Monday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[Dr. Ed 2]

Is the current wave of campus antisemitism actually antisemitism, or is it something far deeper? Does the "Coalition for All Good Things" hate Israel because it is Jewish, or is it something far deeper than merely that?

I'd argue the latter in both cases, and I'm not really sure what it is beyond the fact that it is an attack on the underlying values of the Judeo/Christian tradition.

I'm not saying that antisemitism is not real -- I was at Planet UMass and routinely debated Hussain Ibish before he was famous -- but I sense that there is something far deeper than just bigotry in those schmucks. And they're not even good Muslims -- most of them don't know Arabic and I'm told that there is no authorized translation of the Koran, you are supposed to read it in Arabic.

It's a fear that makes no logical sense.

[Martinned]

Ah yes, that beloved "Judeo/Christian tradition"...

Out of curiosity, is that "tradition" the reason Tucker Carlson is in Moscow right now and, if so, how is he going to get enough sunlight on his taint in the Russia winter?

[Michael P]

Why do you ever think about Tucker Carlson's taint? Especially spontaneously?

[Martinned]

Because a well-tanned taint is an essential part of the Judeo-Christian tradition: https://newrepublic.com/article/166150/tucker-carlson-far-right-testicle

[Michael P]

You think about Tucker Carlson's intimate parts because The New Republic tells you to. You may wish to reconsider your life choices.

[Martinned]

O, don't worry, I do. But if I'm going to be struck by this affliction I can at least share it with the kinds of people who might be inclined to take Carlson seriously.

[Michael P]

TNR takes Tucker Carlson seriously?

[Martinned]

I very much doubt it. This whole taint-tanning thing because such a big story at the time exactly because it was so preposterous. The emperor literally had no clothes.

[Michael P]

Now he's the emperor? Come, join the don't-care-about-Tucker club, it's great not bothering to keep up with what he thinks about Donald Trump, much less testicular tanning. Him, Joy Behar, Jimmy McMillan, they're just talking heads.

[Martinned]

Sure, but how many followers do they all have on Truth Social?

[Bwaaah]

Queen almathea : "Tucker Carlson has 2.8 million followers on Facebook and daytime TV host Joy Behar has 121,000."

There are 150 million voters. Try to maintain a salient perspective, and not obsess over infotainment hosts.

[Bob from Ohio]

"2.8 million followers on Facebook and daytime TV host Joy Behar has 121,000"

How many TV viewers for each?

And how many Facebook followers do the rest of the View women have?

[JasonT20]

There are 150 million voters. Try to maintain a salient perspective, and not obsess over infotainment hosts.

Infotainment is a good portmanteau to describe people like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, people on the left as well like Rachel Maddow. Older figures also fit this descriptor – Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and more.

The problem is that their viewers or listeners don’t treat them like entertainers or even a blend of entertainment and journalism. They treat them as the people that “really know what’s going on” and aren’t afraid to tell the “truth.” They turn them into authorities and turn off their own skepticism.

But it isn’t just about how many followers they have on social media or how many people watch their shows on TV. At his peak, Tucker Carlson got a little more than 1/10th the audience that watched Walter Cronkite. But who had more influence on voter behavior? People that watch, view or listen to infotainers spread what they ‘learn’ from those people and spread it further. It becomes the basis of how they think and what they say in response to arguments.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been talking to a close relative that follows right wing infotainment, and they tell me that something is “known” or “verified,” but they can’t give me any details of how it was verified or often even the details of the accusation or narrative. They just remember the bottom line as it was explained to them by these media figures, and the details or how the ‘facts’ were established is forgotten, assuming it was even part of what was presented.

We live in an era where information no longer has the kinds of gatekeepers that existed for all of human history. The internet has lowered the bar to entry for spreading information to millions of people so much that it is virtually impossible to stop someone’s ability to get what they say out into the ether in Western countries. Only in authoritarian countries with tight fists around internet access can information effectively be suppressed.*

The remaining gatekeepers for information, such as they are, are puny in their ability to manage the flow of information compared to major TV and radio networks of the 50s-80s and newspapers with large circulation.

The downside of this weakening of the gatekeeping is that it also weakens the role of journalistic standards in vetting information. Much more information is available, but evaluating the credibility of that information falls much more on us. More and more of the people putting information out there either have no journalistic training in the ethics of relying on verifiable facts, or if they do, they compromise their training and ethics in order to keep a larger, loyal audience.

We’ve entered a new realm of human history. There is no telling how it will turn out or how we will be able to maintain social cohesion when there is no shared set of facts that we can rely on.

*People getting deplatformed from the service formerly known as Twitter, facebook, YouTube, etc. will get their raw numbers reduced substantially, absolutely, but people that want to can still find what they have to say fairly easily. It can cut them off of spigots of huge amounts of ad revenue and big paychecks, and casual viewers that flipped to them FoxNews using their TV remote might not bother to find them on Rumble or Truth Social or whatever.

[Bwaaah]

I don't think the "gatekeepers" ever really controlled information. Rumor and innuendo have always been powerful drivers of public sentiment. I share your fears and pretty much concur with your analysis. But our ignorance and false understandings are probably never so significant as our passions. (Like, for example, which lives and deaths we pay most attention to.)

[Absaroka]

"At his peak, Tucker Carlson got a little more than 1/10th the audience that watched Walter Cronkite. But who had more influence on voter behavior?"

I'd have to say Cronkite. When Cronkite gave his post-Tet opinion on Vietnam, that really swung opinion across the political spectrum. Carlson only influences his side of the house.

[Sarcastr0]

This is as woo-woo as 'I saw their auras and they were demonic.'

[apedad]

"It’s a fear that makes no logical sense."

When did this blog become about you?

[Michael P]

"Antisemitism" does not mean hostility to, or prejudice against, Dr. Ed 2. What irrational fear did you think he was talking about?

[Dr. Ed 2]

If it is not mean "hostility to, or prejudice against" then what does it mean?

[Ed Grinberg]

Yes, I too think that it is "something far deeper." It isn't just Israel (or Jews) that these people hate so much. What it it? You said: "I’m not really sure what it is beyond the fact that it is an attack on the underlying values of the Judeo/Christian tradition." Again, I agree. But what, specifically, are "the underlying values of the Judeo/Christian tradition" that these people are attacking? I'd say: humanism / human dignity / human freedom / classical liberalism.
I've found this academic paper helpful in thinking about this subject. Here's a key passage:

[Isaiah] Berlin was a liberal, an intellectual, a man deeply devoted to humane values, to decency, justice, kindness, knowledge, and liberty, a moral and in some ways intellectual carry-over from what was best and least brutal in the 19th century. He was also a Jew. That he survived at all was a triumph against the gales of history. ...[S]omewhere within his eminently civilized and gently ironic mind lurked the outlook of a survivor.... To fail to notice this inner melody of melancholy—and of spirited and determined opposition to that which he most feared—is to fundamentally misunderstand both the origins and orientation of Berlin’s work, and its quality.

[Ed Grinberg]

The sight of the "woke" hordes on the march, chanting their hateful slogans, celebrating the inhuman barbarities of 10/7 -- it's the triumph of "that which [Isaiah Berlin] most feared."

[Dr. Ed 2]

Is it the individual they despise?

[Ed Grinberg]

Compare this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

with: The Hamas atrocities of 10/7 are fully justified because the "victims" were really oppressors (i.e., they deserved it).
Which one "despises the individual"?

[Ed Grinberg]

Compare the "woke" position on the 10/7 events (see above) to this (from The Black Book of Communism):
Efforts to draw parallels between Nazism and Communism on the basis of their respective extermination tactics may give offense to some people. However, we should recall how in Forever Flowing Vasily Grossman, whose mother was killed by the Nazis in the Berdichiv ghetto, who authored the first work on Treblinka, and who was one of the editors of The Black Book on the extermination of Soviet Jews, has one of his characters describe the famine in Ukraine: “Writers kept writing ... Stalin himself, too: the kulaks are parasites; they are burning grain; they are killing children. And it was openly proclaimed ‘that the rage and wrath of the masses must be inflamed against them, they must be destroyed as a class, because they are accursed.’” He adds: “To massacre them, it was necessary to proclaim that kulaks are not human beings, just as the Germans proclaimed that Jews are not human beings. Thus did Lenin and Stalin say: kulaks are not human beings.” In conclusion, Grossman says of the children of the kulaks: “That is exactly how the Nazis put the Jewish children into the Nazi gas chambers: ‘You are not allowed to live, you are all Jews!’”

[Nige]

Perhaps you should consider how the deaths of children on Oct 7th were used to spur on and justify the killing of thousands in Gaza. How 'steeped in Judeocide' became a common phrase here to justify the killing of civilians. How 'Hamas' has become a shorthand for dismissing all arguments and concerns; they are such inhuman mosnters that literally everything and everyone they touch have to be kiled and destroyed.

[Commenter_XY]

Yes, POTUS Biden did consider it. His considered (and moral) response was to give Israel weaponry and actionable intelligence to hunt down, and kill Hamas members. I applaud him, and I will always be personally grateful to POTUS Biden (no matter what policy disagreements I have) for standing by Israel in her hour of greatest need.

And sadly, it is true. Hamas steeped an entire society in a toxic stew of Jew hatred and Judeocide. And look at UNRWA, with employees actively participating in the Simchat Torah pogrom, and hundreds more active members of Hamas and Palestinian IJ. UNRWA needs to leave; Israeli based charities can distribute any aid arabs might want to contribute.

Nige, I think it is terrible that a very significant minority of the American Progressive Left now calls POTUS Biden 'Genocide Joe'. Our president was recently heckled in MI with people screaming that epithet (calling him Genocide Joe) at the venue he was speaking. Totally outside the bounds of acceptable civic discourse. But what can you do? We can't restrict their free speech, can we?

[Nige]

You're just doing the same thing, again. Justifying the deaths of civilians. This is Joe Biden's darkest hour. You lot supported the wars post 9/11, so you're just trying to outdo your previous darkest hours.

[Commenter_XY]

Nige, you don't call our president Genocide Joe, do you? Really?

[Nige]

No. Do you?

[Dr. Ed 2]

I much prefer it the way Locke wrote it: "Life, Liberty, and Property."

[Bwaaah]

I do to. But I would not have seen that as a helpful clarification in the context of this thread.

If I'm ever looking for a position I can't fully endorse, I'll think of you. (I feel self-doubt just contemplating that prospect.)

[Nige]

The Hamas atrocities were certainly justified to Hamas, just as the IDF atrocities are justified to them and to you.

[Nige]

'I’d say: humanism / human dignity / human freedom / classical liberalism.'

Not many of those in evidence under the IDF bombardment, are there?

[Dr. Ed 2]

There is if you believe in Exodus 22.2 and the concept of self defense.

[Martinned]

There is certainly to shortage of genocide and other killing in the old testament, that is true. But fortunately the Israeli government hasn't quite gone so far as to incorporate the Torah into the IDF's rules of engagement.

[Nige]

Nobody kills 27,000+ in self-defence. It's the opposite of self-defence beause a) it's just easier to unleash military forces than actually solve the problem, b) is only going to make everything worse in the long run.

[kb]

This is a ludicrous assertion. Think Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Guadalcanal, Okinawa, etc.

[Nige]

I realise we like to think of WWII as the 'good' war but the reality is it was a global catastrophe that left millions dead and millions more under totalitarian subjugation and set the stage for the world to spend decades under the shadow of nuclear annihilation.

[mulched]

Found the Neville Chamberlain fan club.

[Nige]

Found the 'millions dead is good actually' fan club.

[Bob from Ohio]

"we like to think of WWII as the ‘good’ war"

Its because one side [Russia excepted] were clearly the good guys, resisting aggression by horrible regimes. It had nothing to do with the number of dead.

[Nige]

Yes, I know, that's what allows people to romanticise it despite the numbers of dead.

[Zarniwoop]

And yet I bet you want to sit out supporting Ukraine in their fight against those very same bad guys, who are "resisting aggression by [a] horrible regime[]", because you're cut from the same head-in-the-sand cloth as the America-first isolationists of the 1930s (and early-1940s-until-the-US-got-bombed).

[Bob from Ohio]

"And yet I bet"

You lose.

[Noscitur a sociis]

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice—is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

And yes, I’m sure you would have argued that we should have sat out of that war as well.

[Nige]

You're still not getting it. You're not even getting what you're quoting. The only thing worse than fighting the Nazis would have been not fighting the Nazis. That doesn't make millions of dead people *good*. It doesn't mean you can kill thousands of people and it's okay 'because WWII.'

Every Ally in that war inflicted tyrranical injustice on people. If anybody rose up to protect those human beings, they crushed them, brutally. 'Better than the Nazis' is a low, low bar.

[awildseaking]

I think it’s very real, but also something deeper at the same time. These new anti-Semites aren’t ignorant of Jews. Personally, I’ve found that most bigotry comes from ignorance and is often unintentional/result of living a life of ignorance. People normalize things that aren’t normal at all.

There is an unusual intersection in left wing politics where anti-colonialism, neo-Marxism and the progressive stack meet. The conditions are as follows:

1. Extreme skepticism towards any entity with relative power using force (this is how you end up with pro Palestine/pro Ukraine idiots). 2. Violent opposition to anything deemed American interests (this is how you end up with pro Palestine/pro Russia idiots). 3. Willingness to believe anything Black people say (this is how you build coalitions between seemingly opposing viewpoints).

When these conditions mix, they create an environment where resistance to power is not only justified, but necessary, irrespective of the power in question. It becomes a destructive, anarchistic force that does nothing but promote chaos and degeneracy. This is how you end up with hyper racist, anti-Semitic Blacks who think that Jews are powerful enough to fake the Holocaust and that racism towards Whites is restorative justice.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Willingness to believe anything Black people say"

More than just that -- truth or falsehood depends on the characteristics (or class) of the speaker.

[Bwaaah]

“Willingness to believe anything Black people say”

Last year, that would have been a racially insensitive remark. This year, it's a reasonable commentary on the absurdity of the race-race-[lgbtabc+]-race movement.

[Kazinski]

Quite a flurry of posts over the weekend on Trump v Anderson My count is
1 by EV
2 by Adler
2 by Baude/Paulsen
1 by Tillman/Blackman

By the time Wednesday’s thread rolls around we will already have heard the oral arguments, if I recall correctly they post the audio the same day.

I’m already on record as saying I think SCOTUS will rule for Trump based on Section 5 grounds: basically its up to Congress to decide how to implement section 3, and the only current law dealing with Insurrections is a criminal statue that calls for disqualification from “Offices under the United States” along with imprisonment and fines.
And usually a rocket docket case like this will be an unsigned per curiam opinion.

But after thinking about the issue unlike most cases I don’t think they want this back on their lap soon. Usually if they can resolve a case on a statutory question they stop there. However if they punt on the officers question, then what happens if Trump is charged with Insurrection, will the case then come back to them on the officers question? So I think that will be resolved too, but its hardly a lead pipe cinch. Perhaps there will be a concurrence or two that makes it clear there are several votes at least for dismissing on the officers question. I think Roberts is already on record in a prior case as favoring the Tillman/Blackman position.

[NvEric]

Agreed.
The legal pundits resurrected A14 S3 for their own internal sickness of legal dementia brought about by an excessive derangement for which they can never accept from their own faults in academia. Else, they've been bribed to foist the somewhat uncertain S3 into something to exclusively get Trump for which all other efforts failed to address from otherwise legal, but mostly irregular legal theories via a basic corruption of all involved.

Sure it seems the legal system is operating correctly, but as will be seen eventually is a massive disconnected conspiring of various people and agencies. This has been already been exposed before Trump entered the White House, yet not much has been addressed in the legal area. Why ?

[Reallynotbob]

Are you a bot? This comment is practically a Q drop:

“internal sickness” “legal dementia” “excessive derangement” “bribed to foist” “exclusively get Trump” “basic corruption” “conspiring of various people and agencies” "already been exposed… yet not much has been addressed”

And ending with, simply, “Why?” *chef’s kiss.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Crime pays -- illegally striking teachers get handout.
https://www.boston.com/news/schools/2024/02/04/newton-teachers-overwhelmingly-vote-to-ratify-contract-ending-2-week-strike/

[Sarcastr0]

That's not what crime means.

[Brett Bellmore]

I don't know; Was the strike actually "illegal"?

If it was, yeah, this IS what "crime" means.

[Sarcastr0]

I mean, Ed is probably wrong.

But my issue is that illegal and criminal are different words and mean different things.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's pretty common to refer to illegal acts as "crimes", Sarcastr0, for all that civil offenses aren't technically "crimes".

It's not that much better to say that civil offenses pay...

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think people call jawyaking and speeding crimes, actually.

I think it's often deployed, as here, as a rhetorical choice to be inaccurate in service of creating an unearned level of negativity.

[Michael P]

Counterpoint: https://www.kpbs.org/news/local/2021/10/18/despite-racial-disparities-in-tickets-jaywalking-will-remain-a-crime-in-california and https://portside.org/2015-01-21/forgotten-history-how-automakers-invented-crime-jaywalking

I bet that if you ask American adults what the legal status of jaywalking and speeding are, "crime" will be a more common answer than "civil offense".

[Martinned]

Imagine living in a country where you can't cross the street wherever you damn well please.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Germany?

[Kleppe]

Imagine being European, lmao

[Sarcastr0]

Awesome Google-fueled cherry picking. kpbs and portside.org are truly the voice of the nation.

[Michael P]

If you focused on what lawyers or people in the legal community call jaywalking or speeding, you might have a point. You haven't shown anything to suggest the general public regularly makes that technical distinction. In the alternative, you're unpersoning the legal laity.

As a computer guy, I used to get quite annoyed when people called the box that their monitor plugs into "the CPU". I grew out of it.

[Sarcastr0]

I may be biased by who I hang out with, but Googling to find your preferred used case is not a great way to gauge your accuracy due to confirmation bias.

[Michael P]

You sure do like arguing by unsupported again if how you think the world works.

