Merry Christmas to all. Well… unless you are in California where, evidently, you can’t go to religious services indoors!
My best X-mas present for the day is Mom has finally decided to move in with my little sister! Yay!
710 thoughts on “Merry Christmas, 2020!”
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Merry Xmas to everyone, especially those that are wrong about everything, ha ha!
Noel!
Merry Christmas.
Tom Scharf (Comment #195894)
December 24th, 2020 at 1:25 pm
Merry Xmas to everyone, especially those that are wrong about everything, ha ha!
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A Merry Christmas to you too,Tom, and all the others here at The Blackboard.
Best wishes to all for a healthy and happy holiday season.
And Happy New Year! Be well. Seek truth.
Happy new year to all (it surely has to be better at least) and thanks for all the instructive perspectives from everyone.
Happy New Year!!! May everyone who wants a vaccine get one. 🙂
Happy New Year!
At least all your pets probably had the best year ever!
If you want a somewhat grim laugh, go to worldometers.info and pull up North Dakota. Then click on the ‘Projections’ link and compare the actual data to the IHME model. Needless to say, the IHME model is still out to lunch. Admittedly, they haven’t updated since 12/23/2020, but still. They clearly have their models biased to favor lockdowns.
Am I missing the graph which shows observed vs projection? I only see projection tacked onto the end of observed.
DaveJR,
Nope, you aren’t missing anything. They’re obviously projecting a post-holiday surge. When they do update, they won’t show before and after. That would be too embarrassing.
My Dad got vaccinated in WV today, he is 87. That’s a relief.
Curiously WV is leading the country in vaccine distribution.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations
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So the US has vaccinated around 1% of the population in a few weeks. I’m not surprised this effort is in chaos at the moment (slower than “expected” rollout), standard government procedure. They will get their sh** together in a month or so is my guess. In WV they used a local civic center that seats 50,000 for the effort. It might be wise to use the same drive-thru setup they have for testing for vaccinations.
IHME shows ND with over 2700 new cases per day in mid-December. Actual was under 400/day. And 1600 now, compared to a little over 200. Deaths are at 17/day compared to reality of 3/day. Sad.
Tom Scharf,
Unfortunately, drive-thru is a non-starter. There’s too much risk of an allergic reaction. You need to wait at least 15 minutes in a place where they are prepared to deal with that. A severe allergic reaction, like anaphylaxis, generally shows up quickly.
Mike M.,
IHME is where the news goes when they want to inject more Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt into their COVID coverage. They can always count on it. Of course it doesn’t matter to them that the IHME projections rarely pan out.
I expected disorganization at the start. On the one hand, it makes sense for states to organize distribution. On the other hand, there is so much politics in prioritizing and that leads to a tendency to over complicate things and also makes communication difficult. It also makes individuals who need to distribute worry about “the rules” and makes others uncertain if they qualify.
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My health provider did push out some announcements that are long winded, but the key things are:
1) Don’t phone us to ask information. (We are overwhelmed…)
2) Reply and tell us if you want to be on the list of people who want the vaccine.
3) If you do want vaccine, tell us if you want us to text you email you or phone you.
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I replied to (2) and (3) but almost didn’t because there was a huge amount of other verbiage about the safety of the vaccine, the dangers of covid yada, yada. I’m last on the list. I know better than to call my doctor… they would be flooded with messages. Right now, it’s limited to medical workers and really old people.
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I continue with my nasal spray. . .
They are definitely doing drive-thru vaccination in some counties in FL. Pasco county north of me is drive-thru only. The rest are TBD, but most are saying appt. mandatory. Pasco also says you don’t have to be a resident to get vaccinated, but you must stay around for the 2nd shot.
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“ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
You will need to bring the following to your appointment:
Completed Department of Health COVID-19 Vaccine Screening and Consent Form
Registration confirmation number
Valid form of identification (driver’s license, passport, etc.)
Print and keep Emergency Use Authorization and Notice of Privacy Practices
This is a drive-thru only. Please follow prompts on-site and do not exit your vehicle unless asked to do so by staff.”
A local hospital announced that they could schedule appointments for the vaccine for ‘recent patients’ over 65. The phone lines were jammed. One person told me they got an appointment after 3 hours on hold. Apparently the available doses are now spoken for.
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I’ll wait a few weeks for things to calm down.
SteveF,
At least the made appointments. People who are willing to wait 3 hours on hold are very motivated. I’m fine with them getting it first!
California has finally demonstrated the efficacy of lockdowns and multiple other draconian restrictions… except for the powerful, of course, who have no restrictions. Today, California’s draconian restrictions produced a 7 day rolling average death count of 330…. and rising. The greatest thing is that this abject failure of restrictive policies will not even be reported by the MSM.
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In addition to the California travesty, there is a special place in Hell reserved for Governor Cuomo, who’s endless economic destruction has produced the second highest death rate in the country, and one now rapidly rising (again), even as restrictions become ever more economically damaging. Lemme see… you kill multiple thousands of elderly by forcing nursing homes to admit active covid 19 patients, then you do your best to destroy small businesses of all kinds, while you oversee a rising death rate in another surge. You are then hailed a saintly hero by the dishonest MSM. The MSM is simply evil
I was watching, well my wife was watching and I sort of paid attention, to one of the Sunday morning news shows and they had some MD on telling us how to keep your brain healthy. One of the things he said was to not eat red meat. Does anyone know why red meat is supposed to be evil? I haven’t been able to find anything on the web that makes any sense. It seems to me that this is a meme that developed a long time ago and has now become dogma.
I now discount any dietary recommendations that include avoiding red meat. Based on a review article I saw, I don’t think we actually know much of anything about which foods to eat or not to eat other than too many calories and not enough activity will make you fat and too few calories will also cause problems.
DeWitt,
No idea why red meat is supposed to be bad for your brain! I tend to ignore nutritional “experts” on Sunday morning news shows!! They tend to contradict each other and honestly, beyond the obvious (eat a varied diet including lots of vegetables, not too much highly processed stuff) I don’t think they know much.
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I don’t eat enough veggies and I eat too much processed stuff. Especially chocolate.
SteveF,
Wrt CA lockdowns, I did see an essay in our local paper today about Los Angeles, which is the epicenter of COVID-19 in CA. Let me see if I can find a link.
Here.
DeWitt,
Maybe a few in California will begin to realize that much of the destruction has been for no good reason. Truth is, California represents the worst of the USA response to the virus writ large: elite workers need never leave their homes, and work remotely, and never risk infection, while working class people, providing all the food/services/infrastructure enjoyed by those elites, do risk infection…. not to mention all those non-elite workers simply put out of work by draconian policies.
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Will we learn from this sorry episode what not to do in the future? I fear not.
DeWitt,
“Does anyone know why red meat is supposed to be evil?”
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I know exactly why: id!otic quacks can make nonsensical pronouncements without any need for actual evidence. Here is the actual argument: Raising animals for meat is “ecologically wasteful”, not to mention utterly immoral and cruel. And obviously causes global warming, along with many other problems, none of which need be proven, or even rationally connected. Vegans, greens, and lefties want to rule! (much overlap in that Venn diagram)
Re: DeWitt Payne (Comment #196264)
The classic USDA food pyramid guidelines certainly are outdated. From what I’ve read, high (not very processed) carb, low fat diets are generally OK e.g. whole foods plant-based diets. Low carb, high fat diets are generally OK unless one’s genotype is that of a hyper-absorber of dietary cholesterol e.g. keto diets. The high fat diet combined with high (processed) carbs however generally does not appear to be OK. All calories do not appear to be equal from an insulin-centric blood sugar stabilization perspective or from their influence on lipid parameters (particle size, particle count etc.). Also at the individual level, there are exceptions to every rule. You might find discussions of these issues in Peter Attia’s blog interesting.
RB,
Yup, like I said, quackery.
SteveF,
But that argument would apply to all animals, not just the grazers like cows, deer and horses, i.e. red meat. Calves that haven’t been weaned, i.e. veal, don’t have red meat, does that count? Yes, I know the animal cruelty argument goes double for veal.
And grass fed cows who aren’t fattened in a feed lot on corn and soybeans are not ecologically wasteful. They usually don’t taste as good, though.
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To the contrary, I believe red meat is quite beneficial for brain health.
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In 2013, I started having chest pains, got scared. I stumbled on some advice centered around a low carb diet and used it to lose a considerable amount of weight ( and eliminate the chest pains ).
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I’m now fairly convinced that the process was not necessarily the low-carb aspect, though I was quite motivated to follow it, but that ANY concerted effort means an elevation to consciousness. Eating is often subconscious or at a low level of cognition. So any diet that makes you think about what you’re eating may have benefits.
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Red meat includes lots of things brains need. Vegans are often deficient in B-12 and other B vitamins necessary for neurological function. Red meat includes a broad array of amino acids, many of which are necessary pre-cursors to make neurotransmitters and hormones, not to mention repair muscles, skin, hair. Further, the grass fed and finished beef contains higher amounts of omega-3 fatty acid which is found mostly in the brain.
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Part of the problem is not so much categorical constituency ( plant versus animal ), but rather the the protein-versus-energy.
That’s the thesis of Dr. Ted Naiman.
He has a book entitled the PE Diet which refers to the ‘protein to energy’ diet. Given that ‘sarcopenia’ ( muscle loss ) seems to occur with age in concert with increased stored fat, a measure of health is determined by eating enough protein and less ‘energy’. My personal take on this is perhaps NE diet ( Nutrients to Energy ) might be more broadly accurate. Protein is a necessary nutrient. About 50 grams a day are necessary just for skin-hair-nails-hormone replacement – more for muscle building and muscle maintaining.
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One thing to consider while eating meat is eating ‘nose-to-tail’. We tend to eat muscle meat, but paleo people probably ate much more of the animal. The liver stores many vitamins and nutrients, so not surprisingly, eating animal livers provides a lot of nutrition. The flavor of liver can be quite strong, but I’ve discovered that it is oxidized liver so I: cut the sliced frozen liver into cubes WHILE STILL FROZEN and soak it in lemon juice before pan frying it for 1-minute and adding it to my lunchtime stew – not nearly so strong. Liver is SO dense in bio-available vitamin A that one must be careful not to eat too much ( I have 4 ounces over a week ).
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Another aspect of ‘nose-to-tail’ is collagen. Evidently, the amino acid ‘glycine’ is used in a number of important processes, but something we eat less of. Glycine can be synthesized from other aminos, but doing so increases the need for more total aminos. Eating chicken skin and fish skin can help. Ground beef probably has a lot of sinews in it also.
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One source for lots of this info is the Ph.D. Nutritionist, Dr. Chris Masterjohn. He knows the chemistry quite well. He advocates a varied omnivorous diet. He was a vegan but realized the shortcoming of eating only veg. There’s also probably shortcoming from eating only meat.
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Supposedly, deficiencies in Americans are
Vitamins A, C, D, and E and Calcium, Potassium, Magnesium and Iron.
Probably also, folate, choline and glycine.
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Veggies are important for Vitamin C & E, potassium, magnesium, and folate.
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Meat/fish/eggs/dairy are important for Vitamin A & D (also E), Calcium, choline and glycine.
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Big problem with modern food is the ‘refinement’ of foods down to ‘pure energy’ which has few if any nutrients. Think sugar, flour, and oil. These fail on the P:E ratio or the N:E ratio – zero nutrients over high energy amounts. They feed fat cells, but don’t help at all with bodily functions.
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One important aspect of Alzheimer’s prevention may well be weight loss, irrespective of nutrition of dietary constituency.
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That’s because Alzheimer’s is theorized to be Diabetes Type 3. There is an established correlation between Alzheimer’s and diabetes type 2. Of course, like all nutrition study, no one has done ( or can do ) a controlled blinded lifetime study. But interestingly, Amy Berger points out that the same enzyme which breaks down the amyloid proteins implicated in Alzheimer’s is also the enzyme responsible for breaking down insulin ( Insulin Degrading Enzyme ).
To delay alzheimers for several years, be fluently bilingual: https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/news/2018-05-15/bilingual-brains-are-more-resilient-dementia-cause-alzheimers-disease
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Not being too fat is always a health advantage, no matter your diet. For men, a waist over 44 inches is a very strong predictor of shortened lifespan.
Turbulent Eddie,
To maximize your chance for a long and healthy life, choose your parents carefully.
Turbulent Eddie,
Chest pain is not always heart related. It can be… but not necessarily.
I used to have some mild chest pains that for many reasons I strongly suspected were not heart problems. I cured them….. when a dance coach lectured me on my posture. She said I would lose to people who were worse than me because my posture was poor.
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I set out to correct my posture. The two MAIN things are:
1) I bought a back pod. That claims to let you loosen the ligaments around your back…. which was my motive. (I had noticed that no matter how hard I tried to do back correction exercises, it was just. so. difficult. So I “fell” for this.)
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The backpod also so claims to cure “Costochondritis ” which results in chest pain. It’s described as similar to what I felt… but much worse. I did not get it for this issue.
Guess what? After two uses, my chest pain was gone. Totally. I use the back pod from time to time. I should use it more because I still need a more flexible back.
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2) I bought a really cheap posture corrector. I used to wear this when sitting around. (I should continue to do so… But of course, I get lax.)
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On your diet: sorry, I draw the line at liver. Unless it’s made into pate, it’s yucky.
RB (Comment #196270)
January 3rd, 2021 at 6:10 pm
I have found Attia articulate and well informed and has some very informative interviews with the guests he has on his podcasts. The inside information his guests provide are not what you will find from the MSM.
Carrying two apoe E4 alleles is said to confer 15 times the risk of late-onset Alzheimer’s for which one can get tested for less than $100.
https://labtestsonline.org/tests/apoe-genotyping-alzheimer-disease
Lifestyle modifications can be effective in overcoming one’s genes for some diseases. Previously unaddressed diseases are increasingly being targeted by gene-silencing or gene-editing therapies and the progress in this arena has been remarkable. I believe in this century cost will be the main limitation for many previously untreatable diseases.
Lucia, I prepare most of my meals and thus consider that I am avoiding prepared foods. I love and indulge in chocolate and would ask that you reconsider labeling it a prepared food.
I also have a hard time getting a lot of vegetables into my meals but think that might come from my strict definition and classification of vegetables. I do eat lots of salads and tomatoes and peppers.
Lucia, your notification from you medical group concerning Covid-19 vaccinations was exactly the same as the one I received from my medical group.
Re: Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #196293)
Agree, I have learnt a lot from his podcasts.
Kenneth,
Dupage Medical group, per chance?
Yes, Lucia, that is my group also. In fact I am in their office right now. Something routine – I hope.
That would explain the similarity of the message. Interesting we both interpret it the same way. I think it should have been shorter with a link to “more” for the “educational” (but introductory) stuff about how vaccines works. I’m interested in how the vaccine works, but I’ve read the “introductory” stuff over and over and over. And of course, they never give advanced stuff because that would make the lesson even more overwhelming.
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The real purpose is to let us sign up for notifications if we want the vaccine. That’s what it should have focused on.
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I suspect “communications experts” were involved in crafting that message. 🙂
DeWitt,
“And grass fed cows who aren’t fattened in a feed lot on corn and soybeans are not ecologically wasteful. They usually don’t taste as good, though.”
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Virtually all the beef sold in Brazil is grass fed, and it is very tasty. It does not have as much marbling, so if it is cooked past rare to medium rare it tends to be tougher/less juicy. Here in the states, grass fed beef is sold as a premium product (eg https://wildforkfoods.com/products/grass-fed-beef-new-york-strip-steak?variant=31579870822466) Those stakes look fattier than what I have seen in Brazil.
Food science and climate science are battling it out for the dominance of dogma and the suppression of dissent. Both of these areas are full of activists in the media so you really can’t trust reporting.
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There seems to be a correlation with how strongly one proclaims their area as “science” and the elevation of strict dogma. All the low hanging fruit of food science have been picked and now we have a bunch of people trying to do something useful but restricted in how they can test.
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Observational studies + group dogma = Uncanny ability to predict the outcome of studies as the preferred narrative.
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As with many things these things today I find it difficult to separate out useful food science from “you need to become a vegan because it’s moral” food science. One things to look for is whether the preferred diet/recommendation actually affects life outcomes. I cannot tell you how shocked I was to learn that being overweight (as opposed to obese) didn’t affect life outcomes much at all. Perhaps quality of life suffers a bit, but this detail seems to have been suppressed for decades.
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I’ve been doing planks for over a year now and it strengthens the core and has helped the golf game from causing typical back issues so far. They suck to do, but appear to work.
NY has a continuing increase in cases, biggest since their initial surge. However they have managed to find some priorities in life, ha ha.
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New York Officials Say Thousands Can Attend Buffalo Bills Playoff Game
Season-ticket holders to get first dibs on 6,200 seats; attendees must be tested for Covid-19
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-officials-say-thousands-can-attend-buffalo-bills-playoff-game-11609368499
DeWitt,
“And grass fed cows who aren’t fattened in a feed lot on corn and soybeans are not ecologically wasteful. They usually don’t taste as good, though.â€
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On the farm we fed our cattle (not cows since a cow is a female cattle and a term most often used as in dairy cows) out with corn and soybean meal thus I am probably biased against the taste of grass fed beef. It is the fat in the beef that makes it taste good. I say good for those people that like grass fed beef. I am happy if I can occasionally have a good rib eye steak prepared on the grill from non grass fed cattle. Oh yes, and butter on my toast.
They opened the reservations system at my county today. it’s down: “Server Busy The server is busy and can’t respond to your request. Please try again later.”
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So predictable. A high volume reservation system could have been prepared 2 months ago by Google or Amazon. Maybe they did and nobody knows about it, or more likely low paid IT personnel at public health departments never heard the term “load testing” before and used existing systems.
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Medicine seems to have thought the most about these things.
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The gold standard, controlled, blinded, clinical trial.
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Nutrition is very difficult and expensive to control and in most instances, subjects know what they’re eating, so they’re not blinded. And nutrition may take decades to exhibit the chronic results. So it’s mostly observational studies, not controlled.
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Climate science, at least climate change per 2xCO2, is necessarily in a worse bind. There’s not even a complete observational study. The partial study is uncontrolled and unblinded.
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Into this uncertainty dogma creeps.
Turbulent Eddie,
A major problem with dietary studies is that they rely on the subjects memory of what they ate. Dietary logs aren’t reliable either. As a result, most of what we are told is probably wrong, c.f. red meat.
My favorite is the so-called Mediterranean diet, which relied on surveys taken in Italy during Lent. Hence the high seafood content.
Kenneth,
” I am happy if I can occasionally have a good rib eye steak prepared on the grill from non grass fed cattle.”
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Sure. Rib eye is usually excellent. But in my area rib eye is often crazy expensive compared to nearly all other cuts. I find that a good NY strip steak rivals rib eye for flavor, and costs about half as much.
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I don’t know if you have Aldi supermarkets in your area, but their pre-packaged top sirloin (it is in a heavy, oxygen resistant sealed package, with a remarkably long shelf life) is almost unbelievably good for the price ($5.99 a pound).
DeWitt,
“A major problem with dietary studies is that they rely on the subjects memory of what they ate.”
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For me the biggest problem with dietary studies is they always cause my eyes to roll upward almost uncontrollably. It’s mostly quackery, and what is not is unsubstantiated.
Surveys of what people eat are also prone to correlations that exist because of an underlying effect. If poor, overworked people who live in unfavorable locations and have bad access to health care eat “X” for any reason (possibly because it’s inexpensive), “X” will be correlated with less good health.
If Y is trendy and expensive, then wealthy people who may also have spare time to exercise may tend to eat it. It might look correlated with good health…. because… exercise and access to health care. And so on.
Re the quality of science in nutrition science
My colleagues and I always say nutrition science has a half-life of 5 years. This is clearly due for many of the experimental problems already covered but also because both the experimental subjects (humans) and the experimental materials (foods) vary so much. The discussion about the various merits of grass-fed versus grain-fed steak shows how difficult it is to compare an observational study of steak and health when the very definition of steak can vary.
BTW I’m trying to promote the use of the term ‘nutrition science’ in this discuss rather than ‘food science’ since food science is much more, but then maybe I’m just protecting my patch 🙂
Lucia,
Sure. Look at the ratio of covid cases to covid deaths in the counties which make up NY city. In Manhattan, it is close to 1 death per 100 cases, in the Bronx, it is closer to 1 death per 20 cases. Poor people live in the Bronx, mostly rich people in Manhattan. The same story is repeated in lots of other places. Should we conclude living on an island (Manhattan) reduces covid deaths? I think not. It is that rich people are mostly isolated and protected from exposure.
Andrew,
Yes, “food science” involves much more including cooking but at a more systematic level than what’s called cooking at home or in restaurants!
For those more interested in food science, there’s the classic On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee.
One big problem with observational studies as Lucia already mentioned is that outcomes are multi-factorial and when trying to tie nutrition to life outcomes there are so many confounders in place that it makes the statistics really hard if you want to do it correctly.
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The “want to do it” part is key here, as studies tied to activist organizations will tend to not want to do it, as in “income inequality leads to 10 years shorter lives”, “red meat leads to 10 year shorter lives”, “access to healthcare leads to 10 year shorter lives”, “racism leads to 10 year shorter lives”, etc. Intentional misleading reductionism.
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There is also the mid-grade activism hedging where they use the term “up to 10 years shorter lives” (hey, we don’t even need to do the calculations!) which then gets shortened by the media activists to “10 years”.
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The reality is rich healthy educated white people with good genes in modern societies who exercise and have non-excessive diets live longer than their polar opposites. Exactly how much all these factors contribute is a bit of a mystery. I’m sure some people out there try really hard to get these answers, and I’m quite sure their research gets much less publicity than their activist peers.
New York strip steak used to be my go to piece of meat for the grill, but lately it has been rib-eye. Where I buy meat there is not much difference in price between those cuts of meat. I used to grille filet mignon but now do that by searing stove top and then into the oven with no hesitation to do a sauce with butter.
I remember when fatty foods were out and a doctor made some off-the-cuff comment to me about a prudent selection of food could make a difference in quality and quantity of one’s life. Somehow the use of the word prudent did not sit well with me at the time and so I told him that I was willing a sacrifice a couple of years for eating butter over margarine. He said, Ken, you must not talk that way.
I do not consider my fatty food consumption bad for me since as I have aged the portions that I consume keep going down. They are probably a third or less of those in my younger days and a half or less of those in my middle age. I remember taking my father to restaurants and hearing him complain about the large portions and now I understand.
Jan 20th can’t come fast enough in my opinion, ha ha. Trump is being rather unhelpful to whatever cause he thinks he is advocating for. At least he is pretty much guaranteeing he won’t be re-elected anytime soon.
If anything, recent events show that the rot extends beyond Trump to a sizable fraction of the GOP, including hopefuls Hawley and Cruz.
The cause is and always has been Trump. The Republicans should have come out in full force against Trump’s action after his defeat. That would have been a principled stand, but politicians being politicians I suppose they are considering all those voters who voted for Trump. In the meantime there is a very good chance that in light of Trump’s and their actions they will now lose control of the Senate and we will have a far left government soon ramming through their agenda. And do not dream about the “moderate” Democrats at the margins. There will not be any.
Kenneth Fritsch,
Moderate Democrat is something of an oxymoron. When push comes to shove, they all vote the way Schumer tells them.
Tom
Yep. If I prayed, I’d pray to the might Thor and ask him to thrown his Mjolnar in Trump’s direction to incapacitate the guy. The GOP senatorial candidates were polling favorably back in November. Now…. well, not so much. That’s the effect of Trump’s current childishness about his own failure to get re-elected.
Kenneth,
“I used to grille filet mignon but now do that by searing stove top and then into the oven with no hesitation to do a sauce with butter.”
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Seared tenderloin topped with home made Bearnaise, accompanied by a full bodied Cab is about as good as it gets. The only thing I have had that rivals it is beurre rouge over any good grilled steak like strip or rib eye. I used to cook French quite often (usually following “The 60 minute Gourmet”), but my wife’s many food restrictions have put an end to that.
RB,
“.. the rot extends beyond Trump to a sizable fraction of the GOP”.
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Please define “the rot”. Is it similar to the endless efforts by Democrats to remove Trump from office and subvert his presidency as soon as he took office…. by any possible means? Does “the rot” include anyone willing to mention the blatant influence peddling the Biden family has been involved in?
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Yes, Josh Hawley and others are playing to Trump’s base; they are politicians. I guess you have never seen a Democrat politician play to the nutty left base…. maybe because you keep your eyes closed to such things, or maybe because you are part of that base.
DeWitt,
“Moderate Democrat is something of an oxymoron.”
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I completely agree. Democrats are “moderate” where they have to be to gain election (AKA utterly dishonest). Once in office, they vote always with Schumer and Pelosi, unless it is a completely meaningless vote, where they can vote to maintain their ‘moderate’ bona fides for the voters back home. On every important vote, they are solidly left, no exceptions.
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Which is not to say many Republicans in swing districts are not similarly dishonest…. they usually support things that make their constituents more likely to vote for them, even when they understand the policy is nutty. There are just very few Republicans from those districts.
SteveF,
Thanks for Comment #196342. I thought about writing something similar. I just get so tired of it I sometimes can’t bring myself to bother.
Tom Scharf,
“At least he is pretty much guaranteeing he won’t be re-elected anytime soon.”
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Yes, Trump has made himself pretty much un-electable; the utter buffoonery has finally caught up with him. I just hope he hasn’t handed Senate control to Kamala…. which will enable a lot of very bad, destructive policies between now and when the 2022 mid-terms end the craziness. Unfortunately, the damage done when Democrats last controlled both housed for two years was terrible, and I expect the same will happen again unless one of the Republicans wins in Georgia. Look for open boarders, giant tax increases on “the rich”, crazy green laws, and an out-of-control EPA. And these are but the tip of the crazy left iceberg.
mark bofill,
No thanks needed; I write out of honest conviction. And I suspect I have a little more time available than you.
What SteveF said (Comment #196342).
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But as to Trump’s effect on today’s vote, I am not inclined to agree with the comments above. I think that maybe Trump is playing it just right. After the last two months, there are basically two ways for Trump voters to react:
(1) I’m made as hell and not going to take it any more.
(2) It is no use.
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If Trump were to throw in the towel, the latter might predominate. it might be quite common anyway. The only way Purdue and Loeffler win today is if Trump supporters decide to fight. That won’t happen if Trump stops fighting.
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It might be that Trump’s recent behavior will cost both Republican seats. The alternative is guaranteed to cost both seats.
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Addition: The Republicans don’t win today without a huge turnout. They won’t get that if Trump voters are discouraged to the point of not bothering.
SteveF,
I’m also worried he’s handed senate control over to the Dems on a silver platter. It’s going to be close, but before he started acting like a buffon, it looked like at least 1 GOP senator from Georgia was going to be easy to get. Now…. no.
Well, that might be the only choices for actual Trump supporters. But they were certainly not the only choice for potential GOP voters in the GA elections or elsewhere.
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Trump taking down the rest of the GOP might be ok with the “true Trumpers”. But it’s not what others in the GOP consider a good choice. And it’s certainly not the only choice.
Well.. now today that’s the only way. Because Trump’s behavior and that of “his” supporters has repelled the other members of the GOP and moderates who would likely have voted for Purdue. So yeah: Chase away all the other Purdue an Loeffler supporters and then it becomes true that the ones who did the chasing away better come in and vote.
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Well then, it’s too danm bad Trump and “his” supporters chased away a lot of GOP voters who would have voted had then not been repelled by Trump and his cry-baby, diaper wearing trantrum throwing minions.
Question for lucia, SteveF, etc.: If you could vote in Georgia today, would you vote for the Democrats? Or not vote at all?
Maybe Trump’s behavior chased away a significant number of supporters. Maybe not. AFAICT this is just an assertion. If there’s evidence to support the idea, I’d be pleased to hear it.
I doubt Trump’s behavior affected the vote much, it was already baked in. Trump isn’t on the ballot this time and neither is the Libertarian. I haven’t been following this vote but expect it to be close, and with all things being equal the Republicans holding at least one seat. I really doubt many people will change their vote either way.
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As for moderate Democrats I don’t think Manchin will vote for anything crazy unless WV gets some huge payoff in the exchange. It’s hard to pass anything at 50/50. We shall see.
Mike M,
I would vote for the Republicans. I can’t imagine why you would think otherwise. It is not that the candidates themselves are so very important (all four are nothing to write home about, and two are absolute lefty bonkers 😉 ). The issue is that control of the Senate really does matter: In Mitch McConnell’s Senate the Biden presidency does almost nothing damaging (a very good outcome, IMHO), while in Karmala’s Senate, all hell breaks lose, with the very worst policies guaranteed to pass: universal health care (or a path which makes that inevitable), gasoline powered cars becoming illegal, draconian tax increases, confiscation of most wealth at death, draconian restrictions on long rifles, ‘forgiving’ hundreds of billions of student loan debt, confirmation of every unqualified, unhinged lefty judge, etc, etc…. the list is long and repulsive.
mark bofill (Comment #196352): “Maybe Trump’s behavior chased away a significant number of supporters. Maybe not. AFAICT this is just an assertion. If there’s evidence to support the idea, I’d be pleased to hear it.”
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Indeed. We do have one piece of actual data: A significant chunk of Trump voters have a history of not voting because they did not view either party as representing them. So there is definitely a risk of those voters not showing up.
Mike,
It’s an argument anyway. It might be right.
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One could argue that Trump campaigning in GA this evening for the two Republican candidates will encourage those people who don’t view either party as representing them. After all, they backed Trump. This argument might be wrong.
Shrug
MikeM
I would not vote at all. The thought of voting for the crybabies echoing Trump would make me barf.
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Mike M
Yep. And Trump/GOP repelling them and focusing on Trump not thoe voters seems a poor method of getting them to the polls. I mean “I won’t represent you either because it should be all about me, me, me” isn’t a message likely to motivate someone who doesn’t vote because the voter things the politician doesn’t care about the voter.
The GOP was favored pretty well in Nov. Polls show a deep slide. Well see after the vote what the end result is. But the slide in poll support for GOP happened while Trump is acting like a baby, not caring about GOP generally and so on.
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Of course those who always vote and always vote GOP will still do so. The issue of shift is those in the middle– or those who might stay way. I heard turnout is light….
I don’t know who they are trying to appeal to with the current vote “fraud” nonsense, but it sure isn’t me. This is just an embarrassment and not good for the system in general. Politics is a cesspool and it’s getting worse.
FWIW, I think support is down because Trump lost. I think lots of Trump supporters are demoralized. We can say that the decline is due to Trump’s pointless refusal to accept his defeat, but there are other potential explanations.
mark,
Trump lost and is acting like “a total looooooser”. I don’t think Perdue was voted into office by “Trump Supporters”. But the GOP going batshit crazy since November just doesn’t help him.
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It’s looking like a naibiter. The AP has Perdue and Loeffler leading, but I understand heavily Dem districts still don’t have all their returns in. So places like the NYT think the DEMS will win. We’ll see.
lucia (Comment #196359): “The GOP was favored pretty well in Nov. Polls show a deep slide.”
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Nope. The polls show no trend. Both races pretty much within the margin of error the whole time.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/senate/ga/georgia_senate_special_election_runoff_loeffler_vs_warnock-7318.html#polls
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/senate/ga/georgia_senate_runoff_election_perdue_vs_ossoff-7319.html#polls
First link: Looks like a whole lot of loeffler (red) in november-early december, switching against her in dec-jan.
Perdue looks more mixed.
Trump taking the GOP into BATSHIT crazyland is not a plus for these people.
Election looks razor thin.
It looks like with 98% counted, the races are both 50.0- 50.0. Obviously… numerically they are not identical.
We could see automatic recounts!
https://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/georgia-senate-election-results/
SteveF, in a 50-50 Senate, the Senate committees will be split evenly, and the majority and minority have close to equal power over the calendar. This was the precedent set in 2001, and we’ll see if McConnell insists on this.
I have read he would rather be in a strong minority position as he is then selling votes rather than buying them for the majority.
In theory, the split empowers the moderates.
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In practice, I worry about compromises which include just a broader array of bad ideas from each party.
The difference in the Perdue/Ossoff race is that while both candidates received many fewer total votes than in November, Perdue’s drop was greater than Ossoff’s; Perdue fell by 170,000 votes while Ossoff fell only 120,000. Looks like enthusiasm was off for Republican voters more than Democrat voters.
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The nightmare scenario appears to have happened (#196354). Terrible for the country.
Looks like following Trump into his batshit crazy cave did not work for the Georgia GOP candidates. Go. Figure.
MikeN,
Democrats will do whatever needed to advance their desired legislation; precedent set in 2001 is not going to in any way change that. Of course Joe Manchin could insist on following precedent; I am pretty sure he won’t.
Lucia,
I am not certain Trump acting like an a$$hole made the difference. That could be the reason, but it could also be that lots of Trump’s voters didn’t bother to vote when Trump wasn’t on the ballot.
Lucia,
Yes, Trump is acting like a total loser. There’s nothing useful or productive about it and I wish he’d quit behaving that way. Certainly I agree that his behavior is helping nobody (well, nobody I want helped anyway). He doesn’t appear to grasp that regardless of mechanism, he can no longer rule. It really doesn’t matter at this point what Congressional Republicans do, or the SC does, or anything else. He’s done. Half the country barely tolerated him for four years, they will not tolerate an overturned election that keeps him in power.
So — looks like the Democrats have taken control of the Senate. LOL. I look forward to a lot of laughs over the next couple of years. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. And boy, will they ever…
Well… now that it’s all decided, I just want him to vanish. I was hoping for gridlock. (But then, I generally prefer some grid-lock that requires negotiation.)
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Let’s hope things are ok in 2 years and the GOP can regain the Senate. If significant numbers of the GOP go into the bat-shit-crazy cave, it won’t be.
mark bofill,
Yes, Trump needs to stop the histrionics, issue a few more pardons, and prepare to move out of the WH. That doesn’t mean he will. Trump’s many personality flaws have finally caught up with him. Trump’s companies have not done well with the coronavirus pandemic depressing travel, and I suspect he faces possible financial ruin, along with the IRS going after him as vigorously as possible under the law. The normal multi-million dollar cash-advance for a ghost-written book is but a drop in the sea when compared to Trump’s loans.
Lucia,
Has the race been called for Ossoff? It does look almost certain Ossoff will win, because most of the uncounted mail-in ballots (likely questionable…. which is why they haven’t already been counted) are in counties where Ossoff has well over 50% support.
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Carl Rove said that for Perdue to win there had to be over 900,000 votes cast on election day (election day votes are ~65% Republican); that didn’t happen…. only 820,000 election day votes….. too many republican just stayed home.
I don’t think the race has been called, but I think the dems have won.
The Republican tolerance for Trump’s total departure from reality has no doubt in my view helped turn GA blue and given control of Washington to the far left. The two newly elected GA Senators being far left and elected in a formerly reliable red state is a development that will not be lost on those Democrat Senators who might have thought it politically expedient in their red/purple state to show some independence. It might also greatly motivate the Republican Senators from blue states to consider going along with the blue tide.
We already have been informed by the new regime that spending, taxing, regulation and printing money will be at unprecedented levels. I see no moderating forces in Washington that will stop this onslaught. I will look for a blitz by the Democrats to get all their ducks in place in case they lose some controls in 2022. They know well and good that once a program is in place it will be difficult to remove it as long as the President is of their party and that once you get beyond four years it would take more than a timid Republican majority to do it.
