Preface: A subset of my students like extra practice problems. Those taking AP tests especially would like some that have a “similar flavor” to the ones that actually appear on the AP Physics tests. (Make no mistake: certain “types” do appear on tests because none tests “all possible physics knowledge and skillzzzz” but rather emphasize certain predictable things.
So, I like to make problems that are “like” AP problems and store them in a Moodle database. (Moodle is a Learning Management System). For certain problems, I’ve found using R really helps me make tons of variations that are useful for student practice. Naturally, I now have a challenge. I’ve hunted around a little to try to find an R solution, but I figured: Why not just ask? Someone out there might know the answer.
The question: Can I output both the text and an image to a file in R? I do know how to output text and have used that to create files I can just upload into Moodle. It’s very convenient. I also know how to create and save an image to a file. But these are separate files. I don’t know how to add an image to the text file.
More specific motivation. If I could add both text and image to a single file, I could create a “file” that contained both the image and all the text for a “question” and save it. Then I could run the script, create a bunch of questions and upload them. This would save a lot of time in creating a trove of similar questions that can be used to let students practice. (I tend to find I need at least 3 versions of each “thing”. The first is to “show”. The second is for them to “do” in my presence. The third is to be able to provide fresh practice when at home. If you squint you will notice the text in all the questions to the right is the same. In problems 7-9, force is always positive. So it tests understanding Impulse = area under F(t) graph, but a student who doesn’t know what to do with negative force might get away with not having their lack of knowledge detected. So: that’s the minimum 3. Then I have 3 where F(t) is always negative. Them 3 where it is sometimes positive and sometimes negative. That makes a minimum of 9 required. I create graphs for all 9 with the same script but I have more manual stuff to do than I’d prefer. So if I could have the script just create a file containing everything, save it and upload, I’d like that.
Open Thread: but priority on the R question or things related to education, tutoring, teaching, teaching physics and so on.
I would just run a separate text to image converter and then merge the two images.
MikeN,
Not sure what you are suggesting I do….
I don’t want to merge images. I want to create a file that contains text and contains the image.
Maybe this would clarify what I want to do:
When I create these in moodle, I can “export” the question to a text file and I can “import” them from a text file.
If that text file contains an image (and they often do) it starts like this:
Naturally, now that I figured out what I’m trying to ask I was able to do the google search. D’oh!
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33409363/convert-r-image-to-base-64
I was suggesting to export your text file in R. Then export your image file.
Then use a separate utility to convert the text file to an image file, and another utility to combine the two image files.
MikeN,
I think I’ve figured out what to do. It happens to be the other way around: I need to turn the image into text so I can add that text to a text file. The import feature in Moodle imports text. (I’d need to explain too much about moodle to explain why.)
Many of my colleagues at Duke university were from Novosibirsk so I asked them to translate some exam papers for the Russian version of the SAT mathematics exam.
The translated papers were shared with the faculty of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools that had ranked #1 in state SAT achievement for decades.
I was told that CHCCS students could only answer ~50% of the questions as the other half were not covered in the syllabus.
This represents a curriculum deficiency of at least 18 months that has to be corrected when these poorly prepared students reach university.
The lousy performance of US high schools explains why four year degrees often take five years. The first year is wasted in “Remediation” which means that our universities are teaching what should have been covered in high school.
GallopingCamel, Russians in the US score better than Russia. Only the Finns and some cities in China manage to beat their ethnics in America.
I think this is one such exam. Definitely harder than the SAT as I remember it.
http://www.matholympus.com/documents/Russia/Translated%20copy%20of%20Variant10!!!.pdf
gallopingcamel,
SAT questions cover material “not in the syllabus” of any high school also. They always have. It’s not designed to test material students have necessarily been taught.
The other thing to recognize is that college qualifying type tests by design intend to provide information to distinguish achievers at the high end. To do so, the average outcome must be a low score compared to a test that is designed to find out if students mastered specific course expectations. So if it is the equivalent of the SAT– that is a test intended to spread kids out and so designed so most kids get scores around 50% or lower, then taken as an isolated fact, American kids getting 50% doesn’t mean they are doing badly. After all: The test was probably designed so the Russian kids got around 50% also.
That said: Of course, there are problems with US high school education.
I also don’t doubt that some of the time spent toward graduation is due to poor accomplishment in high school. That ought to be taken care of by colleges and universities not admitting these kids.
But the way we in the US make education affordable is providing loans to kids who are accepted to a college. That mean that kids who get accepted all end up assuming they have some chance of graduating and they will take out loans and give an attempt at college the old college try. Colleges, to their shame, will admit poorly prepared kids, take their money and let the kids either spend 5 years or fail.
There have always been poorly prepared kids. Most didn’t get loans for college and schools didn’t admit them in order to fill their classes and take the loan money.
But I think another reason some four year degrees take five years has been schools expanding requirements– this was known to occur in Engineering for a while. ( Schools couldn’t bring themselves to drop courses while deciding something else was “now” essential.) In the 80s, people began comparing hours required for engineering across the country to the number of hours for other classes and the requirements in engineering actually amounted to about 1 1/2 semesters worth of extra hours. That ought to have explained why students were taking 10 semesters to graduate a program that claimed to take 8. ( That said: many did graduate in 8).
Schools also sometimes pile on requirements due to “PC” inclinations. When a university decides everyone in every major needs to take something like “nonWestern culture” or some such, that 3 hour course must either replace something relevant to a major (say quantum physics in physics) or be in addition. For a while schools were adding these things– I think they may have backed off. But increasing number of credit hours required for graduation partly explains the increase in time it actually takes kids to graduate. Whether well prepared or not, more credit hours required will mean more time to graduate.
Lucia, you might want to check out the markdown package in R for integrating text and graphics.
Thanks bob. I’ll look for “markdown package”!
Lucia,
Many thanks for your lengthy reply. The Novosibirsk equivalent of the math SAT exposed the weakness of the curriculum at the #1 high school in North Carolina (Chapel Hill High School) back in 1995.
IMHO the CHHS was 18 months behind Novosibirsk and a full two years behind AICE (Advanced International Certificate of Education) which is a curriculum designed by Cambridge University in the UK designed to ensure that students are ready to enter that university without any need for remediation.
In 1998 I set up the Woods Charter School with a curriculum based on IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education) and AICE. Within three years this school became #1 in SAT achievement in North Carolina by surpassing the CHHS. This school is in the top five (out of 380 high schools) in NC every year and is often ranked in the top 50 in the USA:
http://morcombe.net/Senate/Education.htm
http://www.gallopingcamel.info/woods.html
My point is that the North Carolina Standard Course of Study lacks about two years of content compared to the best schools in New Zealand or “Grammar Schools” in the UK such as RBAI (Royal Belfast Academical Institution). RBAI would be called a “Charter School” if it was located in North Carolina, yet it was founded in 1805.
Until I retired in 2002 I was responsible for building and operating the Duke university HIGS (High Intensity Gamma Source) with a staff of ~20 but my unpaid volunteer job involved running six “FREE” schools with a staff of ~250.
FREE was set up by four parents with no qualifications to run K-12 schools:
* Rebecca Coyne. A polio crippled Cherokee woman.
* Roger Gerber. A retired Barnum & Bailey worker.
* Louise Cole. A Mormon microbiologist.
* Peter Morcombe. A British electrical engineer.
We were unpaid amateurs yet we created a school that outperformed the best school in North Carolina run by highly paid professionals.
Donald Trump wants to return the control of education to local communities and if that was to happen the miracle of the FREE schools would be replicated across the nation.
gallopingcamel,
I’m perfectly willing to believe American kids are bad at math relative to the world. I just think you need to be careful about interpreting a raw test score.
Honestly, I’m not all that surprised given how decisions are made about schooling.
Maybe. Or it may be that founders with ideas are able to implement stuff and people who jump on the band wagon less so. That said: I think local communities definitely have potential to doing better than the very top down stuff they’ve been trying.
I don’t believe that American kids are “bad at math”. The fact our kids perform badly in international comparisons illustrates the systematic failure of our K-12 schools.
The failure of our government schools cannot be fixed absent “Structural Reform”:
http://www.gallopingcamel.info/docs/EdReform.doc
You said:
“I think local communities definitely have potential to doing better than the very top down stuff they’ve been trying.”
That hits the nail on the head. So how would things change if “local control” were implemented? Neither Donald Trump nor Betty DeVos has explained the details of their concept of “local control”. So here is what I would like to see:
In Brevard county Florida we have ~100 schools controlled by the Brevard County Schools. There is one school board and the board members are paid ~$35,000 per year. There is a school superintendent paid >$180,000 supported by a professional staff of over 300 staffers, some with six figure salaries.
While the above expenditures are a huge waste of money, that is a trivial concern compared to the harm these people do by dis-empowering the people who matter such as principals and teachers.
How would Brevard county look with local control?
The creation of new schools in the county would be assigned to an unpaid elected board equivalent to “FREE”. Each of the 100 existing schools would have an unpaid board of directors. The position of “Superintendent” and all his supporting staff would be eliminated.
That is the kind of “Structural Reform” that would transform K-12 education in the USA.
Lucia ==> Did you find the answer to your R question? If so, would you explain it here in comments? …..I too would like to be able to output an image and text to the same file.
Kip,
Someone said to check out the “markdown” package.
Well, it says “Open Thread”…I found this incredibly funny: the top-rated London restaurant on TripAdvisor (for a while) was a complete fabrication.
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/434gqw/i-made-my-shed-the-top-rated-restaurant-on-tripadvisor
Lucia ==> There is a tutorial for R-markdown Here.
Thanks.
HaroldW,
Crowd sourcing isn’t a panacea. It can be manipulated. A lot of one star reviews on Amazon are from clueless people. As I remember, there have been dogs, I mean the furry animals, elected to public office too.
I thought crowd-sourcing was a method for raising money. Does term also apply to on-line reviews?
I have a hazy definition of crowd sourcing. Something along the lines of ‘applying a lot of people online to a problem’, I think.
