jacket, let alone a boat.

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." - LBJ, before his presidency, according to Bill Moyers. Like many Democrats of that era, he became a better person.

The people voting against their own interests are the ones holding the "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!" signs, voting for people who want to tear down the things they like and that the entire country benefits from.

[Life of Brian]

I wasn’t talking about a narrow view of their interests, like “vote for the candidate who promises more $$$”, but rather that their interests would be in improving the country generally, not being suckered by culture war propaganda and promises that aren’t kept, and what they get is usually cutting off their own noses so that “those people”, whoever they may be, will get it worse.

That's even squishier, for similar reasons as I mentioned to SRG above. Abstracting the two parties' entire platforms into "what you vote for if you care about the long-term good of the country" and "what you vote for if you're a sucker that gets sucked into distracting culture wars" is itself one of the primo culture war tactics that both facets of the uniparty rely on.

And it just intensifies the fallacy I first noted above: now you're faulting people for not voting in the way you know they should if only they could really understand what's truly good for them, despite what they might actually think they want. They're not voting against their own interests at all -- they're voting against yours.

The people voting against their own interests are the ones holding the “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” signs, voting for people who want to tear down the things they like and that the entire country benefits from.

And the people waving banners with the latest poignant Ukraine slogan to make themselves and others around them feel better about sending literally nation-building streams of money overseas, as they gingerly tiptoe down a feces-encrusted sidewalk in their own neighborhood.

And the people gleefully willing to hand over treasury money hand over fist to massive multinational pharmaceutical conglomerates for a subscription service to minimally tested concoctions using technologies way too early in their lifecycle to understand the long-term cost/benefit of population-wide use -- many out of irrational fear and many because the culture warriors buffaloed them into turning it into yet another act of patriotism and opportunity for othering.

We can sit here and pull out extreme examples all day. Pretending the phenomenon is anything remotely close to one-sided is itself one of the tactics that keeps us divided.

[SRG2]

They’re not voting against their own interests at all — they’re voting against yours.

My argument is that they place a high value in voting against others’ interests because they think that ipso facto that is voting in favour of their own interests, nor is it a fallacy to say so.

Note LBJ’s famous quote about poor white voters.

[Magister]

With respect to coronavirus vaccination, conservatives sneer at the vaccines which were tested, rapidly but showing their value, but they embrace people being allowed to choose their own off-label treatments with nothing but rumor, that turn out to do nothing for COVID when tests were conducted. It's a weird inconsistency.

I'll concede that I took a chance with vaccination in March 2020, but not being vaccinated was taking a chance as well, and I judged the relative odds and made my choice. There's still no evidence that my choice was the wrong one, and increasing evidence that it was the right one.

Is it bad that pharmaceutical companies made money at it? No, trying to stoke resentment of corporations isn't going to work for you. They made stuff we need and we paid them for it.

[Martinned]

That's not at all what I meant, and you know it. People who vote for crooks should not be surprised that they're getting defrauded.

[Stephen Lathrop]

bevis, have you seen the documentary on Harlan County, KY, and the coal wars of the 30s and 70s there? You really ought to take a look.

My takeaway was that the part about the 70s chimed with my own experience, growing up in what you might think of as hillbilly-adjacent Maryland between the 1940s and 1960s. Even the accents matched the Kentucky ones in the documentary.

The big contrast—a shocking contrast for me only because it revived old memories so vividly—was how far the Appalachian population seems to have sunk from the socially aware, morally determined, communitarian culture shown in the documentary, to somehow get down to MAGA today. It seems impossible to imagine that today's Appalachian population could be descended from that one. What a catastrophic transformation.

[Krayt]

Income inequality is a fraudulent red herring. The correct measurement is the average health and wealth of the people, which continues to increase best in economically free places.

Indeed, with globalization, one would expect owners of large corporations, no longer tied to US profits but world sales, to wildly skyrocket due to value of the stocks.

Again, income inequality is a fraudulent red herring.

[Sarcastr0]

Income inequality matters because it matters to people to see how stratified society has become.

Humans are not purely functional economic machines; psychology and sociology matter.

[Krayt]

This is where actual measurements come in, and educating people so they realize income inequality touters are power hungry hacks.

[Martinned]

Knock yourself out: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17%2930398-7/fulltext#:~:text=References-,Summary,poorest%20by%2010%E2%80%9315%20years.

[Sarcastr0]

That education would not work, because this is about perception of fairness not perception of success.

[SRG2]

The Gini index has actual measurements. There are good reasons to suppose that both low and high index values are bad for economic growth, and that the US's index is sufficiently high to be in the adverse zone.

[jb]

Both things matter, for three (and a half) reasons, in probably ascending order of importance:

1) People's happiness tends to be relative to others. Maybe that's dumb, but it's the reality. So if "how do people feel about their lives" is something we care about, it's not great for people to increasingly feel like they're being left behind economically even if their standard of living is objectively increasing.
1a) To the extent that we believe that, e.g., the recent decline in life expectancy in the US is due to "deaths of despair", feeling like you're being left behind economically can actually translate into bad outcomes that actually undermine achievements in health.

2) Inequality actually ends up permuting the economy in weird ways. We're seeing big sectors of the economy basically deciding that they'll make more money by catering to the relatively small set of rich people with a bunch of disposable income rather than trying to have a broad reach like they had in the past:

https://slate.com/business/2023/06/skiing-movie-theaters-casinos-amusement-parks-prices-upscale-leisure-industry.html

Maybe it's not the end of the world if middle class people can't afford to go skiing anymore, but the opportunities for many people are objectively getting worse as a result of inequality, not just that rich people get more good stuff.

3) It doesn't actually feel sustainable for essentially all of the productivity gains in the economy to be captured by a relatively small group of people, especially since they're definitely not responsible for all of those productivity gains. That's the sort of situation when you get big political overreactions like Communism.

[Brett Bellmore]

"especially since they’re definitely not responsible for all of those productivity gains."

How sure are you of that? I'm a tooling engineer, I design tools for mass production. If my employer pays for a more productive tool, do you think the guy running the machine is responsible for the productivity gain, not the guy who paid for the better tool?

As automation advances, capital, the guys who pay for stuff, is responsible for an increasing proportion of the productivity. Eventually, and I mean within 20-30 years, you're going to be seeing factories that run lights out, totally automated.

Is the janitor who shows up once a week incredibly productive, then?

You want to do something about income inequality, you need a way for more people to derive more of their income from capital, not labor, because labor is going away. Maybe some change to tax laws so that companies have to distribute profits instead of retaining them, so that stocks provide actual income streams, like they used to?

[Sarcastr0]

Productivity is a supply side, not a demand side, attribute.

But I will in fact appeal to incredulity that the multi-million a year-plus-golden-parachute CEO's pay is commensurate with the productivity he brings to the company.

And no, labor is not going away. Not all labor is manufacturing.

[SRG2]

One of the great cons in modern America is the elision between wealth creators and those with wealth. If you are genuinely responsible for building a company that provides a product or service that previously hadn't existed then yes, you're a wealth creator. But if you're the CEO of a company that had been in existence for a while and all you do is maintain the course, if you're a hedge fund manager who used financial engineering to restructure a firm to your own benefit, or if you inherited wealth from your family, you didn't create shit.

But both the tax regime and its advocates pretend that all these groups are wealth creators and we shouldn't question the low taxes or absurdly high earnings that these people can earn. And don't assume that this is the free market in operation - the executive compensation industry is, basically, rigged. There is no real free market for executives because everyone responsible for voting on exec comp understands the implicit contract.

[Brett Bellmore]

Who said anything about them deserving it? In fact, I think it is deplorably common for professional management to be hugely over-paid, because, who decides pay rates?

Management.

We've got a serious problem, economically: widespread violation of fiduciary responsibilities towards the actual owners of the company, the stockholders. Our economy is now almost perfectly designed to maximize, not suppress, agent-principal conflicts. Actual control of how capital is used is multiple layers of agents away from the people whose capital it is, and those agents' own pay is almost totally disconnected from their performance.

[shawn_dude]

Stockholders are largely institutions not individuals these days. Retirement plans, insurance companies, and non-profits hold the majority of it. Only about 25% of stock is owned by individuals.

[Sarcastr0]

I don’t think the solution is to throw decision making more to folks in it for the profit.

[Nige]

That’s weird. The modern form of capitalism seems to be to make everything as cheap and shoddy and bad as possible, with lots of built-in obsolescence, paying employees as little as possible, getting rid of them at every opportunity, while maximising shareholder returns as much as possible, preferably via tax scams and loopholes instead of making things or providing services.

[Brett Bellmore]

Nige, free market capitalism is kind of like diet and exercise: It works, but the capitalists themselves find it unpleasant, and are continually looking for ways to get the gains without having to do the work. Adam Smith said it himself: "“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Nobody distrusts capitalists more than people who believe in free market capitalism. The problem is that, when government intervenes in the name of stopping capitalist abuses, they usually end up working WITH the capitalists to formalize abuses, instead.

Crony capitalism. It's not what free market capitalists advocate, it's the product of thinking free market capitalism can be improved on by government.

[jb]

Yes, I'm sure that people in the top 1% or top .1% of income in the US isn't responsible for all productivity gains. Even in your hypothetical, at a minimum the tool designer is at least as responsible for the gain as the person paying for the tool. But last time I looked at this (which was admittedly about ten years ago), basically all of the gains in the economy were going to bankers, managers and software engineers. So the tool designers aren't getting their share of the gains, while the bankers (who some argue have managed to become a net negative for the economy at this point) are siphoning off the money instead.

And yes, I agree that the incentive structure with our current tax regime is likely part of the problem although we might come to different conclusions about how to change them.

[Ben_]

Note how everyone talking at you argues based on thinly-veiled envy.

And they each have a story to tell about someone, somewhere who got paid "too much".

So you see Brett, anything goes. Stealing is ok because of the story about the hedge fund guy. Hurting people is ok because "golden parachute". Anything is ok (for the good people) because there's always another a story to be told.

[Nige]

Everyone knows the real good people are the people with all the money, and they are also the most victimised in the entire history of the universe.

[jb]

Shock news: Ben_ can't imagine any of his political opponents as being anything other than personally selfish in their political motivations. Maybe this says more about Ben_ than other people, though.

[Ben_]

It’s mere what "against their interests" means. Looting your neighbors' paychecks for a tiny payout to yourself or your friends is second nature to you guys. Anyone who wouldn’t do it as much as you must just be making a mistake.

[Drewski]

"We’re seeing big sectors of the economy basically deciding that they’ll make more money by catering to the relatively small set of rich people with a bunch of disposable income rather than trying to have a broad reach like they had in the past"

One thing I find concerning is that we're increasingly seeing this with government-run operations. Want to skip past the poors waiting for a zoo tour? Don't like security lines at the airport? Need a reserved city parking space without a waiting list? More and more often we see government services that offer the opportunity to skip ahead and avoid hassle, for money. Not only does it make things worse for those paying regular rates but it inentivizes bad service in order to sell people on the upgrades.

[shawn_dude]

Because cancer clusters in impoverished communities are proof of "health and wealth" in free places!

[Stephen Lathrop]

No, Krayt. For goods which can be supplied in essentially unlimited quantities, income inequality matters less. For goods the market has not figured out how to supply except in limited quantities, free market ideology is the doctrine which empowers plutocrats to say to everyone else, "None for you." In today's United States those limited goods include quality health care, safe living areas, good educational opportunities, and, increasingly, access to employment which empowers personal agency.

[Sarcastr0]

According to the actual reg:https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/09/01/2023-18569/hazardous-materials-suspension-of-hmr-amendments-authorizing-transportation-of-liquefied-natural-gas

“Transportation of LNG by rail tank car has not occurred since the July 24, 2020, publication of a final rule authorizing transportation of LNG in rail tank cars”

"This approach reflected the unique safety risks presented by rail transportation of large volumes of LNG and the historically low demand to transport LNG by rail."