Kenneth,
That’s the way I see it too.
SteveF
Moderates don’t want to vote for batshitcrazy. So they stayed home.
Trump made it all about Trump, but wasn’t on the ticket. So Trumpers may have stayed home.
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A campaigned designed to motivate people who might vote for you to stay home is … well… batshitcrazy. But Trump was up there being baby-tantrum throwing Trump. He didn’t have to be.
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The sooner he is well and truly gone, the better for the GOP.
SteveF,
According to 538,Ossof-Perdue is not called. But Ossof is ahead. It might be tight enough for an automatic recount.
The Warnock-Loffler race has a check mark which I think means called. Warnock is ahead, and I think there will be no recount.
I give on the question of whether or not Trump’s baby tantrum throwing batshitcrazy behavior was a significant factor in the GA loss. It might well have been, I’m just not with y’all on your apparent certain conviction that it was. But since it doesn’t seem to make much difference at this point, I’ll quit arguing about it.
Joe Manschin is now royalty. The Dems get one shot at putting something into the budget reconciliation bill that can pass with 50. I hope they choose wisely. Err, I hope that Joe Manschin chooses wisely.
SteveF (Comment #196391)
mark bofill,
Yes, Trump needs to stop the histrionics, issue a few more pardons, and prepare to move out of the WH. That doesn’t mean he will.
_________
Hopefully, Trump does move out of the WH without incident. I don’t understand how the histrionics can help him, but what do I know.
Schumer might have problems with Bob Casey from Pennsylvania as well as Joe Manchin if he tries to pass anti-fracking legislation.
I wonder how many Jewish people voted for Warnock just because he’s a Democrat. He’s also arguably anti Semitic.
I would like to congratulate the Republican strategists for their masterful strategy of “let’s pretend we actually won the election regardless of evidence” for today’s outcome of grasping defeat from the jaws of victory. This was seriously an own goal. Perhaps it would have turned out this way regardless, but this was just incompetent. The good news is that the bozos who thought this was a good idea will hopefully be demoted for their efforts.
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They should have done better. Hide the nuclear codes pronto.
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On the glass half full side, the Republicans lost by very narrow margins in this election cycle while acting like inmates at a mental asylum so there is a lot of room for improvement.
The only way Manchin votes for eco-crazy is if WV is covered in solar panels paid for by the Feds.
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There are far too many Congress critters from fly over country to let anything crazy get through. They couldn’t pass cap and trade with larger majorities. Anti-fracking is not going to happen, it doesn’t even makes sense ecologically. There will be some moderately crazy stuff, mostly excessive spending that won’t move the needle on social problems, and the SC has our back on free speech and overt racial preferences.
Thomas Fuller,
I was under the impression that a simple majority in the Senate could do away with the filibuster using the nuclear option at any time. With that hurdle removed, I’d think it ought to be relatively easy for the Dem majority [simple majority] to pass whatever they like.
mark bofill,
Manchin has stated multiple times he will not vote to end the filibuster. You can assign whatever credibility you like to that statement, but I don’t normally trust politicians to actually do what they say…. especially not when they are already well past retirement age. Manchin won his election in 2018 by a thin margin over a weak Republican in a year with low turnout. Manchin cast a series of votes over the past two years which where extremely unpopular in WV. I think there is a good chance he will conclude he can’t win re-election no matter how he votes on ending the filibuster, so I fear he may “change his mind”.
Tom Scharf,
You are far more optimistic (#196405) than I am. I thing Dem control of the Senate is going to lead to lots of very bad legislation passing.
I feel there are a couple of important factors that might be left out of these discussions here.
The big factor with Trump voter influence would logically appear to me to be the independent voter. That group is more likely to vote based on the character of the candidate and their current image of that candidate’s party and less on political philosophy. I will have to check this out since voters are not necessarily logical in how they vote.
A Senator hesitant in voting the party line could always be promised a lucrative and stately position if they lost in the next election or chose not to run. With the amount of power that government has over corporations and other organizations those organizations are more than willing to hire former politicians as executives, lobbyists, consultants and high priced speakers. I believe I read that Janet Yellen had bagged $7 million in speeches over the last 2 years.
It was only 10 years ago that the left got served up with a shellacking for their efforts at crazy.
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The only way for the left to hold power is to actually govern competently. This isn’t the strong suit of either party which is why power switches back and forth. What they don’t want to do is attempt crazy, fail, and pay the political price for accomplishing nothing. There will be plenty of inside baseball about what they want to do, but we shall see what actually gets written up and past committee. I doubt they can write legislation that isn’t mostly crazy and thus most of it will die before getting close to a vote.
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In the mean time there will be the unknown unknowns of unexpected crisis such as the pandemic, military conflict, or economic downturn and the government will do their usual thing, bumble along while trying to blame the opposing side.
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The most likely to pass is further progress on single payer medical. If the right can’t find a way to get a plan for getting these costs under control then nuking the private medical system looks more interesting even if it will end in disaster. Obamacare tells me it’s $12,000 / year for my single medical coverage.
Tom Scharf,
“I doubt they can write legislation that isn’t mostly crazy and thus most of it will die before getting close to a vote.”
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I hope you are right, but fear you are mistaken. More than 40% of Dems in the senate and a majority of Dems in the House are unhinged. They want to fundamentally change the way the USA is governed, and most of all, greatly restrict the liberties citizens enjoy. Those desires are going to show up in legislation.
It looks like Pence is not stepping into the batshit crazy cave today.
Tom, I think you are underrating the effect the MSM and the intelligentsia will have on programs you and I might think as crazy – because they do not. Their sales and marketing programs will be starting post haste.
You appear to have a consuming faith in some underlying reasonableness of which I see no evidence.
Lucia,
“It looks like Pence is not stepping into the batshit crazy cave today.”
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Can you explain?
I imagine she’s referring to Trump’s insistence that Pence has some power to refuse to certify the election [or prevent the election from being certified]. Pence’s position appears to be ‘nope, I don’t have such power’.
[Pence’s statement regarding this:
]
Georgia Secretary of state reports 100% of ballots are now counted, with Ossoff leading 50.2% to 49.8%…. which means a recount. Short of some gross error, a recount won’t change the outcome.
SteveF, the Senate has to adopt a rules package at the start of the session which includes committee membership and funding, with the minority party getting 1/3 of the funds. Until these rules are adopted, the previous rules stay in effect. This was the leverage the Democrats used to get a 50-50 split in 2001. Majority vote is not enough to get a new rules package adopted.
Too bad Trump was not impeached and indicted early in his term and Pence had become President. I was hoping for that to happen.
If I were a betting person I would bet that a Pence tell-all book would out sell a Trump book – unless fairy tales become popular.
Jee-zus I thought we were done with crazy.
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How bad is our national situation?
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #196420)
Jee-zus I thought we were done with crazy.
_________
We were for a long time. The British attacked the Capitol around 1800, but for a different reason.
I blame Trump for the attack on the Capitol. He says he lost because some Dems cheated, and many of his followers believe him. So some of them attacked the Capitol. I doubt this will be good for Trump’s political future. I hope not.
Just back from dance lessons…. I now need to see just how far out of control the Trumpistas got while I was away from the intertubes. .
Mark
Yes. I was referring to Pence stating that he doesn’t think he has the right to overturn the election by rejecting electoral votes
Kenneth,
I wanted it to be Thor’s hammer taking out Trump. But… oy. What is it, 12 more days?
Mike N,
The nuclear option, with Karmala casting the 101st vote, allows and rule to be changed at any time.
Looks like “mostly peaceful” protests to me, ha ha.
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What a circus of stupidity. The MSM will have a field day with this one. No sane politician can support this, they need to be removed from office if they do (through the normal election process).
Dems believe they lost 2016 because repubs cheated. A 3 year investigation/circus ensued. Can repubs expect their claims to receive the same zealous search for wrong doing? No. The people peacefully protesting in Washington believe they have been cheated, but far far more than that, they believe that there is no justice available to address their concerns.
Pence and congress called in the national guard. Thank goodness Pence is a standup guy.
A protesting woman wearing a cape was shot and killed apparently trying to get into the chamber. That’s not going to go over well. As with all protests using deadly force is a last gasp for police. They are going to have to answer for that one.
I’m a lot less sorry today than I was yesterday that Trump is on his way out!
What a disgrace. Unbelievable.
DaveJR (Comment #196429): The people peacefully protesting in Washington believe they have been cheated, but far far more than that, they believe that there is no justice available to address their concerns.”
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Yeah. That does not in any way excuse the violence. But yeah.
Republican leaders, including Trump, seem to be uniformly condemning the violence. Unlike Dem politicians when their voters riot.
The White House says that Trump called out the national guard to quell the riots.
Well, the populist mood that Trump took advantage of started a long time ago.
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This disgusting exhibition of just how dangerous it could become proves Charles Murray correct.
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At least some of this is due to lockdown insanity.
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But how much, we can’t know until we get the damn vaccines.
MikeM
Link to Trump condeming? Because his video on twitter did NOT condemn the violence. So perhaps he condemned more recently. But if so, I’d like to see that.
Check for passive voice. Sources say Pence called out the national guarde.
This is Trump speaking to the rioters who invaded the capital.
“We love you”, “We know how you feel” is not condemnation.
https://rumble.com/vci1te-president-trumps-message-of-peace-to-his-supporters-1-6-2021.html
As for batshit crazy…. Theres a photo of people swarming the capital here:
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2021/01/06/arizona-qanon-supporter-jake-angeli-joins-storming-u-s-capitol/6568513002/
Lucia,
Seeing that video, I now think Trump has gone crazy… as in disconnected from factual reality. Whatever someone says about the November election, it was not a “landslide” for Trump. It was a very close race decided by a couple hundred thousand votes spread over half a dozen close states. If he doesn’t stop the crazy statements, Pence and the cabinet may well remove him from office within a few days via the 25th amendment. By the time Trump could legally contest his removal, Biden would be already sworn in.
Lucia,
You got to love the hat for its humor value. The guy wearing it is obviously nutty.
Tallbloke ran another photo that is evidently the guy
https://twitter.com/RogTallbloke/status/1346987407195983877/photo/1
He does look “athletic and toned”.
I entered the full url listed and his listing seems to be gone.
With Trump going crazy and dementia Joe entering office in 12 days, use of the 25th amendment may become a lot more common.
We own some horned Vikning hats for fun. But ours are el-cheapos….. For humorous occastions. That guys hat looks pricey. He’s really into it!
Lots of garish tattoos usually indicates poor judgement. I think it is supposed to be a Native American hat….. it is way to cool for Vikings.
The tatoos may be Scandahoovian….. There’s been some debate on twitter what they are. They might be from some sort of online games.
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I hunted for hats like that on Amazon. I couldn’t find anything anywhere near as swanky. All the “Viking” ones are el-cheapo plastic joke ones like we have. His is either real fur or good quality fake. And there is plenty of fur. Much more than $7/hat.
Trump today (https://nypost.com/2021/01/07/president-trump-commits-to-orderly-transition-of-power/)
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Even after yesterday he can’t drop this crap. The guy has hard empirical evidence that violence is erupting to prevent orderly transition. And yet, he still says all this crap.
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I mean…. if admitting he lost sticks in his craw he could have limited it to “Our constitutional process is complete. Biden is the official presidential elect. There will be an orderly transition on January 20th.”
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What a L.O.S.E.R.
Lucia,
It’s Trump. Kicking and screaming is the only way he knows, which is very strange; I expect it in my 2 YO grand daughter, not in an adult. Which is one of the reasons he lost.
Yup. It’s come to this. I’m glad Trump lost at this point. The President is demonstrating that for whatever reason (it doesn’t actually matter why) he is incapable of putting the interests of the country ahead of what he considers to be his own self interest. In my opinion, he’s displaying an appalling lack of political acumen and poor judgement at the same time. And the shortsightedness! For goodness sakes, if any of the harebrained schemes he’d been advocating for actually succeeded and overturned the election, we’d pay the price for it forever in overturned elections in the future. Trump may think four more years of him in office is worth that but I feel like I can say objectively that he’d be wrong about that.
All this being the case, I’m glad he got voted out. Maybe he had utility in 2016 and accomplished some things, but he’s a liability at this point.
Trump truly believes that his aggressive bombastic over the top never admit defeat behavior is the reason for his “success” in life. Expecting any different from him was never wise.
Andrew P,
Some of the overly aggressive behavior may have helped him as a developer. Heck, some of his “we love you” may have been useful when he was dealing with paying clients in his hotel, whose level of “unreasonable” did not involve becoming a rabbel, swarming the hotel and taking over the lobby. (He certainly would have called the police if people did that to his lobby!)
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A mature adult Trump should realize that this point he needs to day, “I do not support what you are doing. Go home. If you support me, go home. This is not useful. We must have an orderly process of succession.”
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Trump needs to skip any gripes he might still think he has. He doesn’t actually have to say he was wrong about his notions about the stolen election. All he has to do is not bring them up right now. Tell people to be peaceful and go home.
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He’s acting like a totally baby having a tantrum.
Is the problem that civilization itself is dysgenic?
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I’ve read some interesting books since the ‘rona and have started a number of times to share some of my ideas here with you thoughtful folks, but some of them are dark and some are controversial. Never-the-less…
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On CNBC this morning there was the usual array of pontificates, but I thought John Hope Bryant identified the issue well. He observed that the scenes of the capital siege were of low education, disaffected frustrated white underclass. He identified these people because he has advocated for low education, disaffected frustrated black underclass.
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The commonality is low education, disaffection and frustration.
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The lockdown, by effectively making people feel imprisoned, is surely a factor. But the populism, in retrospect, probably goes back at least to the ‘TEA Party’, and would include ‘Occupy Wall Street’, ‘Sanders Socialism’, ‘Trumpism’, and the resultant energy of ‘Antifa’ and groups that Trump inspired.
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I mentioned reading Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer. Hoffer observes that people join mass movements because they look down upon themselves because of failure to thrive. Being part of a group or movement relieves the self renunciation. So, populism may be a reflection of a rising underclass ( be they of different races, cultures or other categorizations ).
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To be sure, technology and ‘the economy’ are in constant flux and that may be a component of the general angst.
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But what if there’s something much larger at work?
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Another book I read recently and highly
recommend is At Our Wits’ End: Why We’re Becoming Less Intelligent and What it Means for the Future.
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The thesis of ‘Wits End’ is that evolution, through differential mortality and reproductive success, has instilled intelligence. High intelligence populations are more productive, better organized and foster the creation of a ‘civilization’. The benefits of that civilization then accrue to members of that civilization which gives them a ‘group selection’ advantage over what they might have experienced with a less developed civilization.
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Unfortunately, with the process of civilization, the selective forces which led to genetic advantage, differential mortality, differential reproductive success, differential group advantage and other forces, diminish or reverse.
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Biology appealingly explains both the rise and fall of civilizations. Now, much of this is necessarily speculative. There are historical examples, but not a lot of hard data.
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Still, consider the following.
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In the past, child mortality was close to 50% for most countries, but is approaching 0% for most countries:
https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/06/Mortality-rates-of-children-over-last-two-millennia.png
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A good thing, right? I, you, and others might well have been in the wrong 50%. And I like central heat and nutritious food.
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Now consider the child mortality in the UK by father’s profession over time. Again, a good thing – fewer deaths and less absolute difference between the upper and lower ‘class’ of fathers:
https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2014/02/ourworldindata_infant-mortality-rates-by-fathers-social-class.png
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But there’s a dark side. Those professions are also proxies for intelligence. There was, in 1930, a large disparity between low and high intelligence parents which has disappeared. Sadly, lower intelligence parents were much less able to successfully raise their young and conceive of harms to protect them from which selected for the remaining population being of a higher intelligence. The benefit of civilization eliminates the selective pressure for intelligence, through cheaper universal food and services, through general population safety measures and even pandemic ‘control’.
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Compounding this is another factor. Fertility rates were previously higher for the upper classes and lower for the underclass. But now, civilization encourages education and economic activity by the upper classes which reduces fertility. And social programs, lack of distracting college years, and other factors, encourage or enable fertility of the underclass. This is evident in fertility rate by mother’s education:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/images/databriefs/301-350/db332_fig04.png
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The replacement fertility rate is 2.1 and using education as a proxy of intelligence, population of the intelligent is shrinking and the population of the underclass is growing.
Now, fertility rates are falling for all categories, but the differential is still exerting downward pressure.
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None of this is racial – it seems to be happening across races and around the globe. But the global aspect is particularly troubling. Civilizations have risen and fallen, but never in history has such synchronized advance occurred with such synchronized dysgenics.
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Does this explain at least part of modern populism? I think it’s important to understand.
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For those who are skeptical of IQ and genetics, evidence is quickly accumulating. Evidently, intelligence is highly ‘polygenic’, spread across some ten thousand genes, some of which are additive and some of which are multiplicative. That accounts for the bell curve distributions. It also accounts for some intelligence from parents, but that it also may fade over generations.
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Intelligence isn’t the only factor, of course. There’s also some evidence about other much less understood personality traits. Unfortunately, the same principles of civilizational dysgenic decline may apply.
I’d much prefer to lose than win by any of these shenanigans. Oh brother.
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While this event deserves most of the coverage it is getting, the apocalyptic takes are a bit overdone. Insurrection, sedition. Oops I mean INSURRECTION, SEDITION. It is nice to see that the terms “mob” and “riot” are now in usage, back from the dead. Which is exactly what this was.
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I think the DC/Capital police should have been able to hold back a couple hundred people. These people need to be arrested once they started destroying property and entering non-public zones.
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The protester death is getting overlooked and there seems to be little info on how she got shot and killed. I doubt seriously anyone’s life was in danger here, but sh** happens. She has agency in her own death so I don’t have a lot of sympathy, but it remains to be seen if this was an overreaction.
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Trump is done. I’m not surprised he attempted to blow things up on the way out, but still disappointed. He will still have a cult following but he cut that down by about 80% yesterday.
Trump’s behavior has resulted in a lot of success in his life. This is undeniable and it is easy to see why he remains committed to this style. It has worked for him. The list of elected government leader + best selling author + real estate tycoon + number 1 TV show host + billionaire + whatever else is pretty short. He’s near the end of his life so he figures why not go out in a flurry. Or he could just be crazy at this point. If Trump is truly narcissistic, then he is in nirvana right now.
Turbulent Eddie,
Basically we are implementing efficient eugenics without any official policy. That term is too loaded for polite discussion however. This is the same theory as Murray’s Coming Apart. Upper/lower class pressures have always been with us so the question is whether this is really any different or requires any behavior changes.
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My opinion is the upper/knowledge class is almost completely and willfully blind to this even though the Trump/Sanders/BLM flashing warning signs are clear as a bell. The losers of this voluntary eugenics/classism are getting pretty frustrated and universal social payments aren’t going to cut it. People need to feel respected and have satisfaction with their lives.
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When people feel the satisfaction of burning the system down outweighs anything the system has planned for them then you get this kind of behavior.
I am getting as tired and perhaps more tired of those who have rationalized Trump’s behavior than I am of Trump – who may no longer be in control of himself. Trump’s exaggerations and out-and-out lying are totally unacceptable means of communications by anyone and certainly the President of the US. Unfortunately in the political world politicians and their supporters are always looking over their shoulders at the voters, no matter how uninformed or easily manipulated they may be. I think that is what has lead to Trump not being near unanimously condemned for his behavior. He has certainly been cut way too much slack by too many people in my view.
Don’t get me wrong here about the treatment of the MSM and the intelligentsia when it comes to politicians as most politicians deserve more criticism they actually receive. My criticism of these two groups is that they are biased in favoring the politicians on the left and their reporting shows this in their great hesitancy to report negatively about them.
I have heard the arguments against invoking the 25th amendment and impeachment/indictment because the recipient was duly elected by a democratically and electorally arrived majority, but those are constitutionally derived methods of relief from an obviously bad actor.
mark bofill (Comment #196456): “It’s come to this. I’m glad Trump lost at this point. The President is demonstrating that for whatever reason (it doesn’t actually matter why) he is incapable of putting the interests of the country ahead of what he considers to be his own self interest.”
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I am very upset about yesterday’s events and not at all happy about Trump’s recent behavior. But all this Orange Man Bad stuff hides a very real problem.
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The ruling class in this country have repeatedly demonstrated over the last 20 years (at least) that they are incapable of putting the interests of the country ahead of their own interests, which do not align at all with the interests of the people. A large portion of the population is very angry and frustrated about that.
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That is why we got Trump. We were very lucky that we did not get someone who actually wanted to be an autocrat. Next time, we probably will not be so lucky.
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The response of the ruling class to the legitimate grievances of the people has been denigration (“deplorables”) when they deign to notice at all. They have tried all possible means, legitimate and illegitimate, to overturn the people’s choice of President. During the last year, they have turned to censorship and suppression of dissent. Which, of course, increases the anger and frustration of those they oppress.
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There is zero chance that the ruling class will change their behavior now that have have regained all the levers of power. Our only hope is that a few dissident Democrats in Congress might derail the worst excesses.
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This is not going to end well.
Mike,
There were reasons Trump was elected. He might have been what we needed in 2016. But at the end of the day I’m a conservative. I oppose overturning elections. Could there have been cheating, of course, there can always be cheating. Was there / did it matter? Beats the hell out of me. If people want to investigate and do the research over the next year or so and make some solid case, I’ll hear it.
I don’t support anybody trying to fix our system by demolishing it. Looking for the VP to refuse to certify election results is in my view trying to demolish our system. It doesn’t work that way, it shouldn’t work that way, it would be an ongoing disaster if it was allowed to work that way. The President ought to know better. Either he does know better and he doesn’t care or he doesn’t know better, either way, he’s lost my support.
He ought to have known better with his protesters too. I don’t excuse him for that either. Those people acted like effing Antifa or BLM. It was an outrage that he whipped up in his absurd refusal to accept the reality that sometimes even people like himself lose in our system, and that our system is more important than he is.
I view the problem of the disenchanted voter/person and the uninformed voter/person one of governments having too much power over the lives of these people. The disenchanted in the current world state of affairs would be much less likely to think of being controlled by some other class of people in a totally private world without forceful coercion, since then only government has the forceful coercive power to accomplish that control.
The uniformed voter is not necessarily a lesser educated person since understanding the workings of government and how politicians operate is a difficult task for most people and can be readily biased by their education process. Most people are much more informed regardless of educational level with how their day to day living operates in their private lives. I personally would be more comfortable with people making private decisions where they do have knowledge and information through the marketplace of ideas and goods than these same people voting with significantly less information on politicians whose policies and decisions will be forced upon me.
Mike,
It’s possible that my rant was unresponsive to your post, in which case I apologize. Hopefully I’ll be in a more measured and reasonable frame of mind in a day or two.
I don’t support any of this as stated previously, but a couple hundred idiots * being allowed * to storm the Capital is not a threat to the Republic any more than a thousand other calls by people to protest various grievances recently. The President can certainly call for protests any time he wants just like anybody else. People have a right to be stupid and we should not line up to qualify their ignorance against our so certain knowledge of their grievances from afar to the point of removing their agency in the system. When they break the law they should be held accountable for their behavior, this is already on the books.
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Calls to remove Trump are counterproductive for this reason, and this has been ongoing. Deplorables shall not be allowed to elect people to burn the system down? Yes they should be able to, this is basically the very definition of democracy. If the people who disagree were half as smart as they think they are then they would find a way to convince deplorables otherwise with their epically long resumes on communication theory.
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Stupid people can and should be able to elect stupid leaders, that is our system. If they do that repeatedly it might just be a signal of where the ignorance truly lies.
Tom Scharf,
The posted a definition of sedition on Volokh conspiracy. Technically, the protestors occupying the capital is sedition. But the BLM protestors occupying federal courts was also sedition.
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Basically: sedition is a specific crime with specific elements. So: yep, sedition. (I have no knowledge what “insurrection” is as a matter of law.)
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How this will be handled legally remains to be seen.
Look. Right now,Orange Man IS bad. Ignoring or justifying it or explaining how others are bad doesn’t change it.
Large? Not that large. If a large portion of the population was angry and frustrated with whom-ever you call “ruling class- or at least frustrated in a way that supports Trump– the GOP Senate candidates in GA would not have gone from having 2% leads over the Dem candidates to being edges out. They slid over 2 months, and the reason is the constant yammering by Trump and his fellow bat-shits about the stolen election, fraud yada, yada.
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Well, Trump didn’t change his behavior, so perhaps not. But some of his bat-shits might come to their senses.
mark bofill
This.
Tom Scharf,
Sure. Shall I not be allowed to oppose this? Yes I should be able to.
I supported Trump in the mission of burning out a swamp, not wrecking the nearby village in which I live. I don’t advocate removing Trump, he’s going to be gone anyway in a couple of weeks. I do disagree with you about the riot in the Capitol. My definition of legally protected peaceful protest does not include storming Congress.
I have no objection to people electing representatives to change things. I have no problem with them using “burning” as a metaphor. But yesterday’s riot/Capital swarming didn’t have anything to do with deplorables electing anyone. The Trumpists were acting precisely because they were not elected. That fits the definition of “anti-democracy”.
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If they’d been elected they wouldn’t have wanted to burn anything down. They would happily change, erect or maintain to have things go there way. They’d have the right to do that. That is democracy.
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Same here.
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I take the same position on burning down buildings, looting, breaking windows, setting up CHAZ in Seattle. These aren’t “peaceful” protest.
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And going forward, if these “events” recur and some Trump supporters eventually decides to attend “peaceful” protests that constantly erupt in violence due to “infiltrators”, my position will be the same as it was respecting the “peaceful” BLM protestors who gave cover to the “infiltrating rioters”.
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If you want me to believe you only support “peaceful” protests, don’t attend events that you know based on recent history are nearly certain to be “infiltrated” and becoem violent. Don’t fill out their numbers so the “infiltrators” can better hide and then say “they aren’t us”.
Lucia,
“I take the same position on burning down buildings, looting, breaking windows, setting up CHAZ in Seattle. These aren’t “peaceful†protest.”
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Clearly you take the same position, and that is reasoned consistency.
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But lots of people on the crazy left do not; their condemnation of riots is politically conditional: BLM smashing store windows, looting, arson and worse is OK. Trump supporters storming Congress is clearly not OK with me, but if the unhinged on the right were to declare it OK, that would make them no worse that a broad swath of the unhinged on the left, who basically declared the riots this past summer OK, and the “beginning of reparations”.
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Virtually everyone, including those on the right to extreme right, says storming Congress is not OK. What I am looking for is similar consistency on the left when it comes to condemning rioting when that rioting is motivated by the crazy policies the left embraces; that consistency seems to me completely absent.
Then hold the rioters accountable, I’m 100% for this. This does not equate to removing their selected representative * because of protester behavior *. There seems to be a lot of conflation between punishing protesters and punishing their representative for whipping them into a frenzy.
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I see lots of assertions that Trump made ’em do it! Therefore Trump deserves to be removed. There does not seem to be much evidence of this. Trump is peddling lots of crazy stuff that he may even believe, but there needs to be a very high tolerance for allowing people to be wrong in government. If he isn’t directly calling for violence then I think you have to let people be crazy.
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That doesn’t mean there aren’t any limits, it means that it needs to be nearly unanimous (similar to a capital punishment conviction) and his political opponents can’t make this happen on their own. I don’t think we are even near that threshold especially given we are only 2 weeks away anyway.
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“Burn down DC” or “Let me launch the nukes!” are obvious terms for removal. “I wuz robbed in the election” is not. Trump literally told people to go home and agreed to a peaceful transition (later removed by Twitter, ha ha). Plenty of mixed messages from Trump, but opponent’s mind reading of the executive’s intention isn’t terms for removal in my book.
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As I said I’m for getting rid of Trump sooner rather than later personally, but if you think you will solve his supporters rage with that move, guess again. That is pouring gas on the fire.
lucia,
I would think that CHAZ was seditious. Calls to defund the police might also qualify, although no one is going to be prosecuted for that.
“The ruling class in this country have repeatedly demonstrated over the last 20 years (at least) that they are incapable of putting the interests of the country ahead of their own interests, which do not align at all with the interests of the people.”
Mike, interesting statement. Who do you perceive as “the ruling class”? Does that imply that elected officials are perceived to come from one group of people? Or that elected officials are puppets to a powerful elite and if so why are they?
That so many US citizens regard the people that they elect as a oppressive power is something I still struggle with.
My perception (and this blog is often where my perceptions get corrected) is that a great deal of money is needed to be elected and a 2 year cycle for house representatives make them beholden to financing groups that may indeed have very different priorities to electors.
Unsurprisingly I also find the information ministries of Twitter and Facebook censoring Trump to be counter productive.
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The same institutions who the crazy people blame for help stealing the election are overtly censoring their leader. It’s not a conspiracy that these organizations are increasingly taking sides politically. This is an overreaction.
SteveF,
I’m sure I’ll run across people who will condemn the storming of the Capital but who still support BLM. When I do, I’ll tell them both were wrong.
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That seems to be the case. But there are a few. . .
DeWitt,
Calls to defund the police (or anything) are not seditious. Speech about funding would be protected under the 1st amendment.
Seditious conspiracy is defined here: https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/06/what-is-seditious-conspiracy/
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Seizing the capital building (or the federal courts) were “by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary”. So they are sedition under federal law.
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I would presume there might be similar laws in States.
Phil Scadden,
“Who do you perceive as “the ruling classâ€? Does that imply that elected officials are perceived to come from one group of people? Or that elected officials are puppets to a powerful elite and if so why are they?”
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Interesting questions all. The “ruling class” for me is mainly people who have a disproportionate influence on politics, media, and (most of all) policies. They range from professors at universities to wealthy tech tycoons to Hollywood numskulls who strongly influence national “culture”.
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Elected officials cover a range from principled people honestly trying to do good (a tiny minority) to the purest of political whores, who’s “deeply held” convictions change as easily as their clothes styles (like for example, Joe Biden). Unfortunately, the higher on the political totem poll you look, the higher the number of the later and the fewer the number of the former. Elected officials are not directly the problem, except to the extent that they are blatantly dishonest and beholden to those who fund them… directly and indirectly. Career politicians mostly do what they need to do to personally profit from the money of the “powerful elite” (see Joe Biden’s influence peddling).
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The interests of those who “control the puppet’s strings” are wildly divergent from the interests of the majority of people. That is why Trump was elected in 2016, in spite of his obvious, multiple, and obnoxious personal flaws.
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One thing more: the “ruling class” is always and everywhere isolated from the consequences of their policy choices. That isolation comes from a combination of money, physical distance, and explicit physical protection (walls, guards, palatial compounds, yachts, etc). The ruling elite always and everywhere does what it wants, while demanding compliance from others.
I do not buy the malarkey about Trump being the champion of the downtrodden who might think they are being neglected by the so-called elite. Trump is very obviously a con man and opportunist who will use any wedge he can find for the betterment of Trump. In many ways Trump should be considered a member of the so-called elite. He was able to game the financial system to gain wealth when at the same time having his business enterprises go bankrupt 6 times.
His political opportunism is shown by his changing political affiliations going from Republican to Independence Party to Reform Party to Democrat to Republican to unaffiliated to Republican.
His TV series were very much in line with his conman and opportunist persona.
If I thought I were somehow being neglected by a ruling class and someone like a Donald Trump with a conman/opportunist persona and a background that appeared very much that of a ruling elite class came along, I would be very suspicious of that person’s motivation and intentions in seeking my support. On the other hand, if I, as a member of the neglected class, were rendering my support based on a political philosophy why would I be inclined to support someone like Trump. I can understand someone choosing the least of two evils in a Presidential election, but why make a Trump choice in a primary other than for the case of being conned.
Phil,
The argument can go something like this:
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The Supreme Court has been almost 100% Ivy League forever. 95% of the House has a college degree and 100% of the Senate. About 1/3 of Americans have a 4 year degree.
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Smart and wise people should be able to govern better, but have they? Does that correlation really exist? The “uncredentialled many” can’t be blamed too harshly for looking around and thinking “life sure has gotten better for them (the credentialed) but not so much for us”. There is plenty of real economic data to back up that assertion.
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Whether the political class could have stopped the slide of the working class is another subject, but that there was a slide seems to be reality. This has degraded lately to open disrespect, aka deplorables. As I have said before, you don’t need a masters degree to know when you are being looked down upon.
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Of course the uncredentialled can elect their own to office, but I’m not sure how realistic that is if they don’t have access to the funding necessary to achieve office, believe the system is rigged, or that even if elected they will be shut out of real power.
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The same type of argument that people make for systemic racism for oppressing by race can be made for oppressing by class. A system of self serving people (whites or the credentialed) to keep themselves and their progeny locked into the available wealth and power. The same counter arguments can be made about personal responsibility and destructive culture.
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Some of this is real, some of this is imaginary, some is the creative destructive of the economy that has led to a hollowing out of the unskilled manufacturing sector. The knowledge economy worked out great for me, but seeing 45 year olds working at McDonald’s is pretty sad.
Phil Scadden,
In the 114th Congress (January 2015-December 2016), there were 160/435 Representatives and 53/100 with law degrees (JD). There were in addition about half that number who had previously worked in education. Most of the rest were professional politicians with little experience outside government. Joe Biden was a practicing lawyer until he ran for local office in 1970. In 1972 he was elected to the US Senate where he served until becoming Vice President in 2009. Occasionally you get outliers like Sonny Bono, Al Franken and Ronald Reagan, but most are relatively highly educated compared to the general public. So yes, pretty much one group.
Then there’s the Federal bureaucracy, the upper levels of which, protected from being fired by Civil Service, are sometimes referred to as the Deep State. Part of the reason is that Congress has tended over the years to pass rather general legislation and let the individual agencies make the actual rules.
That comes close to fitting one of the definitions of bureaucracy:
Tom,
Perhaps Facebook and Twitter are going to far. But they are private companies. They get to do that. He developed a habit of relying on them to communicate with the public. That put his communication choices somewhat in their hands. So he’s vulnerable to them yanking it.
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Assuming he knows how, Trump can presumably create an account on Parler, 4Chan, reddit, WeWooo or whatever the recent thing is. (I have a Parler account. There is nothing on it. . .)
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He could announce a press conference. Someone would probably come. He can write letters and send them out. He can get a bullhorn and howl at the moon. He’d get heard.
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Right now, he has very few friends. The GOP Senators are publicly repudiating or shunning him. I have friends on Facebook who were very pro-Trump. They are silent.
Are the progressives going to blame Trump for the even slower rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in France, the Netherlands and some other EU countries?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-off-to-slow-uneven-start-11610015400
And speaking of COVID-19, I’m not seeing a post-Christmas surge in cases yet. Maybe I’m missing something because Fauci and the other experts insisted there would be one.
Lucia,
“But they are private companies. They get to do that.”
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Well, there are many who describe those private companies as predatory monopolists who abuse their position to exclude competition and advance the political goals of those who control them. I am among that many. They are bad organizations doing politically bad things.
Some Parler handles claim to be Trumps kids. There are at least three Donald Trump Jrs. No blue checks to tell us which are the real deal.
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I’m sure Trump could have given Parler a big boost by joining months ago. He doesn’t seem to have done so. Lack of foresight. Too bad for him.
Well I would frankly want Supreme court judge to best legal brains in the country and I suspect that would be a common sentiment. Judges should not be considered part of government.
But okay, I see what you mean about the representatives. So what are the barriers to working class electing their own? Is it only money? Is the union movement in the US really that weak?
And I guess I still wonder at people who support Trump to change that when his cabinet was the richest ever and with family members and cronies with questionable ethics featuring in so many appointments. I think they were conned.