The comment forums here only allow linking to two URLs per comment. You can also see https://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/accidents-hazardous-conditions/jaywalking-crime.htm and https://www.findlaw.com/traffic/traffic-tickets/jaywalking.html for example. From the latter:

Some states have decriminalized jaywalking. Virginia was the first to do this in 2020, followed by Nevada in 2021 and California in 2023.

[Reallynotbob]

Please just hold on to that thought for when the topic turns to the Mayorkas impeachment effort and we're all searching about for the "high crimes and misdemeanors" he committed.

[Absaroka]

Merriam-Webster lists 'illegal' as a synonym for criminal, and 'criminal' as a synonym for illegal. The clear difference you see may not be universal usage.

[Sarcastr0]

I wouldn't use a thesaurus, versus a dictionary for this kind of distinction.

In the alternative, even if you are correct about universal usage, Ed's not choosing between neutral alternatives, and as this is a legal blog the distinction still has meaning.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I think most readers of this blog can distinguish between legal and non-legal use of the term.

[Michael P]

The strike was illegal, as for any public sector employee in Massachusetts: https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXXI/Chapter150E

But the law doesn't appear to have criminal penalties just for striking.

[SRG2]

Looks to me that the word needed is "unlawful" not "illegal"

[Life of Brian]

American Heritage sez:

unlawful /ŭn-lô′fəl/ adjective

Not lawful; illegal.

I don’t think Sarc’s pinhead pedantry of the day is salvageable.

[SRG2]

American Heritage can go fuck itself. "Unlawful" and "illegal" do not mean exactly the same thing.

[Absaroka]

Well, other dictionaries agree with AH. Merriam-Webster, for one.

As far as legal usage, the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unlawful"<Cornell Law School definition reads:

"unlawful: General description for conduct that is illegal or not authorized by law."

It goes on to say "The term is sometimes used in a more narrow sense. For instance, "unlawful" may refer only to conduct that is criminally punishable. At other times, "unlawful" may refer only to actions that violate statutory law (as opposed to actions that violate uncodified common law doctrines such as negligence).", but that doesn't make the primary usage incorrect.

[OtisAH]

Which is why the strike was not a crime. It’s a civil violation for which the union was fined daily for at least the last 1-2 weeks of the strike.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Contempt of court" if you want the specifics.

[Don Nico]

Ed purposefully misunderstands “crime";” This time his offense is malicious rather than simply stupid.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Crime = something (a) one isn't supposed to do for which (b) one can go to jail.

[Martinned]

Now do civil contempt.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Distinction without a difference -- you are in jail, aren't you?

[Bob from Ohio]

"That’s not what crime means."

Metaphors are strange to you?

He's not a lawyer, he's not using it legally but as a colloquialism.

[LawTalkingGuy]

It’s not really a proper metaphor. It’s more like a synecdoche/metonym where part of of the whole of law, specifically “crime” refers to illegality of all types. He’s also using the figure of speech as a rhetorical move to make something seem worse than it is. We associate crime with punishment and the infliction of state violence. By contrast we don’t associate those things with all illegal acts, like breaching a fiduciary duty for instance. So pointing out that that’s not what crime means serves to blunt the rhetorical effect.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The judge said they'd be in jail today if they didn't settle over the weekend.

[Commenter_XY]

Re: Private Vault case, 9th Circuit 4A

The 9th circuit ruled that the FBI violated 4A, and more specifically violated the terms of the warrant issued by the judge (and lied about it). My question(s) to VC Conspirators.

What the remedy for a vault owner deprived of their cash for a few years?
What's the remedy to the FBI lying to the court?

[not guilty]

Since this involves neither state actors nor federal officials who acted under color of state law, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 does not afford a remedy. The federal courts have so curtailed damages liability under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), that it may not apply to any plaintiff whose first name is not Webster or whose last name is not Bivens.

I haven't researched it, but I think that the plaintiffs could possibly pursue a claim against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

[Commenter_XY]

Wait...so the FBI can steal your shit, lie to the Court about it, and then walk away 'scot free' because of Bivens. No exception to Bivens? No recourse? Too bad, so sad?

What's the remedy to stop the FBI from lying to the Court?

[Brett Bellmore]

You ask their superiors in the executive branch to do something about it, I guess.

The federal government doesn't want any remedies against it to exist, and the federal courts are VERY deferential to the interests of the federal government.

As is to be expected when federal judges are chosen by federal Presidents and confirmed by the federal Senate...

[Sarcastr0]

The federal government doesn’t want any remedies against it to exist

This is incorrect. First, the federal government is not an independent entity with it's own desires; it is run by political specifically to keep it accountable to the people.
There are laws waiving sovereign immunity, like the Federal Tort Claims Act and at least one other about federal contract disputes.

[Brett Bellmore]

You're really getting anal about referring to organizations as though they were entities, aren't you?

"First, the federal government is not an independent entity with it’s own desires; it is run by political specifically to keep it accountable to the people."

Yes, it's run by politicians in an attempt, not always successful, to keep it accountable to the people. You'd have to be willfully blind not to notice that the people running those institutions have an interest in reducing that accountability to the extent they can, and act on that interest.

[Sarcastr0]

I think pretending we don't have a republic is a growing thing on the right, so their populist bullshit has less to compete with.

Political appointees are not politicians. Nor do they necessarily have interests aligned with the institution they run.

[Don Nico]

"Nor do they necessarily have interests aligned with the institution they run."
That is quite an admission.

[Sarcastr0]

Disagree.

Trump appointed a SecState who was baseline hostile to the State Department, to provide a stark example that doesn’t require any badness at State.

[Don Nico]

Disagree? How so?
You promptly provided an example.
I admit that I was thinking that that you consider one of your bosses is working with malicious intent.

[Sarcastr0]

'That is quite an admission'

That is what I disagree with. It's true, but it's not neccesarily a bad thing.

[Brett Bellmore]

He wasn't hostile to HAVING a State Department. He was hostile to the way it was being operated.

And in light of this, he had good cause.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The remedy is abolishing the FBI.
I could see it happening...

[Michael P]

"Woke Kindergarten did what it was hired to do", which apparently was to halve the number of students proficient at grade level in math, and also drop the number for English.

https://archive.ph/yhPiQ

[StonewallDeSoto]

But if those proficiency drops were among high-proficiency students, it may have made the school more equal.

[Bwaaah]

And you're point is what?

[BadLib]

They may be preparing their students for a lucrative field in Human Resources. Perhaps this will work out well for these students. There is however a risk that the wokeness requirements for HR positions takes another political turn in the next 15 years.

[Sarcastr0]

Fermi, Pasta and Ulam on non-linear problems: This paper exemplifies the "Fermi method" at its most brilliant - take a simple problem, look for simple variations and discover profound, universal laws, in this case the first example of chaos. My piece on it https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2020/01/the-fermi-pasta-ulam-tsingou-problem-a-foray-into-the-beautifully-simple-and-the-simply-beautiful.html

[Enrico Fermi and co use an early computer (programed by a woman who had been a computer when that was a profession) and discover chaos theory. I had no idea.
Dunno if I buy the paper's simplicity being beautiful; from the linked description it was excitement and a phenomenological description of computer output.
But the history is very cool.]

[William Cheswick]

This piece is quite good, and a bit unexpected considering your usual battles with Brett. NB: Bell Labs had female “computers” as recently as the 1960s. They were called programmers by the 70s.

[Sarcastr0]

Physicist -> lawyer -> science policymaker.

I like to think I keep a hand in.

Do you have a favorite research paper? I don’t, so I stole some recommendations from some twitter thread I saw.

[Life of Brian]

This piece is quite good, and a bit unexpected considering your usual battles with Brett.

That would be because Sarc didn't write it.

[Absaroka]

"That would be because Sarc didn’t write it"

I didn't take it that he was asserting authorship: "Dunno if I buy the paper’s simplicity being beautiful" was a pretty big clue there.

[Life of Brian]

Again, I think the two comments here complimenting him on what he presented as "my piece" speak for themselves. That you and I put together enough other clues not to fall for it seems like a different issue.

Really wouldn't have been such a big deal had he not then cagily replied to both of them in a way that didn't forthrightly correct their (understandable) misunderstanding.

[Bwaaah]

Well it was *his*, in that it was his good taste to have spoken about it.

Reminds me of Charlie the Tuna.

[Life of Brian]

My piece on it

LOLOLOLOL. Good one, Ms. Gay.

[Don Nico]

Bravo, for a well written, highly engaging article.
I think it is quite likely that Fermi was indeed the mast man who knew all physics. When I arrived at U Chicago many years after Fermi's death, he still was a strong presence in the halls of the Enrico Fermi Institute. It was a great honor to be on the scientific board of his museum in on the via Panisperna.

Regarding the paper about large amplitude in real harmonic oscillators, the cubic term in the expansion of the restoring force has had profound implication to modern technologies found in large science infrastructures. It is responsible for bunching and holding collections of particles together in modern accelerator such as synchrotron light sources. It is also responsible for the free electron laser instability that very large machines at SLAC and DESY as well as smaller machines near Trieste, Lund, and Zurich.

I'd never heard of Dr. Pasta. The are many rather amusing Italian surnames that are names of food. One might imagine an "interesting" author list.

[Life of Brian]

Bravo, for a well written, highly engaging article.

Query how long Sarc is going to lay silent and let the misconception continue that 1) he actually wrote something like this, and 2) he was so eager to share it with his peeps here he decided just to blow 10+ years of pseudonymity and doxx himself.

[Sarcastr0]

I posted that it came from a twitter thread an hour ago.

I also posted the thread a week ago, and that I was going to be posting articles from it in subsequent open threads.

I also added my own comments in brackets underneath.

Your whole narrative of plagiarism doesn't hold up for a moment.

[Life of Brian]

Not my narrative, bozo. Two commenters thus far complimented you on “your” piece due to your lack of quotation marks and attribution.

And you still haven’t corrected either of them.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, this was by my intentional design.

That is not how you back up that accusation.

And I don't need to correct them, you came in and accused me of plagiarism as a reply already.

[Life of Brian]

Just stop while you're behind. You replied to Cheswick before I did, and said not a word to correct his misperception -- if anything, your very carefully worded reply continued to feed it.

And if you're really taking the position that you don't have to admit to doing something because I already accused you of it, that seems like a bit of a bombshell change of heart on my credibility that seems worth salting away for future reference.

[Sarcastr0]

"Do you have a favorite research paper? I don’t, so I stole some recommendations from some twitter thread I saw."

That is me, noting my source.

Now, fuck off.

[Life of Brian]

Yeah, I suppose vitriol is really all you have left when you're so squarely caught with your hand in the cookie jar.

Like I said, carefully worded: no clear connection between "some recommendations" and the paper you first linked, and no acknowledgement that "some twitter thread" actually contained the tweet you first posted as your own writing. "Oh, sorry, not mine -- actually copied this tweet here" is quite within your capabilities if that's the message you intended to convey.

You know how to cite sources, and you know how to post links. You did neither, even after it was clear multiple people had eaten up the confusion you spoon-fed them. Cursing at me over your shoulder as you bail doesn't change any of that.

[Bwaaah]

Now, fuck off.

No! That piece was mine!

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Do you have a favorite research paper? I don’t, so I stole some recommendations from some twitter thread I saw.”

That is me, noting my source."

Lol that was you confessing. Dude, you literally pasted somebody else's tweet into the comment box without explanation or attribution. What the hell?

[Sarcastr0]

I did some beam physics back in the day (at Fermilab)! I remember the cube roots in my cooling simulations!!

[Sarcastr0]

What should our meritocratic admissions criteria be aiming for
- success in school?

- success post-school? (not the same as the above; would reward STEM students for being innovative, which is not required for initial mastery of a subject but will serve someone well as they start their career)

- success if given the proper support system? (the current research seems to indicate that cohort-based learning and other such cultural and emotional support systems bring test scores up among first time college goers, and it's not too hard to set that up. Do you take that into account, or do you disfavor those folks because of the extra effort?)

- some more inchoate definition of 'talent?'

- what the differential to the size of the talent pool would be? (would this person likely end up at some other institution, or would they likely end up not going to school? This is more a thing for community colleges, tribal colleges, and schools serving less mobile communities)

The simple 'probability of graduating with the best grades' is limited for 2 reasons. 1) that's a rich get richer situation, and in the long term is not sustainable. 2) probability for success is, at some point, not even really predictable between two different candidates, leaving you with mathematical noise at best or individual biases at worst.

In cases where choosing between students is a wash when it comes to any of the above practical upshots, which is more likely than you think, do you just go for a lottery, or do you still put the time in because merit is about some kind of fairness other than the practical?

[Michael P]

Which "meritocratic admissions criteria"?

Most pre-collegiate schools don't have those. If they have admissions criteria, they're based on residency, need, lottery, or other non-merit measures. (TJHS in Fairfax County infamously abandoned their meritocratic criteria recently, and saw an immediate drop in quality.)

For a university, probably the in-practice target for undergraduates is expected future donations, and for graduate students it's the expected contribution to the university's prestige.

[Sarcastr0]

Are you saying expected future donations *should be* what universities select for, or that's what it is?

[Michael P]

I said "is", not "ought". But in practice, most schools put considerations other than merit above that: they're looking for SJW cred.

[Sarcastr0]

So you meant neither is nor ought.

[Michael P]

You asked about “our meritocratic admissions criteria”, and I was very explicit that those do not always attain as the actual admissions criteria.

On the other hand, the things I named are more objectives than criteria, but the examples you gave are more estimated aptitudes than criteria, so I think it's reasonable to consider what they are really trying to optimize with "merit".

[Sarcastr0]

I did expect some carping about SJW bullshit would pop up; I don't think it's part of this conversation, though.

[not guilty]

I have long been puzzled that Social Justice Warrior is being used as an epithet. I would be proud to be mentioned in the company of the likes of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela.

[Sarcastr0]

Some very silly folks on Tumblr called themselves SJW in like 2015.

Some on the right can't seem to forget that.

[Michael P]

You're being lumped in with Abram Kendi and very silly folks on Tumblr, not those three.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"I have long been puzzled that Social Justice Warrior is being used as an epithet. "

I know, right? Same as "Men's rights activist." Men deserve rights just as much as anyone else.

[Armchair]

Wow...

[Michael P]

Yeah, you'd think people would realize by now that "we can't do this perfectly, so we shouldn't even try" is a poor argument even among the other fallacies. But they keep making that argument about scholastic merit, the border, punishing crime, etc.

[Sarcastr0]

I didn't say anything like that, though.
The issue is not imperfection, it's that for all practical purposes it's completely arbitrary.
Currently, the thinking seems to be that doesn't matter - for fairness' sake you take your criteria and apply them regardless to get a ranking.

[Michael P]

Then what did this mean?

probability for success is, at some point, not even really predictable between two different candidates, leaving you with mathematical noise at best or individual biases at worst.

[Sarcastr0]

"for all practical purposes it’s completely arbitrary"

[Michael P]

So you think we should continue doing something that is completely arbitrary?

[Sarcastr0]

I'm not sure.

What is the alternative?

[Michael P]

At the risk of stating the obvious: Thinking that we should not do that "completely arbitrary" thing.

[Sarcastr0]

I challenge your assumption that we can at the top levels have a meritocratic selection criteria that are not completely arbitrary as to their practical upshot.

[Michael P]

See, now you're back to "we can't do it 100%" -- with the bad-faith wrinkle of "it's not 100% in this particularly challenging case, so therefore it's practically 0%".

[Sarcastr0]

I think I see the issue here - you think I'm talking about the entire cohort of applicants, versus just the top 10% or so you can't distinguish between.

When I said 'In cases where choosing between students is a wash when it comes to any of the above practical upshots' I meant what I said.

[Michael P]

Do you seriously think its hard to tell the 99th percentile of high school graduates from the 90th percentile? Or is the problem really much smaller than "the top 10% or so you can’t distinguish between"?

Before college, it's hard to tell the 99th percentile of "success post-school" from the 90th percentile, strictly because (a) it's hard to predict the future and (b) post-school life is different from being a student, so there's no exact part evidence. But that's back to estimated attribute vs criteria.

[Sarcastr0]

I think you can distinguish (with plenty of muddiness added as is unavoidable comparing between institutions).

I don't think there is a lot of practical upshot in making the distinction.

Hence my question - do you make the distinction anyhow, out of some sense of fairness? Or do you do a lottery, which is easier and would pull in folks who would be just as successful but might not have been engaged otherwise?

[Michael P]

Yes, there's a practical upshot in making the distinction. Can you imagine an MIT or Harvard where admissions was a lottery for the top 10% rather than focusing on the top 1%? They would drop many spots in rankings because they would no longer generate graduates of the same caliber. Universities like that have single-digit percentage admission rates, and that's from an applicant pool that is predominantly the top echelon of high school students. Graduate admissions are a similar story.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, there’s a practical upshot in making the distinction...They would drop many spots in rankings because they would no longer generate graduates of the same caliber

So your argument that there's a practical upshot to the distinction is that there is a practical upshot to the distinction.

My point is that what you just said isn't true.
At some point there is no difference in the learning outcomes between highly admissible students.

You assume otherwise, but bring no evidence other than status quo worship.

[Armchair]

Not make it completely arbitrary...

[Brett Bellmore]

Step 1: Abandon meritocratic selection criteria.

Step 2: Notice that your selection criteria (now...) have no relationship to success.

Step 3: Point to the lack of any relationship between selection criteria and success as proof that meritocratic selection is pointless.

[Sarcastr0]

You are both off in strawman land.

What we call meritocratic selection criteria, no matter how hard we try, don't have a lot of practical difference at some level. And I'm asking what that means for policy.

You are either in denial about that being true, or just want to ride your grievance politics and not think about actual issues. Either way, do better.

[Armchair]

Your education has failed you if you think what I said was somehow a strawman.

"So you think we should continue doing something that is completely arbitrary?"
"I’m not sure. What is the alternative?"
"Not make it completely arbitrary…"

Sarcastr0 ""You are both off in strawman land."