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I don’t know that electing canines to public office is obviously a step in the wrong direction though. :p How much mischief could dogs get up to, how much work would they get done? I imagine it might be hard to tell the difference between some human and canine politicians just looking at data in these two categories.
Stubbs the cat was a fine mayor for 20 years.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/24/stubbs-cat-mayor-alaskan-town-talkeetna-20-years-dies-margarita
Great example. See, I bet Stubbs sexually harassed and/or assaulted very few people. Probably kept his paws fairly clean of corruption. He may have had a small but significant positive impact on the local economy [by boosting tourism]. I suspect the good people of Talkeetna came out ahead.
There’s a new TV series, Wisdom of the Crowd:
It’s not getting great reviews.
DeWitt, it’s basically a ripoff of Person of Interest, without the big name actors.
Lucia ==> I have been having fun with rmarkdown running in RStudio (free version)…makes word docs, html pages, pdfs, etc, including both r render graph images and text with formatting.
Also interactive html slide shows!
Pretty neat….the tutorital at http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/lesson-1.html will get you going.
MikeN,
Except in Person of Interest, the crowd didn’t know they were being sourced.
Maybe I don’t give school planners enough credit.
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My 5’th grader is supposed to be practicing ‘guess and check’, simple 2 variable linear equation word problems. All are ultimately of the form: Item quantities A and B, total count is C, weighted sum of some property (weight, cost, whatever) nA + mB = K. The ‘guess and check’ method requires him to plug in guesses for A & B until he finds the answer.
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I get that there may be value to this method. But I’ve come to suspect darkly that perhaps the real motive is to irritate parents sufficiently to cause them to start to teach their children algebra early at home. I couldn’t take it anymore; I taught him to set up and solve the systems. I’m sure he doesn’t really understand it, because he hasn’t really been introduced to algebra yet. But he ‘gets’ it well enough to read the problems, set them up and solve them himself now.
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If my whimsical suspicion is true, I don’t give these evil geniuses who come up with these schemes enough credit.
Perhaps guess and check is useful on standardized (multiple choice) tests? Otherwise I would not see much point to it.
Mike M.,
I don’t really know what it’s for. I try to imagine explanations. And actually I sat down to type out what I imagined but putting it to words I see now that it really doesn’t make sense. I was going to say, well, it gets kids to play with the problems and start to develop an understanding of how changing a variable in one equation affects the other. But. So. What. Why is that good? I’m not sure I can make something up.
Mostly it just drives me spare, watching my kid waste valuable time guessing and trying values and getting them wrong and guessing and trying again.
Oh wait no – I know. It’s an introduction to successive approximation? Heck I don’t know why they do it. I know they don’t really do it just to be irritating. But. ~shrug~
Grr.
https://www.teachervision.com/problem-solving-guess-check
My fifth grader. Well, call me a regressive Alabamian. I think we could get to this method a little later. I think he’s got a ways to go before we should start thinking about differential equations or research scientist work. But that’s just backwoods me.
On a different note. I’m gritting my teeth / choking down the gag reflex and preparing myself to vote for Roy Moore Tuesday. Anybody want to try to talk me out of it?
Mark, I appreciate the problem. My Dad, who’d voted Repub all the way back to not voting for Roosevelt in 1940, in 2008 couldn’t stomach Palen. He suspected Obama was likely to win, but he didn’t vote for any of the presidential candidates. It’s probably better to sit it out than to have to admit, as I do, to having voted for Jimmy Carter.
My sympathy no matter which way you go.
johm
“All research mathematicians use guess and check,”
Yeah, but it is educated guessing, not just trying things at random.
Thanks John.
In some ways, not voting at all has appeal. I really don’t like helping to put religious social conservatives in office. I really don’t believe a word Doug Jones says about how moderate he is and how he’s going to work with Republicans. I wish I thought he was telling it straight, I don’t.
The trouble is not voting makes me feel worse in other ways. I’m still responsible for not voting against whatever scum gets elected, that means I have some responsibility for what the scum does. Voting for a write in is like not voting.
Well, boo hoo hoo, poor me, I live in a free democratic country and I’m bitching about [my] rights [that] people in other countries would die for [to have]. You’d think I was a millennial the way I’m carrying on (Heh, just joking my precious snowflakes).
Mark –
In the end, you can either (a) vote for a 3rd party candidate to express dissatisfaction with both Jones & Moore, or (b) vote for the candidate who (in your opinion) will legislate closer to the direction you approve. [Or, will do less damage by not supporting legislation against your preferences.]
Moore’s personal faults are more evident at the moment. But I don’t think that should be the guiding force behind your vote. It would be different if you were voting for, say, principal of the local school, where his peccadillos would pose a potential peril to the prepubescent pupils.
HaroldW,
Nice alliteration there. Say that ten times as fast as you can.
Mark Bofill,
It may well be that all research mathematicians use “guess and check” for something. Like for example: solving some ODE’s “by inspection” which sometimes amounts to “guess and check” and later amounts to “Oh Boy! I remember the solution to y”=y. ”
Like you I am skeptical of its value for 2 linear equations with 2 unknowns.
On Moore: maybe he’ll be elected and then face some sort of senate hearing and resign. Then the governor can appoint another Republican? Dunno. I think it’s hard when the person who will implement policies you prefer is a pig and the other one will implement policies you abhor. I usually just find a third party candidate….
Harold, Lucia,
Thanks. I’ve got at least another day to kick it around. Maybe I’ll make peace with some course of action tomorrow.
One of the problems with a choice is that later you have no real idea what the other guy would have done had he/she been elected. I’m pretty confident of my judgement on Al Gore’s character and accordingly am not unhappy with my vote for W in 2000 despite what I have to listen to from my mostly liberal friends. How can we be sure Gore wouldn’t have taken us into Iraq? Or something even dumber.
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2016 wasn’t any eaiser. I despise H. and thought (think) Trump displays serious character defects which made it impossible for me to vote for him. Lucia probably did what i should have done, but …
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Doug Jones would be cruising to victory had he not made the remarks he did regarding abortion. Folks who believe it is murder are never going to support anyone who doesn’t.
j ferguson
Yup. They will pick sexual abuse in the past to ongoing abortion every time. (Mind you: Moore won’t actually get abortion laws changed; 1 congressman doesn’t have the power to overturn rules in place by SCOTUS. But that’s probably not what those anti-abortion voters will be considering.)
mark bofill (Comment #166108): “I’ve got at least another day to kick it around. Maybe I’ll make peace with some course of action tomorrow.”
Sometimes one wishes for a choice of “none of the above”.
Mark Bofill,
It is a difficult choice. Moore is a foolish buffoon for certain. He probably did have an odd yen for teenage girls 35+ years ago… although sorting out the he-said-she-said details 35+ years later is never going to happen. At least there have been no credible claims made for similar behavior over the last 35+ years, so the female interns in the Senate are probably safe from abuse by Moore…. unlike, for example, Ted Kennedy. Jones’ personal record appears by comparison squeaky clean, but he has consistently supported socially destructive public policies, and will continue to.
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There are two sad truths here: Moore is foolish and is likely to make many uninformed bad policy choices as a senator, and Jones is smarter, but guaranteed to make many well informed bad policy choices as a Senator. As Obi Wan Kenobi advised Luke Skywalker: “You have to do what you think is right, of course.”
Lucia,
“1 congressman doesn’t have the power to overturn rules in place by SCOTUS. But that’s probably not what those anti-abortion voters will be considering.”
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Yes, but one sitting Senator may well make the difference in a Supreme Court appointee who would likely allow individual states more latitude to place limits on abortion, moving the country de facto closer to the situation before Roe-V-Wade, even if the “constitutional right to an abortion” formally remained in place. Two approved nominees similar to Gorsuch could well lead to the outright reversal of Roe-V-Wade, explicitly returning all jurisdiction over abortion to the individual states. So I think Moore versus Jones could be very consequential WRT the Supreme Court.
Thanks Steve.
I’m pretty much resigned to the position I started with. Harold got to the heart of it:
It comes down to what I think is more important. With folk like Murkowski, McCain, and Collins in office it seems to me the Republican majority is a lot more theoretical than actual. Moore is less likely to shoot down legislation. On the flip side, as Lucia notes, one Senator doesn’t have the power to do all that much damage otherwise. Hopefully.
I’ll vote for the stinker.
One senator may also make a difference on tax bills.
BTW: I think Franken was a factor in Moore’s polls bouncing back. Specifically, Franken’s initial announcement he was not leaving. When Franken did that, he was balancing whether he thought his moral failings meant he couldn’t hold office and he decided he was still suitable for office. Basically, he — and more specifically those who weren’t calling for his resignation at the time– was telegraphing support for the argument Kate Harding made on WaPo:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/11/17/im-a-feminist-i-study-rape-culture-and-i-dont-want-al-franken-to-resign/
(You have to read the whole thing. Kate was not the only one to make this argument. )
I told Jim that Franken had just given people “near” the fence a reason to think about balancing their interests and decide if they want to apply Kate’s reasoning to their situation. The problem for Jones who hopes to beat Moor is he needs these Alabama voters to not reason the way Kate Harding does. But…. some AL voters will go with Moore reasoning more or less the way Harding does. The only difference is they value the entirely different things from Kate.
I’m pretty sure the Dem’s who ultimately did demand Franken’s resignation did so because Moore’s polls have been rising back into “more likely to win than not” territory. But really, given they way people think that might have been too late to pull back the ‘near the fence’ voters. Their swing back was probably not impulsive.
I understand the race is still close. Dunno who will win. I’d root for “none of the above” if that was possible. Instead I’m just not rooting. Just watching how it pans out.
I can live with that. I don’t have a strong conviction on the issue of abortion either way. Not to say I don’t care, but rather that I don’t know. In such circumstance, who am I (or the Federal government) to dictate the law.