Looking at barriers to getting a more representative government might be more productive.
As to bureaucracy – well we love to hate it, but here at least, the civil service is largely a meritocracy and since late 1980s there has been very much a “board of directors” model for government. It’s about striking a balance between charismatic amateurs (ie MPs) and the technicians (civil service).
Phil Scadden,
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has done more good in the Middle East than anyone else since the founding of Israel in 1947.
Kenneth,
“Trump is very obviously a con man and opportunist who will use any wedge he can find for the betterment of Trump.”
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On this we agree.
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I do not pretend to be able to know all of Trump’s personal motivations, but it seems he is more interested in his own betterment than that of anyone else. Trump first, America second, the rest of the world last. But for better or worse, Trump did recognize the divergence of interests between those who generally control politics/policies in the USA and the working class voter. The rapid growth of income and wealth for “the elite”, combined with stagnation of income and wealth below the median… over decades… is an invitation for political exploitation. Trump, for all his many, many flaws, accepted that invitation.
“Perhaps Facebook and Twitter are going to far. But they are private companies.”
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Of course. I am asserting that censoring Trump is counterproductive to their assumed goals of taking that action, assumed being the operative word here. They are taking action to suppress speech that could lead to political dissent and further rioting. Trump will find a way to communicate anyway and this censorship (especially after the Hunter Biden incident) just infuriates his followers even more. Now it could possibly be that this is just corporate virtue signaling for marketing reasons or blatant political favoritism.
Tom,
I’m a little surprised he isn’t on Parler. Or that other twitter replacement. Or both. (I don’t remember the name. I have an account but never visit it.)
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I’ve been googling “Trump”. I’m not reading a peep out of him.
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I’m waiting to read he’s actually in his room babbling incoherently. Or maybe Melania restrained him. Or Ivanka. Or something.
“done more good in the Middle East”
I am sure the Israelis would agree, not so sure about the other side. But if the end result turns out to be a reduction in conflict and eventual political solution, then I would agree. And I think that is possible.
Phil Scadden,
“Well I would frankly want Supreme court judge to best legal brains in the country and I suspect that would be a common sentiment. Judges should not be considered part of government.”
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Here are the backgrounds of the current justices:
Harvard Law
Yale Law
Harvard Law
Harvard Law
Yale Law
Harvard Law
Harvard Law
Yale Law
Notre Dame Law (first in class)
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So your want seems satisfied. But that misses the point. There are lots of smart people who could serve on the court, very few ever do. And who does get to serve is a purely political decision. Amy Barrett was considered, even by those who oppose her politics, to be very qualified for the court based on her background… yet she was still strongly opposed for political reasons. The court is no less political than any other part of government. It is a pure fantasy to imagine otherwise; only a mealy mouthed fool like John Roberts would suggest it.
Phil Scadden,
If you mean the Palestinians, Abbas was offered the chance to be included, but since that would mean he would have to recognize the existence of Israel, he refused like he has done several times in the past. The progress has come about because the Arab states apparently have come to the conclusion that supporting Mahmoud Abbas is not doing either the Arab states or the Palestinians any good.
Phil
Judges are part of the government. I think American’s use the word differently from UK. I don’t know about NZ or Aus.
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Judges are not part of the executive branch and definitely not part of any executive administration. They are also not part of the legislature. But we aren’t an parliamentary system– so we don’t call the majority of the legislature and their appointed head “the government”.
Unions have been heavily crippled in the US, mostly at their own hand IMO. Lots of corruption. The theory of German style unions are fine by me, the execution American style left a lot to be desired. Lots of union bosses in prison.
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Trump may not be the prototypical working class representative, but he sure can communicate to those people way better than most. How come all the allegedly smart people can’t do this? Trump was an outsider, that was his draw. The working class believe he respects them. Professional politicians are mostly robots who can speak for hours and say nothing. Performative empathy on command. They are all battling for power among their peers, not their constituents. Nobody comes out of DC unchanged. They are all con-people to a certain degree.
Phil,
Wrt the Middle East: There’s also the enemy of my enemy thing. The Arab states are having to choose between Israel and Iran. They’re picking Israel.
DeWitt,
“…he refused like he has done several times in the past.”
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Like every Palestinian leader has in the past 30 years! Negotiation requires a serious counter party. The Palestinians are not that serious counter party. Palestinians simply do not want Israel to exist; they never have and never will. That is the extent of the discussion needed. ‘Negotiations’ with the Palestinians are utterly pointless.
Tom Scharf,
Those are the industrial unions like the UAW. The government employee unions are a different story. They control the CA and IL governments, among others, without having to run union members for office. IL is practically bankrupt because pensions have been over-promised and underfunded. That’s not an accident.
Phil Scadden,
“It’s about striking a balance between charismatic amateurs (ie MPs) and the technicians (civil service).”
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I very nearly vomited at this.
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There is no more corrupt form of government I can imagine than a government run by “technicians” who have no obligation to respond to the voters’ desires/needs. Perhaps you think Plato’s ‘philosopher king’ was an even better form of government.
Government unions having the ability to donate to politicians is a pretty thorny problem. Restricting their speech is unfair but the taxpayer not having a seat at the table for negotiations between government unions and their paid for politicians is also unfair. At least there were some recent legal victories allowing members to opt out of these forced political donations aka union membership fees.
,
Illinois and their state constitution must be changed. It might be too late already, but they are very near the end of their financial engineering mysticism.
Tom Scharf,
Union members can opt out of political donations in theory. In practice, the unions have created so many hurdles in their opting out process that it’s nearly impossible.
Nope, do not believe in Plato’s philosopher kings. As I stated, I like the board of directors model. Government sets direction, certainly sets policy and pushes the civil service to deliver the outcomes for which the electorate will hold them accountable.
Using the term elites or ruling class as a shorthand, and a vague one at that, in pointing to the dissatisfaction of some ill defined downtrodden class of people, does those people and the argument thereof a disservice. Those discussions never get very far into what are the root causes of the dissatisfactions and problems. Where do these so-called elite get the power to rule and through what agencies? Would it be a problem with a system primarily free of government control to intervene into individuals’ lives? Is it a class struggle much like the Marxist proletariat versus bourgeoisie? Can the dissatisfaction be mitigated through government action? If that is the case why would Trump garner votes against the more government oriented Democrat party. Alternatively is the problem one of the elite having power through government actions and policies?
What is the downtrodden answer? Is it more government control to balance the power of the elite or even gain control over the elite? Or is it reducing the power of government?
What are the downtrodden to do now that the person they thought their benefactor is gone from power and discredited? Will the Democrats buy the allegiance of the downtrodden and starting by taxing the wealthy, instituting a wealth tax and providing the downtrodden with “free” medical care and education? What does polling tell us about this class and what they think of these government programs? Will Joe Biden became their new benefactor and the old one quickly forgotten?
Lucia alert: the foregoing are real questions.
Of course, anybody who has read any of my posts on these matters knows where I stand. Here I would like to point to an issue that I think stays hidden from public view and that is how Federal Reserve policy can and does create a class divide. By maintaining a very low interest rate in order to make government borrowing much less expensive than it otherwise would be it penalizes the class(es) that do not or cannot invest in stocks and like assets and depend instead on bonds and other low interest debt issuances. The printing of money also benefits those first in line to use it by way of the Cantillon Effect and is used before the eventual effects of inflation become less and less beneficial to the users further down the food chain. Wall Street gets ecstatic when the government talks about spending huge amounts of money and even more so when the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates and/or prints more money. I would venture to guess that many of the downtrodden see these as moves favoring them.
The role of judges I guess depends on definition of government. To me, the courts are part of civil service. In our system, the judges are only nominally appointed by the government and I doubt many people would know or care what their politics are. I appreciate that this is very different from US and so I guess maybe they do feel part of your government.
Steve says the college they went to misses the point, and I dont think I am understanding what he means. Why is the composition of court part of the disempowering of the working class and what would improve it?
Kenneth, another great comment. Those are good questions, and I am very much for strong fiscal policy rather than relying on monetarist tools.
Tom Scharf (Comment #196500)
January 7th, 2021 at 4:23 pm
Because they did not teach a course in how to be a con man in their schools?
They aren’t what we call “civil service”. Lots of people care about their politics here and some judges are elected offices! (My great grandfather was an elected judge!! )
“Because they did not teach a course in how to be a con man in their schools?”
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Masks will not help you.
Masks will help you
Global warming is an existential threat
We can just bundle all these high risk real estate loans and rate them AAA
Sex is a social construct, not biological
Trump Russia collusion
Iraq’s WMD’s
The national debt doesn’t matter
etc.
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I think they are quite good at it actually.
well… much better than yesterday….
https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1347333670252720129/vid/1280×720/uqiB4FiiVnZ4DTfx.mp4?tag=13
Lucia: “I’m a little surprised he isn’t on Parler. Or that other twitter replacement. Or both. (I don’t remember the name. I have an account but never visit it.)”
Parler would explode if it didn’t require your phone no. just to view the posts. In a lot of ways, I am happy that Facebook and Twitter are so blatant. Making it impossible for non-Lefties to feel comfortable using their products.
JD Ohio,
Yeah. Logging in is such a PITA.
Tom Scharf,
I’d add to your list of cons by the elite:
“People are pretty much the same everywhere.”
And
“All we need to do is get rid of their bad government and everything will be OK.”
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As for the first: in biology only; cultures are drastically different and very resistant to change. The second is stupid, destructive, and the costliest con in history.
Phil,
I don’t know about the bureaucracy in New Zeland, but here in the states, that is not at all the way it works. First, “the board of directors” is temporary, and bureaucrats can (and do) resist any policies that they don’t like…. they wait for a change in elected representatives. Second, it is essentially impossible to fire a bureaucrat for anything less than a felony conviction, so they know they can get away with endlessly resisting any policies they don’t like. Third, bureaucrats are impossible to fire because they have huge political influence, and that influence has led to laws making it impossible to fire them. The “permanent government” of bureaucrats is essentially non-responsive to the desires of the voters. The reality in the states is that bureaucrats are overwhelmingly on the political left…. that is the direction they want government to go, and they sabotage efforts to reverse that direction.
There is no doubt in my mind that most politicians and those who rationalize their policies are good con persons. However, most pale in comparison with Trump. I could start a list for him but space here must be limited.
1. This is the greatest administration ever.
2. I am the greatest President ever.
2. My handling of the Covid-19 crisis was historically in such matters the greatest.
3. The election was a fraud and I won decisively.
4. I want to go big on the Covid-19 recovery spending bill.
5. Trade restrictions are working and it brings revenue into the government.
6. I will build a big beautiful wall between the US and Mexico.
7. Mike Pence was a traitor for not overturning the fraudulent election results.
8. If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore – head to the Capitol.
9. Barack Obama is not a US citizen.
10. I could kill someone in plain sight and still win the Republican primary.
11. You have got to find 11,000 plus votes so I can claim victory in Georgia.
12. When the riot occurred – crickets
Phil,
You said you wanted the best legal minds on the court. I gave you that list to show that at least by training, the Supreme Court in the states is populated by people trained at the very best schools. The structure of the government in the states (with separation of political power) has led to a very different role for the courts than in a parliamentary system with no formal constitution (eg the UK). The Supreme Court has (wrongly I think) made many “final decisions” that are imposed everywhere when no broad consensus can be found on contentious issues. This usually ends very badly, and has made the Supreme Court (and lower courts) extremely political.
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I doubt those who wrote the Constitution expected the Supreme Court would ever have become what it is today. If they had recognized the potential for politicization of future courts, I think they would have set up clear restrictions on the role of the SC.
Unfortunately, Trump’s it-is-all-about-me and superlative laced Twitter messages were never going to provide a platform for discussing some of the basic and systemic political issues and problems – like those that are addressed at this blog. I doubt very much that Trump was capable of making a readily understandable account of these issues for his supporters and potential supporters or even had an inclination to delegate the task to someone who could. Trump hucksterism might have been popular with some of the voting public but it was never going to get at the basic political issues and problems.
Kenneth,
Your list of Trump outrages seems to me mostly blatant exaggerations, obvious lies, and some improper political bullying. I think a “con” is normally a lot more subtle.
Kenneth
Well… it is both the greatest and worst handling of any Covid-19 crisis ever! 🙂
Steve and Tom,
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“in biology only”
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But, what if they’re not?
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People can already get their genetic tests which can tell them their ancestry, though imperfectly. Increasingly, they can also detect, though imperfectly, their disease risk. And, increasingly, people can get tests which have the correlates with their intelligence ( selfdecode.com ).
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Part of the problem with the modern workforce is the increase in complexity.
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But another part of the problem is decreasing intelligence.
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Politicians offer MAGA ( changes to government can fix things ) or systemic racism ( government can fix things ).
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But if the problems are genetic, government, short of some other dystopian hell of an unfree society, cannot fix things.
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Further, if people realize they cannot change their genetics, what’s the use? This leads to Nietchze’s crisis of nihilism.
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Further still, this is not just a problem of the US republic, but of pretty much all of civilization.
Not a big surprise department:
Re: Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #196527)
But seemingly there is no bottom and he keeps delivering on the worst fears. This was in fact from 2017:
https://www.nola.com/opinions/article_3073a030-47a1-5ebf-a39c-97ec56bf009f.html
The House and RNC have been largely remade in Trump’s image and the Hawley/Cruzzes are playing a dangerous game.
Re: Lucia, I think of Trump’s behavior not so much as a child-like tantrum but more as the behavior of a narcissistic psychopath whose psyche won’t allow defeat or humiliation.
Re: Tom Scharf, this is about the lady who was shot.
https://ricochet.com/861284/the-capitol-pd-made-the-right-call/
Turbulent Eddie,
“But another part of the problem is decreasing intelligence.”
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Really? How about the Flynn effect? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#:~:text=The%20average%20rate%20of%20increase,scaled%20by%20the%20Wechsler%20tests.)
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There is zero evidence I have seen of decreasing intelligence, at least as measured by standardized tests, and plenty of evidence of increasing intelligence. That increase is very unlikely due to genetic changes and very likely due to people being exposed to things in their environment (an ‘enriched environment’) which make them better at the kinds of metal tasks which IQ tests evaluate. Which is not to say that there is not a distribution of intelligence which covers a very wide range… there clearly is…. but that distribution on the whole has shifted upward slowly over several decades.
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The real problem is how to handle disparities in income and wealth….. only part of which is related to differences in intelligence.
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #196532)
January 8th, 2021 at 8:29 am
In most nations of the modern world each succeeding generation has had higher intelligence. Intelligence is not the problem.
From the WSJ:
I’m sure this is Trump’s fault too.
SteveF (Comment #196530)
January 8th, 2021 at 8:16 am
Subtle and Trump would never appear in the same sentence. In my book his biggest con was getting through the Republican primaries.
The Trump successes, due to how they were presented and sold, are very likely to be ephemeral just like I suspect will be the allegiance of his supporters.
RB,
It’s possible he will refuse to leave voluntarily. It’s possible even now he doesn’t know how few “true” supporters he has. While some “true” supporters somehow delude themselves that everyone who voted for Trump was enthusiastically for him, the truth is there are plenty of “embarrassed” Trump voters. They were voting against Biden or democrasts, not for Trump. They saw Trump as the lesser of two evils. But they aren’t for these bat shit crazy, shirtless idiots wearing Bison hats. They are not going to “rise up” inspired by the Jan 6 idiots.
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My prediction: If Trump refuses to leave, he will be frogmarched out by police, military and/or secret service. Depending on the anticipated security issues, the arresting officers might be accompanied by the speaker of the house, majority and minority leaders. The press will not be given an opportunity to interview the former president as he his marched out of the white house or president’s house.
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After he is marched out, Joe and Jill Biden will walk in and Biden will address the press. The speech writers are already discussing this speech in anticipation of the possible need.
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As for the rest of DC: Unlike Jan 6, this time, the mayor of DC will make sure he has a decent police force out and about. It’s possible national guard from some adjoining states will be on call.
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My advice: Stay out of DC. It will probably be under control, for a number of reasons. These include that the “Trump” supporters seem intent on explaining they are ok because they don’t burn and loot in contrast to BLM. But giving police and security space is the best course.
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(Note: They don’t seem to burn and loot. But seizing the capital is violence against democracy. That might be somewhat different from violence against property, but it’s still violence.)
Lucia,
Trump is crazy, but I don’t think he is crazy enough to refuse to leave the White House. I suspect he will head to Florida either the morning of or the day before the inaguration, so there will be no frog marching at the white house.
Also from the WSJ:
They must use a different definition of surge than I do. Cases continue to rise, but the trend hasn’t changed. That’s not a ‘surge’ in my book. More FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) from people who call themselves journalists.
Today’s online WSJ Coronavirus Live Updates page has a map of the US with the vaccination rate for each state color coded. There’s a lot of variation. Some of it is probably incompetence of the state government. But it’s also a lot easier for states with low population like North Dakota and West Virginia to vaccinate a higher fraction of their residents.
Thanks for that RB.
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I find it a little bit more than curious that this shooting video isn’t being shown all over the media. Had this shooting been … ummmm … something else … it would be have been analyzed frame by frame with all the usual allegations and broad sweeping statements about society.
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I don’t really have sympathy with protestors in a riot getting hurt if they continue after the violence starts. Primarily this is an examination of whether there is a double standard in place. I’ve seen several articles (didn’t read) about how Trump supporters were treated with kid gloves compared to BLM protesters. This is likely true in the limited sense that they were allowed to breach the capital. However there have been endless protests this year where people didn’t get shot in this manner. As I recall the protesters in Portland were initially allowed to storm the police station.
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Given all that, this looks like a bad shooting. The officer just walked up and shot her. I’m more than willing to see it as an isolated bad decision. He should be terminated for that action, but not charged with murder.
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Overall the Capital police did very poorly here, it was unprecedented so they should get a little slack. They hopefully will be better prepared next time.
Somebody invited Trump to the inauguration? Ha ha.
Lucia,
I do think the worst in terms of the transfer of power is over. I hope to be proven wrong that his influence hasn’t diminished.
Kenneth,
“The Trump successes, due to how they were presented and sold, are very likely to be ephemeral just like I suspect will be the allegiance of his supporters.”
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I don’t think the judges he appointed are going to be driven out of the Federal judiciary. Nor do I think Arab nations are suddenly going to terminate their growing relations with Israel. Nobody is going to tear down the (modest) fencing and walls at the Mexican border Trump put in place. A Lucia correctly points out, Trump’s support has always been in large measure due to people who were voting against the alternative, not for Trump… Trump was the very worst candidate for president in 2016, except for Hillary. Trump is clearly not suitable material for president, but neither is a dementia patient… nor that patient’s chosen vice president.
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What will happen is most of Trumps administrative policies will be quickly reversed: the EPA will be just as out of control (and even more!) as when Obama was in office. The IRS will feel free to target groups they don’t like politically, the ‘intelligence’ services will be more willing to break the law in gathering information on citizens, there will be an overwhelming need for ‘Federal guidance’ on how public schools indoctrinate kids about ‘social justice’, ‘critical race theory’, and the social need to eliminate free speech. Taxes will be proclaimed to have to increase drastically to pay for all the covid expenditures, with marginal rates approaching simple confiscation… but remarkably, wealthy democrat donor groups will be completely shielded. IOW, just more of the same crap which Obama pushed for 8 years.
Maybe Trump not attending the inauguration is the right call. It is certainly a much better choice than attending and pulling a Pelosi. Even if he were to behave flawlessly, his presence might still be disruptive. Imagine the cameras constantly cutting to Trump during Biden’s address. Can we be sure that Biden would act graciously toward Trump? If not, Trump would return the favor; that would be terrible. And what if Biden were to needle Trump during his address? His speechwriters might be tempted and Biden may not have much say in what he says. Better to avoid a potential disaster for everyone.
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Trump will be the 5th living President to skip his successor’s inauguration.
I am resigning as the designated Trump defender, ha ha. Not that I ever was. I never read a single Tweet or Facebook post he put up because it was all crazy. But I don’t read any politician’s statements for the most part. I examine their actions and results.
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What I tend to revolt against is overreactions and blaming the wrong people. I don’t find it particularly surprising that 1 out of million people are willing to believe Trump’s craziness enough to go to DC and storm the Capital with Viking Daniel Boone leading the charge. Some will call that rationalizing, I call it acknowledging that there are lots of craziness out there.
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This doesn’t speak to the underlying reasons why so many people voted for him originally. To the extent that people claim to want to understand this they sure don’t try very hard IMO. The current phase we are in is pretty vengeful, forcibly removing Trump is strategically the wrong thing to do if you want to pacify Trumpism.
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A golf newsletter I get this morning stated that “golf must take a stand against Trump”. Whatever, unsubscribe. I grow weary of people performatively proclaiming their virtue while also showing willingness to viciously persecute political thought at the drop of a hat. It’s just a bit too hateful in my view although that word is now too loaded. The othering of Trump Country is laid bare and everyone is playing a game of topper to see who can hate it the most.
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I won’t vote for you because you don’t respect me. Trumpism in a nutshell.
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I think Trump made it through the primary by splitting the vote, it was a single outsider vs 17 insiders. By the time the professional politician herd was thinned out it was too late. I voted for Rubio.
Mike M,
“Trump will be the 5th living President to skip his successor’s inauguration.”
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But likely not the last.
Tom,
I think this is a video. I don’t know if there are more, though as it’s in a hallway, there may not be a huge number of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWMpTHLJXbw
I don’t think there could be much frame-by-frame analysis.
She seems to be trying to pass through a broken window of a door.
Tom Scharf,
“I won’t vote for you because you don’t respect me. Trumpism in a nutshell.”
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Sure, that is part of it, but another part is: “I won’t vote for you because your policies have damaged my community and cost millions of people like me their jobs.”
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I think Hillary’s “deplorables” gaff showed exactly why Trump won in 2016 and nearly did again in 2020. Unfortunately for those who live in “flyover county”, Democrats have permanently written off the entirety of rural America, and the new administration’s policies will be formulated by coastal elites to advance the interests of coastal elites. Fortunately for rural America, it is likely Republicans will gain control of the House in November 2022, but I expect plenty of very damaging laws passed between now and then.
Tom
I’ve read mixed stuff that make it “sort of yes/sort of no”.
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I read the mayor of DC (Dem) specifically had a light force in place. So the protestors out numbered police so much that’s why the police stepped aside as barricades were breached.
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I read some of the protestors were armed. (Could even be true.) So the outnumbered police really weren’t in much of a position to do much.
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It’s true that some BLM protests were given wide latitude with little police push back. Others were confronted more.
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I think there is a question of just what the authorities expected to happen. Heck, I’m not entire sure what the individual protestors expected to happen. I suspect some of them are as surprised as anyone else. Some problably expected they’d be doing nothing but chanting and carrying placquards. Others intended well… whatever.
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I suspect the vast majority never dreamed they would get into the Capital and certainly didn’t expect to take over the government. But some probably did. Heck, “Shirtless Mr. Bison Hat” types may have thought every pro-2nd Amendment American in the country would rise up across the country and over throw every democratic controlled legislature wherever those existed!! And throw out all the RINOs for good measure!
Mike M,
“Maybe Trump not attending the inauguration is the right call.”
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I agree, Trump should not attend the inauguration.
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Nor should he have done any State of the Union speeches…. which only enabled Pelosi to behave like a spoiled child on multiple occasions… and get away with it.
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There are a million things Trump should have done differently. But the past can’t be changed, except at the NYT and the Ministry of Truth.
Lucia,
“I read some of the protesters were armed.”
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I have read such claims, but I have seen no evidence of it. Have you?
MikeM
We can be sure Trump would not act graciously toward Biden! And we can be sure he’d be the first to act ungraciously. That’s the main reason camera would cut to Trump.
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I think it’s best for Trump to skip the inauguration. It’s not about him.
Tom
Huh? Golf can perfectly well ignore Trump. A golf maganzine likely ought to stick to golf. That’s what people subscribe for.
Sure. They vote against the person who doesn’t respect them. But as SteveF pointed out, they also often vote against the people whose policies they object to.
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SteveF
Nope. No specific evidence. I wouldn’t be surprised if some where, but they don’t seem to have shot anyone. I haven’t seem guns waved etc.
On arming: I do see images of armed protestors in Washington State and Oregon. I definitely see news reports saying some of the protestors in DC were armed. Presumably, someone will find some footage highlighting that. I haven’t see it though. (OTOH: I haven’t hunted for it.)
News reports, like I believe that is proof of anything. If there was footage, you wouldn’t have to hunt for it. It would be the lead story on TV news and on the front page of most newspapers.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised, however, if a number of protesters had concealed carry permits. Whether they were actually carrying at the time is unproven. A fast way to lose your permit is to brandish your weapon in public. So if some were carrying, they likely kept their weapons concealed.
People are being arrested. It’s not surprising since many didn’t make the slightest efforts to disguise themselves. Maybe Trump will pardon them. 🙂
The photo here shows armed people
https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/congress-electoral-college-vote-count-2021/h_20490097776eb05d7c29ddf3c4792834
I’d seen it before but I didn’t know and still don’t know if the armed people are the intruders or security of some sort. I see people in black on the other side of the window, but I can’t tell if they are armed.
I do not buy the image sometimes presented here of the downtrodden and disrespected voter class. I think they are a convenient conduit for those attributing their own complaints about the system to those people. I will be more surprised if a significant percentage of these former Trump voters do not change their allegiance to Biden and particularly so if his administration buys it through promised birth to grave security in the form of goodies like “free” health care, college education, more social security benefits and the occasional check from Washington. Even better for them will having it paid for by the wealthy and corporations and when that tap runs dry by the printing presses.
All of the above has been promised by the Democrats and with control of the presidency and congress who is going to stop them.
SteveF. Thanks for the clarification of your comments over the supreme court. I think I get it. Perhaps something where a consensus could be found to amend the constitution.
Bureaucracy – you are pretty much describing the world of “Yes Minister” – but maybe that UK series didnt screen in States. However, here, Australia, UK and I think many other places, that kind of civil service got swept away in massive reforms pushed through by both left and right. I dont think current system is perfect – far from it – but it is lightyears ahead of what it used to be pre-reform.There is still games being played to try and control the information flow to ministers, and about costing policy initiatives but it would be very high risk to try and subvert a ministers wishes.
The most powerful arm of the service is Treasury and it is hard-right economically.
IQ scores are falling and have been for decades, new study finds
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Are we becoming more STUPID? IQ scores are decreasing – and some experts argue it’s because humans have reached their intellectual peak
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People Getting Dumber? Human Intelligence Has Declined Since Victorian Era, Research Suggests
Phil Scadden,
“Yes Minister” did screen in the US. However, that’s not quite the problem in the US. The minister in that television program seemed to be an advisor to the prime minister telling the prime minister what he could do.
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Our situation is that Congress sets up broad laws set up a new organization and then gives “rule making” authority to that organization. Then those in that organization make the “rules”. So for example, Congress creates the EPA. Then civil servants hired by the EPA make the rules. So for example, precisely how much lead should be in water is left to the EPA.
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If it were only “how much lead” the EPA was limiting itself to… that might be fine. But the agency has a strong tendency to start to view want to enlarge it’s domain of influence arguably beyond what was ever intended. So for example: the EPA wants to extend “clean air” rules to CO2. Whatever your view on CO2, it’s almost certain that the congress that passed the clean air act did not intend greenhouse gases or global warming to be the subject of “clean air” act. They were focused on things like soot, NO2 blah… blah…
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Broad extensions ought to be the domain of the legislature. Most people agree on this when the extension is something they don’t want! But, of course, some people who want the extension would be perfectly happy to have the broad extension be done by the agency. (Because… you want what you want and you may not care how you get it!)
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Meanwhile, for many reasons, agency employees want to “broaden” both for power of their agency and because sometimes, extending and controlling is something that those who want to work at agencies like to do! So these things grow.
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This structure means there is a very strong tendency for rules and regulations to grow and those who support the growth aren’t required to make any case for additional regulations or rules.
Lucia, thanks for that. All helping me to understand why US is so different. In Yes Minister, the “advisor” (Sir Humprey) was supposedly a “Permanent Secretary”, the chief executive of a ministry.
The 1st video here RB posted earlier more clearly shows the officer’s actions:
https://ricochet.com/861284/the-capitol-pd-made-the-right-call/
Never let a crisis go to waste. Twitter bans Trump for life, Google and likely Apple to ban Parler from app stores. It’s getting very Orwellian.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-threatens-to-ban-parler-from-app-store-11610148297
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“We have received numerous complaints regarding objectionable content in your Parler service, accusations that the Parler App was used to plan, coordinate and facilitate the illegal activities in Washington DC on January 6…â€
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The only people not overreacting to this are Wall Street. A great big yawn.
Phil,
The people at the top of bureaucracies in our system are replaced. So the head of the EPA would change when the administration changes. So the sort of minister in “Yes Minister” is replaceable!
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But the “worker bees” matter a lot. They are near permanent and can have quite a bit of influence– and ability to stall, guide etc.
Tom,
I’m sure Parler will be able to get it’s app out in other ways. It might take 2 weeks to organize distribution well. More people will join Parler now. (I’ve joined a while ago, but it’s a big void!)
Reddit bans “r/donaldtrump”
Discord bans “The_Donald”
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Unity is breaking out everywhere! Why there isn’t a peep of dissent on tech platforms anymore. Biden is keeping promises.
Turbulent Eddie,
I was unaware of those studies; the third seems to me wildly speculative, and contradicted by many other studies. Clearly there are many conflicting studies, but the Flynn effect may well have leveled off in many places. One thing is certain: The range of intelligence in the population is quite wide, with the 95% inclusive IQ range covering 70 to 130. This wide range is OK when there is employment available that is suitable for most all that range, but presents a problem when less mentally demanding employment becomes less available and/or generates falling wages. Add to that strong cultural/behavioral factors which reduce many people’s employability, and we face a serious societal problem.
Tom
That’s not banning Trump himself. Those are discussion groups with those names. Mind you… they might be fomenting…. something.
lucia,
I don’t think you can install an app in iOS that doesn’t come through the app store, at least not without jailbreaking the OS. There is at least one law suit going on about that now IIRC. The app store is also why you can’t buy anything with the Amazon app. Apple charges a significant commission on any transaction using an app.
Lucia, the fun bit is that US sees political appointees to head of public service as a strength, whereas UK, Aus, NZ, see the apolitical public service as a strength. I am guessing the chief executive in US performs much of the function of the minister. However, it appears the governance methods in practice, at least since the neoliberal reforms, are very different.
Pretty sure DeWitt is correct above. Android is much less restrictive in this regard than iOS.
Anyone who supports Trump for any reason should now be banned from posting their views? One could just ban specific people who promoted violence, but that might send the wrong message. The entire foundation of this is plain silly and irrational. At least we can all feel totally comfortable that the censorship will end here. Nobody will attempt to widen this net any further.
Google and Apple had already banned Gab for not following Twitter style censorship. Parler claims they are censoring- their ban was for being where the Trump supporters are going.
It is pretty easy to install apps on Android via USB cable connection to a computer, but not on IPhones.
Mike, that too. But there are other app stores for Android beside Google’s.
The cynical view is that tech corporations are busy appeasing the incoming administration to prevent future anti-trust action.
I went to reddit.
* “The_Donald” violated rules 1,2 and 8. So… off to wikipedia….
According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald) the ban happened on June 29, 2020. Evidently, participants created https://thedonald.win/.
I’m there right now…. I have to prove I’m not a bot. I have to pick the images of bicycles. I passed the captcha. It looks like a forum. Looks pretty busy. Anyway, they seem to have found someplace to exercise their right to speak.
*According to reddit, r/donaldtrump was banned for inciting violence. I didn’t find any additional information on wikipedia. But I found this https://ph.news.yahoo.com/reddit-bans-r-donaldtrump-following-183750641.html
Given that it’s reddit, violations definitely could have happened! it would be interesting to read what specifically was written, but one can’t be everywhere! Presumably, those who want to can go to https://thedonald.win/ which seems to be holding up. I clicked a few forum posts. They look like… well… posts of people being grumpy Trump was dumped from Twitter and so on.
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Maybe there will be threads fomenting rebellion, but I’m not going to hunt through the whole thing. I’ll let the FBI do that. 🙂
I have a new Iphone. But I always read things like twitter on my set up at home, not on my phone. So the app doesn’t really matter to me.
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Presumably, Parler will grow over the next year. Self-promoters will figure out how to push their “tweet/parleys” automatically to both platforms. There will be more fragmentation of who talks to whom…. bot oh well.
Twitter disabled third party apps posting to Twitter.
I’m not familiar enough with phone apps, but it might be possible to run an app that would take all your tweets and simultaneously post them to a different site. Can definitely be done within a browser.
Or the site itself could copy your tweets and post them to its site.
This is an interesting take on the events of jan 6. Also, parts match what I’ve thought. (I hadn’t thought one way or the other of what Trump was planning. But I had thought some about the motley cru that were the Maga invaders of the Capital.)
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Anyway, Kieran Healey’s view is Trump did egg the crew on but he never expected anyone to get into the capital.
https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2021/01/08/what-happened/
MikeN,
If you are self-promoting your newspaper articles, blog posts etc, you would definitely take advantage of posting announcements from a browser or anything that lets you.
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The Babylon Bee posts a link to every article on Parler and I assume does so on Twitter. I notice them all on Parler because I only follow about 3 things there…. I haven’t found any people who talk on Parler. (I’m sure they exist, but I haven’t found them.)
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I’m sure these things are effectively robo-posted.
SteveF (Comment #196528) January 8th, 2021 at 8:02 am wrote:
“The structure of the government in the states (with separation of political power) has led to a very different role for the courts than in a parliamentary system with no formal constitution (eg the UK). The Supreme Court has (wrongly I think) made many “final decisions†that are imposed everywhere when no broad consensus can be found on contentious issues. This usually ends very badly, and has made the Supreme Court (and lower courts) extremely political. I doubt those who wrote the Constitution expected the Supreme Court would ever have become what it is today. If they had recognized the potential for politicization of future courts, I think they would have set up clear restrictions on the role of the SC.”
Relying on Wikipedia, some legal systems are based on “common law”, “a body of law derived from judicial decisions, rather than from statutes or constitutions”. Both the English and US legal systems are based on common law, so the framers likely would have expected the Supreme Court to make many final decisions. (In civil law systems, beginning with the Napoleonic code, judges don’t decide general principles of law.)
What was new in our system was a written constitution, which spelled out the limited powers given to the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the Federal government – leaving everything else to state governments. The Bill of Rights was added to further limit the power of the federal government. Each amendment is so short that the framers wouldn’t be surprised if courts created a body of precedent that further defined those rights.
Congress was empowered to create lower federal courts as needed to rule on potential violations of laws written by Congress. Those courts needed to resolve any ambiguity in those laws as written and practical difficulty in application. The founders probably anticipated that this would create more precedents, because that is what happened with state laws.
However, Congress didn’t always pay attention pay attention to the limitations on the powers it was given by the Constitution. In particular, it passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 in violation of the First Amendment. When interpreting the meaning of laws passed by Congress, the Court needed to decide whether the Constitution was merely an aspirational outline meant to guide the legislative and executive branches, or whether the Constitution was higher law than Congressional law or common law when they conflicted. In Marbury v Madison, the Supreme Court decided that the Constitution was higher law and therefore that they possessed the unwritten power to invalidate Congressional law when it conflicted with the Constitution. The framers never anticipated a need for such judicial review, because they had never practiced law in a system where higher law in the form of a constitution could over-rule common law or Parliamentary law. Once you admit that the Constitution is higher law and that the Supreme Court and lower federal courts are supposed to interpret all federal law, judicial review seems unavoidable.