"In the United States, pipelines have historically delivered most natural gas, although other modes of transportation—such as rail and highway—have accounted for a relatively minor portion of natural gas transportation, typically in the form of LNG"

Your populist sackcloth act would have more to it if it appeared you had actually bothered to know what you are talking about.

[Nige]

Yeah, trains could blow up any old place, pipelines you can drive right through protected wilderness and native lands.

[Sarcastr0]

Nothing is costless. Rail transport accidents cause more injuries to humans on a per-barrel-mile or per-ton-mile basis.

[Nige]

Add it to the costs of fossil fuels.

[OtisAH]

How will he maintain his Pox On All Houses self-image if he starts learning about the topics that drive him into his contradictory rampages?

[shawn_dude]

"Remember when progressives and the left were the people upset about the increasing income inequality? lol. "

Remember the phrase "other side of the tracks?" Meaning the railroad tracks, where the poor people live? One of the burdens poorer people bear are increased impact from industrial effects like pollution, industrial noise, smells, etc. They're paying for LNG and other dangerous chemicals being processed and transported near their homes already.

[Brett Bellmore]

The phrase is the "other" side of the tracks, employed thus by people on this side of the tracks. It doesn't refer to proximity to the tracks, but instead situations where the tracks are a dividing line between different groups.

[John F. Carr]

Like some other states, Connecticut asked police to keep track of which races got traffic tickets. Race reporting was not integrated into the ticketing system. The records were independent. If police wrote a dozen tickets for driving while black they might record those in both systems then add a dozen non-existent white driver tickets in the race tracking database to restore racial balance. An auditor discovered the fraud by comparing real tickets and self-reported race breakdown.

A few years ago Massachusetts police were caught submitting tickets with false information to make it look like they made ticket quota despite not having worked the shift. Come in on Friday and backdate some tickets to Thursday, that sort of thing.

One of the questions you might be asked during jury selection is whether you would believe a police officer more or less than any other witness. No, I wouldn’t, they’re probably both equally dishonest.

[David Nieporent]

they’re probably both equally dishonest.

In theory. But cops are professional liars, and most people are only amateurs.

[apedad]

Scenario:

Beau Biden doesn’t die in 2015 so Joe Biden runs and wins the presidency in 2016 (easily beating Trump), and is easily re-elected in 2020.

So none of the Trump issues (Russia, classified documents, pornstar, Georgia, etc.), issues come up and none of the “stolen” election rhetoric either

So….who’s running in 2024?

Trump would have lost twice (would he try a third time?), and Hillary would have been out of the picture for basically a decade.

[Mr. Bumble]

What does Beau Biden's death have to do with this?

[apedad]

Joe didn't run in 2016 specifically because of the death of his son.

[Mr. Bumble]

Seems at odds with this.
https://time.com/4079655/joe-biden-2016-presidential-race/

"Biden’s announcement was the final word on whether he would try to honor a request from his late son that he take another stab at the job he first sought in 1988, at age 44. The presidency still appealed to Biden, but the pathway there, he recognized, was too difficult for a family still grieving Beau Biden, who lost his fight with brain cancer in May. Beau was two years old than the man he called “pop” when he made his first White House run."

[Magister]

The pathway that was too difficult for a family grieving Beau Biden would not be too difficult for a family not grieving Beau Biden (as they demonstrated in 2020).

[Bob from Ohio]

“request from his late son that he take another stab at the job”

Who thinks Beau made any such request? Another Joe-fable I’d say.

Biden didn’t run because Obama made it clear to him it was Clinton’s time.

Edit: Oh, lookee here

"Biden: No truth to stories of Beau's dying wish
William Cummings
USA TODAY 10/16/2015

[Magister]

“Beau all along thought that I should run and I could win,” Biden said, “but there was not — what is sort of made out as this Hollywood-esque thing — that at the last minute Beau grabbed my hand and said, ‘Dad you’ve got to run,’ like, ‘Win one for the Gipper.’ Wasn’t anything like that.”

In the end, Biden felt that the loss of his son was too much to bear while trying to run a presidential campaign.

“Dealing with the loss of Beau, any parent listening who’s lost a child knows that it doesn’t follow schedules of primaries and caucuses and contributors and the like,” he said. “Everybody grieves at a different pace.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/10/26/vice-president-biden-beau-dying-request/74618302/

[Bob from Ohio]

Thanks for posting the link. I can't post links for some reason.

[Frank Drackman]

Yeah, that was a shame how he died taking enemy fire in Iraq

[Magister]

I doubt the Republicans would nominate Trump a second time if he lost in 2016.

I think you'd see the same candidates otherwise; Biden's 2017-2025 vice president, whoever that might have been, plus the same Democrats who ran in 2020 and the same Republicans who are running now. There would be some Republicans who were too compromised in our timeline (either from opposing Trump too much or supporting his insurrection too much) who might be running, and a different history might have raised relative unknowns to enough prominence to run.

[David Nieporent]

I doubt the Republicans would nominate Trump a second time if he lost in 2016.

They absolutely wouldn't have. Although Brett is delusional in thinking the GOP was against Trump during his presidency, they were largely against him until he beat Hillary, because they had thought he was a sure loser. Once he did that, they fully embraced him. But that wouldn't have happened if he had lost; he'd have been totally ostracized.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Joe Biden runs and wins"

Not beating Clinton. She was historic.

[Martinned]

Biden wouldn't have beaten Trump in 2016 either. Sometimes the sitting VP wins the presidency (e.g. Bush sr), but only if the sitting president is a lot more popular than Obama was in 2016.

[NOVA Lawyer]

I tend to think Biden would have won. Why would he have gotten fewer votes than Hillary, who had the emails/Comey headwind?

“only if the sitting president is a lot more popular than Obama was in 2016.”

Reagan’s last three Gallup polls: 51% (Oct 1988), 57% (Nov 1988), 63% (Dec 1988)

Obama’s Gallup polls in October to December 2016 ranged from 52% (earlier October) to 57% (last one wholly in December) and his last Gallup poll showed 59% approval.

I’m not sure you can draw any broad conclusions from a gap of, at most, a few points where both were well (and consistently) above 50% at and after the November election. (Obama’s approval was 57% in the poll conducted the week of including the Tuesday of the 2016 election.) In fact, their poll numbers and the trajectory were very similar (the shape of the graphs of their poll numbers was very similar with both dipping after initial high ratings, briefly rising around their re-election campaign, then dipping below 50%, and then rising to be two of the highest rated end-of-term Presidents other than Bill Clinton: Bill Clinton (66%), Reagan (63%), Obama (59%), and Eisenhower (59%).

I guess you can imagine there is some magical 60% barrier, but then Al Gore is an exception to that “rule”.

[Magister]

He might not have beaten Clinton in the primary even if he had started early enough.

But in the general election? Biden had won a lot more elections than Clinton; he wasn't steadily demonized by Republicans for decades before; he didn't have the email issue or other investigation against him; he wasn't a woman; he visited Wisconsin in the 2016 campaign. But maybe other issues would have been significant enough (his age, plagiarism, gaffes) or maybe the Russians would have increased their efforts to get Trump elected.

[jb]

Clinton was an historically unpopular candidate and just barely lost. Assuming he would have won the nomination, Biden likely would have won pretty easily.

[Martinned]

Clinton was an historically unpopular candidate by the time the Trump campaign was done with her. What makes you think Biden in 2016 would have been character assassinated in the same way?

[NOVA Lawyer]

Clinton had been, quite literally, demonized since the 1990s. Yes, Joe would have taken hits, but he was never as unlikable as Hillary and had not had the sustained attacks since the 1990s. Hillary was almost mythologically bad in the right wing hive mind.

Which is not to say that Biden could have won the primary (he probably couldn’t have) or to deny that circumstances were less favorable to him versus Trump in 2016 than in 2020 (Trump fatigue definitely helped significantly). But I hardly think it’s a foregone conclusion that Biden wouldn’t have done better than Hillary in a general. (And, given how close it was, Hillary likely would have won on essentially any other day than that Tuesday. It was the nadir of her polls. And she very nearly certainly would have won but for Comey's announcement.)

And if your analysis begins with Hillary was so disliked because of how Trump treated her, then you can only be right by accident. She was thoroughly disliked by half the population well before the campaigns for 2016 started.

[Brett Bellmore]

Clinton wasn't demonized, she just failed to totally cover up her corruption.

[David Nieporent]

Of course Biden would've beaten Trump in 2016. Pretty much every major figure not named Hillary would've.

[Krayt]

Joe Biden runs and wins the presidency in 2016 (easily beating Trump), and is easily re-elected in 2020.

So you assume, probably correctly, there would have been no mysterious COVID plague, and thus no dramatic ads by Democrats in the 2020 election with very low Hertz sounds and a black screen with “40 million unemployed” on it running on TV, after bipartisan lockdowns doing the right thing sending people home.

[Sarcastr0]

You think Covid was cooked up by Democrats, or something?

[Krayt]

No, even in this extreme hypothesis they had nothing to do with it.

They did, however, run those exact ads. Blaming Trump as a sinister person responsible for 40 million unemployed, the result of bipartisan lockdowns.

This may have been the first time I wished for an asteroid to smear the surface of the Earth, that someone could be that profoundly, soullessly evil.

[Sarcastr0]

"there would have been no mysterious COVID plague" means what?

[jb]

You think that is the most misleading political ad you've ever seen?

[Brett Bellmore]

Cooked up by? No, unless you count Fauci paying for the gain of function research, and I don't think he meant to unleash a pandemic disease on the world, he just wasn't cautious enough.

Used as an excuse to take unnecessary measures that tanked the economy going into the election? Sure. I don't know that they did it deliberately to that end, it might just have been their spinal reflex authoritarianism. But without Covid measures tanking the economy, Trump almost certainly would have won easily.

[Sarcastr0]

Fauci did not make Covid, you don't need to believe every dumbass morsel that comes across your screen. I like how you kinda imply he was in the lab coat not being careful enough and so doing the lab leak as well.

[Life of Brian]

Fauci did not make Covid

The sentence you're attacking said "paying for" -- unedited and everything. I'm supremely comfortable you're not that poor of a reader.

[Sarcastr0]

I don’t think he meant to unleash a pandemic disease on the world, he just wasn’t cautious enough.

Go back to Pedantopolis, you suck.

[Life of Brian]

What a lazy attempt to try to preserve your original lazy swipe. Pray explain to the class how a word of that is inconsistent with funding the efforts rather than personally performing them. I'll wait.

[Nige]

‘Used as an excuse’

Seven million dead and counting. You are narcissistic sociopaths who think everything is about you.

'Trump almost certainly would have won easily.'

If Trump had shown himself to be a competent leader willing to do what was best for the country in the face of a crisis, he would have won easily. All he ended up doing was pandering to the sociopathic narcissim of his supporters who believed it was all about oppressing them, and triggered even more loathing for him as a person and a leader.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The Wuhan Flu didn't kill that many.

[Nige]

So speaketh The Ed.

[bernard11]

Correct.

COVID was a gift to Trump. If he had behaved semi-responsibly, instead of lying about it, pushing bogus cures, etc. he would have been reelected easily as the President who led us through the crisis.

But he doesn't know how to do that.

[ducksalad]

As Bob says, it’s virtually certain that Clinton would have beaten Biden in the 2016 primary. Even without Clinton in 2020, he had trouble getting past other “centrists” much less known than her.

[David Nieporent]

No sentence that starts "As Bob says" is going to end well, and this one ended up worse than a Dr. Ed/Brett Bellmore historical mashup. What "trouble" did Biden have in 2020 getting past what "other centrists"? By the fourth contest — South Carolina — Biden was fully in charge, running away with the nomination. The only candidate that gave him even a minor run for his money was Bernie Sanders, who is lots of things but not "centrist."