[Sarcastr0]

Me: 'This thing is arbitrary and we can't make it not arbitrary. What should we do about that?'

You: 'not make it arbitrary.'

Want to try again, and be serious this time?

[Don Nico]

My high school had a simple criterion. If you could survive the 9th grade, you remained that. If not you transferred to another school. Thus of the 600 students who entered 150 graduated from that school. The other 450 went elsewhere. It worked. All but two went to and graduated from a 4-year university.

That approach was always under attack and is no long politically acceptable (for at least the last 30 years).

[bernard11]

I think Sarcastro's point is that, at some level, whether it be the 90th percentile or the 99th, distinctions are arbitrary, so why not use a lottery rather than pretend we can see the future?

If the arbitrary selection methods are truly random, of course, then they amount to a lottery, but why take the risk of human biases?

And fairness is some sort of issue. College admissions can be seen as handing out opportunities. Surely, if you have a group of applicants where you can't make distinctions, you want to hand opportunities out equitably.

[Armchair]

Sarcastr0...

You never actually said "This thing is arbitrary and we can’t make it not arbitrary. What should we do about that?"

If you're just going to make up quotes about what you said, there's no point anymore.

[Sarcastr0]

If you’re just going to make up quotes about what you said, there’s no point anymore.

I said it's a wash, which is the same thing.

It seems you are having some trouble following the discussion, and blame me for it.

[Don Nico]

Michael,
You are engaging in a bit of linguistic sophistry.
Say the the criteria are "arbitrary" does not mean that they are set without supporting reasons. It does mean that Reed College has different goals and reasons and criteria than does MIT.
Once those criteria are set, the admissions committees apply them as best and as faithfully as they can.

[Michael P]

Gaslight0 is the one who argued that meritocratic college admission criteria are arbitrary. I disagree, but he's insistent that a problem at one extreme makes the while thing worthless.

[Sarcastr0]

I am not arguing the criteria are arbitrary, I'm arguing that for a subset of students, the distinction created when applying the criteria is arbitrary.

[Don Nico]

"probability for success is, at some point, not even really predictable"
One reason is that post-school success is not directly correllated with university grades.
Later in life, one does have to be "smart enough," but there are plenty of those that do not make it to the top of their profession. Intuition, perseverance, hard work, dogged determination, and being at the right place at the right time, and having the right mentors and supporters all play a role

[Commenter_XY]

Whats the goal? = meritocratic admission, and education

That is the only meaningful way I see to evaluate what should be included in merit criteria.

[ducksalad]

probability for success is, at some point, not even really predictable between two different candidates, leaving you with mathematical noise at best or individual biases at worst.

Couple things to disagree with here. First a nitpick: you don’t predict probabilities of success, you use probabilities to make predictions of success. The probabilities of success associated with ACT scores, for example, at a large university, are a straightforward calculation with fairly small confidence intervals.

The more important disagreement is about your assertion that it’s a wash. I’m sure you can find studies, conducted by opponents of standardized testing, or objective admission criteria in general, that purport to prove test scores don’t correlate. I can find studies purporting to prove they do. I can tell you personally that a room full of students with an average ACT of (say) 26 and mostly top quarter in HS looks, acts, and responds very differently from a class of low ACT, mostly lower half HS students. Of course in the first class there will be a few who can’t do it, and in the second there will be some who can. But the difference in group retention and graduation stats is real, and would be even greater if we didn’t try to focus help on struggling students rather than rigidly treat everyone identically.

Let's agree it's a good thing to help those that need it. That does not change the fact that it takes more effort, and thus costs more, to get them through. When you look at rising college costs, it's useful to remember than in the good old days we were trying to get the top third through college, now we're trying to get the top two-thirds through, and the cost will be substantially more than double.

[Armchair]

Illegal Immigrant Criminals steal in NY, spending the money in Florida.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/02/02/cnns_john_miller_to_avoid_prosecution_migrant_criminal_gangs_steal_in_new_york_spend_in_florida.html

Why is that?

So what the detectives are telling me is, they have crews here that operate in New York, do all their stealing, then go to Florida to spend the money and come back. I’m like, 'Why don’t they just stay and steal in Florida?' They said, 'Because there you go to jail.'"

Oh...

[William Cheswick]

Can anyone tell me the difference between a state and a commonwealth? Dr. Google has not been helpful.

[Michael P]

In the sense of Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, it's just the name they chose when incorporating the state. Those four entities are both states and commonwealths. There's no legal significance beyond the name.

[Martinned]

The Commonwealth of Australia, on the other hand, is a state under international law but not an entity comparable to a US state.

[John F. Carr]

The Scandinavian languages have a word delstat for a political entity like a U.S. state as distinguished from a sovereign state of the kind the U.N. admits.

[Martinned]

In Dutch we call that a "deelstaat". (Well, sometimes we do anyway.)

According to Wikipedia in German they have both Gliedstaat and Teilstaat, but I'm not sure if I've ever encountered either of those in the wild before. In my experience, when Germans refer to something like Texas they will call it a Bundesstaat, a "federal state". Which is basically also what the French, Italians, and many others do.

[Sarcastr0]

If you manage to live in all 4 commonwealths in your lifetime, you get inducted into a secret society.

[Bwaaah]

Like a society that maintains strict secrecy about the difference between a commonwealth and a state.

[Ridgeway]

Fetterman started to blab, and you see how he ended up.

[DaveM]

“Commonwealth” sticks it to the man (King George II) much better than “state”. It’s the bumper sticker you’d put on your horse cart if you lived in colonial Williamsburg.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Kentucky I do not understand -- it was part of Virginia but then Maine was part of Massachusetts and Maine is a *state*.

As to Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, & Virginia, I *think* it dates back to the Royal Charters and the relationship between municipalities and the larger entity (i.e. Commonwealth). Massachusetts has "special municipal corporations" (i.e. "Authorities") which are considered towns without land. This might have made more sense a century ago because the big ones (eg MBTA, MWRA) have their own authorizing legislation and their own license plates. But housing authorities (which in towns are NOT part of the town government) have blue (municipal) license plates and the rest.

Remember that the original states didn't have to have Congressional approval -- the new ones did. (And I don't understand Kentucky.)

You *might* find something in the litigation over the Quabbin back in the 1930s -- the towns of Dana, Etna, Prescott, & Greenwich were "deestablished" into making the "Reservation."

[Ed Grinberg]

A couple of months ago, Prof. Volokh asked: "Should universities ban 'advocacy of genocide'?" (His answer: No, they shouldn't.)
This was my answer at the time:

Our universities have been suppressing certain ideas for decades. Advocacy of genocide ranks pretty high among the ideas they’ve been suppressing. Except … now. Now, when there’re numerous students (and professors!) who want to advocate for the genocide of Israelis (“From the river to the sea!”), our universities have suddenly discovered the virtue of freedom of speech. Curious, isn’t it?
So, what should we do? I’ve long maintained that all public higher-ed institutions should be shut down. As for private ones, the government shouldn’t interfere with them, no matter what they teach or what discussions / presentations they allow.
If I were running such a (private) school, I would not interfere in any way with student advocacy / discussions / presentations. However, I’d be very careful about whom I’d hire, trying to avoid professors who advocate for genocide. And if, upon being hired, a professor surprised me by so advocating (especially, but not only, in the classroom), I’d fire him. (Yes, he has a right to speak his mind, but my (private) school has a right not to be associated with him.*)
* This may very well be wrong under current laws. If so, the laws should be changed.

I've read something that has made me rethink my response as to students:
(from Harvard’s Tragic Journey, Ruth Wisse, Commentary magazine, Feb. 2024)

When Hamas bloodied Israel on October 7, more than 30 Harvard student organizations instantly issued a statement holding “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” As institutional godmother of that DEI coalition, President Gay could not have been expected to denounce their [moral] corruption. But if the investigative commissions do their job, they will address the fact that Harvard students justified an attack for which the vocabulary of bestiality and even Nazi atrocities would prove insufficient. Hamas Jew-killers broadcast their criminality, confident that their societies would support them. The students, likewise, celebrated them proudly, with no expectation of penalty or reprimand, and with no subsequent remorse. If they remain Harvard students, Harvard has a moral stake in their depravity.
Democracy is one of the youngest forms of government, and America cannot expect to keep its republic unless those responsible for higher education can transmit the rudimentary understanding of good and evil. The shock of 9/11 that came from without is less disturbing than this shock from within. Anti-Semitism is never about the Jews. If Harvard cannot find a way of extirpating the rot, it betrays its mission, its obligation to higher education and to the country that looked to it for leadership. Like its recent president, Harvard is a symptom of the larger problem and vitally important on that account. Lawrence Summers knew this, and the spreaders of the disease knew he knew.

I think Ms. Wisse has a point. (To the extent our current laws would prevent a private school like Harvard from expelling such students, they should be changed.)

[Nige]

Hang on a second. Anyone who cheered after Oct 7th is obviously deplorable. But they're no different from the people who are cheering on the IDF killing upward of 27,000 people. If cheering on mass violence is beyond the pale, any of the commenters here who supported the Iraq War, and, incidentally, justified torture, have done far worse than these students.

'The shock of 9/11 that came from without is less disturbing than this shock from within.'

Get away to fuck you delirious crank.

[SRG2]

Few people are "cheering on" the IDF. Many people support the IDF - I am one - and deplore the deaths of a large number of civilians in Gaza as a regrettable war-time occurrence

[Martinned]

Must be a coincidence then that all the cheerleaders comment here on the VC.

[Nige]

So, like anyone who supported Hamas, you support mass violence and even more deaths. 'as a regrettable war-time occurrence' is just boilerplate blandness papering over unbelievable horrors.

[SimonP]

Gosh, it really is just regrettable that the IDF's military mission in Gaza requires killing thousands of women and children, displacing the vast majority of its population, destroying its entire civilian infrastructure, imposing strict limits on the provision of aid and medical assistance, the ongoing targeting of Palestinian journalists, "dirty tricks" with UN aid organizations with an eye towards defeating the broader Palestinian cause, dropping massive indiscriminate bombs all over Gaza without military justification, etc., etc., etc....

It's all Hamas's fault!

[Bob from Ohio]

"It’s all Hamas’s fault!"

Yes. A weaker group starts a war but cannot defend its territory. So it gets invaded and destroyed.

Hamas rejected a ceasefire just yesterday. It can release the hostages today and end this. Its obviously cannot protect the people it claims to fight for so should surrender.

[Nige]

'So it gets invaded and destroyed. '

See this bit? This is the bit where responsibility passes to the invaders and destroyers.

[SimonP]

Hamas is not in any way responsible for Israel's choices, in pursuing its war on the territory. They instigated the response, but we are long beyond the point of believing Israeli claims that their targeting of Hamas assets necessarily requires the levels of destruction and death that we've seen.

And reports on Hamas's intransigence are premature. I don't expect a deal to be reached, because Hamas seems to be resisting a key point of Israel's minimum requirements, which is the total eradication of Hamas. Go figure.

[Bob from Ohio]

All your responses [and Nige's too] boil down to the fact that the Jews are much better at war than the Arabs.

People die in war, lesson is don't start one if you are far weaker.

[Nige]

So what? You can be 'better' at killing thousands of innocent civilians, you just can't claim to have the moral high ground, too.

[Bob from Ohio]

In fact you can.

We killed a lot more German civilians than they killed American civilians. We still have the high moral ground compared to the Nazis.

[Nige]

The lowness of the bar you have to clear to be better than Nazi Germany should give you pause when you're justifying killing thousands of innocent civilians. Here's one clue: if you're going back to Nazi Germany to justify killing thousands of innocent civilians now, you don't really have an actual justification, you just have vibes.

[SimonP]

Objectively speaking, whose actions in the Gaza war are more akin to Nazi Germany's?

[zztop8970]

The point of the Nazi comparison is not to show that Israel is morally better than the Nazis (admittedly a low bar), but that is infantile to compare body counts and conclude 'You can be ‘better’ at killing thousands of innocent civilians, you just can’t claim to have the moral high ground, too.", as you have done.

[Nige]

It is an infantile comparison, that is for sure.

[David Nieporent]

Objectively speaking, whose actions in the Gaza war are more akin to Nazi Germany’s?

Well, Nazi Germany killed Jews for the sake of killing Jews, and Hamas kills Jews for the sake of killing Jews, so…

[Nige]

And now all Gazans are blamed and being made to pay for Oct 7th. A kind of blood libel.

[SimonP]

No, they're more interested in genocide than their Arab neighbors are. What Israel is doing in Gaza is on the same level as Russia's assistance to the Syrian regime, when putting down their civil uprising.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

.

A weaker group starts a war but cannot defend its territory. So it gets invaded and destroyed.

We shall see how strong and tough Israel is after Americans stop providing the military, economic, and political skirts Israel has been hiding behind for decades, leaving a bunch of disgusting right-wing assholes to fend for themselves.

But maybe not for long.

[Commenter_XY]

SimonP...Hamas could have laid down their arms on October 8th, and surrendered. Or anytime after that. Now there is a war, and Hamas will be rightfully annihilated.

It is sad that there are some innocent civilian deaths. That is the truth. As to the innocents who have died...their stories will never be told; their stories will never be heard. They cannot tell their story, because Hamas wrote the cruel end of their story for them.

As for the IDF, I am hard-pressed to identify a similarly equipped and trained military force that takes as much care to preserve human life, as the IDF. Does the US? Russia? China? Saudi Arabia?

[SimonP]

Fuck you. You're just parroting lines you've never bothered to think about independently.

[Nige]

'It is sad that there are some innocent civilian deaths'

Your mild variation from emotional flat-effect when it comes to the deaths of 27,000+ does not convince. It just means you think the deaths are justified, which is fanaticism.

You are apparently hard-pressed to identify the lamest of propaganda.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Keep talking. The more right-wing assholes like you talk, the closer we get to the day at which better Americans stop subsidizing Israel's right-wing assholes.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I support Israel wholeheartedly--right up to the point of their (allegedly) committing war crimes.

That way, everyone has a reason to hate me.

[Nige]

Take comfort from the fact that your opinion appears to be the only one that *doesn't* provoke a hatefest.

[Stephen Lathrop]

I repost here a reply to not guilty I made at the end of a thread which has now scrolled toward oblivion. Here it is:

not guilty, as you no doubt understand, it would be far better to quash the resistance in court right now. With the other Trump cases looking increasingly likely to be delayed past election relevance—or, worse, to become all too relevant right at election time—Trump v. Anderson now shapes up as the one legal opportunity to assure a better result than constitutional crisis and violent suppression might deliver.

Section 3 delivers power to the Court to hand down a decision which would sweep Trump off the ballot nationwide, end his political ambitions, and enable his timely replacement with an actually qualified GOP nominee. It is likely that any such nominee would go on to victory, and claim the presidency. Even a MAGA-friendly nominee might do it.

Thus, the Supreme Court, as early as this week or next, has power to deliver a decision which could end at a stroke the threat of a full year of political crisis, avoiding all the discomfiting happenstance which might ensue. The Court could render impotent as goads to constitutional crisis all the other Trump-related cases. That would turn them into mere criminal matters without historic implications, to be tried at whatever leisurely pace the now-quailing judiciary can manage.

A result such as that would turn Section 3 into a masterpiece of constitutional foresight. It would very soon re-establish the reputation of this beleaguered Supreme Court—or at least go far toward doing so. To do it, the Court has only to summon the courage and comity necessary to see the opportunity, and act on it.

I suggest that makes Trump v. Anderson, right now, the most important legal case the Supreme Court has considered since Brown. Given even an outside possibility that Trump's MAGA legion could deliver an existential threat to American constitutionalism, it could even prove the most consequential case in U.S. history—although success would leave that counter-factual as a puzzle for history to ponder. Which would be yet another brilliant outcome from enforcing Section 3.

[not guilty]

Trump v. Anderson could prove to be the most consequential case in U.S. history? Color me skeptical.

I doubt that any opinion that SCOTUS could render could surpass the consequences of Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857).

[John F. Carr]

He said "since Brown". That is less of a stretch, although I would disagree. The criminal justice reforms of the Warren Court are collectively more consequential than whether Trump gets another term. Individually, maybe or maybe not. NYT v. Sullivan is probably more important than a term of Trump.

[not guilty]

He followed his "since Brown" comment with "Given even an outside possibility that Trump’s MAGA legion could deliver an existential threat to American constitutionalism, it could even prove the most consequential case in U.S. history . . ."

That would include such decisions as Scott v. Sandford and Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803).

[Don Nico]

"existential threat" = the overblown imagination of an aged editor.
But more to the point, I would the Warren Courts reform of criminal justice have had far greater consequences.

Still, I hope that SCOTUS rules quickly and closes any possibility that another such case can arise in Jan. 2025.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nico, anything is possible, if it happens. Trump proved it with regard to violent American coup attempts.

It is not imaginative overreach to anticipate with concern a repeat from a guy whose MO is to be so blatant about outrages he plans, that when he does them they seem normal and expectable. Read the comments on this blog. In the eyes of many, repeat Trump violence has become normal and expectable already.

[Don Nico]

"Trump proved it with regard to violent American coup attempts."
What trump did was egregious, but to call that a violent coup attempt in the context of such attempts globally in the 20th centtury is laughable exaggeration.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nico, which part do you think I exaggerated, the violence or the seize-power part?

[Michael P]

Por qué no los dos?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Carr, taking your premise as presented, with the conjectural assumption that, "a term of Trump," presents—which implies to the point of certainty that American constitutionalism survives whatever the coming 5 years may bring, I agree with you. I also think that is notably more likely than not.

But my remark you responded to was premised admittedly on what I called, "an outside possibility," of an existential threat to American constitutionalism. "Existential threat," means something ceases to exist, or disappears. Not even the Civil War delivered a result so catastrophic as the disappearance of American constitutionalism could be, or so potentially consequential world-wide.

