We need a new thread. Might as well comment on the topic du jour: Weinstein.
Lots of things could be said. I’m going to comment on Hillary’s response when asked if she’s giving his money back.
“What other people are saying, what my former colleagues are saying, is they’re going to donate it to charity, and of course I will do that,” she said. “I give 10% of my income to charity every year, this will be part of that. There’s no — there’s no doubt about it.”
My translation: She’s going to continue giving 10% of her income to charity she likes– just as she’s always done. Just as she would have done if the Weinstein story had not come out. The Weinstein story will not affect her donations in any way.
In other words: She’s not giving up a penny of the money Weinstein gave her.
Source:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/11/politics/hillary-clinton-harvey-weinstein-fareed-zakaria-cnntv/index.html
Of course, Hillary’s reaction to the story isn’t the most important aspect. But I do think it tells us something about Hillary. Something many people already know. But…. still…
The other interesting story: Ronan Farrow who supported his sister when she accused Woody Allen of sexual abuse seems to be a major hero in this story about Weinstein’s sexual depradations. Go Ronan!
Open Thread.
On Harvey… well, it’s not like it was harassment harassment.
On EVs, they are great in certain roles, like as a daily commuter vehicle where you can keep the emissions at the power plant and not in the congested city. But that’s about it, and even in that role they are imperfect.
Earle
Could you elaborate to clarify what you mean?
Lucia,
My apologies, I assumed everyone was familiar with Whoopi Goldberg’s comments.
See https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/sep/29/roman-polanski-whoopi-goldberg for example.
I’d heard it. I just wasn’t sure….
The thing is irony is difficult in comments at a blog.
I’m fascinated by Ronan Farrow at this point. He may have been the one person who would really stick with this– possibly because of the symphathy he gained owing to the treatment his sister had when she did discuss Woody Allen in public.
You can read some of Ronan’s discussions of men getting away with things from this 2016 article– in which he discusses Allen and Cosby.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/my-father-woody-allen-danger-892572
I thought American courts could be stupid. Stumbled on this story regarding Polanski suing for libel and winning when I followed Earle’s link.
******
“Before we [English] get too smug, however, consider that only one jurisdiction threw money at a man who had pleaded guilty to abusing a girl, and it was not the French or American legal system or even the Iranian or Saudi legal system. Inevitably, the task of rewarding Polanski fell to London judges, who have made the slogan “English justice” an oxymoron the world over. ….
….
Polanski denied the accusation [of groping]. Like Russian oligarchs and Saudi Arabian petro-billionaires, Polanski wanted to sue in plaintiff-friendly England, rather than in France, where his citizenship protected him from extradition. Yet how could he? As soon as he came to the high court to reject the allegation, the police would have arrested and deported him. More to the point, libel is meant to protect men and women of good character from having their reputations besmirched. As a fugitive paedophile, Polanski had no good name to besmirch, particularly when the alleged besmirching consisted of the accusation that he was a groper.
….
“in a ruling which is still shocking to read, the Law Lords protected Polanski from arrest by allowing him to testify via a video link from France as they upheld the reputations of sexual predators. Samantha Gailey was now a middle-aged, married woman and wanted the matter forgotten. But instead, the law lords held that to deny a fugitive the right to sue for libel was the equivalent of saying that he was an outlaw and it was legitimate to torture him.
….
When the case came to court, Mr Justice Eady refused to allow Vanity Fair to give the jury the full details of the 1977 attack. It could not therefore draw parallels between Polanski’s offer to Samantha Gailey to get her into Vogue and Lapham’s allegation that he had told the beautiful Scandinavian that he could make “a new Sharon Tate of her.
The magazine’s dazed New York lawyers then heard Eady instruct the jurors that they were not there “to judge Mr Polanski’s personal lifestyle” because the libel court was not “a court of morals”.
…..
“For when you are considering whether a man would make a pass at a woman shortly after his wife’s funeral, his morals and lifestyle are precisely what you must examine. Forbidden from doing so, the jury found for Polanski, and Eady sent him a cheque for £50,000.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/oct/04/roman-polanski-nick-cohen-law
JD
Whoopie tells a whopper. Mark Steyn calls it.
https://www.steynonline.com/8178/do-as-the-romans-do
I report myself predisposed to believe Weinstein did commit many and maybe most of the abuses of which he now stands accused.
That said, there is a tendency to mob or bandwagon these sorts of disclosures. People who were offended at a harsh word a decade ago now come forward with a story of being groped. Those groped or in the room and saw groping were all, in current telling, grabbed by the genitals. Those grabbed claim to have been raped and those who woke up believing they may have been raped tell national magazines they were held down on broken glass and repeatedly sodomized by seven different fraternity men. Children ignorant of such things report to caring CPS investigators stories of Satanic sacrifices, cannibalism and ritual sodomy at their preschool and day care.
Witnesses can be mistaken, victims may lie, and there is a mania for being today’s face on the television.
Pouncer,
Sure. And people can also tell the truth.
I suspect most of these are the truth. In particular: the ones in Ronans story which were discussed with him before the story broke can’t really be attributed to “bandwagon”. They weren’t talking to each other. The story hadn’t broken. Ronan had a sizable number of women revealing details before the story broke in the news.
I should add: Weinstein has more or less admitted inappropriate behavior. He also paid women off. This is pretty difficult to attribute to “bandwagon” behavior.
Sure witnesses can lie. Victims can lie. People can want their faces on the tv. But that doesn’t seem to be the reason Weinstein paid off many women nor made the allusions to treating colleagues badly.
There may be some people jumping on the bandwagon. Perhaps even some who want to say they were “important” enough to be hit on by Weinstein. But it looks like an awful lot of these stories are true.
For what it’s worth: Weinstein never made a pass at me. I haven’t met the guy.
I wonder if the Democrat big donors have done a thorough analysis of how Hillary spent the money. More importantly, whether she spent the money or if it just ended up in her pocket. They had a billion dollars and didn’t have the turnout operation that Obama did, where they essentially went door to door and talked to every voter in swing states. Romney had no idea what they were doing with all those offices until after it was over.
It’s kind of strange the psychology at work that a person can do these things for so long and then a tipping point occurs and an avalanche of accusations occur. Cosby, Weinstein, Trump, Clinton, Catholic priests, etc. I’m not sure if this is journalism gate keeping or the actual people waiting for someone to go first.
.
I’m sure there are some people who are jumping in on some of these for a potential payout, but I’m guessing most accusations are valid. Apparently Weinstein just did what felt good anytime he felt the urge. I’m having a difficult time getting some images out of my head. Judgmental lectures from Hollywood about their out-group are looking less saintly today.
.
At least when the left burns one of their own it decreases my political cynicism a notch. Sometimes the anti-sexist rhetoric can be a bit over the top such that I begin to wonder how some liberals actually reproduce (by a mediated contract?).
MikeN,
I doubt it. I didn’t donate to her and so am not especially concerned. But it is something large donors might want to think about.
My main issue with Hillary above is that she’s just reminding us of the Clintonian interpretation of truth. Clearly, she is not giving the Weinstein money back nor is she even figuring out what the amount was and giving it to charity. She’s just giving the same amount in charity she always planned to give. So: she’s doing nothing vis-a-vis the Weinstein money.
But her answer would appear to be saying she is somehow parting from it.
Honestly, if a politician just said, “No. I don’t give money back even if it’s tainted. I didn’t know at the time and I don’t go through that exercise when I learn”, I’d be find with that.
What percentage of Clinton’s charitable donations go to the Clinton Foundation? That would make her claim of donating the Weinstein contributions even more questionable.
>What percentage of Clinton’s charitable donations go to the Clinton Foundation?
But they do good work! And she has taken no salary! Just half the money is unspent.
Tom Scharf
It an be a combination of both.
When journalists are reluctant to report, people also know they are at greater risk of being treated badly if they do step forward.
It turns out that in this case, there were two news outlets working on the story. I listened to Jodi Kantor discuss her story and she mentioned how remarkable it was that while her story and Ronan’s had large similarities, they didn’t use the same sources. So we have two totally independent investigations reporting largely similar stuff.
An in-depth article from Kim Masters on trying to get the Isa Hackett – Roy Price harassment story published. Although dumbfounded by how Weinstein could go for so long without being outed, I also understand the need to make sure that rumors do not become facts in an instant.
https://www.cjr.org/first_person/amazon-roy-price.php
Kan:
Thank you, Kan, for the clarity, indeed elegance, of this phrase.
There seems to be a lot of dismay that the progress from facts to rumors to facts didn’t move more quickly, but the consequences of a false accusation of what surely should be criminal activities particularly as they involve sex is a very treacherous area. It should probably stay that way.
Conviction should lead to terrible consequences. I’m not sure it does. Civil damages, should they be the only punishment, seem weak tea, particularly in the case of someone whose wealth may be nearly endless.
j Ferguson,
“Civil damages, should they be the only punishment, seem weak tea, particularly in the case of someone whose wealth may be nearly endless.”
.
Which is why plenty of rich and powerful men get away with abusing women… and even children. They figure they can get away with it at a relatively low cost. (e.g.. Bill Clinton)
“It should probably stay that way.”
I agree. This is nothing new. Mankind has been treading the ebbs and flows of this water since the beginning. The best defense is in prudential actions by both parties, but these are not always possible.
I find it amusing and illuminating that some now coming around to vilifying Weinstein are the same ones that vilified Pence for his prudence.
Interesting development on a subject from the last thread: https://spectator.org/trump-vs-the-nfl-is-the-gop-primaries-all-over-again/
.
It looks like the NFL owners have finally realized that offending half your customers is very bad for business (and incredibly dumb to boot!).
Human nature is a conundrum.No winners here. Hugh Hefner goes to play bunny heaven and Weinstein to Hollywood Hell. For the same acts. And everyone throws all the stones they can find once someone threw the first one, but none would do it before.
Hilary is a different story.
It is like a girl getting an engagement ring then the marriage falls through. If you like her she can keep the ring. If you do not like her she is a hussy to not give it back. It is not her morals at stake, it is our mirror of our likes and dislikes.
On a lighter note is there any action underground by the FBI on her and Comey or has it withered on the vine?
Kan,
I think it’s legitimate to criticize Pence for his Pence rule and also criticize Weinstein for his behavior. There is a huge range of behaviors between not meeting women alone for working dinners and arranging meetings on your hotel room, emerging wearing nothing but a towel and asking for sex.
Lots of guys can figure out behaviors between these two extremes.
angech,
Oddly, I haven’t heard stories of Hefner actually harassing women. His business model definitely used women’s bodies for profit. But I didn’t hear any accusations that he organized situations to waylay unsuspecting women by dangling non-Playboyish opportunities in front of them and then doing bait and switch.
What ever one thinks of Hef, it looks like he was upfront with what he was offering.
SteveF,
Next act: we’ll see what the various players do.
Thing is, the players who want to protest cannot ultimately win this. The problem is that if they do continue to protests, fans go away. The fans aren’t paying to attend a protest, they want to watch football. So I think most players will stand down on this. Perhaps some who feel strongest won’t, but then they will lose their platform for protest. They can try to find a new one– which they will find they don’t have.
My view is players who don’t want to stand for any reason should be allowed to remain quietly in the clubhouse. (None of these guys are Jehova’s witnesses– but if they were, I’d say, stay in the clubhouse.)
Fans going away is not in the players interest.
I still think it’s unseemly of Trump to have blundered into this. But Trump doing stuff I think I find unseemly in a president is just Trump. There’s actually no law saying he can’t do all this off-the-cuff tweeting, express views to his supporters and so on.
There is a point of view that Trump is a very smart man in regard to his tweeting and targets and that each barrage actually initiates reactions that he wants.
I fail to see it myself (asdo his targets) but the proof is supposedly there in the pudding.
Examples were deliberately provoking players to disrespect the flag , getting the democrats to push for dreamers and their families to get the green light – bad for the midterm elections good for Trump.
Etc.
If true he is a blinking genius, the flip side is he is on the longest runs of heads in a row in history.
Perhaps Lucia can Monte Carlo some simulations. I doubt one would get an outlier like this.
Players were already disrespecting the flag. Trump didn’t start that.
I don’t think he is a blinking genius. But I do think it would be better if the decision about immigration was made by the legislature.
>longest runs of heads in a row
There’s some tails in there. I agree he is doing more planning than he is generally credited. I suspect he puts in deliberate misspellings just to get CNN to cover it.
MikeN,
There are a lot of tails. Obama care has not been replaced. Major legislations not passed. So on.
I realize some of his fans don’t care that he’s actually not accomplishing much. But he really hasn’t.
I think he sees no downside to typos on Twitter.
Those don’t count as tails, since they are not his choice(we think). I was thinking of tweets that didn’t go well for him.
DeflateGate had a side story that the Patriots have an abnormally low fumble rate which was supposed to be evidence of deflation. I argued that Belichick just makes not fumbling a priority, which many people said was impossible. Today’s game their main running back fumbled in the first quarter and didn’t play the rest of the game.
Trump is an idiotic genius who lets his emotions rule sometimes. What people underestimate about Trump is his ability to pick the “right enemies” regardless of where the current Overton Window is for polite company. Trump’s character flaws aren’t hidden.
.
It’s almost like Trump spent all of five minutes and reviewed a poll of America’s least trusted institutions and formed a campaign attacking them (the media, the DC elite). He then spent all of another five minutes reviewing controversial issues where only one side’s arguments were allowable (immigration, free trade) and told the other side’s arguments. Genius, I think not. Obvious in hindsight, yes. He also has an uncanny ability to bring out the worst in his opponents. Media bias, open borders, “those jobs are never coming back”, coal miners out of business, and you are all deplorable sexist racist bigoted morons. You were able to read that in the NYT and CNN, not HuffPost and Salon.
.
Some pressure groups are effectively granted immunity by the establishment. Nobody in polite company is going to push back against BLM or academia no matter what they do. I’m not saying BLM doesn’t have some legitimate grievances, I’m saying the establishment will not counter their extremists for fear of being called a racist. This can allow their message to be corrupted and confusing.
MikeN
Huh? Seriously, getting rid of Obamacare is one of HIS campaign goals. Not succeeding on that would seem to count as a “tail” based on his promises.
He hasn’t gotten a “wall” yet, which would seem to be a “tail” if we assume he wants it.
Whether the tweets are working against his achieving his agenda items…. Only he knows. Maybe he actually wants non-cooperation. If so, he’s all heads!
This is a truly excellent (very long) article on a factory worker in Indiana and her life struggles as her job was moved to Mexico. It really threads the needle in being able to tell the story without judgment and without any apparent agenda. The subject of the story is both a victim of circumstances and an author of her own problems. In comes from none other than the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/14/us/union-jobs-mexico-rexnord.html
Lucia – there is a range. However, I will tell you that at the higher levels in a very politicized environment you do not take the chances.
.
As we learned in the 90’s “everybody lies about sex”. That means both real and imagined.
.
On college campuses today the best advice for a young man is to always have a wingman – because it is only the accusation that matters. I know this firsthand from my son’s experience.
.
Here is a twitter thread from a Hollywood insider that describes a SOP for casting calls in Hollywood. It it is very easy to see how a predator can work in this environment.
https://twitter.com/jenniferemorrow/status/918890308762554368
Lucia – “…But I do think it would be better if the decision about immigration was made by the legislature.”
The issue starts with laws the legislature has already passed. Obama just stopped enforcing them. There was a problem of long term illegals here before he stopped enforcement, but it got a lot worse when he made it publicly known that the laws would not be enforced.
5 minutes to make those insights and act on them, genius. I do the same thing with my share trading and don’t look where I am, not pretty. I would not want to take an intelligence test against him though I get the impression most people would be happy to do so and would think that they would win
lucia (Comment #165393): “I realize some of his fans don’t care that he’s actually not accomplishing much. But he really hasn’t.”
Wrong. Trump has accomplished a lot.
The economy is up. Unemployment is down. Wages are up. Businesses are investing in the U.S.
Trump pulled out of TPP.
Illegal immigration is way down. Homeland Security is actually doing its job rather than acting as the department of illegal immigrant services.
International bad guys (Assad, Putin) have been put on notice.
Excellent judicial appointments, including, but not limited to, Gorsuch.
Paris and Obama’s climate plan are toast. Pipelines revived. Coal miners going back to work. LNG exports OK. Crazy 2015 interpretation of the Waters of the United States law has been rescinded.
ISIS is on the run.
Regulatory reform is under way. Two-for-one repeals.
Effective response to Harvey, Irma, and Maria.
Legislative progress, not so much. That is because Congress is controlled by the passive-aggressive wing of the opposition (establishment Republicans).
Lucia, those examples are all negatives, sure but not within the meaning given by angech with ‘one of the longest runs of heads’.
The NFL’s nightmare has no end in sight:
Colin Kaepernick files collusion grievance against NFL owners
https://amp.usatoday.com/story/766348001/
Lucia,
“..not meeting women alone for working dinners”
.
Well, that’s my rule. 😮
>arranging meetings on your hotel room,
Note this is routine in Hollywood and other industries. The hotel room is a suite, and it is typical for actresses and actors to meet there.
mikeN
Perhaps. But it didn’t actually read as the way “everyone” met in the reports about Weinstein.
Certainly, one could call for that to change without at the same time saying the rule has to be no dinner in a public restaurant.
Not being in the upper echelon to be able to stay in suites, I have had one-on-one meetings with individual females late at night (dealing with demo issues for sales calls the next day) in regular hotel rooms.
I would always make sure the door was propped fully open to the hallway the whole time – never closed. Not a guarantee about anything, but it always lead to an atmosphere of being completely above board.
I have also refused to be in such situations with certain female cohorts, as I did not trust their honesty.
I’d wondered why no-one had suggested that Pence’s policy about meeting alone with a woman was discriminitory perhaps tending to deny access by women to the development of policies and other things whose efficacy is improved by same day discussion.
.
The Pence practice makes it very difficult to meet with a woman who’s said something at a meeting much worth discussing and which you would like to pursue with her without the noise of chaperones.
.
Lucia, what do you think about this?
>But it didn’t actually read as the way “everyone†met in the reports
He was making the others disappear after a little while. To the actress, it looks routine when the meeting starts.
j ferguson,
I agree with that.
Heck, when I was at PNNL, one of the older male workers said that *in the past* he would never take a business trip with a female coworker. But even he now realized that meant that women would never accompany more senior staff on trips to things like meeting with funding agencies. As getting funding is sort of important, that’s a big professional issue.
In fact, I did go on business trips to meet sponsors and so on and sometimes went with another co-worker. Being an engineer, naturally the other co-worker was a man. Yes. We had dinner together with no one else there. That’s the same thing that would happen if two male co-workers were together.
(FWIW: The guy who wouldn’t travel with female coworkers in the past said the policy was really that of his ex-wife. The issue wasn’t so much that he’d become more enlightened as they divorced. He said it was true he didn’t see the problem for the female co-workers at the time so he wasn’t going to push back. But it hadn’t been him so much who objected. Nevertheless, he did say have a negative effect on women’s career development especially if *everyones* policy was the same.)
Obviously, some guys are going to prefer to at least try to make sure there are more people at the dinners, on the trips and so on. But saying that women can’t be met at working dinners while *men can* hampers women.
There are other ways to avoid harassing women. Like… not meeting coming out of a hotel room wearing only a towel.
j ferguson (Comment #165409): “I’d wondered why no-one had suggested that Pence’s policy about meeting alone with a woman was discriminitory …”
Pence did not say that he would not meet alone with a woman, only that he would not have dinner alone with a woman. I don’t know if lunch was included.
There was a massive uproar from the left about this.
Here’s the problem, in this kind of environment when you have a group of mostly males and only one woman such as is the case in engineering circles a lot of times, is it best to leave the woman behind in a social outing during a convention or whatever? I was with groups that were quite inappropriate quite often at times (aka “fun”). Sales outings were even worse. I’m not sure how to handle that today. Does a woman want to be one of the guys, expect the guys to behave like adults, or prefer to stay back at the hotel? I’m sure it changes by individual and one must read the tea leaves when deciding, but this kind of environment where you feel like you are going to get fired for harassment for telling any off color joke or comment isn’t necessarily good for a woman in many cases who wants to be part of the team and is quite tolerant of behavior. Leave the Pope who is possibly recording everything behind for job safety? It’s conflicting signals with “treat women the same” but “act completely differently when they are around”.
MikeM,
I’m not entirely sure what point you are trying to make. It scans as if you think the criticism was unreasonable.
Pence said he would not have dinner with a woman alone. As business dinners are very common, and present great opportunities for networking and other sorts of professional development, this practice tends to deprive women of professional opportunities. People pointed that out and criticized Pence for behaving in ways that tend to deprive women of political opportunities.
There are, of course, other ways to deprive women of opportunities.
(1) Not meeting with women for lunch in addition to not meeting them for dinner would, of course, deprive them of even more opportunities.
(2) Not allowing them in your office– even more.
(3) Not allowing them at work– even more deprivation.
(4) Forcing them to wear burqua’s would deprive them of even more opportunities for professional development.
Obviously, I’ve sorted these behaviors in order of how much they can harm women’s professional development. But the fact that other practices might be even worse for women’s professional opportunities than the one Pence suggested doesn’t mean anyone was wrong to criticize Pence for his rule.
Whether, on the balance, Pence is fair to professional women is an open question. It sort of depends on whether he does more or less the same for men–making sure others are present at all dinners, whether he meets people for professional dinners generally and so on. Lots of people try to include a more than two people at business dinners– and if he does that, he’s fine.
If he’s excluding women: not so much. The way he said it: sounded like advice to exclude women. He’s a politician. He deserves criticism for that. If he meant something else, he could clarify. It’s not as if his clarification is not going to be covered. Even if it’s covered less, that’s something politicians need to get used to. I’m not seeing criticism of Pence as remotely unfair.
I also don’t see people also criticizing Weinstein who clearly organized his behavior to “pounce” on women– asking for massages and so on, as while also criticizing Pence as even remotely hypocritical.
I think one of the things that is bothersome when people suggesting that somehow Pence’s behavior is above criticism is that rather often it’s put forward as something that somehow protects women.
Guys, like Pence, having policies to not meet women specifically for dinner in public places does nothing to protect women. If we go through the list: Neither does wearing burquas.
Generally speaking, societies that restrict opportunities below what is possible for men have just as much violence against women. It just often hidden, not talked about, and even considered entirely fair treatment.
Tom Scharf
Is the outing entirely social? Or is it business-social? If it’s entirely social, then you can do whatever you want and “best” is whatever you like for social. Sort of like dating or getting married. You get to date or marry who you want.
If it is a work event that has social aspects, then it is not “best” to exclude women.
A sales outing is not a “social” event. It is a business event.
Are you asking if a woman who works in sales want to participate in business events where one sells product? I think the answer is obvious: yes she does.
Beyond that, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t want you to be the one making the decision to exclude her rather than leaving it up to her. It’s not unlikely that if you decide that your sales outing requires you to go out to a strip club, she’ll decline. But I gotta say….. If you conduct sales events at strip clubs…. are you married? Does your wife know you do that? Because I suspect either you aren’t married, your wife doesn’t know or she’s unusual.
I know you can’t prevent the person you are trying to sell things to from telling an off-color joke. But I can’t help wondering if the real problem is that you want to tell the jokes whether or not they improve the prospects for a sale.
If telling these jokes really is important to sales, that might be something that needs to be addressed directly at work with all the sales staff. Then a woman can decide for herself if she thinks she’s going to keel over and die when one is told.
I mean: if the company has found they really do need to meet with clients in strip clubs or tell off color jokes, then pull together the data to show it works, and say so. Address is directly.
Of course, the “risk” here is the company might discover– to the horror of the salesguys who just want an excuse to go to stripclubs– that that method doesn’t really generate sales. But if the data shows it does, ok.
I get that sometimes if you want to sell to a “Weinstein” you might make more sales by acting like a pig. But I suspect an awful lot of sales would go just fine without a person being forced to tell off-color jokes.