[apedad]

Dear God,

Last week I determined that everything that you can conceivably create (including things that are living, nonliving, and even intangible), is eventually destroyed.

As I mentioned, “For the bajillion times you’ve come up to bat, you’ve struck out EVERY SINGLE TIME,” and wondered if there’s a HIGHER power that not only has the ability to locate everything you create (again including the intangible things), and also there’s absolutely nowhere you can hide them, but also has the capability to thoroughly destroy everything you make.

And I don’t mean the Devil or Satan or Mephistopheles* or . . . who’s the “man of wealth and taste” in the Rolling Stones song?

They’re made up boogie-men that humans created because sometimes they can’t readily explain unusual or bad things around them, like this guy: https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1696147664692224391

No, I mean some entity vastly more powerful and eternally more successful than you.

And since I don’t know anything about this entity (except their 100% success rate against you), I’m afraid I can’t give any more info.

I do know though that you are the ultimate loser and, well, I just can’t support a loser; especially the complete and utter loser you are.

So, I’m signing off.

Hope you (eventually) figure things out and if you do let all of us know - and not through your clerks and lackeys – give it to us face-to-face, mmmK?

Done,

apedad

(*capt crisis: PLEASE do a movie review on “Angel On My Shoulder,” with Paul Muni and Claude Rains as Mephistopheles. It’s in my top three movies of all time. Mucho beaucoup!)

[Mr. Bumble]

This is getting as old as capt's porno reviews.

[Bob from Ohio]

capt. pleasures himself his way, ape pleasures himself his way.

[VinniUSMC]

So, I’m signing off.

Please be true, please be true, please be true.

Is this your suicide note? No response would be greatly appreciated.

[Internet sloth]

The ruler of the Southern Ocean was Shu, the ruler of the Northern Ocean was Hu, and the ruler of the Centre was Chaos.

Shu and Hu were continually meeting in the land of Chaos, who treated them very well. They consulted together how they might repay his kindness, and said: 'Men all have seven orifices for the purpose of seeing, hearing, eating and breathing, while this ruler alone has not a single one. Let us try to make them for him.'

Accordingly they dug one orifice in him every day. At the end of seven days Chaos died.

[Sarcastr0]

Man, we got some folks with fragile faith if this stuff sets you off.

[Estragon]

Proud boys! Stand back and stand by… for 22 years.

“There’s no comparing anybody that was there — including myself — with George Washington or any of the Founding Fathers […] We invoked 1776 and the Constitution of the United States and that was wrong to do. That was a perversion.”

[Bob from Ohio]

"6 1/2 years in prison for man who burned buildings following George Floyd's murder"
Matt Sepic, MPR News, October 18, 2022 12:20 PM

"Judge goes below guidelines, gives 10-year term to man who set deadly Lake St. fire during unrest"
The prosecutor argued that 26-year-old Montez Lee Jr. was a protester, not a rioter.
By Paul Walsh Star Tribune
January 18, 2022 — 6:20am"

[Sarcastr0]

U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly departed significantly below what the federal guidelines called for in issuing his ultimate sentence -- even as he accepted the government's recommendation to apply the so-called 'terrorism enhancement' that effectively labeled Tarrio's crimes as domestic terrorism.

You consistently want harsher sentences and less due process. Except here.

[Bob from Ohio]

Harsher sentences for real crimes like setting fires which kill, not treating a riot as terrorism.

Left wing rioter, prosecutor argues he was a protester. Right wing riot enabler, prosecutor argues he was a terrorist.

Its literally “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law” in operation.

[apedad]

It must suck to be you.

[Mr. Bumble]

Another one of God's failures?

[OtisAH]

Can’t suck more than reading him though. We’re still on the doody end of that stick.

[Bob from Ohio]

Mute button is right there.

[OtisAH]

If I muted every ignorant sack of flop-sweat, regret, and excrement who posts here there’d be fewer than two dozen readable posts on an 800 post open thread. And it makes no sense to just mute a couple of you.

[shawn_dude]

I mute a handful that are consistently dumb. The upside is I can do a quick scan of the comments to see the muted vs non-muted ratio and decide if the thread is even worth my time.

[Bob from Ohio]

"It must suck to be you."

Not at all, I rest in HaShem's loving embrace.

I just think "protestors" who intentionally set fires should be harshly punished. You don't I guess.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It does.

It once sucked to be Black.

That got changed....

[Sarcastr0]

argues he was a terrorist.

Didn't just argue - *proved beyond a reasonable doubt.*

Which makes that asshole a terrorist not a rioter.

[Bob from Ohio]

He's not a terrorist whatever was "proven".

Insurrection! Coup! Terror!

Your hysteria is amazing.

[Sarcastr0]

Not me. The court.

Your faction-based lack of hysteria is noted and shitty.

[David Welker]

This whole terrorism stuff is just a bunch of rhetoric.

I am wondering why we don't designate the Chinese Communist Party as a terrorist organization. It uses violence to achieve ideological and political objectives.

The idea that violence somehow becomes worse if done based on political objectives is strange. Sometimes, political objectives make violence better rather than worse. Example: John Brown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)

In that case, we have an inexcusable acts of violence. However, if he was a serial killer who just killed for fun rather than some political/moral objective, he would actually have been worse.

I also have a problem with hate crime enhancements. We are getting into the territory of trying to punish people for their opinions (however wrong) and not just their actions.

[Brett Bellmore]

Government regards terrorism crime as extra bad because it's aimed at influencing government, the civilian attacks are just supposed to pressure government.

In the immediate cases, the terrorism wasn't just aimed at pressuring government, but was actually directed against people working for the government. Double plus ungood.

[Bob from Ohio]

There was no terrorism.

Nobody had guns or bombs. No government employee was seriously harmed. No innocents harmed. The only gunshot was from a trigger happy cop.

[Nige]

Just your standard white riot - the biggest outrage is that anyone objects.

[Bob from Ohio]

Your faction-based hysteria is noted and shitty.

[Sarcastr0]

You seem to be pretty salty about the Proud Boys' dealings in the criminal justice system you usually find way to lax.

The due process you generally argue to be burdensome was followed, the evidentiary burdens met, the guidelines followed.

It resulted in some large sentences. But this time it was people you find to be human, which is a change for you, since you generally pre-crime folks into being not worthy of having rights or your empathy.

[Bob from Ohio]

You seem to be pretty happy about the Proud Boys’ dealings in the criminal justice system you usually find way to [sic] harsh.

[Sarcastr0]

I’m shedding no tears, but I do think these sentences are part-and-parcel of how much we overuse our jails and prisons.
I said so below about an hour ago.

Sorry, you're groping for a tu quoque won’t find purchase here. You, on the other hand, are more nakedly a hypocrite.

[Aunt Teefah]

The last thing you see before your children are kidnapped and enslaved by the Nestle Corporation:

https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1698302619083509871/photo/4

[apedad]

Want to win, Republicans? Here’s a blueprint for success in 2024
By Newt Gingrich

Third, Gov. Youngkin has launched a "Secure Your Vote Virginia" campaign, which is designed to mobilize votes and get his supporters to the polls as early as possible. He analyzed the outcomes in 2020 and 2022 and realized that allowing the Democrats to build up a huge advantage before Election Day made it hard – sometimes impossible – for Republicans to play catchup on Election Day.

As Gov. Youngkin explained it in a USA Today article on Aug. 13, "Republicans need to stop fighting early voting. It's how we can win on Election Day."

He went on to write Republicans cannot afford to go into Election Day down thousands of votes. That will all but guarantee loses.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/win-republicans-blueprint-success-2024

Repubs then: Mail-in ballots are a threat to our Nation and should be banned!
Repubs now: Mail-in ballots are a threat to our Nation but fuck it we need to win!

[DaveM]

Virginia has early in person voting. It doesn't have to be mailed in.

Mailing is the SECOND WORST way to cast a ballot.

[David Nieporent]

What's the sixth worst?

[Nige]

Fishing line.

[M L]

Voting by mail drastically increases the capacity for fraud and abuse, ballot harvesting, paying for votes, destroys ballot secrecy, etc. That’s a universally bipartisan recognized fact. I understand everywhere in Europe pretty much does in person only with an ID required.

But yes if it’s going to be allowed then obviously Republicans would need to have well funded operations of paid people on the ground working the nursing homes and the housing projects and so on just like Democrats do and have done for a long time, if they want to compete. But they don't, and I predict they won’t. Republican leadership that controls the money is out to lunch, they don’t care much less want to put in work and tenacity.

[Krayt]

If Democrats are so successful at fraud, successfully ape them. Or expose them, now that you know their magician’s trick.

Oh wait. You knew it all last time, and had the presidency. And governorship of purple states that went blue. And all that executive power couldn’t take that mountain of evidence and do anything with it because when the exec dropped it off, the investigators told them nope sucks to be powerless you hah hah! Who do you think you are, the one charged with enforcing the law?

[M L]

Right, that's what I'm saying, Republicans will need to have a ground game harvesting ballots like Democrats do if they want to compete, if this is how elections are going to work now.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Yet we've been doing it in Colorado for more than a decade without issue.

Anything else, Chicken Little?

[DaveM]

How do you know? Actually, you don't. You couldn't. Even if you did random audits of mailed in ballots it might increase your confidence level a bit, but it would never even come close to the security AND privacy of in person voting. And I doubt they run audits

The US Mail is not, and has never claimed to be, a guaranteed delivery service. Non-delivery rates of first class mail is high single digits.

[Brett Bellmore]

"And I doubt they run audits "

Every time I've heard of anybody trying to do one, just taking the list of people who'd supposedly voted absentee, and go around asking them if they had, it's been shut down in a real hurry as 'voter intimidation'.

[Magister]

The Republican National Committee was under a consent decree for 35 years that forbade, among other things, voter caging.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force

[Brett Bellmore]

Forbade, as I understand it, having election observers, too.

It's since gone, but they're having a slow learning curve getting back to doing things the Democratic party routinely did all that while.

[Magister]

Read the link! They were in minority neighborhoods to intimidate voters.

Armed members of the Task Force "were drawn from the ranks of off-duty county deputy sheriffs and local police," who "prominently displayed revolvers, two-way radios, and BSTF armbands."

Republicans continued the same things anyway; it was just the RNC under the consent decree, but they still violated it several times which is why it got extended. In the wake of Shelby County, it was probably inevitable that it would end. And perhaps fortuitously so, to take another grievance away from the Big Lie crowd; Donald Trump's campaign in 2016 had election observers who were deemed distinct from the RNC with no "coordination".

If the Democrats had done any of the same things, the RNC would surely have taken it to court. Where is that case? Any documentation?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Actually I do know it to be true, because nobody has raised any issues and we haven’t had to adjust our rules governing the process because of any issues.

You people want something to bitch about? How about you look at the guy who put all this bullshit in your head and actually tried to steal the election himself.

And for the record: I can verify whether my ballot was received or not, just like every other Coloradoan.

[jb]

Also the appallingly liberal den of Democrats Utah.

[M L]

Whether any of these things are an "issue" is a matter of opinion I suppose.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Until you produce evidence, they are “bullshit noise from a bullshit poster.”

[M L]

I don't even know what you're talking about. You want "evidence" that Democrats have significant well funded ground game operations? I can't help it if you're that stupid and ignorant.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Then you're a goddamn idiot, because the only aspect of your post I've addressed at all is your bullshit concerns about mail-in voting.

[David Nieporent]

I understand everywhere in Europe pretty much does in person only with an ID required.

You understand incorrectly.