That goes as well for not guilty's reference to Dred Scott—admittedly an excellent choice for comparison as an enormously consequential judicial blunder. It would be hard for today's Court to do worse, but I do not put it past them.

With Trump v. Anderson, the Court has the raw materials of catastrophe before them. Either things the Court might do, or things they might neglect to do, could turn out dreadfully. They cannot afford to leave the way open for otherwise avoidable happenstance to do its worst during the upcoming year. I hope enough justices understand that.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The consequences would also be the same, too.

[not guilty]

My comment on the previous thread that Stephen Lathrop was responding to reads as follows:

Professors Baude and Paulsen reference Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), and segregationists’ ensuing campaign of “massive resistance” to school desegregation. The analogy is instructive. I suspect that that campaign had broader support and better organization than the present day cult of Donald Trump and his legion of keyboard warriors.

Two presidents sent federal troops to enforce school desegregation as the law of the land — Little Rock in 1957 and the University of Mississippi in 1962. The United States is better off for having overcome the haters.

If Trump’s minions were to take up arms, 10 U.S.C. § 251 et seq. furnishes President Biden with ample authority to quell the resistance. That would not be pretty, but neither would it last long.

[Stephen Lathrop]

not guilty, thanks for adding that. I thought it was a great comment, by the way.

[Don Nico]

"That would not be pretty, but neither would it last long."
Exactly so, but some commenters here recoiled when I said the same.

[Martinned]

Haven't you heard? The 2nd amendment is all about resisting a tyrannical federal government!

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

What did you think it was about?

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, that's what they said at the time it was all about, so, duh.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bellmore, which time? Before they invented popular sovereignty, or afterward? They said different things on the before-side than they said on the after-side. Although admittedly, among the slave lords with different motivations and emphasis than among the others.

In general, during the interval following ratification, you will find notably fewer references to militias as a bulwark against tyranny and oppression in the U.S. See how many non-Southern pro-militia advocates you can find between 1790 and 1800, for instance. Compare that with 1775–1785.

[Absaroka]

"In general, during the interval following ratification, you will find notably fewer references to militias as a bulwark against tyranny and oppression in the U.S. See how many non-Southern pro-militia advocates you can find between 1790 and 1800, for instance. Compare that with 1775–1785."

Why be coy? I'm sure you wouldn't make a claim like "you will find" unless you had the data to back it up. Why not share your source?

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Sure, the emphasis on "overthrowing tyranny" (by the very people who would be subject to being overthrown) has ebbed right up to the present day. Now, it's "unthinkable". They'd hardly be expected to consider themselves tyrants.

None of them would ever joke about becoming a "dictator", staying in office for a "third term" or "terminating" the Constitution...

[Dr. Ed 2]

That would not be pretty, but neither would it last long.

It would be Northern Ireland writ large -- and that went on for 30 years. Remember this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM4vblG6BVQ

In a country this size, with the rebels concentrated in rural areas, it WOULD last after the initial uglyness, and who is the large outside power, respected by BOTH sides, that could step in and settle it? (It was largely American Catholic cops who did the Good Friday accords.)

I don't think it would be settled quickly...

[Brett Bellmore]

"In a country this size, with the rebels concentrated in rural areas, it WOULD last after the initial ugliness,"

You'd think that a party that's concentrated in urban areas that would become uninhabitable in under a week if extremely exposed infrastructure were damaged, would be a bit more scared about a civil war.

Forget civil war, when China does decide it's time to invade Taiwan, our whole electric grid is going down, and that's going to be really ugly in the cities.

[Nige]

You'd think they'd be easier to scare with threats? How disappointing for you.

[bernard11]

Hey, Brett doesn't threaten, no matter what it sounds like.

[Brett Bellmore]

Warning: "If you walk into that alley, you'll get mugged!"

Threat: "If you walk into that alley, I'll mug you!"

Most people are aware of the distinction.

There seems to be this expectation on the left that, if they did provoke the right to some kind of revolutionary action, the right would form up in rank and file in order to engage in classic military battles with the US army, like some kind of historical reenactment.

At which point the left would simply have the air force do a bit of high altitude bombing, problem solved.

It seems not to have occurred to them that the right has actually heard of asymmetric warfare, and that they're VERY badly situated if that ever came to America, because our society is irresponsibly fragile, and they live in the most fragile part of it.

I don't want to see this. If this sort of thing ever happens in America, even if my side won, America would never be the same again. Most revolutions end up being for the worse, not the better, and that would probably be the case for the 2nd American revolution.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The downscale right-wing culture war casualties who support Trump are our society's losers -- they have never accomplished much nor stuck with anything worthwhile for very long in their entire lives, and they are not positioned to start now. They talk a lot, and the internet has given our bigoted, uneducated, left-behind misfits a chance to huddle together online for warmth, but they are brittle and weak rather than strong. Better Americans will continue to shape our national progress against conservatives' wishes, and the clingers get to whine about it as much as they like, but whining is about as far as it will go.

Replacement will continue to solve most of our problems involving the clingers.

[bernard11]

Warning: “If you walk into that alley, you’ll get mugged!”

Threat: “If you walk into that alley, I’ll mug you!”

Most people are aware of the distinction.

Yeah, except that’s not what you’re saying, plus you're going to cheer the muggers on, and loudly proclaim that they shouldn't be punished.

What you are saying is something like this:

“Look, I’d like you to do me a favor. It’s fine with me if you don’t want to, but my buddies over there, the rough-looking guys with guns and baseball bats, might get pissed off at you.”

It's a threat that just sounds like a warning.

That’s the game you’re playing, Brett. You’re not fooling anyone, so cut out your BS distinctions. You're all for the violence.

[Nige]

Actually, you keep saying ‘my friends here are going to mug you so you better do whatever they want.’

‘There seems to be this expectation’

There is no expectation of this. The right will go full Hamas, we’re sure, having endlessly gamed out their power-fantasies until they actually believe them.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bernard, your comment put me in mind of Mark Twain. After attending a Wagner concert in Europe, he assured readers that Wagner's music is, "Better than it sounds."

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bellmore, you suppose that if China decides to invade Taiwan, China’s strategists will think it advantageous to create a simultaneous casus belli against the U.S.? I will have to check Sun Tzu on that one.

Of course that was somewhat the Japanese strategy in 1941. I wonder if the Chinese can remember how that turned out.

By the way, have you noticed how much of your commentary now focuses on conjectural violence? You might be able to get competent counseling as close as North Carolina.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Of course that was somewhat the Japanese strategy in 1941. I wonder if the Chinese can remember how that turned out."

I think they can remember that in 1941 the US was a fairly self-sufficient manufacturing giant, and are hardly concerned at all that we will launch wave after wave of mutual fund managers against them.

"By the way, have you noticed how much of your commentary now focuses on conjectural violence?"

As they say, "If you want peace, prepare for war."

[Don Nico]

Brett,
What is the point of this bullshit fearmongering. You are as bad of the leftist commenters predicting chaos if Trump runs and loses. if power to the cities go down, the grid failure will extend to rural America. Those milking machines are not going to work not to mention large agricultural facilities.
If large scale violence is in the cards, no matter what, let is come sooner than latter. The rightist wingnuts will be crushed if that is what they are hoping for.

[Brett Bellmore]

I had a long reply prepared, but Reason doesn't let you know it's logged you out until you hit "submit".

The problem here is that, by the time you add up everybody the left thinks are "rightist wingnuts", you've got a substantial fraction of the country.

You think I game out a civil war because I WANT one? No, I do it to warn people from thinking, "Bring it, we'll crush you."

No, the crushing will be mutual. This won't be a nice civil war like the 1860's, where everything behind the lines was safe. And it won't be Northern Ireland, where one side had the backing of a major power.

Nobody will win a civil war in the US. The country will be in ruins, and whoever wins won't dare let it be free again.

So, let's not have one. Which means, let's refrain from provoking one.

[Martinned]

let’s refrain from provoking one.

Take your own advice. Commit to accepting the outcome of the elections. (Which two plausible Trump VP candidates have already declined to do.)

[Brett Bellmore]

Commit to running elections according the laws on the books, and I'll commit to accepting the outcome of the elections. Deal?

[Nige]

Even ones where Republicans win? Knock yourself out.

[Don Nico]

"Northern Ireland writ large "
There is not a chance of any protest degenerating into a civil war or the Troubles writ large. Ed, you really ought to see a psychotherapist. In the meanwhile, armchair reactionaries like yourself need to take a good dram of Irish whiskey and go to sleep.

"largely American Catholic cops who did the Good Friday accords"
You are hallucinating. The US did supply a negotiator; I know one of the Northern Irish negotiators quite well. Your claim is a LIE.

[Nige]

Hah, missed that. Jesus. Ed can't bring himself to just say ‘Thank you for contributing to peace in Northern Ireland, Bill Clinton!’

[DaveM]

A result for the reasons you give would turn section 3 into a tool for tyranny, inflame half the country and engulf us all in utter chaos.

The purpose of the courts isn’t to oust your political enemy. If yours is the general Democratic Party position, then democracy and federalism has already died on your side.

[Stephen Lathrop]

DaveM, you might not be familiar enough with my commentary to have noticed, but that comment invited a way in for folks I regard as political opponents, if not enemies. I think if the Court did as I suggested, my political preferences are more likely to suffer than otherwise. It is a price I would pay gladly to preserve American constitutionalism, which was the point of the comment.

And by the way, there is nothing illegitimate about using Section 3 to accomplish that. Suppressing insurrectionists is what Section 3 is for.

[ThePublius]

What insurrection?

[MoreCurious]

The one that began the day after the election in November 2024 and culminated on January 6, 2021. Everyone else knows about; were you too stoned to notice? Or maybe they cut off your cable and internet service for failing to pay your bills?

[Absaroka]

"began the day after the election in November 2024 and culminated on January 6, 2021"

I know I'm not stoned enough to grok that 🙂

[Bwaaah]

I know I’m not stoned enough to grok that

I am, and I understood something. You need to get stupid, like me. Get your stracts faight. And something about internet service.

[Absaroka]

I'll try another dozen bong hits and see if it helps.

[Bwaaah]

You might try fentanyl, and somebody to stand by in case you reach the point of understanding.

[Dr. Ed 2]

This IS an attempt by the Dems to use the courts to oust their political enemy.

[Armchair]

College IQs now are merely average.

https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2024/01/23/why_college_students_average_iq_has_fallen_17_points_since_1939

Used to be, if you went to college, you were a notch above in the eyes of the employers. Now...you're just average. No better than a random high school senior. And the authors suggest making college courses...easier.

I think we need to have a serious conversation as a society. Is it really worth sucking away the first 4 years of a new adult's productive working career AND dropping over $200K in debt on them (one way, direct or another, via tax burden), for what is essentially a finishing school with no real training advantage for 90% of the classes. And those who can't afford to take off 4 years at the beginning of their career are automatic losers. Or we can fix the system...

1. Eliminate the requirement for a 4-year college education from all graduate/professional schools and jobs. If it's not providing an advantage, there's no point in subjecting people to the debt and time requirements.

2. Make first year college classes much harder. It's better if people who aren't skilled enough leave sooner (and save more money and time), than let them waste more time and money.

3. Re-introduce college entrance exams.

[Sarcastr0]

I will ignore how unseriously you come in calling an undergraduate education a 'finishing school,' and how your fixes look a lot more like you just want a less educated populace.

Because I agree with you in broad strokes - the fact that undergrad is such an exclusive onramp into just about every profession is leaving a lot of talent on the table. We should have apprenticeship programs, tons of 2-year technical programs, better connections between community colleges and the workforce. And, heck, more opportunities for people with just a masters.

More on-ramps, more off-ramps.

[Armchair]

That's what it's become essentially. A finishing school for those with enough money and time to afford it.

The fixes make it what it was originally.

[Nige]

'A finishing school for those with enough money and time to afford it.'

No, that ignores everything else you said. First of all if people who can't afford, it, don't really have the time and are not suited and not even interested are obliged to obtain a degree to get a job, then it isn't a 'finishing school,' it's an economic trap squeezing the young.

[Sarcastr0]

Lets ignore your subjective take here; the labor market seems to think you're full of shit.

What about my idea of rather than disincentivizing undergrad, incentivizing other options?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Sarcastr0, your idea was correct.

But it also bears mention that the 1937 IQ comparison point is apples to question marks. All it shows is that colleges became more broadly inclusive than they were so long ago. Left out is what benefits that inclusivity conferred, both on a broadened cohort of graduates, and down the road among their inevitably better-prepared offspring.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Bullshyte.

We have just replaced what a High School diploma was a century ago with a College Degree.

[Armchair]

Let's challenge your math skills for a second Sarcastr0.

Take a middle ranked US Private University. American or Drexel. Assume a 4 year tuition at list price. How long does it take you to make back your "investment" on average? Say, with a Physics major.

[Absaroka]

Fun question!

Looks like full tuition at Drexel is $60k/yr, so $240k total.

Typical salaries: welder, $50k, electrician $60k, physicist $100k.

If apprentices make half the average, then on graduation day the physicist is $340k-ish in the hole, so it will take 8-ish years for the physicist to catch up. Of course she will probably work a lot longer than 8 years.

In reality, I people who want to be physicists should study physics, and people who want to be welders should weld. You're not going to starve with any of those careers, and you spend enough of your life working that doing something you like matters.

(I got a job as a computer nerd and do my welding at home as a hobby 🙂 )

[Brett Bellmore]

I agree about the apprenticeship programs, and technical programs. One of the BIG mistakes we made in this country over the last few decades was deemphisizing vo-tech schools.

However, if the average IQ of college students is now barely above average, what's the average IQ of college graduates?

The 6 year graduation rate for 4 year degrees is running at about 60% right now. The 3 year graduation rate for 2 year degrees? Under 40%.

So, it's quite possible that the average IQ of college graduates hasn't declined much, it's just that we're now admitting a lot of people who have very little hope of graduating.

[Sarcastr0]

1) You make school more accessible, you make it's graduates look more like the population; that's not necessarily a bad thing.

2) Quit talking about IQ; it's a fraught metric.

3) I'm not sure your graduation metrics are right; do they exclude for-profit institutions?

[Commenter_XY]

For academic work in a university, IQ matters. Example: You will not see a developmentally disabled adult with an IQ of 70 in Physics classes.

[Nige]

It only matters in the specific areas that require the type of intelligence measured by IQ tests.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, and that's basically all of STEM.

[Sarcastr0]

I very much disagree. I work more in STEM outcomes than STEM education, but at that level you want things other than raw processing power.

Communication skills, creativity, etc.

And also IQ doesn't measure talent, it measures skill - i.e. talent plus preparedness. That has implications for its long-term sustainability as a sole metric - eventually, if you don't build capacity, you have an aristocracy of incremental doctrinaire types, and you stagnate.

Metricization is a legit problem already in some subfields.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174952/the-tyranny-of-metrics

[Brett Bellmore]

You want things in addition to, not "other than", raw processing power. The raw processing power is just the minimum qualification to be able to do the work.

[Sarcastr0]

You are treating an optimization variable like a threshold variable.

That's not mathematically viable.

There is a threshold of processing power you need, but also I'd say a threshold of creativity (for lack of a better term) as well. And of human skills.

[Bwaaah]

I'll open up a materials sciences lab, and let Sarc do the hiring.

My goal? To create an underperforming laboratory that has exhaustive excuses of why my people can't do the basic math.

[Don Nico]

I would have said that IQ measures potential. ot every smart person has the skill or the psychological make up to realize that potential.

[Martinned]

I would have said that IQ measures the ability to take IQ tests.

[Sarcastr0]

They're too easy to game/train for if potential is all you're looking for.

[Absaroka]

"They’re too easy to game/train for"

This is about the SAT, not IQ tests, but in Mr. Pinker's view:

"We have already seen that test scores, as far up the upper tail as you can go, predict a vast range of intellectual, practical, and artistic accomplishments. They’re not perfect, but intuitive judgments based on interviews and other subjective impressions have been shown to be far worse. Test preparation courses, notwithstanding their hard-sell ads, increase scores by a trifling seventh of a standard deviation (with most of the gains in the math component)."

(heh, the whole article is worth reading, he was on a tear)

[Absaroka]

A couple of related articles from the NYT floated across the ether, both arguing that SAT is highly predictive of college success:

"The Misguided War on the SAT"
"A Top College Reinstates the SAT"

[Sarcastr0]

I'm not against standardized tests, largely for the reasons in the articles you cite - biased and gameable as they may be, they are substantially better than nothing, and those schools that eliminate them have nothing better to replace them with.

1) Be aware of what you are testing. Don't pretend potential is the same as ability is the same as talent. This is mostly a problem with IQ tests; folks seem to understand that the SAT, LSAT, GRE, etc. are not testing raw intelligence somehow.

2) they should not be the sole thing you base anything on, from individual admissions to spotting a problem with the system.

[Brett Bellmore]

1. No, more of an irrelevant thing, if the actual purpose was to educate people who'd benefit from it. Maybe a bit worse than irrelevant; Suppose that a completely blind admission process were to result in some racial or ethnic group being over-represented, not because of discrimination, just because they met the objective criteria better. (Perhaps because they were trying to.) Is it really that great to start discriminating against that group just to improve your optics?

"Too many slants being admitted. Let's say they have bad personalities!" pretty much describe a lot of elite institutions' efforts to have a student body that 'looks like America'.

2. Circular: The only thing that makes it fraught is the demand that it not be used. So all you're doing is insisting that I should comply with that demand. No.

3. Per the National Center for Education Statistics, graduation rates are higher for public schools in for 4 year degrees, but higher for the private schools for the 2 year degrees. I cited the "all institutions" numbers.

Frankly, looking at those numbers, I'm wondering if the private for profit 4 year degree programs aren't largely a scam. Except that if you took that low graduation rate to indicate that, what would it say about the public 2 year degree programs?

[Sarcastr0]

Dunno why you're dragging affirmative action into this. You want to argue we need to do more racial IQ things?