I wish we had automatic legislative review of judicial interpretation of federal law. When a lower court’s opinion about the meaning of a federal law is appealed, Congress should recognize that they retain the power to decide what the law actually means by passing clarifying legislation. When a case is important enough to have been appealed to the Supreme Court, Congress should require that it hold a vote on any narrow clarifying bill before they next adjourn, so they can decide what the law actually means (if possible) before the Supreme Court hears the case. This might satisfy complaints I and SteveF may have in common.
In other words, before the Supreme Court had a chance to rule that CO2 was an air pollutant, Congress will have forced itself to at least hold a vote on clarifying legislation. It’s their job to decide – if they can reach a decision. In the case of ozone-destroying “pollutants”, Congress volunteered to pass legislation before courts ruled. That’s vastly better than what happened with GHGs.
However, Congress can’t pass legislation that clarifies the Constitution without amending the Constitution.
Frank,
“In the case of ozone-destroying “pollutantsâ€, Congress volunteered to pass legislation before courts ruled. That’s vastly better than what happened with GHGs.”
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Absolutely. But I would go further. The SC foolishly (because of the foolish progressives on the court) ruled in Chevron that when Congresses intent is in doubt, the bureaucracy gets to make the law mean whatever the hell they want it to, and force everyone to comply. This has made for routine promulgation of preposterous Federal regulations, against which there is no legal appeal. Kafka is probably smiling.
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If the five actual conservatives on the court reverse Cheveron, and start voiding regulations that are not clearly justified by actual laws, that will be a huge improvement. It would force Congress to make basic policy choices, and to face the political consequences when those choices are rejected by the voters. The court’s simple insistence that Congress do its job would be a hundred times more consequential in the long run than anything Trump did during his four years in office.
Tom Scharf (Comment #196586): “Anyone who supports Trump for any reason should now be banned from posting their views? One could just ban specific people who promoted violence, but that might send the wrong message. The entire foundation of this is plain silly and irrational. At least we can all feel totally comfortable that the censorship will end here. Nobody will attempt to widen this net any further.”
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Indeed. The recent tech oligarchs’ actions are sure to induce even more discontent and conspiracy theories. Violence to follow.
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I wonder what Republicans like Mike Lee have to say about this. Their position has been that it is a free market, so if people don’t like Google, Twitter, etc., they can create their own platforms. Once again, Trump right, mainstream Republicans clueless.
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This is not the tech companies currying favor with the new administration. It is the acceleration of a slow motion coup.
Frank
They can pass clarifying, unclarifying or new legislation whenever they like.
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It wouldn’t be helpful to require Congress to spend time on legislation merely because an individual appealed a ruling.
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SteveF’s later objection to the Chevron defense is on point. Where the legislation passed by Congress is unclear the ruling should be against the bureaucracy’s rule not deferred to them. Then Congress can pass a law clarifying. But if you can’t tell if something is allowed or called for by the law Congress passed, it should be not allowed.
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If this means Congress needs to be more careful to be clarify what is intended: Good.
Steve F –
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Yes – seems to me rising complexity is pulling the high IQ job reward upward while dysgenics is pulling the population IQ downward. I believe this is important to current politics ( as well as diminishing peoples ability to think critically and react rationally with a long term plan ).
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Jordan Peterson cites the military IQ requirement of 85. The military is the most motivated employer, so this effectively indicates the labor of those with an IQ of 85 is worthless ( and this number may be rising ). As Peterson says, this is a heartbreaking situation. It is also not sustainable, particularly with present trends.
Frank (Comment #196598): “In Marbury v Madison, the Supreme Court decided that the Constitution was higher law and therefore that they possessed the unwritten power to invalidate Congressional law when it conflicted with the Constitution. The framers never anticipated a need for such judicial review,”
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Very nice summary, but that bit is not quite right. The founders were very concerned about that very thing. Some wanted to specifically constrain the courts. Others thought that the fact that the courts had no power to enforce decisions would enough to constrain the power of the courts; unreasonable decisions would just be ignored. That actually happened at times in the 19th century, at least as late as the Jackson administration.
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In Marbury v Madison, had the court ordered the administration to obey the law passed by Congress, Jefferson would have just thumbed his nose at the court. But Marshall’s decision was one that claimed the power of judicial review while not leaving anyone in a position to defy that decision. So he got away with it.
lucia (Comment #196603): “SteveF’s later objection to the Chevron defense is on point. Where the legislation passed by Congress is unclear the ruling should be against the bureaucracy’s rule not deferred to them. Then Congress can pass a law clarifying. But if you can’t tell if something is allowed or called for by the law Congress passed, it should be not allowed.”
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I second that. It does not address the problem of decisions like Obergefell, but it would constrain the power of the administrative state.
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I’d go further and say that there should be limits on the power that Congress can assign to the executive. It makes sense to give the executive authority on purely technical matters, like deciding if a new drug is safe and effective. But administrative power often goes way beyond that.
Turbulent,
“…. while dysgenics is pulling the population IQ downward.”
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I do not believe there is clear evidence of that.
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #196568)
January 8th, 2021 at 3:59 pm
It appears from what I have read that IQ was generationally increasing in most nations up to the 1990s where in some nations it has leveled off and in others continues to rise. The increases in IQ came for the lower levels while at the highest level there were little to no changes. This development could indicate that human intelligence, or at least IQ test results, has an upper limit, but that people at lower levels have potential for improvement.
That IQ can increase/decrease for a nation over time puts it less in the potential realm of genetics.
These things do have uncertainty, but…
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The absolute difference of child mortality between high IQ parents and low IQ parents used to be high and now is near zero.
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And, the fertility rates of low IQ parents is high while the fertility rates of high IQ parents is below replacement.
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The fertility and mortality are both dysgenic and are both large and rapid reversals from two and even one century ago.
“Where the legislation passed by Congress is unclear the ruling should be against the bureaucracy’s rule not deferred to them.”
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It’s not always clear when something is not clear and when it is. These are judgment calls. I’m sure the courts have invalidated many rules that were “clearly” out of bounds. People will invariably disagree on these lines. The EPA was intentionally given leeway to rule on things so congress didn’t have to enact a new law every time somebody dumped a new chemical drum into a ditch. There are absolutely many activists in the EPA who abuse that rule and are going to press the boundaries no matter where they are. These civil service / activists are either the devil in disguise or highly motivated productive employees depending on where you view the subject at hand.
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Congress can still pass a law “thou shall not regulate CO2 emissions” and it’s very easy from there. There ought to be rule that any “weighty” regulations that are excessively burdensome or intrusive require a congressional approval. Maybe there are, but yet another judgment call.
An example of why lower IQ’s rising are better childhood nutrition. Free school breakfast/lunch programs, etc. This can be viewed as showing how environmental effects are real but act mostly to lower the bar for where genetic IQ’s can take you. It’s all very complicated and fuzzy, but discussions on the subject are toxic. The “blank slate” theory is obviously wrong but enforced socially.
Turbulent Eddie, perhaps you should investigate the Flynn effect. Alternatively, you might explore Kevin Drum’s blog on Mother Jones and his frequent postings on the effects of lead pollution.
I have hoped for some time that major media would start ignoring 99% of Trump’s nonsense once he left office. I’m pleased that newer electronic media are leading by example.
Mike M. (Comment #196602)
January 9th, 2021 at 8:15 am
I agree with Mike Lee, if that indeed is his position. A private party shutting down another private party is very different than the government shutting down a private party or restricting who that private party can shut down. If Lucia, the owner/operator of this blog, wanted to shut down a poster for whatever reason she should have the right to do so. If I, as the owner of my home, shut down a visitor to my home for whatever reason I chose I should have the property right to do that.
In Trump’s case his being banned from Twitter early in his administration would have been a great favor to him and those of us who tire of listening to his blathering egotistical tweets. Trump would unfortunately never think of writing or have a designate write a white paper detailing his positions on various political topics and putting that out for public consumption – but he could have. I think that it is great that a private party can tell a politician to go to hell. It helps in at least two ways first it shows by example the freedom of expression and property rights and second it also may well show the political leanings of the private party if they treat parties according to their politics. Obviously the consumer, who does not like the political leaning of that party or that party having a political preference, can end their association with that party.
Back in the day when the government had strict licensing and a fairness doctrine for TV broadcasting we had three major networks who presented the news from a center/left perspective with no alternative source of news and commentary. Then along came talk radio which definitely allowed the choice of right of center commentary. We now have government supported public broadcasting which is very much left of center in the politics and commentary.
You should think twice before considering getting the government involved in these matters if you have right of center political views because it is rather easy to see where a strictly government regulated and/or supported entity will come down on political issues.
Of course, Trump was not clueless in this matter as his position was always perfectly clear: Whatever helps Donald J.
“Ignoring” and censorship are totally different and shouldn’t be confused. Ignoring is a choice by the recipient, censoring is by an authority removing the choice for the individual.
“WASHINGTON – House Democrats plan to introduce an article of impeachment as early as Monday alleging the president should be removed from office days after a violent pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in a deadly riot.”
“House leaders are still discussing how best to proceed against Trump, who would be the first president ever to be impeached twice.”
Source: today’s USAToday.
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I’m not sure I understand the need for impeachment since Trump will be out of office in a couple of weeks anyway, but I may be missing something.
Kenneth,
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The Bell Curve cites various studies from its publication in the early ’90s which estimated the genetic contribution to IQ of between 40% and 80%. Clearly, malnourishment could degrade brain development and subsequently IQ, regardless of one’s genes.
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But Charles Murray also cites adoption studies, wherein adoptive homes, because they are certified and competitive, may represent the best possible home environment. Statistical studies based on mother’s IQ in these situations indicates about a 6 point IQ increase. Not zero, but also not large, certainly not nearly as large as the variance observed.
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Here’s the Wiki:
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Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%[6] with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%.[7] IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics, for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults.
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That IQ is more strongly correlated with genetics for adults may be even more relevant to society.
Lucia, what I mean is that you have an app monitoring your phone and when you use the Twitter app, it will take your tweets and automatically post them to your Parler account.
This is definitely possible on a browser.
The reverse would not be possible, monitoring for posts on Parler and then posting these to Twitter, because Twitter will not allow anything but their tools to post tweets.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #196614): “You should think twice before considering getting the government involved in these matters”
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I don’t want the government regulation of those matters.
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I want section 230 protection to apply only to platforms that do not control content beyond what is allowed in the law. If Facebook wants to act like a publisher, then they should have all the rights and risks of a publisher. I think that is arguably less government, not more.
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I also want antitrust laws to be enforced. That increases the freedom of the marketplace.
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Tom Scharf (Comment #196615): “Ignoring and censorship are totally different and shouldn’t be confused. Ignoring is a choice by the recipient, censoring is by an authority removing the choice for the individual.”
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Spot on.
Fuller,
The point you are making is (as usual) unclear. Proving environmental effects doesn’t preclude the existence of genetic effects, and conversely the people who believe it is 100% genetic should feed their children lead paint every day and see what happens.
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From before the 1960’s to around maybe 2000 IQ research wasn’t social dogma and there is craploads of good data available. Go look at the gold standard of twins separated at birth studies. Examine what happens when low IQ children are adopted by high IQ parents and vice versa. Examine the IQ of children of mixed IQ parents. Examine the children of extreme high IQ and low IQ parents (spoiler: slow generational return to the mean) Examine IQ changes over time, some environmental increases (great schools, teachers, etc) are lost by adulthood. The Flynn effect is race neutral. The point here is that many revealing tests have already been done. What is definitive is genetics and environment play a role.
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98% of discussion on this subject is tedious strawman exercises. There are approx. zero experts in this field who believe it 100% one way or the other.
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When examining IQ by race there are sometimes certain intellectual tests that are done better in different cultures. Asians I think are better at spatial rotations and such. Maybe they had to dodge tigers jumping in trees 10,000 years ago, who knows.
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On the grand scale human survival and dominance over other predators was likely selected for generically. Is the difference between your dog and yourself environmental? Can’t we just put them in good schools and feed them big brain puppy chow? The differences genetically in humans is subtle by comparison.
I believe I recall the name Kevin Drum mentioned above by Thomas Fuller as the researcher on the effects of lead from vehicle exhausts from leaded gasoline on the prevalence of violent crime in the inner city and how those crime rates decreased significantly as the lead pollution was reduced. I could not personally find flaws in his statistics or find papers that refuted his research. On the other hand I did see hardly, if any, references to his studies in the MSM. It would appear that lead was a much more significant factor in inner city violent crime than socio-economic ones.
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #196609)
January 9th, 2021 at 10:04 am
You are showing educational attainment and job classification versus effects on live birthrates. You would need to show the connection of those classes to IQ and/or intelligence or maybe more importantly but not available IQ potential.
WordPress kicked Conservative TreeHouse off their platform a month ago.
Tom Scharf (Comment #196615)
January 9th, 2021 at 10:55 am
I do not understand your point here vis a vis two private parties. Am I censoring someone who I want to exclude that someone from my private property? If so I am all for that version of censorship.
Censorship in my book becomes bad when government is involved and worse the more it is involved.
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #196617)
January 9th, 2021 at 10:58 am
I thought we were discussing generational changes in IQ. Genetics certainly have an effect on IQ, but that does not mean I would hire someone based on an IQ test.
I’m satisfied with the state of free speech regulation in the US and getting the government involved for private companies would make the problem worse or disastrous IMO.
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It’s another question entirely if specific private censorship is wise or counterproductive. I find it curious that these things happen very quickly and across multiple domains. There is a herd mentality and too much groupthink.
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I also very much dislike the nanometer thin veneer claims of political neutrality in this censorship. This is laughable at this point. What’s next? The President? Oh, wait.
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If lefty companies want to remove non-lefty people from their platforms that is fine. It should be seen as such. However the mob and their loudest cheerleaders want the non-lefty discussion removed * everywhere * and it is clear if they had the power to do so, this is exactly what they would do using rather loose interpretations of hate and violence for their opponents and rather rigid interpretations for themselves. They are already doing this.
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More importantly this is just unwise. Fox News came into existence and is so successful because the legacy MSM tried the same plan.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #196614)
I agree with Kenneth.
The fact is: Twitter has not really shut Trump down. Trump could go to Parler. He could spend $15 for a domain, install some forum software and pay a hosting company somewhere to host his forum. Loads of people would go read whatever he has to say. He could get mirrored hosting.
Once he wrote whatever he wanted to write, it would be discussed on Twitter.
The only way in which Twitter is shutting him down is to not let him write on Twitter. The same goes for facebook and so on.
I have a self hosted blog. I don’t accept the idea that Twitter has “shut him down†merely because he won’t go to the trouble I’ve gone to have a self-hosted blog.
He’s written this btw:
https://twitter.com/lucialiljegren/status/1347916086918975495/photo/1
Well… If he DID predict this (some way other than blathering) he should have acted earlier and set something his “own platform†months ago. He. Did. Not. His inaction means he doesn’t have a platform he prefers but doesn’t make Twitter obligated to give him theirs, for free, to use however he wants. “Freedom†isn’t a one way street that lets The_Donald do what he wants and everyone else has to bend to his will.
MikeN
WordPress is not a real hosting service. If they wanted to continue, they should have had backed up regularly (which you can), and moved to a private server.
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If you want freedom of speech, find your own platform. (I do. It’s not that hard a concept. It’s not that much work.) Don’t insist someone else allow you to use their printing press.
Tom
Yes. And Fox News doesn’t ask MSM to let Fox use MSM cameramen, officespace, broadcast hardware and so on and so on. MSM has everyright to do that. If they initially allowed Fox on but changed their mind, that would be MSM’s perogative. And it would be Fox’s stupidity to have thought it made sense to hand over control of their platform to MSM.
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Fox isn’t that stoooopid. But some people (including Trump) appear to be that stooppid. If he “forsaw” having his Tweet-bullhorn taken away, he should have talked to people about setting something else up.
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If you want free speech, and you want control of your own platform create a dang platform and use it. Fox does. Trump can. Conservative whose-i-whats it can too.
Looks like Trump will serve through Jan 19.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/533461-mcconnell-circulates-procedures-for-second-senate-impeachment-trial-of-trump
And so on….
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In fact, you can’t, or at least not legally.
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But I’ll bet you already indirectly do hire on the basis of intelligence. That’s a big reason that the waiters with college degrees phenomenon occurs, not because it’s necessary, but because the degree means both intelligence ( at least to the admissions standards, which is a form of IQ test ) and conscientiousness to stick out the four years.
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It’s not perfect – some degrees obviously require more intelligence than others. But it’s a pretty good proxy.
Even if a degree doesn’t require a lot of intelligence, it does require some conscientiousness, some ability to do some drudgery assigned by others, and some stick-to-itativeness to achieve a goal. Those tend to be good traits in employees who are going to have to deal with customers.
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A reasonable level of intelligence is also a good thing in a waiter. But personableness matters a lot too. So does physical stamina.
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In our current market, those with degrees that require a lot of “IQ” type intelligence tend to end up using those degrees for something other than being a waiter because they can make more money using their degree.
Tom Wrote: “I’m satisfied with the state of free speech regulation in the US and getting the government involved for private companies would make the problem worse or disastrous IMO.”
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Government is already involved, having granted social media companies amnesty from being legally responsible for the content they publish, unlike traditional media. The irony is that the current law exists the way it does in an effort to uphold free speech. The idea being that the companies shouldn’t be held liable for the things their users print through their mediums because, if they were, lawfare could be used to silence people and therefore stifle free speech. Back then it was claimed the shear amount of data precluded any proper control of what was printed, and therefore censorship wasn’t even really feasible. That the fledgling companies would be buried under lawsuits.
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Clearly times have changed, though. The social media companies have grown, technology has advanced, and they exert increasingly draconian control over what is, and is not, allowed to be said on their platforms. They are increasingly acting like publishers, with “editors” deciding what content is allowed and what is forbidden, not based on the law, but on their own “moral” foundations, all while remaining free from any legal ramifications of the content they allow to be published. This is not what the law was intended to support.
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Either they are a platform, dedicated to allowing communication between people within the bounds of the law, or they are publishers, which can pick and choose who is “right” and who is “wrong”, but have to stand behind the opinions they publish. Currently they have the best of both worlds, the freedom to publish any opinion they want, and no legal recourse for those they wrong in doing so.
I don’t discount that having a degree proves something with respect to IQ, perseverance, etc.
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The problem with credentialism is the forced payment of $40K+ to government approved institutions to get that piece of paper and no independent way to get an equivalent piece of paper of competence in an area for free to low cost. I’m not a better engineer because I wrote checks to an institution and sat bored to death in their buildings for 4 years.
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Assuming the moral scourge of IQ testing for employment was allowable, how many companies would hire people based solely on IQ for their very specialized needs that had nothing to do with what was taught at State U?
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It’s not that Big Education is useless, it’s that it has become too dominant and costly. Biden want to forgive student loans. As a person who has paid for Big Ed and their climbing walls, this is infuriating.
The New York Times and the Washington Post are the two most quoted and looked to newspapers for news and opinion in the US. They come under regulations and responsibilities that some want for the social media biggies. Those papers can censor and ignore based on their political leanings all they want – and they do so in spades. The social and non social media generally is supported by the current leftist intelligentsia and those venues are their means of getting their ideas exposed to the public. Changing the rules for social media would not change any of this and in fact would encourage more outwardly biased political actions.
Using anti-trust against social media in my view is based on different political intentions from the left and the right. The left is fully consistent in wanting the government to rule over private entities like large corporations and anti-trust is a tool for keeping them in line. Some on the right would use it against the social media giants because they do not like their politics. Both reasons are wrong and go against the grain of freedom for private entities from government harassment or the threat thereof.
Given the current overwhelming presence by the left in media matters, I see the online blogs and discussions online a very healthy and powerful counter force. The only way for it to reach its true potential is to keep it as free from government regulation as possible. And that means whether they are right, left or neutral they all need to be free of the government. Look to China to see what occurs when the government is in control.
Tom Scharf,
Many years ago, when I was involved in hiring engineers, I would have been happy to evaluate every applicant with an examination on relevant technical material. Not possible; human resources would have arrived in my office, Uzi’s loaded, ready to kill me.
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So relying on credentials and interviews is what you are forced to do. I think that the “university education system” has become mainly a farce; they turn out appalling numbers of indoctrinated lefties, “educated” in fluffy liberal arts fields of no economic value. These are people who know almost nothing of substance.
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But even in the “hard” sciences and engineering, lax admissions, and even laxer evaluation, has devalued degree credentials from most universities. I would be 100% for administration of a standardized test in every technical field… and one required for anyone claiming competence in that field, whether trained by reading alone on-line, or trained at a university.
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Of course, anything like that is prohibited; you can’t become a lawyer by passing the bar exam…. you have to pay a university first. You can’t become a pharmacist by passing an exam…. you have to pony up the money for accredited “training”. It is all a scam, set up only to protect the interest of formal educational organizations, and even more, formally educated ‘professionals’.
Lucia,
“Even if a degree doesn’t require a lot of intelligence, it does require some conscientiousness, some ability to do some drudgery assigned by others, and some stick-to-itativeness to achieve a goal. Those tend to be good traits in employees who are going to have to deal with customers.”
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All true. But my guess is someone who has taught themselves mechanical engineering, or chemistry, or civil engineering, etc. well enough to pass a standardized tests in those fields has also demonstrated stick-to-itiveness. The absolute worst two hires I ever made, 15 years apart, were highly credentialed (PhD’s) from “good” universities, who it turned out to understand absolutely nothing about how things actually work.
SteveF,
Ph.D’s not knowing how things work can definitely happen. . .
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In principle, they should know they don’t know how things work. I know how some things work. Other things…. not so much. Sometimes, you just have to admit that you need to spend time to learn how a process, method or machine works.
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I have to admit, I’ve run across people with masters who don’t know how things work — sometimes things that I think they ought to know how the work.
SteveF, I had the same experience in my hiring career whereby Human Resources wanted to filter candidates and present me with a small percentage of the original applicants. Most of my hiring was done when I had a company president or vice president as a boss. I would go to my boss with the message that for me to be held accountable for my people I had to have total control of the hiring process. This always got HR pretty much out of the process.
I would sometimes ask my people to do an interview of candidates that I was not real sure how they would work out. One of my people who was very good at his job was also unfortunately a maintenance drinker. When I had him do a secondary interview he reported back to me that I should not hire the candidate because he had alcohol on his breath and might well have a drinking problem. He was right and we did not hire this person.
I interviewed some very intelligent people who I did not hire for various reasons. Most often that included having a chip on the shoulder and others coming across as someone who might not be very industrious and rather would prefer to sit back as consultant with a great storehouse of knowledge.
Some of my best hires turned out to be the most disruptive to the corporate culture and I had to spend time and energy keeping them from being fired. Letting HR make the choices for me probably would have made this part of my job much less difficult.
Ray Dalio has released new chapters of his upcoming book.
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He details the US situation as being stage 5 of 6 in the debt cycle of civil unrest.
Lucia,
I would have hired you in a heartbeat; brilliant is hard to turn down. But brilliant is very rarely an option. I did lose a few brilliant hires, one a co-op student, second generation Armenian, who worked for me for a total of 12 months while an undergrad. He had almost unlimited upward potential, but opted for grad school instead of industrial work. You win some you lose some.
SteveF,
I don’t know chemistry!!!! It’s all gone. So if the job needed chemistry, hiring me would be a mistake– and I wouldn’t apply!
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There are many things I’m bad at. And as my husband points out…. I’m smarter, but he’s more consistent and harder working. (Yes… he says this and we both agree. Well… definitely about him being harder working!)
Actually… that reminds of we took two classes together. The 2nd one was a EE course in stochastic processes. (We were both interested in the first 2/3rds and then realized the last 1/3rd not so much. But we were in the course.
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At the same time we took the course, we were in ballroom dance in PE and went to dances at the gym every Friday.
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The grader for the course was also taking ballroom dance. He asked me to dance. Then he mentioned he was the grader. (Well… I happened to already know that.) Then he sort of hesitantly said… You know.. there are two of you with the same last name in the class…. “Yes” I said. He said: “Do you know each other?”.
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I laughed and said we were married. He said, he was totally puzzled because we obviously didn’t do the homework together because we picked different methods– both to get the right answer. But he could tell neither one of us was copying of the other by a long shot.
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I said: “Yeah… we never do the homework together unless one of us gets stuck.”
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I think that’s where to leave the story.
Lucia,
I was never looking for specific knowledge of chemical engineering, I was looking for smart. I will not argue with your husband, but I still think you would be a great hire. There are many things I am bad at as well, including consistent follow-up on issues/problems.
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Hard working is a huge plus of course; the difference in national wealth between Brazil and Japan has to do mostly with motivation. Still, I like brilliant, when available.
Steve F
“All true. But my guess is someone who has taught themselves mechanical engineering, or chemistry, or civil engineering, etc. well enough to pass a standardized tests in those fields has also demonstrated stick-to-itiveness.â€
I always thought I should’ve gotten extra credit for teaching myself DiffEQ, linear algebra and Fourier series since neither Kim Kong nor Avram Florin could speak enough English to order at Subway. We were all surprised on the last day of class when we found out our Fourier/Laplace prof was actually named Florin Avram. This was for the 3rd rated Aero Engineering program in the US.
Btw, I didn’t do a good job at teaching myself Laplace Transformations. I settled for a C.
Well…this really IS going to hurt Parler
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-parler-aws
Amazon Is Booting Parler Off Of Its Web Hosting Service
Lucia,
Ya well, those on the left will do what they can to suppress any voice they disagree with. The willingness to suppress ideas they disagree with at is likely the best place to examine the exemption for liability for “neutral platforms” to post obscene slander and defamation. Until now, they ave ‘gotten away with murder’ in terms of defamation and slander.
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I have no problem with them being political actors. I have a very big problem with them being treated as neutral platforms, when they are anything but neutral, and are in fact obvious, strident political actors.
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In addition, they all work aggressively to suppress competition, either buying or crushing potential competitors (the suppression of distribution of Parlor is but one example). They are bad people, consistently doing bad things, which do willful harm to the public. Antitrust action seems to me the obvious solution… split them into 3 pieces each, and let all competitive hell break loose between the pieces.
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I add here a gentle observation: Those on the left always want to suppress the expression of contrary views. Those on the right usually invite contrary views to debate the merits. People who claim the deep political divide in the USA is caused by people on the right are not just mistaken, they are dishonest. The arrogance, the dishonestly, and the unwillingness to compromise is very nearly 100% on the left.
I’m willing to believe Amazon may not be even handed. But Amazon has posted some of the “parleys” that violated the AmazonAWS TOS. They are pretty violent, not just political. Obviously, I have no idea what proportion of the parleys are like that because– just as on twitter– you only see things posted by people you follow. But there is a point where I think things that seriously look like threats to kill people might actually be threats to kill people and not metaphors.
I’d ban someone if they threatened to kill people here in comments at my blog.
If one was looking for coordinated censorship between a cabal of tech companies I wonder what evidence one would look for? It’s like they all share a secret Bat Phone or something.
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #196645)
January 9th, 2021 at 6:06 pm
Ray Dalio, appears to look for answers to the present and near future from a purely historical view of the past without any undergirding economic understanding of the events. I would recommend a course in Austrian economics for him.
Ray Dalio’s thesis is crudely that debt cycles underlie inequality and civil unrest:
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He says look for signs of moderation but also, it’s often not clear when a civil war has already begun, for example, no one knew that the Bastille was the beginning of the French Revolution.
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If civil war is imminent, one is unlikely to sway the masses invoking it. Avoiding it would seem logical. This would mean fleeing to another country ( but to where? ), or fleeing to parts of the country less likely to be involved, or riding it out, trying not to be involved. I’m not ancient, but old enough to have little energy for this nonsense. Still, I have to consider.
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Do you have a plan B? Where would you go?
SteveF (Comment #196653)
January 9th, 2021 at 9:29 pm
I disagree with your remedies for big tech. As a practical manner you will end of with more left wing entities without any compunction to avoid political issues and less efficient business organizations.
It appears big tech is using its private organizations to determine what voices are heard – like the NYT, WP and Fox do as examples of free speech in the private world. Using the government with anti-trust and other rules and regulations in an attempt to change this sounds left wingish to me.
Lucia wrote: “I think things that seriously look like threats to kill people might actually be threats to kill people and not metaphors.”
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Of course. The issue is that some threats of violence are more acceptable than others. It’s summed up by the phrase “your speech is violence, my violence is speech”, which covers the extreme ends of the spectrum that have been normalized in the recent past by the main stream and social media.
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Depending on your level of support for the “agenda”, even a hint that something suggests possible violence is grounds for TOSing, but far more explicit calls for violence are left alone.
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In other news ANTIFA showed up to harass Ted Wheeler having a meal and was apparently punched shortly afterwards. No arrests were made. This is a clear example of the kind of political intimidation that is the “existential threat” to democracy all the pearl clutching is about, but they’re just exercising their right to protest and have their voices heard.
Here’s another good one. The guy who stood in front of the burning building and claimed things were mostly okay, accuses people of “sugar coating” language when referring to the capitol.
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This is another metaphor for current public discourse. The people representative of these forums have principles that they are willing to equally apply to all sides. So when one “side” plays up, they get roundly condemned by all, with the other side complaining that the condemnation is simply not condemnation enough and that all need to be condemned for the actions of the few. When the other “side” plays up, they are condemned by one side and that condemnation is painted by the other side as unjustified and excuses are offered in support of unjustifiable behavior. This unbalanced approach leads to emboldening on one side and growing anger on the other.
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Democracy dies in darkness, claims the Washington Post, as they take pictures with the brightness balance all over the place.
DaveJR
We don’t know that in the case of Amazon’s decision with respect to Parler.
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These two advocate assassinating people and shooting people in the head:
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https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-parler-aws
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They don’t look like just “metaphorical usage” of phrases like “we will fight” which might mean– campaign and get our people elected. I don’t know how numerous these are at Parler, but these two examples do advocate violence and quite directly.
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These can’t even be claimed to fall in a category of “performance art” like that C-List actress who had a severed head of Trump (which did get her fired from CNN and roundly criticized by all sides. I mean… Chelsea Clinton criticised her!) These text entries at Parler are direct statements advocating violence.
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It’s hard to fairly moderate a large platform. But think you have to keep in mind the possibility that in the past 4 days (or even before) Parler has been overrun by people who are overtly advocating actual violence and that this isn’t merely allowing the left to say they are going to shot others in the head. It may well be the case that similar types of comments are not being posted by “the left”. (Though if you can find them, that would be useful to your argument.)
DaveJR,
I agree that television and newsmedia coverage is unbalanced. Violence was downplayed all summer. No doubt about that.
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But that doesn’t mean that discussion on Parler hasn’t gotten out of hand. It looks like it very well may have done so. It looks like it happens to be right-leaning people posting messages suggesting that left-leaning people be assassinated. But really, it almost doesn’t matter who is posting it. It’s fair for someone to realize that this has to stop and enforce their TOS which includes prohibitions against trying to encourage people to rise up and assissinate others!
Lucia, I began with “Of course”, indicating that I agree with your POV. That doesn’t mean that an unequal application of the “rules” is not on general display. An implied infraction by one party may be sufficient grounds for banning, while an explicit infraction by another will not. Shaun King “TalcumX” is a good example of this. The actual rules have become such that anyone can be banned for “reasons” these days.
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Parler said it would work to remove such things. Amazon refused to accept this solution.
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Want to get an upstart social media company banned from the mainstream? Post violent comments on it and drop a line to the MSM.
Gab has their own servers:
https://news.gab.com/2020/09/30/gab-just-became-resilient-in-a-big-way
Lucia wrote: “But that doesn’t mean that discussion on Parler hasn’t gotten out of hand. It looks like it very well may have done so.”
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I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it had, and I don’t condone such things, but excuse me if I don’t take Buzzfeeds word on the extent of the problem. They’re a hyperpartisan outfit not above creating the news they report on (although I doubt they had to try in this instance).
DaveJR,
Sure. You started with “Of course”. But then pivoted to “The issue” (My bold). That pivot tend to convey that what you conceded in “of course” is somehow not important enough to be “The” or possibly even “an” issue.
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In anycayse, I responded to your discussion of “The issue”.
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That might happen. Or under the circumstance, it’s quite likely those posting the violent comments were not people trying to get Parler banned. They could just as easily just be people who are angry with Twitter, moving to Parler and wanting to “show the world” they can say whatever the heck they want. So they may be people cutting off their own noses out of spite.
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I’m sympathetic to Parler. But I don’t know exactly what they offerred to do. Implementing scripts to watch those who recently joined and prevent them from writing “assassinate”, “shoot”, “kill”…. at least for a while might be useful. Forums often have a “first 30 days” moderation for people. That could have helped, but probably wouldn’t have been something they wanted to do for their current “brand”.
Buzzfeed just seems to have reported what Amazon wrote to Parler. I don’t think they did their own investigation. I also don’t necessarily take Buzzfeed at face value. But I’m not going to jump to the conclusion there can’t be a justifyable problem at Parler. There might be. There might not.
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It seems to me an awful lot of people are assuming there can’t be a real problem at Parler. I think that’s unwise.
Lucia wrote: “Or under the circumstance, it’s quite likely those posting the violent comments were not people trying to get Parler banned.”
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I agree. Parler just displays one of the reasons why setting up alternative social media sites to challenge the mainstream isn’t easy. I expect Parler is just the first new casualty in the ongoing war against alternative social media. All alternatives are going to come under increased attack now, and free speech protections don’t mean a thing when their infrastructure (bank accounts, backbone links etc) cave to threats, as they have in the past.
Parler isn’t a casualty yet. They may end up being down for 2 weeks after which they will find something.
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Having said that: They are going to have to do some sort of moderation or they will not attract non-crazies. If they do nothing, they will be like 8Chan; few sane/decent people are going to want to participate there.
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The fact is: a platform can’t attract non-crazies for long if the platform is also hosting open discussions that sound like people encouraging literally killing other people in ways that sound like well… “Let’s all organize to kill people”.
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Money is fungible. They will be able to find banking and so on. Where? dunno. Perhaps all bitcoin? Or banks … somewhere. Merely conservative outlets will be able to. But it’s important to not excuse people openly discussing killing others even if you think moderation is tainted by political bias on many platforms.
I just add: One of the difficulties in starting an online platform like Parler or Gab right now is merely that there is a ‘first starter’ problem. People know that readers and people who converse check in regularly at twitter. (I do.) So, they go in to read what is said.
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I don’t know who to try to follow at Parler. I don’t know who might be “speaking” an so on. I have an account. It’s boring to check in. I’ve found virtually no one interesting to follow. (And those I have followed are also on twitter. So it’s all duplicate.)
I hate to interrupt the discussion of potential FutureCrime(tm) from unhinged people with the reality that the only person who got shot and killed at the Capital was a protester. Death threats to public officials are routine and the probabilities of those being real threats are what? 0.00001%? Almost never.
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We can go down the Whataboutism route all day long here, somebody shot up a DC baseball game and there were zero calls to shutdown the endless (and I mean that literally) social media that is chock full of unhinged anger about Trump and his supporters. I don’t even go to Twitter and still see plentiful wishes for the deaths of Trump and his supporters on moderated comment threads related to the coronavirus. The NYT was still blaming a Twitter post by Palin for the Arizona shooting of Gifford last year. Strangely they never asked for Twitter to be shut down in response. And on and on and on. An on.