[M L]

A 2021 Crime Prevention Research Center study found that 46 out of 47 European countries require voters to provide some form of identification to vote — the United Kingdom was the lone exception. However, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson supports voter ID. So while 80% of Americans support voter ID, according to a June 2021 Monmouth poll , and it’s common in the rest of the world, it remains a divisive political issue among elected officials.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/voter-id-laws-are-the-norm-in-europe

I think they are pretty strict on voting in person too, though presumably that loosened up at least temporarily for COVID. E.g. in Greece, "Greeks who are not in their municipality on the election day (perhaps they’re on vacations or on some summer island for temporary work) can’t vote at all. ..The only exception to the point above are the Armed Forces and some other state institutions (e.g. prisons)."

[Martinned]

The UK has voter ID now, though there is no question that the Tories brought it in as a voter suppression technique. Personally I don't mind it because, as you say, it's quite common, and Brits ought to have easy access to affordable government-issued ID anyway. Passports are quite expensive, but that's something that needs to be fixed regardless of whether you need a passport to vote.

In the US, voter ID is much less justifiable.

[VinniUSMC]

"Why won't those damn Republicans just sit back and let us abuse the system in peace!" -shitdad/apeshit

Also, I'm really bummed that you lied about signing off.

[shawn_dude]

Still waiting for actual evidence of abuse of mail-in ballots at any meaningful scale that is out of balance with other forms of ballot fraud. Also, would love to see your explanation for why bed-ridden adults and hourly workers should have to give up their ability to vote if they aren't able to get to a polling place on that one day a year.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Or active duty military. Currently that's 1.3 million people.

[shawn_dude]

Good point. Having been one at one time, mail in ballots often arrived at my APO late and took too long to arrive. But at least I got a chance to try.

[Mr. Bumble]

Sure, why not have Door Dash or Uber Eats pick up the ballots when they deliver your pizza?

[ducksalad]

It's a consistent position (Youngkin's, not yours).

Oppose mail-in voting, but if there is going to be mail-in voting, play by the rules.

No different from opposing targeted tax deductions as a matter of policy, but taking them if they are enacted. Or opposing the designated hitter rule, but having a designated hitter on your team.

[Moderation4ever]

You should have said that the Republican liked mail-in voting before 2020. Many of the rules they complained about were enacted by or during Republicans control of state legislatures. It was only in 2020 when the former President was seeding election skepticism that mail-in voting was questioned. Republicans support skews older and these were the people most likely to use mail-in ballots. It was only during the pandemic and a broad group of people started using mail-in ballots that Republicans objected. So, the Republican are not adopting a new position but returning to an old one.

[DaveM]

The problem with always being online 24/7 is that people aren't nearly interesting enough to keep our attention. So, attention must be artificially manufactured.

Hence, cat videos. Tik Tok clips. Movie reviews. Game walk-throughs. Make-up videos.

The online social equivalent of going to the Bowling Alley back in the day.

Don't scoff. People need chill time. Might as well do it together.

[Michael Ejercito]

https://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWbd0.html

Perhaps the greatest surprise in our work was that even small nuclear wars can have devastating climatic effects. We considered a war in which a mere 100 megatons were exploded, less than one percent of the world arsenals, and only in low-yield airbursts over cities. This scenario, we found, would ignite thousands of fires, and the smoke from these fires alone would be enough to generate an epoch of cold and dark almost as severe as in the 5000 megaton case. The threshold for what Richard Turco has called The Nuclear Winter is very low.

If 100 megatons can generate an epoch of cold and dark, imagine what one teraton could do.

Which raises the question.

Why has this not been done already, if climate breakdown is such a bad thing?

[Nige]

You'd rather have nuclear war than reduce carbon emissions. You really are beyond parody.

[Krayt]

Not a war. The proverbial peaceful use of nuclear weapons.

[Nige]

You'd rather set off nukes than reduce carbon emissions.

[OtisAH]

Your question is why we haven’t triggered “an epoch of cold and dark” if “climate breakdown is such a bad thing”? If that’s your question why would you think you’d ever understand any possible response beyond “because it’s all a hoax”?

[bevis the lumberjack]

Because nobody’s that crazy. You’ve gone and joined the population controllers.

If you’re gonna do that, just wait around for a volcano to go off. It’s the all-natural way of getting what you want.

[Brett Bellmore]

Ah, yeah, the nuclear winter theory.

It's been looked at in detail and is bunk. Requires totally unrealistic assumptions, modern cities aren't flammable enough to generate the required firestorms, the fuel load isn't remotely high enough.

[Michael Ejercito]

Why not detonate a cumulative teraton of hydrogen bombs in a single day and find out?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bellmore, how much of everything does not become fuel in a thermonuclear fireball?

[Brett Bellmore]

Trivially, if a material can't engage in exothermic reactions with oxygen, it doesn't matter if a nuclear bomb turns it into radioactive plasma, it's not "fuel", it doesn't contribute to a fire.

Less trivially, the proposed mechanism is that the bombs set off fire storms in cities, and the concentrated heat and burning of carbon compounds sends a plume of soot laden air all the way up into the stratosphere, where it doesn't rapidly get rained out the way it would be down in the troposphere.

But for that to happen you need a VERY high fuel load, to produce enough burning in one spot to generate both the enormous amount of soot, AND to produce an updraft powerful enough to reach the stratosphere. You had that high fuel load in some old European and Japanese cities which were composed mostly of dry as tinder wood structures. And yet, Hiroshima had a firestorm, while Nagasaki didn't. It takes a LOT of fuel lying around to get one.

Modern cities are mostly brick and concrete, they're incapable of generating fire storms.

[Stephen Lathrop]

An updraft powerful enough to reach the stratosphere is a given in any multi-kiloton range thermonuclear explosion. Heat sufficient to ignite most elements, up to and including iron, is also a given. Iron and steel burn, aluminum burns, magnesium famously burns, silicon burns. Not all the by-products will be soot. I am in over my head on this one. So are you.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yup, silicon burns, if it's not already "burnt", as you'll find all silicon outside of IC wafers is. But carbon compounds are nearly unique in their capacity to produce ultra-fine particles while burning in air.

Demonstrably, even a nuke didn't cause a firestorm in Nagasaki.

And I linked to analysis above of the nuclear winter theory. It's bunk.

[DaveM]

Why yes, let's intentionally emit not just dust enough to cool the whole planet, but radioactive dust. What could possibly go wrong?

[shawn_dude]

An epoch is several million years. The recent 2022 Tongan volcanic eruption was measured at 61MT equivalent or larger than the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated (Tsar Bomba.) According to fire.ca.gov, there are an average of 5,812 wildland fires per year averaging 1 million acres. Nationwide, that number is around 50,000 fires burning over 7 million acres per year. Globally, it's likely far higher.

Despite the fact that these smoke events have a measurable local impact on climate, the volume of them already exceeds the 100 MT total global detonation of low-yield, fire-causing bombs the article mentions.

[VinniUSMC]

Pedantry doesn't suit you. You're not very good at it. "It could generate an epoch of cold and dark" doesn't imply a length of time, it implies the beginning of a new period of "cold and dark". It's even the first definition when searched!

Webster-
Epoch, noun

1a: an event or a time marked by an event that begins a new period or development
b: a memorable event or date

2a: an extended period of time usually characterized by a distinctive development or by a memorable series of events
b: a division of geologic time less than a period and greater than an age

3: an instant of time or a date selected as a point of reference (as in astronomy)

[John F. Carr]

Geoengineering is an old idea. It attracts hostility from the powers that be because they are fixated on a solution instead of a problem.

[Brett Bellmore]

It attracts hostility because they’re using ‘global warming’ as an excuse to completely reengineer society according to their whims. Essentially the saner among them are trying to recreate feudalism, the less sane are actually working towards human extinction.

While geoengineering would largely allow life to go on as normal. And normal life is what they're working to abolish!

[Nige]

'Essentially the saner among them are trying to recreate feudalism, the less sane are actually working towards human extinction.'

Oh, I'm sorry, is wealth inequality a problem after all? Also, has Dr Evil issued his Make Humanity Extinct manifesto already?

'While geoengineering would largely allow life to go on as normal.'

The solution is perfect! never been tried, inceredibly expensive, results uncertain, bad side effects probable, but other than that perfect!

[Don Nico]

And yet, removing 100 Gigatonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering it all underground is certainly geoengineering on a grand scale

[Nige]

Rewilding and restoring the sorts of wetlands and grasslands and forests that absorb and sequester CO2 is geoengineering of the most obvious and effective sort.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Seriously, could Kirkland be right?

Three times now, on three different days I have tried to hit the open thread with SA post describing what a horrible person I think that guy is. And how poorly his rise to fame speaks of our politics. All three times it has failed to post. The one this morning was immediately behind my Biden LNG post, but it ain’t there. Is someone cutting posts out? This is a sincere question, as I can’t think of a different explanation.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Rittenhouse is that guy
I had to try two configurations to get it to post.

[Brett Bellmore]

Interesting. When I tried a comment with his first and name in it, only spelled correctly, it didn’t post the first time, and got blocked as a duplicate comment the second.

But “Kyle” and “Rittenhouse” post just fine, so long as they’re not next to each other, or spelled correctly.

Looks like somebody slipped his name into a porn filter? Anyway, it's not you, it's the name.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I'll be darned, you are right, I just tried it. Hilarious!

[OtisAH]

Maybe it’s a data point in favor of the existence of a kind and loving God?

[VinniUSMC]

Whatchu talkin' 'bout Bevis?

[Brett Bellmore]

Test: Rittenhouse.

[Brett Bellmore]

Test: Kyle.

[Brett Bellmore]

Test: Ky1e Rittenhouse.

[Mr. Bumble]

Kirkland hacked the VC comments?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Seriously, could Kirkland be right?

So far as I am aware, Prof. Volokh imposes his censorship (1) after the fact, by causing comments he dislikes to vanish or (2) by telling commenters to stop commenting or to stop using certain words to describe conservatives.

And censor he does. Repeatedly. Hypocritically. In a partisan, viewpoint-driven manner.

I am not aware, however, of any censorship at this site conducted by Prof. Volokh imposing filters, blocks, or the like.

[not guilty]

Donald Trump appeared on Hugh Hewitt's radio show and said that if he has to go to trial, he "absolutely" will testify in his own defense. https://hughhewitt.com/former-president-donald-trump-on-his-trials-and-his-campaign

Testifying is Trump's right, and is solely his decision. But doing so would be quite a trainwreck.

[apedad]

Lawyers!

Defendants can't invoke the 5th from the witness stand, right?

Must-see-TV-with-popcorn-and-drinking-games.

[Bored Lawyer]

I only did limited criminal work, but my understanding is that once the defendant takes the stand, he is open to cross-examination about anything relevant to the case, even beyond the scope of his direct testimony.

And, yes, Trump testifying would be a train-wreck.

[not guilty]

You are correct.

[shawn_dude]

Yes, but will it be televised because THAT would be worth my time to watch.

[Bored Lawyer]

Not the federal trials, which by rule may not be televised. Don't know about Georgia, but my impression is yes.

[not guilty]

Yesterday's hearing in Georgia was televised.

[Krayt]

Unless he views it as power hungry factions tangling with each other, surface arguments be damned as they are just tools for power.

Which is certainly closer to the truth than a million feigned sour pusses marching articles of impeachment over to the senate.

Like a bank lying their $35 charge for a $4 overdraft is to help you preserve your credit rating, these sour pusses are lies covering the real joys of the scummy hidden business models.

[Moderation4ever]

The way that Trump is presenting his defense for some of these cases, will almost require him to testify. I think it will be difficult for him to prove he actually believed there was election fraud, if he does not testify to his beliefs. Now, if his defense in the court room is different than his public defense he maybe able to skate by without testifying.

[Bored Lawyer]

“They say that Hitler killed the Jews because they were Jews and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews. Not true. It was clearly explained that [the Europeans] fought [the Jews] because of their social role, and not their religion,” [he] said in August. “Several authors wrote about this. Even Karl Marx said this was not true. He said that the enmity was not directed at Judaism as a religion but to Judaism for its social role.”