I don’t think that’s the message for most guys.
I always thought Pence’s only legitimate (given my view of his moral values no matter how I judge them) excuse for not meeting alone with a female business associate was to protect their reputations or avoid tempting the fates. To me this sounds like someone who considers the human spirit weak.
I am probably the oldest poster here, but in my business career traveling on business with female associates was not uncommon and was in my judgment necessary for a good business environment and in my case was always all business. I would occasionally take my administrative assistant to lunch to catch up on the office politics that would normally bypass me. She would remind me that my reputation at work put our lunches above reproach for anything but what they were. My male ego might have preferred at least some suspicion but I was not unhappy with the assessment.
Peggy on Mad Men in order to fit in, joins everyone for a company meeting with clients at a strip club.
MikeM,
And I suspect she wouldn’t have wanted Tom to be the one to make the decision about whether she could go.
In the plot of MadMen, I think it was pretty clear that some clients did expect to be taken to strip clubs as part of “sales” and that not doing so would affect whether the company could make certain sales.
In other cases: taking them to the strip club would not have resulted in a sale.
Of course this can be a problem for women. It can be a problem for men too. Some guys also don’t want to go to strip clubs. If the job required that, they would generally try to find another job.
I don’t remember the details, but I think it was something like a party with the clients after completing a deal or some other victory for the client.
lucia (Comment #165414): “MikeM, I’m not entirely sure what point you are trying to make. It scans as if you think the criticism was unreasonable.”
I was pointing out that j ferguson (Comment #165409) was mischaractering Pence’s policy. I suppose I could have been clearer by quoting more of his post: “The Pence practice makes it very difficult to meet with a woman who’s said something at a meeting much worth discussing and which you would like to pursue with her without the noise of chaperones.”
Pence’s policy would have no effect on that.
.
Off hand, I can not recall attending a business dinner (either in academia or interviewing for industrial sector jobs) with only two people present. Lunches were a different matter.
This is primarily a comment on how to act during off-time social outings. A nighttime sales outing at an offsite sales meeting turned into something that people would ponder if it caused the fall of the Roman empire. I will spare everyone the details. My experience was the sales team was hard partying by design. Sales changes their behavior based on what they perceive their customers want.
.
People form their own work social groups but I think the current environment is so sensitive to perceived slights that it can be counter productive to the goal of women’s equality. If a group goes out the perception is that a woman is much more likely to report offense, and the “guy code” is much closer to Vegas rules. Guys can opt-out anytime they want but reporting it as a business problem is almost unimaginable. Women are a protected class and assertions they were made uncomfortable are handled as a work-related felony. Why take a risk with a protected class? This can leave them isolated, by design, in a male dominated environment.
.
Maybe this is a good thing, maybe it’s not. Maybe guy’s behavior is what needs to change, maybe creating artificial social constructs doesn’t solve anything. Maybe equality really is not recognizing differences between men and women instead of over-recognizing them. The answer isn’t women must go to strip clubs and like it, but instilling job-terminating fear into men for an amorphous definition of acting inappropriately off hours may make men distrustful of women.
Sorry Mike M,
While my perception of the Pence limitation was broader than it apparently was, the dinner limitation is sufficient to make my point. And I’m astonished that you never attended a business dinnner with only another person.
This seems to have happened to me more at trade shows, but I’d meet someone and we’d realize that we shared an interest and the question would be asked, “What are you doing for dinner?” and dinner would frequently follow. Male or female, except with the female I might stipulate no naughty intentions, to which the response might be “Are you kidding” but we’d eat together anyway.
.
I suppose it might matter what the business was.
.
I would add that I was for a brief period in a business where the customer decision makers expected to be “treated.” I can remember one episode in Chicago in the ’70s where the person treated, a government employee, fell in love with the treat who in fact was being paid to attend to his needs.
.
I can’t remember how this was resolved if I ever knew.
.
I never understood the appeal of strip clubs and was always mystified when folks whose business we were seeking wanted to be taken to them.
MikeM
Nonesense. Given the reality of the people’s hectic schedules a policy of not meeting women alone at dinner would have the effect of making it difficult to “something at a meeting much worth discussing and which you would like to pursue with her without the noise of chaperones.”
I recall such meetings. They aren’t the rule, but they happen especially at conferences where people will be discussing talks and then say, Why don’t we go for dinner?
On interviews, breakfast meetings with only two people present were more common than not.
Tom Scharf
Presumably you realize that a rule where they are 100% excluded by design and where that is considered just dandy certainly doesn’t fix this. So it wouldn’t seem the “problem” of women possibly reporting sex discrimination is “the cause” for their being excluded. After all: the alternative you seem to be suggesting is just flat out excluding them to avoid the risk they might report something and that that report might be taken seriously.
Now: I do sympathize with some aspects of being overly sensitive to reports that people are made uncomfortable.
On this… perhaps. I do suspect the do what the perceive the customer wants– but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is what the customer wants.
I remember my Dad came home from work one day. Four men in his group has been taken to lunch by a visiting Englishman who wanted to sell his company something. All through the meeting, the Englishman was telling “Dumb-Irishman Jokes”. Dad said the most uncomfortable of his co-workers was the Jewish guy who kept trying desperately to get the Englishman to recognize that was three of the people he was “selling” had last names of Tiernan, Kennedy and Gallagher. Dad said the “sales” guy was just totally oblivious that not only were the four people he was “selling” not enchanted by these jokes but he was actually insulting them quite directly. I strongly suspect this guy “perceived” these “jokes” were what the potential clients “wanted”. None of the customers wanted to hear these.
I’m sure the English guy sometimes managed to sell things. He may even have done very well in England; maybe dumb-Irish jokes work there. I do think those who totally fail flush out of sales so his method probably sometimes “worked”. But I’m not entirely sure that sales people necessarily actually do things that are maximize sales.
I think sometimes sales people’s perception of what customers “want” is colored by what the sales person wants. The salesperson does what they want because they want to, and sometimes it works ok.
Yep.
My dad also reported being in New York and seeing a business acquaintance from El Salvador who was clearly “being treated”. Happens. (Dad said his diagnosis was based on multiple things including the fact he’d come up, greeted his acquaintance and asked after the wife and kids…. and so on. The guy then said he’d was there for business with a particular outfit– who dad knew had the reputation for arranging such “treats”. The acquaintance hadn’t expected to bump into someone he knew while in New York. Dad did not rush out and tell his wife. )
That said: the acquaintance was alone with “the treat”. So this isn’t really a situation where a male coworker would have been present while the female co-worker was excluded. I have no theory on who made the call to arrange for the young lovely to be present with the man. Likely as not it was a secretary– which would have been a woman.
Lucia, I can see we have the same experience. My first job in architecture was a summer stint at a Chicago architectural firm in their structural department. I worked for a female Chilean structural engineer who very quickly discerned the weaknesses in my understanding of what we were trying to do and took me to lunch that we might have time to get into details. This recurred one day each week.
.
There is a project in Milwaukee whose structure was devised in Millers on Wabash, summer of 1966, on napkins.
Strip clubs as a customer form of entertainment were always a major problem for me and I never would attend such places with vendors. A large company would on an annual basis show-up on a given date to invite the “boys” to an evening at a strip club in a Northwest suburb of Chicago. I would always turn down the invite and one year the salesman asked me facetiously whether I wanted to do business with a company that provided a good product or one that knew how to entertain the boys. I ask him if I could quote him. It turns out that we never did do significant business with that firm and primarily because we never had decent technical discussions with them. Their entertainment was a waste for them and my company.
Most of these things can be worked out with simple social cues, but some people are better and worse at this. Engineers tend to be people who aren’t particularly good at it. (Good) Sales people tend to excel at it. Sales people want to gain trust, and developing an interpersonal relationship with a customer is a very good idea. If that means strip clubs or the local museum and a coffee shop then they figure it out. Tickets to sporting events are popular.
.
Dilbert had a series of Dilbert being in the sales department for a while and it was the land of decadence. That was my impression. Engineers would be worried about exceeding their per diem by a dollar and sales would be sponsoring $5K dinners with open bars. I don’t think sales and a recovering alcoholic would be compatible.
.
Manning the booth at trade shows was like torture for me. We’d be staying in some dumpy hotel and the sales team was in the suite at the nicest hotel around because, you know, customers. But I’m not bitter, ha ha. I would occasionally do some customer tours with a sales guy and it was a lot of fun. That life was seemingly a vacation for them until they had to answer for sales numbers at annual meetings to the CEO and I was quite happy not to be a sales guy then.
Today’s New Yorker:
A good sales guy will make your company way more money than a good engineer. That is a very bitter pill to swallow. There is obviously an inter-dependency here but in a world where multiple companies have teams of competent engineers who are updating a product based on available technology and the people who make the buy decisions aren’t that technical, sales is the difference between bankruptcy and thriving. Good sales people earn their money, I hate saying that.
Tom Scharf, I hate reading it. But it’s true. When we ran an engineering computer sales outfit, I was appalled when I realized that the corporate ‘decision-makers’ had very little comprehension of what the stuff they needed could do, or even for that matter what their companies really did. We were very early involved in rapid-prototyping.
.
Spending my remaining time in the garage designing things, and whipping them up on CNC router, CNC Mill, and 3Dprinter is so much happier than trying to deliver what some fool in sales promised a client.
.
My very favorite Dilbert was one where Dilbert is asking the guy with the pointed hair, “Sales told the customer we could do WHAT?”
TomScharf
And yet, your examples above explaining why women might need to be excluded evidently involve the sales people who are “good” at social cues. . .
And if Irish jokes don’t work, they don’t figure it out and just keep on keepin’ on with the Irish jokes. They continue until they find the client who likes them. Then their boss thinks well…. that’s the way you find the client that particular sales person finds.
My brother-in-law came to work and some tickets to watch a golf thingie had been dropped off for him. He loves playing golf but put the tickets in the “pool” (which was allowed) and the secretary took them and went to the event. The salesperson — who’d been hoping to sell him at the game was surprised and later asked why. Brother-in-law said (a) he doesn’t like to attend that sort of game and (b) he’s not allowed to accept them, so he just left them for “the pool”.
The idea that sales people are especially adept at picking up what the “client” wants…. uhmm… no. Often they don’t even talk to them enough to figure out what they might want.
For what it’s worth: the purchasing decisions where brother-in-law works are made by the engineers. If sales guys don’t understand that, too bad for the salesguys.
Brother-in-law still considered that sales guys proposals on the same basis as any others. To the extent it was a good proposal, the guy could make sales. Whether the employer ever made the connection that the sales guys “schmoozing” skills were irrelevant is unknown.
Yes. Because the engineer’s boss is going to watch whether they overspend. The sales guys boss might think overspending is worth it. Maybe it is. Or not. The sports tickets sent to brother-in-laws outfit: not useful.
Maybe. Or not. The thing is: sales are directly observable.
It is harder to sell crappy products.
Tom,
Who decides what to purchase depends on the product. Some products purchase decisions are made engineers. Lots are made by various “management” types. Some are made by city councils and so on.
Obviously, a company needs good sales staff. What constitutes good sales staff can vary. One feature of good sales staff should be feedback about what features customers are looking for. That information should get back to management and engineering.
That said: the thing that is not obvious is that sales “needs” to exclude women or “needs” to hire strippers and so on. It might help drive sales in some businesses– e.g. Hollywood. I doubt that Apple computer ever “needed” to hire strippers and I doubt they “needed” to tell off-color jokes. Good engineering and good decisions about what to make seems more useful than strippers.
There’s plenty of bad sales guys out there, but good sales guys are good at their craft just like good politicians are good at theirs. Sales guys are going to try to figure out who makes the buy decision and that is rarely engineers for large contracts. There is engineering input in many cases so they get their tech guys to talk to the other tech guys. My fantasy world of where engineering is the most important thing with lots of real control doesn’t really exist. Business areas exist where it really matters.
.
What do good sales people do? Things like giving discounts if a hospital sole sources their product, waits for them to become dependent, then raises the prices after changing products is a big impact to the hospital. Gives away razors for free. Sells you car inusrance cheap the first year and then increments it yearly just under a pain threshold. Installs your dish for free and charges you $39 dollars monthly for the first year of a two year contract and never tells you what the second year costs. Steers you into high commission financial products. Rust proofing for your car. PC anti-virus that isn’t really needed. “Zero” closing costs on a loan. Printers / expensive cartridges. Makes Photoshop a monthly fee. Convinces you renting music is a great idea. Sells a car by monthly payment, not total cost. They recognize most people buying their products aren’t engineers and do sales engineering.
Good sales people do sell. There is no doubt about that. They can only do what their management permits though.
Happened to my 80 year old mom. She didn’t consult us. We’d been trying to persuade her to install an antenna for years. But in the past, the companies had some good deals for old women who really only want good reception for PBS but somehow won’t listen to their kids who tells them they can get that on antenna.
She realized her mistake after buying because she didn’t notice the service didn’t include the one channel she really wanted. We finally got her to install an antenna — and drove up to put it in. She canceled when the contract was up. No more cable or direct tv. She’s dried up as a customer and tells all her friends about how great her antenna is.
Her friends are getting antennas.
I’m not really sure I’d call this person a “good” salesperson. Ripping off octegenarians by locking them into a contract for something that doesn’t even give them the one channel the really want? …. not good. I’m sure they did get their commission.
I’m pretty sure cable and direct tv are starting to find their business suffering because of things like Netflix, Hulu and cheap antennas. Guess what: Streaming is an engineering change. The fact is: it’s hard to sell inferior products and people eventually figure out what’s inferior.
At a certain point, the sales people need competitive products to sell. I suspect the salesperson who sold mom the ridiculous cable package will eventually move on to a job selling something else. They’ll find it easier to sell things if they product gives value to customers. Otherwise, no matter how good they are, they’ll move on to another product.
But yes: companies need sales staff. I still don’t buy that sales actually “more” important than the other plank which is putting together good product. The latter involves engineering, management, supply chain and so on.
Fortunately, I can now find cheap cartridges at Amazon. I can also get cheap water filters for the fridge.
Those pod coffee makers? It seems you can buy some sort of pod fillers.
I’m not under the delusion that engineers make all the purchasing decisions. But I’m also not under the delusion that “sales” is actually more important to a company than engineering. If the products are truly bad, they eventually won’t sell.
FWIW: since the whole issue of being worried about women at “sales” meeting is what seemed to motivate the discussion of what make sale staff might “need”…. I can’t help noticing. None of the products or sales methods you listed involve telling “off color” jokes that might get a guy targetted for sexual harassement. None would seem to likely to create the slightest reason for exclusing women from the sales “guys” business-social activities. That is: unless the goal is to “treat” the staff to a party where they are allowed to tell off color jokes even though that has no business function whatsoever.
DirecTV was really bad before they were bought by AT&T. I literally couldn’t find the 2nd year price anywhere on their website. It seemed like such an obvious scam. Car X, $399 / month, no credit check! People don’t actually ask how long the payment terms are? I found some leasing so indecipherable that I just gave up. Sales people exploit human weaknesses on purpose. They are most important when you have a crappy product, ha ha. I read about sales in run-down mobile home parks, they try to get people to lease on a rent to own basis which also makes the renters responsible for repairs. Genius.
.
One way to handle printers is to buy a high end office printer. I’ve only changed cartridges once in 10 years on mine, and they sold it really cheap expecting to make money back on lots of cartridges. You also get a very good and fast printer. It seems almost all sales scams involve pay a little up front and get gouged over time.
.
Marketing, branding, manufacturing, customer service, etc. They all matter and any one of them can kill a company. Sales are fortunate because they are closest to the money and directly measurable.
.
My comments on women is just about men getting so paranoid about how to treat women that women become toxic team members for reasons beyond their control. Group social outings are team building exercises. It seems things are getting pretty unforgiving but I don’t really know. HR wasn’t the thought police when I was a corporate citizen. If this is what society wants, fine.
Tom Scharf
Yet these Geniuses aren as wealthy as Mark Zuckerberg.
It’s true that IF you have a crappy product, the only way to push it is dishonest sales people. That’s not the same as saying that generally sales is more important that engineering. If you have a product that can only be sold through deception or heavy sales tactics, you generally end up without a big market share.
Yes. But this is not the same as “most important”.
Honestly, I don’t think women become toxic team members. We had a guy who was a problem at PNNL. All the guys agreed he was the problem. And yet nothing was done about him. The guys agreed it was ridiculous.
The guys weren’t needing to walk on egg-shells around the women.
Which should mean that proposing excluding women from them shouldn’t be on the table.
Honestly, I really don’t think it’s that hard for “boys” to behave as well as a school teacher would have expected them to behave. Or to behave as well as they’d expect to behave when meeting their future inlaws.
I just don’t think “Geeh…. guys won’t be able to act like their in a locker-room at the Playboy mansion” is a really great argument for excluding women from work functions.
Harvey’s donations would not have been income for Hillary. So giving the same money to charity as always wouldn’t possibly be Harvey’s money going to charity. Donations to the Clinton Foundation will be spent on charity by keeping it with the Clinton Foundation, which is a charity.
Tom Scharf:
You appear to be addressing a business environment where sales, engineering and perhaps even production become unintentionally separated in their corporate missions. The ability to sell products on a consistent basis is no better than the weakest link and that is something that was brought home to me later in my business career. We had sales and marketing people who were good at selling and marketing and some even had a decent knowledge of the technical aspects of the product being sold. What they often lacked in relations with customers was the confidence and authority in discussing technical issues. We had production and engineering people who were very knowledgeable about their areas of expertise relating to the products being sold, but did not have good confidence in discussing the issues with customers. Management in my early years thought that this departmentalized approach was the only way of doing business. They saw their sales people as charmers, the engineers as capable but not necessarily good at communicating with those people that represented the customer and the production people as tending the ship but never to be exposed to the customer.
I ended up as technical person who was called upon to meet with customers and often that occurred when there was a problem and thus not under the most congenial of conditions. At first exposure it was not something that I initially particularly cared to do but later with more exposure and confidence came to enjoy. I insisted that engineers and production people meet with our customers in, of course, the presence of our marketing and sales people, and particularly so when they had problems with our products. At first it was difficult to recruit engineering people and even more difficult to get production people to visit customers, but later, like me with more exposure, these people enjoyed the mission and better still the customers mainly appreciated the efforts to communicate with the people directly responsible for fixing and avoiding product problems.
I used to tell the story of an actual customer experience in order to vent the trepidations of those who might be called to talk to our customers. We had a particularly tough customer of a Korean firm whose management was not above picking a vendors product apart with the idea that that was required to keep a vendor on its toes. After one of these particularly rough meetings we had dinner with the customer and after a couple of drinks our very capable and knowledgeable marketing guy, named Ron, asked a customer person who had been particularly tough on our product: what it would take to please this customers since from the meeting it appeared we could do nothing right. The tough customer guy said in broken English:”Oh, Ron we love you man. Do not take this all so personally.”
MIkeN,
The donations were presumably, either to her campaign or to the Clinton Foundation.
If her campaign still has money, the campaign could send it back. I don’t know if it can give it to charity, but other politicians say they are giving it to charity. So presumably, they can do that.
If it was given to the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Foundation could give it back. It would be rather odd for the foundation to “give it to charity” since the foundation is supposedly a charity itself. The only non-fake way the Clinton Foundation can part itself from Weinstein money is to give it back to Weinstein. I’m sure this could be done. I don’t think the Clintons want to do it.
Obviously, to the extent that Clinton transfers any money from one pot to the charity she and her family run she has not parted with the Weinstein money.
If she’d just said, “Money given to the Clinton foundation will not be given back. We use it for good work and will keep it even if it was donated by ax murderers.” That would be fine with me. But she wants to make it sound like she’s giving it back.
Hillary said she is donating 10% of her income to charity as always. This has nothing to do with Weinstein’s money. She wants to make it look like she is giving Weinstein’s money to charity, and is doing it clumsily.
I wonder what would happen if she gave Clinton Foundation number equal to Harvey’s donations to the ELWAC that Rose McGowan i demanding of CBS. Would it be considered unclean and they would refuse it?
What’s an ELWAC?
I think it’s ELAWC. Rose McGowan was tweeting about it, saying that unless some organization donated to it, they are complicit. I think it was CBS, but don’t remember what made her mad at them, regarding Weinstein.
Well… that googles out to
East Los Angeles Womens Center.
Off topic — Funny post by Pielke fils about an EOS article (Cheng et al.) recommending the use of OHC as a global warming metric, and the lack of citation to Pielke père suggesting that as far back as 2003.
Regarding electric vehicles, there are ideas to reduce recharge time:
“[British startup Zap&Go’s CEO Stephen] Voller said his firm’s batteries – made using a nanocarbon – are being designed to fully charge in five minutes. That would allow consumers to refuel as quickly as they fill cars up with gasoline. Other companies are also chasing lithium-ion alternatives…[Israeli startup] StoreDot says its batteries – using nanomaterials and proprietary organic compounds – can fully charge any electric vehicle in five minutes.”
.
Caveat: as with all such statements by companies looking to gain attention and/or financing, take with appropriate amounts of NaCl. Still, it shows an awareness that this aspect is considered a critical hurdle to acceptance of EVs.
HaroldW
“..are being designed”. “That would allow…”
No working prototype. If you like to party in Vegas, that’s fine. I’m keeping my wallet shut tight.
Hi HaroldW,
Suppose I bought a Tesla 3 when they finally become generally available say late next year? It would serve our local needs perfectly for most of the year, shopping, out to dinner, the r/c flying field, home depot, occasional runs to Jupiter, Stuart, Ft Lauderdale – all on the overnight charge at home.
.
It’s true that it would be lousy for trips, but…
.
If the range was doubled to 400 miles and the charge time reduced to 5 to 10 minutes it would perform similarly to our present car. Am I crazy to think that battery capacity could double in the next five years and someone could get the charge time down to this sort of number? And that for say $5k, I could replace my battery pack – which would still have residual value with a new one? After all, these batteries would still be useful at a discount for home UPS’s.
.
Our friends buy new cars now for bells and whistles, not because the old one is shot. Cars no longer seem to wear out, at least like they did 30 years ago. But maybe we do..
.
Now if only I could find one whose front fenders I could see, the better to park it straight in the space. I have a 100 year old friend who is replacing a one year old Honda for exactly that reason, he can’t get a handle on where the front of the car is, with resulting occasional visits to the panel beaters.
You might be surprised at how much money can be made renting to the lower class. I read “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” and it was a bit of an eye opener. A run down mobile home park can be a gold mine. There is a huge disconnect in how people accumulate wealth, bright eyed millennials think it is writing a new blockbuster app, when it can just as easily be toilet manufacturing or slum lording. If you are smart and capable it might be wise to enter a business area that isn’t chock full of smart and capable people if your interest is wealth. You need $8M in wealth to be in the 1%.
.
Sales can be deception, but it can also be just knowing and understanding what you customer wants. I do a lot of “sales” as an independent contractor. Technical conversations last a couple minutes at most, most small businesses can’t make technical judgments (which is why they need outside help). They want a feeling of trust, want to see that I understand their problem, and want to see my self confidence that I can do the job. I don’t win customers with Star Trek babble, and talking over people’s heads tends to make them feel dumb. Technical competence does matter for continuing business with a repeat customer. One of the guys I work with is less competent but wins more business because he is better with customers.
HaroldW (Comment #165447): “batteries – made using a nanocarbon – are being designed to fully charge in five minutes.”
Let’s see. A Tesla battery is 85 kW-hr. Charging that in 5 minutes would require about 1000 kW. You could do that with 100 amps at 10,000 volts or 1000 amps at 1000 volts, among other choices. I don’t know if that can be done safely.
Kenneth Fritsch,
You are absolutely right. If you work in an engineering bubble at a large company straight out of college one can believe “the product is the only thing that matters”. I believed that. Firmly. I was such a naive little pup. Then I started working in small companies. Creating a great technical product without competence in other areas is a path to failure. This I know. I learned the hard way. Production, sales, marketing, administration all have real value. It is definitely valuable to have these areas understand the other areas.