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What we have here are isolated demands of rigor against an unofficial rule of far left speech must be tolerated and far right speech must be banned. Extremists on the left should be dealt with individually and extremists on the right must be dealt with a huge net. The standards of judgment are blatantly politically tainted. It’s all so tiresome and repetitive.
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Should private companies moderate their forums? To the extent they can, and mostly for the benefit of others who just want an intelligent discussion, not in some fevered dream that they are preventing social unrest. I am going to say straight out that moderating them from view is doing nothing but moving it underground.
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I don’t really buy that allowing it in the open is somehow fostering more extremism. Bad ideas die out on their own, but there will be a constant flow of new bad ideas. Part of the draw of (real) white supremacists, Antifa, and Jihadism are disaffected youth who want to be part of the most anti-social organization they can find just to rage at society.
There are 500M+ Twitter posts a day, if all one needs to do is find a few anecdotal posts to declare the platform hopelessly corrupt then I submit that any platform can be easily tanked.
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What is meaningful is if “bad” posts are reported and nothing is done about them after review and this problem is pervasive. If this is the case at Parler, then fine. They need a reporting system and polices. The policies in place ought to be clear enough so that posters can reasonably determine when they are in violation.
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I don’t need to remind anyone that the “policies” in place are so flexible and open to biased interpretation that the NY Post was shutdown by Twitter for two weeks for reporting apparently real information about Hunter Biden. That was too dangerous by current thinking.
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So there are two separate discussions:
1. At what point does a platform become so toxic that outsiders need to take action to shut it down?
2. Are the policies in place being abused for partisan purposes to shutdown political speech?
Lucia: “It seems to me an awful lot of people are assuming there can’t be a real problem at Parler. I think that’s unwise.”
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There definitely can, and probably is a [most probably a small/tiny] problem at Parler. The issue is whether the shutdowns are done for business or political reasons. There are justifications for businesses to refuse to do business with others who are politically controversial so as to ensure that the business bottom line is not negatively impacted. I can live with Twitter or Apple evenly enforcing a policy against violence against Parler. However, they don’t and won’t, when for instance the Iranian leader is permitted to have a twitter account. The real issue is businesses using their financial power for political reasons and not for business reasons.
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There is no reason to allow huge and powerful tech companies who wield more influence than most govt agencies to shut down people for mostly or purely political reasons. Twitter for instance forced the Federalist to shut down its comment sections or be de platformed — simply an effort by Twitter employee extremists to harm an effective political enemy.
JD Ohio
That is clearly in appropriate. Twitter should not be having TOS that extend to what is discussed off Twitter.
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Twitter isn’t enforcing any rule against Parler. Parler isn’t using Twitters platform. Apple is inflicting sanctions on Parler. They are ones Parler will be able to deal with. People can sideload apps on their Iphones
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https://www.wired.com/story/install-apps-outside-app-store-sideload/
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People will end up doing so.
JD Ohio,
AmazonAWS kicking Parler off their platform is a bigger problem for Parler. They will probably need to do as Gab does and run their own servers.
If indeed the social media giants were censoring nonsensical and violent speech from the right and giving a pass to the same from the left is not that actually helping the right or at least its public image that might be affected by these unhinged individuals being associated with the more reasonable and numerous part of this political group?
I do not agree with what I think the social media giants political leanings are, but then again as a libertarian there are not many organizations or individuals with whose political leanings I would agree. If I thought the government should go after these people and their organizations (which I do not since I judge the government to be the source of many of these problems or at least a potential source) I would not know where to start or end.
What do people think about the Dominion Voting versus Sidney Powell lawsuit? Is this heading for quiet settlement or do the parties want a public court fight?
Phil Scadden,
I have no thoughts at all on that suit!! I don’t know how defamation works with a company. I suspect they’ll never get $1.3 billion out of her because I don’t think she’s a billionaire!!
BTW: This article says she has over 1 million twitter followers. So I searched on “powell sidney”…. I can’t seem to find her. Tweetdeck lights up with “user suspended” alerts.
So I googled: She’s been banned by twitter. So, I guess she doesn’t have 1million twitter followers any more. (I guess I should check out parler or gab!)
Private entities should be allowed to make mistakes as long they are not using coercion in the sense that it is available and used by governments. Businesses’ fates are ultimately at the hands of the consumers who in part and total have great power in these matters. I judge that social media to the extent that are biased and not even-handed will eventually pay the price. I very much want that to occur by the voluntarily and uncoerced actions of the consumer and not the government.
Furthermore since the government is now in the hands of the left perhaps those with concerns about these issues on the right should be concentrating on voluntary actions.
Phil Scadden,
IMO, the suit is a PR ploy by Dominion. I doubt either party wants it to go to trial. Given pre-trial discovery, it might turn out that we would find out that Dominion really does have a problem with their machines.
SteveF wrote: “Absolutely. But I would go further. The SC foolishly (because of the foolish progressives on the court) ruled in Chevron that when Congresses intent is in doubt, the bureaucracy gets to make the law mean whatever the hell they want it to, and force everyone to comply. This has made for routine promulgation of preposterous Federal regulations, against which there is no legal appeal. Kafka is probably smiling.
I would like the Supreme Court to apply a “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard: Unless there is no reasonable doubt that Congress ceded power to regulate something to the administrative state, they don’t have the power to regulate it. One could apply the Clean Water Act to non-navigable rivers, but unless Congress unambiguously did so … One could apply the federal rules on telephones and telegraphs to the internet, but unless Congress … One could apply the Clean Air Act to non-traditional pollutants that don’t directly cause harm like GHGs and ozone-destroying gases, but unless Congress … FWIW, the Supreme Court sometimes rules laws are unconstitutionally vague. Chevron deference means letting the administrative state make decisions when the law is unconstitutionally vague. Unfortunately, Scalia is the one who applied Chevron deference to regulation of GHG’s by the EPA.
The problem is that agency experts know far more about technical subjects than the average judge can master, so the Supreme Court established a general principle of deferring to experts. Looking at how poorly the judges have understood the issues in Mann’s defamation lawsuit, the SC is probably right to defer to experts. In an ideal world, the experts would be apolitical, but every president selects unprincipled experts who will say what he wants. If deferring to politicized experts is better than deferring to the average judge (or even Supreme Court justices, if your case gets that far), maybe the best thing is to severely limit the scope of the damage experts to powers that Congress has delegated beyond a reasonable doubt.
Listening to National Constitution Center podcasts while exercising has informed me that the conservative justices led by Gorsuch are looking for a case that is an appropriate vehicle for torpedoing Chevron deference. That means finding a case where the consequences of abandoning Chevron deference produces a satisfying result that can’t be achieved without introducing a replacement principle a majority can endorse. (Gorsuch has been on two podcasts and is a delight to listen to, though he never discusses subjects he might someday rule on.)
Technical expertise has nothing to do with most questions related to problems with creeping authority of agencies. That an agency employee might know more than I do about– say– the effects on lead in water on human health doesn’t mean squat relative to whether the clean water act should extend to navigable waters. Either the act says it extends to navigable water, that it doesn’t or is ambiguous. If ambiguous, it should be read to NOT extend. Congress can extend if they want to.
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I don’t think the concept of “reasonable doubt” applies because that has to do with the weight of evidence– like for example, do we have enough evidence to say someone is guilty. Here, we just need to courts to look at the act actually passed by Congress, decide if a power is granted, and rule.
DeWitt – I am pretty unfamiliar with what you can do in “discovery”, the objection Dominion are making is to:
“During a Washington, D.C. press conference, a Georgia political rally, and a media blitz, Powell falsely claimed that Dominion had rigged the election, that Dominion was created in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo Chávez, and that Dominion bribed Georgia officials for a no-bid contract”
I would have thought the paper audit of results in recount would be sufficient to show the machines were not “rigged” and the other claims are patent nonsense.
A defamation claim is always about PR, practically by definition, but I would have thought punitive damages or grovelling apology would be a pretty good safeguard against future claims for Dominion.
Court papers with list of claims they reject is here. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.225699/gov.uscourts.dcd.225699.1.0_1.pdf
Phil Scadden (Comment #196691): “I would have thought the paper audit of results in recount would be sufficient to show the machines were not “rigged†and the other claims are patent nonsense.”
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The Dominion machines don’t permit a proper paper audit.
Phil Scadden,
That’s not surprising. Here’s a quote from the rather extensive Wikipedia article Discovery (law):
The process can be quite expensive and time consuming. With a public figure, and Dominion probably qualifies as one, the standard of proof in libel or slander is higher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_figure
IOW, public figures rarely file such suits, and even if they win, the damages awarded may be trivial, i.e. $1.
No sure I understand Mike. If count by voting machines yield same number as count of same votes by hand, then how do you rig anything? My understanding is that the paper records are retained and were recounted where it mattered.
Dewitt. Mind boggling but very useful, thanks. Though some of the Powell claims seem to push “reckless disregard for truth” pretty hard. And if she cant produce the video that she claims she has of Dominion founder saying he could change votes, then malicious lying seems to be the obvious explanation.
Phil Scadden (Comment #196694): “No sure I understand Mike. If count by voting machines yield same number as count of same votes by hand, then how do you rig anything? My understanding is that the paper records are retained and were recounted where it mattered.”
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The paper records are generated by the machine.
According to Dominion, their system involves paper ballots
https://www.dominionvoting.com/elections-101-about-dominion-voting-systems/
They could do a better job describing their system. The shows pictures of their ballot systems– it lookes like what we use here. But I think it’s:
1) Voter fills out a paper ballot with those black felt tip pen. OR Voter fills out on a touch screen, then has a paper ballot printed out they can check. (I’ve used both.)
2) Voter feeds paper ballot into machine which reads and logs.
3) Paper ballots saved in the lower bin of the machine.
After voting is complete.
4) operators print out tabulation of votes for each candidate and sends electronically to tabulation location.
5) operators take ballot box (which is locked) to collection location.
(I did 4 and 5 when I volunteered to work the polls.)
6) At the collection location, a few of the randomly selected boxes are opened and checked compared to the electronic print outs.
7) IF a recount is called for, the boxes are opened and the paper ballots are reviewed manually. This is s_l_o_w.
The whole point of their systems is they are auditable.
MikeM
And spit out and given to the voter– who then puts them in a tabulator. Right?
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Maybe you can post a link to the system you think untracable so we can see the specifics of how it works.
Lucia, Mike M,
Since the hanging chads fiasco, I think all Florida voting is done on paper ballots the voter marks (blackening machine readable bubbles), then the voter feeds the paper ballot into a reader that tabulates votes…. the paper ballots are retained and available for a recount. If a voter makes a mistake on their ballot, they can inform a poll worker, who shreds the spoiled ballot and gives the voter a new ballot. In all cases, there are paper ballots available for manual recounts.
Evidently, Trump did not incite a riot, even by the weakest of standards.
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Of course, we do expect more from a president than ‘He didn’t break the law.’
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But the response may be more troubling.
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I got an account on Parler months ago but never returned, mostly because of lack of content of interest. However, Willie Soon did post. I was not so interested as to return for Willie Soon, but though his opinions may differ from mainstream and from mine, but he is a published scientist, citing real, not fake data. This platform is now gone for him as well as any other individuals creating things which may have been totally unrelated to politics. This does conjure up the Ministry of Truth and is highly troubling to me, and is a wedge further galvanizing. To prevent civil war, we need moderation, not more polarization.
Turbulent Eddie
On Trump and inciting…. That just talks about standard for criminal incitement.
Whether it’s relevant is discussed here:
https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/08/yes-congress-may-impeach-and-remove-president-trump-for-inciting-lawless-behavior-at-the-capitol/
The various VC posts are worth reading. Different ones discuss criminal law, first amendment, impeachment and so on.
BTW: Parler was hacked.
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https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgqbex/parler-is-gone-but-hackers-say-they-downloaded-everything-first
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What will come of that… dunno. I wasn’t discussing any plans for activity in DC last week on Parler or anywhere. In fact, my Parler ‘parleys’ are limited to things like “How the heck do I change my screen name”. (They had really stupid default screen names like lucia4803883925″. So I got it changed to the obvious.) Maybe a “hi I’m here”. And I followed some people– but really, I could only find people who practically never post there OR people who self-promote constantly. (It looks like Babylon Bee posts something for every article. Volokh auto-posted. Paul Joseph Watson auto-posts. None of these are very useful to join Parler for because all also post on Twitter and in particular Paul J Watson is boring and repetitive. But every now and then, he can be a resource for videos and such.)
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If you do want to “find” people to follow, the only way to do it is to look at followers of people you do find and try to follow them. The only way to be found is to follow a few people and hope someone does the same.
https://gizmodo.com/every-deleted-parler-post-many-with-users-location-dat-1846032466
Hopefully, we don’t wind up the gulag for being curious, but if so, perhaps a morse code version of the Blackboard?
“The PGA of America is moving on from President Donald Trump, announcing Sunday in a statement that it will relocate the 2022 PGA Championship scheduled for the New York City suburbs at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster.”
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This is just crazy and has gone too far. Of course they can do this according to whatever contractual obligations they have. This is what those promises of unity and reconciliation looks like in action from the left. A vendetta to silence opponents in any way imaginable. Is anybody going to feel less hostile now that they have been silenced? There is going to be very predictable blowback for this type of behavior, and they won’t stop until they feel blowback.
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A fundamental problem with a large segment of the right with a libertarian streak (like myself) is they abhor organized group boycotts by loud minorities as they distort the drivers of the individually driven marketplace. At what point does big tech need to feel market pressure for their blatantly biased behavior?
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The worst part is that exactly nobody in the mainstream beyond the likes of Ben Shapiro et. al. is standing up for free speech and condemning these actions as short sighted. The moderates are completely silent. They neither praise nor condemn, just report it and keep their heads low. This cancel cult is really going down the lines of mandatory struggle sessions.
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Given this environment it actually makes sense for Trump to pardon himself before he leaves office, ha ha.
Evidently, if you even created an account on Parler, ‘Hacktivists’ have your email address and whatever else you put on the registration form.
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I’m sure they’ll be rational and judicious.
No, Trump Isn’t Guilty of Incitement
Inflaming emotions isn’t a crime. The president didn’t mention violence, much less provoke it.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-trump-isnt-guilty-of-incitement-11610303966
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In the District of Columbia, it’s a crime to “intentionally or recklessly act in such a manner to cause another person to be in reasonable fear†and to “incite or provoke violence where there is a likelihood that such violence will ensue.†This language is based on Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), in which the Supreme Court set the standard for speech that could be prosecuted without violating the First Amendment. The justices held that a Ku Klux Klan leader’s calls for violence against blacks and Jews were protected speech. The court found that Clarence Brandenburg’s comments were “mere advocacy†of violence, not “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action . . . likely to incite or produce such action.â€
The president didn’t mention violence on Wednesday, much less provoke or incite it. He said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.â€
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Trump is a level 10 a-hole, but this case is mostly a mind reading exercise of intent from opponents. His actual words say they exact opposite, and the case depends on advocacy of a not yet violent protest with a wink, wink interpretation of words that say the opposite. This has been evident for a while as almost all MSM articles only speak in terms conclusive assertions of his conduct and not the actual facts. It is rare to see them quote actual words in their conclusions.
I read one comment from one who must be one of those people “familiar with Trumps thinking”. Trump had his fingers crossed behind his back and gave winks to the gathered crowd…
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The narrative is that he incited violence, and so violence he did incite. Others who incite violence by their actual words don’t really mean it. Just a figure of speech not to be taken seriously. Violence occurred? Nothing to do with them.
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Meanwhile, from the mouth of the “President for all Americans”
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“Our priority will be black, latino, asian, and native-american owned small businesses.. women-owned businesses.”
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Be careful there, Joe. You excluded mention of LGBETC.
I don’t know about now, but Asian owned business didn’t qualify for minority owned business help when I looked into a few decades ago. They use the term “disadvantaged minority” now to exclude Asian and Indians from the equation.
SteveF (Comment #196699): “I think all Florida voting is done on paper ballots the voter marks (blackening machine readable bubbles), then the voter feeds the paper ballot into a reader that tabulates votes…. the paper ballots are retained and available for a recount.”
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That is how it is done here. It seems like the right way to do it, as long as the link between ballots and the machine that counted them is maintained.
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At least some of the Dominion machines use a touch screen (iffy in itself) and then print a paper ballot with what it recorded. It seems to me that there are all sorts of ways that can go wrong, especially if voters are not diligent about proof reading the paper ballot (most probably are not). I don’t know if that can be exploited to systematically change results, since even a small fraction of voters checking *might* be enough to keep the system honest.
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Actually, I don’t know if all machines these days produce a paper trail. At one time, many did not.
Not sure if this is real:
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/coup%2020210111%2007.jpg
When the machine prints out the paper ballot from a touch screen, the tabulator will not care what the voter is looking at when reviewing the ballot. There will be a separate code printed on the ballot that contains all the information. If the machine can be set to print a ballot with these two things differing, then cheating is easy.
This was also the issue with Patrick Byrne reporting that Fulton was removing and shredding ballots that the state Senate had decided to inspect. They were all blank ballots so people on Twitter said what’s the big deal, but others said there was no QR code in the corner.
By ‘hackers’ I think it is Amazon employees who took Parler’s data from Amazon servers.
Tom Scharf,
“They use the term “disadvantaged minority†now to exclude Asian and Indians from the equation.”
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Of course. The desired outcome is identical income, wealth, degrees, and jobs for all identifiable groups. If an identifiable group which obviously suffered past discrimination (say east Asians), does better than average, then they cease being subject to prejudice, and become part of what the left sees as the problem. The left wants only uniformity of outcome, quite independent of merit, culture, effort, intelligence, etc. They insist that unequal outcomes are on their face irrefutable evidence of racial prejudice. Nothing else matters, unless of course an identifiable minority group does too well, then prejudice against that minority no longer “counts”.
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Equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity. Equality of outcome, independent of all other factors. Equality of outcome is always the goal; it is the foundational moral concept of the left, starting with Marx. It is never going to change, it can only be stopped by popular vote by those who disagree.
Mike N,
“If the machine can be set to print a ballot with these two things differing, then cheating is easy.”
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Sure, but only if the paper ballot itself is not read by the machine, but rather a QR or similar code which could disagree with the human-readable ballot. Simple solution: only optical readers that read what humans read….. leaving little room for fraud.
MikeN
The potential for mistallying by hacking the machind is the same with any system. When I fill in with a pen and put in the tabulator, the tabulator might be rigged to to change my vote from “Indepedent Guy” to “Trump” or “Biden”. That’s why most places pick a faction of the ballot boxes, count manually and check the tabulation against the ballots in the boxes.
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That’s also why there are other checks.
MikeN,
No. The Parler Hack I read about is not by Amazon. I’ll find more. (I was out dancing. 🙂 )
Parler hack:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgqbex/parler-is-gone-but-hackers-say-they-downloaded-everything-first
Not enough detail to know whether this was really just Parler having SKS level programmers store things on web-accessible pages they protected using “security by obscurity” or if the hackers did something actually illegal to access “unauthorized” pages.
Hackers making the DB available to “researchers” appears to be an effort to punish anyone they can find for their wrong think. The same people who think this is a good idea run to their fainting couches when public facial recognition technology is proposed or someone brings a camera to an Antifa protest.
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The opposing side organizing and voting for their side is a danger to Democracy in the new view of reality.
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People posting unhinged things on these platforms should know better, but my guess is the Ministry of Truth and Justice will find many guilty parties. Remember when the complaints about Twitter were met with arguments of “just make your own platform”? I guess those were insincere. Shocking.
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In order to curry favor with our new overlords I have reported everyone on this forum for their wrong think.
Here’s an essay from the WSJ that argues that FB and Twitter are, in fact, state actors because of Section 230 and threats from government officials. If they are state actors, then the are not purely private actors and so are subject to the First Amendment. Censorship of political views, like blocking reporting of the Hunter Biden case, is not legal.
Tom,
You could scrape and make a database if you want. Then people can read the database. (Of course, it’s all just here anyway.)
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That doesn’t strike me as a “hack”. It’s just compiling public information.
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I’m trying to find out more about a different aspect of the “hack”. (The word is getting used for several different things.)
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I’ll post more later this afternoon. (I’ve got a kid to tutor. 🙂 )
lucia (Comment #196722): “That’s why most places pick a faction of the ballot boxes, count manually and check the tabulation against the ballots in the boxes.”
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I am not sure that is routinely done. I *think* it much more common to just run the ballots though a different tabulator. Also, do all places maintain the connection between machine used and ballots?
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I really don’t know. A decade or so ago, there were huge vulnerabilities; many machines had no paper trail. New Mexico seems to have a very secure system, but it is my understanding that it is one of the very best. I have seen the claim that many states ban the use of Dominion machines because of security concerns.
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But I do not have solid information. Sounds like others here don’t either.
Tom Scharf (Comment #196725): “Remember when the complaints about Twitter were met with arguments of “just make your own platformâ€? I guess those were insincere. Shocking.”
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People are still making that claim. Several did so on this site within the last day or two.
I like the argument that platforms become de facto state actors when they accept section 230 protection. If they want to forgo that protection, then let them do what they like. I seem to recall that DaveJR very ably made that point above.
My side’s freedom fighters have a right to anonymity. Your side’s terrorists have no such right.
MikeM
I still make that claim. I don’t know what aspect of it is supposedly insincere.
Note:
* Gab has its own servers and is operating (though slowly)
* Parler does NOT have its own servers and is NOT operating because they got kicked off of servers that belong to someone else.
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Parler also seems to– possibly– have had programmers with a skill-set similar to the SKS guys who “hid” their image files in an entirely publicly accessible web page. Then the SKS guys called having their files scraped “hacking”. Well… part of what is being called the Parler “hack” is nothing more than “scraping” of public web sites– which was legal and ok to do when Brandon it to SKS and still ok.
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If “someone” who posted images to Parler– a public site– thought those were “secure and private”, well, that was stupid of them. I’m sure most of the “database” of “everything” on Parler is going to be one big snooze-fest.
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There is another element of what is called the “Parler hack” that might have been an actual “hack”. But I don’t know the details yet.
Uhmmmmm…. I don’t consider myself a state actor when I block attempts to post porn or otherwise objectionable to me comments here.
MikeM
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Well… it’s likely hard to get the same number twice if or both tabulators have been fiddled with. So the fiddling would still be caught. The paper ballots still exist.
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Also: if there 2nd “calibration” tabulator was calibrated with several batches of “known” ballots, that would make it hard to fiddle. It seems pretty plausible to me that the process of random checking would have thought out some steps. Unless you describe the full process, just saying step “X” might be fiddled — as if it’s the only step– is pretty lame with respect to suggesting something can go wrong.
The subset of people who previously made comments about making another version of Twitter for conservatives if they don’t like censorship … and now applaud the takedown and persecution of Parler and its userbase are those being insincere. They are making up arguments as they go along, they really just want to shutdown conservative speech.
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Not accusing anyone here about doing that.
lucia (Comment #196734): “Parler does NOT have its own servers and is NOT operating because they got kicked off of servers that belong to someone else.”
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And they had a contract requiring 30 days notice, which was blatantly violated. They are suing Amazon. I hope they get billions.
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I am not sure about terminology, but I think that scraping is the systematic collection of information that is *meant* to be public.
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If someone enters your home without permission through an unlocked door, they are breaking and entering. And if they pick up something and walk out with it, they are committing burglary.
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So the question is not whether the information was properly secured, but whether it was meant to be private and whether the people who took it could reasonably be expected to have known whether it was meant to be private.
Which was the thread where you introduced Principal Flagrante Delicto? I feel like I ought to go review it. Because its pertinent, but mostly because it was so darn funny!
Lucia,
“I block attempts to post porn or otherwise objectionable to me comments here”
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This has been a problem for you? People try to post porn? Real questions.
Oh gosh… I have to find it.
It will be interesting to follow the suit. We’ll probably learn what the language of the contract is– including whether 30 day notice is required if the user violates TOS. I’m sure there will be lots of law-blog posts on that!
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Well… I think info that is on public facing web pages with no password or user account is meant to be public. So collecting that is scraping.
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And if it’s posted on a billboard, you’ve got a lot of gall claiming you didn’t “mean” it to be viewed.
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(Yes.. I have to find the “rumpy pumpy” post.)
Sure. There seems to be a lot of things being called “hacks” wrt to Parler’s data being made into a database. It ranges from:
1) Someone pulling together a crowdsource project to scrape material from Parlers public facing web site to
2) Someone figuring out the login emails for admins, then figuring out how to change passwords for some admins, logging in using the new passwords/username combo and getting a lot of stuff that is on the “admin” side.
(1) is not (2). (2) is not (1).
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I KNOW quite a big of what some people are objecting to happened with (1) only. That’s just ordinary scraping of content that everyone had access too. It provided content that lead to creation of a database with all the public stuff that was on Parler. Paler (and those who posted) may not be happy that all that stuff is no in a database elsehwere… but… oh. well.
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I heard rumors of (2) but I don’t know if it happened. I think someone who intentionally changed a password and then intentionally used the new password/user combination almost certainly knowingly exceeded authorization. So this– if it occurred– would likely be a hack. If someone figures out if it was done and who did it, it might lead to charges under the computer abuse act. (Or whatever it is called.)
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Of course, even if obtained in a hack, the material collected in the hack is now out of the toothpaste tube. Just like the climategate emails which may have been hacked. So, it’s going to be available for people to see just like the climategate emails were/are.
SteveF
Usually links to porn. At least several times a week! Lots of links to sites for “_____ brides”. (Fill in _____ with Russian, Chinese, …. what have you.)
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I moderate all first comments and spam filters catch nearly all the other stuff. I also moderate out links to gambling sites, diet drugs, viagra and so on. There are at least 20 or so spams a day. (I stopped running my local scripts to block certain addresses; cloudflare still blocks a lot of crud.)
Mike M,
“I like the argument that platforms become de facto state actors when they accept section 230 protection.”
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I’m not sure they become state actors, but hey sure as heck are no longer just like any other private IP address. They are filtering/removing political voices they disagree with, while simultaneously claiming they have no responsibility for content on their site. It clearly has nothing to do with dispassionate ‘community standards’; that is a blatant lie. It is suppression of voices they do not want the public to hear, nothing less, nothing more. I believe they have about two more years before the sh!t hits the fan in their offices. They should enjoy the next couple of Biden dementia years; but those will end.
Lucia,
“I also moderate out links to gambling sites, diet drugs, viagra and so on.”
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Gambling sites and diet drugs? OK. But Viagra? 😉
SteveF (Comment #196743): “I’m not sure they become state actors, but hey sure as heck are no longer just like any other private IP address.”
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There is certainly room to argue the point. From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_actor
Section 230 is the government encouraging the act.
There is certainly a symbiotic relationship between the tech companies and the Democrats. Since the Democrats now control the government there is arguably a symbiotic relationship with the government. But the really problematic thing is the alliance with one side.
Twitter etc, are arguably providing the public function of a town square. Even company towns can’t regulate speech in such spaces:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama#Decision
Mike M.,
There is also coercion involved, which by itself would make the platforms state actors. There have been threats of various actions by various Democrat congresspeople if action wasn’t taken.
Amazon throwing out parler reminds me of a slogan I saw on a T-shirt: “There is no cloud, there’s only someone else’s computer.”
MikeM,
The town square analogy is interesting. I guess we’ll be trying to figure out how far that goes.
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Dewitt
Yep. People need to remember this with respect to 4th amendement searches too.
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All: I’m still looking for my “rumpy pumpy” example related to privacy and hacking. I may need to write a script to dig out comments that are readable. sigh.
Lucia,
Don’t trouble yourself on my account. I’ll go digging for it tomorrow in old threads if I have time and I’ll post the link. I mentioned it only cause it came to mind and made me chuckle, I wasn’t trying to make work for you.
I want to find it!!! It’s hard to dig because I’ve never gone to the trouble to undo the google bot blocks that must have happened when I was bot blocking. (I didn’t mean to block google-bot.)
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Or google doesn’t like me for some other reasons. 🙂
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I should be able to search the comments. I just need to write a quick php script. I’m out of practice though. Going to the mysql interface doesn’t work well because..well… it doesn’t show my much of the comment and it seems to somehoe pick stuff that I *swear* does not includ the word “rumpy”. 🙂
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I did find some analogies with “kittens”. I did read through and see that I’m pretty well consistent.
* I thought Brandon finding, loading and viewing publically facing web pages is not hacking under CFA even if SKS didn’t “like” it. Telling people what he found: also ok.
I’m sure and I can go back and find that I’ve always thought it’s ok for people to share contents of material that was hacked– even if the hacker could/should be prosecuted. (That’s climategate. The never found the hacker/leaker or whatever the person who dropped the files might be called.)
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I do want to find the “rumpy” analogy though. It was funny.
I am still in the ‘build your own platform’ camp. It doesn’t matter what you do with Section 230 or anything else. It is clear, and has been for some time, that Google and Twitter and Facebook will seek to block items with which they disagree, including employees putting people and ideas in blacklists, or throttlelists, or shadowban lists, or some other methods. This will still be happening after any government action to force them to play fair.
Kenneth Fritsch: ” Private entities should be allowed to make mistakes as long they are not using coercion in the sense that it is available and used by governments. Businesses’ fates are ultimately at the hands of the consumers who in part and total have great power in these matters. I judge that social media to the extent that are biased and not even-handed will eventually pay the price. I very much want that to occur by the voluntarily and uncoerced actions of the consumer and not the government.”
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I think technology has raced by the justification for this argument because it has gotten so big and powerful. The First Amendment was applied to govt entities because the govt entities were much more powerful than many, diverse business entities. Twitter, Facebook and Google are much more powerful (and monopolistic as well) than most govt departments. Therefore, we can’t rely of consumers to change their behavior. If the Big Tech lynch mob is so powerful it can stop the publication of a Senator’s book or prevent a President from using the most widespread means of communicating with people, it needs the heavy hand of govt to stop it from not only kneecapping govt officials but from singling out individuals for punishment. (For instance, no internet, no email, no text messaging, if someone from the Left doesn’t like you.)
Monopolies are largely immune to the “voluntarily and uncoerced actions of the consumer”. The whole point of a monopoly is to deny choice to the consumer. Government protection via section 230 denies an important avenue that the individual can take against the tech giants. Add to that cooperation between the tech monopolies and the government and the market place has become irrelevant.
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The real issue has nothing to do with private sector or government. The real threat is an excessive concentration of power.
Mike M; “The real issue has nothing to do with private sector or government. The real threat is an excessive concentration of power.”
I agree 100%
Jonathan Turley has written a nice article explaining his idea that free speech is a human right and it shouldn’t matter (much) whether the censorship comes from the govt or private companies.
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“As I have previously written, we are witnessing the death of free speech on the Internet. What is particularly concerning is the common evasion used by academics and reporters that this is not really a free speech issue because these are private companies. The First Amendment is designed to address government restrictions on free speech. As a private entity, Twitter is not the subject of that amendment. However, private companies can still destroy free speech through private censorship.”https://jonathanturley.org/2021/01/11/parler-shutdown-in-latest-attack-on-free-speech/
MikeN: “I am still in the ‘build your own platform’ camp.”
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The major problem with that is it’s exactly what they want, because it means they retain control of the public square. The alternatives can be slandered as hotbeds of irrelevant radicals and the big companies represent themselved as the moderate center.
MikeN,
I have an inclination to agree…. buy your own server, contract a connection to the internet with a long term contract without significant content restrictions (porn sites obviously have these connections), and launch your own platform that nobody can pull the plug on…. heck, the server can be placed anywhere, putting it physically out of reach.
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The problem is scale and cost. It can be done, but reaching very many people with a platform not controlled by tech oligarchs or people on the left (overlapping groups) is not going to be a trivial exercise.
DaveJR,
If no other vote is allowed, people will vote with their feet…. in the internet age…. vote with their keyboard. As for slander by the tech monopolies: revoke section 230 for those who censor content.
DaveJR
Whether “they” want it or not is irrelevant to whether it’s the right choice. But no, if people like Parlery “buy their own server”, then Google/Facebook/Amazon/, whoever you think “they” are, will not retain control of the public square. The reason Google/Facebook/Amazon/whoever control the public square is they are the only one who bought or built parts of it. In fact, the “public” square is run on “private” property. Ordinarily, it is run on “public” property (owned collectively by a town.)
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If others– like Parler– build a chunk of public square, they have some control over a chunk of public square which gives them control. If they borrow or rent Google/Facebook/Amazon’s property, then Google/Facebook/Amazon will necessarily have some control.
Glenn Greenwald (on the left!!!) weighs in on the crushing of Parler:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-show-of-monopolistic?
He focuses on the blocking of Parler app installations, rendering the Parler service unworkable, even for existing users, since updates will not be allowed. Since IOS users can only install via the Apple App store, they effectively eliminate the possibility of Parler being used by the 728 million iPhone users and many more who operate Mac computers. Apple can effectively block any independent service provider it disapproves of from being accessed from the devices they produce. (Android phones can still apparently download Parlor, though that is no longer possible through the Google store.) I suspect that Apple’s refusal to allow Parler to be installed will lead to a lawsuit.
lucia,
I believe the Pentagon Papers case set the precedent for the right to publish stolen material. Climategate was a tempest in a teapot by comparison.
The point in the Greenwald article that I found most interesting is that most of the incitement of the DC riot was done on Facebook and YouTube, not Parler. Killing Parler appears to actually be a purely monopolistic move to eliminate competition. Parler was getting to be too successful. Russia’s attempts to influence our elections pale into insignificance by comparison.
SteveF,
Parler has filed suit against Amazon for breach of contract among other things.
Lucia wrote: “The reason Google/Facebook/Amazon/whoever control the public square is they are the only one who bought or built parts of it.”
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No, they control the public square because that’s where the overwhelming amount of the public is, and the public have no reason to go elsewhere while the rest of the public remains there. It’s the excuse I hear over and over again. “I use it because that’s where friends are, family is, famous personalities, companies, politicians etc etc”.
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Sure, you can buy a place claiming to be “a” public square, but it is clearly not “the” public square, and will not have a reputation of being “the” public square until it is populated by the public, and it will not become populated by the public until it has a reputation of being representative of the public. Of course, building up such a reputation when powerful establishments are intent on you not gaining one, and one side is adamant that they will not contribute to it, is even more tricky than hardening your infrastructure against attack.
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For example, if you want to interact with people like Mann, you will have to use a platform he is active on, regardless of whether you want to use that platform or not, and so you are subject to it’s rules whether you like it or not.
I’d like to give the process more time to work itself out before the heavy hand of a government fix is employed. Whatever form that fix would be has dangers of its own. Once a 230 or similar is employed then people will want to widen the net, use it politically, interpret it in ways not intended, etc.
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There is little question to me that there is coordinated censorship going on, but as I said earlier, Fox News came out of the same environment without any government fix necessary. The best solution is for consumers to punish these companies with their wallets.
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They are overplaying their hands, and things can change rather quickly. MySpace. BlackBerry. Motorola.
DaveJR
Amazon/Facebook/Google/Twitter didn’t just get out lassos and coral up a herd like cowboys pulling in horses and cattle! They bought hardware, came up with ideas and developed a platform and attracted that public. Anyone can leave.
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Using their current dominance achieved by bothering to get hardware and create a platform as an excuse why others shouldn’t build their own platform is lame.