“The [Europeans] fought against these people because of their role in society, which had to do with usury, money and so on and so forth,” he continued.

Without knowing who said this, do you consider this anti-semitic?

[Ridgeway]

Of course it is.

[jdoeford]

Yup.

After I answered, I looked up the speaker. I was kind of disappointed, I thought the speaker would turn out to be someone I'd never expect.

[ducksalad]

If the speaker agrees with the position he is describing, yeah, that’s anti-semitic.

If the speaker is describing someone else’s position, it’s still confused by the speaker conflating Jews with people who practice Judaism.

[Ridgeway]

He is saying that people don't dislike Jews because of their religious practices, but rather because of their predilection for usury and general unpleasantness.

Hoppy could probably provide some deeper insight.

[ducksalad]

And he's "correct" as far as describing what anti-semites believe. I don't think a mob engaged in a pogrom would spare some business because the owner yelled that he didn't believe in God.

[hoppy025]

This is correct. People don't historically dislike Jews because they want to follow the Torah and not accept Jesus, but because of their collective behavior. It's much like blacks. Nobody dislikes blacks because they're dark. People dislike blacks because they're collectively violent and disorderly.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Not only is it anti-semitic, it's completely wrong. Does the speaker believe that each Jew killed in the Holocaust was murdered because of his or her social position? Or just because he or she was a Jew.

[Bored Lawyer]

The consensus seems to be this is classic anti-semitism. Which it is.

And the speaker -- Mahmoud Abbas, the "moderate" Palestinian leader with whom Israel is supposed to set up a two-state solution.

[Ridgeway]

See -- he is a moderate. He only hates Jews because of their general usuriousness, not because of their religion. A full-bore antisemite would hate them for both.

Just like how Hoppy is only moderately racist. He only hates blacks because of they are "collectively violent and disorderly." Not because of their skin color.

[Enrique]

I debunk Baude and Paulsen's misguided article here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4564998

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Just based on the abstract, the paper seems to be a straw man, mischaracterizing what Baude - Paulsen are saying and then arguing against that.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Clinger-on-clinger rumble!

[Mr. Bumble]

Just one more thing to be concerned about that no one seems to care about.
https://transformers-magazine.com/tm-news/dangerous-transformer-shortage-in-the-usa/

[Brett Bellmore]

I've cared about it for years, it's been an issue for going on 20 years now.

Essentially, because so many utilities are politically controlled public ventures, they're not really allowed to spend money on stockpiling materials to deal with rare events, even if that means they're setting themselves up for an eventual major failure.

It's a subset of a basic issue that was exposed during Covid: The relentless paring of safety margins in order to extract the last tiny bit of efficiency, at the cost of rendering the system no longer resilient against disruptions. In the automotive industry we call it "Just too late inventory".

I think maybe it's a result of something business schools teach, or perhaps just that price comparison has become so easy in the modern era that nobody can survive if they're willing to maintain those margins, their lunch gets eaten by the guy who doesn't.

[Mr. Bumble]

Another good reason to look into a back-up whole house generator.

[Longtobefree]

Good luck with that; you do remember "they" are going to ban gas burning stuff, right?
And forget diesel, too.
Your whole house generator will have to be powered by slaves on treadmills.

[John F. Carr]

The PC term is "enslaved people".

[ducksalad]

Just in Time: a horrible conspiracy of MBAs and industrial engineers to bring the downfall of civilization.

It’s gotten to the point where I’ve heard of parts suppliers bragging to their customers about how little inventory they have. WTF?

[Mr. Bumble]

Just in time is no longer just in time.

[jb]

It is weird that you assert that the problem is government control and then go on to say how the whole economy has moved to being structured this way. Yes, it's a problem for the reasons that you and ducksalad articulate; no, it has nothing to do with the fact that they're politically controlled public ventures--in fact that should be the one protection we have against it happening but unfortunately the voters also care about lower power bills next week instead of preventing an outage next year.

It's really dumb and sad that the people who make extremely short-sighted decisions about how to run their companies almost always end up making a ton of money and passing the problem on to someone else. I wish I had a viable idea to fix the problem.

[Mr. Bumble]

You do realize the the states and the feds play a huge role in regulating "public utilities"?

[jb]

Yes. I also realize that resistance is measured in ohms. Neither of these facts are the cause of the problem here which Brett himself acknowledges is a broad feature of the modern economy including in purely private entities.

[apedad]

Courthouse clerk who wrote book on Alex Murdaugh trial lawyers up after convicted killer claims she had an ax to grind and coached jurors

The additions of lawyers Bamberg and Lewis came not long after Murdaugh defense lawyers Dick Harpootlian, a Democratic state senator, and Jim Griffin announced the motion for a new trial, which asserted clerk (Becky) Hill “instructed jurors not to be ‘misled’ by evidence presented in Mr. Murdaugh’s defense” and “told jurors not to be ‘fooled by’ Mr. Murdaugh’s testimony in his own defense.”

What’s more, the Murdaugh lawyers alleged, Hill had “frequent private conversations with the jury foreperson, a Court-appointed substitution for the foreperson the jury elected for itself at the request of Ms. Hill.”

The Murdaugh defense also asserted alleged that Hill polled jurors during the trial “for their opinions about Mr. Murdaugh’s guilt or innocence” and “invented a story about a Facebook post to remove a juror she believed might not vote guilty.”

https://lawandcrime.com/live-trials/live-trials-current/alex-murdaugh/courthouse-clerk-who-wrote-book-on-alex-murdaugh-trial-lawyers-up-after-convicted-killer-claims-she-had-an-ax-to-grind-and-coached-jurors/

WHOA!

This a huge twist in this case.

The court clerk was allegedly talking to jury members about the case, often remarking about the defendant’s presumed guilt and pressuring them to quickly dispense with his case - and then wrote a book about it a couple months later!

[Harvey Mosley]

If this is true (and I have no reason to doubt it; nor a reason to believe it) then the clerk should be sentenced to the same sentence that Murdaugh received.

[not guilty]

Six Colorado voters (four Republicans and two unaffiliated) have sued Donald Trump and the Colorado Secretary of State in state court in Denver for a declaration that Trump is unable to appear on the 2024 Republican primary or general election ballots in Colorado. https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/2023-09-06-08-43-07-Anderson-v-Griswold-Verified-Petition-2023.09.06.pdf

"[A] state's legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office." Hassan v. Colorado, 495 F.App'x 947 (10th Cir. 2012) (Gorsuch, J.) Trump may have to litigate his eligibility to appear on the ballot on a state-by-state basis.

[Martinned]

Not going to happen. The court will declare this a political question, or reject the suit on the merits, or an appellate court will.

[Mr. Bumble]

"The court will declare this a political question..."
Well there has already been a case in Florida. How many will it take to put this to rest, permanently?

[not guilty]

Last year five Georgia voters challenged Marjorie Taylor Greene's eligibility to appear on the ballot pursuant to a state statute which allows voters to challenge whether individual candidates in their districts meet the requisite legal qualifications to run for their prospective positions via an administrative proceeding before Georgia's Office of State Administrative Hearings. Rep. Greene sued in United States District Court claiming that the statute was unconstitutional.

The Court denied injunctive relief and permitted the state administrative proceeding to go forward. Greene v. Raffensperger, 599 F.Supp.3d 1283 (N.D. Ga. 2022). The state proceedings were resolved in Rep. Greene's favor, and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the federal case to the district court with instructions to dismiss the case as moot. https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca11/22-11299/22-11299-2022-11-03.pdf?ts=1667491276

[not guilty]

"Not going to happen. The court will declare this a political question, or reject the suit on the merits, or an appellate court will."

I seriously doubt that. A determination of the merits would require a trial or a summary judgment proceeding after an opportunity for discovery. In either event, Donald Trump must belly up to the buzzsaw.

[ducksalad]

Maybe because it's a high-profile high-stakes case.

But as the Margrave or ballot-access.org will tell you at length, courts have been very willing to rule on ballot access disputes for minor parties, or major parties running for lower offices.

[Martinned]

Yes, exactly because this is a high-profile/high-stakes case. The only people who will dare go near it are people who have an incentive to make political hay out of the section 3 argument, and who can be confident that their decisions won't have actual consequences, because they'll be blocked/overruled somehow.

[Jimmy the Dane]

The real insurrection is coming from the Left's attempts to abuse the judiciary in doing the dirty work. Charging the leading candidate of one of the two major parties with 4 BS indictments and then having Obama judges set trial dates in the middle of the primaries. On top of engaging in further lawfare to force resources to be spent on a state by state effort to deny Trump access to ballots. This is not going to end well for them....

[Sarcastr0]

Welcome back to the VC!

I see you're still into not-so-well veiled threats of political violence.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Where did I make any kind of "threat".....? Hint - I didn't. The only one trick pony that you know is screaming at the top of your lungs about strawmen. Nice try though.

[Sarcastr0]

This is not going to end well for them….

Where did I make any kind of “threat”

That's our Jimmy!

[MoreCurious]

If your kids take shortcuts across my lawn, and I tell them that it's not going to end well for them if they do it again, are you telling us that you're not going to perceive that as a threat?

[Estragon]

Jimmy!! I honestly thought you were in jail. I guess we’re not that lucky. How do you think Tarrio will enjoy the next 22 years? Even worse for him, he couldn’t use the “just a tourist waved in by cops taking pictures” defense you are so fond of. He needed you on his legal team!

[DaveM]

It appears that half the Democrats want to keep Trump off the ballot so they won't lose to him, and the other half wants to make sure he is on the ballot so they have the weaker candidate to run against.

Dems: it's not that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, it's that their left hand is thumb wrestling with their right.

But for Trump, the upshot is he is going to have to litigate in every Democrat-controlled state between now and November next.

[Jimmy the Dane]

They only really need to be successful in one toss up state to rig the entire election or force the Republicans to take underhanded tactics to keep Trump off other state ballots. Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, or Pennsylvania and the 2024 is over before it even started. That is pure and true fascism.

[Sarcastr0]

It appears you're making up a story so that every single judicial action against Trump can be laid at the foot of Democratic plotting, no matter what.

[Jimmy the Dane]

No need to make it up. It is a plot by demokrat operatives.

DOJ = demokrat
State challenges = demokrat funded
Lawfare = demokrat coordinated

Only a fool could not see that this is all designed to get Trump.

[OtisAH]

That is just stupid. Every word and the thought behind each one. Weapons-grade moronium.

[Jimmy the Dane]

So DOJ is not run by demokrats eh?

[windycityattorney]

Its leaders are appointed by democrats, yes. But the whole 14th amendment state challenges came from the Federalist Society - hardly a bastion of Democrat politicians or strategists. And seem to have been taken up mainly by fellow GOP lawyers.

I think most will have a hard time of getting around standing but maybe somewhere someone will have it. And if the recent past is a guide, that person will be a GOP lawyer or GOP state election employee.

[Nige]

Talking out of turn? That's a demokrat.
Lookin' out the window? That's a demokrat.
Staring at my sandals? That's a demokrat.
Paddlin' the school canoe? Oh, you better believe that's a demokrat.

[ducksalad]

Actually the "optimum" result would be for Trump to be on primary ballots, get nominated, but then be barred from the general election ballot very late in the cycle.

A combination of infighting among Republicans and missed deadlines to replace candidates would lead to a scattering of different names on the ballot in different states.

That would cut way down on Republican turnout. But even if enough voters picked the various Republican placeholders on the ballot to win the electoral college, and the electors agreed in principle on the "real" candidate, in several states the electors would be thwarted by laws instantly replacing any electors that do not vote for the name printed on the ballot.

[jb]

It's hardly a Democrat-controlled thing. The first place I heard about there being much traction of the topic was New Hampshire, which has (a) a Republican governor and (b) a Republican Secretary of State.

And the case in Colorado is raised by Republicans as well, even though I think it's fair to describe Colorado as Democrat-controlled at this point.