.
This is for selling products on the open market, which is very difficult. You can be successful with only technical wizardry if you create a product/technology and then sell that technology to an established player in the market. You must overcome a big problem of NIH though.
j ferguson (Comment #165449): “If the range was doubled to 400 miles and the charge time reduced to 5 to 10 minutes it would perform similarly to our present car. Am I crazy to think that battery capacity could double in the next five years and someone could get the charge time down to this sort of number? And that for say $5k, I could replace my battery pack – which would still have residual value with a new one?”
.
Not crazy, but not realistic either. A Tesla has, I think, an 85 kW-hr battery pack. Musk has said that he thinks the gigafactory can get battery costs down to $200 per kW-hr. That would be $17K for a Tesla battery pack. A big chunk of the cost is raw materials, so the old pack would likely have substantial trade in value, so maybe that would cut the cost in half.
.
I think there is very little room for efficiency improvement with EV’s. The biggest would likely be 10-20% from improved charge/discharge cycle efficiency. So more range requires bigger batteries.
.
Faster charge times might be just around the corner in the form of Li-ion batteries with glass electrolytes. But I suspect that 5 minutes might never be feasible.
Mike M,
doubling the range would also mean 85kWhr going to 170 kWhr which would exacerbate the charging excitement if the 5 minute time would still be possible. 5 minutes charging doesn’t mean 5 minutes at the station either. Even at gas stations we run into the guy who’s parked at the pump inside buying lottery tickets – paying the idiot tax as it were – while we wait, and wait.
.
while it makes sense that cost of kWhr battery capacity might be some sort of irreducible constant, maybe not, although I’m generally convinced that there is no free lunch.
.
Whats’ NIH?
j ferguson (Comment #165454): “while it makes sense that cost of kWhr battery capacity might be some sort of irreducible constant, maybe not, although I’m generally convinced that there is no free lunch.”
Significant improvements might be possible. Harold posted a link about an outfit that claims to be on the way to making supercapacitors with potentially 4 or 5 times the capacity of Li-ion batteries at a much lower cost. It might eventually be possible. But I doubt it is just around the corner.
lucia: “Whats’ NIH?”
I saw that and thought “What does the National Institutes of Health got to do with this?”
I think it means Not Invented Here.
Here is a really interesting article by Victor Davis Hanson on the method in Trump’s madness, in particular the purpose of his outrageous tweets and how he creates a good environment for his cabinet: “when a president is doing downfield blocking, others are relieved of the interference. A Trump secretary of defense or national security advisor exercises power and influence in ways unimaginable in comparison to most earlier counterparts.”
https://amgreatness.com/2017/10/16/the-method-to-trumps-madness/
Hanson is neither a fan of Trump nor a never-Trump type. From my reading of his pieces over the last year plus, it is clear that he does not like Trump but recognizes the validity of what Trump is trying to do.
JFerguson, have the guy get a car with a front camera. If the option is not available(Audi has it), a shop should be able to install it to go with the rear camera.
5 minute recharge is unlikely, unless you have a smaller capacity battery.
If you wait till late next year, you won’t get the car until 2020. He already has 450,000 orders. Using last quarter’s numbers, the time to fill the order is 500 years! Tesla is ramping up, but Elon will still delay the 200,000th car to take advantage of government tax credits. At 5000 a week, it would take 2 years to fill the current orders. He’s hoping to ramp up to 10,000 a week. He has also skipped a step in the manufacturing process of doing a test production line to save six months, so any errors would cause significant delays.
What are the chances of increasing battery life span, so the 15,000 charge can be avoided during the life of the car?
Does this life span affect solar panels as well?
Here’s the Pielke Jr post.
https://theclimatefix.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/pielke-on-climate-6/
HaroldW,
I think they have only had global coverage of OHC for about a decade. The addition of deep depth sensors has been relatively recent. It’s probably the best place to measure since it’s where most of the heat is. Obviously if we had total ocean and total atmosphere it would be a better measurement of long term trends than the surface I think.
NIH – Not Invented Here. Selling technology to technology companies meets lots of resistance internally.
My understanding is quick recharge works in the lab, but the real challenge is making it into production in quantity at a reasonable price.
Mike M. (#165451) “A Tesla battery is 85 kW-hr. Charging that in 5 minutes would require about 1000 kW.”
Thanks, I hadn’t done the math. But yes, 85 kW-hr in 1/12 hr is 1000 kW.
From Wikipedia, SAE J1172 has a Level 1 standard up to 36 kW, Level 2 up to 90 kW. “The SAE DC Level 3 charging levels have not been determined, but the standard as it exists as of 2009 has the potential to charge at 200–600 V DC at a maximum of 400 A (240 kW).”
So 1000 kW is a step beyond the current (sorry) limits. A charging station with multiple “pumps” will have to handle several MW of peak power.
.
MikeN – thanks for providing the link to the Pielke post. I intended to put that in my comment…senior moment I guess.
Mike N,
My assumption on a 2018 order was that the surge in sales would not continue. Maybe I’m wrong.
I don’t understand why a rapid recharge doesn’t scale, other than subject to a total energy transfer per unit time limitation identified by Mike M.
.
There is another possible error in my assumption that I could buy a 200 mile Tesla next year and update it with no more than a battery-pack change when the 400 mile battery packs become available. It could be that on-board electrical gear would also require replacement if I wanted 400 miles AND 10 minute recharge.
.
all of this obviously pre-supposes that what I want is possible.
It occurs to me that waste heat during rapid recharge could be a limitation. Even with the primative lead-acid battery bank I used to recharge in my boat daily, there was a heat limitation which meant I had to schedule the rate to keep temperature down.
I think I’ve written about it here already, but Tesla did a demo of a fast battery swap and claims to have deployed it. They collected over a hundred million for the extra credits from California for having that. So the fast charge is possible in this way. However, the reality is the deployment and demo are a fake. Anyone with a Tesla can try and use this to prove me wrong.
Has anyone reported about Harvey’s assistant who was setting up these hotel meetings? She would be there and then disappear after a bit.
MikeN – it was more than one assistant.
“According to Reuters, the NFL representatives did not press upon players not to kneel, but instead talked about ways to help them in their activism.”
.
“And then, as York explained to me, “in the long run, I think you’ll see a really, really strong platform and initiative where we have several weeks of the season that are dedicated to socioeconomic and racial causes.â€
.
Ugh. This is not going to end well I think. Pretty tone deaf from a fan perspective. I don’t tune into the NFL for social justice lectures, I really don’t like cancer lectures either during football. If the price of watching a game is being lectured to on progressive politics, I’ll pass. It may wind down on its own, the number of protesters was pretty low last week and all the networks stopped showing them.
“Through the first six weeks of the NFL season, total viewership of games is down 7.5 percent, compared with the first six weeks of 2016.”
“Compared with the first six weeks of the 2015 season, NFL ratings are off 18.7 percent”
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/21056998/nfl-ratings-75-percent-week-6-2017-compared-2016
.
“In the past week, Credit Suisse lowered its price targets on both Fox and CBS stock, citing NFL ratings declines.”
Ocean Heat Content and Science Ethics
“we suggest that scientists and modelers who seek global warming signals should track how much heat the ocean is storing at any given time, termed global ocean heat content (OHC)†(Cheng et al. 2017)., the idea to monitor ocean heat content as a metric of human-caused global warming that is far better than surface temperatures was first presented by my father in 2003 in BAMS.”
Sadly, Mike N OHC is a chimera.
The measurement changes are too minute and subject to error to ever be of use from year to year.
In the big picture, a Pielke thing I guess, The measurement is far more important to our understanding of climate change and the heat dynamics. Much better than than any of the ephemeral, human time line constraints we use such as SST, land and air temps.
Just not usable due to its lonnnng time needed to make an observable reliable change evident.
A bit like having to use GRACE for measuring the Antarctic ice mass.
Imponderable, flawed algorithm, glacially slow changes.
Needs to be done.
If we use the same algorithm and satellites we can build up an idea.
Same satellites, another flaw.
JFerguson, I don’t expect a surge in sales either. 2018 is almost here. Turns out the target for end of year is not 10k per week, but 20k per month. At that rate it would be nearly the end of 2019 by the time existing orders are finished. Even that rate will clearly not be reached, as they are currently producing on the order of a hundred per month, while trying to fix problems with the robots.
Turns out building cars is harder than iPhones. I’m sure GM and Ford are having a good laugh at the moment. However it is likely these problems will be eventually worked out. My guess is buying this car in year one would be a big mistake, it’s almost certain to have some major quality problems. When there is immense pressure to produce mistakes get made.
HaroldW (Comment #165445)
HaroldW, while I agree that OHC could be a dependable metric for the effects of AGW as Pielke Sr. originally suggested, I would also have a problem with how that will eventually translate to temperature changes. I would think the surface temperatures are more important and critical in measuring the ultimate effects of AGW than OHC.
Looking at the CMIP5 models for the warming from the additional heat going into the oceans and then returning at some distant future time gives a view of a very wide spread in the magnitude and timing of that process. The 4XCO2 experiments run in CMIP5 and attempts to estimate Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity from those experiments shows just how difficult getting a handle on not only the final equilibrium GMST change but on how long that process might take and at what rate. Even coming up with simple models to make these estimates is not an easy task.
Kenneth, the effects of AGW, yes. However, OHC is a better way to measure the imbalance. I’m not sure if they ever came to a satisfactory conclusion over ‘the pause is hiding in the deep oceans.’ Some like Bart Verheggen were arguing it could happen without a heating of the upper ocean thru fluxes. I believe the IPCC destroyed the theory that was adopted so quickly by ClimateBallers in its latest report with some charts of ocean temperature changes. The new angle is there is no pause.
Tom Scharf you are still thinking like it’s a regular car company. Buying the car in year one is quite different from ordering in year one.
Mike N, Tom S,
Mike N has a good point. Ordering in year one is different from buying in year one. On the other hand, problems with a year one car often receive serious attention from the manufacturer and depending on the customer, the problems can be the basis for extending the warranty indefinietly. I bought a 75 VW Rabbit the first day. I think I got the fourth one sold in Chicago. It had a carburetor which was dropped the following year for good reason. I won’t go into the problems, but I was eventually given carte blanche warranty which the zone rep told me would be good as long as I owned the car. They didn’t come and pick it up when it wouldn’t start but often sent someone out.
.
I would rather that it had worked – it did all but in colder than 10F above, but eventually sold it when I got a company car.
.
With Tesla, there are all those 3’s in the hands of employees, so an outsider may not see this sort of service.
Is this even remotely plausible?
http://www.thedrive.com/tech/15162/amazon-patents-drone-to-recharge-electric-cars-while-driving
Mike N,
They are patenting the tree.
MikeN —
While I can imagine it would be possible to have a drone dock with a moving vehicle — doesn’t sound easy, though! — I find it hard to believe that a significant charge can be transferred. It would require a heavy drone, with correspondingly large lift. The author of your article has the same doubts.
The Telsa 85 kWh battery weighs 1200 pounds. Providing a quarter charge would entail flying ~300 pounds of battery, plus charger & coupling apparatus. And the beast has to be able to fly back to drone central afterwards, still carrying that weight.
Raqqa fell, and what is interesting is that this city was basically flattened, and nobody cared. Compared to some cries of outrage about excessive force in Fallujah there was barely a whimper about Raqqa.
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/10/the-battle-for-raqqa/542778/
.
According to a BBC report I read they would drop laser guided bombs to kill only a single militant at a time. Kelly called this phase a “war of annihilation” and it seems to be quite accurate. They were dropping hundreds of bombs every single day.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/the_city_fit_for_no_one_raqqa_syria_islamic_state_group
.
When you can flatten a city and even the usual passivist suspects have little to say about it, you hold a special place in pissing off the world.
.
It is curious that the fall of ISIS isn’t given more attention. There is no “VI day” here. I suppose it is because it is happening in slow motion, journalists are scared to cover it, that ISIS type ideology will survive, and that it is human nature to care more about what Trump said 5 minutes ago.
.
We may have crumbling trust in a lot of institutions, but when we ask the US military to flatten a city we can feel assured they can get the job done. There’s that.
Tom Scharf: “It is curious that the fall of ISIS isn’t given more attention. There is no “VI day†here. I suppose it is because it is happening in slow motion, journalists are scared to cover it, that ISIS type ideology will survive, and that it is human nature to care more about what Trump said 5 minutes ago.”
.
I suspect the press is largely ignoring it because admitting that Trump has accomplished something important would make their heads explode.
.
The military deserves the credit for defeating ISIS, but the reason progress was so much more rapid under Trump than Obama was that Trump untied the military’s hands by loosening the rules of engagement.
.
The defeat of ISIS is a big deal. Yeah, the warped ideology still exists and the remnants will still be around as an underground terrorist organization. But what made ISIS so dangerous was their ability to recruit people to both fight in the Mideast and to engage in terrorist attacks elsewhere. That ability is now greatly diminished. It depended on two things. One was the allure created by the success they had. The other was the claim to be the caliphate. Both are now gone, since there can be no caliphate without territory under its control.
j ferguson,
My (long) experience is that most patents are rubbish. Usually the idea of the patent is obvious to someone “skilled in the art”, and worse yet, often already known, anticipated, or even routinely commercially practiced by many “skilled in the art”.
.
The patent office has a tough job: separating the wheat from the chaff, when 95% is chaff. This becomes doubly difficult as the scale of detailed technology expands… what is obvious to those ‘skilled in the art’ of a field may seem miraculous/novel/inventive to someone working in the patent office.
.
The worst part is when you have something truly inventive in a field (and truly unique!), the examiner will often reject the application based on “anticipation” from an utterly unrelated publication or patent, and you end up having to fight for a patent on truly innovative idea. The process of gaining a valid patent is a complicated mess…. and 20 years is way too short a validly, at least when a patent is actually inventive.
Mike M,
Of Course the media has something to say about Raqqa and Trump.
.
Rolling Stone: The president’s only contribution to the liberation of Raqqa was not interfering with the Obama Administration’s military strategy
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-trump-has-nothing-to-say-about-isis-w509499
.
There are 100 others just like this. Let’s not muddy up the situation with Obama having created this monster by pulling out a little too quickly after he was elected, he’s the real hero here.
.
Stock market up 25%, ISIS nearly defeated, in less than a year. Obviously Trump doesn’t deserve all the credit, but the gyrations the media goes through to make sure he gets none of it are a bit telling. Trump must be bad, all bad, all the time. Fine, be partisan, but this doesn’t mean you can’t even be happy ISIS is going down. One can compare this to Obama getting credit for Bin Laden’s death. I always laugh when people praise him for the courageous decision to do this, like this wasn’t the easiest call in the history of the universe.
.
Obama deserves some credit for refusing to put a lot of ground troops in and forcing the locals to do some of the dirty work. This was always a good idea, and it looked to be backfiring badly when ISIS took over large areas, but eventually the locals did do a lot of the hard work here in Mosul and Raqqa. The next phase will be these guys fighting each other of course.
“The next phase will be these guys fighting each other of course.”
.
Probably true. When you are fighting over control of contested land area, it is a zero-sum game. Unfortunately, often the very worst actors gain the advantage. The middle East is where people will fight to the death over a geographic area without economic value. So it has been, so it will always be. No peace will come to that region in my lifetime… nor that of my children… and perhaps grandchildren. Utterly screwed up.
Tom Scharf (Comment #165488): “Of Course the media has something to say about Raqqa and Trump.”
I had not seen anything about this in my local paper. But I looked on line and they have an AP story published today that I expect will be in tomorrow’s print version. The headline is “Devastation in Raqqa raises questions about cost of victory”.
Other than the devastation, the AP does not seem to see anything significant in the story.
Cruz was always talking about unshackling the military’s hands, but I think this was understood by none but some soldiers fighting ISIS.
Obama could have stayed out of Iraq entirely, but did decide to attack ISIS. Rules of engagement were controlled at a high level, all the way to Obama directly. Trump changed it to doing the minimum required by international law to avoid civilian casualties, and authority was spread as far down the line as practical, including for drone use. The journalist who reported this meant it as a criticism.
McClatchy had a headline during the surge, As Violence Falls In Iraq, Cemetery Workers Feel the Pinch
Unsavory Things about Mueller: Two recent articles I stumbled on. First: With no basis, Mueller tried to entrap lawyer, Harvey Silvergate. http://news.wgbh.org/2017/10/17/silverglate-how-robert-mueller-tried-entrap-me Also, Sidney Powell has summarized the unsavory history of Andrew Weissmann with respect to the Arthur Anderson case and other matters. http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/356253-judging-by-muellers-staffing-choices-he-may-not-be-very-interested-in (Ms. Powell although she has a very specific point of view, has a distinguished background including significant experience as a prosecutor)
…..
Mueller is really a bad character. Amazing (and not) that he has been around so long.
JD
Cool tech approach. Solar-powered balloons over Puerto Rico substitute for non-functioning cell towers. “[The balloons] navigate using an algorithm that puts them in the best position to deliver a signal by rising and falling to ride wind currents.”
don’t un-rechargeable cell phones live in the same territory where the cell towers are down?
JFerguson, maybe they are using hand crank chargers, or car chargers. I’d bet that the market for this filled quickly.
Hi MikeN,
or maybe those chargers with small solar panels.
MikeN (Comment #165491)
” Rules of engagement were controlled at a high level, all the way to Obama directly. Trump changed it to doing the minimum required by international law to avoid civilian casualties, and authority was spread as far down the line as practical, including for drone use.”
–
Surely, and I rely only on patchy memory, Obama and the USA were using drones to kill and terrorize people well before Trump came along.
The US military is in charge of most operations, Trump only gives the OK, like most American presidents, after the fact.
More Fake news.
“Mueller is really a bad character”.
Do you know for sure that he is a Democrat??
Angech, Obama has said that he approves operations personally.
The New York Times reported that high level agency approval was required unless it was declared an active war zone. ISIS was only approved for the latter in early 2016.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/us/politics/trump-loosen-counterterrorism-rules.html
angech (Comment #165500): “Do you know for sure that he is a Democrat??”
Did someone say Mueller is a Democrat? Is that relevant.
Mueller appears to be like his protege, Comey. He will go along with either party or screw either party, but he will always do what is best for himself.
“angech (Comment #165500): “Do you know for sure that he [Mueller] is a Democrat?”
He was appointed director of the FBI by Bush. I would assume that he is a Bush Republican.
JD
There were some lawyers that left the Mueller investigation several months ago. I took it as they were unhappy with what was happening. Now I think it might have been similar to what happened in the Ken Starr case. Could they have been the source of leaks who were let go? Looks like less leaking lately.
Scott Adams is revealing Trump Technique again.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-power-of-the-presidential-tweet-1508702456
Scott Adams also says revealing the technique makes it more effective.
I read the article. I’m not convinced. But… well.. whatever.
Trump is going to Tweet. I mostly avoid paying attention to those.
The media will keep reporting, perhaps with extra technique by Trump. So you will end up paying attention.
Now it could be Scott Adams is just making all this up. However, you have read his article, so you may end up noticing some of what he says in Trump’s tweets. It could be a total coincidence but we would see it as confirmation.
MikeN,
No. I often don’t pay attention to some of the tweet induced stories.
Scott Adams is telling us his opinion. I don’t think that’s “made up”. It’s just what he thinks. I don’t share it.
No, it is possible Scott Adams is making this up for his own gain. The same techniques he attributes to Trump- it could be Adams is using those techniques against his audience. Setting up confirmation bias where we recognize what Scott tells us is expert technique, but is really just a coincidence.
I became convinced it is deliberate technique by Trump after the chocolate cake.
Now we know. The DNC and the Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS to assemble the Trump dossier. I suspect they didn’t know they were going to get a bogus dossier compiled apparently with Russian assistance. So it was the Democrats who really colluded with the Russians, even if unknowingly. I think there’s some sort of rule in politics requiring one to accuse their opponent of things they’re doing.
What is fun about this is how many people claim they already knew Clinton and the DNC paid for the dossier and that it is old news.
Just last night I heard on the news that anonymous sources within the FBI claimed unspecified claims in the dossier were gaining credibility! To ensure listeners appreciated the full impact of this information it had to be emphasized that some unspecified claims were actually gaining credibility!
DeWitt,
Yep. Looking like at least some high placed Democrats colluded with Russians.
Kan,
Yeah… if they already knew, maybe they should have told the rest of us. But, no, “they” may have known, but the didn’t see it as information the rest of us needed to know. So: not old news to me or others.
DaveJR,
Well… if unspecified claims have gained credibility, clearly the American public needs to learn more about who funded the dossier and so on. Now that part of the problem appears to be the FBI, it looks like Muller is not the appropriate person to investigate the FBI. Perhaps he should recuse himself so an investigation can be done by an investigator from outside Washington.
Nope – not old news at all. The WaPo, NYT and Mother Jones are all going at each other over this very topic today.
David Corn from Mother Jones is stating he spilled all the beans last Oct. The problem was he did not have any names, just the DNC and an unidentified Republican donor (still unidentified) .
The people in the DNC and Clinton campaign and all RNC organizations are still denying any knowledge of it as of today. The WaPo story was big in that it named people on the record, and had dollar amounts paid to the intermediary law firm.
ttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clinton-campaign-dnc-paid-for-research-that-led-to-russia-dossier/2017/10/24/226fabf0-b8e4-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html?utm_term=.099439d3c68c
They probably paid with the money she got from Weinstein. /sarc
“Other details”. We all know some details are true. Perhaps they’ve confirmed that Trump once stayed in that hotel? I’m pretty sure Trump himself is totally open about having gone to Russia for some reason or other (beauty contest?) and stayed in the hotel. If so, that confirms that “information”.
Obviously, a statement like “already confirmed some information” is true because everyone always know some information was true. No one could have created any sort of dossier without including some true info.
Lucia,
“They probably paid with the money she got from Weinstein.”
.
The interesting thing is that this OPPO research seems a quantum level greater than what I have heard of in the past. Passing of the document, full of unsubstantiated allegations (many demonstrably false) by the Clinton campaign or their operatives reflects a frightening amorality. That the FBI became involved reflects likely criminality of Obama appointees at the FBI. If the reports of Clinton and a Clinton foundation official meeting with company officials prior to Clinton approving the uranium sale (and just before $140 million got donated to the Clinton foundation by company officials) turn out to be true, that reflects a level of corruption unseen in the USA… at least in my lifetime, and more typical of what has happened in Venezuela since the “Bolivaran revolution”.
The DNC not listing Fusion GPS as a vendor is likely a significant campaign finance law violation. The strategy of pushing the supposed Trump/Russia collusion thing looks to be backfiring.
SteveF,
Yep. As you know, I voted for Johnson. But assuming Hillary’s campaign did this– and that appears to be near certain– it confirms Hillary in office would be a very big danger. In fact: it confirms all the fears of those who distrusted her.
It’s a shame Trump is also hardly admirable and presents his own dangers. But on the balance it’s not clear the dangers he presents are worse. They don’t seem to go to the foundations of democratic republican form of government. In contrast, the behavior around this dossier which seems to have influenced the FBI and may have gained the Clinton foundation lots of money really do go to the foundations of our form of government.
For all his faults, of which there are many, Trump is the kind of person separation of powers better handles provided he doesn’t start a huge war, which is a danger. That said: he hasn’t yet and it’s not clear Hillary would have been any better on that front.
We’ll see what comes of this. It’s going to be drawn out. But the press has now shown signs of looking at both the Dems and the GOP when looking into the “Russia” issue. So I think a fair amount of truth is going to come out.
I suspect the plan by those in the DNC who organized the dossier was that this would never be connected to the DNC. I also suspect if Hillary has been elected her administration would have “graciously” have not investigated the supposed Trump-Russia connections. However, sadly for her, she and those Dems who knew the dossier was funded by the DNC didn’t have control. I suspect a sizeable number of Dems *also* did not know. Of course, they bought the “story” of the Trump connection, so of course they set up a drum beat for the investigation.