My theory of human rights stems from human consciousness. Were it possible (and it may well be, for all I know) to cut off my hand and keep it alive independently of the rest of me indefinitely, my hand isn’t me. It’s my awareness that makes me me. At what point does an unborn child have this? I lack the courage of my convictions at this point – what if it turns out that an actual newborn doesn’t quite have awareness yet? Call me chicken, even if newborns aren’t aware / conscious the way we are I can’t take the position that they don’t have human rights.
I don’t have the balls to take a stand on abortion, frankly. Not confident enough that I’m even on the right track.
mark bofill (Comment #166114): “I’ll vote for the stinker.”
It’s like the Louisiana gubernatorial election where people had bumper stickers saying “Vote for the crook”. The alternative was former Grand Dragon David Duke.
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SteveF (Comment #166112): “Moore … probably did have an odd yen for teenage girls 35+ years ago…”
Possibly just very old-fashioned, if the object was courting rather than dating. The former would be only with the permission of the young lady’s parents and would have the sole purpose of the two parties assessing each other as marriage material. It used to be common when females married at prime child bearing age (no later than early 20’s) and males waited until established in their careers (often not until their 30’s). The worst accusations are incompatible with that, but don’t seem all that credible.
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Tangentially related fun fact: Two of President John Tyler’s grandchildren were still alive as recently as a year or two ago (might still be). Tyler was born in 1790 and was the first president born after the end of the Revolution.
MikeM
Even if the object was “courting”, he had a yen for young teenage girls. Also, I think people saying this are making a distinction without a difference. Honestly, if if the “parents permission” is meaningful, parents who permit their 14 year olds to be “courted” by a grown man have a screw lose.
And beyond that: My dad always said the purpose of dating was to figure out if someone was marriage material. He thought once you’d figured out they weren’t, then you shouldn’t date any longer. So, once again: distinction w/o difference.
Anyway, it doesn’t sound like he’s accused of taking the 14 year old to the opera or dinner. That incident doesn’t sound like “dating” nor “courting”.
Actually…. I’m pretty sure this is a myth. Big myth. Commonly held, but still a myth.
Among other things: It used to be common that there was no such thing as a “career”. Training for trades didn’t take until someone’s 30s and so on.
There were cases where someone whose “career” was something like “inherit Daddy’s title” might be married off to someone whose age was much different. (Sometimes it was an older woman.) But that didn’t make the practice common.
MikeM
I should add: teenager is not prime child bearing years. It used to be even less so because the age of menarche has dropped with better nutrition.
On marriage ages: It’s a blog, but it contains census data. So…
https://historymyths.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/myth-136-women-married-very-young-in-the-olden-days/
The age spread between men and women has narrowed since 1975. But at least in American history, the standard practice was not for a guy to wait until their 30s and then marrying teenagers. Had it been, we’d see much more than 4 years between ages of men and women.
lucia (Comment #166119): “Honestly, if if the “parents permission†is meaningful, parents who permit their 14 year olds to be “courted†by a grown man have a screw lose.
…
“Anyway, it doesn’t sound like he’s accused of taking the 14 year old to the opera or dinner. That incident doesn’t sound like “dating†nor “courtingâ€.”
Yes, that would be inappropriate by any measure. But that is one of the iffy accusations. I have not studied this, but from what I have seen it seems that there are two very serious but iffy accusations and a bunch of others that only seem odd and may be misinterpreted.
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lucia (Comment #166121):
For comparison, here is the U.S. census data showing the median age of marriage for selected years in the more recent past:(4)
1900 Women: 21.9; Men: 25.9
Medians. So half the woman married earlier, many in their teens. And half the men married later, many in their 30’s. The late marrying men would have been weighted toward the minority who needed time to get established in their careers. I probably should have said “not uncommon” or “not terribly unusual” rather than “common”.
Like Trump, Moore’s sexual creepiness is to me part of his overall creepiness and as such I did not vote for Trump and would not vote for Moore. Neither would I vote for their Democrat opponents. That voters and politicians will accept bad characters given that they toe the party line is pretty much an accepted fact of partisan politics. If Franken were from a red state with a Republican governor I doubt that there would be much of a call from fellow Democrats for him to step down. I would give more credit to Republicans that want to vote for Moore in a partisan fashion to do it with the idea that he would be subsequently removed from the senate and replaced by an appointed Republican.
That’d be great. I doubt it will happen, but I’d be pleased if it did.
MIkeM
Maybe it’s iffy. Maybe it’s not. I haven’t looked into it enough to know whether it the charges stick or not. I’m not an Alabama voter and I figure we will hear more in the charges againts Moore. I don’t need to try to follow it closely.
But when someone tries to say things that seem to make it seem seem like the behavior Moore is accused of is acceptable, or every was acceptable or is was normal in the US in the past….. uhmmm no. It wasn’t.
Half the men also married earlier. Many in their teens. This doesn’t support the notion that men were waiting until they were in their 30s and then marrying teens. That wasn’t the rule.
Teen marriage was acceptable in some times in the past. That went for both men and women. People also died later. Widowers did tend to marry younger and I suspect widows often didn’t get married.
Even going by fiction, while while not historical still reflects mores of the time, you can tell that mostly first marriages were between men and women of comparable ages. Marriages that were a second marriage for at least one of the partners were between older men and younger women.
>but one sitting Senator may well make the difference in a Supreme Court appointee
I think if the majority is lower, the usual suspects will start voting down judges as too extreme.
Perhaps it is partisanship in action, but Frank Luntz had a focus group where people in Alabama wee saying it was common for older men to date teenagers back then.
https://youtu.be/HjLMAoejW-A
Here is an informative chart:
https://assets.babycenter.com/intl/gb/i/preconception/infertilitygraph.gif
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Looks like there is not a lot of difference in fertility up to 30 or so. Of course, the earlier onset of ovulation and better overall health (due to better nutrition today) may mean the same graph from 100 or 200 years ago might look a little different. I still think Moore had an odd yen for teenage girls…. he is just three years older than I am, and at 29 I would have thought dating a teenager was beyond weird. I would also have expected a very unpleasant conversation (or worse) with most any teenage girl’s father.
I can’t really get that excited about viewing elected officials through some sort of moral microscope. I don’t expect anyone to be a perfect person and what may be really being judged here is a person’s ability to hide their faults. Sexual “failings” aren’t really very relevant to a politicians job. I’d be much more worried about a politician’s history taking bribes or other corruption. It’s mostly just a gut feel that you can trust a person to vote close to your priorities.
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I don’t want a certified saint, I want an effective politician. I’m not a single issue voter, but for those who are it is a simple process. If you care about abortion in Alabama this isn’t a difficult problem (either way).
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I am very much disgusted with the entire process of disqualifying candidates based on this weeks moral lens and applying that to behavior of 30 years ago.
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Moore has a big creepy factor and his views are a bit overtly religious for my tastes, but as far as that overruling adding another person to join team “bash white men, pander to minorities, adhere to cocktail party politics, and full steam ahead with globalism”, no.
SteveF,
The problem with 14 year olds who have reached menarche getting pregnant tends not to be “infertility”. Historically and even now if the girl doesn’t get modern health care, the problem was and is infant and maternal mortality. There are also problems with infant care and survival if the very young mom doesn’t live in an extended family. Late teens…. not as much of a problem. It’s legal to marry when you are 18.
When I was a teen my reaction to someone Moore’s age would have been “Oh. Yuk.” For some of the stories we hear, that’s the reaction. Some just report that “everyone” knew he “hung” around stores in malls making teens (likely 16-20) who worked there (and so couldn’t necessarily just avoid him) think “oy yuk” and try to avoid him.
Whether or not 30 year old men dating teens was considered ok in Alabama at the time, I would consider this the lurking around the malls behavior stalkerish behavior. It would be creepy stalker behavior even if the clerks had been 25-30. Thinking you might be being stalked is scary. If he did that, he was creepy. Super creepy. Oh. Ick.
Because it is weird.
Tom,
I agree with you here. I don’t like to reward the dirt diggers by letting them manipulate my vote. Had this come out in the primary, Luther Strange would have gotten the nomination [nomination? Luther Strange would have won]. I don’t think it’s accidental that it came out after the primary was settled.
Truthfully, while I agree with the general consensus that Moore is creepy (at best), that’s not my biggest problem with the guy. But I’ve got bigger problems with the Democrat, so, that’s that.
Tom Scharf
For me, it depends. For example, when I was a grad student at UIUC, Dan Crane was involved in a scandal. He had sex with an underage congressional page. Not intern: page. These are students in their junior year in high school who spend a year in DC in boarding school away from their parents. Meanwhile, Dan Crane’s main issue was sexual abstinence, no abortion and no birth control for teens. His campaign literature features his large conservative family.. blah… blah….
Dan Crane was my congress-critter. There was NO WAY I was going to vote for the guy. I also think that Dan Crane deserved to be criticized for that particular moral failing which he, himself, decreed to be wrong. In fact, he was not re-elected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Crane
I definitely agree that “it depends”. I think they should be criticized so people who do care know about it. I just don’t care that much myself.
Voters don’t want to have to select between a borderline pedophile and someone on the wrong side of their ideological spectrum. It would be nice if these people were eliminated during a primary, but as marks infers, the order of these events is likely not coincidental in many cases.
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Right now, just an accusation is enough to get people removed from office which is a bit ridiculous. However in a lot of cases the behavior is not being denied. Moore denies his behavior, but I have no idea how strong the evidence is. At least in one case some of the evidence was fabricated (yearbook). If he is being falsely accused then that is an injustice to him. I’m guessing there is some truth here.
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I doubt a terror attack in NYC by a (Muslim?) immigrant is going to hurt Moore’s chances in Alabama, ha ha. The attacker was upset about Israel/Gaza apparently, so obviously attacking a NYC subway is the answer.
Ehh. Sort of. Using weasel language.
Here for instance.
Q)Did you date teenagers? a)Not generally, no.
Not generally? ugh.
remember ever dating any girl without the permission of her mother.
….Ugh again.