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Beyond that: “Public square” is a metaphor. There are many “squares” in the world, many of which are public. Finding excuses to not create your own square is just lazy. And more over, it is bound to mean you will never have control of your own square.
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Even if the 230 rules change, the ‘conservatives’ need to invest in creating their own “square”. Because merely changing the 230 rules isn’t going to magically take away control from those who own the hardware.
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It is utterly naive to think changing 230 rules will fix the problem. This is not to say that 230 rules shouldn’t be changed. But that would be in addition to services like Parler and Gab building their own infrastructure that they control.
One thing that drives me crazy is that I have a Google news feed on my Android phone and it personalizes this feed for you. It gives you options such as “Not interested in Trump”, “Not interested in content from the NBC”, etc.
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I had to employ the “Not Trump” early because it just flooded my phone with anti-Trump Russia articles. Rather tiresome. All fine, except one thing that has never been an option is “Not interested in social justice”. I absolutely believe this is by design from the moral scolds controlling the feed software.
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It’s all similar to p-hacking. They use seemingly neutral algorithms but make sure they are never broken in a way to “deny” me access to stuff they think I need to read for my own good. Confirmation bias. Clever propaganda is much worse than blatant propaganda.
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If I had the option to move to platforms that aren’t politically active then I will take that choice. I do sympathize to a degree with these companies, they are being forced into a corner with the “silence is violence” mantra. I think they do want to just get out of this business if they could.
DaveJR,
If you want to help grow room for conservative voices on public space:
1) Be sure to create a profile on Gab. (Endure the current s_l_o_w_ness.
2) Tell people your log on. Ask them to follow you. Follow them.
3) Check on Gab at least once a day. Periodically post something on Gab.
And: most of all: donate to Gab so they can grow their server base and hire software developers and staff.
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Parler is down, but plan to do the same for Parler.
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Also look for other platforms. (I can’t remember the names of the various platforms sprouting.)
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Go ahead and campaign for changes in 230 laws– but remember, those changes will also apply to Parler, Gab, me and everyone else. Not. Just. Twitter. And remember that who enforces laws matters. You don’t control the justice departments of executive branch right now.
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Or just continue to complain that people who own servers kick people who rent off.
Tom,
When I load a new pane in firefox, “pocket” shows me popular articles. I think they actually do pick them because they are “popular”, but I suspect many are promoted.
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Many are click baitish. (I do often click.) I’ve started telling some to not appear afterwards. The main factor for me is “pay wall”. So… no NYT, Atlantic, WAPO and so on articles. This has nothing to do with politics. I’m just not going to pay….
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Pocket seems to have learned not to show me those. It took a little while. Pockets algorithm seems good– it lets me do it article by article.
Spoke too soon… I’m getting fewer NYT. But I clicked the “dismiss” on one about the Covid vaccine today. I can learn about Covid vaccines plenty of articles. Not paying for NYT to read utterly not-unique information that is everywhere.
JD Ohio (Comment #196752)
January 11th, 2021 at 11:09 pm
Your argument has been used by many people in an attempt to justify government action because voluntary and non coercive actions by the consumer is “not working”. It comes mainly from those claiming to be on the left but it is popular with a number of people who are not associated with the left. It sounds rather undemocratic. The consumer in actuality is much more likely to be informed and aware of their own needs and desires when it comes to consuming(voting) in the private world than in voting in the public world.
The questioning of the consumers’ choices of course opens the issue of questioning the like choices when it comes to voting for the people who run the government.
Remedies to these problems are much more likely and in a more timely manner to occur in the private sector than with the coercive power of government and all the unintended consequences that can and do occur in that environment.
When the government gets involved and regulates the consumer actually losses choices. And it should also be foremost in one’s mind that the private power comes from voluntary actions while that of government from coercive ones and often based on political biases and preferences.
DaveJR,
BTW: As I am advocating people do as Gab did and get their own servers, I tried posting to Gab. I’m not sure it posted. . .
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But honestly, if you aren’t using the services you approve of, part of the blame they don’t take off is on you.
SteveF (Comment #196763): “Glenn Greenwald (on the left!!!) weighs in on the crushing of Parler:”
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Most leftists adjust their “principles” to conform to the political expediency of the moment. But there are exceptions. Notably Glenn Greenwald, Jonathan Turley, and Alan Dershowitz.
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Google etc, did not just build their dominance. They have engaged in systematic anticompetitive practices to drive out competition. “Just buy your own servers” is dangerously naive. What is to stop the monopolists from preventing Parler etc. from buying servers? Or getting a domain name? At present, nothing.
Yet another example. According to the WSJ this was sent to every kid in America applying to college through the Common App:
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“We witnessed a deeply disturbing attack on democracy on Wednesday, when violent white supremacist insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undo a fair and legal election. The stark differences between how peaceful Black and brown protesters have been treated for years relative to Wednesday’s coup again call attention to the open wound of systemic racism.â€
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Not only is this assertion … ahem … disputable, but the real issue here is that a college application is not the venue for political indoctrination.
Has the private sector ever successfully disposed of a monopoly? Real question. Local monopolies, probably. But local monopolies are not really monopolies.
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I suppose an example might be Henry Dow and the bromine cartel. But Dow got to build his business unimpeded in the USA before taking on the European cartel. So that cartel was really just a local monopoly that encountered external competition.
Kenneth Fritsch,
But the government is already heavily involved. There is Section 230 to shield platforms from legal liability and there are congresspersons threatening legislative action if the platforms don’t do as they’re told and restrict free speech from the wrong persons. I don’t believe Section 230 was intended to allow platforms to act as publishers and ‘fact check’, edit or censor content other than obvious cases which are effectively shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater while still remaining shielded from civil suits.
Even AMLO in Mexico thinks killing Parler was a bad idea.
Mike M. (Comment #196777)
January 12th, 2021 at 11:25 am
A true monopoly can only occur with the coercive power of the government to exclude competition. Having economic power based on voluntary actions between consumers and an enterprise is not a legitimate reason, at least in a free to semi free system, for the government to restrict these voluntary actions. Those entities that are most often involved in these monopoly actions are those who are having trouble competing and not the consumer.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #196778)
January 12th, 2021 at 1:00 pm
DeWitt, I have heard those arguments before and I assume that you and I read the same WSJ article this AM using it. The problem with that argument in a system where government does and can wield significant power is that:
1. The obvious solution is to drastically reduce the power and influence of government in these matters.
2. The problem with this approach is that it encourages more government involvement in matters like this one with no limitations on how far it can be applied. The premise is, after all ,that, if the government has the power where it can threaten and intimidate you and/or your organization and influence your actions, the government must then step in and regulate you and/or your organization.
Kenneth,
Modifying Section 230 to clearly state that the exemption from being classed as a publisher does not cover platforms that act as publishers by refusing to allow content that would otherwise be legal ought to reduce the power and influence of government.
I just wish Trump would resign.
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Biden should cut a deal and tell him he would pardon him if he just stepped aside. Biden pardoning Trump would be a good faith gesture even though the libs would scream, but that is also pushing backing against the most vindictive elements on his side that cause him the most damage. Biden probably re-elects himself in 2024 by doing this.
Tom Scharf,
Pardon private citizen Trump? For what possible criminal charge? Things are getting crazy in Washington DC if people are seriously contemplating criminal charges against Trump for what rioters did at the Capitol. It is madness.
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“Biden probably re-elects himself in 2024 by doing this.”
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Biden is going to be in la-la land by 2024, and won’t be running for anything.
MIkeM
Parler already has a domain name. It’s Parler.com. Absolutely right on the server part.
Currently, the only thing preventing them from buying servers is it seems they don’t want to buy servers. They’d rather rent. That’s what people call “nothing prevents them from buying servers.”.
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They could. The don’t wanna.
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But the fact they don’t want to buy servers doesn’t mean it makes sense to say Amazon must rent them servers and while Parler has totally free reign to dictate the terms of the rental agreement. Ordinarily, “landlords” have some choice of renter. The can consider credit worthiness. They can consider whether the tenant has loud parties. Then can forbid pets. And so on.
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Suppose you keep poisonous spiders at pets, but you can’t find a landlord who allows any renter to keep those . If you want more control than renting gives you, you buy. You don’t bitch that you can’t find a landlord who allows you to keep poisonous spiders as pets. Or you can keep bitching and moaning. And complain about how all the landlords are ganging up and not allowing you to do what you want.
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The adult thing is to realize that if you want control over what you do with your servers, you buy your own servers.
Dewitt
I don’t like that language. Comments advertising their diet aids and dropping links to those are legal. I want to ban that. It means I can’t ban Doug Cotton’s entirely legal time wasting posts.
.
As a practical matter, that language basically says everyone loses 230 protection if they moderate at all.
.
If you want 230 dropped entirely, say so. But don’t think it’s easy to tweak it to just “be fair”.
Lucia,
“The adult thing is to realize that if you want control over what you do with your servers, you buy your own servers.”
.
Sure, but that doesn’t address the extensive efforts to keep potential users from downloading the Parler app. Seems to me those are unlawful constraint of trade…. and I think that was the conclusion of at least one Congressional committee that looked at Apple’s refusal to allow apps to be load in any way except via their app store. The EC fined Apple something like $4 billion over this tactic. I think the argument “just develop and sell your own smartphone so people can download the app for your web based service” is more than over the top.
SteveF
Perhaps not. But I’m responding to people who are saying Parler shouldn’t buy their own severs.
.
I haven’t objected to the idea that people might want to change rules under 230. It’s not either or. That can be changed. But don’t expect that to help Parler. If Parler wants to avoid getting whipsawed by Google/Amazon/Apple and others, they need to get their own servers.
.
But iPhone users can load apps other ways. I posted a link above explaining how.
.
I’m not seeing this as any bigger deal than Apple kicking Epic Games/Fortnite off. My thought when I read their dispute is Fortnite can run its own app store. My thought now is can Parler. Heck, the two can get together and set up a rival app store.
https://www.wired.com/story/install-apps-outside-app-store-sideload/
How to Install Apps From Outside Your Phone’s App Store
I should add: I do think the law should forbid a phone IOS from preventing side-loading of apps. The user should be allowed to check a box indicating they understand that Apple has not checked the app.
Luica,
“I posted a link above explaining how.”
.
I looked at several links. They all involve “jailbreaking’ the phone….. doable? Yes, but complicated for the average person, and with many downsides…. like you can’t get the IOS updated, and your warranty is automatically voided. From a practical POV, jailbreaking iPhones is really not much of an option, and certainly not a practical one for most people who were using parlor.
.
I agree that bypassing the app store should be a normal option…. you paid for the phone after all.
Tom Scharf (Comment #196782): “I just wish Trump would resign. Biden should cut a deal and tell him he would pardon him if he just stepped aside. Biden pardoning Trump would be a good faith gesture even though the libs would scream, but that is also pushing backing against the most vindictive elements on his side that cause him the most damage. Biden probably re-elects himself in 2024 by doing this.”
.
In other words, you want Trump to throw his supporters under the bus and consign the Republican Party to oblivion. I don’t want either.
If Trump were as self-centered and unprincipled as many people claim, he might do that. I think he won’t.
lucia (Comment #196784): “Currently, the only thing preventing them from buying servers is it seems they don’t want to buy servers.”
.
So far as I know, buying servers still requires *money*. Big piles of money. Something that startups typically lack.
Mike M,
“So far as I know, buying servers still requires *money*. Big piles of money. Something that startups typically lack.”
.
Depends on the expected number of users and the quantity of information each user sends and receives from the server. If the expected load is a few hundred or a even a couple thousand users simultaneously, it may not be so much money. If you need to support 100,000 users simultaneously, with near zero possibility of outage, then it is going to be a lot of money…. and that includes computer hardware, physical installation (power and heat management, etc), and operating cost. But it could be reasonably cheap to get started.
MIkeM
Of course buying servers costs money. People going into business often have to spend money. If you want to own a restaurant, you usually at least buy an oven and pans, tables and so on. Renting also costs money– over time instead of right away.
Renting might allow a lower barrier to entry, but a restaurant that buys will have better control over retaining their location and avoid the risk of losing their lease. So it is still the case that owning the stuff you need to do business makes you less vulnerable to whoever might want to kick you to the curb.
.
One of the dance studios around here lost their lease unexpectedly. The owner decided to raise rents– and quite suddenly. The dance studio moved out of their building with 30 days notice. (I don’t know what happened to his nice wood floor!)
.
Gab owns their own servers now. It’s up and running. I posted there today. You could too. 🙂
.
Certainly Section 230 giving the internet freedom to innovate has provided some economic gains. It has passed the constitutional test several times.
Going after third parties for liability absent Section 230 would seem to me like (mis)using tort law to go after third parties (like Big Tech) with deep pockets.
I am for whatever gives private parties the most freedom in using their private property within legal limits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230
Kenneth,
As a devoted libertarian, you express views that are abhorrent to those now crushing Parlar and actively suppressing all information they don’t like (eg Facebook and news reports on Hunter Biden, for example). The left never stops, and ends up eating its own. You would just be roadkill along the way to political nirvana.
Mike M. (Comment #196791)
January 12th, 2021 at 3:10 pm
I think this might well be a bit backwards. Republicans and supporters will be thrown under the bus by Trump if he feels that it is to his advantage and I suspect from a narcissist like Trump this will come to pass. Republicans have severally hurt their brand by too many Representatives and Senators remaining loyal to Trump in his unhinged and unproven claim of a fraudulent election. I doubt that many of those Republicans truly believe in that kamikaze mission, but rather think that their next elections will depend on support from the Trump hero worshipers. Those Trump supporters in my view will soon forget Trump. Voters historically can be very fickle.
MikeM,
I don’t know in what sense Trump stepping aside and accepting a pardon would constitute throwing his supporters under the bus. I certainly doesn’t consign the GOP to oblivion. It looks a lot more like it would be the salvation of the GOP. Right now the GOP’s biggest problem is they need to focus on ideas and people who are not Trump. The majority of the GOP do not support Trump. He is no longer any sort of real leader. But the party is stuck mucking around him and will be stuck until he’s gone.
.
If he doesn’t leave, the party risks a schism. It might happen anyway. But most of the party are going to go to the not Trump side. That’s the side that needs to formulate ideas, pick a direction and move forward. The Trump side will eventually fizzle.
.
The main good thing that could come of him being impeached is he couldn’t run for any federal office. (I figure he’ll try to run for Senator in FL if he’s not impeached. 🙂 )
lucia (Comment #196798): “The majority of the GOP do not support Trump.”
.
Seriously? Do you have any evidence for that? It might be true for the party establishment, but I can’t believe that is true of the people who voted for him.
Addition: This seems to imply that you are spectacularly wrong: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trumps-job-approval-rating-ticks-up-after-capitol-riot-rasmussen-poll/ar-BB1cFtmx
It keeps on getting better. Twitter is digging a hole and climbing in.
.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/01/12/twitter-strongly-condemns-internet-shutdowns-in-uganda/
.
Ahead of the Ugandan election, we’re hearing reports that Internet service providers are being ordered to block social media and messaging apps.
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We strongly condemn internet shutdowns – they are hugely harmful, violate basic human rights and the principles of the #OpenInternet.
.
— Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) January 12, 2021
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Access to information and freedom of expression, including the public conversation on Twitter, is never more important than during democratic processes, particularly elections.#UgandaDecides2021 #KeepItOn https://t.co/Q2SJfsFUiD
.
— Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) January 12, 2021
MikeM
Yes. Seriously.
It is a claim. I think it’s true. You don’t have to accept it.
.
Oh. I think it’s absolutely true of the people who voted for him. Deep down, I think Trump knows it’s true. He knows he’s what he calls a l_o_s_e_r (as in someone who lost). He knows that people who voted for him will vanish *poof* within second or weeks of him exiting office.
.
I think part of the reason polls tended to not pick up the number voting for Trump is quite a few Trump voters are “embarrassed to be voting for Trump” voters. This is a sizeable fraction. And even those not embarrassed to be voting for him were often merely voting against Biden. They preferred the DEMs not in the office, but they don’t actually support Trump.
The other side on banning Twitter & Facebook
.
“That social channel you are talking about, if it is going to operate in Uganda, it should be used equitably by everybody who wants to use it,†Museveni said of Twitter and Facebook. “If you want to take sides against the National Resistance Movement, then that group will not operate in Uganda.â€
Lucia,
Hard to say how many Republicans actually support Trump. There is no doubt a core of strong supporters, but I suspect there were plenty of voters making a lesser-of-evils vote (2016 and 2020), not a vote affirming Trump as Trump. He is not and has never been suitable material for President…. just someone that many thought better than the alternative. WRT Trump being impeached after leaving office: That will be laughed out of the Senate; it is silly, wildly outside the Constitutional description of impeachment, and a stoooopid waste of time to boot. Trump is not ever going to run for Senate from Florida, and I very much doubt he could better either of Florida’s sitting senators if he tried.
SteveF,
I don’t think he’d win. But I wouldn’t be so sure he won’t throw in his hat and run.
.
Of course, he might not think Senator is elevated enough for him. 🙂
Lucia,
I think Trump will be 100% absorbed with avoiding financial ruin over the next year or two. But yes, for sure the Senate is obviously below his stature.
.
On a serious note: I often wonder what Trump might have accomplished in office if he had the tiniest bit of self control. But it is a little like wondering about if pigs could fly…..
There’s a difference between supporting Trumpish policies and following him down a Stop the Steal rabbit hole. I’m not going there and it was an epic blunder for him to do it.
What a twisted web we weave when we practice to deceive. The social media giants have tied themselves into knots and their moral posturing at this point is buffoonish. I am utterly shocked that after they conceding to take sides on an issue it has only resulted in a magnitude more calls for the same.
Tom: “The social media giants have tied themselves into knots and their moral posturing at this point is buffoonish.”
.
Does anyone else even notice? The whole edifice is self supporting. Feeding, reinforcing, and covering for the various lies and outrageous hypocrisy each facet displays. Each new iteration making the last seem rather mundane. CNN recently ran with the header “ANTIFA LEFTIST GROUP SEEKS PEACE THROUGH VIOLENCE.” while Schiff reasserts the “peaceful protest” vs “white supremacist insurrection” line…
Tom Scharf,
I’m assuming you’re as shocked as Claude Rains’ character in Casablanca was when he commented on gambling at Ricks. Nevertheless, it’s a good point. The progressives are adept at raising the bar. Whatever you give them only whets their appetite for more.
DaveJR,
“Peace through violence” Wow! How much more 1984 doublethink can you get (War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength)? I thought ‘Silence is Violence’ was bad enough.
SteveF (Comment #196803): “Hard to say how many Republicans actually support Trump. There is no doubt a core of strong supporters, but I suspect there were plenty of voters making a lesser-of-evils vote (2016 and 2020), not a vote affirming Trump as Trump.”
.
So why has the number of people saying the approve of his presidency not dropped? Or not dropped by much?
MikeM,
Well.. that’s easy:
(1) The number of people saying the approve of him has dropped noticeably since November. See
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
(2) Polls are actually somewhat slow instruments.
(3) The answer “approve” in “approve/disapprove” is not exactly the same of “are you a Trump supporter“.
I can perfectly well approve of some of his policies (deregulation among them) and not support him. That means if my choices are “approve/disapprove”, I might say “approve” even if I answered “do NOT support” on the previous (or next) question.
.
Especially just before an election people answering “approve/disapprove” may merely interpret it relative to the ‘other’ candidate.
lucia (Comment #196812): “(1) The number of people saying the approve of him has dropped noticeably since November.”
.
There was a brief spike in Nov., all the way up to nearly 45%. Latest is a little over 40%, the same as one year ago, well in the range it has been in all along, and probably not significantly different from Nov.
His approval is down relative to November and noticeably so. That his approval was never high is hardly evidence in favor of his having lots of “support”.
Lucia: “As a practical matter, that language basically says everyone loses 230 protection if they moderate at all.
.
If you want 230 dropped entirely, say so. But don’t think it’s easy to tweak it to just “be fairâ€.”
To me a simply tweak would be to use some measure of bigness and size. So, censoring is forbidden if you have, let’s say more than 50 million users. Or, you could do it by revenue earned on the site. It is common in federal law to exempt small entities. For instance, many federal employment laws are not applicable to employers with less than 50 employees.
In the case of the behemoths we are discussing, I believe it is necessary that they be regulated.
Mike M,
I did not suggest his support had dropped, only that lots of people voted for Trump as a lesser of evils choice…. I am in that group, and always have been. Trump’s behavior has always ranged between barely appropriate and outrageous; had he ever needed to hold a job, he would have been fired….. his behavior is just beyond the pale.
SteveF (Comment #196796)
January 12th, 2021 at 5:50 pm
Steve, I think your post is somewhat overdone, but it brings to mind a good point and that being:
I believe that Social Media Giants can very easily and I suspect numerous times with good reason shut down rabble rousing, emotionally, conspiratorially laced comments from the right. Just like Trump’s lying and exaggerated quips and comments it is very easy to justify shutting them down. Someone who avoids those approaches cannot so easily be shut down on a consistent basis without having the political argument that the reasonable persons being shut down are attempting to publicize.
The Trump problem, and why the Republicans should work diligently to relegate him in the dust bin of history, is that his language and generally nutty persona gets in the way of any political message that he might have had – and even when the raw message made sense.
The major problem I have with Social Media and MSM is not so much their criticism of those on the right and particularly politicians but their lack of doing the same for those on the left. The more obvious this becomes the better for the general public to see what is really going on. I have younger liberal Democrat acquaintances who tell me they now subscribed to the WSJ in addition to the NYT because they know that the Times does not provide the entire story or sides of an issue.
JD Ohio,
Size of web site might be the way to go.
SteveF,
My guess is there are tons of people like you. Voted for Trump, but don’t really “support” him. Of course, we could debate what “support” means. But if the choice was between him and a typical Republican who is not Trump, they would pick “not Trump”.
.
These people might not answer “disapprove” on a poll. Like me, they may approve of a number of policies. They may approve of his SCOTUS and court appointments. They approve of a number of things. But that’s not the same as supporting him.
.
That is is the President means that those who don’t support him still work with him. Or put up with him. Or tolerate and so on. He was constitutionally elected so… what are you going to do? People who don’t like DEM policies aren’t all going to start voting DEM just because they don’t like the current President. They aren’t even going to join in something like calls for impeachment if they honestly think the crime doesn’t rise to that.
.
There are practicalities associated with politics.
.
I’m pretty sure once Trump is out, it will be pretty obvious that many of those who voted for him are perfectly happy to have others come to the fore of the GOP.
.
Mike M had asked for “evidence”. Well… of course there is none to quantify this.
.
Polls don’t ask things like “do you support Trump?”. There some slightly related questions that don’t mean quite the same thing. And even if someone thinks, “This word literally means X“, that doesn’t mean everyone answering it interprets the word the same way. “Do you approve or disapprove of Trump” is not the same as “Do you support him.” I’m pretty sure Trump knows there are plenty of people who are going to be willing to watch him fall after Biden is out of office. (Some want to push him– which is a different thing.)
.
JD, your proposal to regulate by size/revenue has already been put into a congressional bill. I do not recall the status but it is in the link to Wikipedia in my post on Section 230.
It should be remembered that the innovation that has occurred because of Section 230 and noted in my above post was nearly all made by the behemoths.
Kennet
And at this point, his only real message seems to be “I, Trump, should be kept in office. ” Yes, he’s doing that by decreeing the election was “fraudulent”. But the main thing is pretty much all about him and him being in office.
.
As a political message, that’s not going to move forward for very long. (Well… not unless he really can pull off a military coup, which he can’t. It would be difficult for anyone because our military culture isn’t likely to put a tin-pot dictator in place. And if he did pull it off, the country would end up collapsing– that’s something people who haven’t drunk the Trump Kool-aid know. And most people– even most in the GOP have not drunk the Trump Kool-aid.)
Once again, the Bee gets to the heart of the matter:
https://babylonbee.com/news/liberal-argues-conservatives-can-always-leave-earth-make-free-society-on-some-other-planet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230
Kenneth,
“The major problem I have with Social Media and MSM is not so much their criticism of those on the right and particularly politicians but their lack of doing the same for those on the left.”
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The unbalanced coverage of politicians is only part of the issue. The MSM simply will not accurately report information which is contrary to the political narrative they want to advance (constant ‘progress’ toward “democratic socialism”). Of course, the detail of how any legitimate democracy depends on accurate information being provided to the voters seems to them irrelevant….. they actively and willingly suppress and distort information. Their defacto position is: we will coerce you through inaccurate, distorted, and withheld information to vote the way we want you to. This nothing but a symptom of the underling fundamental problem with the left: they will countenance no opposition unless forced to…. much like the Catholic Church at the time of Luther’s Protestant Reformation. With the left the ends always justify the means; libertarians beware.
.
I think Trump will quickly fade into relative obscurity, especially if he is in serious financial trouble, as I expect he will be.
It should be noted that even things everyone pretty much agrees on seemingly must be driven to a divisive level. The attack on the Capital by a politically agitated mob was unacceptable. Everyone who entered the Capital illegally should be prosecuted. There is no actionable evidence to overturn this election. Trump is being an a-hole. People actually dying over “Trump’s landslide victory” is just way too far.
.
A few of the crazies in the riot are likely guilty of higher crimes, others were just at a political rally and got caught up in the action. These are the people taking selfies and obviously thinking the whole thing was a joke. The radical revolutionists are unlikely to be the people posting Pelosi’s lectern on eBay.
.
Trump is not legally guilty of any real crime according to my understanding of the law, but this wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t being so delusional. Censure is absolutely warranted and Impeachment would be a close call had he any significant time left in office. It’s best to run out the clock just to lower the volume. Trump did this to himself. He is no victim in this one.
.
This is not to say we have “equity” in how heated political rhetoric is treated in the MSM and beyond, we don’t. The only thing we can do is line up to hold both sides accountable when things go out of bounds.
Kenneth,
Hawley’s bill has as much chance of passage as I have of joining the PGA tour next week. Those now in control in Washington want opposing voices on the internet censored or silenced. The Babylon Bee’s take is, as usual, nearly perfect.
The rioters at the Capitol were mostly ‘white’ Americans. The BLM riots this summer were in the name of ‘black’ Americans. One might think these groups polar opposites, but both represent the poor and marginalized. They are competing for political attention and resources, not because they differ, but because they are alike.
.
There is a general perception that Trump is racist for ‘white’ Americans. Racism is
treating individuals by group ( seeing race, not person ). The opposite of racism is treating all individuals equally, and not by group. Unfortunately, rather than treating all individuals equally, Biden’s words appear to distinguish by race against ‘white’ Americans.
Here’s the problem: What if the worst systemic discriminator is not a human being, but Mother Nature?
.
If that’s the case, low IQ whites, the kind marginalized, are pandered to by Trump with racial appeals that will not change their individual lives. And Biden’s pandering of systemic racism will not change group differences.
.
In polar coordinates, the extremes are 180 degrees out of phase, not from one another, but from the moderate axis. Being each 180 degrees out means they are more similar than different.
.
To return to the middle, we need the moderation of inclusion of all individuals, not racial exclusions of the left or the right.
Tom,
“Impeachment would be a close call had he any significant time left in office.”
He doesn’t, so impeachment is not a close call at all. Congress can censure him if they want, but I suspect history will treat him worse than that. I do hope that history will also critique the corrupt politicians and their destructive policies which led to Trump’s improbable election.
.
Yes, Trump is (and always was) an a$$hole. I suspect many people have known someone who is nearly as much an a$$hole as Trump…. they just don’t normally get elected to the Presidency.
Turbulent,
“And Biden’s pandering of systemic racism will not change group differences.”
.
The objective is Federally mandated equality of outcome for all identifiable groups, independent of any measurable group differences. Biden’s pandering of “systemic racism” is just a means to enable that outcome. As is preferential hiring and promotion, as is preferential admission to colleges/universities, as is preferential selection of government contractors, etc.
.
When Wisconsin voters via plebiscite made racial preferences unlawful, there was a legal challenge which was finally decided by the SC (in favor of the voters). I her dissenting opinion, Justice Sotomayor directly accused her colleagues who made up the court majority of being racists. They were pissed; she didn’t care. Sotomayor wants racial preferences, no mater what the voters want.
.
California voters required (again via plebiscite) that admissions to the California University system be race neutral; ever since, the state government has done its level best to subvert that requirement (setting up racial preferences by other means) and worked to have the plebiscite overturned. The left never stops.
Tom Scharf
Parler not stripping exif data, being easily scraped and getting scraped is going to mean many of them will be prosecuted. One unique thing about this particular event is that there will be tons of evidence readily availble with no need to get a warrant or request under the 4th amendment.
.
Oddly, based on the story, this evidence would not be available if Amazon had closed them down sooner!!
.
As the story unfolds, it appears all the evidence may come from garden variety scraping of public docs (legal). Claims that people were able to break into password protected areas appears to be false.
I don’t really take seriously what anybody says on social media. People who are serious about revolution don’t announce their actions on public forums in a traceable way. These people use Signal and other encrypted apps. It’s really an indication that people aren’t serious when using open access social platforms.
.
Signal Downloads Are Way Up Since the Protests Began
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/style/signal-messaging-app-encryption-protests.html
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Ironically these kind of apps are not banned, ha ha.
Tom,
The evidence issue isn’t going to be limited to what someone said on Parler. Lots of that can be defended as exaggeration, metaphor and so on.
.
My intended point is that law enforcement will have in many instances concrete evidence that a person *was* inside the Capital, moved around. Sometimes this will be from meta data on materials they uploaded to Parler and was then scraped and archived.
.
Since merely being inside the Capital, especially certain parts, is an offense, law enforcement will have evidence of crimes.
.
At BLM, we have lots of evidence of general mayhem. But often, there’s not much evidence to trace who broke a window, who took the large screen tv and so on.
.
Why some much discussion of Parler re the riot? From what I have seen, most of the planning was done on Twitter and YouTube. Few of the people arrested even had Parler accounts.
.
Of course, it is hard to know what the truth is.
MikeM
Because Parler’s data got scraped and is being made public. So, that data is public. To the extent that some will provide evidence of crimes, that data is going to have consequences.
.
And moreover, that Parler data was not scrubbed of meta-data — including location data– by Parler. So that data containes infotmation that can be analyzed, and discussed.
.
Making this simple observation which happens to involve “Parler” and not the other groups seems to bug you. But this is why it’s being discussed.
.
Honestly, complaining about “why” Parler data is being discussed is about as ridiculous as others complaning that “climategate” emails got discussed when– as anyone knows– there were certainly other emails ‘out there’. Well. the ones that were leaked and became public were read and discussed. The ones no one sees are not discussed. This is obvious.
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #196827)
“Unfortunately, rather than treating all individuals equally, Biden’s words appear to distinguish by race against ‘white’ Americans.
“Our priority will be Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American owned small businesses, women-owned businesses…”
______
Seems like you are saying I am a racist if I help a Black because he’s Black, or I hurt a Black because he’s Black. That’s a weird definition of racist.
BTW, Webster’s will be expanding its definition of racism soon.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52993306#:~:text=Merriam%2DWebster's%20current%20definition%20of,superiority%20of%20a%20particular%20race
Max,
It’s not that weird. If you decide to do something about somebody based solely on the color of their skin, at minimum you are employing racial discrimination in determining a course of action. In other words you are discriminating (recognizing a distinction; differentiating) based on skin color in order to decide how to behave towards that individual.
One can argue whether or not racial discrimination is identical in meaning to racism I suppose. Perhaps it’s not identical. My opinion is that at minimum there is significant overlap.
OK_Max,
Giving explicit preference to one race over another is racial discrimination. Whether that discrimination makes someone a “racist” is a bit like arguing over whether on not someone is “too fat”.
.
If a better qualified job applicant doesn’t get a job, and someone less qualified does, simply because the better qualified applicant is of East Asian descent, or because “we have too many Asians”, or because “we don’t have enough xxxxx” (fill in whatever xxxxx you like), then the person or organization responsible for that hire is indeed acting like a racist. They are prejudiced against one racial group in favor of another.
It’s a fallacy that you are only helping with racial preferences. Many areas are zero sum such as college admissions, you are taking away from others when you allow someone admission by a racial preference.
.
Webster being pressured into the “you can’t be racist against white people†silliness by activists doesn’t make it legitimate. If you want to call it prejudice or whatever feel free. To pretend injustice doesn’t have a lot of paths is just dogma. All things being equal giving a healthy black owned business help over a struggling white owned business doesn’t make sense. Using skin color as a proxy for who really needs help is divisive when better measures are available.
.
I will add that doing this with relief funds will be legally challenged and almost certainly be overturned unless very carefully tailored. This is counterproductive virtue signaling at its worst. It will delay funds, it already has:
.
A Covid-19 Relief Fund Was Only for Black Residents. Then Came the Lawsuits.
Oregon earmarked $62 million to explicitly benefit Black individuals and business owners. Now some of the money is in limbo after lawsuits alleging racial discrimination.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/03/us/oregon-cares-fund-lawsuit.html
Re mark bofill (Comment #196837) and SteveF (Comment #196838)
Given a broader definition of “racist,” I suppose you could say I’m a good racist if I help Black people because of their race, or I’m a bad racist if I hurt Black people because of their race. And you could say I’m not a racists at all if I neither help or hurt Blacks because of their race . However, I couldn’t find this broad definition of “racist” in Websters. Did I miss it?
Well.. my twitter feed says Trump has been impeached for inciting the capital riot.
Re: lucia (Comment #196798)
Agree with this. This is a chance to break with Trumpism. But the GOP appears to be calculating that they can wed the Trump base with traditional GOP suburban voters. Impeaching after 1/20 is not just about removing from office but entirely within the Constitutional power of the Senate to disqualify from future office. The failed Clinton and first (and likely second) Trump impeachment attempts nevertheless likely had the effect of enshrining that impeachable acts had occurred.
Lucia,
My logic says the Senate will not act on it. I think Pelosi is quite crazy, but that is small potatoes compared to her personal vindictiveness. What an awful person.
OK_Max,
Seems you miss the point completely. If you give advantage to one group, you automatically give disadvantage to other groups. You know, just like the Jim Crow laws after the civil war. It is a zero-sum game. Racial discrimination is always zero sum (as is sexual discrimination, religious discrimination, etc, etc). .
I am rather surprised you can’t seem to do the zero-sum arithmetic. To suggest there is “good” racial discrimination is, IMO, just preposterous. Discrimination based on irrelevant characteristics is inherently bad, and yes, often racist.
RB,
“Impeaching after 1/20 is not just about removing from office but entirely within the Constitutional power of the Senate to disqualify from future office.”
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Johnathan Turley, that radial right wing law professor from Georgetown, disagrees with you. So do I: it is nutty, and disconnected from the clear description of the Constitutional process.
Max,
From your link,
racism :
3. racial prejudice or discrimination
In the example you supplied and as I have already explained, deciding to treat somebody a certain way based on the color of their skin (their race) is racial discrimination. According to your link, this is racism, because racial discrimination is listed as one of the definitions in an OR clause of the definition of racism.
If you need any further help finding your ass with both hands please do not hesitate to ask.
Mark Bofill,
“If you need any further help finding your ass with both hands please do not hesitate to ask.”
.
I think you are applying logic to a question which simply does not have anything to do with logic on the left. They want equality of outcome for different racial groups, independent of data or logic….and nothing else much matters!. Any policy, no matter how unjust and unfair to living/breathing individuals, is perfectly OK if it helps achieve equality of outcome for identifiable racial/ethnic/religious/sexual groups. It would all be laughable, were it not so very unfair, damaging, and corrosive to civil discourse.