Well… the investigation happened. I really don’t think the “in the know” Dems and Hillary wanted this.
That Hillary engaged in oppo research against Trump is not surprising.
It would have been her or some supporter. What was learned with the information is more important. Hillary campaign did lie about this funding, and an FEC complaint has been filed. You are allowed to use subcontractors of course, but the purpose of the expenditure cannot be hidden, and Fusion GPS was not engaged in ‘legal services’. I find it strange that if Hillary is the sponsor, the Steele dossier includes that Russia has lots of compromising information on the Clintons.
Was the dossier used by the FBI to get a FISA warrant? Did they tell the court that this was Hillary campaign research?
It looks like:
They hired Fusion to get some info on Trump, which included paying Russians to provide info. A full investigation was launched at FBI, and this and the Steele dossier were used to get a FISA warrant, allowing for wiretapping of Trump’s campaign at some level.
In addition, other intelligence intercepts was being looked at for info about Trump, with Susan Rice a major player.
They lost the election anyways. Then they had Comey brief Trump on the dossier to give the media a pretext with which to publish the information. I’m guessing Comey did not tell Trump this was compiled by the Hillary campaign.
MikeN,
If Comey had told Trump, I’m pretty sure the info would have been tweeted tout de suite.
CNN is reporting that charges were filed by Mueller on Friday with arrest by Monday.
Any bets as to
1) Who will be arrested?
2) When will the arrest happen?
3) Is this story true?
The unidentified GOP donor has confessed today. The Washington Free Beacon, a news and opinion website.
.
That is a very long way from the RNC, the GOP, or anyone of the 16 GOP presidential candidates or a GOP donor.
.
It remains important to note that the Steele work and dossier was not funded by The Washington Free Beacon. Steele did not start work until after the Clinton campaign started paying.
Kan,
Yep. Pretty weird for a “news” site to have hired ‘opposition’ research, unless it was just perceived as ‘research’ at the time. Perhaps it wasn’t really “opposition” when they funded it– after all, they didn’t fund the Steele work.
CBS news has an article on the Free Beacon connection.
The headline: ‘Washington Free Beacon funded initial Fusion GPS anti-Trump research’
Lede: ‘ The conservative website the Washington Free Beacon triggered the research into then-candidate Donald Trump by Fusion GPS that eventually led to the now-infamous Trump “dossier” ‘
But the only connection is that Fusion was involved. There was no “leading to” the Steele dossier.
It’s interesting that as of 3:20 PM EST, Saturday the Washington Post and Politico are both silent on this.
JFerguson, it could be they wanted to get a new story in over the weekend, and created something out of thin air.
I was wrong about Politico. They had the story at 12:31 PM
MikeN (Comment #165554): “it could be they wanted to get a new story in over the weekend, and created something out of thin air.”
It does seem suspicious that we are being told that arrests are imminent. Surely that is not normal. And right before the weekend, to keep everyone hanging. Smells of desperately trying to regain control of the narrative now that it is becoming clear that the real Russia colluders are the Clintons.
Mike M.,
Not only that, but the FBI is looking like it was bamboozled by the Russians. That’s probably a greater motivation for Mueller than protecting HRC and the Democrats. And that’s not to mention that there’s evidence that the Clinton email server ‘investigation’ by the FBI was a planned whitewash from the start.
MikeM,
I think I read that there is an arrest on Monday but additional information is in a sealed court order. That would explain why the story says there will be an arrest, but no one knows who is to be arrested. It is newsworthy to report, but the info is scant.
I think many suspect Manafort will be arrested. I guess we’ll see….
Lucia – I think we are about tho find out that many news orgs have hired the likes of Fusion GPS. Yesterday John Podhoretz was tweeting that it was not uncommon for news organizations to do so. He related a number of cases from the 80’s where he had done so.
https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status/924420683110715393
DeWitt – “the FBI is looking like it was bamboozled”
.
The FBI needs to come clean on a number of fronts and stop hiding behind national security claims (of which they really have no grounds for).
.
Trying to protect their own at this point is just going to dig a deeper hole for them.
Kan,
I wouldn’t be surprised if hiring them is pretty common among news organizations. It’s potentially a way to get leads for stories without having a journalist who might be an employees on the story.
I’m not even surprised that politicians hire them.
The thing about the Steele dossier is that whoever paid for it seems to have distributed it in a way that got around quite a bit including to the FBI. It’s one thing to try to learn if there is dirt on your opponent. It’s another thing to distribute material that looks false.
Yes. Particularly at they appear to be using this to not tell Congress stuff.
lucia,
The FBI’s other ploy is to claim that divulging anything would interfere with the Mueller investigation. IMO, the Mueller investigation needs to be interfered with. It’s looking more and more like Mueller is channeling Patrick Fitzgerald.
lucia (Comment #165558): “I think I read that there is an arrest on Monday but additional information is in a sealed court order.”
Well, yes. But how does the press know what is in the sealed order? And how can the knowledge be so carefully limited? It is obviously a case of selective leaking (probably orchestrated by Mueller) in an attempt to control press coverage.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #165562): “”IMO, the Mueller investigation needs to be interfered with.”
That would be a mistake. It would only be depicted as a coverup and therefore proof of Trump’s guilt. Trump’s play is to give Mueller rope and let him hang himself.
Mike M.,
Fat chance. That’s not going to happen whatever Mueller does. Patrick Fitzgerald got away with framing Scooter Libby by basically suborning a witness, who has since recanted her testimony. Why do you think it will be any different with Mueller? The mainstream press won’t touch him as long as he’s seen to be going after Trump.
Prosecutors under current law have absolute immunity. They cannot be held liable for malfeasance whatever they do, including using testimony they know to be false. See, for example, the case of Ted Stevens in Alaska. There is an exception when the prosecutor is also acting as an investigator, but the bar is still nearly impossibly high.
An interesting ploy might be for Trump to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the FBI.
A lot of people voted for Trump for a lot of different reasons. The smelly DNC / Beacon / ?Russia / Dossier is further evidence of how slimy Washington has really become. Obsession with DC inside baseball by both the participants and the media. I’d rather have the government run by Walmart greeters at this point. Elect the Kentucky Quilting Club!
.
It is so sad and distressing that this is what has become of our alleged smart and talented people. What is even worse is how taken aback they appear to be when their performance, behavior, and morals are questioned as they shoot bazookas at each other.
.
Politics has always been ugly of course. It just seems to have moved another standard deviation down. Return as much power to the states as possible until such a time as this bunch of goons can demonstrate that the DC toxic swamp can be #resisted. Ugh.
Tom Scharf (Comment #165567): “… I’d rather have the government run by Walmart greeters at this point. … It is so sad and distressing that this is what has become of our alleged smart and talented people. … Return as much power to the states as possible until such a time as this bunch of goons can demonstrate that the DC toxic swamp can be #resisted. Ugh.”
Amen.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #165565): “That’s not going to happen whatever Mueller does.”
.
People lock into binary choices, even when there are more than two options. If A and B can not both be true then if A is false, B must be true (in public perception). The third possibility gets lost.
.
The binary choice has been:
(A) Trump colluded with the Russians.
(B) Trump did not collude with the Russians.
With that choice, Mueller can, at worst, fizzle.
.
The binary choice is becoming:
(A) Trump colluded with the Russians.
(B) The whole thing was an attempted frame up by Clinton, the DNC, the media, and the FBI.
.
With the new choice, either no charges or trumped up charges against Trump associates imply that (B) is true; not as a matter of rigorous logic but as a matter of public perception.
.
The mainstream media no longer controls the flow of information. Trump will get his version out via twitter and alternate media. Months ago, Trump established the idea of Mueller as biased. Bogus, inflated charges could blow up in Mueller’s face.
.
This could be fun.
DeWitt said “They cannot be held liable for malfeasance whatever they do”
Mueller knows this all to well from his Arthur Anderson work.
Mike M.,
A special prosecutor will find someone to prosecute. It isn’t a binary choice. Patrick Fitzgerald was tasked with finding who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. That was quickly solved and turned out to be a non-issue. But that didn’t stop him. He concocted a case against Scooter Libby and got him convicted. Martha Stewart wasn’t guilty of insider trading, but she went to jail anyway. Mueller will find someone to prosecute and proceed to railroad him or her into prison. The press will eat it up. The Russian thing will be go down the memory hole along with who actually paid GPS Fusion to concoct the story in the first place.
DeWitt,
“They cannot be held liable for malfeasance whatever they do”
.
This is a serious problem which leads to serious misconduct. They should be personally liable for treble civil damages for wrongful prosecution, and criminally liable as well… minimum jail time equal to treble the crime wrongfully prosecuted.
SteveF,
Prosecutorial immunity is not codified in law AFAIK. My understanding is that it was created by judges. It’s extremely unlikely that judges would enforce a law as draconian as you suggest. They would find some pretense for throwing it out.
Trump appears trapped in his office by the swamp.
Is there any way out like the mention of a special prosecutor?
Seems to be two sides bending beyond their breaking points at the moment If one goes the other wins.
Trump needs a breaker? The Nuclear One testimony?
DeWitt,
It is up to Congress (and State legislators) to set the law right. If judges refuse to enforce the laws, then impeachment and removal from office is the remedy. IMO, there is far too little prosecution for obvious violent offenses, and far too much for dubious illegalities. Watch how Meuller’s prosecutions play out.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #165565): “Prosecutors under current law have absolute immunity. They cannot be held liable for malfeasance whatever they do, including using testimony they know to be false. See, for example, the case of Ted Stevens in Alaska.”
I don’t think that is quite right, although prosecutors do enjoy what seems to be excessively broad immunity. They can not be sued for incompetence or negligence or even malice. From what I can find, they can be held responsible for breaking the law, such as jury tampering, creating false evidence, or suborning perjury. But it seems to rarely actually happen. Probably very hard to prove.
Although the Stevens persecutors were accused of suborning perjury, it was never proven. They should have been disbarred, at a minimum, for what they did do.
At least one local prosecutor in Texas has been disbarred for misconduct: http://texasdefender.org/state-bar-texas-disbars-charles-j-sebesta-prosecutorial-misconduct/
.
Addition: The prosecutors in the Stevens case were found to be in criminal contempt (eventually overturned) and were the subjects of a criminal investigation (which seems to have led nowhere). While all that was in flux, one of the prosecutors committed suicide, not clear why.
https://jonathanturley.org/2010/09/28/prosecutor-in-stevens-case-commits-suicide/
DeWitt Payne (Comment #165571): “A special prosecutor will find someone to prosecute. … Mueller will find someone to prosecute and proceed to railroad him or her into prison. The press will eat it up.”
Sad, but true.
.
DeWitt: “The Russian thing will be go down the memory hole along with who actually paid GPS Fusion to concoct the story in the first place.”
Not obvious. The public is increasingly aware of malicious prosecution and is primed to see that in this case. The Master Persuader in the White House will be pushing that interpretation. We shall see.
SteveF: “They should be personally liable for treble civil damages for wrongful prosecution, and criminally liable as well… minimum jail time equal to treble the crime wrongfully prosecuted”
A not workable proposal. If this was the law, every criminal defendant would find an excuse to accuse prosecutors of something. Maybe prosecutors have too much immunity, but I agree that they need broad immunity. They deal with really nasty people and often, very complicated questions.
I do agree that Mueller is a malicious idiot. If I was Trump, I would consider appointing someone to investigate Mueller and Comey while Mueller is carrying on his jihad. Be interesting to see what positions Mueller would take if he was on the other side of the process. Probably also find that he has committed crimes — the Federal Code is so huge that anyone can be accused of a crime, if you look hard enough and are willing to stretch the language of various statutes.
JD
There was a gap of more than one month between the hiring of Fusion GPS by Hillary, and the hiring of Steele. What happened in that time frame?
JD Ohio,
Accusing a prosecutor of something is not what I am concerned about. I am concerned about cases like Ted Stevens and the twisted efforts of folks like Mueller, who is running a politically motivated witch hunt. Those involved in the Stevens case should have spent a few years in prison.
JD Ohio,
A perfect case where a prosecutor should have spent the remainder of his years in prison is Mike Nifong, the prosecutor in the Duke Lacrosse team prosecution. Turns out not only that prosecution was wrongful, but a wrongful prosecution from 1995 put an innocent man in jail for nearly 20 years… the prosecution had witheld DNA evidence proving innocence.
Charging Manafort and Gates isn’t news, it’s olds. They have been dead meat for months. Mueller must be getting desperate if he’s trying to make a big deal of this.
From CNN:“The indictment against the Manafort and Gates contains 12 counts: conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.
The charges do not cover any activities related to the campaign, though it’s possible Mueller could add additional charges.”
New to me name: George Papadopoulis
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4163402/Papadopoulos-Statement-Offense.pdf
Why oh why do people think lying to the FBI when they are engaged in an investigation is something one can do?
Looks like Manafort and Gates refused to give anything useful to the FBI in exchange for lighter charges. This is likely a good sign for Trump, that they probably have nothing much to give. I’m betting few people on earth are willing to go down for Trump. Perhaps a deal could still be made if they have anything. If I was them the only deal would be total immunity, period. They shouldn’t trust the FBI at all here, it’s too political.
.
The chances of Mueller doing all this work at taxpayer expense and saying he found nothing is zero.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #165583): “Charging Manafort and Gates isn’t news, it’s olds. They have been dead meat for months. Mueller must be getting desperate if he’s trying to make a big deal of this.”
Manafort and Gates are only significant to the Russia investigation if they can be flipped to provide the goods on bigger fish. The left is getting all excited about the “fact” that that is now going to happen. But I suspect that if they had anything to offer, they would have already flipped. Mueller likely is desperate.
I think the public (excepting the willfully blind) will see through this and it will only add to the narrative of a Clinton/DNC/Obama/FBI/Comey/Mueller/press collaboration to get Trump, by any means fair or foul. And that will serve to shine light on all the Russia related wrongdoing by the above.
Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about a meeting with a Russian on “Clinton Dirt”. Should be interesting to see how the repeated denials by Clinton and the DNC that they knew anything about the funding of the Trump dossier works out, ha ha. Surely meeting with Russians on Trump dirt is an honor bound duty to prevent the destruction of our democracy.
.
Trump’s team made rookie mistakes playing the dirt game, the Clintons are professionals after having been put through the wringer for decades. They know how to play this game. Is that a feature or a bug?
Tom Scharf,
That’s why I said why oh why do people lie to the FBI. This was just dumb on his part. He should have either (a) told the truth, (b) refused to talk to them at all or if that option was not possible (c) hired a lawyer and plead the 5th.
Lucia: “why oh why do people lie to the FBI.”
Oftentimes because lying is a part of their professional careers. Also, telling the truth may be an admission of a crime. Sometimes, lying helps you beat a conviction. Third, the FBI has a long (somewhat convoluted) history of not taping interrogations. If the FBI says you lied, the FBI may be lying. Didn’t bother to tape Hillary’s “interrogation.” Hard to imagine her telling the whole truth — most probably she beat criminal charges by lying.
Put Mueller under oath for 5 hours and question him vigorously. Wouldn’t be pretty. Bet he lies.
JD
A couple articles from Popehat on how the feds work their charges and how unwise it is to speak to them:
https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/29/dennis-hastert-and-federal-prosecutorial-power/
“The rational response to this situation is clear: don’t trust the feds, don’t talk to the feds.”
“This is another aspect of the federal government’s vast prosecutorial discretion. Hastert’s alleged false statement happened in December 2014. When agents interviewed him, I guarantee you that the feds had already made their case.”
.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448755/trump-investigation-shows-how-easy-it-feds-create-crimes
“Nobody who has paid attention to American criminal justice for the last generation should be shocked. It is routine — mundane, even — for federal investigators to convict people not for the subject of the investigation but for how they reacted to it.”
The suggestion in an op-ed in today’s WSJ is for Trump to issue a blanket pardon for everything Mueller is charged with investigating. Then he can fire Mueller as being irrelevant and let Congress investigate. The Fifth Amendment would then no longer apply and everything would be more transparent.
DeWitt,
Just read that while eating a salad.
From Popehat link cited above, a very insightful comment — “In other words, they targeted the man, and then looked for the crime”
JD
>FBI has a long (somewhat convoluted) history of not taping interrogations.
🙂
This particular case looks interesting as the ‘lie’ is that he told them he thought a certain person was unimportant, but later was looking to meet her to get dirt on Hillary.
Papadopoulos name has come up before, where he was trying to set up Russia meetings and the campaign was ignoring him.
The money laundering case against Manafort could fall apart. Like with Tom Delay, there is an issue that the money has to be illegal to begin with for a charge of money laundering.
According to Politico, Mueller may be expanding from just Trump associates, to include Tony Podesta (not to be confused with his brother John).
.
Hard to root for anyone in the vicinity of DC. I don’t like the powers that be (of both major parties) who use government influence and money for the benefit of themselves and their friends. Nor do I like the unchecked power of a special prosecutor. Expanding on Lord Acton’s dictum about “power tends to corrupt”, “other people’s money tends to corrupt, and absolutely huge amounts of other people’s money corrupts absolutely.”
Andy McCarthy, the #1 guy to read regarding Mueller and Hillary’s server
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453244/manafort-indictment-no-signs-trump-russia-collusion
I suspect the leak to CNN about the indictment wasn’t just to distract from Hillary, but to distract from the arrest of The Greek. He appears to be cooperating, and can presumably name some more people that wanted to meet with Russians.
JD, what do you think of Mueller piercing attorney client privilege?
http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/sites/dcd/files/17-mc-2336_MEM_OP_REDACTED%20FOR%20UNSEALING_20171030.pdf
Looks like Perkins Coie should be made to speak as well.
SteveF: “Mike Nifong, the prosecutor in the Duke Lacrosse team prosecution. Turns out not only that prosecution was wrongful, but a wrongful prosecution from 1995 put an innocent man in jail for nearly 20 years… the prosecution had witheld DNA evidence proving innocence.”
He was disbarred in North Carolina and went bankrupt. He should be subject to criminal prosecution for what he did to the person wrongly accused of murder.
JD
“JD, what do you think of Mueller piercing attorney client privilege?”
The general rule is that attorney client privilege cannot be used to shield new crimes that a client commits with the assistance of an attorney or crimes that an attorney commits individually in connection with a case where the attorney is representing someone. Don’t have time to read the long memo.
Did skim the first page, which reminded me how goofy this whole thing is — Mueller is supposedly investigating Russian interference in US elections. As I have mentioned before the US has interfered with the elections of other countries on many occasions. The whole basis for the “investigation” is a joke.
JD
would seem plan is to get Trump to pardon his men and then both sides will impeach him for “obstruction of justice”
Why cannot the President order an investigation of the Democrats instead of just tweeting?
Trump shouldn’t do anything right now. He should just wait for Mueller et. al. to overplay their hands (a near certainty). He can then take action against an overzealous witch hunt.
.
Manafort is going to go to jail as the proverbial sacrificial lamb here. They will throw the book at him, but he may very well get a Trump voter or two on his jury. Manafort should also know they will get him later even if he does do a deal. The political steam roller is aimed at him and he is tied down. Everyone knows he is simply a tool here. Manafort could also just plead guilty to ensure he is …ahem… sentenced before Trump leaves office.
Tom Scharf,
The money laundering charge is bogus. He shouldn’t plead guilty to that. A charge of money laundering requires that the money being laundered was acquired illegally. It wasn’t.
DeWitt, there are some other aspects to money laundering that they could try and get Manafort with, but you are correct.
JD, Steve McIntyre points out that Mueller recorded The Greek’s statement. It is in the list of evidence.
Papadopoulos was questioned by the FBI in Jan 2017. In July he was arrested for lying to the FBI in his January testimony. How did the FBI know in January that he had contacts with Russians. Was he one of the “unmasked” Trump campaign officials? Or did the FBI have other reasons to invesyigate him?
This is even thinner than I thought. It seems this Papadopoulos guy, who the press is describing as a “foreign policy advisor” was just a 20 something volunteer who was trying to be a player and got played. http://nypost.com/2017/10/30/robert-muellers-big-catch-was-low-level-unpaid-intern/
8 killed and a dozen more injured with a rented delivery truck (Home Depot)…. the driver shouting, no surprise, “God is Great” in Arabic. The druver was from Uzbekistan, and arrived in the States in 2010 at age 22. Maybe we should bring in a couple hundred thousand young Muslem men, like those smart Germans. What could go wrong?
My favorite part is how the NYT (once again) describes it:
“He was identified as a 29-year-old from Uzbekistan who came to the U.S. in 2010. Officials say that he shouted “God is great†in Arabic, and that notes indicating loyalty to ISIS were near his truck.”
…
“It is still not known what motivated the attack.”
.
Sigh. Exactly the script of the Orlando shooting. So our Ivy League geniuses cannot discern motivation even when killers literally call.it.in.to.911 during a shooting or leave effing notes.at.the.scene. Talk about willful blindness. Seems the standards of deriving motivation change when it’s Charlottesville. Has that killer ever expressed his motivation? Not that I know about, but it’s reasonable to make some inferences based on circumstantial evidence.
.
I understand they are expressing a subtlety of whether it was or was not directly commanded by ISIS, that the connection with Islam is well known, and these events are becoming almost mundane, but I still expect mundane outrage and an admission of a sort that the immigrant Muslim going on a NYC terror attack defeats their preferred “immigrants are angels” narrative.
.
It’s almost impossible to find the words Islam and Muslim in any main media article. If it weren’t for the audacity of that “non-religious” terror organization to name itself the Islamic State religion would be left out of it completely. The selective outrage of the media has become so predictable it is comical. If you want to use the words “white supremacist” every 12 words in endless articles on one person killed in Charlottesville, I think journalists are duty bound to bring up analysis of Islam after Orlando and NYC after 58 deaths. On the other hand I doubt Trump will be saying anything about “good people on both sides” here, ha ha.
.
So what about Las Vegas? It looks like a “terror attack of unknown motivation”. Depending on how you define terror, this may or may not be terror based on no known political goal. I still think it’s terror in the more general sense. At this point it seems to fall into the psychopathic killer category, although one can argue most of the lone wolf ISIS attacks are psychopathic killers that just used ISIS as a tool.
On a totally different subject.
What would be a preferred strategy to diversify out of the US stock market? My retirement horizon is approaching and the usual strategy of gliding into more bonds seems like a big loser. Bonds are crap and have been for a long time now. As far as I can tell it is better to diversify globally and more small cap / large cap diversity. I was pretty much buy and hold on SP500 index for decades. I survived 1998 and 2008 and the temptation to exit at the bottom of the swing was quite high with my risk averse spouse. Not that I don’t remind her how staying in worked out, ha ha.
http://www.fedprimerate.com/s-and-p-500-history-chart.gif
.
I don’t think there is a magic answer here and unfortunately the markets seem to react globally now instead of hedging each other. If anyone has a surefire low risk / high return strategy tell me now! Otherwise I will continue throwing darts and pretending I know what I’m doing.
Just a data point to reinforce my biases, here is NPR a day after Charlottesville:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/13/543201715/charlottesville-tries-to-pick-up-pieces-after-day-of-deadly-unrest
“White supremacist” / “white nationalist” are used 13 times.
.
Here they are today:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/01/561304014/suspect-in-new-york-city-truck-attack-worked-as-commercial-truck-uber-driver
“Muslim” / “Islam” are never used.
.
The doctrine of a preferred narrative is obvious.
The Times really is astonishing. From their editorial board: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/opinion/that-crazy-talk-about-robert-mueller.html?ref=todayspaper
“Mueller … is doing the job he was hired to do — smoke out any and all links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government officials who assaulted American sovereignty in 2016 in an effort to get Mr. Trump elected.”
Right. Determining whether any crimes were committed is irrelevant. Mueller’s job is to prove Trump guilty.
.
“These days, the most serious attacks on American governance are coming not from abroad, but from Mr. Trump’s aides and his allies in the right-wing media and Congress.”