It would not have been my customary behavior
Not sure if he knows, but when a politician evades like this the answer is pretty clearly ‘Yes. But I don’t want to admit it.’
Anyway.
Lucia,
Infant mortality (defined as death within one year of birth) is highest among black mothers, and shows little trend with maternal age (it is about 1% of live births). Among white mothers, the rate of infant mortality is much lower (about 0.5% on average), and does increase when material age is below 30 years and above 35 years.
(see for example: https://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/handle/1903/18789/SocSci_v3_32to38.pdf?sequence=1)
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Maternal mortality shows only a gradual increase with maternal age: https://mchb.hrsa.gov/whusa10/hstat/mh/images/405mmVa.gif The youngest mothers (less than 20 years old) have the lowest overall death rate from pregnancy (7.1 per 100,000 live births).
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Infant mortality is a complicated measure of the ability of a mother to bear children successfully, since it is influenced by both infant health at birth and maternal socioeconomic factors after birth…. which probably at least partially explains the much greater infant mortality rate among black mothers at all ages and the higher rate among very young white mothers compared to ~30 YO white mothers. The rising rate for older white mothers suggests an increasing toll from birth complications and/or congenital defects with increasing maternal age…. no surprise there.
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Anyway, I don’t thing there is clear evidence a very young woman is much less likely to have a healthy child, but plenty of evidence that she is unlikely to be in a situation where that child will receive proper care…. and so very unwise to have one.
S
teveF
We don’t have many 14 year old mothers in the US. Not none, but not that many.
I think the white-hispanic curves are from populations that generally get medical care and have family support. The high mortality at young maternal ages is related to youth, the high related to age. The best outcome is not in the teens.
I should add: The unadjusted figures are what matter if one wants to explain why men might want to pick mates to optimize chance of progeny. That’s what I’m showing. The adjusted to explain based on things like ” plurality, birth order, maternal education, prenatal care, payment
source, and cigarette smoking during pregnancy”… well… that might be interesting from a health perspective. But however those covary with age, that’s just the pool from which men might pick woman to bear their children. (Assuming this is the man’s choice, of course.)
As I expected, Glenn Greenwald is channeling my anti-media bias in relation to last week’s embarrassment.
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The U.S. Media Suffered Its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages and Now Refuses All Transparency Over What Happened
https://theintercept.com/2017/12/09/the-u-s-media-yesterday-suffered-its-most-humiliating-debacle-in-ages-now-refuses-all-transparency-over-what-happened/
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The biggest issue in this debacle was multiple sources supposedly getting the most pertinent fact wrong, as in not being able to read a date from an email. Then two networks “independently” verifying it. Unclear how this happened.
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As Greenwald says, it seems all these journalistic accidents go in one direction, anti-Trump hyperventilating, a clear indicator of confirmation bias.
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Is there nobody in the entire media that asked the question “why would secret access to the emails allegedly proving “collusion” be sent to multiple Trumps via their highly public email accounts? And then turned over to congress?”.
Lucia,
I think the adjusted probabilities are a bit more informative (see figure 2 in the pdf file). In figure 2, only the very youngest white mothers have a much higher rate of infant mortality. I don’t know how to separate maternal socioeconomic factors from infant health at birth. But I would never expect the infant mortality rate among 16-17 year old black mothers to be lower than any other age group of black mothers, unless those very young mothers end up living with their own mothers, who help provide care.
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This article:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562289/
suggests that there is a moderately higher incidence of low birthweight for women who become pregnant at a very early age:
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“We conclude that the overall evidence of effect for very young maternal age (<15 years or <2 years post-menarche) on infant outcomes is moderate; that is, future studies are likely to refine the estimate of effect or precision but not to change the conclusion. Evidence points to an impact of young maternal age on low birthweight and preterm birth, which may mediate other infant outcomes such as neonatal mortality. The evidence that young maternal age increases risk for maternal anaemia is also fairly strong, although information on other nutritional outcomes and maternal morbidity/mortality is less clear. Many of the differences observed among older teenagers with respect to infant outcomes may be because of socio-economic or behavioral differences, although these may vary by country/ setting. "
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I really think a significant part of higher infant mortality among young mothers is socioeconomic related. Lets face it, few 16 year olds (boys or girls!) are able to properly care for an infant.
SteveF,
I don’t generally. But I especially don’t think they are more informative to a claim that men would marry teens to optimize progeny– which seems pretty close to what MikeM is claiming. WRT to that claim, men pick from the actual pool of women and the chances of progeny are based on the unadjusted rate of birth and mortality. In fact: if you pick from the pool of teens, you get the infant mortality rate from the pool of teens. If you pick from older, you get the infant mortality rate from older. The guy picking doesn’t get the “statistically adjusted mortality to account for ‘other’ factors”.
The adjusted can be interesting from the point of view of providing access to health care, support, counseling people not to smoke.
The accusations against Roy Moore include a claim he went for 14. I think that would fall into the very youngest mothers. Recall I didn’t claim any problem for 18 year olds. What I clained is this:
That’s saying it exist.
Yes. Which is a factor I was referring to when I wrote
I’m talking about the 14-16 tranche.
Lucia,
“men pick from the actual pool of women and the chances of progeny are based on the unadjusted rate of birth and mortality.”
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Based on my experience and observation, many men pick women in large part based on physical appearance… at least if they have multiple options. I suspect that is in part hard wired behavior, but certainly with some cultural influence. They sure as heck don’t often choose based on an estimate of the survival chance of offspring. My experience could be mistaken of course, but I have given this subject (women!) considerable attention over the years. 🙂
SteveF,
I didn’t claim they did pick based on probability of progeny.
The issue of progeny came up when Mike wrote this:
(1) Whether we adjust or not, prime child bearing age in the population is not “no later than early 20s”. The flat part of the U for unadjusted hispanic and white is in the late 20s. When adjusted, the prime age for white goes up. that for hispanic is still mid 20s. Blacks are a different matter.
(2) When figuring out the “prime” child bearing age: A woman exists whether or not she smokes, had a previous child or had any of the factors that they statistical “corrections” accounted for in infant mortality. So: from the point of view of women who actually exist the “prime” age is the age at which women who exist have the low infant mortality. It’s not the age at which some statisitically adjusted pool of women have the best outcome.
This woman doesn’t “count lest” just because a statistician can statistically attribute the negative outcome of an infant mortality to the fact she smoked, or had a previous child, or had high education or any other factor the statistician attributes it to. The extent to which her marital age enters into her decision to marry or the the tally of marital ages is just as great as that of a woman who didn’t smoke and so on. So the adjusted figures are not “better” if you are discussing a “prime” in context of decisions made by men or women. Those decisions are made by the unadjusted pool based on outcomes for the unadjusted pool.
So: I think the unadjusted is what matters when we are discussing the prime age for the population of women who actually exist. I think unadjusted is also what matters if someone is going to explain “why” women marry at any particular age based on when the prime child bearing age occurs.
Of course: Mike was even more wrong about men deferring marriage until their 30s. In fact: Men married in their mid 20s. Women were a bit younger with the spread varying between 4 years and 1 year.
Mark Bofil,
It’s would take a lot of nose holding to vote for Moore. I read this:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454542/roy-moore-election-conservative-case-against-him
Gosh …. he’s…. bad. That’s not to say the Dem isn’t bad too. Oy!
Lucia,
He’s a pretty loathsome specimen, yeah. I don’t know as much about him as I ought to. There’s usually another side to the story, sure. But at the end of the day, it seems to me that [at best; the most benign interpretation I can give to the guy’s history] religion (his specific interpretation) is the star he orbits. At least officially; don’t know how he squares the teenage girl thing with it.
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I’ve got no use for that. But he’s more likely to vote the way I’d want a senator to vote than Jones. And I keep telling myself that without support from other senators, there’s a limit to the damage he can do.
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But yeah. Stinko – extraordinaire. I won’t deny that I’m experiencing a certain degree of shame from what I’m doing. ~shrug~
mark bofill: ” I won’t deny that I’m experiencing a certain degree of shame from what I’m doing.”
I don’t see why. You are just playing the hand you are dealt. It is not your fault that it is such a lousy hand.
Mike,
Thanks. I’m ashamed because the guy stands for stuff I don’t believe at all. But as you say, it’s a lousy hand. Folding isn’t better in my book; I’m going to kick myself through the middle of next year if I don’t vote and Jones wins.
Mark, Is Jones really that bad or is it liberals in general?
John,
No to both. Closer to say Democrats right now. Another time, I’d vote for Jones. Today we live with hyper partisan politics where the House Minority Leader announces in all seriousness that Republican tax reform is the end of the world, it’s the Armageddon. Next up is entitlement reform, which needs to get done somehow, in my view. At some point Mueller will conclude his investigation and there will be a determined effort to impeach Trump, looking right now as if it will be for process violations.
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I don’t know if tax reform will be done by the time Jones is in office. I’m doubtful he would support it. I strongly doubt he’s going to vote for any meaningful entitlement reform. I worry that he will line up with Democratic leadership to oppose Trump period paragraph, including voting for impeachment. Perhaps I do him an injustice.
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I look at the flip side of the coin. I think it’s more likely than not Moore would support the tax bill and entitlement reform, and oppose Trump’s impeachment. I ~hope~ the rest of the Senate will keep him off any important committees. He’s not going to turn the U.S. into a Christian Iran all by himself. Maybe he’ll be replaced soon.
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Bunch of rationalization. Moore isn’t my guy. My reaction to the democrat lion eating people in my village is to turn to wolves who [would] just as cheerfully eat people in my village as the lion, once that problem is gone. It’s a crappy answer. I don’t have a better one. Next time maybe I should volunteer my time during the primaries for a candidate I can stomach. Live and learn.
The Democrats vote (no) in lock-step, just like the Republicans did in the Obama years. Funny that I no longer read any media articles on how bad obstructionism is for the US now. If Jones gets elected he will vote with the Democrats. You know what you are going to get, which is a generic Democrat. Moore will be a (slimy) generic Republican in reality.