Are you going to help Tiger Woods or Obama over poor white people? If you are using skin color as proxy for something else then you might instead say “I’m helping poor people” or “undereducated people” or “people in the poor area of town”, etc. In general there is no need to discriminate by race when helping people, you can discriminate instead by who needs the help you are providing the most. If the people who need the help you are providing are mostly black, then fine.
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If you want to racially discriminate your help as a private citizen then do so. If you want to tell yourself it is “good” racial discrimination then go ahead. Just don’t tell yourself you are not racially discriminating or rename it to something else and pretend it’s not what it is.
Tom Scharf,
“In general there is no need to discriminate by race when helping people, you can discriminate instead by who needs the help you are providing the most.’
.
Your logic is perfect. Reality is not. What is forced upon businesses, organization, and individuals is explicit racial preferences, not help based on need. Racial preferences hurt people, they are inherently unjust and harmful.
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The rest is arm waves. I help support a dozen poor kids all over the world; I don’t care at all about their race. Helping poor kids is not racist. Giving preferences to people based on thier race is most definitely racist.
Steve,
I do generally resort to biting sarcasm shortly after logic fails, but it doesn’t work any better with OK_Max as far as I can tell.
Shrug.
SteveF,
Con Law experts Jed Shugerman, Jonathan Adler and Steve Vladeck all disagree with Turley, who I’ll take your word for it took the stance that you describe.
RB,
Would you like to bet if the Senate will ever convict Trump?
If you take the bet, I figure I could make you support some of the poor kids I normally do. Which might be good for you.
SteveF,
My understanding is the Senate is not going to act on it before Jan 20. They are in recess. McConnell previously said that he would need 100% of Senators to vote in favor of coming out of recess (or whatever it’s called when it’s actually going to be a new Senate after an election?) . I’m sure at least 1 Senator will vote against, so the trial won’t happen until after Biden is in office.
.
Well… if it ever does. After Jan 20, maybe no one will care anymore. Dems and Biden may prefer to not have the first weeks of his administration be about something other than starting to launch their preferred initiatives.
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However, the one tangible thing the Senate convicting can do is ensure Trump cannot run again. Obviously, there are also intangibles related to conviction. People will differ about what the intangible message is.
.
There is lots of debate at LawBlawgs about whether one can convict after Trump is actually out. There appears to be precedent that one can do so from other office holders. However, the impeachment has to happen before he’s out.
.
Obviously, there is no SCOTUS ruling on presidential impeachment happening after the president has left office.
.
I suspect we are going to hear arguments about the legal niceties of this. I have no expertise on it.
SteveF,
As I said in Comment #196843, I don’t believe that the Senate will impeach him. It will probably fall short by more than 10 votes. Other Con Law professors supporting the Constitutionality: Bobby Chesney, Eric Segall, Gregg Nunziata.
The simple argument is that a President can resign at the 11th hour to avoid impeachment thereby rendering the disqualification powers moot.
Even if the Senate wanted to have the trial before Jan 20th, Trump would simply request time to prepare a defense which would reasonably be granted I assume.
Woohoo!
Redstone Arsenal is probably going to be the home of Space Command!
RB,
“I don’t believe that the Senate will impeach him.”
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The Senate convicts on impeachment…. or not. The House impeaches, which in their profound idiocy they have already done….. twice.
.
Trump is not going to resign. Trump resigning is nothing but a lefty wet dream. He will leave office normally next week, and the Senate will never convict based on the House’s ridiculous impeachment vote…. if the Senate even bothers to take up the impeachment gauntlet, which I seriously doubt they will. Bothering to vote on it would be a silly waste of time. You know the expression about beating a dead horse? Don’t worry, Trump will not be running for anything.
Mark Bofill,
The Bee has it right…. contact Elon Musk about setting up a free society….. on another planet. Redstone could be one of the departure points.
OK_Max,
That you think there is “good racism” and “bad racism” indicates that you’ve already missed the core of the argument. Racism — by which I mean treating persons differently *simply* because of their race — is a bad idea; it substitutes an irrelevant characteristic for whatever relevant attributes might be. Treat each person as an individual! If you’re taking their race into consideration for whatever reason, I call that racist, even if you think that’s “good” racism.
Lucia,
The Senate is never going to convict Trump after January 20, and I doubt they will even try. If they do try, that is a near guarantee Republicans will gain control of both Houses in 2022. I doubt Dems are that dumb, but you never know…. they have been really dumb in the past.
Here is what mises.org is doing to survive any tech purges.
https://mises.org/wire/surviving-tech-purges-what-were-doing-mises-institute
The article points to the private/government mix with Big Tech and how that relationship blurs the definition of private and how that might affect the application of censorship without actually stating a remedy. Mises.org is obviously a libertarian website, but that does not mean I always agree with what authors of threads there have to say about a current political topic.
The labeling of an enterprise or organization as a government or quasi-government entity in order to regulate its operations is a very slippery slope in my mind. In today’s world of increasing government regulation and threats of regulation there are not many enterprises and organizations that can claim to be free of involvement with government and as such presents a backdoor for socialism/fascism.
I find myself unable to predict what happens to the impeachment process after Jan 20. I can’t even guess if the Dems would press for a trial after Jan 20. The thing is: Once Biden is in office, time spent on impeachment is time lost for him introducing his legislative agenda. Most presidents want to have a running start on their own agenda. So the DEMS may not want to push it at that point.
Lucia,
“Obviously, there is no SCOTUS ruling on presidential impeachment happening after the president has left office.”
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Of course not. Only the current insane rage on the left, which does seem quite unique in the country’s history, would ever lead to the SC having to rule on such a crazy idea. I am guessing if the new Senate majority (AKA Kamala) is foolish enough to chase after Trump even out of office, then the SC will put a stop to it. Really, it is nutty; the Constitution even states plainly that once out of office the former President is subject to normal civil and criminal law.
I’m with Lucia on this one. I’m not sure TDS isn’t that deranged.
Kenneth,
I once thought much as you do, especially after reading the Friedmans’ book ‘Free to Choose’ some 40 years ago. Experience since then has disabused me of the Friedmans’ simplistic analysis of the world.
Kenneth Fritsch,
I was looking up logical fallacies the other day because I thought someone I knew was setting up a false dichotomy, i.e. tariffs or nothing to deal with China cheating on trade, and I noticed that slippery slope was listed as potentially fallacious. It seems like a rather long way from making the First Amendment apply to large social media and web hosting services to socialism/fascism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
SteveF,
I’m not even sure whether a conviction after he leaves office would end up with a justiciable question! The only concrete penalty at that point would be he can’t run for office. So the question of whether the impeachment might be moot unless Trump files when he has the intent to run for office!
SteveF,
When I said
I did not mean that Trump would resign. The simple argument for the constitutionality of impeachment (or conviction and disqualification if you will) after the term ends is that otherwise Presidents and others can exploit a loophole bypassing the disqualification powers given to Congress by resigning before impeachment. See here:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=286277
SteveF (Comment #196845)
“ To suggest there is “good†racial discrimination is, IMO, just preposterous. Discrimination based on irrelevant characteristics is inherently bad, and yes, often racist.â€
———
I was suggesting you believe there is “good†racial discrimination. I’m glad to hear that’s not what you believe.
mark bofill (Comment #196847)
I’m sorry, Mark, but I don’t understand your comment.
Re HaroldW (Comment #196860)
OK_Max,
That you think there is “good racism†and “bad racism†indicates that you’ve already missed the core of the argument.
———
HaroldW, that’s not what I think, that’s what I suspected others might think. I’m sorry what I said was not clear.
Someone was arguing here against bypassing FDA guidelines on vaccine testing. m
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-11/beutner-says-students-must-be-vaccinated-to-return-to-campus
MikeN,
That article isn’t suggesting bypassing guidelines. Once available to students. They aren’t yet and won’t be until they are tested.
Also
So LA isn’t forcing anyone to take the vaccine, it’s giving parents an option to give their kids a vaccine or not. They can just do online learning. As they currently are.
Lucia,
“I’m not even sure whether a conviction after he leaves office would end up with a justiciable question!”
.
For starters, the constitution specifies that the chief justice presides over the impeachment trial. I suspect even mealy-mouth Roberts could himself raise the question of the constitutionality if such a silly trial, and could ask his colleagues to rule on the question. If Roberts just refused to show up, would the process be constitutional? I doubt it. But all such details aside, the whole process is nutty, just like the first impeachment trial; the Senate is not going to convict Trump. People who keep doing the same things expecting a different result have taken leave of their senses. It is all a waste of time, and a waste of their limited political capital by Democrats.
SteveF
I thought that yesterday. Today I read a rumor that McConnell is open to the idea. So… I’m not betting either way on this.
.
Well… it’s the “same” in the sense that it’s “an impeachment/trial”. But it’s not entirely the same as before. There are at least three ways in which things are different:
.
1) This time most people understand what the issue is. They may disagree whether Trumps involvement was an impeachable offense. But the Ukraine phone call and “abuse of power” was more convoluted, less immediate and so on and so on. Lots of people are personally appalled at Trump right now. The Capital was overrun. This isn’t just being an oaf and little coming of it.
.
2) Quite a few GOP Senators are likely more electable if they vote to impeach. Some will find it a wash. Some in places that require the “Trump voter” to be elected might be hurt by voting to impeach…. but well… that might not matter to the ones who are more electable. And if there are enough to impeach, they won’t really need to strong arm the ones who won’t to get a result.
.
3) No matter how the vote goes, Trump won’t have the power of the presidency to attack the GOP Senators who vote against him. In fact, it’s likely Trump will be pretty busy with other legal matters after this is all over. So Senators who want to vote for impeachment don’t have to worry about Trumps vengence afterwards.
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I’m not betting either way.
.
I doubt Roberts would refuse to preside. That doesn’t seems like something Roberts would do. I think it’s more likely he would view the constitution as saying he is required to preside if the trial is held. Otherwise, either he thinks he gets to single handedly decide a constitutional issue or he is refusing to fulfill his own constitutional duty. If the former– that’s a huge deviation from tradition that SCOTUS decisions are made by voting among the judges. If the latter, well… a chief justice who refuses a constitutional duty should be impeached himself.
.
On the other hands, Trump has created such a cluster-f***, I really don’t know what is going to happen.
.
Beyond that: right now, I don’t even care if he gets impeached.
.
I read meritorious sounding arguments that it would be a good thing. I read meritorious sounding arguments that it would be a bad thing.
The constitutional argument saying it can’t be done pretty weak. In the end: I really can’t decide. So, “que sera, sera” as they say.
.
My view has always been impeachment is a political process. What a “high crime” is is also a political judgement. If I thought that before, I’m not going to change my mind today.
SteveF (Comment #196876): “I suspect even mealy-mouth Roberts could himself raise the question of the constitutionality if such a silly trial, and could ask his colleagues to rule on the question.”
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There is NO role for SCOTUS in the process, other than the chief justice presiding. Can members of Congress be impeached and tried? No. The House impeached Sen. William Blount and the *Senate* decided that it would be unconstitutional to try him on the grounds that impeachment does not apply to members of Congress. They made that decision *after* they kicked Blount out of the Senate. Kicking Blount out did not by itself settled the matter because of the possible ban from holding office in future. Just as RB says.
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Although no one has ever been tried after resigning, precedent from several judicial impeachments seems to be that it is allowed, but it has been conventional to dismiss the charges.
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SteveF: “If Roberts just refused to show up, would the process be constitutional? I doubt it.”
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That would be grounds to impeach Roberts.
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SteveF: “the whole process is nutty, just like the first impeachment trial; the Senate is not going to convict Trump. People who keep doing the same things expecting a different result have taken leave of their senses. It is all a waste of time, and a waste of their limited political capital by Democrats.”
.
The Dems are only being dumb if the Republicans refuse to be dumber. Senate Republicans should unite on the grounds that a trial is a waste of time.
.
The problem is that many establishment Republican insiders, especially the donor class, see this as an opportunity to force the Tea Party types back into submission and put things back to the way they were pre-Trump. That won’t happen. The populist genie is not going back in the bottle. Trying to make Trump voters toe the party line will only hopelessly split the party.
.
Maybe the Dems are being dumb and petty. Or maybe they are being smart and offering the Republicans a golden opportunity to self destruct. The question is whether the latter will be smart enough to decline.
Lucia,
When the Senate sees the polls, and they perhaps already have, they won’t convict Trump. There will probably be less than 5 votes.
https://www.axios.com/trump-mcconnell-republican-voters-69b27794-5557-44fe-80a6-d481adf15adf.html
Why, 40% even want him to be the 2024 Republican nominee. I wouldn’t be surprised if the leaks coming out are just McConnell’s way of threatening Trump not to do a repeat event between now and the inauguration. Otherwise, he could have agreed to Schumer’s request to hold the proceedings now.
Mike M. (Comment #196878): “Although no one has ever been tried after resigning,”
.
I was wrong. Grant’s Secretary of War, William W. Belknap, was impeached, tried, and acquitted after leaving office.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_W._Belknap#House_corruption_investigation,_resignation_and_impeachment_1876
Based on the self-described affiliations to traditional and Trump Republican camps, more than 55% of Republican voters want Trump as their 2024 nominee.
RB (Comment #196879): “Why, 40% even want him to be the 2024 Republican nominee.”
.
That is 40% of “traditional Republicans”. It was 92% of Trump Republicans”.
So that would be 60% of Republicans. Plus 20% of independents.
MikeM, yes, 55.6% of Republicans and 20% of the 6% of Republican voters who consider themselves independent per the topline. So, in the neighborhood of 57% overall.
MikeM
First: whatever you think they “should” do, the fact is they simply are not united on this.
Second: I don’t see what good that ‘uniting’ on those grounds is smart. If there is a trial, it’s going to be after Jan 20. Schumer will be Majority leader. Unless Shumer decides it’s against the Dem’s interest to have a trial, there will probably be a trial. GOP being “united” isn’t going to sway him much.
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The one thing that could sway Schumer’s decision against is that spending time on impeachment would mean not spending time on agenda items the DEMS want to advance. The DEMS won’t want the trial to take a long time. It will take a long time as longs as it looks like some GOP senators might impeach, but Schumer can’t be certain.
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So that argues toward not uniting being in the GOP’s favor.
.
Honestly, I think it’s in the GOPs favor:
* for Trump unable to run for future office so even he knows it is impossible, not merely improbable.
* for his evisceration to be done mostly be Democrats with a few GOP helping along.
* to take long enough for the effort to slow down Biden’s agenda and take some wind out of those sails.
.
That doesn’t mean it will happen that way.
MikeM/RB,
If it’s true that many Republican’s think they want him for their 2024 candidate, then it would definitely benefit the GOP for him to be impeached. Otherwise, they will go down in flames in 2024, and possibly in 2022.
.
Trump being active will mobilize the DEM base especially if he’s fixated on the 2020 election.
He divides the GOP. No matter how much the Trump supporters come out to vote, they aren’t sufficiently numerous to beat the throngs of people who will not vote for Trump.
.
We already saw him mobilizes DEMS and demobalize GOP in Georgia. And that was before the riot in the capital.
Lucia
I just don’t see how this process stops, now that it is in motion. Agree that prime beneficiary of a successful but drawn-out process is the establishment GOP.
Of course, the whole impeachment and Senate trial is a political endeavor by the Democrats to force the Republicans to make a no-win choice between defending or impeaching/indicting Trump. It is unfortunately all about the Trump voters who evidently would stand by Trump and his disruptive and irrational behavior even if most of the US and world is turned-off by him. They would for unknown reasons of their own prefer him to alternatives in keeping the left at bay.
I personally judge that sticking with Trump and his supporters is the worst choice the Republicans can make. The longer they wait to condemn Trump’s behavior and approach the more long term damage it will do to their political brand. If they lose some of the Trump supporters because they would prefer being governed by the far left, that is preferable over having a bullying and unhinged person and his supporters dictating their image.
Kenneth
Oh… they’ve convinced themselves the DEMS are Satan. So they’ll probably spin off some other party, which they’ll discover is small. Maybe they’ll call it “Bull-Moose and Squirrel” party.
.
Then, in the end, if they vote, they’ll mostly vote GOP. The big danger is they might not vote. But if they’ll only vote for Trump, the GOP is screwed whatever happens to Trump. Because there are now way too many people who will vote for anyone other than Trump.
RB,
I also don’t see how the process stops. Schumer isn’t like to say “Oh. Never mind. It doesn’t matter now.” Nor is he going to say “On reconsideration, it wouldn’t be constitutional to try him after he’s out.”
.
There’s probably very little reason for the GOP to help them do things fast. They can slow down Cabinet appointments more easily by having to spend time dealing with impeachment. Trump will be out, so cries about urgency will be a bit lame.
.
Based on Trump’s most recent video, it sounds like he’s calmed down enough to not do something utterly deranged (like launch nuclear missles.)
.
Hopefully, I won’t need to eat my words on the nuclear missiles prediction.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #196867)
January 13th, 2021 at 8:14 pm
DeWitt, to be clear what I said was, “is a very slippery slope in my mind” It is a slippery slope in my mind and the more slippery because it isn’t in other people’s minds.
The progressives and socialists didn’t stop voting Democrat because Biden was nominated. If Trump is primaried out next time around the Trumpers aren’t going to vote Democrat. It might suppress turnout some, but I doubt it.
.
If the left was smart they would happily fund an alternate party for the Trumpers.
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Let Trump be Trump, he’ll get beaten in 2024 if he runs in the Primary. I don’t want any overlords determining who gets to run and who doesn’t. It will be the same problem as last time, the conventional vote will get split so the Republicans will need to be smart enough to not let that happen and thin the herd down to one challenger ASAP.
.
This impeachment would have had a lot more impact had they not abused the process the first time. It’s a big yawn in reality. 6 more days and counting … tick … tock.
.
I think Trump will fade like the Rodney Dangerfield of politics over the next several months. The world can only take so much.
Lucia
Trump is impulsive. But he has a strong instinct for self-preservation. So, I believe he’s going to spend his remaining time pardoning friends, family and himself. Also, he consistently has had an opposition to nuclear weapons and inspiration from his uncle, so I’m not worried about that either.
It is noted that all the talk of an intentionally deliberate and slow vaccine process talk has disappeared. Had we even saved a single month or more likely up to 3 months here it would have saved a large number of lives. This argument, now with real data in a huge breakout, is verboten. I find the entire meme that capital ‘S’ science cannot be criticized pretty unfortunate.
Tom
Yep. If the “rules” for the process hadn’t been stretched in a way that seemed to be “no vaccine before the election”, many lives would have been saved.
.
I’m alive, but I’d be happier if I were vaccinated. But that’s months off I think. A faster process would mean I’d be vaccinated sooner.
OK_Max: “HaroldW, that’s not what I think, that’s what I suspected others might think.” [Re: existence of “good” racism & “bad” racism]
Apologies for mis-interpreting. I agree with you that others think this way: judicially-enforced quotas are an example.
lucia (Comment #196884): “whatever you think they “should†do, the fact is they simply are not united on this.”
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True. But that does not mean that they can not choose to show a united front. I don’t think anyone expects a single senator to vote based on whether they think Trump is guilty or not.
.
lucia: “I don’t see what good that ‘uniting’ on those grounds is smart. If there is a trial, it’s going to be after Jan 20. Schumer will be Majority leader. Unless Shumer decides it’s against the Dem’s interest to have a trial, there will probably be a trial. GOP being “united†isn’t going to sway him much.”
.
I agree. My concern is with not destroying the Republican party.
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lucia: “It will take a long time as longs as it looks like some GOP senators might impeach, but Schumer can’t be certain.”
.
I had not considered that. But I don’t see why the time spent on the trial depends on GOP senators. It is not like the trial itself will have any influence on how senators vote.
But yeah, if McConnell can head fake Schumer into wasting a month on this, it would be to the GOP’s benefit.
MikeM
Sure. In principle they can unite and decide they will all vote to impeach to. All that has to happen is the ones who disagree can decide to bite their tongues and “unite”. Easy peasy. Impeach Trump and it’s done.
.
Mine too. And I think uniting to save Trump is likely to destroy the GOP. I gave reasons above. I think the only way for the GOP to survive is for Trump to disappear from politics. Poof!
.
Trump being impeached will be good for the GOP’s prospects.
.
We know the DEMS will all vote to impeach. But they also want to succeed.
.
As long as there is uncertainty but with the hope of success, the DEMS would be likely to not want to push for a vote especially if there is no perceived urgency. All the uncertainty will be related to GOP Senators dithering. There won’t be any perceived urgency because Trump is out of office and he can’t run for President until the 2024 campaign cycle starts.
.
To some extent, GOP senators will be able to manipulate this into sucking up a long time by saying things like they will make up their minds after they hear all the evidence, or insisit on due process blah, blah, blah…..
lucia (Comment #196898): “Mine too. And I think uniting to save Trump is likely to destroy the GOP.”
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I don’t see why. I can see where another Trump campaign might be a problem. I can see where Trump’s base refusing to forgive the GOP establishment will be a problem. But I see no reason why defending the right the free speech will destroy the party.
.
lucia: “I think the only way for the GOP to survive is for Trump to disappear from politics. Poof!”
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But there is no way for the establishment to bring that about. Trump will not disappear from politics unless he chooses to. Banning him from office won’t change that.
.
The trick will be to keep Trump and his supporters in the same tent as the move conventional Republicans. Or for Trump and his supporters to build an alliance with disaffected Democrats who will never vote for a Republican Party that stands for big business and foreign adventurism. And who increasingly realize that they don’t want to vote for a Democrat Party that stands for big business and foreign adventurism.
.
If the Republicans unite with the Dems to ban Trump, then in 2024 the Republican nominee for President will be a divisive white supremacist. If elected, the Dems will refuse to accept his election as legitimate. We know that will happen because it happens every 4 years.
lucia,
The Democrat Senators will all vote to convict because 95% of Democrat voters are in favor. So it’s a safe vote for them. But according to the same poll, about 70% of Republican voters are against convicting Trump. So it’s not a safe vote for a lot of Republican Senators.
Nearly all Republican Senators who vote to convict are going to see a challenge in their next primary election. I would say that Susan Collins in Maine would be safe, assuming she runs again in six years. There are probably a few others that I can’t think of off the top of my head, but I don’t think there are 17.
“But yeah, if McConnell can head fake Schumer into wasting a month on this, it would be to the GOP’s benefit.”
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Would it? I think the dems are building a new sledge hammer and the reps are helping them do it. Their policy and arguments will be dismissed as “Trumpist” and they will dive into the foxholes like someone just tossed out an accusation of racism.
The WSJ has an article about how excess deaths are higher in some countries than deaths assigned to COVID-19. Mexico seems to be one of the worst.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/29-family-members-fell-ill-with-covid-mexico-didnt-count-them-11610642019
Interestingly, according to another article about global excess deaths, South Korea, as of October 3, had far more excess deaths than COVID-19 deaths. France as of December 5, didn’t have any excess deaths over the reported COVID-19 deaths.
Lucia,
Do you really believe the Senate is going to convict Trump long after he is out of office?
DeWitt,
“Nearly all Republican Senators who vote to convict are going to see a challenge in their next primary election.”
.
I agree, but with one caveat: there are going to be some GOP Senators who do not plan to run again. Some of them may vote against Trump. I doubt that gets the number to anywhere near 17. The trial, should it happen, is a silly waste of time, and divisive to boot.
.
I am reminded a bit of exhuming Oliver Cromwell’s body after his natural death to “execute him” properly for having killed the King of England three years earlier….. including placing his head on a spike for years outside Westminster. Vengeance is always an ugly thing.
Speaking of racism and its siblings:
https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1349473089331974144
A Cupertino elementary school forces third-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities, then rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.â€
.
First, the teacher told the eight- and nine-year-old students that they live in a “dominant culture†of “white, middle class, cisgender, educated, able-bodied, Christian[s]†who “created and maintained†this culture in order “to hold power and stay in power.â€
.
Reading from This Book Is Antiracist, the teacher taught the children the theory of “intersectionality” and claimed that “those with privilege have power over others” and that “folx who do not benefit from their social identities … have little to no privilege and power.â€
.
The teacher asked students to create an “identity map,†listing their race, class, gender, religion, family structure, and other characteristics. They were told to “circle the identities that hold power and privilege.”
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In a related assignment assignment, the children were asked to write short essays describing which aspects of their identities “hold power and privilege” and which are “oppressed”—in effect, ranking themselves according to the intersectional hierarchy.
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One Chinese-American parent compared the training to the Cultural Revolution: “Growing up in China, I had learned it many times. The outcome is the family will be ripped apart; husband hates wife, children hate parents. I think it is already happening here.â€
I would relish the idea of the Trump Senate trial giving the Republican Senators the opportunity to let the public know what they really think of Trump and his tactics and further provide a general filibuster to keep the Democrats from spending gobs of money that we cannot afford by way of taxes or printing it.
The Senate wasting time, why I have never thought that occurs – except maybe just about every time they open their mouths.
HaroldW (Comment #196895)
January 14th, 2021 at 12:14 pm
OK_Max: “HaroldW, that’s not what I think, that’s what I suspected others might think.†[Re: existence of “good†racism & “bad†racism]
Apologies for mis-interpreting. I agree with you that others think this way: judicially-enforced quotas are an example.
_______
HaeoldW, thank you.
Lucia
My position is I don’t know if they will convict him. If it happens, it won’t be “long after”. Perhaps 6 months at most. More likely less than 3.
MikeM
If he can’t be a Senator or President, he won’t want to be involved in politics. Well… maybe if he could be Governor. But that ain’t gonna happen.
An interesting eyewitness account of events at the west front of Capital on Jan. 6:
https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/14/i-saw-provocateurs-at-the-capitol-riot-on-jan-6/
There were definitely people who came well prepared for violence. A very small percentage.
The Capital Police presence was initially almost non-existent. When they did show up, they started firing tear gas canisters into what had been a peaceful crowd.
MikeM,
It did look like a mix of people who planned violence and people who just came for a day of protest. Some who may have just come to be “reporters” or “record”. Those in the backward MAGA caps may not have been antifa as this guy guesses. They may have been “self appointed press planning to report on youtube”. (Nothing wrong with self appointed press btw. Just saying: that’s what they might be.)
.
Same as BLM riots. Planners plan to take advantage of the mopes who fill out crowds. That’s once reason I advise people not to go to these protests– or if you do, stay the heck to the outside so you aren’t buffaloed. The minute things look like they are turning into “something” get the heck out.
lucia (Comment #196912): “Same as BLM riots. Planners plan to take advantage of the mopes who fill out crowds.”
.
Well, there is a difference. If you go to what you expect to be a peaceful protest and a riot breaks out, you are excused. If you go to a second protest in the same place organized by the same people, you are either a fool or are at least a little complicit in the resulting riot. If you then do it a third time, you are aiding and abetting the rioters.
I agree that history of protests makes a difference. But there has been violence at past protests that attracted some “pro-Trump” people. Sometimes white supremecists were also there.
.
I think by Jan 6, we had evidence that pro-Trump protests also sometimes got violent.
OK_Max,
I think the confusion about your support for racial preferences stems from this:
“Seems like you are saying I am a racist if I help a Black because he’s Black, or I hurt a Black because he’s Black. That’s a weird definition of racist.”
.
I suspect many people (certainly HaroldW, mark bofill, and me) all think that does come pretty close to defining racist. If you help a black person because he is black, and that comes at the expense of others (who happen to not be black) then that is in fact racist. If you just love black people and want to help them yourself (say you give them money out our your own pocket), then that isn’t racist. But if you say, “We should take taxpayer money and give it to people who are black (or Asian, or Norwegian, or Hispanic, or Indian, etc), but not to others”, then that is explicitly racist.
.
I am uncertain what your view on racial preferences (and racial discrimination) really is. Do you support racial preferences in hiring, promotion, university admission, government contracts, etc, or not?
lucia (Comment #196914): “I think by Jan 6, we had evidence that pro-Trump protests also sometimes got violent.”
.
What evidence? There were occasionally scuffles on the fringes between pro-Trump and anti-Trump people. That is a long way from what happened on Jan. 6 or what happened dozens (hundreds?) of times last summer. No shooting or knifing. No Molotov cocktails thrown. No violence aimed at police. No attempts to tear down barriers or break into buildings. No looting. No mobs chanting threats. No reason whatever for Trump supporters to expect that the protest might turn violent.
What do we make of this?
.
Antifa member at the Capitol Storming:
‘We did it’ – ( pump and dump? )
.
https://twitter.com/amuse/status/1349885882262761473
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Combined with Sullivan, pumping up the crowd:
.
“Let’s go. This shit is ours! F— yeah! … Let’s burn this shit down.â€
“You guys are f—ing savage. Let’s go!â€
.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/blm-activist-charged-participation-storming-capitol
Naturally, there are arguments about who presides over the impeachment trial for a former president. Evidently, it depends on the theory of underlying the notion that the president can be tried after his term ends. One theory has to do with the possibility of impeaching private citizens (which evidently can be done). The other theory has to do with the notion x-office holders are tried in their capacity as office holder.
Anyway: Theory (1) Kamala oversees. Theory (2) Roberts does.
I have no opinion on which theory is correct. These all seem to come down to “in field fly” type rules of the constitution. The cases almost never come up. Few to no rulings– no SCOTUS ones and so on.
https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/15/does-the-chief-justice-preside-over-an-ex-presidents-impeachment-trial/
The experts frantically predicted a post-Thanksgiving surge in Wuhan virus cases. Never happened.
Then, in a near panic, the experts predicted a post Christmas/New Years surge. Not happening. In fact, it looks like it might be just the opposite: Just as cases should be surging, they are leveling off.
Lucia,
The issues you bring up highlight how much the Constitution leaves things vague. The close cases that the SC splits along ideological party lines are all cases where the Constitution is ambiguous.
RB,
When it comes to the Constitution, one person’s ambiguity is another person’s willful undermining of clear meaning.
MikeM,
In Florida (now 27th in deaths per million in the States) the recent death rate seems to have in fact increased somewhat, consistent with a rise in transmissions at Christmas. Anecdote: a relative of an in-law (age late 70’s) died three days ago after having caught covid, apparently from two college age grand kids who tested positive just after Christmas.
.
There does appear to be some leveling off in confirmed case rates in the States as a whole, but the death rate remains the highest ever during the pandemic… 3,400 per day for the 7-day rolling average.
RB
I don’t think that’s entirely true. Sometimes close splits are due to vagueness in a statute!
.
But on the details, the constitution is vague. There aren’t clearly thought out bullet points on:
1) what specific actions are “high crimes” or “misdemeanors”. It’s left to people to go back and see how those terms were used back when the language was written.
2) What happens if the impeached president resigns and/or term ends before the trial. Options could have been
* MUST have trial anyway. (If so, Nixon’s trial would have had to continue.)
* MAY have trial if Senate choses.
* MAY NOT have trial. (It’s clearly not “moot” because the penalty of disallowing holding office again can only be imposed after a guilty verdict fro the trial.
3) In the event the trial happens after a former president is no longer in office, who presides?
.
Impeachments of presidents happen so rarely we don’t have much in the way of precedent — which at least tends suggest the Senate ought to follow rules from previous cases. But we have no cases of a former President.
.
Evidently, (and this is from blog reading), the mostly lawyers in the Senate to tend to take the precise charges seriously. This is important both because the specifics set precedents. On legal problem seems to be the articles actually say the President doesn’t have the same free speech rights as private citizens. That echos what they said in Johnsons impeachment– he was cleared precisely because this claim was important.
.
The full argument is not based on “he doesn’t have same 1A rights”. But.. it’s sort of a problem. I don’t know if the Senate later writes an “opinion” on which aspects of the charge hold up. If yes, they could write that “even though he does have same 1A rights…. we find”.
.
We’ll see what happens. I really can’t predict. It does look like whatever trial happens it happens after Jan 20. So we’ll learn who the Senate thinks presides. (I’m betting Roberts will preside, not Kamala. But we’ll see!)
lucia (Comment #196921): “One theory has to do with the possibility of impeaching private citizens (which evidently can be done).”
.
That seems crazy. What basis is there for impeaching private citizens? Is there even one scintilla of evidence for that? The Constitution does not say anything about that, so the default is that Congress does not have that power, since that is how the Constitution works.
.
Now, if you can show that it was possible to impeach private citizens under prior law, you might have a case. But otherwise, the fact that the text does not mention a restriction on impeaching private citizens simply means that was too silly to mention.
.
Precedent is that the power of impeachment does not extend to members of Congress. So it can hardly extend to private citizens.
MikeM,
You have to read the article. https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/15/does-the-chief-justice-preside-over-an-ex-presidents-impeachment-trial/
But in some sense, it comes down to the “vaguness” in the constitution, which does not have bullet points for every possible thing. This is some relevant text fro the article
Basically: No bullet point explicitly describes who can be impeached. We do know that whoever is impeached, they will be tried in the Senate!
.
Uhmmm… but the document does give Congress the power to impeach.
The view of the framers was not that failing to mention something very specific meant it was too silly to mention. There is a debate in the … (I think floor debates about need for bill of rights) about the right to wear a hat. It addresses the issue you are bringing up which is how we interpret things that are not mentioned.
.
MikeM,
Out of curiosity, what precedent holds you can’t impeach a member of Congress? (Real Q.)
Ok.. I found this https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII_S4_1_2_1/
“
Interesting that took two years between the vote to impeach and the time the Senate took to decided they lacked jurisdiction!
There’s no deadline for the articles of impeachment to be sent from the house to the senate. There are several in the senate rules. It would have been best served to hold them for six months are so to avoid tying up the senate early in Biden’s term. In reality there is no rush for the senate trial.
The founders were striving to find a documented means for limiting the powers of the government that they had created. In a more general sense I would hope that would mean interpreting that documentation to handle wayward politicians in much harsher terms than private citizens would be.
We as nation, I believe do not hold our politicians sufficiently to account and I blame that, at least in part, on our two party system whereby when our guy goes astray legally and ethically it is just a politician being a politician and oh well never mind and when it is the other guy we want to hold that guy to account in the sense I judge to be more justifiable and proper but still not at the level I would prefer.
Woke alert: I have been using “guy” in a neutral gender sense for some time now.
https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/expulsion/Blount_expulsion.htm
“In a narrow vote, the Senate defeated a resolution that asserted William Blount was an impeachable officer. In this vote, the Senate failed to make clear whether its decision stemmed from a belief that no senator could be impeached or from the belief that someone who ceased to hold a “civil office” also ceased to be impeachable.”
Andrew P,
You wrote “it would have been…”. Has Pelosi sent the articles to the Senate yet? (I’m googling… But if you know that would be faster.)
I saw something yesterday that seemed to imply it, but since the senate is not in session I’m not sure she could have.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/15/house-delivers-trump-impeachment-articles-to-the-senate.html
The US Senate by 2/3 vote can expel a member of that body.
Unfortunately, there’s not much evidence to convict the orange megalomaniac, but a lot of evidence that Antifa/BLM agent provocateurs did incite riot:
.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/blm-activist-charged-participation-storming-capitol
.
So where will that leave us?
.
* orange will be able to run again in 2024
.
* he’ll be able to point with evidence that fascist antifa/BLM is a real threat
.
* and a growing population will even more doubt and fear the mainstream media and big tech
.
Not good
If a member of Congress is not subject to impeachment (the Senate refused to try a Senator), then how is a private citizen subject to impeachment? Real question. This is all way out of control.