IQ is a fraught metric. It's a phenomenologically derived metric from the 1960s.
It's too much of a composite to be able to easily figure causality versus correlation.
And there are studies about its limited scope. I've linked plenty to you. You discard those studies as all woke nonssense, for an outcome oriented reason - you like IQ. But that's you, not me, making a bare demand.

And yes, private for-profits are largely a scam. I don't think the only reason why is graduation rates.

[Dr. Ed 2]

ALL privates are for profit...

[Sarcastr0]

Wrong again.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Dunno why you’re dragging affirmative action into this. You want to argue we need to do more racial IQ things?"

Because every time a university sets out to make it's student body "look more like the population" they start in with invidious racial and ethnic discrimination. We have numerous examples of that.

"And yes, private for-profits are largely a scam. I don’t think the only reason why is graduation rates."

On the numbers, four year private for profits are a scam. Two year? Don't seem to be.

[Sarcastr0]

No one was discussing this.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Brett -- be careful with grad rates of 2 year degrees because a lot of them transfer to a 4 year college at the end of their first year.

AND a lot of them are taking specific courses for certification in a trade, and don't bother graduating. So you gotta be careful how you count.

But there IS massive attrition.

[OtisAH]

These among others are areas I wish we’d discuss when talking “reparations.” Cash payments to descendants of slaves accomplishes nothing except short to maybe long term relief for those few people. Investments in education, small businesses, etcetera ad infinitum are where reparation discussions should focus if we’re to have them at all.

[Bwaaah]

“Investments in education, […], etcetera ad infinitum.”

We’re on track, and just haven’t yet reached investment infinitum. But sound thinking there.

[Nige]

Your point no 1 covers it. If you can't get jobs without degrees everybody will be trying to get the degrees, and miring people in debt for the privelege is a sick joke.

[Armchair]

You can get jobs without degrees. Especially if the degree is worthless.

[Nige]

The degree is worth thousands and thousands of dollars and lots of employees oblige you to have one regardless of the degree's merit or relevance.

[Mr. Bumble]

"...and lots of employees oblige you to have one regardless of the degree’s merit or relevance."
That is starting to change.

[Nige]

Is it?

[Dr. Ed 2]

It already HAS changed.

The purported earning bonus for a college degree is based on those now retired/retiring -- those who graduated before 1980.

[apedad]

College students are a subset of all Americans so it would be expected that their IQ tests are falling.

American IQ Test Scores Show Recent Declines, According To New Study

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2023/03/23/american-iq-test-scores-show-recent-declines-according-to-new-study/?sh=54e9aa06559f

[SRG2]

Cui bono?. Who does it benefit to require a college degree for jobs whose demands bear little relationship to degree work?

[Life of Brian]

College IQs now are merely average.

Not to get too mathematical this early on a Monday morning, but that's by definition the inevitable result of the "college for all" movement.

[M L]

Not in Lake Wobegon.

[Life of Brian]

LOL, indeed.

[Life of Brian]

Eliminate the requirement for a 4-year college education from all graduate/professional schools and jobs. If it’s not providing an advantage, there’s no point in subjecting people to the debt and time requirements.

Yeah, there's a lot of societal inertia at play here I think. Back when college admission and retention standards were higher, a college graduate was more of a proxy for intelligence/diligence/etc. than it is today, and a lot of industry took advantage of that proxy as a coarse, first-pass filter for job applicants.

That's not working so well now, so companies are increasingly dropping the degree requirement and going back to screening individuals on the merits of the actual skills required for the actual position. Good for them, and hopefully that trend continues.

[Dr. Ed 2]

No, it was Gregg v. Power Systems and subsequent EEOC rulings that requiring a college degree (in anything, from anywhere) was NOT discriminatory but aptitude tests were.

[David Nieporent]

There was of course no "Gregg v. Power Systems" case. (What our illiterate Dr. Ed means is Griggs v. Duke Power Co..)

[Don Nico]

"College IQs now are merely average."
Why is that surprising? The broader is college admission, the more accurate that statement becomes.

[Longtobefree]

Eliminating federal student loans will accomplish all of those goals.

[M L]

All of those things are probably needed.

Even 15-20 years ago, walk into a community college and see what kind of education is going on. It's easier than high school, any top half high school student would see it as a complete joke. But not for most of the students there. So one has to ask, what exactly is the point of anything going on here?

There is no value in having people forgo work and real life to sit in these classrooms - there is negative value, actually, it is destructive. But kids are just herded from one thing to the next, like going from 5th to 6th grade, 8th to 9th, high school to college. And they are told along the way that this is the path to success (largely a classic correlation/causation fail, but even if it were true it does not justify the system/structure or mean that it could not be better and very different). Overall this phenomenon has been partly a propaganda push, partly a sales scam, partly institutional inertia and self-perpetuating credentialism, partly a malign ideological flare-up.

But there is no central decisionmaker to "make it this way" or "introduce this" or "eliminate that." So your thoughts are not really solutions but fall more into the category of just observing problems/symptoms. The concrete step is to remove government involvement and allow things to sort themselves out. The primary form of government involvement is the funding of the entire debacle under the guise of student loans.

[Dr. Ed 2]

40 years ago, in a college town that will remain nameless (and isn't Amherst) the local high school let high school students take English classes at the state university instead of in the high school -- until it came out that the reason why so many students were doing so was that the college classes were EASIER than the high school one.

[M L]

That actually brings up an interesting point. High schools have long offered "dual enrollment" classes/credits where students get a sizeable jump start on a college degree. Home schoolers have used this to even greater advantage, completing a year or more of college before the usual age of high school graduation, and home school popularity has exploded since COVID. This points to the idea that one of the routes through this mess is compressing the timeline and completing that degree sooner.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, my son is in a charter HS affiliated with a local college. Not only will he be able to take college credit classes starting in his sophomore year, he gets one year free at the college after he graduates HS.

It's quite common for the graduates of this HS to have a 2 year degree by the end of "13th grade", without any college debt.

[M L]

Nice. Is your son potentially on any kind of "elite" college track, or state flagship etc? I'm wondering what the 4 year admissions scene looks like for kids doing 2 years at a CC or basic state school.

People here might be interested in checking out this insane article about the current state of high end admissions consulting in Manhattan and such. Cost 120k/year from 7th or 8th grade on.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/college-admissions-educational-consultants-command-education.html

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, he is taking "honors" everything. He'll be starting in on the college classes next year on account of having exhausted the state requirements in some topics. But probably vocational courses, he's found in the robotics club that he really enjoys shop work. He's been talking about maybe a career underwater welding, he enjoys scuba.

GTCHS

[David Nieporent]

I'll take "Yet Another Fictional Anecdote from Dr. Ed" for $500, Alex.

[Ridgeway]

I am sure it is. However, I would put my daughter's recent AP Art History course up against any college survey course in the field. Similarly, her AP Government course was extremely rigorous. In terms of volume, she covered more than we did in Con Law.

[Sarcastr0]

Republicans prefer to keep their money ‘inside the family’, as it were. Which isn’t remotely the same as laundering a bribe, it just means that, all things being equal, you prefer to deal with people you associate with.

Not a bribe, just terminal levels of partisan chauvinism, folks - it's not bribery, it's just capitalism incest!

[Brett Bellmore]

What's "terminal" about it? It's perfectly natural behavior. We're talking about people who are deeply involved in politics, of course they're going to let politics influence their choice of hotel.

[Sarcastr0]

Have you met people who work behind the scenes in electoral politics? They are mercenary, not partisan zealots.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, I've met them, I've been active in politics since the late 70's. I assure you that it's a mix, not all mercenaries.

[Nige]

The one thing Trump is undeniably good at is getting Republicans to give him lots of money. You can launder a lot through a hotel.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Isn’t Hyatt owned by the Pritzker family, and aren’t they Democrats?

JB Pritzker is the Governor of Illinois and he IS a Democrat, and I remember running into the Pritzker name before -- someone else.

Could it be that the Republicans don’t want to stay at a Hyatt more than anything else?

[Kazinski]

Far-left comic Michael Rapaport slams ‘cadaver’ Biden, says voting for Trump ‘on the table’ after migrants beat cops in NYC

https://nypost.com/2024/02/03/news/far-left-comic-michael-rapaport-says-voting-for-trump-is-on-the-table-after-seeing-migrants-beat-down-cops-in-times-square/

[Armchair]

The UNRWA is hopelessly infiltrated with terrorists.

Over 1000 members of its workforce (more than 10%) closely associated with Hamas terrorists. Nearly 50% of its workforce related to a Hamas terrorist. It's facilities used for terrorist storage. It's members taking direct place in terrorist attacks... It's time to shut it down.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees can replace it. They handle refugees literally every place else in the world. ONLY Palestine gets its own special organization. And that organization is hopelessly corrupted by terrorists.

Shut down the UNRWA. Replace it with the organization that helps refugees everywhere else.

https://nypost.com/2024/01/29/news/about-1200-unrwa-staffers-have-links-to-hamas-thousands-more-closely-related-to-terrorists-israeli-dossier/

[Nige]

No amount of suffering is too much to inflict on the people of Gaza, eh?

[Armchair]

Yes, we had this discussion before. You ended up supporting slavery, because the slavers were providing food to the slaves.

I think that's where your moral compass went off.

[Nige]

You ended up killing all the slaves, I wouldn't go crowing about it.

[Armchair]

Did I? I said we should free them... You insisted we couldn't remove the slavers...

[Nige]

I didn't insist on anything, you introduced a fairy-tale in a discussion about real world events, it was and is nonsenscal.

[Armchair]

Is it so hard for you to say that we should remove the organization that is corrupted with terrorists and their supporters, and replace them with a different UN organization that handles refugees everywhere else?

[Sarcastr0]

'Is it so hard to agree with my personal take?'

[Nige]

Is it so hard for you to not immediately fall in line with every IDF smear campaign?

[ThePublius]

What does that comment have to do with the original post? UNRWA members participated in the OCt. 7 atrocity. So we ended funding for that organization.

So, somehow this is inflicting suffering on the people of Gaza?

I don't follow. Perhaps you're saying UNRWA is necessary to support Gazans, to avoid or preempt or remedy their suffering? Well, UNRWA has then strayed from its mission by participating in a surprise attack and slaughter in Israel.

I just don't understand some people.

[Nige]

Israel decides they don't like an agency giving aid to beleagured civilians, launch a savage PR campaign against them, you swallow it whole, act as if less aid won't cause more suffering and it's only logical to believe the IDF. You're a fanatic.

[ThePublius]

So, you're saying that you don't believe any of the stories that UNRWA employees support Hamas, and that some even participated in the Oct. 7 attack? Many countries disagree with you and have defunded UNRWA. What makes you smarter?

[Nige]

I don't believe it just because you, or the IDF, say so. I disagree with many countries? Won't be the first time. What makes you and them so dumb?

[Armchair]

So, you believe Hamas over Israel?

[Nige]

What have Hamas to do with it? They don't give a shit. No, wait, they probably love it when Israel goes after aid agencies and increases the suffering of the people of Gaza. Proves them right, or so they'll claim. They want you dead, you have every right to resist. Etc.

[Commenter_XY]

I want to commend POTUS Biden for his moral clarity in ending funding to UNRWA. Several other countries have followed suit. This is a wonderful opportunity for arab countries in the region to show their concern and compassion for the civilians in Gaza. Of course, I expect them to talk loud, and do nothing.

I would also commend (and deeply thank) POTUS Biden for his moral clarity in providing Israel with advanced weaponry, and real time intelligence to enable Israel to hunt down Hamas members and kill them. The world will be a materially safer place without living Hamas members in it. It is rare that a US POTUS acts with such moral clarity; as an American Jew, I truly appreciate that, especially now.

[Nige]

'The world will be a materially safer place without living Hamas members in it'

27,000+ bodies on the pile, all safer.

[ThePublius]

Unfortunately, all war involves civilian casualties. Also unfortunately, many Gazan civilians, some argue most, support Hamas. Not all civilians are innocent, no more so than they were in Nazi Germany.

[Nige]

Now you're merely justifying the killing of tens of thouands of civilians, and expecting to be treated as if you have some sort of moral high ground.

[Commenter_XY]

Well, we do actually; occupy the high moral ground. The actions and behavior of Hamas and their supporters has placed them into the human animal category. Perfectly justifiable to hunt them down like the human animals they are, and kill them. This will be over soon enough, inside Gaza. Maybe by Simchat Torah, with luck.

Then Israel can hunt down and kill any remaining Hamas members in Judea and Samaria.

It is a war, Nige. An existential one. There are not too many rules.

[Nige]

You DID occupy the high ground. Then you (well not you, you just cheerlead it) killed 27,000+ people mostly innocent men women and children, maimed a lot more. You had the moral high ground and you dropped a MOAB on it now you're sitting at the bottom of the crater, still digging.

[David Nieporent]

You might want to recalibrate your moral compass if your definition of "moral high ground" revolves solely around being a victim. And that responding to victimization makes one the villain.

[Nige]

If that was my definition you might have a point.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Your mindless support of Israel’s deplorable right-wingers resembles your support of this blog’s low-grade right-wingers.

[grb]

Commenter_XY : “It is a war, Nige”

There is never any shortage of wars around the world, C_XY, so here’s a question for you : Which war combatant in the past few decades has been most ruthlessly efficient butchering civillians, the elderly, men, women and children. Yemen would be a decent pick, but the numbers aren’t there. The obvious choice is Syria, where Assad and Putin leveled whole cities, used chemical weapons, and developed the new weapon of a barrel packed with explosives, then dumped out a helicopter onto city neighborhoods.

In terms of total numbers, sure. But in terms of murderous efficency, it’s a very close call. By women and children killed per hour, Israel is giving Putin and Assad a run for their money.

Now, three points :

1. Maybe you can come up with an alternate candidate so Assad and Netanyahu can safety vie for second in terms of oceans of innocent blood shed. But given how many of Netanyahu’s supporters are using WWII firebombing as their go-to excuse, I doubt it.

2. But you don’t care, do you? The Palestinians are subhuman vermin to you, right?

3. Meanwhile, Israel has dropped hundreds of 2000lb dump bombs onto densely populated urban areas. Each bomb has a kill radius up to 1000ft. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Netanyahu is talking about the mass ‘voluntary migration’ of Palestinians at the same time he’s waging a terrorist war on Gaza’s civilian population. Supposedly the Congo is Israel’s top choice for mass human transport.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-in-talks-with-congo-and-other-countries-on-gaza-voluntary-migration-plan/#:~:text=Last%20Monday%2C%20Netanyahu%20told%20a,on%20it%2C%E2%80%9D%20he%20said.

[Commenter_XY]

Take it up with Hamas, grb.

[Bob from Ohio]

That's where he gets his arguments.

[grb]

Commenter_XY : "Take it up with Hamas, grb"

So you have one standard for Israel and another for the rest of the world. That’s a matter for your own personal ethics, but shouldn’t you at least be honest about it? Shouldn’t you own it?

I would have found it repugnant if the United States government and military killed over 24,000 civilians in the four months after 9-11. I found Assad’s butchery repugnant. I find Putin war on civilians in Ukraine repugnant. I have one standard. You might give that a shot.

On seeing the quote below, the first thing I thought was could this guy be Commenter_XY secret identity? Because in terms of crude propaganda from an Alice in Wonderland alien planet, it seems a pretty good match.

Rep Glenn Grothman (R) : “I would like to talk about the people in Gaza should be so lucky, so grateful, realize how lucky and grateful they are that they are living so close to Israel…. In fact, Gaza has been treated incredibly fairly and generously by Israel”

[Commenter_XY]

I don't find it repugnant at all to kill Judeocidal Hamas members.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"Stop making me hurt you."

Classic abuser mentality.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Should Israel spend a trillion dollars on improving Palestine like we did in Afghanistan??

[Nige]

Is that not what they're doing?

[Bob from Ohio]

"ending funding to UNRWA"

Suspended. It will be resumed soon.

[Longtobefree]

"Shut down the UNRWA."

The last three letters are unnecessary.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Won't work because the new group would wind up hiring the same workers -- they'd have to because of local needs, e.g. language, culture, etc. And who would be there and willing to work?

[John F. Carr]

The already weird eBay stalking case is getting weirder. One of the stalkers, Jim Baugh, is claiming to be a secret agent. The stalking victims are going to have to butt heads with government lawyers claiming Baugh's background can not be revealed in the lawsuit.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/02/02/business/natick-ebay-feds-classified/

Baugh himself can't deny facts underlying his criminal conviction. The present lawsuit is about negligent supervision – somebody should have known better than to hire this loose cannon.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Maybe that's why he WAS a secret agent?

Note "was"....

[Bwaaah]

Stupid Liberty Insurance commercial (seriously):

"I had a perfect driving record, and then I got into an accident. My insurance company immediately raised my rates. Is that what I get for having had a perfect driving record?"

(No. That's what you get for NOT having a perfect driving record.)

[not guilty]

In stark contrast to some of her earlier comments, Governor Nikki Haley is now saying that a state has no right to secede from the union. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/04/states-secede-nikki-haley-00139496 Last week she reportedly said of secession, "if Texas decides they want to do that, they can do that." She added "If that whole state says, 'We don't want to be part of America anymore,' I mean, that's their decision to make."

I surmise that she figured out that, despite her secession comments and her omission of slavery as a cause of the Civil War, neo-Confederates are a lost cause for her.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

So, if Trump gets off the ballot based on a post-Civil-War constitutional provision, that will open the way for a candidate who is soft on the Confederacy to be the Republican nominee.

[grb]

To further emphasize there's no Stupid like right-wing stupid :

"Gov. Ron DeSantis has endorsed legislation pending in the Legislature that would make it a criminal misdemeanor to manufacture, sell, or distribute “cultivated meat,” defined as “any meat or food product produced from cultured animal cells.”

....DeSantis, during a news conference, suggested he sees the lab-grown meat industry as another attempt to control Americans, similar to what he sees as happening with renewable energy. “You need meat, okay? We’re going to have meat in Florida. Like, we’re not going to have fake meat. Like, that doesn’t work.”