Paranoid much?
.
From there the Times goes on to call “delusional” any suggestion that the Clinton’s and Mueller might have done anything wrong with respect to Uranium One and to attack Trump for actions that he has not taken but that some people (like the Times) have speculated he might take.
Tom Scharf (Comment #165616): “Muslim / Islam are never used.”
Well, NPR did mention ISIS. Nevertheless, Tom’s point is well made.
What fascinated me is NPR’s headline: “Suspect In New York City Truck Attack Worked As Commercial Truck, Uber Driver”.
There you have it. The driver worked for corporations, including the evil Uber. What more do we need to know?
Tom,
I also worry about bonds. Interest rates are low, which means both (a) the return is low if interest rates stay stable and (b) there is a fair risk of loss in capital if interest rates rise. It’s hard to see interest rates falling more which means that it’s difficult to see a potential upside of capital gains should interest rates rise.
That said: I have no investment advice. At home, I’m sort of promoting the notion that it might not be a bad time to hunt for a retirement place where we can build. If interest rates do rise, owning two properties with a locked in lower interest a mortgage on at least one might not be such a bad idea. That said: I wouldn’t advocate strategy that for someone who can’t easily cover the extra mortgage payments nor someone who isn’t in the position where they might actually find overlapping home ownership convenient for some reason.
What with maintenance, insurance and so on, carrying costs of real estate are high and so must be carefully thought out. (Obviously, there are people who have money making rental property. I have no idea if that’s a good business proposition right now because I do not want to assume the work involved in being a landlord. That includes not wanting the work in communicating with a property manager who does lots of the grunt work. The owner still needs to make some decisions.)
Tom Scharf,
There are ETF’s for pretty much everything you can think of. I’ve seen recommendations to buy puts on the market (yes, there are ETF’s for that too) as portfolio insurance. If the market goes down, the value of the put goes up. But you have to know when to get out. You don’t want to let a put expire unless it’s worthless.
https://jonathanturley.org/2017/11/01/no-cisgender-straight-white-males-wanted-dnc-posts-job-notice-that-excludes-heterosexual-white-males/comment-page-1/
Doesn’t that violate state and federal law? Needless to say, this story hasn’t been picked up by the mainstream media.
Who needs fake news when the real stuff is so astonishing. I would never have believed it could come to this – cisgender indeed.
I just checked. You aren’t even legally allowed to ask about sexual orientation or preference in a job interview or application. The candidate can, however, volunteer that information.
I’ve been thinking about dumping some money into real estate by buying a more expensive house if/when I move. This has the side benefit of being able to “live in your money”. However the market has far outperformed my current real estate, and real estate has lots of hidden fees with property taxes, maintenance (new roof, etc.), and so on.
The attempted overt discrimination against white males is getting pretty crazy. There are obviously lots of people who would punish white males if given the opportunity, ironically the punishers are those who are most concerned about racial and sexual discrimination. I’ve never bought into the “we must discriminate to make things fair” theory, perhaps we should instead just work continuously to stop all discrimination. When’s the last time you heard that idea being pedaled by the left?
It is enlightening to see what some people say when this has become more socially acceptable. I find it likely that this overt bias will be quite counter productive to their political goals. The left created this identity above all monster and I’m not sure they know how to counter its excesses. It’s not helpful, it’s a gift to the right.
KarlK, it is likely that Sergey Millian was one of the primary sources for the Steele Dossier and a primary contact of The Greek.
Tom Scharf. What would be a preferred strategy to diversify out of the US stock market? My retirement horizon is approaching and the usual strategy of gliding into more bonds seems like a big loser. Bonds are crap and have been for a long time now. As far as I can tell it is better to diversify globally and more small cap / large cap diversity. I was pretty much buy and hold on SP500 index for decades. I survived 1998 and 2008.
–
You have just implied that your, and my, preferred strategy is not really a goer.
If it has always worked for you keep going!
I.e. you had not found a better one in 35 years and now you would chance internet advice?
I guess if you know see your and my wife’s point of view??
–
Anyway
Diversify
Spread risk.
Nail the opportunities for a high return low risk bank rate if you can find one, they do come up from time to time.
Republicans in keep a third in the Stockmarket.
Impeachment jump out.
Democrats in sell all the shares.
Hope this helps.
The Cheifio blog, very alternative, has some speculation on money and investment, might be worth a look.
“The Cheifio blog, very alternative, has some speculation on money and investment, might be worth a look.”
bitcoin
“bitcoin”
There’s an ETF for that, or soon will be. Or maybe it’s futures contracts, I forget. Bitcoin wallets have been hacked in the past. The targets seem to have been people who bragged about having bitcoin on social media. Or so I read somewhere.
We’re probably pretty naive. read on.
.
we’ve been retired for 14 years now, living off investments.
.
We rent although we could own. Living on a boat for 10 years taught us how to live in less space, and we do except for the garage/shop which wouldn’t have worked well on the boat.
.
Our theory is that houses are not always a good investment especially if the market slows when the folks who would otherwise be buying starter-homes can’t or don’t. The kids’ lack of interest in real estate cascades all the way to contaminating your prospects if you want to sell, the better to move to the CCRC.
.
we look at bonds as insurance. insurance costs money.
.
so we have bonds and equities.
.
We never do as well as some (SOME) of our friends, but 2008,9 wasn’t nearly as bad for us as it was for a lot of them.
.
This is all done by a small wealth management outfit in Massachusetts which we’ve used since 1998.
.
Reason is that i don’t think I’m smart enough to do this. My spouse agrees.
.
I like them. Their efforts are always a bit better than OK. If they were great, I’d be worrying about Madoff.
It’s kind of weird, I never really cared much about investment strategy, so I was about 95% US stocks for 30 years. I spent 20 minutes in a bookstore in 1985 and read that stocks were the best long term investment, and unmanaged funds outperform managed funds most of the time. There were maybe 3 or 4 choices in retirement plan investment in those days.
.
I guess I just figured if it all blew up I would just keep working, which I liked anyway. That plan worked well. I just consider myself lucky in this case, 20 minutes doesn’t make one a financial genius, and asset allocation never came up in my 20 minutes of research. Now that it did work, I worry about money, ha ha. Strange.
.
It is alarming to me that the school system will spend hundreds of hours teaching my child French, but never go over financial basics such as retirement planning, getting a car loan, a mortgage, and how not to get ripped off by all the scammers. It is also ironic that people will spend hours shopping and searching the Internet for a best deal on a good phone but totally ignore their own long term financial management. I consider myself in that negligent category (20 minutes….). I have sent both my kids the basics of retirement planning and it was like they were being forced to hard labor in a Gulag. Just not interested. I suppose it is a long term / short term brain thing.
.
It is sad to see all the pay day loan stores and how many people carry a lot of debt on their credit cards. No easy answers, but at least teach people the basics in high school.
I very distinctly remember getting Fidelity Reports in the mail in the 2008 time frame and throwing them directly in the trash without looking for at least 6 months. It was liking getting mailed a turd, ha ha. It’s hard to stay in the market during a panic, and the media loves a panic. What seems to be hard with investment is that the best strategy is usually to do the opposite of what your impulses are. Jumping in at the top of the market and bailing at the bottom isn’t exactly how one draws it up mathematically. I kept telling my wife “Buy low, sell high” in 2008. I don’t think there are magic mathematical formulas that tell you how to time the market.
.
Buy and hold, dollar cost averaging, don’t look at returns very often.
Peter Lynch stated that if a couple is near retirement, one of them will likely be alive for 30 years, so better to stay in the stock market. He also called diversification, diworseification, and advised doing research and picking out stocks you like.
MikeN,
Value investment hasn’t worked well recently. All the money is going into passive index funds. I think that’s eventually going to backfire spectacularly, but who knows when.
Tom Scharf
Actually, not hidden. But people who make money selling the home they live in often don’t think of these when considering how much they “made” on their home. That said: you do need to live somewhere and you’d have to pay rent if you didn’t own.
Whenever Jim and I started toying with the idea of a vacation home, we would remind ourselves that we would need to pay taxes, maintain the place, and that our idea of “vacation” is not to “drive to Wisconsin to spend the weekend mowing or working on the deck” or even “drive to Wisconsin to see if the place flooded” and so on. So anything like that would need to be hired out.
Vacation homes can be great. They can be great investments. But you need to really think about real estate carefully. Make sure you’ve identified all the carrying costs and if the plan is to enjoy it by usinig for a vacation or second home, make sure that plan is realistic.
When we did toy with a vacation home in Wisconsin, driving back we did discuss the issue of wanting to see aging parents on weekends. Realistically, being in Wisconsin meant not seeing them. We realized that realistically, for use it was going to mostly be carrying costs and few visits.
Tom Scharf
My view is if they learn math then the rest isn’t something you need to learn in school so much.
We did learn about interest rates in middle school– APR and so on. Not sure it stuck with most kids.
The other class that used to be useful was home economics which at least taught about setting budgets for meals. It might seem like small potatoes, but part of retirement planning is knowing how much your lifestyle costs, what aspects could be pared back, what you can expand if you have more. Learning on little things like planning dinner when you are 12 years old or so is good practice for moving on to understanding how planning and budgeting works with bigger things.
I think some habits need to be modeled by parents. For example, you should try to teach your kids to (a) know what it is they think they want, and (b) comparison shop for those things.
School classes about “money” probably aren’t going to teach people how to spot Bernie Maddoff. I’m not entirely sure how you teach kids to balance trust and distrust. Both are required in real life.
Friend of mine had a math degree. He was asking me about the periodic finance charges on his credit card bill. Never realized that almost all of his minimum payment was just going towards interest.
I do wonder if index funds will start losing their power if they become too dominant. Passive funds are now 40% of the market, they were 12% in 2000. People could start making money by gaming index funds which are by definition reactive.
D Payne: “Value investment hasn’t worked well recently. All the money is going into passive index funds. I think that’s eventually going to backfire spectacularly, but who knows when.”
I agree with your sentiment. Once a stock or investment class becomes too popular, it eventually becomes overvalued. On the other hand, if index funds don’t become too big, they are a good proxy for societal economic growth in the Julian Simon sense — over the long-run, historically over the last 200 years human economic well being has increased substantially in a long-term predictable way.
Additionally, you need to have an iron stomach to keep investing after something like an unexpected 40% downturn. This is not possible for 99% of people. Personally, I wrote off stock investing about 9 years ago when a penny decline in Red Hat’s earnings caused the stock to temporarily crater by about 30%. I didn’t sell at that time and in fact, bought additional stock when it went down. However, I realized that the main buyers of stocks were led by 32-year-old MBAs at institutions who knew nothing. Eventually made something like 5 to 10 times my investment in Red Hat and have stayed away from stocks ever since.
Smaller rental properties in not great but not terrible areas (About 1000 to 1300 sq. feet) have been good to me. I am always on the lookout for good repair people, and I treat them well. Am also selective about renters. Right now, I have good tenants in all my 4 properties (all that I can do by the seat of my pants–I don’t want any more), and I am making money. After about 5 years, if the tenants are good, the profitability really picks up. Over long time frames, rental properties are a good inflation hedge that produces income. It helps if you can pay cash for the properties. Not difficult for me to locate homes in the $45,000 to $65,000 range, which at $750–800 a month rent exposes me to little risk.
The most distasteful aspect of renting to me is re-renting. You will get 120 calls and only about 4-6 will be qualified. Also, sometimes, you get very nice people who just can’t afford the home, and it is painful to tell them no.
JD
Dow 2007 – 14,093
Dow 2009 – 6,626 (aaaaggghhhhh!!!!!!)
Dow 2017 – 23,516
.
Even buying at the peak in 2007 you are still up 67% today. Turds can be polished, it just takes a long time in some cases. If someone jumped out in 2009 it was a massacre.
.
Stocks were outperforming bonds by 2013 even if you bought both at the peak in 2007. If the market dropped 35% tomorrow stocks would be exactly where bonds would have taken someone since 2007.
.
Perhaps things will go disastrously bad, say after a Nork EMP when Trump confiscates Dennis Rodman’s passport.
.
What will the future bring? Who knows. But if you look at any 10 year period over the past 30 years stocks win, usually by a large margin. If you need all your money in 3 years, maybe bonds are better. If the past is instructive, a worthy question, then the answer is obvious. If risk tolerance is low and you sleep better, by all means invest conservatively.
.
$10,000 invested in 1987, value today:
Bonds: $60K
Stocks: $195K
$10,000 invested in 1997, value today:
Bonds: $26K
Stocks: $41K
$10,000 invested in 2007, value today:
Bonds: $15K
Stocks: $21K
Steven Mosher (Comment #165632) said “bitcoin”
.
Cryptic, but anybody thinking of going there should read a series of LuboÅ¡ Motl’s blogs about crypto currencies, or bubble-bits.
https://motls.blogspot.com/2017/11/cme-futures-should-drive-bitcoin-price.html
Predicting the stock market is like predicting what would happen with a Trump presidency.
.
NYT Oct 31 2016:
“The conventional wisdom is that, right off the bat, the stock market would fall precipitously. Simon Johnson, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, posited that Mr. Trump’s presidency would “likely cause the stock market to crash and plunge the world into recession.†He predicted that Mr. Trump’s “anti-trade policies would cause a sharp slowdown, much like the British are experiencing†after their vote to exit the European Union.”
““Trump’s trade-led recession would tip Europe back into full-blown recession, which would likely precipitate a serious banking crisis.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/business/dealbook/what-happens-to-the-markets-if-donald-trump-wins.html
.
The guy is from MIT and he knows computers, so how could he possibly be wrong? He uses algorithms! Complicated ones!
.
CNBC Oct 27 2016:
“Nevertheless, there’s a popular and prevailing view I now believe is reasonable to express: If Donald Trump is elected president of the United States it will be exceedingly harmful to markets, bad for our economy, and could help drive the nation back into a recession.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/27/if-trump-is-elected-president-it-would-be-exceedingly-harmful-to-markets-bart-chilton-commentary.html
.
And of course, what would you expect Krugman to say, ha ha. Krugman Nov 9 2016:
“If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”
“We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.”
.
Surely a Nobel Prize winning economist knows what is going to happen.
.
There are far too many “experts” in the media that routinely espouse catastrophe if their (usually liberal) agenda is not followed. What a bunch of blowhards. Expert prediction has become so unreliable and corrupted by agendas as to cause one to lose faith in the entire enterprise. I wish the media would at least put on people with a track record of success. They still quote Paul Ehrlich amazingly enough.
Tom S: “Dow 2007 – 14,093
Dow 2009 – 6,626 (aaaaggghhhhh!!!!!!)
Dow 2017 – 23,516”
It took 20 years to recover from the 73 crash when measured in real dollars. Be interesting to see how long (if at all), it took the market to reach a point where a 1973 investor would have earned 5% or even 3% in real dollars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973%E2%80%9374_stock_market_crash#Aftermath
JD
With so many people down on Trump, you’d think the DNC would be awash with money. It’s not. They raised less than half as much as the RNC through September of this year, $51 million compared to $104 million. That’s from a story on Donna Brazile’s new book, excerpts from which seem to confirm that the DNC was in HRC’s pocket because her campaign was supplying their funding.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/02/politics/donna-brazile-dnc-book/index.html
What DeWitt?
And have them run someone like Elizabeth Warren?
DeWitt, the Senate and House committees are doing better than the Republican counterparts. RNC is in a deal with Trump, who is bringing in tens of millions per month from his constant e-mails. Obama was achieving this during the campaign. My suspicion is anyone who signed up for monthly donations will keep being dinged until their credit card expires.
“”Whenever Jim and I started toying with the idea of a vacation home, ”
–
Was in Moscow for a week earlier this year. Train in goes past millions of little villages.
Apparently everyone in Moscow has one where they go to take a break, plant veggies and relax.
Maybe mid summer?
Are they called Dasha’s?
What a life.
What the English can only dream of doing at great cost.
Americans OK if you have some finance.
angech,
Close. It’s dacha.
Cheap real estate and cheap labor, both of which don’t exist in the UK. Probably passenger train proximity helps too. People move to the suburbs in the US in part because they can’t afford to live in the cities. That leads to long commutes by car to work and back everywhere but parts of the Northeast.
DeWitt…..People in the US live in the suburbs because they don’t want to live in the city….for a lot of reasons…..most of them are not economic.
Chuckrr,
First, I said “in part.”
Second, have you priced housing in the California Bay area? It’s astronomical. There’s a list going around of ways to tell if you’re from California. One of the items is that you make $300,000/year and can’t afford to buy a house. That’s only a small exaggeration. You might be able to afford a small house or condo with an income of $200,000/year.
DeWitt,
“Afford” is always a rather expansive term. I’d suggest that around here, lots of people would say they can’t “afford” to live in the city. It’s not literally true. As a matter of literal truth, they could live Chicago. But they like to have space around them both inside their houses and a border around it. They like better schools for their kids and so on. Meanwhile, they don’t mind lack of public transportation. So on the balance, they pick places in the collar counties.
Of course, it’s also the case that some people don’t work in Chicago. Very few people will live in the city and commute to work in the suburbs, but some young unmarried adults do. Often those people rent.
lucia,
Rather than ‘can’t afford’ I’ll change that to: It’s become too expensive to live in the city for many people. I was in Austin for the F1 race in late October. My wife’s brother, who lives there, said something like that unprompted. The rush hour traffic there is horrible.
Austin has become the Madison, WI of TX. I saw several of this type of sign in front of houses there. There was also someone on South Congress Street who was “taking a stand against white supremacy” and asked for our help. It wasn’t clear whether he was completely sincere or whether it was a project for some class at UT. I wasn’t curious enough to find out how we could help. I suspect it was some sort of petition to sign.
“Science is Real”
.
As we all know, it is immoral not to believe in someone else’s interpretation of what science says. I’m definitely not voting for someone who says Science Is Not Real. That will thin the herd by exactly zero.
.
The WH “allowed” the release of the Climate Change report without comment recently and the media was speechless and confused on what to say. The NYT accused the WH of wanting to censor and bury this report earlier this year based only on concern from scientists and no actual evidence.
“Scientists say they fear that the Trump administration could change or suppress the report.”
.
The NYT then “leaked” the report because they thought it would be censored. Other climate scientists then corrected them as it was available for public comment for months. This is one of these Trump FutureCrime(tm) articles where the media is creating news solely on paranoia on how terrible Trump will be.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/08/09/new-york-times-guilty-of-large-screw-up-on-climate-change-story
Tom Scharf (Comment #165650)
I had a niece email for advice on whether to get totally out of the stock market after the Trump election. I told her that over the years of investing I found that those who made investment decisions based on their political views often ended up losers. I also told her that the federal reserve has more control over what the stock market does than a president of the US. The Feds keeping interest rates artificially low has done wonders for the stock market (at least temporarily) since investing in bonds returns very little.
Tom, the people you mentioned are no doubt very partisan Democrats (I know Krugman is) and thus their stock market advice and prognostications are virtually worthless.
As an aside I have always been amazed that liberal Democrats cheer on the Feds actions after the Great Recession by their low interest rate policy when it in reality greatly favors the more wealthy over the less wealthy and poorer classes. I guess as long as the voters are ignorant of how these Fed actions work that is a safe political stance to take.
On Sept. 10, I wrote a blog post here asking whether Hillary Clinton had serious health problems. Several people tried to silence me on the ground that I had no basis to ask the question — I would construe their attacks on the post as though they were treating me as a truther.
….
A couple of matters have come up recently that support the idea that it was reasonable to question Clinton’s health. First, Donna Brazile seriously considered removing Clinton on the ground that her poor health was disabling. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/brazile-i-considered-replacing-clinton-with-biden-as-2016-democratic-nominee/2017/11/04/f0b75418-bf4c-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html?utm_term=.1b57cd5d77f1
…..
Also, about three weeks ago, she missed several interview sessions because she claimed that caught her heel in some steps and suffered some sort of foot injury. (At one time she claimed a twisted ankle — at another, a broken toe.) Of course, with Clinton, the truth of what she says is not even a consideration when she speaks to the public. So, she could have had a simple trip or she could have had dizziness due to potentially serious underlying conditions and is now lying about it. Interesting that the injury is described as two different conditions in the article I am citing. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/10/16/hillary-clinton-book-tour-stumbles-after-ex-candidate-falls-and-hurts-foot.html In any event, to the extent that Clinton seeks or positions herself for public office, her health is fair game.
JD
Kenneth,
Most of the money that the Fed distributed in the various quantitative easings ended up in stocks and other assets too. Reducing stock holdings somewhat might not be a bad idea. Or you could buy portfolio insurance by buying out of the money calls on VIX and puts on broad index ETF’s like SPY.
And yes, it did increase wealth inequality, something progressives claim to be against. Subsidizing rooftop solar is yet another example of a progressive favored income transfer from lower to higher incomes.
DeWitt,
“Subsidizing rooftop solar is yet another example of a progressive favored income transfer from lower to higher incomes.”
.
I had conversion with my progressive sister about how incentives and subsidies for back-fed solar power were essentially making poorer people subsidise wealthier people’s virtue signaling. She acknowledged the clear unfairness… but insisted the end result (lower CO2 emissions) justified the injustice of the renewable subsidies… There is no route except the ballot box to insisting on rational, or even reasonable, energy policy choices.
JD, throughout the campaign it was clear she needed help climbing stairs. I find it hard to believe she was going down stairs in heels. Even after she collapsed and did that weird photoop for the media, there was accusations that it was a body double, that really came down to different aspect ratios. It was clear to me it couldn’t be a body double based on how she placed her feet, trying to maintain balance.
SteveF (Comment #165669)
November 5th, 2017 at 6:31 pm
The ends justifying means is the argument I have heard from the Federal Reserve members for keeping the interest rates low and creating wealth inequality – the very few times they have felt compelled to give a justification/excuse.
Similar justifications for climate policy should come as no surprise or be considered unique.
MikeN,
I’ve been known to wear heels. I avoid running down the stairs when wearing them.
I’ve been known to carry coffee while going up or down stairs. I rarely do so, but when I do I don’t run because I would spill coffee.
Did the running down the stairs while wearing heels and carrying coffee supposedly happen at home? I don’t wear heels at home. I kick my shoes off and wear slippers. If I didn’t like slippers, I would put loafers on.
I realize I am not Hilary and Hilary is not me, so I can’t assume that this whole story could never be true of me. But honestly: I don’t believe she was running down the stairs carrying coffee while wearing heels.
Lucia & MikeN: This article states that Clinton has said she doesn’t drink coffee. http://www.wnd.com/2017/10/hillarys-falling-claim-doesnt-have-leg-to-stand-on/
Also, in addition to what you two have mentioned, Clinton said that she was talking over her shoulder while running down the stairs in heels. This really is funny. Hadn’t caught what you two caught in addition to the two different descriptions of the injury. Hard to imagine a 70-year-old with Clinton’s history running down stairs in heels and talking over her shoulder while holding coffee.
JD
Lucia & MikeN: This article states that Clinton has said she doesn’t drink coffee. http://www.wnd.com/2017/10/hillarys-falling-claim-doesnt-have-leg-to-stand-on/
Also, in addition to what you two have mentioned, Clinton said that she was talking over her shoulder while running down the stairs in heels. This really is funny. Hadn’t caught what you two caught in addition to the two different descriptions of the injury. Hard to imagine a 70-year-old with Clinton’s history running down stairs in heels and talking over her shoulder while holding coffee.
JD
It’s like she’s can’t keep remember which excuse she is telling so she just tells them all. Is it even plausible to fall backwards while your heel gets stuck? And if you did, how does your toe break?
SteveF,
I don’t think very many people have thought the whole renewable energy and electric vehicle things through. I’ve read people who think the states will lose a lot gasoline tax revenue when there are lots of electric vehicles. Sure, but the obvious solution, which will be implemented, is a road use tax on electric vehicles and the electricity to charge them instead of a subsidy. The same goes for roof top solar. You’ll be charged for using the grid as storage rather than compensated at retail for the electricity you generated but didn’t need at the time. And electricity will be much more expensive for everybody.