[Jimmy the Dane]

You don't think the demonkrats can find a few "republicans" to help out? Do you think these professional communists are amateurs?

[Moderation4ever]

You are right on point that the Colorado ballot objection is raised by Republicans. The Republicans could have a good year in 2024 if they could keep Trump from being the nominee. So it is in their best interest to keep Trump from being the nominee.

[windycityattorney]

So was the Florida one.

[Kazinski]

After reading Bruce's paper, particularly his criticism of Chief Justice Chase's decision In Re Griffen, Baude's argument if carried to its conclusion mandates an absurd result:

If Section 3 is actually self executing, as Baude insisted, then Joe Biden did not legally succeed the Presidency from Donald Trump in Jan 2021, and Biden has never been the 46th President of the United States.

In Baude's words "It just is."

[Sarcastr0]

Lenny Bruce?

[Kazinski]

Ok, but if you read Baker's paper and follow his logic on the self executing section 3, then Mike Pence became the 46th President of the United States sometime during the afternoon of Jan. 6th 2021. All actions Trump took as president after Jan 6th are null and void.

So Joe Biden actually succeeded he presidency from Mike Pence and is the 47th president.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think he goes into specific remedies like you are here.

[Kazinski]

Ok, but if you read Baude's paper and follow his logic on the self executing section 3, then Mike Pence became the 46th President of the United States sometime during the afternoon of Jan. 6th 2021. All actions Trump took as president after Jan 6th are null and void, including pardons.

So Joe Biden actually succeeded the presidency from Mike Pence and is the 47th president.

Baude scathing criticised In Re Griffin because Chase ruled that a judge who by most definitions at the time came under the 14th amendment disqualification clause, actually had to be removed as judge by legal proceedings. According to Baude he ceased being a judge the second he became an insurrectionist.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Chief Justice Chase wasn't exactly a model of consistency. The year before Griffin, in the treason case against Jefferson Davis in the same circuit, CJ Chase ruled that section three WAS self-executing. in re Davis, 7 F. Cas. 63, 90, 102 (C.C.D. Va. 1867).

[Kazinski]

I agree with Chase in Griffin: that an official needs to be removed from office by some.procedure, not merely as Baude claims that he is automatically removed at the time he commits some act that retrospectively is considered insurrection.

Here is what Baude said:
"Chase reversed. Here is how he framed the problem: Everybody agreed that Sheffey had been lawfully appointed as a state judge in February 1866, while Virginia was controlled by military reconstruction and the Fourteenth Amendment did not
exist. The question was whether ratification of Section Three kicked him out. As Chase put it: “whether upon a sound construction of the amendment, it must be regarded as operating directly, without any intermediate proceeding whatever, upon all persons within the category of prohibition, and as depriving them at once, and absolutely, of all official authority and power.”
"But his core argument was that surely Section Three cannot mean what it says: It would have bad consequences, can’t possibly have been intended by the ratifiers, and would violate the spirit of the Constitution. As we will explain, these arguments are bad ones.

If you believe as Baude asserts that Section 3 is immediately self executing on Judge Sheffey, then section 3 was immediately self executing on Trump "without any intermediate proceeding whatever", which would make Mike Pence the 46th President on Jan.. 6th.

The Davis case was 1867, the 14th amendment was ratified 1868, Griffin was in 1869. So any inconsistency with Davis is explained.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Also, I could be wrong, but I seem to remember that the decision being challenged in Griffin occurred before the 14th amendment was ratified.

[Kazinski]

I don't know what my spellchecker has against Baude, but it changes his name especially when I use apostrophes, that first sentence of course should be 'Baude's paper'

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY

This white, male, disaffected
conservative blog has
operated for no more than

TWENTY (20)

days without publishing
a vile racial slur; it has
published racial slurs
on at least

TWENTY-SEVEN (27)

different occasions (so far)
during 2023 (that’s at least
27 different discussions,
not 27 racial slurs; many
of those discussions
featured multiple racial slurs).

This assessment does not address
the incessant, disgusting stream of
gay-bashing, misogynist, antisemitic,
Islamophobic, and immigrant-hating
slurs and other bigoted content
presented daily at this conservative
blog, which is presented by
culture war losers from
the Federalist Society for
Law and Public Policy Studies.

Amid this ugly right-wing intolerance and stale conservative thinking, here is something worthwhile.

(This one is good, too.)

[Mr. Bumble]

Karma can be such a bitch:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/09/a-neoconservative-is-a-liberal-who-has-been-mugged.php

[Bob from Ohio]

She'll heal and go back to being pro-criminal. I award her no points.

[Ben_]

I didn’t see this before I posted it below.

Note how she’s blaming the guns for her non-gunshot injuries.

It might be interesting to watch what happens. She either loses her position in Democrat politics or repudiates her Facebook post and goes back to being pro-crime. There’s no 3rd option in Minneapolis.

[John F. Carr]

The British government is close to granting amnesty for some murders committed during the Troubles. Were I writing on a clean slate I would say hang the lot of the IRA terrorists and their counterparts in the North. But my government helped negotiate a peace treaty that included forgiveness. I don't have a sense of whether the bill goes too far. The House of Lords thinks so, as do Northern Ireland's parties. The House of Commons does not.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Were I writing on a clean slate I would say hang the lot of the IRA terrorists and their counterparts in the North.

After that, execute all of the British colonialists and parasites, then mock and scorn the (remainder of the) royal family and its toadies?

[Martinned]

It's mostly the British army veterans that they're trying to protect. Nobody in Westminster is trying to grant amnesty to IRA terrorists.

The bill is currently in ping pong: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3160

The Irish government has already said it will challenge the law in Strasbourg in interstate proceedings. Under standing ECtHR case law, the art. 2 right to life includes a positive obligation to investigate and punish unlawful killings.

[Nige]

I don't think they really care so long as they protect the soldier-killers. It's pure Rule Britannia fuck the Micks, even the ones that are British.

[Davedave]

It's not about protecting the soldiers, it's about protecting the people who gave the orders. They don't want a series of trials in which the soldiers defences/mitigations are that they were following direct orders.

[Nige]

Yeah, probably.

[Martinned]

Most of the people who (ultimately) gave the orders are dead by now.

[Davedave]

The younger ones are not even retired. Bear in mind this shit went on into the nineties - the GFA wasn't signed until 1998.

[Martinned]

The younger ones aren't the ones "who gave the orders". Patrick Mayhew, John Major's Northern Ireland Secretary, has been dead since 2016. Major's Secretary of Defence, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, is still around, but wouldn't be by the time he'd ever be convicted of anything.

[Davedave]

What on earth are you talking about? The Secretary of Defence doesn't give orders to troops and undercover operatives. Those orders were given by local and regional commanders. The relatively junior officers who received them from the commanders and gave them to the people who carried them out are now senior officers in the army and intelligence services.

[Mr. Bumble]

It's called chain of command.
Orders start at the top and work downward.

[Martinned]

There are only two groups of people who are likely enough to be prosecuted that someone might bring in amnesty legislation to protect them: the soldiers at the bottom who did the deed, and the politicians at the top who have friends in high places. In this case I'd argue the worry is about the former.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8352/#:~:text=Recent%20prosecutions&text=To%20date%2C%20six%20military%20personnel,the%20prosecution's%20case%20was%20inadmissible.

[Davedave]

What are you blathering about? Are you just totally failing to understand what I'm saying? There are some now-senior career military and intelligence officers who gave illegal tactical orders. They are the ones trying to arrange protection for themselves - one way they can do that is to ensure the people who carried out their orders are not prosecuted.

Obviously the people who were in charge back then are now dead or long retired. It's the ones who were in tactical command who are now senior officers who are worrying about being prosecuted.

[Ben_]

Another Democrat gets what she voted for:

https://twitchy.com/aaronwalker/2023/09/07/shivanthi-sathanandan-discovers-consequences-of-dismantling-the-police-n2386950

I wonder if she will learn anything?

That’s why Democrat elites live in gated neighborhoods though, so stuff like this only happens to others and they can ignore it.

[Ben_]

Looks like Disney will lose their free speech retaliation case in Florida:

https://x.com/baseballcrank/status/1699900497392800074

[grb]

Ben_ : "Looks like Disney will lose their free speech retaliation case in Florida"

Why are right-wingers always so ignorant? Explanation:

(1) Disney filed a case in Federal Court covering all of Desantis’ criminal actions.

(2) DeSantis filed a case in the Florida courts (covering some of his criminal actions).

(3) Disney dropped the elements in the federal lawsuit being covered in the state case, filed counterclaims in the state case, and everything is proceeding forward. All of DeSantis’ criminal actions still face full legal review and the evidence against him is substantial – much of it a result of his bragging about his petty criminality.

I hope that helps you understand this better, Ben_….

“Disney last week had asked to drop its other claims in the case, which concern a dispute over Walt Disney World’s development contracts, because they are being actively pursued in a separate state-level lawsuit in Florida”

“In the state-level case, Disney has filed counterclaims — including a breach of contract claim — and is seeking damages against the board. Earlier Thursday, the board asked that court to dismiss Disney’s counterclaims”

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/disney-drops-free-speech-claim-political-retaliation-suit-desantis-rcna103965

[Ben_]

Looks like Disney will lose.

I absolutely admit to being ignorant of everything that happens in the future. After it happens my knowledge of it may increase.

[PaulS]

That puts you way ahead of most people

[OtisAH]

Dunno if you’re just lying to us or lying to yourself too but no, Ben, your knowledge does not increase with new information. You wallow in ignorance like it was a bed covered in thousand dollar bills.

[OtisAH]

Exactly. If DeSantis and the legislators stuck to the “This Disney arrangement is bad for Florida taxpayers and terrible policy” line Disney would either not have filed suit or the suit they filed would be far far weaker. But when “conservatives” feel emboldened they just let it all hang out. Once they started with the “We’ll show Disney not to question us” and “We will kill woke at Disney” stuff they were fucked. And are fucked.

[DaveM]

That post has been removed, or the link is bad. I don't think you can say anything about winning or losing, but you can say that Disney is choosing not to fight in a particular venue. With all their financial troubles, that's probably a good thing for them.

[not guilty]

It appears that Coach Joe Kennedy, of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District fame, coached one game for the high school that had fired him, and then quit. (He had relocated to Florida years before.) https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/09/supreme-court-praying-coach-joe-kennedy-fake.html

That is a good thing. Hypocrites like Kennedy should not spend time around adolescents.

[Krayt]

I also note an ad that Americans should feel ashamed at how good Canadian McDonald's is.

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

Etymology trivium of the day:

The word "smith" (as in "goldsmith", and "blacksmith") is related to the archaic verb "to smite". Go, Jack, go!

[DaveM]

This is very clever, yes, but I think it betrays more than it reveals. Why do you think our modern Goliath needs to "smite" this David? Trump has no power at all. He's just a citizen. The government holds the entire deck of cards, they can make any play they want.

Maybe you think Goliath wouldn't actually win in a fair fight?

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

I've seen many words used to describe Donald Trump, but "victim" has never been one of them.

[Mr. Bumble]

victim
vĭk′tĭm
noun

1. One who is harmed or killed by another, especially by someone committing a criminal or unlawful act.
2.A living creature slain and offered as a sacrifice during a religious rite.
3.One who is harmed by or made to suffer under a circumstance or condition.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
More at Wordnik

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

And can you name two chemical elements named for mischievous goblin-like or elf-like creatures featured in German folklore?

(HINT: one of them – one of the goblinish or elvish creatures – is mentioned in Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.)