This isn't about making sure that lab meat is properly labeled. Nor is DeSantis saying only that the state won't buy lab meat for school lunches. No, he wants to ban it completely in the state of Florida even though it's made by private companies and he has no apparent health or safety issues with it. He just thinks it's too woke or something.

https://jabberwocking.com/desantis-no-lab-meat-in-florida-thank-you-very-much/

[Dr. Ed 2]

How is this different from banning Filled Milk?

Remember that Filled Milk was actually safer back then.

[Krayt]

Or horse meat?

[Brett Bellmore]

It's the same in that, while the legislation is stupid as can be, it's probably not unconstitutional.

[Martinned]

I thought the idea was that, beyond a certain level of stupid, all stupid legislation is unconstitutional?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Why???

[Brett Bellmore]

The rational basis test. It requires, not as the name suggests, that you have an actual rational basis for the law, but only that the judge be unable to imagine a possible non-insane basis for it. (Factually mistaken basis are OK, and the basis the judge imagines doesn't have to be the legislature's actual basis.) He has to decide that you'd have to be chewing the furniture crazy to think the law was a good idea.

Unless the judge really hates the law, it never fails to pass this test. It wouldn't be hard to construct some kind of rational(ized) basis for this law. "High tech food production methods like tissue culture production of meat can lead to the local food supply being dangerously vulnerable, relative to traditional animal husbandry."

See, there's a rational basis!

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, that's pretty stupid, as described. Kind of pointless, cultured meat is going nowhere, for fundamental reasons of biology. It's absurdly hard to grow solid tissue outside a complete organism.

It's verging on a scam, frankly. And maybe not just verging.

Here's the actual bill, I went to check that it wasn't being misrepresented. It isn't, it's actually that stupid.

Mind you, not really any more stupid than California pork regulations, and at least it doesn't attempt to regulate what's going on in other states.

[Life of Brian]

Kind of pointless, cultured meat is going nowhere, for fundamental reasons of biology.

Even so, as with many super-duper-feel-good schemes, many a fool will be separated from their money before that reality become painfully clear.

[John F. Carr]

If the price of cultured meat drops there will be a strong movement to ban raising animals for meat because you can pay twice as much to buy ethically cultured quasi-meat. Voters like initiatives that are advertised as animal-friendly.

[Life of Brian]

As the saying goes: if wishes were horse meat....

[Brett Bellmore]

I agree there is that concern, but it's not a valid concern, because that "if" ain't happening.

[Noscitur a sociis]

How does it regulate conduct in other states any less than the California law?

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, this just prohibits selling the product in Florida. The California law required the supplier to certify the production process they'd used in other states, or else they couldn't sell the pork.

So regular meat producers in other states bear no burden from THIS law, rather the state would bear the burden of proving the nature of the product.

[bernard11]

Well, this just prohibits selling the product in Florida.

Huh?? What a pretzel! The CA law does not prohibit selling pork in CA, while this law does prohibit selling "cultured meat" in FL, but they are equally bad?

[Brett Bellmore]

The CA law prohibits selling meat (Specifically, pork, veal, and eggs...) produced in ways the state disapproves of.

The FL law prohibits selling meat produced in ways the state disapproves of.

The difference is that the Florida law prohibits selling meat produced in a very unconventional manner which nobody does except on an experimental basis, and meat produced in this manner is likely to be very easy to identify and segregate from normal production channels, so the practical impact of the law is essentially zero.

While the California law prohibits selling meat produced in an industry standard manner, which can't be distinguished from meat produced as the state demands, and which is traveling through the same channels of commerce as the banned meat, so that the resulting burden on producers is enormous.

Aside from that, they're equally foolish bad...

[Noscitur a sociis]

I agree that people in other states who exclusively produce meat that complies with this law aren’t burdened by it. But the same is true in California.

The only real difference I see is that producing lab grown meat is much less common than producing non-California compliant pork. But that’s just an artifact of the current state of the technology.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, it's an artifact of fundamental biology.

Actual living animals have immune systems and digestive tracts. As a result they can live in a non-sterile environment deriving their food from unprocessed, non-sterile plant matter, with minimal unskilled labor input. They have circulatory systems and waste excretion systems, so they can build up extensive solid tissue, and dispose of waste products. They're even self-reproducing!

Tissue cultures lack immune systems, so expensive absolute sterility is necessary. They lack circulatory systems, so they can't grow to a significant 3rd dimension. They lack digestive systems, and so must be fed carefully tailored nutrient solutions. The cells have evolved to live inside whole organisms, they must be carefully supplied with signaling hormones or they commit suicide. They lack waste disposal systems to segregate waste from nutrient.

Everything they lack due to not being complete organisms must be artificially supplied at great expense.

Now, 'never say never'; I suppose with a great deal of genetic engineering you could address all these deficiencies, and end up with something that... looked an awful lot like an animal! Only maybe an animal that was a bit more efficient at feed conversion than a chicken, if you did everything right.

Or, you can just raise chickens, and skip all that, perhaps devote all that research to, I don't know, curing some disease?

[Stephen Lathrop]

I hear the turkeys you are so fond of eating are more efficient converters than chickens.

[Brett Bellmore]

A little bit, though not by much. Too bad they're too noisy for suburban backyards.

[StonewallDeSoto]

This made me wonder, what was the stupidest political action ever? I think the (left-wing) Four Pests campaign must take the cake.

[Longtobefree]

How is this legally different from banning "tobacco products" that contain no tobacco?

[M L]

A Border Crisis By Design

It is unequivocally the intended result of Biden administration policy.

Three years into the border crisis, most Americans still don’t understand what’s actually happening at the border. This lack of understanding extends to the mainstream press and to most Republicans, who have struggled to communicate effectively on the issue.

The cause of the current crisis is President Joe Biden’s unprecedented refusal to enforce federal immigration law, which requires that all asylum-seekers be detained rather than released into the United States. The solution, therefore, is for Biden to start enforcing federal law as he is constitutionally required to do—or for Congress to deny the president something else he wants until he does.

Many observers, however, seem unclear about the cause of the crisis. Praising a not-yet-released Senate immigration bill, which a trio of senators is currently negotiating with the White House behind closed doors, the Wall Street Journal editorial board writes that “the President needs Congress to fix the underlying incentives at the border.” But the president, not Congress, has created the incentives that have attracted so many illegal aliens, by offering a near guarantee that asylum-seekers will get released into the U.S. rather than detained as their claims are adjudicated.

Under presidents of both parties before 2021, those trying to enter the U.S. illegally at least had to evade the authorities. This hasn’t been true under Biden. U.S. District Court Judge T. Kent Wetherell writes that U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) Chief Raul Ortiz “testified that the current surge differs from prior surges that he [has] seen over his lengthy career in that most of the aliens now being encountered at the Southwest Border are turning themselves in to USBP officers rather than trying to escape the officers.” Ortiz, whom the Biden administration selected as chief, said that aliens are likely “turning themselves in because they think they’re going to be released.”

The difference in the number of releases under Biden and under his immediate predecessor is like the contrast between the Himalayas and a pitcher’s mound. . .

READ THE WHOLE THING

https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-border-crisis-by-design

[Longtobefree]

Well, it's not like he took an oath or anything - - - - - - - -

[CigmaDom]

Could you, please, point me to the law that
"enforce federal immigration law, which requires that all asylum-seekers be detained rather than released into the United States". I have been looking for this but cannot find it.

Thanks for the pointer.

[Sarcastr0]

Why would anyone feel the need to cross the open border when the Biden administration would willingly let them in at a port of entry if they utter the password “asylum”? Well, if one is a drug-smuggler, a terrorist, or someone with a criminal record in the U.S., one might rather cross the open border than risk an encounter at a port of entry.

Misstating what saying 'asylum' will get you so he can call every illegal a criminal.

Fuck this guy.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, the contents of the border "compromise" have finally leaked.

NATIONAL SECURITY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2024

And it's as awful as anybody worried.

For instance, an extra $2.5B to finance flying illegal immigrants into the interior.

Explicitly prohibits a lot of actions if illegal immigration drops to below 5,000 a day, a level we'd never exceeded in history before Biden took office.

[Martinned]

an extra $2.5B to finance flying illegal immigrants into the interior.

I wonder which politicians asked for that. (And whether it rhymes with "rabbit".)

[Brett Bellmore]

No, that's the fed's program of flying illegals into 'red' states who need their illegal alien number boosted in the administration's opinion. It's got nothing to do with Abbot sending them to 'blue' areas so they can enjoy what they voted for.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Republicans wanted Cubans to come here illegally because they vote…Republican!! And before you say the want smaller government remember they helped Bush “win” in 2000 and he jacked up federal spending while slashing taxes while selling us out to China.

[Nige]

Hope he doesn't send too many or his donors might start running out of cheap labour.

[OtisAH]

Brett will literally say anything. Doesn’t matter at all how nonsensical it is, he will actually put it out there. For what reason is anybody's guess. I doubt he even knows why. Just a congenital liar I guess.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Sec. 3301. Border emergency authority.
• Creates Sec. 244B of the Immigration and Nationality Act which grants the Secretary of Homeland Security new emergency authority to respond to extraordinary migration circumstances. The “border emergency authority” may be exercised if the 7-day average number of cumulative encounters of inadmissible aliens is between 4,000 and 5,000 per day and must be exercised if the 7-day average is above 5,000 per day. [Just tell the Border patrol to take the rest of the day off any time they approach 5,000, and none of this matters.] Exercise of the authority is also required if the number of encounters on a single day exceeds 8,500. Unaccompanied minors from non-contiguous countries are not included in the total number of encounters for the purposes of this section. [They're a significant fraction of encounters, and WHY? I can see some excuse for not deporting them, but why don't they count against the total?]

• When use of the emergency authority is authorized, the Secretary has the authority to prohibit the entry into the U.S. of all individuals, except unaccompanied minors, between ports of entry and may only screen individuals for eligibility for withholding of removal or protection under the Convention Against Torture. Concurrently, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is required to continue processing a minimum of 1,400 inadmissible aliens per day across southwest land ports of entry under expedited removal or the 235B non-custodial removal proceedings contained in this title, ensuring that access to the asylum system remains available.

• Requires the Secretary to suspend exercise of the border emergency authority within 14 days of the 7-day average number of encounters falling below 75% of the total applicable encounter number which initially authorized the Secretary to exercise the border emergency authority.

• Provides that the authority shall not be activated for more than 270 days in the first calendar year, 225 days in the second calendar year, and 180 days in the third calendar year. [Regardless of whether the actual emergency persists...]

• Authorizes the President to suspend the border emergency on an emergency basis for up to 45 days if it is in the national interest. [So, never mind any of this border emergency stuff anyway, it's never going into effect.]

• Provides that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has sole and original jurisdiction over any challenge arising from the Secretary’s authority to exercise the border emergency authority. [Take that, 5th circuit!]

• Imposes a 1-year inadmissibility bar on any alien who has been removed two or more times pursuant to the border emergency authority. So, for a year inadmissible persons whove been deported twice will be... inadmissible? Whoa, harsh!]

[Longtobefree]

"Unaccompanied minors"; is that the description of military eligible persons?
Or are we pretending it's a bunch of kindergarten kids out for a stroll?

[David Nieporent]

The extremely right-wing border patrol union has endorsed the bill, saying it gives them far more control and authority than they currently have.

[Brett Bellmore]

But that doesn't matter, because,

1) The emergency powers end if illegal immigration drops to a level that's still higher than we ever saw before Biden took office.
2) The president can cancel these emergencies by just saying so.
3) The root problem is that the administration isn't enforcing the existing laws!

That's the fundamental problem: Grand bargains depend on having parties to the bargain who will actually comply with the terms. And we already know the current administration doesn't feel bound to enforce the law. A new law can't fix that, they'll keep the parts they wanted, and ignore the parts they didn't.

Until we establish that the President has to enforce the existing law, there's no point in changing the law.

[Sarcastr0]

This is why you choose violence.

If you're so big into the other side's bad faith that nothing they do or say other than capitulation is allowed, then you have talked yourself into no viable governmental solution to anything ever.

[Brett Bellmore]

What, because one President decides to be lawless, there's no viable government possible? That's a stupid take even for you.

[Sarcastr0]

You're not just talking about the President, you're talking about the Dems in Congress. And the GOP in the Senate.

All bad faith, all cannot be trusted.

I cannot read your factual take without reaching the conclusion that only when we purify our political branches can there be legitimate compromise-based policymaking again.

[M L]

But noted "conservative" David Frum says this is the toughest immigration bill there will EVER BE!

https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1754362000803536936

[Brett Bellmore]

Oh, is he still alive?

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

I remember when you wanted to suck his dick.

[Bob from Ohio]

"And it’s as awful as anybody worried."

Its not even going to pass the senate so don't waste time or anger on it.

[PaulS]

It's no longer illegal if it's below 5000...so those who come in can claim they came here legally?

[Brett Bellmore]

Still technically illegal, it's just that they can stop all enforcement below that threshold. (That we never reached before Biden.)

[M L]

Monday meme thread.

"You're stuck on a deserted island and can only take 1 thing with you"

Statists:

https://i.ibb.co/LpqYMbC/stat.jpg

[Longtobefree]

My choice: a private jet to fly me to Davos, emission-free.

[Bwaaah]

I would take a turnstyle that accepts credit cards.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY

This remarkably male, tellingly
white, right-wing blog has
operated for no more than

SIX (6)

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

FOUR (4)

occasion (so far) during 2024
(that’s at least four discussions
that have included a racial slur,
not just four racial slurs; many
Volokh Conspiracy discussions
include multiple racial slurs,)

This blog is matching
its deplorable pace of 2023,
when the Volokh Conspiracy
published disgusting, vile
racial slurs in at least

FORTY-FOUR (44)

different discussions.

These numbers probably miss
some of the racial slurs
published regularly by this blog;
it would be unreasonable to
expect anyone to catch all
of them.

This assessment does not address
the broader, everyday stream of
gay-bashing, misogynistic, Islamophobic,
antisemitic, racist, Palestinian-hating,
transphobic, and immigrant-hating slurs
(and other bigoted content) published
at this faux libertarian blog, which
is presented from the receding
right-wing fringe of modern legal
academia by members of the
Federalist Society for Law
and Public Policy Studies.

Amid this blog’s stale, ugly right-wing thinking, here is something worthwhile.

This is a good one, too.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Today's Rolling Stones, by request:

First, a hot one.

Next, very cool.

[Commenter_XY]

Arthur, may I make a request? How about something from the album Shango (Santana). There are some pretty good solo pieces in there from Carlos Santana himself.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I am not familiar with that one, although my band has played Santana tunes— Samba Pa Ti, Europa, Evil Ways, Smooth — over the years. I will see what I can do.

[Commenter_XY]

Arthur, check out Shango. Not just the song 'Hold On'.

[BrotherMovesOn]

Keith swapping out his Tele for a Gretsch.
I suppose he's entitled!

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You can have one of Keith's (alleged) Telecasters . . . and the shipping is just $150!

[Estragon]

Other than Dr Ronnie himself, who was doing all that ketamine in the white house?

[Commenter_XY]

That is a really good question. They do a lot of drugs (prescription) in the White House.

[Ben_]

Breaking — Biden White House censorship machine tried to ban books by pressuring Amazon to make books unavailable:

https://x.com/jim_jordan/status/1754637205773963625

"After the White House spent a week berating Amazon, what did the online bookstore do?

Starting March 9—the same day as its meeting with the White House—Amazon enabled “Do Not Promote” for [these] books"

[Sarcastr0]

Just take Jim Jordan's twitter's word for it?

LOL.

[Michael P]

https://nypost.com/2024/02/05/metro/migrant-moped-crew-busted-after-stealing-cellphones-right-out-of-nyers-hands-sources/

The robbery ring — and others like it — worry law enforcement specifically because the migrants often have multiple aliases and swap identities and birthdays, turning them into so-called “ghost perps” who become very hard to track, sources said.

I was assured by totally serious people here that illegal immigrants didn't do anything like that, that they were more law-abiding than native born Americans, and that they couldn't possibly have practice at avoiding accountability for their crimes.

[Commenter_XY]

They (illegal aliens) don't cost the American Taxpayers money either. Illegal aliens are just the newest progressive unicorn.

[Martinned]

Either that or, as a group, they bring in more tax money than they cost. Up to you whether you want to have a reasonable conversation or just throw garbage.

[ThePublius]

"as a group, they bring in more tax money than they cost"

How can that be?

[Martinned]

Because they are quite likely to have jobs, and quite unlikely to receive welfare payments. (Because they're not eligible for most welfare payments.)

[Brett Bellmore]

Because they never, ever, use fake ID to get benefits they're legally not entitled to?

[Martinned]

You will note that I said, repeatedly, "as a group". As in: "on average".

[ThePublius]

That is patently ridiculous! Wow. If that was the case, why are NY, Boston, Chicago, and other cities complaining about how much all of these "migrants" are costing them.

You are living in a fantasy world if you believe these "migrants" are, on average, gainfully employed, paying taxes, paying for their own food and housing, and so on. Ha, ha.

[Nige]

But they *could* be. They're the ones that got caught.

[ThePublius]

I don't follow that, about getting caught.

But if you think they could be gainfully employed, paying taxes, paying for their own food and housing, and so on, then you likely also believe that unicorns poop rainbow-colored soft serve ice cream.

[Nige]

Of course they could be. Loads of them already are. You think being an illegal, living in the US, earning a living, paying taxes, is some sort of outlier thing? People live that way for their entire lives! Being illegal is a *misdemeanour!*

[not guilty]

Simply being illegal is not itself even a misdemeanor. Entering the country illegally is a petty offense. Take for example, someone who enters the United States legally and overstays his visa. His mere presence in the country is no crime.

[Nige]

Thanks for clarifying.