Lucia,
“I realize I am not Hilary and Hilary is not me, so I can’t assume that this whole story could never be true of me.”
.
Hillary was named after the New Zealander who would one day become famous for climbing Mt. Everest, because her mother could see the future. Hillary dodged sniper fire when walking from her State Department plane, even while the assembled press was unaware of the passing bullets. Hillary made $100K on cattle futures in a few months, but tired of it and never did it again. Hillary’s Rose law firm billing records were misplaced in the White House when they were under suoppeana. Hillary is perfectly healthy, and though grossly overweight, abstains from half marathons because they would interfere with her busy schedule. Hillary would NEVER approve of Bill taking $500K for a brief speech in Russia if there was even the possibility of conflict of interest….. etc, etc.
.
She was probably drunk and stubbed her toe on the coffee table in her hotel suite; the only connection to coffee.
SteveF,
At least she’s a visionary. Have you forgotten that she stood in her back yard in Park Ridge watching the jets coming into Ohare International years before it was so designated and years before the jets actually showed up.
SteveF,
Who knows? Maybe she learned Bill continues to cat around, got angry and kicked a heavy piece of furniture or the wall. Or just got angry at something.
Obviously, her history of tall tales makes it even more difficult to believe the improbable story about how she broke her toe. But really… the woman doesn’t run. She wears heels about as often as I do– which is rarely. She’s previously claimed not to drink coffee (I do.)
I almost can’t help but wonder why she added the claim about the coffee. If you left out the coffee, the story might almost be believable. Yeah… fall seems a bit odd. In heels, you are more likely to land oddly on your heel, if it gets caught you are more likely to fall back. But I wouldn’t decree it impossible for a heel to get stuck, and the person ends up propelled forward. This would be possible in stilletos (which Hillary definitely does not wear.)
If you fall backward, you don’t break your toe. If you fall forward, you are likely to be seriously hurt with your head and upper body being more at risk than a toe. But, still….
To me: no one runs down stairs carrying coffee. The mere fact of coffee means you are going to slow the heck down. Otherwise, you will spill it for sure!
I think both Bill and Hillary have gotten used to the MSM letting them off the hook on their fairy tales over the years and thus probably are not as careful liars as they previously were. Obama was much better at stretching the truth. Trump tells very obvious lies that would be difficult for the MSM to minimize as was the case with the Clintons and Obama even if they were so predisposed – which they are not. Nixon looked and acted so shifty that he could come across as lying when sometimes he was not. The common denominator here is that they are all politicians.
Perhaps it’s like 1984. The point isn’t the lie, but to make the minions repeat the lie and claim to believe it.
Lucia,
“Maybe she learned Bill continues to cat around, got angry and kicked a heavy piece of furniture or the wall.”
.
She certainly has been fully aware of Bill’s many ‘interests’ for a long time, and even worked to discredit some of the (many) women who accused Bill of ‘inappropriate advances’, so I doubt she much cares who Bill is currently involved with. More likely she was drunk and stubbed her toe on a piece of furniture. The strange thing is that she seems to think a whopper of a lie is better than the simple truth… and this is consistent over decades of public life. I could understand if her lies were just fig leaves to cover her many failings, but it is much worse than that, it is really pathological. She prefers to lie, even when the truth would serve her better.
SteveF,
Oddly, even if she didn’t stub her toe on furniture, that would make a better lie than the one she told. It’s more believable and is the sort of thing lots of people would say, “Yeah…. I can imagine doing that.”
Other more plausible lies would be something heavy was knocked off a shelf or dresser and landed on her toe. Accidents happen.
What I sort of don’t get is that she had plenty of time to concoct her story. If, for some reason, she doesn’t want to tell the real story, why not make up something that sounds more believable? Obviously, for some reason, she doesn’t want to wait, or perhaps she can no longer tell what sort of concocted story sounds impossible. She has a history of lying or even when not lying evading the truth in rather obvious ways. (As in asking whether they mean wiping the hard disk with a cloth). So implausible lies are silly.
My best guess as to why she would lie is that the injury is related to an underlying health problem, most likely, in my mind, the brain injury she suffered in 2012. Of course, it is possible that there was a minor unrelated foot stumble, but that is undermined by the very unlikely explanation that she gave and her history of lying.
JD
lucia: “So implausible lies are silly.”
And truth is stranger than fiction. So maybe … Naw, can’t be. 🙂
Next time Tim Cook is giving you a condescending lecture on your morals, make sure and remind him he has been burying all his profits in the tiny island of Jersey. If global companies want to perform shady (but legal) financial engineering to avoid taxes I just ask they do it without lecturing me from on high.
.
Paradise Papers: Apple’s secret tax bolthole revealed
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41889787
I wonder if the toe is on the same foot she used when she “put her foot in it” with the deplorables remark.
J Ferguson,
Appears to have been her right foot this time… the deplorable case was definitely her left foot.
.
The boot she was wearing looks suitable for a more serious injury than a broken toe… More like a minor crack in a larger bone or a severe sprain of ligaments.
One year since the election! I just can’t wait to see what the media has to say about it, surely they will note that the vast number of apocalyptic predictions they made failed to materialize, ha ha.
.
From my view, it went about as I expected. Hyperventilating media covered every utterance from Trump like the Cuban Missile Crisis, but in reality the government grinded along doing its business in pretty much the same manner it has always done. Trump embarrassed himself frequently, and caused his shrieking opposition to embarrass themselves nearly as often. As far as materially far reaching important events, not much to report that can’t be undone by the next President except for the Supreme Court and the defeat of ISIS. Personally I think the less government does the better in most cases.
Congress remains deadlocked with itself even with single party control, and all hand wringing on “obstructionism” mysteriously disappeared completely on Jan 20. Washington DC remains obsessed with itself.
The chances of Trump lasting all 4 years now looks more likely. Nobody tried to assassinate Trump which is a bit surprising. Russia still seems to be mostly vapor, very few people would have predicted almost nothing found after a year. The Republicans are still blowing up their party and its unclear what will be left, although this may ultimately be a useful enterprise to make them align with the values of their voters. The Democrats stand for almost nothing other than opposition to Trump and moral preening. Silicon Valley is going the Microsoft route and making themselves villains. Absolute power…
A major international event that reminds us we are all on the same team would be useful at this point. Everyone constantly magnifying each other’s flaws gets a bit tiring.
My view that the alleged requirement that our government must be run by a bunch of Ivory Tower self-designated experts or else catastrophe awaits has proven to be false. I believe this is their not-to-be-named base fear, that their shiny impeccable CV’s really don’t make much difference over someone from Vanderbilt or, God forbid, Anywhere State University. The high end university system has lost their way, and a bit of humility will go a long way to correcting this.
Tom Scharf,
It’s not just Gorsuch. Trump is appointing and McConnell is getting confirmation on a lot of conservative Federal appeals court justices too. That’s in spite of unprecedented massive foot dragging by Senate Democrats.
“One year since the election! I just can’t wait to see what the media has to say about it”
–
First mention of it anywhere. Thanks.
–
“Nobody tried to assassinate Trump which is a bit surprising.”
–
Wrong.
I think someone was deported to England and we probably have not heard of some attempts.
It is only the one that succeeds/ near succeeds that one hears about.
A pretty even handed review of Trump’s first year:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/trump-year-later-celebrations-controversies-chaos-n818491
.
And the type of review one would expect from the usual suspects, still dreaming of a nullification, ha ha. Dream on.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/08/donald-trump-illegitimate-president-rebecca-solnit
.
Trump killed my decent, kind Mom! Appeal to emotion anyone?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/08/trump-election-killed-mother-brutal-new-normal
This particular type of story has become common:
Sept 2017 NYT: Air Force General Addresses Racial Slurs on Campus: ‘You Should Be Outraged’
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/us/air-force-academy-racial-slurs.html
.
“Though the slurs were discovered at the prep school, “it would be naïve†to think the episode did not reflect on the academy and the Air Force as a whole, General Silveria said.”
The YouTube video of this speech got 1.2M views.
.
Nov 2017 WP: A black student wrote those racist messages that shook the Air Force Academy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/11/08/a-black-student-wrote-those-racist-messages-that-shook-the-air-force-academy
.
The student who did it was one of the alleged victims. I’m not asking for people to not be upset about hate crimes, I’m saying there has been enough false flag operations that the media should wait for some evidence before sensationalizing them, or at least report them with a caveat. This is a bit of a difficult situation when 95% of these crimes go unsolved.
Tom Scharf
Yeah… here’s her emotion:
Maybe she was running down the step wearing heels while carrying coffee and talking over her shoulder. . .
The thing is: it always sounds mean to belittle someones grief over a loss. But. Now. Really.
In the what the f*** category:
In late September the Air Force Academy superintendent strongly and emotionally criticized what he thought were racist messages attacking Black students. Instead, one of the Black students: “was actually responsible for the act,†academy spokesman Lt. Col. Allen Herritage said in an email to the Gazette. “The individual admitted responsibility and this was validated by the investigation.†…. the student wrote the messages in a “bizarre bid†to get out of trouble for other misconduct at the school,”
So, the dishonest student was responsible for attempting to instill hate against totally innocent white students. Rather than blaming the criminal (in all liklihood) perpetrator, the article was mainly concerned with how the wrongful act by a Black student could affect legitimate complaints against racist messages. Among the quotes:
“Despite the negative effects of the hoax, though, the school — which has faced other recent “woes†in addition to the faked messages, the Gazette reported — and Silveria are standing by their initial response.
“Regardless of the circumstances under which those words were written, they were written, and that deserved to be addressed,” [maybe the school superintendent should have said he would be more careful and cautious in the future]
….
Michele Malkin was criticized for this entirely reasonable statement: “Too bad Air Force Academy Prep official who hysterically lectured all cadets against “racism” after this #HoaxCrime didn’t refrain from judgment until AFTER investigation was complete. ”
******
Sebastian Gorka was criticized for this statement: ““When people fake hate crimes in the last six months with some regularity, it’s wise to find out what exactly is going on before you make statements, when they could turn out to be not who you are expecting.â€
It apparently is beyond this writer’s comprehension that when there is a fake hate crime, it is appropriate to criticize the offender. Conversely, when there is a real hate crime, it is appropriate to criticize the perpetrator.
JD
….
JD Ohio,
Seems everyone is terrified of not reacting.to evidence of racism with sufficient rage (which might suggest insufficient moral purity). It’s really screwed up.
The meme in the media is to hold all white people collectively responsible for the actions of those who commit hate crimes, “…reflect on the academy and the Air Force as a whole”.
.
I don’t feel responsible for the acts of some jerk out there doing irresponsible things. The action should be the same regardless of who did it and what they did, if it is a crime the people who did it should be held responsible for their actions by a rational justice system.
.
It’s a curious point that those who want this collective responsibility don’t seem to want collectively responsibility for hoaxes, the hoax is after all an individual action in their minds.
Since we had long discussions about the Mann libel suit here, which was filed in DC, I think it is appropriate for me to cross-post something dealing with the DC courts here. If Joseph W is reading, maybe he has a comment. (I think he is from the DC area) From the Curry post on Jacobson lawsuit https://judithcurry.com/2017/11/01/stanford-prof-sues-scientists-who-debunked-him-demands-10m/#comment-861081
*******
“The DC court’s public records procedures reflect on the competency and ethics of the court (Or potentially the Clerk of Courts, if the Clerk is an office independent of the Court.) I asked for the complaint and the attachments and was told that they would be emailed to me. Over the phone was not told that I would be charged. In any event, I received an email that requested that I pay $129 for the emailing of public records. Here is the email:
“Good Morning:
Copies are $0.50 per page and we accept payment in the form of cash, check, money order, debit/credit. We do not accept credit/debit payments telephonically and all payments with the exception of cash are subject to I.D. verification.
Please make checks payable to Clerk, D.C. Superior Court.
The page count for the documents requested from 2017 CA 6685 is 258 pages, and the total cost for the documents is $129.00. If you would like to proceed please remit payment either in person or via mail and the documents will be issued upon receipt. Copies can either be mailed or transmitted electronically.
Payments should be mailed to:
Attn: Clerk,
Civil Actions Branch, Civil Division
500 Indiana Avenue NW, Room 5000
Washington, D.C. 20001â€
Not difficult to see how the DC Court of Appeals wrongly based its decision that Mann had viable suit against Steyn, in substantial measure, on the demonstrably false idea that Mann had been cleared [in] 6 investigations. This policy is so stupid it is embarrassing. (Theoretically, I could see, potentially, a $5 charge for an email) It reflects very poorly on the Court or the Clerk — whoever is responsible for the policy. In either event, in the big picture, it reflects very poorly on the Court system that such an egregiously poor policy is part of DC’s system of “justice.â€
JD
JD Ohio,
I see from the comments at Climate Etc. that Brandon S is on the wrong side of this argument too.
D Payne: I have had a very fruitful period of non-interaction with B Sholl and hope to keep it that way.
JD
Hear! hear!
Steve F “Seems everyone is terrified of not reacting.to evidence of racism with sufficient rage” — I agree people think acting on cliches and getting angry means they are doing something productive. The writer of the above article is a theater graduate and arts/writer critic. Gives her lots of insight on topic. Forgot link before. Here it is: https://mic.com/articles/185937/racist-messages-posted-at-air-force-academy-discovered-to-be-written-by-one-of-the-targeted-victims#.cTfpD6BFR
JD
T Scharf “The meme in the media is to hold all white people collectively responsible for the actions of those who commit hate crimes, “…reflect on the academy and the Air Force as a wholeâ€.
****
I agree with your point that collective responsibility is a one-way street for the Left, particularly the millennial Left.
JD
Hi there! I do live near D.C. but am not practicing in the D.C. courts. I did try the website for the D.C. Superior Court and see the Jacobson lawsuit is there (Civil Action No. 2017 CA 006685 B) but for some reason they have images for everything but the danged complaint right now. (If you want to see the affidavit of service or the praecipe to extend time filed, they’re right there. From the last I see that the defendants have until 27 November to respond–or at least the plaintiff has agreed to that.)
The first scheduling conference is set for the end of December; I don’t know how that’ll affect the time of getting the real substantive documents up on the website.
Maybe that will change later–I certainly hope it will, as I should like to at least read the complaint before making any comments about it. If I remember when I was looking up documents in the Mann case, they seemed to show up within a few weeks of being filed.
P.S. – Sometimes there’s a good reason for delays like that–for example, if the complaint or its attachments may contain material (like private phone numbers or social security numbers, or “for official use only” material or the like) that needs to be redacted before the document is made public.
Joseph W. “I should like to at least read the complaint before making any comments about it.” Docs were recently posted here by B Sholl
http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/2017/11/lying-is-not-okay/#comments
Go to Nov. 9, 2:12 pm comment. Personally, the only reason for the charge that I can think of was that some politician somewhere (including potentially, judge/politicians) wanted to make his budget look better and came up with this awful idea of charging 50 cents per page for pdfs. I was wondering whether you had any insights. Also, in skimming the docs, I didn’t see anything personal other than email addresses.
….
I skimmed the Exhibits and was not impressed.
JD
I didn’t check to see how many appeared in the complaint, but his list of 30+ falsehoods is weak. For one his response is that it’s true!
Perhaps I am misunderstanding things, but several times he responds to a critique that it is implausible to do X which is Y times as much as the current electrical production, by saying that it is not just electricity, we are electrifying the entire energy sector. Doesn’t that make it less feasible?
I also don’t think this qualifies as fabrication or falsification per PNAS definition, so complaints about not following their rules on this would fail.
JD – Thanks! I’ll have a look this weekend (very long day ahead today).
My own guess lies elsewhere–some midlevel employee didn’t want to spend lots of time sending documents to members of the general public (or didn’t want his own subordindates doing that), especially when a notorious case draws public attention. So the charge keeps the requests to a minimum and encourages people to just wait ’til it goes up on the website.
In fairness, courts really do draw the attention of cranks and crazies (and sometimes just lonely people), as litigants and otherwise. One purpose served by filing fees, and maybe also by charges like this, is to discourage them from overwhelming the system.
One of Jacobson’s complaints against the NAS is breach of contract, because PNAS did not restrict the article by Clack et al. to a “Letter”. A “Letter”, per PNAS description, is a brief comment, submitted within 6 months of the original article to which it responds. The Clack article was submitted almost 3 weeks(!) beyond the 6 month limit and exceeded the word count and reference limits of a Letter.
.
Perhaps the lawyers here can comment on this claim.
Hmm… Not a lawyer. But I think there has to be some “consideration” for a contract to hold. Right?
I wonder what the “consideration” would be. Transfer of copyright? Page charges?
Also: if it’s breach of contract, that’s not the same as defamation or slander. It’s a rather more mundane contract thingie. (See my brilliant legal language!) Would the damages be somehow limited by the value of the consideration? It somehow wouldn’t seem right if there’s no limit. Suppose I had a contract for someone to mow my lawn once a week over the summer at a rate of $50 per mow. Then they don’t show up. I’m not seeing my damages being a million dollars.
I think Jacobson would have been better off leaving out most of his complaint like publishing as an Article instead of a Letter. It makes the rest of the case look weaker by association. I can see why the editor did not forward his list to the authors.
Harold,
I think editors have some leeway in approving what is published in their journals. A breech of contract suit for publishing a letter three weeks late (especially in light of the extensive review process) is absurd.
It’s a publicity stunt to recover his reputation. It’s working with the choir.
SteveF, his complaint isn’t that it was three weeks late, but that it wasn’t published as a letter but instead as a research article. If it were a letter, then it was three weeks late, and too long with too many citations. It could not have as effectively taken apart Jacobson’s paper if it were a letter.
MikeN “It could not have as effectively taken apart Jacobson’s paper if it were a letter.”
.
Which is how I recall it worked with someone like SteveMc vs Mann. I’m not sure it’s usual for replies to be allowed full article limits however and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Johnson’s emphasis on hydro put him on the shitlist more than anything else.
Harold W and Lucia
re: contract
In essence a contract is an agreement. Jacobson’s lawyer is trying to morph the PNAS policies into an agreement. It is a major stretch, but if lawyers don’t raise long shot arguments, they are deemed to have waived them. There is little downside to raising this issue, so the lawyer is making the claim.
Lucia damages. Sometimes they work the way you state. However, damages can exceed the amount of the contract if they are reasonably foreseeable. (Very famous, Law 1 case — Hadley v. Baxendale dealing with what are called consequential damages)
….
To use your example. Suppose I hire Joe to cut my lawn and tell him that I have a very important client visiting me for dinner who is a stickler for cleanliness and well-kept lawns, and it is very important that my grass be cut in a professional manner or I could lose a contract that will give me $50,000 in profits. I agree to pay Joe $50. Suppose Joe butchers the job, and I can actually prove that I lost the contract because of Joe’s poor work and can actually prove the $50,000 loss. (both stretches in normal circumstances, but possible in some circumstances) So, in the circumstances I have described, the damages would not be limited to the contract price for the services.
JD
MikeN,
I repeat, editors have some latitude in what gets published in their journals. Whatever ‘infractions’ of guidelines for the journal the published critique represented, they likely are well within the editor’s latitude. Really, the legal complaint against the journal is utter garbage.
SteveF,
I agree with you that the complaint about letter vs. article, time ans so on must be garbage ones.
JD,
Thanks. It does make sense that sometimes the damages can be greater than the cost of the services. Though I admit if I were on a jury and the award was up to the jury, I’d find it very difficult to award the law owner $50K in those circumstances. The risk with a juries and jurors might find that hard to accept. I know judges get more used to these things.
A long time ago, I watched some tv court thing where some woman took in a collectable designer bag worth more than $3K to a cheap chinese restaurant. The waitress spilled soup on it, and the customer was suing for $3K. As a juror, I would never award the customer that much against a waitress in a place where lunch costs less than $10. I just couldn’t do it. (As a customer, I would never take a $3K bag and place it in a location where a harried minimum wage waitress might spill soup on it. Heck…. I wouldn’t carry a $3K bag. But really, just… couldn’t sue them.)
JD,
Thanks. The claim that PNAS’s failure to follow its policies (as Jacobson alleges) damaged Jacobson sounded farfetched to me. Or, for example, because an author did not disclose as a conflict that she is associated with the Breakthrough Institute. But if there’s no downside to padding the claims — well, I guess it’s all right then. I wonder, then, why only Clack is singled out for damages — if Jacobson can get $10M (+punitive) from NAS and $10M (+punitive) from Clack, I’d think he should ask for $10M from each of the other 20 co-authors.
Harold, he merely sent complaints to every coauthor’s university president.
He also sent within a few days of finding out about the paper submission that he considered it defamation and libel, was intending to file an injunction against publication, and to make sure every author received his list of complaints so there was no legal excuse for them.
JD, would this announcement of intention to file unless the paper is retracted hurt his case particularly when he lists 30+ complaints, of which only a few are even plausible claims, not even waiting for author’s corrections?
So well before publication, Jacobson ‘finds out’ about the paper, and prepared for legal action immediately. So how did he find out? I can think of two ways: the journal editor selected him as a reviewer, or the letter authors provided him with a copy as a courtesy (or to get his comments). Either way, seems to me there is no evidence of defamation… I mean, you wouldn’t notify the target of a future defamation ! The case should be thrown out immediately, either on the basis of pure absurdity, first amendment rights, or anti-SLAPP (if an applicable statute exists).
.
DeWitt,
Brandon S manages to come down on the wrong side of most every absurd argument.
Not intentionally. Hypothetically one might not realize something could be defamation. In this case, it’s also possible people would think somehow “peer review journal” automatically makes it “not defamation” or that it means the defamed person would never sue.
Oddly, I’m sympathetic to the idea that one may sue a journal or author of a peer reviewed paper for defamation. If an author said I was an axe murderer in a peer reviewed paper, I don’t think anything about “peer review”, “scholarship” or “academic freedom” should protect them from a defamation suit.
That said: this doesn’t seem as clear as someone calling him an axe murderer. (Also: I’m not going to delve into the details enough to form a solid opinion. )
I’m almost tempted to go over to Judy’s and read threaded comments…. uhmm… nah.
SteveF (Comment #165733): “So well before publication, Jacobson ‘finds out’ about the paper, and prepared for legal action immediately. So how did he find out? I can think of two ways: the journal editor selected him as a reviewer, or the letter authors provided him with a copy as a courtesy (or to get his comments).”
If the paper was a comment on Jacobson’s paper, he would have been sent a copy by the journal editor so that he could prepare a rebuttal that would appear immediately after the comment. At least, that is how most journals do it.
Mike M. :”If the paper was a comment on Jacobson’s paper, he would have been sent a copy by the journal editor so that he could prepare a rebuttal…”
The Table of Contents shows a rebuttal Letter by Jacobson et al. in the same issue as the Clack et al. article. [The Letter apparently only appears in the online version, though.] So your surmise is correct.
Mike M,
Could well be, but then why is an opportunity to publish an immediate rebuttal not enough? It all strikes me as the bizarre behavior of a deranged political advocate. If the case ever goes past the preliminary hearing, then even scholarly journals will end up succumbing to pressure from political hacks. As I have noted many times over many years, ‘climate science’ is more politics than it is science. Public defunding is the correct political response.
Actually, Brandon has a post at his web site on this topic where he lays out his analysis. You are correct that its a tortured analysis that ignores important issues.
SteveF (Comment #165738): “Could well be, but then why is an opportunity to publish an immediate rebuttal not enough?”
It is enough, of course.
.
SteveF: “It all strikes me as the bizarre behavior of a deranged political advocate.”
Exactly right.
.
SteveF: :If the case ever goes past the preliminary hearing …”
I sure hope that does not happen.
The activists like to accuse their critics of being antiscience. It is bad to promote or oppose policies in the face of clear scientific evidence. What Jacobson is attempting to do is far worse. It is an attack on science itself. Science is a process, so to attack the process is to attack science.