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I really wish this lock-step voting would end. If there was a referendum on eliminating both parties, it would probably win in a landslide. It’s hard to see a lot of upside in our two party system lately. I really don’t want to see legislative whiplash every time congressional control changes hands.
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I think Moore’s seat comes up again in 2020(?).
Is it because all the other democrats vote in lock-step that you assume jones will (not unreasonable assumption). Maybe a senator from Alabama might be different?
A senator from Maine doesn’t vote lock step. Maybe there could be a Democrat who thinks for himself.
Yeah, pretty much. It’s another factor that makes the call difficult.
Looking at the little signals though, it doesn’t sound like Jones is all that interested in what his constituents think.
For example, http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/27/politics/doug-jones-on-the-issues/index.html
On abortion – with the Dems
On health care – with the Dems
On 2cnd Ammendment, expanded checks, so essentially with the Dems.
LGBT rights – with the Dems
Tax reform – with the Dems
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Fair enough, right? He’s a Democrat, no real bones about it. It doesn’t make all that much difference at the end of the day if he’s thinking for himself if his thinking lines up with the thinking of every other Dem out there who’s thinking for himself.
~shrug~
I assume Jones will vote in lock-step. I imagine he has been asked that question, says he will vote his conscious, then vote in lock-step because his conscious tells him to do so like everyone else. I’m not an expert on Jones by any measure.
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I believe the leaders of Congress punish people who go off the reservation by withholding committee memberships, election funding, and so forth.
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He can run as an independent if he wants, he’s not. Manchin from WV voted against the climate bill and some others. He is the most Republican Democrat there is I think. But he still votes mostly with the Democrats.
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What really happens is that the leaders know some votes will cost a member severely locally, so if they have enough votes they allow some members to vote the other way to help protect the seat.
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Perhaps Jones is a true independent, that would be nice. I’m not a big fan of overtly religious stuff Moore does, but I also don’t object to overtly religious people having representation in Congress. If prayer in schools or abortion were on the line Moore would be more dangerous.
If Jones wins, I won’t be surprised. Unfortunately for Moore he isn’t running against Clinton, ha ha.
List of congress who vote against their party the most. Manchin / Collins lead the way. Although Manchin says he isn’t going to switch parties it may very well happen. Trump carried WV by over 40%.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/06/11/here-are-the-members-of-congress-who-vote-against-their-party-the-most
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The trend to vote with your party has increased dramatically over the past 30 years. This is not a good thing. We have a robo-left brain and a robo-right brain in congress.
https://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2015/04/24/political_partisanship_in_three_stunning_charts_109196.html
Maybe the time has come for people to vote directly on legislation instead of voting for legislators. It’s technically doable today.
having folks vote directly for legislation is not unlike referenda. It would be utter folly. we recently had a referendum in Florida which included a choice as to whether the utility (florida power and light) could distribute the cost of their support of home-grown solar system connections to all of their customers or just to those with the solar setups.
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Of course the news media, liberals that they are, thought we should all chip in for these costs – Climate Change don’t you know.
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I talked to dozens of people about this (from my soapbox) and not a single one had understood it. Mostly it was if the Sun Sentinel had recommended it then that was what they were going to do.
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Mark, how can a conservative possibly support what you suggest?
🙂 I haven’t really thought it through.
Why is it nutty?
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I understand we have a separate House and Senate for a reason. The Senate was supposed to be composed of representatives elected by State legislatures if memory serves, but that’s history. Still, they’re supposed to provide the longer term wisdom and be more immune to the passion of the moment. I think it can be reasonably questioned if this is actually working out in practice.
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So – I think there’d be problems with just letting majority rule rule, couldn’t be quite that simple. But – say we elect an ‘overrideable Senator’ where he gets to vote his way unless his constituents override him.
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Just thinking out loud and without any careful thought. Don’t be shy about letting me have it. 🙂
Thanks.
Unexpectedly large turnout, could be people are breaking for Jones!
http://www.newsweek.com/alabama-election-updates-latest-745195
Won’t be the end of the world if Jones wins.
Mark,
maybe it would be better if someone else got into this idea with you. I hate it so much I can barely control myself.
My apologies sir, seriously. I wasn’t exactly being facetious, but I certainly wasn’t deadly serious either. Forget I mentioned it. Just making nervous noise here.
As a preview of 2018, if the Democrats can’t win in Alabama with the Republicans running a bozo, it becomes less likely that the Senate will change hands in the 2018 elections. If Moore loses, it should, but probably won’t, put Steve Bannon and Breitbart out of the picture for 2018.
My daughter voted for Jones.
Tom,
Heh, yeah. Mine probably did too. For the record, yes I voted Moore.
my favorite slogan seen so far this election:
:>
Dang! Jones may well pull this off.
And I’m calling it for Doug Jones! Exciting night. Glad it’s over! No more commercials!
Looks like we can say with confidence that hitting on under-age girls is not conducive to winning a Senate campaign. I imagine this isn’t a confidence builder for the Republicans in 2018. Enjoy your time on top, it is always fleeting. The pendulum is now swinging the other way.
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In a (not) curious bit of timing, the texts that got Strzok canned from the Mueller inquiry were released last night. Most are run of the mill Trump trashing that most Republicans have likely said at one time or another. I’d prefer not to have a highly partisan player on a highly partisan inquiry though. However the one that likely got him canned was when the person he was talking to said:
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“So look, you say we can text on that phone when we talk about Hillary because it cant be traced,”
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Beyond this being an idiotic theory of texts not being able to be traced, it shows an intent to deceive. That’s where the line is crossed. Openly partisan is way better than stealth partisan. That’s why is he is working in HR now, and my guess is he will get an invitation from congress to explain this rather soon.
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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/peter-strzok-lisa-page-texts-trump-idiot/
Tom,
Yup.
My takeaways:
1) Complacency is never a good idea. Jones and the Democrats did not give up even when it appeared that the smear story wasn’t turning the tide in the polls. Moore on the other hand took the weekend off and literally rode back in on a horse yesterday morning expecting to win. Democrats outspent opposition by about 10:1.
2) The black vote. Are Republicans ever going to do anything to court this vote, doesn’t look like it to me. Instead we’ll ignore it and nominate people who’ll say things like this:
Bad idea. The Deplorables aren’t the only dissatisfied people out there. Rise by the white nationalist sword, fall with the white nationalists.
3) Republican leaders need to grow a pair of testicles and not run for cover every time a negative story is run on one of their candidates.
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But overall, good. We didn’t send a wannabe theocrat to the Senate, I can’t be sad about that. Tough break for Trump and his agenda.
shrug.
On the other thing, I haven’t been too impressed so far with the idea that agents were biased. I mean, I’m sure they were. But it’s not clear to me why that derails anything.
Worse that the FBI stonewalled Congress on it. Still, not sure what impact that will ultimately have.
Mark,
If Congress reasserts its oversight authority by not merely citing the FBI director and Deputy AG for contempt, but also by holding their trial in Congress rather than submitting the citation to the DC US attorney, who will ignore it, it will be a good thing. See Jonathan Turley’s column: https://jonathanturley.org/2017/12/13/a-question-of-contempt-it-is-time-for-congress-to-enforce-its-oversight-authority/#more-132400
DeWitt,
I agree. Thanks for the link!
I may have been a little hasty earlier. This seems a bit over the top:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/13/fusion-gps-admits-doj-officials-wife-nellie-ohr-hired-to-probe-trump.html
The wife of a DOJ official involved in political opposition research. That’s more than bias, that looks like corruption to me.
mark bofill (Comment #166170): “On the other thing, I haven’t been too impressed so far with the idea that agents were biased. I mean, I’m sure they were. But it’s not clear to me why that derails anything.”
With respect to this year’s investigation, I think it does not change much. The real issue is last year. It appears that the agents that conducted the softball investigation of Clinton were highly biased towards Clinton and against Trump. And it seems that at least one of those was responsible for using the Steele dossier to get DoJ resources committed to an attempt to derail the Trump campaign.
When you put it all together, it looks pretty bad. Victor Davis Hanson:
“Indeed, the only remaining trajectory by which Mueller and his investigators can escape with their reputations intact is to dismiss those staff attorneys who have exhibited clear anti-Trump political sympathies, reboot the investigation, and then focus on what now seems the most likely criminal conduct: Russian and Clinton-campaign collusion in the creation of the anti-Trump Fusion GPS dossier and later possible U.S. government participation in the dissemination of it. If such a fraudulent document was used to gain court approval to surveil Trump associates, and under such cover to unmask and leak names of private U.S. citizens — at first to warp a U.S. election, and then later to thwart the work of an incoming elected administration — then Mueller will be tasked with getting to the bottom of one of the greatest political scandals in recent U.S. history. Indeed, his legacy may not be that he welcomed in known pro-Clinton, anti-Trump attorneys to investigate the Trump 2016 campaign where there was little likelihood of criminality, but that he ignored the most egregious case of government wrongdoing in the last half-century.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454543/mueller-investigation-too-many-anti-trump-coincidences
Why did they think texts can’t be traced? Do they mean texts sent by mobile phone? I assume they can be traced
(a) *at least* as long as cell phone records are kept and
(b) *at least* as long as one party to the text doesn’t delete the text from their phone.
After that…. I guess I would think it would depend on what someone does with any record of their texts.
Don’t know. I’da thunk an intelligence specialist with the FBI would have known better.
I gather that if nobody is already specifically monitoring, there’s a limited window of opportunity to get somebody’s texts. It looks like phone companies just don’t keep them around all that long.
If somebody with NSA access wants to monitor Dishfire is there for that.
I’m sort of curious now. Are FBI agent texts routinely monitored / logged. I’d have thought these two would have been aware of that if so. If not, were these texts obtained from the devices. Pretty careless of them. It does seem sort of odd.
[Edit: they should have known better. here: https://cdt.org/insight/section-702-what-it-is-how-it-works/ ]
Mike M,
LOL! Thanks for the link.