[David Nieporent]

The ones that get caught are 'in the system' and aren't able to work. The ones who don't get caught, who just live in the U.S. off the books, work for a living. (Remember, They're Stealing All The Jobs.™)

[Absaroka]

"But if you think they could be gainfully employed, paying taxes, paying for their own food and housing, and so on, then you likely also believe that unicorns poop rainbow-colored soft serve ice cream."

Ones that are getting W-2 wages are going to be paying social security taxes, and maybe some withholding that won't be refunded because they won't file. Ones that are working for cash won't be paying those taxes but will be paying sales taxes and so on. Some may be benefiting from various social services; if you have an unbiased accounting for that I'd be interested to read it.

[Nige]

But sooooo whaaaaaat? Jesus it's not a real fucking problem and they'll get deported if caught how many Irish people snuck in that way and no-one cared?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

.

But if you think they could be gainfully employed, paying taxes, paying for their own food and housing, and so on, then you likely also believe that unicorns poop rainbow-colored soft serve ice cream.

Why are we discussing the Republican-registered residents of can't-keep-up states such as West Virginia, Mississippi, and Arkansas?

[ThePublius]

You guys must all be smoking dope. Come to Massachusetts, to Woburn, Taunton, and other places and see for yourself; talk to Gov. Healey, Mayor Wu. We are spending hundreds of millions on these people who are doing nothing. They are not working! Jeez. Get a brain!

[Nige]

Send them off to work then. Costs vanish, they're productive, plus it's a fuck you to Republicans and their Great Replacement bullshit.

[Martinned]

Leaving to one side the actual empirical evidence, what is odd about assuming that current immigrants behave just like all other immigrants in the US in the last 200 years?

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/forbrn.pdf

[Absaroka]

In fairness, we can safely assume that an immigrant in 1880 wasn't going to be availing themselves of government social services, because there weren't really any. You can read biographies, and people got off the boat not knowing where there next meal would come from or where they would sleep that night.

It took enormous self confidence setting on top of a prodigious work ethic to make that leap, much to the benefit of the US.

That may still be true today, but I'm not sure you can assume that the social safety net has had no effect; you'd have to show your work.

[Brett Bellmore]

You know, like the perpetual claim that illegal immigrants are more law abiding than Americans, that turns out to not be true if you look at updated, rather than original, records? As was recently discussed here?

We're not discussing "immigrants". We're discussing "illegal immigrants".

It's like stating that most people making bank withdrawals are law abiding, and ignoring that you're doing it in the context of a discussion of bank robbery.

[Nige]

Look, you and your fellow Republocans have decided that it's politically expedient to spread the lie that this underclass of illegal people who are mostly just keeping their heads down is an existential threat, not because they're all guilty of misdemeanours but because they're being imported to vote illegally for Democrats and to oust the white race from the demographic top spot. It's pure fucking hateful evil bullshit and we know this because the Republicans just rejected the bill they wanted and they don't care that it shows them to be unserious about the Border becuase that's not what it's about, it's the good old-fashioned fash tactic of hating on an Other and getting armed idiots running to the Border as if it's on fire and stoking more dumb hysteria. One day Democrats will work out that they will never, ever get credit for anythnig to do with the border, because putting some sort of decent order on the border is not the aim.

[ThePublius]

In Massachusetts they get housing in hotels, get three meals a day, delivered, and also get cash for incidental expenses and snacks. Truth. Many towns are outraged as entire hotels have been taken over by the state for this and its hampering commerce. Check Taunton, Woburn, and so on.

(Oh, but they never do this in Weston, Wellesley, Arlington, Lexington, or any other upscale liberal bastion.)

[Nige]

Oh-oh! Someone's just learning about class warfare!

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Let’s hope they learn standard English, particularly capitalization.

[Martinned]

Since this issue came up a few times recently:

Civil servants are constitutionally prohibited from striking in Germany. This general prohibition also affects State school teachers who have a civil servant status. On 14 December 2023, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled in Humpert and Others v Germany that such a prohibition did not violate the right to freedom of association under Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

https://strasbourgobservers.com/2024/02/06/defusing-a-brewing-conflict-with-the-constitution-humpert-and-others-v-germany-procedural-rationality-and-the-right-of-civil-servants-to-strike/

[ThePublius]

So, if they strike are they committing a crime? 🙂

[Martinned]

🙂

The flipside of not being allowed to strike is that German civil servants have a protected status. In this case, the teachers in question were subjected to disciplinary proceedings, and given an administrative fine of €100 and €1,500, respectively.

[M L]

Are you tired all the time?

Have you considered killing yourself as a solution? That's how they do it in the Netherlands.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13027297/women-harrowing-post-euthanasia-day.html

[Martinned]

Why are you opposed to patients' rights?

For the record, this is what ME is: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-cfs/

[John F. Carr]

Add to the list of Trump's crimes: He broke the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals' web server. I can't reach it trying to get a copy of the newly released opinion denying his claim of presidential immunity.

[not guilty]

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against Donald Trump's claim of immunity from criminal prosecution. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.40415/gov.uscourts.cadc.40415.1208593677.0_3.pdf

I'll likely have more after I have read the unanimous per curiam opinion.

[Martinned]

One Bush sr. nominee and two Biden nominee. What more do you need to know?

[not guilty]

The Court of Appeals judgment provides as to issuance of the mandate:
>blockquote>The Clerk is directed to withhold issuance of the mandate through February 12, 2024. If, within that period, Appellant notifies the Clerk in writing that he has filed an application with the Supreme Court for a stay of the mandate pending the filing of a petition for a writ of certiorari, the Clerk is directed to withhold issuance of the mandate pending the Supreme Court’s final disposition of the application. The filing of a petition for rehearing or rehearing en banc will not result in any withholding of the mandate, although the grant of rehearing or rehearing en banc would result in a recall of the mandate if the mandate has already issued. See D.C. Cir. R. 41(a)(4).
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.40415/gov.uscourts.cadc.40415.1208593674.0_2.pdf

Donald Trump accordingly has until next Monday to apply to SCOTUS to stay the mandate, an action which requires five votes.

In Doe v. Mills, 142 S.Ct. 17, 18 (2021), in an opinion concurring in the denial of application for injunctive relief, Justice Bear It, joined by Justice Kavanaugh, wrote:

When this Court is asked to grant extraordinary relief, it considers, among other things, whether the applicant " ‘is likely to succeed on the merits.’ " Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 434, 129 S.Ct. 1749, 173 L.Ed.2d 550 (2009). I understand this factor to encompass not only an assessment of the underlying merits but also a discretionary judgment about whether the Court should grant review in the case. See, e.g. , Hollingsworth v. Perry, 558 U.S. 183, 190, 130 S.Ct. 705, 175 L.Ed.2d 657 (2010) (per curiam); cf. Supreme Court Rule 10. Were the standard otherwise, applicants could use the emergency docket to force the Court to give a merits preview in cases that it would be unlikely to take—and to do so on a short fuse without benefit of full briefing and oral argument.

In that both Justices Kavanaugh and Bear It are likely essential to SCOTUS granting a stay, her reasoning there bodes ill for Trump.

[David Nieporent]

Not shockingly, the president is not a king. Not sure why it took this long to rule that way; it's not a long or controversial decision:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.40415/gov.uscourts.cadc.40415.1208593677.0.pdf

[David Nieporent]

I read the whole thing. It's not overly long or involved. I cannot grasp why it took this long; the whole thing could've been written before oral argument, given the lack of any surprising elements of the opinion.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Perhaps one of the judges didn't mind delay?

That is not a clear conclusion but it makes as much sense as any other that might come to mind, particularly in light of one judge's record.

[Stephen Lathrop]

I recommend to everyone a marvelously manipulative, graphically superb, and fundamentally biased PBS Documentary titled, Democracy on Trial. Nobody, not even Trump, deserves to be the target of such powerful graphics and biased visual editing. It is practically the most vivid presentation I have ever seen on my television.

I especially would like to hear what the MAGA types think after they watch it. But only if they watch all two-and-a-half hours, and pay attention.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Thanks, but I've got better things to do.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'd agree with that last, though I don't always agree with them.

And both of them are quite approachable if you email them to discuss what they've posted at Balkinization, in my experience.

[Kazinski]

I'm reading briefs at SCOTUSblog.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, I was trying to narrow the question to those schools with a (supposedly) meritocratic selection criteria, but you make a good point that not all schools are, or should be, like that in a well-balanced educational system.

[Brett Bellmore]

But education is a scarce resource, and to the extent you don't dole it out in a meritocratic manner you're wasting that resource.

[Sarcastr0]

Elite education is scarce; education being scarce is a policy choice.

[bernard11]

Well, maybe. I'm not sure the analogy to an investment decision is all that great.

If you are going to look for the best use of the resource, then I suppose, if you can define and measure it (which seems dubious to me once you get beyond extremely coarse measurement) you want to use post-graduate success, but not "total success." Instead you want marginal success. How much difference will the education make in the individual's life?

That's even harder to estimate.

[Martinned]

Everything is scarce. That's not a policy choice.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Elite education is scarce; education being scarce is a policy choice."

Thomas Sowell's book "Basic Economics" is excellent.

[Brett Bellmore]

That could be an indication that Republicans prefer to keep their money 'inside the family', as it were. Which isn't remotely the same as laundering a bribe, it just means that, all things being equal, you prefer to deal with people you associate with. Like me hiring a friend to fix my air conditioner last year, though he wasn't any cheaper than anybody else. If I could, why wouldn't I?

If you're a Republican visiting DC during a Republican administration, why wouldn't you, all else being equal, stay at a hotel that happened to be owned by and branded by your President?

The problem with these numbers, though, is that they're comparing periods that are disjoint; The latest Trump ownership number is from Nov 2019, when Trump was still President, the earliest non-Trump ownership number is from June 2022, over 2 1/2 years later, well after Biden took office.

If you're a Republican political operative, you just have more reason to be in the area when there's a Republican administration to interact with. And maybe a new hotel opened up, that was better?

At a minimum you'd have to look at the numbers for the other hotels in the area, too. Was it just that total hotel spending tanked due to the change of administration? Did a new hotel open in the area that grabbed the business?

[Armchair]

"A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that remote working might not be as productive as once thought. Workers who were randomly assigned to work from home full time were 18% less productive than in-office employees, either taking longer to complete tasks or getting less done. "

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Do “Back to the Office” Mandates Work?"

This isn't the type of thing that's subject to that sort of analysis. Some jobs are better suited to remote work than others. Some organizations are better at managing remote work than others. Some employees value remote work more than others.

The correct approach is to let organizations and employees self-sort.

[jdoeford]

.

[OtisAH]

A lot of people think Brett is a partisan. But here he works just as hard trying to explain away “pay for access” under the Turnip administration as he ever did explaining why sloppy email practices in the early days of the widespread use of email were proof that Clinton is a traitor.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"If you’re a Republican visiting DC during a Republican administration, why wouldn’t you, all else being equal, stay at a hotel that happened to be owned by and branded by your President?

Not to mention the fact that the Trump Hotel was the talk of the country -- we know that advertising works. So I suspect a lot of groups wanted to stay in it (a) to say they had and (b) out of curiosity. Like shopping at Macys when it was only in NYC.

But staying at a Hyatt? We already did in (name the city) -- let's go for something new and exciting...

[bernard11]

If you’re a Republican visiting DC during a Republican administration, why wouldn’t you, all else being equal, stay at a hotel that happened to be owned by and branded by your President?

You may want to give that "all else being equal" some thought. The hotel rates "https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/17/trump-secret-service-hotel-rates-records/">ripped off the taxpayers, why not others as well?

After all, this is a guy who doubled the initiation fee at Mar-a-Lago when he was elected.

[Brett Bellmore]

I think he means that we could increase the supply of education if we wanted, by spending a larger proportion of our limited resources on it, and shorting something else, instead. That other thing being outside the focus of his analysis, shorting it doesn't count as a cost...

[Don Nico]

Martin,
If one looks from the point of individual schools, it certainly is a policy choice.
MIT or Harvard are not going to be expanding significantly the opportunities for undergrad admission over a 5 year horizon.
It is true that in the 90s the State of CA did expand the mandate for UCLA from 30,000 students on campus to 35,000

[Sarcastr0]

It also makes some assumptions on where the current limiting factors on our resources come from. While there are physical limits, we are nowhere near those. Which implies that treating resource allocation as a conserved quantity is not correct.

For an example of this thinking: drill, baby, drill.

[Mr. Bumble]

Plus it's harder to whack off at your desk in the office than it is at home.

[Brett Bellmore]

Oil companies, to the extent the best geological science can guide them, only drill where they expect to get enough oil or gas out of the ground to make drilling profitable, because they derive their income from selling the oil or gas, not from drilling holes in the ground, which is instead an expense.

Higher education at present will admit practically any warm body, because they derive their income from tuition and subsidies that scale with admissions, not even graduation rates, let alone the graduates' later income.

So, you can say, "Drill, baby, drill!" and as best can be managed, only profitable holes will be drilled.

If you say, "Educate, baby, educate", you'll get gender studies and basket weaving, because the schools don't care if the classes you're paying for actually benefit you.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"It also makes some assumptions on where the current limiting factors on our resources come from."

Huh? The limiting factors are the opportunity costs, as Brett just pointed out.

[Don Nico]

You raise an interesting thought experiment. Let's say that the State of Utah was will to invest $1B over 5 years to Establish the Utah Institute of Technology. How many years would it take until UIT rivaled Caltech.
Actually, the U Texas systems did something quite similar in the 1960s to make UT Autine into a top school in the physical sciences.

[Commenter_XY]

I am 'Trumped Out', LOL. Figured I would ask about that case. It is really unbelievable. When I read about it, I said: NFW! Nobody just disses a judge like that. But I guess you can.

If I were the Fed district court judge, I would be livid.

Lie to the FISA court? Nothing happens.
Lie in Federal district court? Nothing happens.

[John F. Carr]

A requirement that good Muslims speak or read Arabic does not imply a requirement that good Christians read a particular version of the Bible. The religions can have different rules. The ones that are particularly widespread we can call rules of the religion, keeping in mind that Americans are not legally obliged to follow the majority rule of a religion.

I would put speaking above reading because widespread literacy is very modern in religious terms. There are YouTube videos teaching people how to properly pronounce Arabic in the way the prophet Mohammed is thought to have spoken. Unlike the Bible which is a translated anthology of stories written in different languages, the Koran is said to be a transcription of one person's speech in the original language.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Th Puritans believed one had to be able to read the Bible and that was the start of universal taxpayer-supported public education. The "Old Deluder" Act of 16-something.

[OtisAH]

No, he does not. And he will explain why. And his explanation will make wish you hadn’t asked.

[Brett Bellmore]

People frequently make excuses for decisions that don't actually need excusing. They're strange that way.

[Martinned]

Unlike the Bible which is a translated anthology of stories written in different languages

Next thing you tell me that everything in the Bible isn't literally true.

But seriously, we don't even know what the Lord's Prayer means, never mind the rest of the bible.

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

[Brett Bellmore]

I am a partisan, no lie.

But if Biden owned a hotel in DC, and Democrats stayed at it, I wouldn't find that particularly strange or guilty. It's just normal human nature to prefer to associate with compatriots. There's nothing shady about it.

Like I said, last year I had my air conditioning fixed, and I hired a friend to do it. Why? Why not! All things being equal you send your money to people you like.

CREW hasn't demonstrated that all things are actually equal. They're comparing political spending by Republicans during a Republican administration, with such spending during a Democratic administration. They haven't bothered showing that the Republicans are still spending as much on hotels in DC, they haven't bothered showing that a new hotel didn't show up to grab the business.

And they haven't demonstrated that there's anything shady about spending money you were going to spend anyway where friends will benefit.

[Tom for equal rights]

OtisAH - OtisAH 59 mins ago
Flag Comment Mute User
".... he ever did explaining why sloppy email practices in the early days of the widespread use of email were proof that Clinton is a traitor."

Otis
A) 2008-2012 were not the "early days " of email
B) HRC set up her email server system specifically to evade required security and retention requirements.

[SRG2]

She’s in the wrong party right now.

Perhaps. Or perhaps the GOP needs someone like Haley making the case against the Confederacy.

[OtisAH]

No, she’s just on the wrong side of the party she absolutely belongs in.

[Martinned]

The New York Post

[M L]

I don't know if he's far left, but from a few instances I recall he's been one of the most off-putting, foul-mouthed, aggressive characters offering the sort of drive-by social media political commentary from a leftist viewpoint in recent years. Probably just a really gross shtick trying to stay relevant.

With that said, I'm a big supporter of the right adopting this leftist practice of strategically labeling opposing persons and views things "far right" in order to marginalize them or advance other rhetorical purposes. This is how they make the same policies and platforms that Bill Clinton had in the 90s into outright Nazism today.

[Martinned]

Those things can both be true.

[OtisAH]

Yes, the folks whose homes, vehicles, and underwear are covered in Turnip banners and Blue Lives Matter flags, and who take group photos with their guns while burning dust masks, books about gay penguins, and cases of Bud Light in the middle of a tire fire, absolutely *despise* virtue-signaling.

[Reallynotbob]

Martin Luther thought ordinary parishioners should be able to understand the Bible and liturgy, and that helped to kick off the Reformation.

[OtisAH]

His ass.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

It's a bit late to worry about it now, but that is exactly the first reason which sprung to mind when I heard about Hillary's server way back whenever it was. Why else do it?

[Commenter_XY]

That Toobin guy would like to have a word....

[Bwaaah]

Cite?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Huh? You lost me...

[Don Nico]

I assume that you mean college/university admission. For that I doubt that there is a single criterion. But assume that there is (or a useful set), what is the goal of applying the criterion?
Maybe it is prediction of academic success. (The high schooler took a graduate course in physics and got the highest grade in the class).
Maybe it is build new social networks or other sociological goals.
Maybe it is restorative justice.
Maybe it is to build strong sports teams that cement alumni financial support.
In practice, all those considerations play from Reed College (not football there) to MIT and Harvard. And all are legitimate.