.
The whole politicized global warming industry is undermining the credibility of science. I have worried (but only a little) that it could produce lasting damage to science. If Jacobson’s suit gets past the preliminary stage, it could be the beginning of the end of science.
I suppose that is to be expected. The left is busily trying to destroy western civilization and science is one of the crowing achievements of that civilization.
Sad.
SteveF, HaroldW, MikeM, the editors sent Jacobson the paper asking if he would like to submit a letter in reply. The paper is not a rebuttal comment with reply by Jacobson, as he protested. It is a separate research article with a reply by Jacobson. So instead of Clack’s being limited to 500 words, Jacobson was limited to 500 words, and Clack had the opportunity to respond to Jacobson’s comment and get the last word.
The journal would not have been aware of the defamation before notifying Jacobson. He responded with demands of retraction of 40 items, or he would sue. He also asked for 3 weeks notice before publication so he could file for an injunction, which I thought was unconstitutional prior restraint.
In his letter. He could write a research article…. hypothetically.
(Far be it from me to suggest the rules are actually ‘fair’.)
Mike M,
“The left is busily trying to destroy western civilization and science is one of the crowing achievements of that civilization.”
.
Starting with Lysenko. For the left, the only objective is the “reordering of human society” to be “more fair”. Everything else is only a means to that political end, science included. Sad indeed.
Mike N,
There is never a last word in science, as Thomas Kuhn recognized. In politics, the last word is important… in science, not so much. And yet another proof Jacobson et al are practicing politics, not science.
>There is never a last word in science, And yet another proof Jacobson et al are practicing politics, not science.
ClimateGate showed Ben Santer got a critical paper rejected at one journal, then instead of submitting a reply made sure it was a separate paper to avoid giving Douglass the last word.
Mike N,
Umm… ya. Santer is the quintessential policy advocate/hack, not a disinterested researcher.
Santer noted in the climategate emails that he would like to encounter Pat Michaels in a dark alley. I don’t see Santer wanting the ‘last word’ with Douglass et al in any way surprising… for a political hack.
Lucia: “I’m sympathetic to the idea that one may sue a journal or author of a peer reviewed paper for defamation. If an author said I was an axe murderer in a peer reviewed paper, I don’t think anything about “peer reviewâ€, “scholarship†or “academic freedom†should protect them from a defamation suit.”
******
Falsely calling someone an axe murderer is precisely what defamation laws are designed to remedy. Would make no difference if the false statement was made in a scientific journal. Judges and juries can handle this type of case. Both judges and juries are not normally equipped to handle difficult scientific issues.
…..
At Curry’s David Appell asked: “Scientific disagreements must be decided not in court but rather through the scientific process.†Why?
Seriously, why?â€
……
I think my reply is responsive to your musings.
“There are a number of reasons. 1. Most judges have no significant scientific backgrounds; 2. The judges are almost always supposed to rely on the arguments presented by lawyers who, most often, have no special scientific expertise; 3. Virtually, no judges are conversant in statistics; 4. Most judges have roughly 500 to 2,000 cases pending of widely different claims– they don’t have the time to seriously research specialized scientific issues or become knowledgeable about them. They also don’t have time to address serious scientific questions and do justice to the rest of their cases. 5. 99% of human beings cannot be knowledgeable about criminal law, trust law, contract law, tort law, constitutional law et cet., and also be knowledgeable about specialized science — particularly specialized science across all fields — for instance, physics or chemistry.
As poorly trained as judges are, most juries are exponentially worse. Most libel cases are tried before juries to address the matters that this blog post [dealing with Jacobson lawsuit] deals with.”
JD
Here is a case involving Oberlin college that shows how defamation lawsuits can serve valid societal purposes. http://freebeacon.com/culture/local-bakers-sues-oberlin-for-libel-slander/
……
Here is a relevant portion of the article.
“The complaint comes a year after Oberlin College students held a massive protest in front of Gibson’s Food Mart and Bakery, in response to three of their peers being arrested and charged with shoplifting.
Allyn Gibson was physically assaulted by the students during the incident, according to police who arrived on the scene.
The three students, one of whom is white, pleaded guilty in August to attempted theft and aggravated trespassing.
As part of the deal, the trio had to read statements stating explicitly that their arrests were not racially motivated.
However, a flier disseminated at the Nov. 2016 multi-day protest, which was attended by college deans—including Raimondo—staff, faculty, and hundreds of students, pressed customers to cease patronizing the “racist establishment with a long account of racial profiling and discrimination,” according to the suit.
An Oberlin Police Department investigation into the racism charges found that only six of the 40 shoplifters arrested at Gibson’s in the last 5 years were African American, according to the report.
The Gibson complaint alleges that the college supported its students in their show of racial outrage in an attempt to push a narrative of Oberlin having a “legacy of being a strong advocate for and a strong supporter of African American students and racial minorities.”
JD
>2. The judges are almost always supposed to rely on the arguments presented by lawyers who, most often, have no special scientific expertise;
In Brady’s appeal to Goodell, his lawyer came very close to pointing out a flaw in the science and showing how Belichick had the right explanation in his press conference, then got confused and dropped the whole line of questioning. I saw it, pointed it out at ClimateAudit, but no one(including me) caught the true significance until many months later.
Ok… you guys made me do it. I read Brandon’s post.
I’m now wondering if the notion that something is a “modeling error” might not be considered an opinion, or, if not that a “judgement” of some sort. If seen as such– and it seems to me it might be– Jacobson should lose his suit because he is trying to sue for an opinion. They give reasons to support their opinion.
Jacobson will have a hard time explaining how the “reasons” are the lie. At most, he can claim that the authors interpretation of the number of his table was tortured and that he finds it impossible to believe that trained scientists would interpret it they way they did and would not accept his explanation. But… I don’t think his finding something impossible to believe will make people think this rises to “defamation”.
So legal eagles: Is the claim something is a “modeling error” an opinion? Or a question of fact?
I should add: It’s not the fact that it’s Brandon’s post that was a pain. It’s the fact that I’m avoiding reading too much about this suit. I figure it’s something that’s just going to have to be sorted out in the courts. I have no issue with the principle that Jacobson can sue. I think at least in principle, it’s just fine to sue a peer reviewed journal or a peer reviewed author. I’m just loathe to dive into reading about this case and don’t feel I need to form any opinion about whether they did or did not defame him.
On the other hand: I am now wondering if Jacobson’s suit will fail to a large extent because he is suing over what amounts to people expressing opinions.
lucia,
I can understand why you would not want to dig too deeply into what is (at best ) a crazy lawsuit.
.
I did take the time to read both Clack et al and the Jacobson et al rebuttal…. the Jacobson et al rebuttal doesn’t address the most substantive issues raised by Clack et al. Example: Clack et al point out that even after installing many new hydroelectric turbines at existing dams (to increase peak hydroelectric power production… for when solar/wind are not sufficient), and after installing many new high voltage distribution lines to carry the extra peak hydroelectric power, the annual total hyrdoelectric power Jacobson et al project is ~30% higher than the highest ever annual hydroelectric production, and almost 100% greater than the lowest annual production over the last ~25 years. Clack et al point out that hyroelectric power has zero marginal cost, and total production is limited only by available water. So you must conclude that Jacobson et al are either in gross error on this point, or they have some reason to believe precipitation in hydroelectric basins is going to increase to consistently far above the historical record amount. My judgement: Wacko!
.
There are many other factual errors in Jacobson et al (like unrealistic discount rates, dismissal of nuclear power as completely unacceptable, highly dubious and grossly inflated costs for “health and environmental costs” for fossil fuels, etc.), many of which are unaddressed by Jacobson’s rebuttal to Clack et al. Really, the Jacobson et al paper seems to me nothing more than a wild-eyed green political document, and pretty much unrelated to science… or even to rational analysis. How it ever got published in the first place is the real puzzle. Climate ‘science’ is clearly mainly green politics.
SteveF, Tobis says that the original Jacobson article was NOT peer reviewed and that the journal does take a limited of papers that are not peer reviewed. Clack et al was peer reviewed though. I conclude that Jacobson would have had trouble getting his paper past peer review.
SteveF wrote: “Clack et al point out that hyroelectric power has zero marginal cost, and total production is limited only by available water.”
.
Is there some reason why the same amount of water cannot be used several times so long as there is enough potential energy ie multiple dams on the same basin?
>Is there some reason why the same amount of water cannot be used several times so long as there is enough potential energy ie multiple dams on the same basin?
Yes. Because the water is at a high elevation before it is used and a low elevation afterwards. The mass at different elevations is what create the difference in potential energy which is tend converted to electrical energy.
To “reuse” the water you’d have to pump it back up, which would consume an amount of energy that is at least as large as was generated in the first place.
The only way to increase the current maximum amount if for climate processes to cause more water to fall at the high elevations. This results in more “m” in “mgh”. If there was more “m”, it would be possible to capture more “mgh” as the water moves down “h”.
DaveJR,
Oh. I see you are thinking dams in series. Yes: the water can go through dams in series. But that already happens. You can get a maximum “h” from where the water falls to sea level.
There are practical considerations why you usuall can’t put in dams to snag all the “h” though.
DaveJR,
“Is there some reason why the same amount of water cannot be used several times so long as there is enough potential energy ie multiple dams on the same basin?”
.
Of course, and this is in fact normal practice (eg Colorado River is dammed to generate hydroelectric power both above and below the Grand Canyon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dams_in_the_Colorado_River_system). You could dam the Colorado just below the Grand Canyon, and convert much of the Grand Canyon into a lake, to generate a lot of new hydroelectic power, but I am guessing that would meet with some resistance.
.
The issue is that the obvious places where hydroelectric power can be produced have already happened. Increasing total hydroelectric power means constructing new dams… in “environmentally sensitive” places, many of which may have marginal hydroelectric capacity to boot.
David Young,
Well, that explains how such rubbish found it’s way into a “peer reviewed” journal.
.
Maybe this ridiculous lawsuit, and its potential legal cost, will convince PNAS to require all papers be reviewed prior to publication.
Lucia: “I am now wondering if Jacobson’s suit will fail to a large extent because he is suing over what amounts to people expressing opinions.”
Personally, I doubt it because what is a fact and what is an opinion is a matter of degree. It seems like some of the allegations of error/lying could fit into verifiable facts.
…..
Where I think that people are getting somewhat off track, is focusing on alleged lies/errors claimed by Jacobson. It appears to me that if the basic premise of his paper is junk (that renewables are feasible at a comparatively easy economic cost), then it doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) matter that some of the subsidiary criticisms are lies/errors. I can think of a lot of legal subtleties that could affect my point, and I haven’t researched them, but this appears to be the fundamental issue to me.
*******
The Mann Court’s description of the fact/opinion issue in defamation appears to be a good starting point. Here it is:
“However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas.”
Gertz, 418 U.S. at 339-40. Therefore, under the First Amendment a statement is not actionable “if it is plain that a speaker is expressing a subjective view, an interpretation, a theory, conjecture, or surmise, rather than claiming to be in
possession of objectively verifiable facts.” Guilford Transp. Indus., 760 A.2d at 597 (quoting Haynes v. Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 8 F.3d 1222, 1227 (7th Cir. 1993)).
Although ideas and opinions are constitutionally protected, the First Amendment does not, however, “create a wholesale defamation exemption for anything that might be labeled ‘opinion.'” Milkovich, 497 U.S. at 18. http://climatecasechart.com/case/mann-v-competitive-enterprise-institute/
JD
“>Is there some reason why the same amount of water cannot be used several times so long as there is enough potential energy ie multiple dams on the same basin?
Yes. Because the water is at a high elevation before it is used and a low elevation afterwards. The mass at different elevations is what create the difference in potential energy which is tend converted to electrical energy.To “reuse†the water you’d have to pump it back up, which would consume an amount of energy that is at least as large as was generated in the first place.”
–
Actually this method is used in Australia and around the world using excess or spare or unwanted energy.
The water is repumped up again at night or in non use periods and helps even the load out and keep the frequencies up.
It is like a rechargeable battery in this sense and is one of the ways to store wind and solar for no winds and nights.
As an aside I saw a scheme mentioned of pushing heavy railway loads up hill with unused and wasted power and then letting the trains run downhill to generate electricity. Water seems much easier to do en mass.
As Lucia said it consumes more energy than it produces but it is an effiient storage and reuse system.
The problem with Jacobson is that he does do this at night, every night, in his paper because Hydro is the only one of the 3 WWS sources that is readily available all the time.
Because of the largeness of the States and the smallness of the legally unextendable, environmentally safe dam system his submission actually uses 5 times or more as much power as the dams actually can output in a year [12 hours approx each night].
Hence the complaint of a severe modelling problem.
Now some water can be pumped back up but it needs a massive spend.
–
Secondly the dams, despite claims that they can up their maximum power output 5 plus times,cannot do this with the engines they have in place. You just cannot spin engines designed with a certain load and frequency 5 times faster.
A massive replacement of all hydro engines would be needed as well.
angech,
Yes, but you can’t create more energy by repumping. The only thing you can do is store– which is as if it was not used. So it’s not a way to make “more” energy with the same water.
JD Ohio
I think some things called “modeling error” are verifiable facts and others are not. I’m not going to delve enough into this one to decide which I think it is! (And if I’m not going to, I suspect a jury won’t want to!)
I suspect you are right about people (including me) getting off track. But yes, it does seem to me that if the initial paper is junk, it’s unlikely that some internal claim would be what makes the author lose reputation. Unless he suffers loss of reputation, then no defamation… right?
Lucia: “Unless he suffers loss of reputation, then no defamation… right?”
I would certainly hope so, but haven’t researched it. The problem is the concept of libel per se where several forms of defamation assume that there are damages in several categories of libel — for instance defamation pertaining to your business or job. I can think of a number of ways in which this could turn out to be a complex problem, but I haven’t done the research and have no idea what the answer would be.
Also, since Jacobson appears to be fairly well-known in his field, he is probably a limited public figure and may have to prove malice.
JD
Here is a link to one article dealing with defamation per se and damages. Apparently, how states handle this is highly variable. http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/businesstorts/articles/spring2014-0513-defamation-prepare-plead-prove-actual-damages.html
JD
Can’t help myself. Hopefully, this is my last post tonight. The writer states: “The District no longer allows presumed damages for defamation per se directed at public figures, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974). See El-Hadad v. United Arab Emirates, 496 F.3d 658 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (affirming unpublished lower court decision implying that presumed damages are no longer available for public figures). The court in El-Hadad noted that D.C. law provides for presumed damages for defamation per se directed at private figures.” http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/district-columbia-defamation-law
….
This summary is iffy because it refers to an implication that presumed damages are not given to public figures — not a clear holding.
JD
Lucia,
“…it does seem to me that if the initial paper is junk, it’s unlikely that some internal claim would be what makes the author lose reputation.”
.
Jacobson et al was junk science, and not subjected to review. Unlike the Clack et al comment on Jacobson et al in PNAS, which was subjected to 6+ months of review prior to publication. I can only imagine the level of review it was subjected to with the Jacobson threat of lawsuit already received by PNAS. Perhaps O’Donnell et al (refuting Steig et al’s wacko Antarctic warming paper) received closer review, but I suspect most papers do not face such close scrutiny.
Jacobson makes many claims against Clack, but the primary one is that Clack wrote Jacobson produces 1300GW in his model while the paper lists 87 GW as a max and called it a modeling error. Jacobson had already explained to Clack the reason for this discrepancy in e-mail, and not a modeling error but an assumption not clarified in the paper. It’s possible Clack found the explanation so ridiculous he thought Jacobson was covering for his error.
SteveF (Comment #165768) “Jacobson et al was junk science, and not subjected to review.”
What is your basis for claiming the Jacobson paper was not subject to review? It says on the published paper “received for review May 26, 2015” and “approved November 2, 2015”. PNAS used to allow for “pre-selected editors”, which often turned peer review into pal review, but they ended that practice in 2014. http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/10/pnas-narrows-pathway-to-publication.html
Peer review is spectacularly uneven with respect to quality of reviewing. In practice, depending on luck of the draw in editors and reviewers, it can range from pal review to sneer review. I experienced the full range in my publish-or-perish days.
Mike M,
I was basing it on:
David Young (Comment #165754)
(Referencing Michael Tobis).
Could be Tobis is mistaken. In a quick search I saw several papers by Jacobson in different publications from about the same time; based on the abstracts, all these papers appear to be very similar to the PNAS paper; “we can de-carbonize the entire US economy, quickly and at low cost”. Perhaps Tobis was referring to one of these similar papers.
Well California, go ahead and prove it. Decarbonize your entire economy at low cost. Make my day.
.
Let’s assume Jacobson is right, what is stopping this miracle? The evil fossil fuel companies? Trumpsters? The unenlightened? Surely California can bypass all these obstacles and just make it happen. It’s clean energy. It’s low cost. It will prove to the world it can be done. Go ahead. DO IT.
.
I don’t wish them failure, I wish them success. Low cost clean energy would be fine with me. Of course it is the “low cost” where all the arm waving and magical thinking happens. The capital investment required to make this happen is ginormous. The “savings” are naturally produced through second and third order effects which are mostly theoretical. Less asthma! Longer lives! How can you put a price on that? Computers and algorithms!
.
RPJ ran a bunch of actual numbers in The Climate Fix: A nuclear power plant-worth of carbon-free energy per day, every day until 2050 (Global). And of course nuclear is usually not allowed in these fantasies.
.
The real problem with clean emissions isn’t converting today’s plants, it’s the increasing new emissions from China, India, and Africa over the next century. If you can’t convince people to build new plants with clean emissions the case for replacing existing working infrastructure with the same makes much less sense.
.
The technology isn’t there yet, and it can’t be wished into existence. It’s almost impossible to read this stuff anymore as it has devolved into moralizing and virtue signaling. How many solar panels could be bought with what is spent on lawyers relating to the environment?
SteveF (Comment #165771): “Could be Tobis is mistaken.”
OK, the original source seems to be https://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2017/11/mark-jacobson-abandons-science-takes-up.html
“It got into PNAS without peer review. (That journal has a publication mechanism that allows some non-peer-reviewed articles.)”
He gives no source for his claim.
From what I can find, that is not, and has not recently been, the policy of PNAS. I think that decades ago, National Academy members could publish in PNAS without review. If memory serves, in those days PNAS was not such a prestigious journal as it is now.
lucia (Comment #165762)
Yes, but you can’t create more energy by repumping. The only thing you can do is store– which is as if it was not used. So it’s not a way to make “more†energy with the same water.
Um.
You store and use and restore and use
There is energy that would be wasted, discharged into the ground, unless it was used to push the water back up
Enough solar panels and you could use the same water every night.
It is using otherwise wasted energy.
The only thing is that this might improve the Hydro power capacity somewhat though they still have to run every night and daytime would be filling up again so no energy then, Actual increase not guaranteed if they would have had the capacity to run that way without pumping.
So you may be right it is more as a battery than a new source of extra power. Helpful if dams are running low I guess.
angech,
I’m not sure what you are saying. But once you use the energy to do something like run a vaccuum cleaner, clean a home etc. you then can’t resuse that energy to pump water back up and store that, then make more energy.
You can
* have the water at “h”, then run it through the dam turning it into electric potential energy.
* Now that it is eletric potential energy you can use it for *something*.
(1) The use could be pumping the water back up to “h”, in which case, you can store the water. For all practical purposes you now have “un-generated” the electric energy. So: you subtract that from what has been generated, and you are back to generating either 0 joules or negative joules (because it takes more energy to pump back than you created in the first place.
(2) Or the use could be providing it to a residential or business customer to do something like heat their home, recharge their tesla or what have you.
(3) Or you could waste the electric potential energy to heat somehow because it’s not needed when you generated it.
What you can’t do is make *more* than ‘mgh’ of energy from a mass ‘m’ of water that the weather-climate cycles put at elevation “h”. (Generally speaking, if you (3) is going to occur, it’s best to just not pass the water through the dam in the first place and instead just leave it at ‘h’. There can be reasons why it might be a good idea to generate it and use it to pump it to some elevation, but if the option of leaving it behind the dam exists, just continuuing to store it is generally a better solution than generating it, and ‘ungenerating’ by pumping it back behind the dam where it would be stored.)
angech,
While we were in Oz a couple of months ago, a professor at ANU announced that his studies had revealed the existence of 22,000 potential pumped storage sites in Australia if Tasmania was included. 22,000 seems a big number.
.
Did you see any kick-back on this?
Tom Scharf,
Jacobsen notwithstanding, Scotland has made real moves toward fossil fuel independence based almost entirely on offshore wind and an entirely new floating wind farm 15 miles out to sea where the wind blows more steadily (http://www.thenational.scot/news/15579776.Scotland_just_hit_another_brilliant_renewables_milestone/), generating 2X the national electric needs in a single windy day and 63% in the month of September. As that number climbs to over 100% annually, the excess electric power will drive electric cars and heat homes. Expensive, yes, at the present time, but a longer term investment in the future. One example of a country using political will, and their unique natural resources to quickly become fossil fuel free.
Owen,
If it works, then do it. It’s likely with Scotland that peak capacity and average capacity have large gaps and they still need to pay twice for baseload backup so it has many of the same nagging problems. But there is no reason to not use something that works. The US has lots of wind capacity, unfortunately it is in some of the least populated regions. You can’t just jump from nothing to cost effective immediately so some of these not cost effective experiments are worth it just for technology development. I’d just rather have California pay for it instead of me, ha ha. People who oversell the reality of clean energy can do more harm to their cause then good. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Tom and Owen,
A technology that kills raptors and bats is not clean. There’s also the unknown factor of infrasonic noise pollution. That’s likely only a problem for whales for an offshore wind farm.
DeWitt,
I get the point, but we aren’t going to provide the world its needed energy without some drawbacks and risk. I would like to see how an alternate reality where fracking wells had to apply for eagle kill permits would work out, ha ha. I’m guessing they wouldn’t get much sympathy, nor permits. The original sin of killing nuclear power still wreaks mightily.
Owen (Comment #165777): “Scotland has made real moves toward fossil fuel independence based almost entirely on offshore wind … One example of a country using political will, and their unique natural resources to quickly become fossil fuel free.”
Propaganda. Scotland will be importing fossil fuel power when there is not enough wind, so they will not be fossil fuel free.
j ferguson (Comment #165776)
” a professor at ANU announced the existence of 22,000 potential pumped storage sites in Australia if Tasmania was included.”
–
Australia is different, vast flat, dry, hot areas that make it hard to sustain comfortable human habitation or farm due to lack of water.
The coasts, where 90% of the population congregate have inland mountain ranges and you need height for pumped storage. OK on the East Coast when rainfall is sufficient. A new scheme by the Prime Minister is directed at one large hydro storage backup to reduce some of the East Coast fossil fuel dependence. We only have 23 million people. All I can say is 22,000 potential pumped storage sites is not the same as even 50 usable pumped sites.
I am actually quite in favour of storage and water redirection schemes for Australia, both for power and badly needed inland irrigation.
Did you see any kick-back on this? Yes. See Franklin Dam, Tasmania.
“angech, I’m not sure what you are saying.”
Join the club.
–
” once you use the energy to do something like run a vacuum cleaner, clean a home etc. you then can’t reuse that energy to pump water back up and store that, then make more energy.”
–
True.
The water though is lying spent of energy in the lake below.
There is a large amount of free renewable excess wind and solar energy. see Owen “generating 2X the national electric needs in a single windy day”.
The trouble with renewable is you have to throw it away after paying for it because the grid already has enough reliable non renewable energy built in to ensure it functions correctly. By harvesting this excess energy and storing it you can reduce the amount of fossil fuel generation actually needed to function correctly.
The problem with Jacobsen and hydro is this. In a W/W/S scenario the night time and non wind blowing time power generation has to be made up from the existing hydro sources.
He has factored them in to run for up to 12 hours at night. They can only produce so much power running at full stretch, that they cannot supply the whole grid. If they did we would not need any other sources, would we.