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But then again…
I’m going to be chuckling the rest of the day.
The black vote surge in AL reminds me of the surge that took out Bobby Jindal after the Trent Lott story broke.
Partisan bias by agents is not a problem if they are behaving fairly. However, Strzok was sending text messages about an insurance policy to keep Trump from becoming President. Another agent’s wife was working with Steele and got a ham radio license during the campaign. Either she suddenly got an itch for this after 50 years, or she was trying to evade surveillance.
I think Strtok was making a dumb joke that falls flat without facial expression / intonation. There’s no credible way he could have seriously thought that, that I can see.
The Strzok thing is small potatoes until Mueller tries to indict Trump on “Trumped up” charges. It’s a bigger issue with the Clinton investigation which hopefully doesn’t matter any more. For now it is just another brick in the wall that too many people in DC are irrationally anti-Trump and are likely incapable of an unbiased investigation. Mueller is going to need a smoking gun that is nuclear hot to get past the political threshold for taking Trump down. I fully expect partisan investigations to result in partisan outcomes. At least Mueller kicked Strzok off the investigation, but not being transparent about why it happened doesn’t look good.
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There are far too many people in DC that think it would be heroic to take down the opposition’s President. I was no fan of Obama but never contemplated taking him down by any means necessary.
Taking out Trump would likely backfire politically in a huge way, be careful what you wish for.
.
It is a bit mysterious why anyone would be reading their texts to begin with. What prompted someone to do that, and what probably cause did they have?
Mark, Strzok is being described as the key figure in getting a FISA warrant against Trump. Is this the insurance policy?
> why anyone would be reading their texts
The DOJ IG is doing an investigation, and there is an investigation into leaks. I’ve seen one report suggest that CNN’s fake story about Donald Jr getting the Wikileaks ahead of time was actually a sting operation against leakers, putting in a different date in each copy.
mark bofill,
I have seen a claim about the Alabama Senate election that I wonder if you could comment on. It is that there were three viable candidates in the Republican primary: Moore, Strange, and a solid conservative Congressman. The last might well have been able to beat Moore in a runoff, but the national party establishment threw their support behind Strange. The result was that Strange, who appears to have also been a deeply flawed candidate, was able to make it into a runoff in which he could not beat Moore. Is there any validity to that? Or is it just rewriting history?
MikeN,
“sting operation against leakers, putting in a different date in each copy”
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That makes total sense. It seemed so strange multiple sources couldn’t read a date. If they find the leaker, string them up and quarter them. Leaking with impunity has gotten out of control.
So, what I remember from the primary – Mo Brooks, Luther Strange, and Roy Moore. I don’t know what the popular consensus is, but I’ve always thought Mo was a bit of a weasel. He acquitted himself well in that shooting incident in Washington not all that long ago though. Sometimes I’m a little too critical of politicians.
Anyways – yes, that’s basically correct. The first round weeded out Mo and a bunch of others. The runoff eliminated Luther Strange.
Luther seemed to have been tarnished a little by speculation about making a deal with Bentley (who was forced out with his own scandal recently); letting Bentley off the hook for Sessions seat. I don’t know if I’d call Luther Strange the establishment candidate… Trump endorsed him. Is Trump establishment now in Alabama’s eyes? I wouldn’t have thought so.
I didn’t do my homework at the time and didn’t understand what Roy Moore was. I got busy around runoff time. If I had, I would’ve spent time and energy (in what doubtless would have been a futile) effort to support Luther Strange.
I get the sense Moore was extremely strong in Alabama. I thought it was more that than the fact that Luther was flawed. Religion is awfully important down here.
Hope this helps!
Mike N.,
That could well be. I hadn’t thought about it that way.
Disclaimer – 166192 contains my opinions. Nothing really qualifies me to opine in particular. I live in Alabama, but. Not like I’m connected with the movers and shakers in the Republican party or anything like that. Not even particularly well connected to the community. I know my neighbors slightly. 🙂 That’s about it. I’ve had firsthand experience of the importance of religion here though, even in Huntsville among all the scientists and engineers. It matters whether or not one goes to church here. I’m an atheist, but I went to church regularly for awhile for the social benefit of my kids. Painful lesson learned with my eldest girl, who I had to take out of middle school and homeschool largely because we didn’t understand yet that one couldn’t really be an open unbeliever in Huntsville. But anyway.
I remember all of the incessant commercials now. It was Mo Brooks who was painted as the establishment candidate. He bet against Trump and lost; Luther Strange ran a commercial endlessly of Mo warning voters that they’d pay a price for voting for Trump or something. Mo talking to reporters about how Trump would lose and voting for him was a mistake. I forget exactly how it went, but he bet wrong on camera and Luther made him pay bigly for it.
I told my daughter to be careful talking about religion in Alabama. Don’t disrespect people who go to church.
Mitch McConnell spent millions attacking Brooks. Despite what he said about Trump, he was the most Trumpian candidate in the primary, and unacceptable to the Establishment.
End result was McConnell & Co, spent about ten million attacking Brooks, then attacking Moore in the runoff, then a few hundred thousand attacking Jones, and ended up with one less Republican seat. If they had done nothing, they would have had Senator Mo Brooks instead of Strange, and ten million in the bank which is probably the difference in a few seats next year.
IG’s office reported that they got the texts as part of their investigation into the Hillary e-mail investigation.
MikeN,
Yeah. It was sort of a comedic tragedy in hindsight.
I imagine if a judge saw the kind of favoritism shown in those texts for a criminal defendant’s jury or judge then a new trial would be ordered. It may be impossible to get a fair jury for Trump. I have no desire to see the HRC issue rehashed again. Getting beat by Trump was the ultimate punishment she could have endured.
Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get me. I’ve got a tinfoil hat and I’m not afraid to use it.
.
This story slipped by me:
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/08/homeland-security-tied-to-attempted-hack-of-georgias-election-database-report.html
.
WTF is going on in our government.
.
[Edit: Oh, I understand the idea of scanning for vulnerabilities. It’s usually customary to secure the agreement and cooperation of the target being security assessed before starting. Prevents … misunderstandings.]
Hillary is still wearing a surgical boot. I guess broken toes take longer to heel when they are broken while running down stairs in heels carrying coffee.
Meh, disregard 166206
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/26/federal-review-debunks-georgia-election-hack-accus/
Tom Scharf,
“Getting beat by Trump was the ultimate punishment she could have endured.”
.
Nah, jail time, which I think she clearly deserved, would be much worse. The good news is that the sexual harassment typhoon has apparently driven the Clintons underground, meaning I don’t have to listen to reports of her stinking drivel. That has real value in maintaining my sanity. 😉
Ladbrokes is now offering 4-6 on the coldest December on record, with 4-9 on a wintry flurry on Christmas Day.
–
Lucia should take her maths skills into the betting field on some of this climate stuff.
Amazing how the warming pushes all that cold air down south.
Jim got me a St. Lucia’s Day present. It looks like this:
https://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-chic-home-sherpa-lined-hoodie-robe
Looks cozy!
It is. And very useful when global warming sends cold air down to Chicago! Or even when it’s cold without the benefit of global warming.
Opinion piece by Theresa May in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/12/theresa-may-uk-green-economy
Confirms phase-out of coal plants in Britain by 2025.
Owen (Comment #166216): “Confirms phase-out of coal plants in Britain by 2025.”
So I guess they will have to greatly increase imports of gas and/or electricity. Any idea from where?
Mike,
Nope. They’ll get it from solar! In a few years it’ll be too cheap to meter! And wind! And when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing they’ll use energy stored in elastic bands! Lots and lots of them.
It’ll be glorious.
It’s easy to say you’re going to close them, but when it’s time and there’s not enough generating capacity, they won’t be. May will be long gone by then. Generating capacity has been a game of kick it down the road and wishful thinking for quite a while now.
DaveJR,
Scotland has already closed all coal plants and electricity production from coal in Britain in 2016 has dropped to 1/3 of its 2012 value. See https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/09/britains-last-coal-power-plants-to-close-by-2025
When South Australia closed its coal plants they had to bring in deisal generators.
Britain can do the same Currently they are building a new nuclear plant, have a few older nuclear plants around and import nuclear energy the excess from French plants, cheap at moment but when the lose their coal production the French will shoot the price up through the ceiling, as one would.
Fun and games, children only learn from being burnt by fire if the adults go missing.
There seems to be a flaw in the CO2 ECS for a doubling of CO2.
Arrhenius also said it would go down by 4 degrees for every halving of CO2.
One could halve the value numerous times and get an impossible temperature drop
DeWitt, what am I missing, is there some sort of boundary condition to prevent this?
angech,
Eventually the emission altitude will reach the Earth’s surface. Then the dependence of forcing on concentration will change.
angech,
Ummmm… The Aussies are not importing electric power from the French.
angech,
What Mike M. said. 1. at a low enough concentration, the relationship is linear, not logarithmic. 2. if we say the GHE raises the surface temperature 33 degrees, that would be slightly more than eight doublings, 2^8 = 256. If we use the pre-industrial level of 280 ppmv, 280/256 = 1.1 ppmv. That’s well below the level where the effect is linear, not to mention that the atmospheric absorption/emission would be difficult to measure at that level.
SteveF,
The ‘they’ in the above sentence obviously refers to the UK, not Australia.
Owen,
.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/14/winter-electricity-blackouts-risk-recedes-says-national-grid
.
“The Grid’s capacity margin, the cushion between electricity demand and supply, has risen to 6.6%, beating its summer prediction of 5.5%. The buffer zone is also well ahead of last year’s “tight but manageable†5.1%, which was the lowest in a decade.
.
In its annual winter outlook, the firm that operates the UK’s electricity transmission network said it expects average peak demand of 52.7GW during cold weather, with 55GW of supply capacity available.
.
The improved position is partly down to a reprieve for the Eggborough coal power plant in North Yorkshire, which was due to shut down before the winter but will stay partly operational until March 2017.”
.