[apedad]

Peter Navarro found guilty of contempt after failure to answer Jan. 6 committee

After just a daylong jury trial in Washington, D.C., Peter Navarro, the former trade adviser to the now quadruply-indicted former President Donald Trump, was found guilty of contempt of Congress for his failure to comply with a subpoena issued to him by the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

During his opening statements on Wednesday, prosecutor John Crabb said the case was a simple one: Navarro, who had pertinent information for the select committee about what happened in the White House on Jan. 6, didn’t provide documents as asked and he didn’t testify when requested to do so under a subpoena. Navarro was indicted both for failure to provide the records and failure to testify.

Navarro was indicted last June. He has insisted that he wasn’t being contemptuous of the select committee or Congress when subpoenaed in February 2022 but rather, before trial, he claimed he couldn’t be responsive to their requests because Trump had invoked executive privilege over him and his testimony. Navarro told the committee “my hands are tied” in one email last year and suggested they contact Trump directly.

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/peter-navarro-found-guilty-of-contempt-after-failure-to-answer-jan-6-committee/

So this case hinges on the technical issue of executive privilege; when it's invoked and how is it invoked (and only the President can invoke the privilege, right?).

[Brett Bellmore]

If only everybody who refused to comply with such subpoenas were actually subjected to trials, rather than just the ones who are enemies of the regime, it might look less like just punishing enemies of the regime.

[jb]

It's interesting because the FBI seems to be taking the position that they don't prosecute Contempt of Congress when Executive Privilege is actually asserted by the President, but since Trump isn't backing up Navarro on this the privilege actually doesn't apply.

I'm not sure if that's a reasonable stance or not, but it is weird that Navarro originally claimed that Trump didn't want him to comply, but Trump has absolutely not backed him up on this. As with the many Georgia co-conspirators, it seems like it sucks a lot to get in this guy's orbit since he will absolutely not care about the consequences to you if anything goes sideways.

[JasonT20]

It’s interesting because the FBI seems to be taking the position that they don’t prosecute Contempt of Congress when Executive Privilege is actually asserted by the President, but since Trump isn’t backing up Navarro on this the privilege actually doesn’t apply.

If Trump was willing to back Navarro up and claim Executive Privilege, then we would end up seeing the question go through the courts as far as Trump would be willing to fight it: Can a former President assert Executive Privilege, or is that something only the sitting President can do? The answer is obviously the latter, in my opinion, but its less obvious how courts would rule on it.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

If only the remaining non-conspiratorial parts of your brain weren't addled with selective amnesia...

[hoppy025]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-lawmakers-approve-new-tax-for-guns-and-ammunition-to-pay-for-school-safety-improvements/ar-AA1goBni?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=9dc7f85a9f42406f819bd6bb757c30b0&ei=8

These reform Jewish leftists will NEVER stop.

[mydisplayname]

Once upon a time, J. Stalin, A. Hitler, and I. Amin arose from the dead, gathered 50,000 of their friends, and took a trip to Mexico (which is not a NATO member and is not a US ally). During their visit, the unarmed 50,003 decide to wade across the Rio Grande in an effort to enter the United States. “Stop!” says the Governor of Texas. “I believe you to be naughty folks who are trying to invade my Sovereign State! I shall erect barriers to prevent your invasion!” The wise Governor, recognizing the clear and present danger posed by the unarmed 50,003 (against whom no war has been declared) does indeed take action to prevent the invasion.

A well-meaning but misguided attorney (or professor of law) then prances into a courtroom and argues that the Governor’s barriers against entry threaten the habitat of Salina mucket (Potamilus metnecktayi), an endangered species of freshwater mussel. The prancing lawyer thunders “The Governor cannot declare Stalin, Hitler, Amin, and their 50,000 closes friends to be invaders: they are merely foot-voting against the way-of-life cherished by millions of citizens! We must foot-vote in the opposite direction (and not refer to doing so as cowardly retreat). The law is the law! Besides, think of the mussels!” A judge could determine the matter to be unjusticable… and could thereafter proceed to justiculate anyway: “The matter is political and not for the Court to decide; therefore, I am ordering the Governor to remove all barriers which might prevent Stalin, Hitler, Amin, and their 50,000 closest friends from entering our once-great nation. Think of the mussels!” Such a ruling, regardless of its inconsistency, would carry little weight, unless the President employed some sort of enforcement mechanism — perhaps the sending of military forces to protect the unarmed 50,003.

Of course, the President could awake from a nap, change his diaper, wander into the East Room and, through Proclamation drafted by the Puppet-master Behind The Curtain , say “Stalin, Hitler, Amin, and their friends are great fellows, Jack. Cornpop says so! Let them in right now!” thereby effectively overruling the Governor. The President is unlikely to do so, however, because such action, after creating a true Constitutional crisis, would likely be overruled by a wise Congress and would likely lead to his removal from office (either by Congress or by voters).

What next?

[Martinned]

What do you mean "what next"? You made up that story, you get to decide what happens next. Or do you want to turn it into some kind of chain story, where every commenter takes their turn adding something to the end?

[Mr. Bumble]

"...where every commenter takes their turn adding something to the end?"
Isn't that pro forma for these threads?

[Sarcastr0]

The best procedural policies are based on Hitleriffic hypotheticals.

[apedad]

What next?

You woke up from your wet dream.

[Mr. Bumble]

That would be captcrisis after reviewing a porno.

[M L]

Why Do Most Countries Require Photo Voter IDs?: They Have Seen Massive Vote Fraud Problems

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3849068

Date Written: May 18, 2021

Abstract

Americans keep hearing that there is no need to protect against vote fraud, that fraud is either non-existent or extremely rare. We hear that regulations, such as photo voter IDs, are unnecessary and will disenfranchise voters. Yet, the United States is not unique in having this debate. Virtually all of Europe and almost all developed countries require in-person voters to use photo IDs to vote. Indeed, out of Europe’s 47-countries, only the United Kingdom hasn’t required photo IDs to vote in their entire country, but that is about to change. Similar in-person rules exist for most developed countries. The vast majority of countries ban absentee ballots for people living in their country. While some point out that eight of Europe’s 47-countries allow for proxy voting, where you can designate someone to vote on your behalf, the safe-guards used to prevent fraud are generally far more stringent than used for absentee ballots in the US. Other countries have discovered widespread voter fraud when safeguards are not used. They also understand that relying on conviction counts is unlikely to catch the vast majority of fraud that occurs. The question is: why is the US so unique in terms of not guarding against vote fraud?

[Martinned]

That paper seems distinctly low on actual evidence, except for a few anecdotes. But to answer the research question:

- In most European countries carrying ID is mandatory anyway, so requiring voter ID has little cost.
- In many other European countries travelling abroad is sufficiently common that almost everyone has ID even if it is not mandatory to have it. So again requiring voter ID has little cost.

[Mr. Bumble]

In 2021 (last year I can find statistics for) there were approximately 233 million licensed drivers in the US. Without a history of identification papers the drivers license is the default identification "paper". Combined with other forms of ID there is no valid reason why voter ID would present a hardship.

[Martinned]

That depends on how difficult those other forms of ID are to get. Because relying on driving licences definitely excludes two clearly identifiable groups: the disabled and the elderly.

[David Nieporent]

The same agency that hands out driver's licenses to drivers hands out non-driver ID to non-drivers.

[JasonT20]

Like Mr. Bumble, you seemed to go right past Martinned's other sentence: "That depends on how difficult those other forms of ID are to get." And also the remaining question:

Are those non-driver IDs needed by all non-drivers for other important things already, or would they only be getting them in order to vote? For anyone that would only need to get an ID to vote, then it becomes an essential question to ask how difficult it will be for them to do so, and to ask whether that burden is justified by the risk of voter impersonation.

[Mr. Bumble]

None of the voter ID laws relies exclusively on drivers licenses .

[JasonT20]

None of the voter ID laws relies exclusively on drivers licenses .

And you went right by Martinned's point that it depends on how difficult other forms of ID are to get.

How about we see how many people that are legally eligible to vote already have accepted forms of ID that they use for other purposes? Then we would know how many people would need to get an ID just to vote, and we could judge whether it was a burden proportional the risk of in-person voter fraud.

[Ben_]

No one seriously thinks an ID is hard to get. Democrats lie about it and other Democrats dutifully pretend to believe the lies. No one is fooled. Not even you.

[Martinned]

I think that Republicans promote voter ID laws because they believe, subjectively, that it is an effective voter suppression tool. Based on that, I'm skeptical about all claims that it will not have its intended effect.

[Mr. Bumble]

That would be "that it is an effective {fraudulent} voter suppression tool".

[JasonT20]

Begs the question of whether voter ID is necessary or effective at actually preventing fraud.

[VinniUSMC]

I think that Republicans promote voter ID laws because they believe, subjectively, that it is an effective voter suppression tool. Based on that, I’m skeptical about all claims that it will not have its intended effect.

Well, I see your problem. Rather than having a thought, you substituted in an imaginary boogeyman.

[jb]

Remember when the friendly Republicans in North Carolina got caught specifically looking for which forms of "fraud prevention" would have the biggest impact on black voters and specifically chose those things to enact? Pepperidge Farms remembers:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-smoking-gun-proving-north-carolina-republicans-tried-to-disenfranchise-black-voters/

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The fans of this bigot-hugging right-wing blog dislike anything that calls a bigot a bigot.

Tough.

[Ben_]

Understood. You endorse bad policy because it furthers your personal partisan hatred.

[Nige]

Oh no you've upset the partisan hatred hater.

[Sarcastr0]

Founder of the Crime Research Center publishes article in Crime Research Center.

I leave the substantive point to Martinned who is actually on the ground. But this is not a very credibly sourced study.

John Richard Lott Jr. (born May 8, 1958) is an American economist, political commentator, and gun rights advocate. Lott was formerly employed at various academic institutions and at the American Enterprise Institute conservative think tank. He is the former president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, a nonprofit he founded in 2013. He worked in the Office of Justice Programs within the U.S. Department of Justice under the Donald Trump administration from October 2020 to January 2021. Lott holds a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA.

[apedad]

But...but...you guys keep saying, "Who the fuck cares what happens in Europe!"

[Martinned]

[Double posted]

[Estragon]

Anyone else got a problem with “…people doing poems on aircraft carriers”? Or just “coach”tuberville?

Bonus empathy exercise:

If your military promotion was being held up by an individual who went on TV and said the above- how would that make you feel?

[Nige]

Don't anyone tell him about Siegfried Sassoon or Wilfred Owen, he'll cancel the First World War for being woke.

[Jimmy the Dane]

You are a fool in denial.

[David Welker]

I am sorry Queen, if you are going to talk about this you need to consider the burden of proof.

You recall that this concept is to be applied in every conversation, right? According to you.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Yeah sure 4 indictments out of Biden demonkrat DOJ come down in different jurisdictions at the same time coordinated with a demonkrat prosecutor at the state level (a state with no pardon either which is pretty convenient) is just a mere coincidence. Are you really that stupid?

[Jimmy the Dane]

Truth hurts, huh?

[Mr. Bumble]

You forgot the E Jean Caroll imaginary rape case the the probability of superseding indictments not to mention the stupid article 3 actions.

[jb]

Uhh.

Two indictments from the DOJ. Two from state prosecutors.

But who cares about facts when they're inconvenient to a good conspiracy theory?

[Nige]

‘Yeah sure 4 indictments’

It’s because – sing along a me – Trump’s a fuckin’ criminal.

[David Nieporent]

Um, only two of the indictments came out of the DOJ. Also, you seem to have a mental defect that prevents you from spelling "Democratic" correctly.

[Mr. Bumble]

Easy to not notice. This thread structure sucks.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Or the constant "Russia" stuff that the left keeps on recycling despite the fact it has been debunked time and time again.

The plan always was to drown Trump in legal challenges from day 1 using demonkrat judges to undo the 2016 election results and prevent Trump from winning in 2020. This is fascism true and blue.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Do you laugh every morning when you look in the mirror then?

[David Welker]

Queen:

I am afraid you have the burden of proof here when it comes to establishing that he is a sick person.

[VinniUSMC]

What a sick person you are.