“needing 1,300 GW of peak power from 150 GW of capacity, there also needs to be an extra 120 TWh of hydroelectric generation on top of the 280 TWh available.”
It is impossible for the current hydro system to run 10 times faster and produce current at the right amplitude and frequency. The water intakes, the size of the motors are fixed at an upper limit.
The hydropower numbers in Jacobson do seem to have something wrong with them. As pointed out above, he assumes 400 TWh per year, which is too high. He appears to assume a doubling of peak capacity at hydro plants to 175 GW (Table S2), although he notes that does not increase the total power than can be generated. He also seems to have 58 GW of peak supply from pump storage (Table S1). So that gives peak production of 233 GW. Yet Figure 4B shows periods with over 1000 GW from hydro (in the fascinating units of TWh/hr).
He also has extended periods of time with zero hydro production (Figures 4, S4, S5). He says in the text “Hydropower is used only sporadically and only when other storage is depleted”. Just shut the rivers down completely and occasionally ramp up rapidly to flood stage (or beyond?). That’s environmentally responsible.
There is no doubling of hydro. The two values in S2 just show no new hydro construction.
The 58 GW pumped hydro storage actually is not included either. So he is turning 87.5 GW into 1350 GW.
The 280 TWh turning into 400 TWh, he explains as including Canadian hydro supply of 9 GW.
Take that away, as well as transmission losses, and the number is close to a peak that was achieved decades ago, around 350 TWh.
Here’s something else to keep you up at night:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/12/us/nsa-shadow-brokers.html
It looks like up until recently, our very own NSA was the world’s leading hacking organization. Complaining about Russian hacking, and exactly how much was actually Russian is still an open question, looks rather hypocritical.
MikeN (Comment #165786): “There is no doubling of hydro. The two values in S2 just show no new hydro construction.”
You are correct. I misread Table S2.
“The 58 GW pumped hydro storage actually is not included either. So he is turning 87.5 GW into 1350 GW.”
Again, it looks like I read it wrong. I was trying to figure out if there was any way to stretch what was in the tables to be consistent with what was in the figures (there isn’t) and then forgot that is what I had done.
What is the efficiency loss for pumping water up a hill and then using it again? I imagine this isn’t much better than 50%. You also have to account for the capital, maintenance, and power to drive the pumps. There may also be times during droughts and floods where you can’t pump even if you wanted to. It looks good on paper, just not sure of the reality. Has anyone done this?
Tom,
I don’t know the size of the loss. Qualitatively, it would depend on
* the loss involved in generation in the first place,
* the efficiency of the pumps you use to pump it up
* losses during transport in the piping system.
I guess I could look up loss involved in converting (mgh) to electric power through the first pass. But suppose you get 90% of that converted to energy in a first pass. Then you’d get at best 81% of mgh after creating it, pumping back up and doing a 2nd pass — that would assume no losses in pumping it back up.
I think most dams are designed to allow a fraction of the “m” of water to be diverted (to do things like spill fish and shut them away from turbines), so I’m guessing that you don’t get more than 90% of the mgh converted to electric energy. (I guess I could look up?)
Obviously, all other bad things people don’t like (like killing fish if they go through the turbine and pumps) increase with re-use. But that’s a slightly separate thing.
OH– I’m assuming you pump to the same reservoir with my 81% = 90%2. That would mean you remix in aquatic life. I suppose if you pump to a water tank that is kept free of fish the losses on the 2nd pass might be lower since you don’t have to spill to keep from killing fish. (But you have to build the fish-free enclosure.)
OK, I went through the extreme effort of typing it into Google:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
.
The round-trip energy efficiency of PSH varies between 70%–80%, with some sources claiming up to 87%.
Lucia, how do they avoid killing fish right now?
Mike N,
Mostly they just kill them in the turbines: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/22/6/062010/pdf
MikeN,
I think the main way to not kill them in the turbines is to have some sort of screen upstream and divert the to a stream that doesn’t go through the turbines. The stream in that water doesn’t generate electricity.
https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk1/1995/9519/951906.PDF
“A range of mitigation methods for down-
stream passage and for prevention of turbine
entrainment exist, and some have been applied
with more success than others. The so-called
“standard†or “conventional†technologies are
mainly structures meant to physically exclude or
“guide†fish to a sluiceway or bypass around the
project and away from turbine intakes by means
of manipulating hydraulic conditions. Other
“alternative†technologies attempt to “guideâ€
fish by either attracting or repelling them by
means of applying a stimulus (i.e., light, sound,
electric current). Many theories have been
applied to the design of downstream passage sys-
tems and further experimentation is underway in
some cases (see box 4-1).”
Obviously, guiding fish to a sluice or bypass means some of the water goes through the sluice or the bypass. That water doesn’t generate electricity.
Tom–
Also, it reads like the link you give discusses water often being pumped to a man-made reservoir. So the fish issue might not matter there. If they don’t pump fish up then they may not need to worry about fish on the way down.
That said: They need a place to create the man made reservoir.
Jacobson is not suggesting a pumping system at the dams to bring the water back.
He is suggesting turbines to boost the output on demand.
Can someone explain to me how this works?
MikeN: “He is suggesting turbines to boost the output on demand.
Can someone explain to me how this works?”
From Jacobson’s rebuttal Letter: “turbines were assumed added to existing reservoirs to increase their peak instantaneous discharge rate without increasing their annual energy consumption”.
A great fishing lake around where I live is the upper man made Forebay reservoir of a pump and dump system.
.
https://www.energystorageexchange.org/projects/214
Mike N,
The current sluices are not sized for additional turbines, so new or enlarged sluices would be needed, in addition to more turbines and greater transmission capacity (more transmission lines or higher capacity lines). But the big issue is that the total annual hydroelectric production Jacobson projected (that is, total GW-hours produced in a year) lies well above the record total annual production at all existing hydroelectric dams combined, and that production is set by the total water volume available. So for Jacobson’s scheme to actually work, precipitation in the catchment areas above all the dams would have to increase far above historical records. IOW, Jacobson is just wrong about this.
SteveF: “total annual hydroelectric production Jacobson projected (that is, total GW-hours produced in a year) lies well above the record total annual production at all existing hydroelectric dams combined, and that production is set by the total water volume available.”
But Jacobson’s scheme seems to involve using hydro for energy storage, so the production limit would seem to be set by both rainfall (water volume available) *and* excess energy produced by solar/wind. Did Jacobson break down the hydroelectric energy by stored/recovered/”native” (where this last, poorly-named, category is due to natural water flow)?
[Edit: I recall reading that Jacobson concedes that there would be required capital investment associated with the enlarged power capacity. But that it would be “small”. I’ll see if I can find a reference.
Further edit: found it. In his rebuttal Letter, Jacobson wrote: “Jacobson et al. (2) only neglect the cost of additional turbines, generators, and transformers needed to increase the maximum discharge rate. Such estimated cost for a 1000-MW plant (23) plus wider penstocks is ∼$385 (325–450)/kW, or ∼14% of hydropower capital cost. When multiplied by the additional turbines and hydropower’s fraction of total energy, the additional infrastructure costs ∼3% of the entire wind, water, and solar power system and thus doesn’t impact Jacobson et al.’s (2) conclusions.”]
The Atlantic: Democrats Are Shockingly Unprepared to Fight Climate Change
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/there-is-no-democratic-plan-to-fight-climate-change/543981/
.
When looking under the covers, it seems climate is 95% posturing with no real plan to do anything. Most proposed plans are punish the carbon sinners with taxation and distribute the proceeds to favored constituents. What can possibly go wrong with an enormous green slush fund?
.
All we need to do is allow the government to tax the hell out of us now and we will earn way more than that investment back later! Sign me up. Studies have been done that prove this, and if you don’t agree then there is also funding for re-education camps in the form of the civil justice system.
Pielke Jr. has an opinion piece in today’s WSJ titled: “A Litigious Climate Threatens Scientific Norms” where he goes after Jacobson and Mann for litigating issues that should be non-personalized ones handled through the normal imperfect and slow system of scientific discourse.
I think it is important to watch how our judicial system handles these climate issues and be very sensitive to ruling judges that might want to make precedents based on climate science and policy being some unique and special issue that requires an entirely new approach for adjudication.
MikeN (Comment #165798): “He is suggesting turbines to boost the output on demand. Can someone explain to me how this works?”
.
Partially answered by other comments above, but I think I can add some detail with respect to those comments.
.
A large hydro dam might hold a year or more of river flow in its reservoir. That is implicitly stored energy, in somewhat the same way that fossil fuels are stored energy. Jacobson refers to it as storage, which is confusing; especially since he also has pumped storage in his system. As MikeN pointed out previously, he treats the pumped storage independent of hydro.
.
The operator of a dam with a large reservoir has considerable flexibility in the rate at which water is released and electricity is produced. To take advantage of that, it is common to size the turbines such that maximum power is quite a bit higher than the average power set by river flow and dam head. I think that some dams have been upgraded to produce higher max power so as to better enable the grid to adjust to variations in demand. So to some extent it is possible to add turbines to produce extra output on demand.
.
Jacobson provides no details about that in his paper. I interpreted one of his supplementary tables as indicating a doubling of peak output, but as MikeN pointed out, I was in error.
.
As HaroldW says, Jacobson now seems to be saying that adding turbines is cheap and therefore he can add as many as he likes, with no constraint. That is entirely consistent with his graphs showing hydro output. That is also entirely bonkers.
.
Most of the time, Jacobson has no hydro power being produced. That means one of two things. One is releasing water without producing electricity which would reduce annual hydro power production. That is inconsistent with the total annual production he gives, which already would require significantly more dams. The other is totally dry river beds below the dams most of the time. That is not a viable possibility. At other times, Jacobson has hydro power production more than 15 times present max production and something like 35 times average production. That means releasing 35 times the average river flow. Bonkers.
.
Jacobson is an irresponsible crackpot.
.
Uh-oh. Am I going to get sued?
Forum shopping on these highly emotional / political issues almost always results in the initial rulings favoring the one suing. I’m guessing that lawsuit wasn’t filed in WV or KY.
.
The environmentalists have become a shadow of their former selves with an over-dependence on the legal system to accomplish objectives. They are very good at this, but they lose respect that picking up garbage at the local stream earned them decades ago. If you want someone to protect nature, make them love nature first and foremost.
.
Try watching a nature documentary now compared to 30 years ago. They used to show nature, now they show lecturing humans. It’s not look at these beautiful birds, it’s these birds are threatened by evil humans and somebody needs to be punished.
Wait, so these turbines are just the same as how a dam normally operates, and he wants to add more or larger openings? I was thinking he was adding something to force more water through the existing structure. If it is the former, is there any justification for saying this is not an increase in nameplate capacity?
Tom Scharf (Comment #165808)
I would have to respectfully disagree with your comment in that the legal system (as it operates today) is probably the easiest path to their ends.
The lecturing in nature related TV programs has been the norm for many decades now. When it started it may have been less direct but it was there.
I am very sensitive to TV and motion picture shows that lecture and have a political agenda.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #165787)
I did not think it was a major secret that the US government has (or did have maybe) the most advanced hacking capabilities in the entire world and no doubt uses those capablities – since their use need not be disclosed.
I am a bit surprised that the MSM invariably refers to Russian and foreign hacking as if it is something only an evil enemy would employ and never mentioning what the US might do.
MikeN (Comment #165809): “Wait, so these turbines are just the same as how a dam normally operates, and he wants to add more or larger openings? I was thinking he was adding something to force more water through the existing structure. If it is the former, is there any justification for saying this is not an increase in nameplate capacity?”
Either method would be an increase in nameplate capacity. The resulting costs should have been in the supplementary tables.
.
HaroldW (Comment #165804) quoting Jacobson:”Such estimated cost for a 1000-MW plant (23) plus wider penstocks is ∼$385 (325–450)/kW, or ∼14% of hydropower capital cost. When multiplied by the additional turbines and hydropower’s fraction of total energy, the additional infrastructure costs ∼3% of the entire wind, water, and solar power system”
If true, that would be something over a half trillion for the capacity implied by Jacobson’s figures. So $15-20 trillion for the whole system. It looks like he gives the total cost in Table 1 as $14.6 trillion. In an article titled “Low-cost solution …”. Indeed.
A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.
Mike M,
“Jacobson is an irresponsible crackpot.
.
Uh-oh. Am I going to get sued?”
.
I believe that in the States at least, the truth is an absolute defense against claims of libel and defamation. So “…..know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” (John 8:32)
Mike M,
What I want to do is walk the near empty river bed in the Grand Canyon when Jokebson has the flow stopped for several days at a time… at least you could pick up a lot of trout for dinner. And think of the excitement of white-water rafting at multiple times the normal river flow when the gates are open. Yup, it is a super idea…. sorry that’s a typo… it is a stupid idea.
The best recent example of a lecture free documentary was the BBC’s Planet Earth II. Naturally this caused criticism. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from its success.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/01/bbc-planet-earth-not-help-natural-world
.
If you want to learn about nature, the last place to look is in a media environment section. Here is the NYT’s Climate and Environment section, they don’t even have a nature section unless you count nature conservation. Doom and gloom with a side helping of doom and gloom.
https://www.nytimes.com/section/climate
.
Climate change has sucked all the oxygen and joy from environmentalism and nature coverage.
$14.6T is $44K per person in the US. Since only about 100M actually pay federal taxes, that would be $146,000 per taxpayer, or about $4,500 extra per year through 2050.
.
I don’t imagine there will be public referendum based on that number anytime soon. If you care about global warming you would be better off spending that money in China.
What I want to know is where the water comes from that is supposed to be pumped back into dam reservoirs using excess solar and wind electricity when the dam isn’t generating. Perhaps Jacobson believes that rivers can be made to flow uphill when needed.
Kenneth,
I read the Pielke, Jr. op-ed today. It’s good as far as it goes on the legal issues with Mann and Jacobson’s suits, but I object to his comment that Mann’s critics were wrong. Were they wrong in saying that treemometers use cherry-picked data? No. Were they wrong when they said the original algorithm in MBH would produce a hockey stick graph from random noise? No. So what were they wrong about? Inquiring minds want to know.
DeWitt, Jacobson makes no mention of using excess solar and wind at dams, though presumably for pumped hydro. Someone on this thread brought that up as a possibility.
Jacobson’s means of increasing production for short periods is with turbines at dams and keeping more water at other times.
MikeN,
That sounds like the exact opposite of flood control. Electricity generation is the third listed reason for the existence of the TVA. Navigation and flood control are the first two. I guess he means to shut down agriculture in the California central valley too, because it relies on irrigation with Colorado River water.
Pumped storage is indeed listed in the SI, but it’s only about 5% of total storage. For most storage, he relies on Phase Change Materials heated by Concentrated Solar Power, PCM-CSP. He assumes 99% efficiency for heat storage, but ~16% overall efficiency on conversion of solar energy to electricity.
In a word, bogus.
MikeN: “Jacobson makes no mention of using excess solar and wind at dams, though presumably for pumped hydro. Someone on this thread brought that up as a possibility.”
Mea culpa. I put two and two together and got 7. Should have looked more closely at the SI. Thanks, MikeN & DeWitt.
DeWitt,
“In a word, bogus.”
.
Thank you for braving the legalities of stating the obvious. That Jokebson can’t appreciate the many silly assumptions his paper includes is a terrible condemnation of his (limited) intellect. That said, better to leave him to his overwhelming stupidity.
DeWitt,
” Were they wrong when they said the original algorithm in MBH would produce a hockey stick graph from random noise? ”
.
A nitpick: The noise has to have some autocorrelation (ie some pink noise characteristic) for the MBH algorithm to pull a hockey stick from a bowl of spaghetti. I think “Mike’s Nature trick” of hiding a fundamental flaw in the whole theory of treemometers (growth always correlates with temperature…. except when it doesn’t) is a far more damning issue.
SteveF,
Of course tree ring data is highly autocorrelated. There may even be some long term persistence.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #165825): “Of course tree ring data is highly autocorrelated. There may even be some long term persistence.”
I think that all proxy temperature measurements are highly autocorrelated. The obvious explanation is that temperature is highly autocorrelated on time scales up to 100 kyr. Whereas climate models give random noise on time scales longer than a few decades.
Mike M.,
Except temperature is not the only growth factor for trees, nor is it the most significant growth factor. Worse, it’s known to be non-linear, with growth slowing at both ends of the range. Mann’s algorithm requires a monotonic relationship between temperature and growth.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #165818)
November 16th, 2017 at 3:38 pm
I agree with you that perhaps Pielke Jr. was trying too hard to make the point that whether a writer of climate science or comments about the science is right or wrong it is not a litigious issue.
Mann got a lot of the science and statistics wrong in several of his papers. That he personalizes those who criticize his work and litigates make his work just that much more suspect that his advocacy is getting in the way of his science. That he appears to do all this with little critical comment or rejoinder from the climate science community reflects poorly more on the community than Mann.
That climate science mostly ignores issues like divergence of proxy responses, attempting to find and use a prior criteria for choosing temperature proxies and looking for long term persistence in long time span proxies also does not speak well for climate science.
My point is that I tend not to personalize with Mann but rather look at and judge what climate science does in general and more importantly what it does not do.
At Muddy Run Reservoir along the Susquehanna in Pennsylvania, excess grid capacity is used to pump water from below the dam (actually between two dams) into a reservoir high above the Susquehanna. In operation since 1968. Nameplate capacity 1072 MW. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muddy_Run_Pumped_Storage_Facility
DeWitt Payne (Comment #165827): “Except temperature is not the only growth factor for trees, nor is it the most significant growth factor. Worse, it’s known to be non-linear, with growth slowing at both ends of the range. Mann’s algorithm requires a monotonic relationship between temperature and growth.”
All true. Tree rings are a questionable temperature gauge, as indicated by the fact that the recent temperature rise does not show up much in tree ring data. If autocorrelation was specific to tree ring data, it would indicate another problem with that data. But other proxies also show autocorrelation.
I received a spam letter, addressed as being from me, to a number of climate people that I have e-mailed, along with two names I do not recognize that are not in my address book, Chris Benner and Jeremy Lott.
Should I assume that my e-mail was hacked, or is it likely another source?
Recipients of e-mail:
To
Chris Benner
Darrell Kaufman
jrbouldin (last comment reminded me of him and then this spam)
brandon shollenberger
Robert Wilson
steyn
Jeremy Lott
Mike Novick
JonahNRO
Steve McIntyre
MikeN, I’d be inclined to think it was someone else if you’ve never emailed two of those people before and you drew the short straw. The mail headers will tell you where it was sent from though if you have the full raw message.
.
Additionally, unless you only send email to climate people, that would lead me to believe it came from a climate person.
MikeN,
It sounds like the originator has malware that’s sending spam to random addressees in their address book. The full header has the information about the originating computer. Some web systems like Yahoo mail strip the header data off and the end user never sees it.
Earle,
That’s not entirely true. The full raw email file, including header, can be accessed from the ‘more’ drop down menu. The other thing that Yahoo Mail does is if you move the cursor over the supposed originator, the actual email address of the sender is revealed. I get a lot of emails, usually in the spam folder, purportedly from Yahoo claiming my account is going to be terminated. The true address is usually from a .edu domain. I don’t know if the kiddies are just bored or their email has been hacked. I’ve been tempted to forward these notes to their webmaster, but so far I’ve managed to resist.
The message is sourced to an e-mail proxy server in Brazil and a Nazaro Associates as the sending address. I think it is not mine that was compromised because Rob Wilson’s e-mail address is in my list but not his name as appears in the mail. However, I think the JonahNRO is an old e-mail address that other recipients are not likely to have.
MikeN,
That looks a bit more sophisticated than the phishing spam I usually get. Perhaps it’s a result of the Equifax hack.
JonahNRO as in the National Review? Unless this was a private address, I doubt it would be exclusive to you. Bear in mind, it’s extremely unlikely you have the full contents of the address book, just a small snippet, and none of the people in that list are probably the origin.
Yes, the same Jonah. The address is old(@aol.com) and not what he currently lists. Not even sure it works, though it has never bounced.
> and none of the people in that list are probably the origin.
Hadn’t considered this.
Just noticed the e-mail itself doesn’t work. It lists the http and then slashes, and then .voice.eatvegetation.com
I hadn’t noticed the first .
So unless there is malware that Yahoo detected, it does nothing.
SteveF (Comment #165822
“. That Jokebson can’t appreciate the many silly assumptions his paper includes is a terrible condemnation of his (limited) intellect. That said, better to leave him to his overwhelming stupidity.”
–
Too harsh.
He is not stupid.
The assumptions are perhaps not quite bright from our perspective.
He is committed to 100% renewables.
This clouds the perspective somewhat and what he wants to be true must be true.
In his eyes.
Delusion, not stupidity.
angech,
.
“Too harsh.
He is not stupid.”
.
I must respectfully disagree. Stupidity manifests itself in many ways. Jokebson is wildly disconnected from reality; that is plain stupid in my book. There are lots of plausible ways to reduce CO2 emissions without destroying the global economy… Jokebson chooses to support only those ways which can’t and won’t work, and which will do economic damage…. AKA stupid.
Kenneth L Fritsch (Comment #165828)
November 17th, 2017 at 11:31 am
I failed to note my most recent and perhaps biggest disappointment with the climate science community and what they apparently chose to ignore and that is the possibilty of the GMST having a 60-70 year periodic mode that would change dramatically what we see as temperature changes due to natural and GHGs in the warming period of AGW.
It can be shown empirically that the CMIP5 climate models (as it can for the observed GMST) have periodic behavior in the GMSTs
produced that can be of various decadal lengths.
Unfortunately there has not been a good physical and theroetical model put forth to explain these cycles. The empirical evidence should still produce more interest, in my mind at least, in the climate science community.
I have emailed the results of my analysis and published and referenced works of others of the observed and CMIP5 climate model cyclical behavior to a number of climate scientists and have not had a single reply. This is very unusual since almost always I have received replies and at least acknowledgments from my email queries.
Hi Ken, I hope you saw my message to you yesterday.
Regarding the apparent 60-year cycle in GMST you say : “Unfortunately there has not been a good physical and theoretical model put forth to explain these cycles. ”
If there truly is a 60-year cycle my money would be on a magnetosphere influence on cloud formation and that the Earth’s magnetosphere is being perturbed in a 60-year cycle in harmony with the 60-year conjunctions of the Sun with Jupiter and Saturn relative to Earth. I credit Nicola Scafetta (2013). Here is an excerpt from that paper’s conclusion:
I share the view that I wasn’t that upset about bad math from Mann, but was appalled at how the climate science community reacted to that being pointed out. The leadership of team climate science didn’t do their profession any favors in this episode. The criticism of Mann was over the top, as this was likely more ineptitude than conspiracy, but I think in science “the math should win every time”. They got caught red handed over-selling their product and doubled down on it.
.
Looking back now I just see it as past climate is a very vague concept when trying to dig out small temperature trends, and where we are going is much more important than where we have been. If we had detailed climate records for hundreds of years that would be very helpful to the models, but we don’t, and we aren’t going to get it. Aerosols, even for the twentieth century, are more guessing than measurement.
.
…and trees don’t grow in the winter…
Ron Graf (Comment #165843)
I skimmed over the paper you linked and do not see a spectral analysis as rigorous as the Huang empirical mode decomposition (EMD). The EMD method is rather new but was available when this paper was written and published. I also do not believe the paper has done much more than look at correlations between various series’ periodic components. I appreciate any effort to look at the periodic components of observed and climate modeled GMST, but to find a reasonable physical explanation is what should be sought and is needed.
I find that CMIP5 climate models have periodic behavior in the historical period and of various decadal and shorter cycle lengths. The periodic structure does not necessarily replicate that of the observed but it is nevertheless present. If the climate model shows a large trend in the 2000s then of course the same periodic structure found earlier might not be so evident. Or the cyclical behavior of the climate models in the historical period could be the result of faux fitting to the observed by the modelers.