Eggborough coal plant didn’t close in March 2017 and is still operational.
Mike M, DeWitt thanks.
“Eventually the emission altitude will reach the Earth’s surface. Then the dependence of forcing on concentration will change.”
–
I knew that there should be a catch somewhere.
–
“The British are the energy importers from France.
Usually.
Tricastin, one of France’s biggest nuclear power stations, was closed by the French regulator in September
The plant’s reactors make up four of 19 currently offline in the French nuclear power industry,
The operators of Britain’s eight remaining coal power stations appear to have stepped in to exploit higher French prices, exporting power across the channel as temperatures have plunged”
11/18/2017 if I have my American right.
Amazing to think only 8 power stations of coal left if correct reporting.
–
My wife forbids comments on the [cosy] robe.
Some people here may be interested in some of the recent happenings at Penn State, the home of Michael Mann. A Kuwaiti student at PSU stated to Laura Loomer: ““Get the f*** out of my country you disgusting subhuman piece of garbage, death to America.â€
“Not all Yanks are bad of course, here are some good ones,†he wrote, including a photo of caskets of dead American troops.
“Can’t wait for Trump to permanently cripple your country, 9/11 didn’t kill enough of you f**ke*s,†Altarakmah stated. “Hope Iran nukes your country.
Although the person to whom the remarks were directed, Laura Loomer, has a checkered history, the Kuwaiti did make the hateful statements about the United States.
The Kuwaiti offered a non-apology for the remarks stating:”“I do regrets the comments I made. And I apologize if they offended you,†See http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/12/penn-state-exchange-student-apologizes-for-comments-that-sparked-campus-investigation/
…..
The student’s statements violated PSU’s policies which state: “It is the policy of the University to maintain an environment free of harassment and free of discrimination against any person because of age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, creed, service in the uniformed services (as defined in state and federal law), veteran status, sex, sexual orientation, marital or family status, pregnancy, pregnancy-related conditions, physical or mental disability, gender, perceived gender, gender identity, genetic information or political ideas. Discriminatory conduct and harassment, as well as sexual misconduct and relationship violence, violates the dignity of individuals, impedes the realization of the University’s educational mission, and will not be tolerated.” http://www.psu.edu/dept/aaoffice/statements.htm
…..
Nonetheless PSU is not disciplining the student at all. There was a long thread at a PSU football site, which can be accessed here: https://bwi.forums.rivals.com/threads/laura-loomer-pulling-a-clay-travis-vs-psu.194905/page-3
JD
PSU has another incident resulting from ignoring things, a hazing death this year:
https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/hazing-in-america/penn-state-hazing-death-grand-jury-report-highlights-school-s-n829991
Apparently they learned nothing from the sex abuse scandal. It’s still hear no evil, see no evil.
JD Ohio –
Although that individual’s opinions are vile, I detest university “speech codes”.
I suspect that his visa will be revoked (or not renewed) by the feds, who should consider him a terrorism risk.
Here is what happens when an American makes reasonable criticisms of Islam.
”
Officials allegedly said it could be ‘harassing,’ told him to observe ‘social cues’
A Missouri high school that suspended a student for making critical comments about Islamic extremism says he’s not allowed to appeal the finding of wrongdoing.
JD
Senior Alex Lonsdale, a member of Liberty High’s nationally ranked debate club, says he was just trying to have a friendly debate.
During his free period Oct. 17 at the public school near Kansas City, Lonsdale joined a spontaneous conversation among acquaintances about the nature of Islam.
He told The College Fix in a phone call Monday that he pointed to pro-terrorist sentiment among British Muslims, as indicated in polls by ICM Research for the 2016 Channel 4 documentary “What British Muslims Really Think.†The program was presented by the former chair of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips.
A Muslim sophomore also in the debate club, Faraz Pervaiz, allegedly challenged Lonsdale’s viewpoint on account of his own religious beliefs. …
School officials told him his behavior could be considered “harassing†or “hounding†and that Lonsdale should be conscious of “social cues,†according to Lonsdale.
He said they accused him of “‘creating an emotionally unsafe zone.’
https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/39777/
Cross posted from PSU site
Harold W: “I detest university “speech codesâ€.
I suspect that his visa will be revoked (or not renewed) by the feds, who should consider him a terrorism risk.”
Absolutely nothing is being done to the Kuwaiti. You can check the comments on the PSU site. You make a good point about speech codes, but the Kuwaiti’s posts can easily be interpreted as threats. In any event, legally, it is easier to penalize him for the Code of Conduct violation as opposed to revoking his visa.
What is really galling, is his non-apology. “If I have offended anyone…”
JD
Speech codes are bad. A double standard on enforcing those codes is even worse. Unfortunately, that’s what we have now.
There’s definitely a double standard for speech on college campuses. However it is a gift that keeps on giving for the right, so it’s OK to point out hypocrisy but I wouldn’t call for equivalent speech codes, that is a trap. You kind of expect students to misbehave, it is when faculty do the same thing that I start wondering what is going on.
JD –
Thanks for the link to the Lonsdale case. An excellent — if that’s the correct word — example of why I hate speech codes. I hope the administration rethinks its attitude toward free political expression, but that would require a fortitude which seems to be in short supply in current times.
Scharf: “There’s definitely a double standard for speech on college campuses. However it is a gift that keeps on giving for the right, so it’s OK to point out hypocrisy but I wouldn’t call for equivalent speech codes,”
….
Another view, and the one I lean towards, is that if Codes were equally enforced on both sides, they may go away. I would add that there is a serious legal element of threats and stalking that partially takes this matter out of a pure speech code issue.
JD
It is telling that free speech is the very first thing that got put into the constitution. The Supreme Court has been quite unforgiving with speech codes.
One can imagine in our current political environment how speech codes would reverse every time one party obtained power. Realistically it is social mob shaming that is the biggest threat to free speech right now, not the government.
It is telling that free speech is the very first thing that got put into the constitution.
Say rather into the amendments–though there was not a long gap between ratification and those amendments, all considered. It was certainly a contentious issue during ratification–I’m partway through this book, which suggests that the absence of a bill of rights was one of the most common objections, and maybe the most common objection, to the main body of the Constitution.
(And the argument wasn’t between people who disagreed on the importance of free speech. It was between people who thought the federal government already lacked the power to infringe free speech or other rights, so that no such amendment was needed, and others who feared the contrary.)
Realistically it is social mob shaming that is the biggest threat to free speech right now, not the government.
If I remember, the Supreme Court recognizes a world of difference between the two–for example, in striking down a “Stolen Valor” statute, saying that public shaming by private citizens was a valid alternative to getting the government involved.
If this is the case, I agree that it’s much different. When social mob shaming gets out of hand, it loses it’s edge. Climate denier? Sure, you can call me that – don’t care. Deplorable? Yup; proud to be a Deplorable. I got a T-shirt that says so. So on.
[Edit: the government on the other hand is powerful enough that it can’t be ignored – have my stuff/money taken, lock me up, so on.]
JosephW,
Off topic: One thing puzzles me a lot, and maybe you can comment; law enforcement agencies use ‘civil forfeiture’ to sieze property when someone is suspected to be involved in criminal activity. My head scratching on this is that this process seems completely contrary to due process, and I can’t understand why these statutes have not been voided by Federal courts. Care to comment?
Civil forfeiture is completely crazy. Not being charged with a crime and the govt taking your stuff. If you hire a lawyer and prove you aren’t guilty then maybe you can get it back.
.
I understand why they want it, to catch drug dealers that never come in contact with their drugs. Report to the IRS an income of $30K and get caught with $200K in cash, a bit suspicious. But just because it’s hard to catch them doesn’t mean you can just throw out the rule book.
.
Drug dealers responded by leasing their cars instead, thus they didn’t own them to be seized.
.
The WP covered this in depth here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize
SteveF: ” My head scratching on this is that this process seems completely contrary to due process, and I can’t understand”
Exactly my reaction. You could google “civil forfeiture” and find cases dealing with it. Probably best is googling “Supreme Court cases dealing civil forfeiture.” My memory is that Sessions supports this. ugh.
JD
Tom,
It has always seemed to me that civil forfeiture is something that is unconstitutional. Perhaps seizing could be justified if ordered by a court with suitable jurisdiction. Another prudent limitation might be specific causes: drug smuggling, child prostitution, etc. To circumvent due process for someone who disagrees with an IRS interpretation of law seems way over the top.
Mob shaming is completely legal and is the correct way to handle differences in most cases. I think it has become a bit of a moral panic lately and the mobs have too much power. The firing of the Google engineer, ugh. The canning of a few people for harassment without any due process. There are exactly zero standards in the current panic on harassment which leads to a career death penalty. Not to mention it has also become a retroactive (non) standard covering decades.
.
You cannot just blindly believe accusations. This leads to Duke lacrosse and UVA cases. Do women want equality or not? How about equality of due process for all people? I can’t believe this stuff hasn’t been struck down by the Supreme Court yet. It’s not even a close call as far as I can tell.
SteveF — I haven’t worked with or studied civil forfeiture, so I don’t have anything worthwhile to say about it. (I know a little about criminal forfeiture but that is a different ball of wax–you get your due process in the criminal process before the assets are forfeited.)
Tom Scharf — In the generality, the law doesn’t (and shouldn’t) prevent you from firing employees even for really bad reasons…unless there’s a specific statute that regulates it.
You can’t discriminate in firing based on race, national origin, sex, religion, etc. under the Civil Rights Act of 1964; or because employees take medical leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA); or because they serve in the Reserves/National Guard under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA); but you can fire anyone you darn well please for saying things that disturb your company’s PC wa. That leaves the Supreme Court nothing to act on in cases like the Google engineer’s.
Tom,
Idk. Got mixed ideas about it. The Google engineer had to know he was walking onto a minefield. Otoh, I don’t doubt that there are cases where innocent people get ruined. But life is like that in lots of ways. Is it really out of hand in this specific area, or is it just that it’s getting lots of attention right now. Not sure.