[Sarcastr0]

Or Luther was a symptom of, and allowed by, the printing press.

Single historical causes are hard to pin down!

[Martinned]

But if Biden owned a hotel in DC, and Democrats stayed at it, I wouldn’t find that particularly strange or guilty. It’s just normal human nature to prefer to associate with compatriots.

Now there's a revealing slip of the pen. Democrats are apparently a different country.

[Don Nico]

"I hired a friend to do it. Why? Why not!"

As Mayor Richard J Daley once explained on the evening news about a city contract awarded to his son's company,
"What father wouldn't help his son get ahead?"

[David Nieporent]

But if Biden owned a hotel in DC, and Democrats stayed at it, I wouldn’t find that particularly strange or guilty. It’s just normal human nature to prefer to associate with compatriots. There’s nothing shady about it.

That doesn't even make sense. When I go to a convention, or book a stay, at a Hilton I don't get to hang out with Paris and Conrad. (Yes, I know Conrad is dead.) I choose my hotels by location, price, and amenities, not the name of the absentee owner.

[Sarcastr0]

That's why I keep it to 'should' - once you get into the real world it gets complicated to the point of being less interesting, IMO.

[Bwaaah]

"And all are legitimate."

Agreed. I'm skeptical in some regards, but they should all be in the range of permissible.

Race? Not.

[grb]

Florida's beef industry is probably at the root of this, though I have an alternate theory : DeSantis - sobbing in despair - asked an aide where the campaign went wrong. That minion suggested the governor didn't give his voters enough red meat - which sent DeSantis racing out the door to set-up a press conference.

OK, no. It's just DeSantis treating his voters like imbeciles once again, just like he did with CRT in the public schools, or the threat posed by the microscopic number of transexuals, or his sudden 180-degree turn to being anti-vaxx. Has there ever been a politician who viewed his own supporters with such contempt as DeSantis?

(aside from Trump, that is. no one will ever match him for seeing his political base as dupes, chumps and marks. Not that they mind. They just want cartoon entertainment, which DJT delivers)

[Sarcastr0]

I don't understand how it is that schools are not part of the market but oil drilling is.

Neither are a pure market, but neither are insensitive to costs and demand.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Higher education at present will admit practically any warm body,"

The problem is that there are way too many seats in higher education, there have been for a decade now and the problem is inexorably getting worse because of demographics.

[Sarcastr0]

See also California's university system.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I think the Apollo Program is a good example as well.

If you steal good people from elsewhere, it is very easy to quickly build a program if money is not an issue. Or if you have a cause, eg Manhattan Project.

[bernard11]

I remember that.

Didn't they grab some really outstanding talent by offering them much more than they were making?

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

That was just bullshit, Joel.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, obviously, which was the meaning of my remark.

[ThePublius]

How do you make that leap? How is that logical?

[Brett Bellmore]

Who the hell said that the schools weren't part of the market? Of course they are. A market hugely distorted by federal subsidies, but still part of the market.

I said that the oil industry has strong motivation to only drill where it's profitable, because they make their money off successful wells, not dry ones.

And this contrasts with the education industry, which makes its money not, off successful education, but just warm bodies in classrooms.

If schools had to make their money off the enhanced earnings of graduates, and experienced flunk outs and the under employed as a loss, they'd have motivations much better aligned with the interest of their students.

Dump the current student loan system, and a lot of the pathology goes away.

[Sarcastr0]

So is this a false consciousness thing about schools not serving their customers? You think that is unrelated to who attends?

You're not making sense.

And finding oil is necessary but not sufficient for oil companies to make money. Hence why subsidies complicate the market.

If schools had to make their money off the enhanced earnings of graduates
The dystopian innovations of people who think RoI is everything.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Dump the current student loan system, and a lot of the pathology goes away.

Just dump the current repayment system and replace it with income-based repayment with the college liable for the balance.

[bernard11]

If schools had to make their money off the enhanced earnings of graduates, and experienced flunk outs and the under employed as a loss, they’d have motivations much better aligned with the interest of their students.

Well, if you assume that the only value that schools add is additional earning capacity. I guess that's OK, but not everyone agrees. I'm old-fashioned (conservative?) enough to think there's more to it than that, that education has value for its own sake.

Is it worth something to be better able to evaluate government policy, to understand and better appreciate art and music, to know history, etc.? I think it is. In a way these are a form of consumption, just like spending money on consumer goods, so acquiring those things may substitute for some amount of money.

And of course, not everyone seeks out the highest-paying career open to them. Is it a loss if the school educates students like that?

[Brett Bellmore]

Seriously, why doesn't everybody host their own email server?

Because it's hugely inconvenient and has all sorts of downsides!

Really, the only upside to hosting your own email server is, as was demonstrated, the capacity to erase the hard drive if somebody starts making embarrassing inquiries as to what might be on it. EVERYTHING ELSE is pure downside!

All she had to do, to comply with regulations, was to have it configured to echo messages to the government's own system, so that they'd be property archived, in case their were FOIA inquiries or subpoenas in need of complying with.

But if she'd done that, wiping the drive would have been pointless.

So, yes, any RATIONAL person looking at the situation understands that the only purpose of having her own email server in her own physical custody was to retain the capacity to do exactly what she did: Destroy evidence.

[Nige]

We actually know it was more convenient to have a private server because people in the Bush administration did the same and no-one cared.

Meanwhile this man is ok with Trump stealing government documents, some of them classified.

[Dr. Ed 2]

A case of Bud Lite has 2.25 gallons of liquid in it -- enough to put out most tire fires.

[Martinned]

Putting out fires seems like the only acceptable use of a case of Bud Lite anyway.

[Martinned]

How much education to provide is a policy choice. Teaching capacity being scarce - at the level of the country, state, or university - isn't. In fact, the former is a consequence of the latter. If teaching capacity wasn't scarce, there would be no reason not to have infinity of it.

[Dr. Ed 2]

They do -- Oct 7th is why...

[zztop8970]

"Security control" and "control the entire area: are far from the same thing, and i24's translation clearly says '"security control over all territory west of the Jordan River."
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/1706995925-netanyahu-considers-two-state-solution-amidst-ongoing-israel-hamas-hostilities-says-david-cameron

[Nige]

Putting resources into the training of teachers and making it an attactive career is a policy choice, though.

[Don Nico]

Teaching capacity is not the limiting factor, physical infrastructure and the level of intrusion on the surrounding community is.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Brett's Brett. In my view, both Hillary and Donald should have been prosecuted. Of course, Trump failed to even manage that when he had the chance, so it's a bit late now.

[Estragon]

“We actually know it was more convenient to have a private server because people in the Bush administration did the same and no-one cared.”

This is a key point.

[Nige]

They were both investigated. Turns out their alleged crimes were not equivalent.

[Nige]

You can also adopt the practice of pretending the right hasn't been claiming to be 'adopting the tactics of the left' to justify things they were doing anyway since the 70s or 80s at least.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Putting [scarce] resources into the training of teachers

[Nige]

Their scarcity, in the richest country in the world, is a policy decision.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I get that leftists truly believe this.

[Bwaaah]

"Putting [scarce] resources into the training of teachers"

Take a look at the self-selected, non-trained teachers on YouTube who are *killing it*. GREAT teachers, unlike the "trained" [mostly] dead wood that stood in front of you in your classrooms, are now demonstrating the state of the art in teaching, on demand, at almost no cost to any would-be student.

The world has changed once again, and as always, that which we call "our education system" remains unmoved. Did everybody pay for their credits? Everybody has to pay for their credits.

[Nige]

I get that rightists truly support this.

'Take a look at the self-selected, non-trained teachers on YouTube who are *killing it*.'

Also whatever this is?

[Bwaaah]

There are great teaching videos on youtube for just about any subject of interest. Don’t know about that? Is this one of those far right ideas you go on about?

[Nige]

I'm sure there are.

[Don Nico]

UTA actually sent out recruiting letters admitting unashamedly that it was seeking to by the best STEM talent. It CA did that for the UC system it was several decades ago. By the 1960s, it certainly was unnecessary.

Of course, top schools are always looking to raid the faculty of other top schools

[Noscitur a sociis]

This fucking guy…

[Reallynotbob]

I think both are true, and agree with you. One could argue Luther's excommunication was a consequence of the printing press. By the time he published the German Mass, it appears he had embraced the press as a tool of the ministry.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Luther's biggest issue was the Pope's sale of indulgences -- forgiveness for sins not yet committed.

How many Catholics today would approve of that?

[Bwaaah]

"But seriously, we don’t even know what the Lord’s Prayer means."

"We" don't? Which "we" are *you* speaking for?

(Get your collectivist head out of your singular ass.)

[Commenter_XY]

Sigh, 'Meatball Ron' will now have to be called 'Cultivated Meatball Ron'. 😉

[Noscitur a sociis]

You know what ἐπιούσιον means?

What does it mean?

[Mr. Bumble]

Not exactly right. They only wish to be able to celebrate the mass in Latin, not prohibit the mass in the local language.

[bernard11]

Why is it wasting it? Bringing the low up 8 points might be better for society than bringing the high up 2.

Exactly right. In fact, you could make a case that if you are after enhanced earning capacity you should tend to admit relatively less well-off students.

Billionaires' kids are going to do fine regardless.

[Bob from Ohio]

Its one word. Not knowing what one word means is not nearly the same as "don’t even know what the Lord’s Prayer means”.

[Bwaaah]

Could it mean different things to different people? Would that be wrong?

Alternatively, can it mean the *same* thing to different people? Is that even possible?

The Martinned axiom: "If it doesn't mean the same thing to everybody, it's stupid."

[Absaroka]

I wouldn't confine the analysis to income. If we put resources into educating the very brightest, and they go on to cure cancer, invent antibiotics, increase the efficiency of solar panels or capacity of batteries, etc, etc, they will be better off, but so will the rest of us. People on the left end of the distribution (intelligence or income) don't want to die of cancer either. We shouldn't be so afraid of inequality that we Harrison Bergeron everybody just to prevent it.

[Bwaaah]

You don't understand "compatriots" to mean, in this context, people with whom you share a group identity? You don't have idiomatic variations in word meanings where you come from? Or could this be a case of lazy malicious misinterpretation?

[bernard11]

I absolutely agree. I was just following the assumption made by others that earning capacity is the only relevant measure.

And of course there are less spectacular versions of your examples, as well as non-technical ones. Does an artist or writer whose work brings pleasure or insight to viewers/readers not contribute value to society?

[Absaroka]

"Does an artist or writer whose work brings pleasure or insight to viewers/readers not contribute value to society?"

Sure!

The economist would say that Taylor Swift provides more value than the cancer researcher, simply because she is paid more. I think that's a bit too simplistic.

But I don't object to subsidizing the education of artists, or art in general, with my tax money (though others might!). I do think it is something we ought to be pretty careful about. Ballet and professional wrestling are both performance art - while I prefer the former, who am I to say society ought to subsidize my preferences and not the wrestling fan's?

We presumably subsidize the nursing school on the theory that many of us will, or at least might, some day benefit from a ready supply of nursing care. Some kinds of art (whether Piss Christ or the next Mona Lisa) might not have the same broad appeal.

[Don Nico]

Yes, they did. One example was the nobel laureate Steven Weinberg

[Bwaaah]

Never before had I considered the implications of your name.

[Bwaaah]

Certainly the area is ripe for social science, no? I think you're just trying to avoid a right answer. (One size fits all, baby!)

[TwelveInchPianist]

Yeah, what's wrong with people advancing.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Okay, what does ἐπιούσιον mean to you?

[Bwaaah]

Nothing. And that's an interpretation that is likely to very closely match some other people's.

[Michael P]

If you want to maximize marginal success from limited educational resources, you should focus those resources on the very most able students you can identify. Giving the top 1% good resources will increase their performance much more than giving those same resources to the median student.

That's essentially why we as a country intentionally do not optimize for marginal success of education.

[Michael P]

Who in the Bush administration used a personally owned email server? I remember a lot of complaints about a privately run email server that was used for campaign purposes -- because federal law does not permit federal money to be used for those purposes -- but even then it was owned and run by professionals rather than sitting in a residential closet next to a bathroom.

[Sarcastr0]

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

[Absaroka]

Colin Powell. In fact he suggested to Hillary that she set up a private email capability.

(He minimized the security risks. I think he was dead wrong about that.)

[Brett Bellmore]

Let's start with facts.

Colin Powell did not have a private email server. He had a private email account. Not the same thing, it doesn't give you the power to delete data under subpoena, because the actual server is being maintained by a third party (In Powell's case, AOL.) which will be observing normal data retention and subpoena compliance policies.

He didn't violate a rule against having a private email account, there is no such rule, though it is (And was!) highly recommended that you not, and nobody who isn't near the top of the food chain would get away with it.

He didn't violate the actual rule (Which Hillary violated.) requiring such private email accounts to be configured to echo messages to the official system for archiving. Rather, he was the reason the rule was adopted!

So, not going to defend what Powell did, he shouldn't have done it. But Hillary did much worse, and unlike Powell, actually was violating the rules. (Rather than behaving badly enough to CAUSE the rules!)

[Nige]

Oh look, a Trump supporter demanding others respect mere ‘rules.’ Lol.

Powell and Rice used insecure private email for *classified* info. The only classified stuff that went through Clinton’s server was one thing classifed in retrospect. So, actually, what THEY did was way worse.

[Brett Bellmore]

"The only classified stuff that went through Clinton’s server was one thing classifed in retrospect."

You're awfully confident of the nature of server contents that somebody had systematically deleted rather than comply with a subpoena, aren't you? Not really a believer in spoliation, I guess.

You're also wrong.

Clinton’s Handling of Classified Information

"Some of the emails containing classified information “bore markings indicating the presence of classified information,” contrary to Clinton’s claims that none was marked classified. Comey did not provide a specific number."

I would think you'd remember this; It was a subject of much laughter that she claimed to have thought that paragraphs labeled (C) were just items in a list, and (A) and (B) had been omitted.

"It’s also likely that there are other work-related emails that they did not produce to State and that we did not find elsewhere, and that are now gone because they deleted all emails they did not produce to State, and the lawyers then cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery."

Which was, of course, the point of wiping the drive and then cleaning their devices in that manner. So that nobody could check their work...

[Nige]

And yet, only one actual classifed document was identified. Sounds like yet more wild speculation.

I’m awfully confident of an FBI investigation that found she did nothing wrong and efforts by Trump to have her prosecuted turning out to have nothing to prosecute her for. I’m sorry they let you down in your politically motivated lawfare witch-hunt against a political opponent.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Comey did not provide a specific number.”

We do not know how many classified documents she actually had transmitted over her email, exactly because she DID have a hard drive under subpoena wiped anyway.

Again, not much of a believer in spoliation, are you?

"I’m awfully confident of an FBI investigation that found she did nothing wrong "

The FBI investigation did NOT find that "she did nothing wrong". Here is what Comey actually had to say.

"Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information."

We have testimony that this was originally worded as "grossly negligent", and changed to "extremely careless when he realized that the statute in question explicitly criminalized being "grossly negligent".

"“Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”"

So, rather than saying she'd done nothing wrong, he in fact confirmed that she'd done something wrong, and merely asserted that she wouldn't be prosecuted for such an act.

Not because nobody would, of course. Just because important people get a pass on that sort of thing...

[David Nieporent]

We do not know how many classified documents she actually had transmitted over her email, exactly because she DID have a hard drive under subpoena wiped anyway.

False. As I've pointed out hundreds of times to you, you've never read the subpoena.

Again, not much of a believer in spoliation, are you?

You're using a legal term you don't understand.

[Nige]

Yeah he just didn’t have enough evidence to indict or prosecute, that’s the point. The whole thing was yet another a witch-hunt, designed purely to derail her campaign, with no other serious intent behind it whatsoever, because they knew there was no actual evidence of wrong-doing, just ‘indications’ and ‘maybes’ while the previous Republican adminstration was a colossal disaster when it came to handling documents and emails, classifed and otherwise.

[Brett Bellmore]

Of course he had enough evidence to prosecute, if he hadn't been given the job of clearing her.

Just the fact that she had lawyers without security clearances look through her email for her knowing that it might contain classified information was enough to convict her on, if she didn't benefit from the "important person" exception all of our laws have for anybody not named "Trump".

[Sarcastr0]

Do you have any evidence his job was to clear her other than that he cleared her?

[Nige]

‘if he hadn’t been given the job of clearing her.’

Shit you make up doesn’t count for anything.

‘was enough to convict her on’

No it bloody wasn’t and oh hey look who’s suddenly concerned about who’s going through classified documents that aren’t there but not classified documents that are.

'if she didn’t benefit from the “important person” exception all of our laws have for anybody not named “Trump”.'

Yeah Hilary Clinton was 'too important' for the Republicans who'd been trying to nail her with something for years to not nail her with this thing. This is the standard double standard - made-up evidence counts against Clinton and Biden, actual evidence doesn't count against Trump.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Do you have any evidence his job was to clear her other than that he cleared her?"

He was literally handed this job after Lynch was caught secretly meeting with Bill, did you forget that?

You think they were discussing how long her sentence should be?

[Nige]

They were probably discussing Bill's haircut, you're still making shit up.

[David Nieporent]

Just the fact that she had lawyers without security clearances look through her email for her knowing that it might contain classified information was enough to convict her on,

Is that your expert legal opinion?

[David Nieporent]

He was literally handed this job after Lynch was caught secretly meeting with Bill, did you forget that?

I mean, it's not true, so I hope people forgot about it.

But Brett thinks that unless Trump said in a public speech, "I order you all to attack the Capitol and execute my enemies," that he wasn't responsible for the J6 attack.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

What's the phrase, "fighting like cats in a sack"?

(Except in this case, it is partisan cats.)

[Sarcastr0]

Giving the top 1% good resources will increase their performance much more than giving those same resources to the median student.

Why do you think this would be true?

[Brett Bellmore]

And this was political players living the high life off the donors' money, so why would they care?

[Nige]

Worked out great for the Confederates.