Thanks! The way you revere the mentally ill, that must be some kind of great compliment. Maybe you could start your worship of my divine being by sacrificing yourself to the nearest wood chipper.

[ducksalad]

It’s unlikely but not impossible. Similar things happened frequently in the Civil War era. It happened on a smaller scale in 1960 when Alabama Democrats chose to put uncommitted electors on the ballot rather than Kennedy.

It's not that hard to imagine these court cases dragging on past the start of primary season. And the people contesting him being on the primary ballot (longshot or pretextual Republicans) are different from those who will contest him being on the general election ballot (Democrats and 3rd parties).

Considering how many times the Republicans have tried (or even succeeded) in getting us kicked off the ballot, I would not object too much to the LP being part of the challenge to Trump's ballot access. Turnabout, fair play, only way they'll learn, etc.

[Jimmy the Dane]

No it isn't. That is exactly the plan. To deprive the American voter a choice because when they had one in 2016 they picked the "wrong" one according to liberal elites.

If you want to be a fascist dweeb that is fine. Just stop pretending. Everyone sees your true colors anyhow.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Depriving people the right to vote is fascism. That is what is being done here. If you can't see that you are either blind or stupid.

[ducksalad]

I think some of the centrists who dropped out and transferred their support to Biden also genuinely didn't want Sanders. Not just in the sense of too socialist to win the general, but more socialist than they themselves were comfortable with.

[Davedave]

Sorry, are you actually suggesting Sanders has ever been a serious candidate? There are not many people stupid enough to believe his brand of nonsense - not nearly enough to give him any chance of winning.

Obviously those who have been fooled by him are incapable of seeing that he is just a less competent version of Trump, but he's either a complete idiot - which is manifestly untrue - or a shameless liar, happy to dupe some idiots in order to make money. There is no possibility whatever he believes the insane nonsense he preaches - but it's a well-paying grift.

[shawn_dude]

Another form of "voting with the feet."

[David Nieporent]

If the issue were, say, a medical condition, and the adoptive parents insisted that they were the adopted kids' actual parents and demanded that their bone marrow be used for the kids, we would not humor them.

[Krayt]

That does seem a bit stiff for someone who didn't kill someone. Apparently, though, he created a little group for the express purpose of interfering with the peaceful transfer of power, which was accomplished (as distinct from full overthrow, I presume).

So, maybe it's ok as a warning not to do that?

[Sarcastr0]

I mean, yeah, our sentencing lengths are all outta whack systemically. Some weird hybrid between retribution, rehabilitation, and removal where no one philosophy can explain them.

That being said, the federal terrorism enhancement is burly for a reason. Killed someone or no, I hope folks think twice before they take actions threaten violence towards overturning an election.

[Kazinski]

I don't think they are out of the ordinary.

This is how the criminal justice system has traditionally handled the classic "failure to communicate".

After all they are deplorables.

[Moderation4ever]

The sentences the Proud Boys leaders received may seem harsh and they are often compared to what one would get for murder. But in many cases murder is a crime of passion and that happen spontaneously. Here we are looking at people who went in with a deliberate attempt to install a non-elected President. As bad as the act is the murder may realize their error and feel remorse quickly, while the criminal planning an insurrection may never feel they are wrong.

[John F. Carr]

I think federal sentences in general are too harsh. Based on the number of people sentenced at the bottom of the sentencing range, federal judges do too.

The people demonstrating, sitting in the Speaker's chair, and so forth deserved misdemeanors. Those who planned to riot on January 6 deserve felonies. Six years or so would be enough to keep them out of trouble until Trump is no longer relevant.

[Davedave]

The charges were very much the lower end of the spectrum, so high sentencing for those charges seems right. Bear in mind these could have been treason charges and death sentences.

[Sarcastr0]

Yep, as I posted a week ago:

1) The Baude Paulsen paper seems right as a matter of originalism.
2) This shows why originalism is sometimes absurd.
3) It is also an academic question that I do not expect to go anywhere institutionally.
4) The tantrum the right is throwing is very funny.

[Mr. Bumble]

E jean Carroll is ongoing with a case scheduled for Jan. 2024.

[David Welker]

By a preponderance of the evidence?

No, I am afraid not. Rather than being a sick person, he might be a malicious person. Or he could be a combination of both. Are you aware of any DSM-5 diagnosis by a licensed psychotherapist that applied here?

Tsk. Tsk.

How dare you say something that wasn’t firmly backed up by evidence establishing it by the preponderance of the evidence.

This is just like a court. Right??? We have to decide right now if this is maliciousness or sickness.

[David Welker]

Mens rea in terms of whether an act is intentional or not is one thing. After all, a homicide that is accidental is very different than a homicide that is intentional. But a full blown psychoanalysis of someone’s political ideology doesn’t make sense.

If a person uses torture and rape because they hate a particular individual, this is not a hate crime. And it isn’t terrorism, no matter how much terror it inflicts.

It is illogical. And it is problematic because we are now inquiring into the content of someone’s belief system. John Brown’s political motivations made his crime less bad, not worse. Yet, he would be subject to a terrorism enhancement.

But here is the question. Would a prosecutor that AGREED with John Brown charge him with a terrorism enhancement. And would a prosecutor that DISAGREED with him so charge him?d

See the problem yet??? We are creating a situation where government officials are going to be tempted to punish people more harshly or not based on whether they agree with them or not.

Terrorism enhancements are dangerous nonsense. And I don’t care whether they are applied to leftists or rightists or upists or downists or Catholics or protestants or whomever. People should be punished for what they do, not the belief systems that motivate them to do what they do.

[David Welker]

If you actually want to KNOW THE TRUTH then saying that you are going to actively take a position kind of goes against you actually knowing the truth.

My view as a person out there living in the world is that I want to know the truth. “I am going to believe the opposite until you prove it to me” isn’t a functional approach for arriving at true beliefs, but is instead an approach that will lead to systematic errors.

What I advocate for instead of actively going against a position where evidence has not been produced is neutrality. At least in instances where I do not need to take a position, tentative or otherwise. Because I actually care whether what I think is true or not.

That you have a different value system, where you base your personal beliefs on some bizarre procedural calculus that are appropriate and NECESSARY in a courtroom but is not appropriate or necessary in your every day life is a sign that you just aren’t a very thoughtful person.

In other words, you don’t really care what is true or not. You are just into playing games.

[Harvey Mosley]

Not getting into the whole fascism thing. But this
"No one would be deprived of the right to vote, rather the right to vote for a specific guy..."

Sounds so much like this:
No one would be deprived of the right to marry, rather the right to marry someone of the same sex.

[David Welker]

Oh, also according to you, I should actually conclude the opposite.

According to you, I should assume he is NOT SICK because you haven't produced satisfactory admissible evidence in the form of a formal DSM-5 diagnosis that he is in fact sick.

Not only am I not supposed to be neutral in the absence of evidence, I am supposed to actually disbelieve you. Because you are making the assertion X and have not produced the evidence, I am supposed to think not X is true.

How irrational.

[shawn_dude]

They went to D.C. on Jan 6 to participate in the start of a civil war by preventing the certification of the vote. Should the government punish attempts to "kill" it less than attempts to kill an individual?

I'm not sure the heavy sentence will have a deterrence effect given the propensity of MAGAts to craft novel conspiracy theories to justify pretty much anything.

[Mr. Bumble]

Yes, they should all be given the death penalty, publicly.

[DaveM]

Boy, I sure hope people show you more grace than you’re showing to others with this comment. Here’s your diagnostic question: how many people were charged with insurrection on J6? No googling!

[Bob from Ohio]

Its not really that the J6 sentences are excessive [though they are] but the Floyd riots are treated with leniency. The two arson cases [one with a death] I pointed out, the Molotov lawyers in NYC who got 2-3 years, and many others.

Did anyone get 16 or 22 years for any BLM riot anywhere?

[Sarcastr0]

It could be that different crimes being done in different situations with different intents are being treated differently.

Or maybe there is a conspiracy against MAGA that includes the entire judiciary.

[bernard11]

I think some of the centrists who dropped out and transferred their support to Biden also genuinely didn’t want Sanders. Not just in the sense of too socialist to win the general, but more socialist than they themselves were comfortable with.

Yes. That was clearly the motivation for some of the consolidation behind Biden in the primaries.

[Davedave]

Sanders isn't actually socialist, he's a grifter who knows that antisemitic conspiracy theories are a good earner - utterly shameless.

[shawn_dude]

Did anyone who participated in the riots related to BLM protests receive a charge of seditious conspiracy?
"If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof,[...]" 18 USC 2384: Seditious conspiracy

Let's start with the crime itself. If the folks who were arrested at George Floyd related protests were charged with other crimes, I don't think it's reasonable to make the direct comparison you're trying to make. Portraying the January 6th insurrection as a mere riot doesn't make the difference in motivations, goals, or effects disappear. You can review the status of some of the Capitol Breach Cases here. A quick scan shows a lot of short sentences and probation-only. Outside of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who were there for an insurrection and those that assaulted police officers, the sentences seem similar to many of those arrested during the George Floyd protests.

For the George Floyd protests, large numbers of the cases were dropped with a common reason being lack of evidence. There's speculation that the police arrested large numbers of people as a crowd control tactic without any necessary illegal activity, but if one discounts this, the lack of actual evidence would be sufficient.

[shawn_dude]

Did anyone actually plan to riot? We have convictions for people who jointly planned an insurrection to install an unelected president. We have convictions for people who assaulted police. These are the largest in terms of sentencing. After that, for those that have completed their sentencing, there's mostly probation or less than two years depending on circumstances (as far as I can see.)

Walking into a federal building and holding a sit-in (even in the Speaker's chair) should be a lite sentence. But breaking through a police barrier, busting out windows and doors while police attempt to deny entry, and then sitting in the Speaker's chair is an entirely different thing. I don't think there can be a productive discussion on what the sentencing ought to be in a fair world when there isn't even agreement on the nature of the crime they committed.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The people demonstrating, sitting in the Speaker’s chair, and so forth deserved misdemeanors.

That's the sympathy for un-American bigots and disaffectedness misfits talking.

Those who planned to riot on January 6 deserve felonies. Six years or so would be enough to keep them out of trouble until Trump is no longer relevant.

Thank goodness even the Trump-nominated judges didn't fall for that partisan bullshit.

[Mr. Bumble]

...or maybe, or maybe, or maybe.....

[Brett Bellmore]

"For the George Floyd protests, large numbers of the cases were dropped with a common reason being lack of evidence. "

That's actually the point of going masked and wearing uniform clothing, you know: The police may be able to prove a crime was committed, but won't be able to prove which of 20 identical looking people committed it.

Worked for the Klan, works now for Antifa.

[John F. Carr]

The long sentences were for defendants convicted of seditious conspiracy. The jury found they conspired "by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof". They did not just happen to be around when an act of tourism got out of hand. According to the jury.

Before 1956 the maximum sentence for seditious conspiracy was 6 years.

[Nige]

Another one entirely Trump's own fault.

[Nige]

Harsh but fair.

[Nige]

Turnabout. From the people killing black people to black people objecting to being killed.

(Of course those are literally the only two times in all of history when people wore masks to disguise their identities to authorities, so obviously they're linked.)

[Mr. Bumble]

Not sure if this is addressed to my comment. If it was your sarc meter was turned off.

[VinniUSMC]

Bear in mind these could have been treason charges and death sentences.

Only in the sense that dumbdumbs like you swallow up that nonsense without a second thought. Not in the literal sense of having actually committed treason.

[Davedave]

Attempting to stage a coup is waging war against the US, even if it's pathetically incompetent and doomed to failure.

[Brett Bellmore]

Sure, they're linked: The Klan was, and Antifa is, the armed wing of the Democratic party. Who you sic your goon squads on may vary between now and then, but your party seems determined to HAVE its goon squads.