Tom Scharf (Comment #166252): “Mob shaming is completely legal …”
True.
.
Tom Scharf: “… and is the correct way to handle differences in most cases.”
No. Mob shaming is never the correct way to handle mere differences of opinion although it does have a limited role in maintaining social norms.
.
Tom Scharf: “I think it has become a bit of a moral panic lately and the mobs have too much power.”
Which is why mob shaming is generally a bad idea; it leads to mob rule.
News of the day: Congress has (finally) done what Justice John Roberts should have done in 2012: blatant coercion of individuals by the Federal Government in health care… the ‘individual mandate’… is gone. The SC decision most destructive to personal liberty since Kelo V New London is now moot.
.
The camel’s nose (or was it the donkey’s nose?) was in the tent, but has now been firmly kicked out. Let the wailing among “progressives” begin. The appropriate reply to their howls is “elections have consequences”.
Tom Scharf,
Notably, those are cases where the government actors were pursuing things.
I think generally speaking businesses need to retain the right to fire people “without due process”. Does this mean people will sometimes be canned for harassment w/o said process? Yes. They may also be canned for shorting the register w/o said process and so on. Or they may be canned for constantly being late without the business instituting a “due process”. Or they may just be canned for being incompetent without “due process”.
But the alternative is that businesses get wound up in red tape when they are pretty sure they have a good reason to fire someone.
It’s true we need some limits so we don’t see things like all Jews being fired when a company is taken over by a new business entity who doesn’t like Jews. But generally speaking, I think companies shouldn’t be forced to set up arbitrary “judicial” like processes. Due process is required of our legal system. We need to think carefully about general demands for “due process” in hiring and firing.
Lucia,
With large companies at least, there is usually very careful documentation of behaviors which justify dismissal. Which is not to say there are never summary discharges, but usually that is either because someone relatively high up has a burr under their saddle, or is just a jerk (sadly, altogether too often). Summary discharges are more likely for people above first line managers, no doubt because their superiors demand unquestioned loyalty along with task success. I have seen summary discharges that led to lawsuits and significant out of court cash settlements, especially when the discharge was unexpected based on past performance evaluations. Big companies have much to lose, and tend to be careful with documentation, and yes, even bureaucratic in discharging people. Where a union is involved discharges are extremel difficult unless the employee committed felonies on company time.
SteveF,
I agree. Companies do stuff to protect themselves. Also, sometimes they have actual contractual agreements with individuals or unions– which clearly they must follow. There also are some actual laws (as listed by Joseph W). Obviously, to the extent their contracts with employees stipulate some sort of “due process” or actual laws need to be adhered to, they need to make sure the manner of firing people don’t cause them liability.
But my view is that no one should actually suggest all this rigomorole should some how be required or that it is actually a good thing. I think the ideal is that companies ought to be able to fire without lots of “due process” in many cases.
In the case of the guy at Google: if his contract didn’t protect him and he wasn’t fired for an actual illegal reason, I don’t buy into anyone’s claim there should be some sort of “due process” before he was fired.
Lucia,
SteveF’s observations agree with my experience. The larger the organization, the more likely the dismissal process will be highly bureaucratized.
.
After considerable time wasted educating human resource people so that they might better understand why a problem person’s technical acumen was insufficient to stay at our place and listening to all the crap about helping them grow, etc, etc, I started firing miscreants on the spot.
.
After one of these episodes, I got two calls within a couple of minutes, one from human resources demanding that I appear before the director, and minutes later one from the managing partner telling me that whatever I’d done was fine with him especially if it angered the GD’mned human resource “person” (not the word he used).
.
One of the greatest delights of retirement is that the BS level is well below my threshold of pain. And I suppose thinking about the wonderful meal I’m going to treat SteveF to when Trump is still in office in early 2021.
Lucia: “I think generally speaking businesses need to retain the right to fire people “without due processâ€
I agree with this generally. I think that what bothers many people is how quickly many accused people just go away. I have been reading closely, and looking for strong denials. I virtually never see them, so I strongly suspect that the charges are true and provable. If you are wrongly accused of harassment, you potentially have breach of contract arguments and for sure, have a good defamation claim.
It doesn’t appear that many people have been wrongly accused. For instance, Kevin Spacey’s career has been totally ruined. If the charges were false, he would be vigorously fighting them.
For a long time, I have considered Hollywood to be a sewer. It appears that it is worse than I thought.
JD
Lucia,
The legal risk for a company is they set up HR ‘system’s with clear protocols for performance evaluations. These are explained clearly to employees, and participation in the process is obligatory. These systems are no doubt in place to avoid prosecutions under state and Federal laws (anri-discrimination, etc). So when a formal system is in place, there is an implicit ‘contract’ with employees, which I think JDOhio was hinting at. Firing an incompetent is usually difficult under these circumstances. Summary discharge? Legal risk.
My experience at a large corporation was that it was too hard to fire an incompetent and too easy to “downsize” good people.
After one downsizing episode, HR actually bragged about the fairness, because the company’s demographics remained the same.
Clearly, that means they targeted some victims based on…well…”demographics”.
John M, demographics was it? akkkk.
I liked how a quasi-government organization where I once worked dealt with a “forced-upon-them” downsizing. They called it a “reduction in force”. There was a very high likelihood that it would not be fair, that genuinely useful people would be reduced, and (gasp) there might be Unjust Termination lawsuits.
.
I think they needed to send about 100 people on their way out of 2500 workforce. Some genius hit on the idea of checking resumes for fraud. It worked, although they discovered quite a few more than 100 fabricated vitas among the professional and semi-professional staff.
.
i would never thought of the possibility that the demographics of the place might have been distored by this action. I suppose someone did.
.
It did help explain why a couple of the HVAC engineers seemed to have such a tenuous grasp of the wonders of the psychrometric chart.
.
I always wondered how they dealt with the HR people who had signed off on checking their original applications.
SteveF,
Sure. I haven’t been trying to suggest that “due process” doesn’t happen at companies. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think there’s any justification in people outside a company complaining there was not enough “due process” in a particular instance.
Of course an individual who was fired will have a claim if the company violated its own contract with that individual or if the company violated a law. In that case, they can file a suit and take it up with the courts. Of course this will make companies take pains to follow any processes they are required to follow as a result of the contracts the company entered into.
But none of that justified a complaint about insufficient “due process” from someone outside the company and not employed by the company. If a company’s contractual obligations did not create a need for some sort of lengthy “due process”, and they did not violate any law, I say bully for them.
This sort of came up with someone saying something about “due process” with the google-guy. WRT to the google-guy’s firing: If he has a legal leg to stand on with Google, of course he should sue and perhaps win. I suspect he won’t. Either way I’m not going to complain Google’s process wasn’t involved enough for me. My view is that generally speaking, outsiders should not be inflicting excess “due process” on hiring or firing decisions.
j ferguson,
While I was at PNNL, they had a downsizing. I can’t remember the details of how it was structured, but to some extent it was that almost anyone was eligible to take the downsizing package. One also had to make a decision relatively quickly (so you didn’t have a year to float resumes.)
The majority of those who to the voluntary severance seem to be:
1) Unmarried so the decision was not complicated by the need for two people to find jobs relatively quickly.
2) In technical jobs of a sort and level where they could count getting jobs in industry with a degree of ease. At a government lab, this generally meant people who were not in ‘line management’, but also people in things like engineering, computer science and so on who could get non-research, non-academic jobs. (Industry does not view ‘line management’ at labs as similar to management in industry because it isn’t similar.)
3) Did not own homes so the decision was not complicated by the need to sell a house.
4) Had enough years that the severance package had a reasonable wad of money in it. This meant people there more than a few years.
The net effect seemed to be that the people who left seemed to be disproportionately those with 5-10 years experience in CS or engineering. No one at any level of line management seemed to leave. As far as I can tell, no one who had the reputation of the “retired on active duty” left.
One of the guys in our group who left was rehired by PNNL within a year. At least two people who did not leave were axed for various and sundry reasons within two.
Lucia,
“…claim if the company violated its own contract with that individual or if the company violated a law. In that case, they can file a suit and take it up with the courts.”
.
It is more than that. The existence of a formal ‘system’ of performance evaluation (which is pretty much required to avoid the risk of class action lawsuits by those fired for incompetence) sets the company up for a lawsuit after almost any summary discharge (that is, a discharge not extensively documented for poor performance). I have seen more than one such lawsuit. The point is that in the actual environment where larger companies operate, summary discharges present substantial legal risk.
.
Which doesn’t mean summary discharges don’t happen, they do. They just tend to be costly for the company.
Lucia,
PNNL? Near Hanford?
John,
Yes in Washington.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_Liljegren
.
I suspect she may not be able to tell the sex of an Atlantic black sea bass…
Yep.
I cannot tell the sex of any fish.
Lucia,
How about guppies? ☺
I’ve never owned a guppy…. Is there an obvious difference?
…. goes to google…
SteveF (Comment #166267)
Whatever the risk was, the Human Resources departments considered it a major risk and thus the discharges had to be very carefully handled. A new hire as I recall is readily subject to summary discharge early in their work period. Obviously at that point there are no records of performance evaluation that might run counter to the dismissal actions.
Reduction in forces would appear to soften the requirements for dismissal, but still presented legal issues as to age discrimination – or sex, but mainly age. Unfortunately this could lead to an aging work force where talented new (and younger) hires would be lost in a reduction in forces. In order to prepare for these reductions in forces the periodic evaluations had to be more realistic and particularly so for longer time employees who might not be performing to earlier levels. This could be a difficult process for those timid managers who had to inform the older employee that their skills were slipping or were previously over rated or were not keeping up with newer employees. This was particularly a rough situation for a manager and employee who went from a coddled position to one where more honest evaluations were required.
All,
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyful Festivus, etc!
I should have added: May you all win Major Awards. Everyone be careful not to shoot your eye out tomorrow.
“Deck us all with Boston Charlie.”
Comments are closed.