.
The impeachment power provided by the Constitution is a means to remove public officers. According to Madison, impeachment was to be used to reach a bad officer sheltered by the President and to remove him “even against the will of the President; so that the declaration in the Constitution was intended as a supplementary security for the good behavior of the public officers.†I don’t see how “public officer” magically becomes “anyone” whenever it is politically convenient.
Thanks Andrew P,
It sounds like the trial could start Tuesday the 19th
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/trump-impeachment-trial-could-start-next-tuesday-mcconnell-says.html
If so, that’ when Trump is still in office. I have no idea how the date when the trial starts might affect the legal arguments about trying a former president.
SteveF
I think the answer is very clearly “We don’t know”. What we are reading are various theories of what is and is not constitutional.
One can reasonably conclude Trump peddled a fantasy to impressionable people who then mobbed the Capital. In this sense he is politically guilty. From a criminal perspective I don’t think I would convict a citizen based on Trump’s actual words. Michael Brown’s father yelled “burn it down” before some of the riots and was never charged. Equality before the law should matter.
.
If Trump got thrown out of office for this * political * crime, I wouldn’t be too upset. I would however demand that future politicians be held to the same standard. It is a close call, suppose there was actually fraud, or Trump really believed this charge? I think however that there was enough investigation that those claims are not reasonable. Of course many seemingly reasonably people still believe in the Trump Russia collusion fantasy even after the Mueller report.
Turbulent,
I doubt Trump is going to run in 2024. If he does, he won’t get the Republican nomination, although he seems to me enough of a megalomaniac to pull a Teddy Roosevelt and try to split the Republican party….. Trump could call it the MOP (Mad Orange Party) instead of the GOP.
.
I am pretty sure Trump is going to have enough financial (and perhaps legal) troubles in the next two years that he is not going to try to run again.
It’ll be interesting to see how Trump handles this one. Will he answer the summons and put up a defense or just ignore it like last time and let the vote happen.
SteveF (Comment #196939): “The impeachment power provided by the Constitution is a means to remove public officers.”
.
Exactly. That is clearly the original meaning of the Constitution. Until yesterday, I never heard anyone suggest anything else.
TDS rages on.
For anyone interested in math, Biden’s stimulus plan is effectively to charge federal taxpayers $12.6K a piece and then send them a $1.4K check in return.
.
I think I’ll invest in whoever produces the machines that print money.
Although there is the Belknap precedent, I am more and more inclined to think that once Trump is out of office, the impeachment is moot. The purpose of impeachment is to remove an official. If the desire is to punish a former official for illegal acts while in office, there is a constitutionally provided mechanism for that. If an official commits a crime while in office, he is subject to prosecution after leaving office.
Tom Scharf
The thing is impeachment is not necessarily (or even mostly) for criminal activities. Or at least it’s not necessarily for things the sort of crimes private citizens can commit.
.
There are two big issues related to dealing with presidential behavior:
1) I think it’s understood that by the nature and power of the office, the President can do things that are wrong, and cut to the heart of our political process. They could be things that legislators didn’t think of before and so no specific law was written. We don’t want to write ex-post facto laws. Of course we don’t want him to commit ordinary crimes either. But we do want to be able to have consequences if the president does “something” that no one bothered to write a law for because… well.. who’d a thunk? And mostly no one even can do those things.
.
2) To the extent he commits and ordinary crime that would be a crime for anyone and everyone, the normal criminal system can pursue that. Yes, we have rules in place that make it difficult for the “regular” criminal system to touch the President. But I’m pretty sure if Trump has walked out in public, pulled a gun, aimed, shot and killed Biden, the local police could charge him with garden variety murder.
I don’t think impeachment was every considered to be limited to ejecting a President who committed garden variety crimes. (Although, we would need it in that case. A president isn’t going to be able to fulfill his duties from a jail cell.)
MikeM
Correction a purpose of impeachment is to remove the official. If removal was the only purpose they wouldn’t have also removed their right to serve again. So the impeachment is not “moot”.
Joe Biden Vows to Unify America. That Job Has Become Dramatically Harder.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-vows-to-unify-america-that-job-has-become-dramatically-harder-11610723681
.
“Mr. Manchin, who spoke to Mr. Biden earlier this week, said he would like to see a delay in a Senate trial following Mr. Trump’s impeachment by the House.
“I would love to be able to give Joe Biden three to four months, and we don’t have to move right into an impeachment trial. The impeachment is viewed as truly a political maneuver,†said Mr. Manchin, who said it was unlikely enough Senate Republicans would join with Democrats to convict Mr. Trump.”
.
In the past the routine calls for “Unity” from both sides collapsed after about two minutes when what they really meant was “if the opposing side adopts our values then we can all get along”.
.
What Biden has to do is actually make a sacrifice that his party doesn’t support as show of good faith for this goal. Something like pardoning Trump, etc. Asking the House/Senate to call off the vindictive investigations to move forward.
Tom Scharf,
Trump is not going to be thrown out of office at all, no matter what his ‘political crimes’.
.
It was a terrible mistake for Republicans to impeach Clinton over lies about his many sexual adventures… instead of gaining 25 seats as Gingrich promised, Republicans lost 5 and nearly lost their majority….. and Gingrich resigned. It was a terrible mistake for Democrats to impeach Trump the first time…. they expected to gain 15 House seats but they lost 11, even while Trump lost re-election….. though unlike Gingrich, Pelosi would never resign over any error of judgement. .
.
This silly impeachment is an even bigger mistake, and one that I believe may cost the Democrats both houses of Congress in 2022. Why can’t politicians learn that the preferences of their most strident base are not the same as the average voter? I find in bizarre.
Article 2, section 4:
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That has traditionally been treated as the list of people who can be impeached. The need for a list demonstrates that not just anyone can be impeached. If you claim that list is not exclusive, then on what basis can ordinary citizens be impeached? The logic of the argument that anyone can be impeached would imply that can be done for any reason. It would be inane to suggest that the Framers gave any such power to Congress.
lucia (Comment #196949): “Correction a purpose of impeachment is to remove the official. If removal was the only purpose they wouldn’t have also removed their right to serve again. So the impeachment is not “mootâ€.”
.
Wrong. The debates over impeachment at the convention make it clear that the *purpose* was removal. OK, removal might not be the only consequence. I don’t know the history of the removal of the right to serve, but I suspect it was so the President could not just reappoint the removed official.
Lucia,
“So the impeachment is not “mootâ€.”
.
No, just ridiculous political posturing and attempted payback by angry Democrats. I refer again to the exhumation of Oliver Cromwell, which was similar in spirit, though more extreme.
.
Mitch McConnell says he could start the Senate trial on Tuesday, before Dems gain control…. I guess he wants to make sure he can set up the trial rules…. or maybe confuse Biden’s first days in office. Maybe he has the votes to insist on a 6 hour trial followed by a vote. Impossible to say what he is up to.
MikeM
I think you mean it’s been treated that way once. There really isn’t much of a “tradition”. This isn’t like celebrating Thanksgiving in November.
SteveF
Agreed. I have no idea. That’s one of the reasons I can’t predict what will happen.
Tom Scharf,
It’s even worse than that. I’ve seen multiple comments at the WSJ (you can only comment on opinion pieces and it’s fairly heavily moderated) which claim the Mueller report proves that Trump was a Russian agent.
Lucia,
Turns out, McConnell may have said nothing about the trial starting next week: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/trump-impeachment-trial-could-start-next-tuesday-mcconnell-says.html
.
That looks like a news story from a year ago…. the last time Trump was impeached for no good reason. With multiple silly impeachment efforts, it is easy for things to become confused. A bit like Groundhog Day, only a lot less funny, and a lot more corrosive.
MikeM,
I think you are also not reading what the sentence says literally. It doesn’t say “This is a list of the types of people who can be impeached”. It describes a consequence of impeachment for that list of people.
So, technically, all we really know is being removed from office is not a consequence for those not on the list. And that sentence is not where the constitution grants or describes the power of impeachment. The impeachment power is given to the Senate in an entirely different article of the constitution.
.
So you are skipping this part of the argument (and not even mentioning it)
.
That’s the argument by people who think others can be impeached. Me… I don’t know. But you can’t just dismiss an argument by ignoring it and ignoring other sentences in the constitution.
.
As it happens the author of the article I link says he doesn’t know which interpretation is correct, nor does he know which the Senate will adopt. See
https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/15/does-the-chief-justice-preside-over-an-ex-presidents-impeachment-trial/
Lucia,
I read the article. I found it mostly disconnected from the obvious intent of the Constitution; both over-reasoned and silly to boot. YMMV.
The purpose of the impeachment is to
1) Send a message of Trump Bad,
2) Ban Trump from running for President in 2024.
3) Put Republicans on defensive and force them into a tough vote.
lucia (Comment #196959): “I think you are also not reading what the sentence says literally.”
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It is not meant to be read literally. It is meant to be read thoughtfully in context. To remove it from context is to destroy its plain meaning.
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SteveF (Comment #196960): “I read the article. I found it mostly disconnected from the obvious intent of the Constitution; both over-reasoned and silly to boot.”
.
Succinctly stated. “Over-reasoned” and “silly” frequently go hand-in-hand.
MikeN (Comment #196964): “The purpose of the impeachment is to
1) Send a message of Trump Bad,
2) Ban Trump from running for President in 2024.
3) Put Republicans on defensive and force them into a tough vote.”
.
Indeed. In other words, to pursue partisan advantage without regard to the damage done to our democratic institutions.
SteveF,
The article is just telling us the two arguments used to explain why one can hold the impeachment trial after the term is over. The author doesn’t conclude which if any is correct. I do think it’s worth reading what those arguments are.
MikeM
But you not only failed to read it literally, you also read the sentence out of context.
.
The context of the sentence containing the list is a consequence of impeachment, not the power to impeach. The power to impeach is not only discussed in a different sentence, it is discussed in a different article.
Mike M.,
I’ve been looking state-by-state and have found one state with what looks like a Christmas/New Years surge, Utah. Using worldometers.info graphs, there was what looked like a decline in the new case rate from a peak with a Thanksgiving dip in the middle, but then after the holidays the case rate increased to a peak on January 9 only slightly below the mid-November peak.
Other states I have looked at show a relatively small bump in a declining trend (I’m looking at states ordered by total cases adjusted for population). North and South Dakota still look like they have achieved effective herd immunity.
DeWitt,
Yeah, Utah and New Mexico were declining before Christmas, then went up and now are back to declining. Actually, most of the mountain states show something similar. Maybe a holiday bump or maybe just the displacement of testing and results to after the holidays. But the bump should have had a delay of about two weeks from infection to positive test. So I don’t think the data really agree with that.
Trump gave the left a gigantic shiny turd on a silver platter, ha ha. Nobody should be surprised they are using it up to best of their ability. One thing Pelosi learned is you have to jam through impeachment while the emotions are still high, which is of course anti-ethical to how we run our justice system. Once Trump is dragged kicking and screaming from the WH like a 5 year old everyone will breath a sigh of relief and the anger will drop by a magnitude is my guess. There will be the usual suspects still blathering on about Trump but that will get boring pretty fast.
For everyone demanding that social media monopolies be forced to not restrict speech, what are you going to do when the Jihadists line up behind that? Violent speech is in the eye of the beholder, and to say that definition has been expanded beyond recognition is an understatement. Saying nothing is violence as we know. A certain segment of our society considers the right wing more dangerous than ISIS.
.
What we need are some guidelines that are not so malleable by partisans as we have now. In particular I am not fond of mind reading alleged dog whistles into FutureCrime(tm).
Tom Scharf,
“Once Trump is dragged kicking and screaming from the WH like a 5 year old everyone will breath a sigh of relief and the anger will drop by a magnitude is my guess.”
.
Are you actually suggesting Trump will have to be dragged from the WH, or are you joking? As for the anger dropping: it has little to do with Trump himself, it is mostly anger at people who do not embrace the extremes of the woke ‘progressive’ left. Unlike Trump, those folks are not going to disappear; the anger on the crazy left will remain.
.
With regard to FurtureCrime(tm), you won’t be required to detect them…. you will more likely be accused of them.
SteveF (Comment #196972): “As for the anger dropping: it has little to do with Trump himself, it is mostly anger at people who do not embrace the extremes of the woke ‘progressive’ left.”
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Indeed.
https://res.cloudinary.com/teepublic/image/private/s–n5ffwKT9–/t_Preview/b_rgb:191919,c_lpad,f_jpg,h_630,q_90,w_1200/v1588948630/production/designs/9762727_2.jpg
I’m saying Trump is a target rich environment. Once he is gone the partisans will have to shift to the less fun “obstruction to Utopia” argument. They will also need to shift to directly attacking the electorate which is just distasteful and prone to backfiring. I’m not saying some won’t do this (they already are), but this becomes a liability to the left.
If the current impeachment/trial can set a precedent for future Presidents and be held over their heads during their term of office as a lesser standard for initiating the process, I am all for it.
Lying and deception about government programs that can affect our lives every bit as much as a thief stealing our property needs some means of recourse. And do not give me that “well you can vote the person out of office” routine because with our two party system thieves can be voted into office.
Tom Scharf (Comment #196946)
January 15th, 2021 at 11:27 am
Tom, the Biden administration plan is to heavily tax the wealthy and corporations, even though reasonable economist see this taxing plan negatively affecting the middle class vis a vis jobs and investments in innovations. The left views it differently with their thinking being that you can heavily tax the wealthy and corporations and when that negatively affects the economy you provide government support for the middle class. What a better way to make all three of these groups dependent on the government and voting for the party doing the taxing and doling.
When the economy fails, the Federal Reserve steps in and starts printing money and that is the time to invest in those machines.
MikeM,
Well.. they may be out for me. But I don’t consider Trump to be protecting me from them!
Kenneth Fritsch,
Technically the Fed doesn’t print physical money, the Treasury does that through the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and coins by the US Mint. The Fed does create money by M2 or higher definition. They do this by buying stuff through open market operations and puts credit in the banks. I don’t think the physical money supply will change much, at least until inflation starts to ramp up more than it is now. And they’re not just buying Treasury Bills, they’re buying corporate stocks and bonds.
Then maybe they’ll start adding zeroes to the bills like Germany did during their hyperinflation between 1921 and 1923. Paper money that had become valueless, which happened within about 24 hours at the peak, was burned as fuel IIRC.
And in other news, an intriguing new Swiss invention:
https://www.businessinsider.com/switzerland-calls-referendum-on-stopping-covid-lockdowns-2021-1
SteveF (Comment #196915)
January 14th, 2021 at 6:19 pm
OK_Max,
I think the confusion about your support for racial preferences stems from this:
“Seems like you are saying I am a racist if I help a Black because he’s Black, or I hurt a Black because he’s Black. That’s a weird definition of racist.â€â€¨.
I suspect many people (certainly HaroldW, mark bofill, and me) all think that does come pretty close to defining racist. If you help a black person because he is black, and that comes at the expense of others (who happen to not be black) then that is in fact racist. If you just love black people and want to help them yourself (say you give them money out our your own pocket), then that isn’t racist. But if you say, “We should take taxpayer money and give it to people who are black (or Asian, or Norwegian, or Hispanic, or Indian, etc), but not to othersâ€, then that is explicitly racist.
.
I am uncertain what your view on racial preferences (and racial discrimination) really is. Do you support racial preferences in hiring, promotion, university admission, government contracts, etc, or not?
_______
I too am uncertain of my view on racial preferences. While I can’t think of a case where I would support racial preferences in hiing, promotion, university admission, etc., that doesn’t mean there aren’t any I would support.
An individual of any race can be racists if it means just a dislike of or misconception about members of a different race. Collectively, however, racism can be more damaging to minorities, not only because they are fewer in number, but because they also can suffer from racism that is systemic.
“Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of racism that is embedded as normal practice within society or an organization. It can lead to such issues as discrimination in criminal justice, employment, housing, health care, political power, and education, among other issues.” [1]
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism
OK_Max,
One problem with the concept of institutional racism is that the folks who believe it’s present in the US attempt to prove it with disparate impact statistics. If the proportion of Blacks in prison is higher than the proportion in the population, it must only be because of institutional racism.
Oh, and if there are likely to be too many Asians accepted to a University using race neutral standards, that has to be fixed too, but that’s not racism.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #196980)
January 15th, 2021 at 4:22 pm
And in other news, an intriguing new Swiss invention:
Switzerland is holding a referendum on whether to strip the government of its power to impose coronavirus lockdowns
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Yes, but not soon. In June, I read. Hopefully, the virus will be on the way out by then.
Yes. The vast majority of the prison population is male. Clearly this is proof of the tyrannical female matriarchy and systemic misandry.
[sarc]
OK_Max,
Sure. Systemic racism can exist. For example:
* Slavery in the US was systemic and only blacks were slaves.
* Jim Crowe laws in the south sent black kids to different schools. That’s systemic and racist.
* Red-lining where people didn’t sell homes to blacks in certain neighborhoods was systemic and racist.
I’m not going to claim there is now zero systemic racism. There is certainly racism. But there is a certain point where things are flipping over unfairly to others. So for example: Holding asians to a much higher academic standard to make room for african americans with the criteria for “extra points” being race is racist in the other direction.
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With respect to education, lots of programs that are racist on their face are being proposed to “fix” disparities that are supposedly racist. That’s not right.
on a different subject, in this NYT story They Can’t Leave the Bay Area Fast Enough, one CEO laments:
God and the world and government, huh. SF isn’t an unlivable mess because of God or the world. The local government, sure.
I hope these guys give some thought to how exactly the local government got in power before they begin voting in their new locales. But I doubt they will.
DeWitt, I am always grateful for your technical explanation of how the money actually is printed as I believe this is the third or fourth time you followed up my Federal Reserve printing money statement with a post on technically how it is done. When I say the Fed is printing money it is in the context of the person who hires a hit man as being the murder.
Actually we are probably headed for a cashless and digital situation where the printing of money would no longer be required. The move is happening in other nations.
The year-over-year growth in the M2 money supply had never exceeded 15% until 2020 (going back to 1981). The M2 supply has grown 20% from $15.33 trillion at the end of 2019 to $18.3 trillion at the end of July, 2020.
I would be interested to see those that favor racial preferences at least finish their theories and policies with a testable hypothesis.
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Racial preferences in admissions will seed the black community with more graduates and provide better role models of success and slowly bring the entire group up to par. There will be a gradual increase of applicants who require no preferences and the policy can be disbanded after a few decades. Everyone is a blank slate and we simply need to even out the starting positions to obtain equity. Social engineering 101. Or something else. Theory, test, results.
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The reality is there is more than enough data to come to conclusions other than an arm waving Stars Wars Force of systemic racism “It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together”.
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It’s a very hard problem, but just giving up and going to racial preferences is unfair to others. Why are there so few minority engineers? Check the college graduation rates. Why are there so few graduates? Check the SAT math scores. Why are the SAT math scores low? Check the high school standardized tests. Why are the high school math scores so low? Check the middle school scores. … They have now gone all the way back to preschool. Mandatory free preschool is the new social engineering.
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Here’s an observation. You want to see some well behaved kids in public? Go to a high density Asian neighborhood and visit one of their restaurants. I personally think Asians are a bit too strict, but you can’t tell me there isn’t a testable hypothesis here.
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Now, why are there so few Asian QB’s in the NFL? Check the college teams. …
Kenneth,
Why not say the Fed creates money, which is what it actually does, rather than prints money. That way you wouldn’t push my nitpick button. I’ll try to remember, but I can’t guarantee it will happen.
Tom Scharf,
Evidence that racial preferences harms those it claims to benefit is that when racial preferences were ended in California, the number of Blacks graduating from state colleges and universities increased. It’s one thing for Harvard, say, to claim everyone who is admitted is capable of graduating and another to face the discouraging reality that many preferential admittees will be near the bottom of their class.
DeWitte
And the discouraging reality that part of the “success” of Harvard grads is their parents, aunts, uncles, grandfathers and so on own companies. Or that the grad has a trust fund and can be “patient” when waiting for opportunities. And that the grad has connections that pre-date going to Harvard.
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Yes, some of success comes from the education at Harvard, but some does not. But what that means is the admit who graduated last in the class and who– for any reason– did not make social connections– may not gain the apparent ‘benefit’ of having gone to Harvard. Yes, they still have some PR benefit from their diploma being Harvard-brand. And if their education suited them to doing something — which it might have– it might help them. But it’s not at all clear they are helped more than if they had gone to “Very Good State University” in their state.
lucia,
Making social connections for Blacks and Latinos at Harvard and who knows how many other prestigious Universities is made even more difficult by self-segregation. See here:
https://observer.com/2019/05/college-campus-segregation-commencements/
How to lie with statistics care of USA Today. They have a graph on this page showing the weekly average of new cases compared with other countries. The problem is that it’s the raw numbers not adjusted for population. So as a result the US looks very bad. But let’s do population adjusted seven day moving average peak rate using the latest data from Johns Hopkins, the source of the graph in USA Today. Adjusted for population, the US comes in fourth at 752 peak new cases/million, behind the UK 879, Spain 864 and France 860 peak new cases/million. We do rank highest of the major countries in total cases/million, but not by a factor of five as the JH graph purports to show.
DeWitt,
To not normalize by population proves either profound stupidity or profound dishonesty….. for USA Today, it is almost certainly the later. They are not trying to inform, but rather coerce the population into accepting the continuation of policies which are at best dubious, and at worst simply destructive.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #196991)
January 15th, 2021 at 6:41 pm
Creates not prints it shall be. Actually the phrase “creates money out of thin air” is more appropriate with fiat money.
I am reminded of your correction most times I use the term print and a couple times I parenthetically referenced the Treasury.
I have been pretty much sticking to the WSJ lately, but made the mistake of looking around this morning. Beyond the expected “Trumpers are coming for your children” coverage, it is a shameless exercise in “Vaccine distribution in chaos and way too slow!”. The latter here is what is infuriating from the same crowd that demanded a slow process from the beginning, and Biden is going to fix everything with a big dose of more federal government.
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“We will manage the hell out of this operation”, says Biden, ha ha. The media ran to their printers with no further questions, success declared. It is noted the Biden management would include identity based distribution priority if it could.
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There is no doubt the distribution is chaotic but will get worked out. It will be a supply based problem for months to come. Down here they finally hired outside help for the reservation systems. A weeks supply of reservations takes about an hour to fill up.
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My county has 250K people over 65 years old. They get 10K first doses next week. That’s 6 months to vaccinate everyone. Supposedly the supply will increase in the coming months as production increases, but the numbers are a bit vague.
Tom wrote: “it is a shameless exercise in “Vaccine distribution in chaos and way too slow!â€.
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Heard some colleagues yesterday saying how vaccine avaiability would magically improve in a few days time because of “federal help”. What you can guarantee is they won’t be disabused of the notion. The media will make it happen.
It’s really a simple question of how fast can Moderna, Pfizer, et. al. produce the vaccine. There will be some latency getting the supply out at first as we have seen, but I very much doubt we will have warehouses full of unused vaccine without demand for a long time. More Biden “help” isn’t going to increase production. These companies are looking at their biggest cash cow of all time here, no additional incentives necessary.
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The media is like a super obsessed one trick pony of “WHAT IS THE POLITICAL ANGLE ON THIS”. So tiring. What is the vaccine supply curve look like? What are the limits to production? How fast will people over 65 vaccination be completed? How is that estimated to affect the death rate?
If “distribution” is defined as getting what the Feds have purchased into arms, I suspect vaccine distribution will be more efficient over the next month because that’s what we’d expect for new process with previously untested logistics.
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Whether Moderna and Pfizer can supply faster.. dunno.
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Some countries are doing better than we are– e.g. Israel. That’s because they have fewer rules.
lucia,
Some countries are doing as bad or worse than us too. I’ve seen articles about problems in Canada and France, for example. But that’s ignored when the press beats up on Trump. The big problem with vaccine distribution is, IMO, that the government is doing it rather than contracting with, say, CVS and Walgreens. They’ve proved they can deliver a lot of flu shots in a hurry.
Early in the process, Pfizer offered to sell 100 million doses to the US government. They were turned down. Now the feds have ordered more doses from Pfizer, but they will have to wait in line.
Some states (WV, ND, SD, NM) are doing very well with distributing the vaccine. Some are doing very badly. I suspect that the latter are largely states like NY where the governor is trying to micromanage the process while making it subject to political goals.
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If the feds decide to micromanage distribution while applying their own political goals, it will be pretty much guaranteed to make things even worse.
MikeM
I agree. If the feds are going to take over distribution, they will need very simple, very clear rules for who can get vaccinated. To be simple and clear, they need to be the same all over the entire country. The only truly simple clear rules I can think of are:
1) age only.
2) lottery based on something not easily changed or faked.
You would then need to toss all the priorities having to do with job, race etc. I mean…. for purpose of the vaccine, anyone could “identify” as black and even more especially, Latino! Job ID’s can be faked. I might be able to pay the local grocery store to give me an ID that claimed I worked there. If I was the managers daughter…. it would probably be easy to get an ID.
I can tell you in WV the reports I got are that the requirements to get vaccinated are a bit “loose”. The friends and family sharing plan is alive and well there. They are using them up as fast as possible. Some of the lag is just reporting, some is the usual government incompetence. The grocery stores down here are starting to distribute.
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NPR and the woke interpretation of distribution. At least they labeled it an opinion instead of “science”. This is just chock full of political correctness and moral posturing. If the leftish Feds are going to be in charge then this is what we will get.
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OPINION: Moral Tragedy Looms In Early Chaos Of U.S. COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/16/957236269/opinion-moral-tragedy-looms-in-early-chaos-of-u-s-covid-19-vaccine-distribution
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The official Biden plan is mostly more of the same.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-to-outline-plans-to-vaccinate-more-americans-11610743589
lucia (Comment #197020): “If the feds are going to take over distribution, they will need very simple, very clear rules for who can get vaccinated.”
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Yes. The simpler, the better. Like that will happen.
Even with simple rules, the people doing the distribution will have paperwork to demonstrate compliance. With luck, they won’t also have state level paperwork. Yeah, right.
But the woke rules that are messing things up in many states will definitely be included in Biden’s plan. But of course, they will be somewhat different. So where it is a mess, it will be even more of a mess. And where distribution is working, it will be a mess.
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So we know two things for sure:
(1) It will be an even bigger mess than it is now.
(2) That will be all Trump’s fault.
“David French, the conservative Christian writer who fought in the Iraq war, says the way to build a sane G.O.P. is to borrow a page from the counterinsurgency handbook: Separate the insurgents from the population.
That means prosecuting the rioters, impeaching the president and not tolerating cyberterrorism within a community or congregation.â€
Source: David Brooks, Trump Ignites a War Within the Church, NYTimes, 1/ 14
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Although Brooks doesn’t say so I presume he believes it would be best for the GOP to prevent Trump from running for President again by voting for conviction, etc. It doesn’t look like enough Republican Senators agree with Brooks to assure conviction. The Dems should hope the Senate doesn’t convict Trump if he will be a drag on the GOP going forward.
OK_Max,
I think it would be better for the GOP if Trum doesn’t run. Also: the sooner everyone knows he won’t be trying to run, the better that is for the GOP.
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Yes. I suspect at least some Dems do hope Trump won’t be convicted. They may get their wish. We’ll see.
Mike M,
“The simpler, the better. Like that will happen.”
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Very simple; Democrat politicians: First. People ‘of color’: second. Teachers: third. Bureaucrats: fourth. People in prisons: fifth. People who must be in contact with the public at work (any job, any age): sixth. Old white folk who actually are at risk of death: dead last, with extra emphasis on ‘dead’.
Steve F,
I’m surprised at you. Apparently you are for causing children to commit suicide. How shameful.
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Gov. Brown cites child suicide concerns among reasons for vaccinating educators ahead of seniors
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/vaccine/gov-brown-cites-child-suicide-concerns-among-reasons-for-vaccinating-educators-ahead-of-seniors-coronavirus-covid/283-36299893-e164-42cc-bf6c-66d6a05ae918
I think teachers having priority is not a bad idea. But I also think cashiers, grocery store workers, meat packers and so on should have similar priority.
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Checking/Verifying all these priorities will start to be complicated. Overly strict rules will slow things down. That’s bad because the most important thing is to get vaccine in arms. Like the Israeli’s are doing.
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Race would have been particularly bad. I would definitely have brought in my passport with birthplace to get in as “Hispanic”. I kinda sorta am… I mean… Born in El Salvador, lived there through 1st grade. Dad grew up in Cuba. Grandma was Cuban– of the “white-landowner” variety whose father was American! So I’m not Hispanic in a way that should get me priority!!
Marc Bofill, you call it sarcasm, but I attended a school meeting about minority achievement. They have been implementing plans to eliminate the disparity in minority discipline. While putting up numbers, someone asked if there was a gender split. The person responded there was a huge disparity, but that is not part of the group’s mission, and he didn’t understand why it wasn’t.
Heh. Imagine that.
Let’s say the Senate tries Trump, convicts him, and bans him from office. What is to stop him from running in 2024? If he wins, what is to stop him from serving? Real questions. In other words, how could the ban be enforced? Seems to me that the will of the people should prevail.
lucia (Comment #197049): “I think teachers having priority is not a bad idea.”
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Only if they immediately return to the classroom full time. Teachers in LA are saying they won’t return until all the students are vaccinated.
Mike M.,
First, none of the vaccines are approved for ages under 16. Second, I see reports that countries in Europe are going to close schools because they think that children are a major factor in transmission of the virus. While that’s certainly true for a lot of diseases like influenza, I don’t remember seeing any evidence for COVID-19. Meanwhile many schools in the US have been closed for a long time and those that are open have masking, distancing and hygiene protocols. Yet we have the highest percentage of confirmed cases for major countries.
MikeM
Banning him from office forever can be part of the punishment. The Senate would have to vote on whether the merely remove him or ban him from serving. If they ban him from serving, that ban should hold since they are granted the power to do that.
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Nothing prevents someone who is not qualified to hold office form running. A 21 year old can run. States might not put him on the ballot. So could Arnold Schwarzenneger who is naturalized. Politica parties might not promote him. He might need to appoint his whole slate of electors for his “Bull-S**t Party”. But I guess lots of people could write in a vote for him .
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The constitutional would prevent the Chief Justice from swearing him in. So he wouldn’t be president even though he was “the people’s choice”.
I guess perhaps you don’t think the constitution should be followed.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #197096)
“First, none of the vaccines are approved for ages under 16. Second, I see reports that countries in Europe are going to close schools because they think that children are a major factor in transmission of the virus. While that’s certainly true for a lot of diseases like influenza, I don’t remember seeing any evidence for COVID-19.”
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I have read it is easier to catch Covid-19 from an adult than a child.I don’t know how much easier it’s supposed to be. Nor do I know why it’s easier.
Recent covid deaths by age group:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/
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This is old news but being under 14 years old makes your risk miniscule. It was OK at the start to pretend we didn’t know what was going on, but we do now. There are ongoing questions of whether kids can transmit it easily (while not getting very sick) but there is little reason we shouldn’t know that by now (do we?).
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Teachers have some risk no doubt, as do grocery store clerks and so on but the kids have been thankfully spared from this one. I have no problem with any teacher 50 or older going to the front of the line in order to allow schools to open.
lucia (Comment #197099): “Banning him from office forever can be part of the punishment.”
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Yes, but what does “office” mean? And how is such a ban implemented?
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Could he be elected to the Senate? Obviously, yes. People have run for the Senate, and been elected, in spite of not meeting the requirements for eligibility. Would such a person be seated? It would be up to the Senate to decide (Article 1, Section 5, Clause 1).
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Note that the qualifications for President in Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 say nothing about being declared ineligible.
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The idea that the Senate could declare people ineligible for elected office and make that binding on the people and all future Congresses is just not consistent with the philosophy behind the Constitution.
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The Constitution uses various forms when it refers to “office”. There is a case to be made that when one looks at historical usage, the various formulations are deliberate and specific.
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https://conlaw.jotwell.com/constitutional-officers-a-very-close-reading/
By that reading, “Office … under the United States” means
and “Offices of Honor, Trust or Profit under the United States” means
Which is consistent with the overall philosophy of the Constitution.
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By the way, who decides if a person meets the criteria set out in Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5? The only possible answer that I see is the Electoral College. If they elect someone who is 33, that person should be sworn in as President.
Lucia,
“I think teachers having priority is not a bad idea. But I also think cashiers, grocery store workers, meat packers and so on should have similar priority.”
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I think it is a horrible idea! Giving all those people high priority will only lead to lots more loss of life-years. IMO, inoculating anyone other than the vulnerable first falls in the range of “really dumb”. Like the UK, I think we should inoculate the people who are at real risk of serious illness and death. That is mostly people over 65, but also some who have other serious health issues.
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It does not include most prison inmates, homeless people, teachers, bureaucrats, and other politically favored groups. It most certainly does not include 20 to 30 something bar hoppers. Protecting those who are actually at risk of serious illness and death maximizes benefit if you care about ending the covid madness; the rest is political posturing…. which is unfortunately not in short supply.
MikeM,
It says:
He’s an “officer” by virtue of being president. So, at a minimum, the Presidency.
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I think it’s perfectly consistent. If the constitution gives them that power they have it. That’s the nature of “consistency” with the constitution.
OK_Max,
My grand daughter (2 years, 3 months) weighs about 12% as much as I do. Her exhaled air volume, potentially contaminated with viruses of all types, is comparably smaller than mine. I think that helps explain at least part of why small children rarely transmit covid to adults. Add to that the relative mildness of childhood covid infection, and presumably lower viron concentration, and the low rate of transmission from childern to adults seems to me not surprising at all. Most young kids, even if exposed, never show any symptoms….. based on the numbers I have seen, it looks like about 1 in 5 kids shows symptoms.
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Late teens to early 20’s are a different story…. they do transmit the virus to adults.
MikeM
That strikes me as a very odd “possible” answer. I think it’s pretty obviously wrong. I think the final answer would be “The Supreme Court”. But the Senate and Congress are both supposed to be allowed to also interpret what is constitutional. They attempt to do so when writing legislation. Theirs just isn’t the final answer in a dispute.
Nothing in the article supports his interpretation of “office of honor” as meaning someone who is not paid and has no duties.
It likely merely means “office of [high respect; great esteem]” which would include elected officials, judges and the president.
Two judges were both impeached and disqualified from further office. The Senate held a vote on disqualificaiton for a third, but didn’t disqualify him. So precedent suggests Judges are subject to disqualification under impeachment.
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https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-2/section-4/judgment-removal-and-disqualification#fn856art2
Alcee Hastings was impeached and removed for perjury and bribery as a federal judge. He sued because his trial was done by a Senate committee and not the full Senate. The committee actually voted 2/3 not guilty.
The Senate did not ban Hastings from an office of trust, and he has been in Congress for nearly 30 years.
lucia (Comment #197107): “He’s an “officer†by virtue of being president.”
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That is not obvious, as explained above.
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lucia (Comment #197113): “So precedent suggests Judges are subject to disqualification under impeachment.”
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Which agrees with the article I cited.
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lucia (Comment #197111): “I think the final answer would be “The Supreme Courtâ€.”
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I seriously doubt that anyone in attendance at the Constitutional Convention would agree with you. Certainly, that suggestion would have horrified Madison or Hamilton. The unelected Supreme Court negating an election for a member of a different branch of government? Unthinkable!
Mike M
Yes it that he is “an officer” is obvious. Even your link admits he’s “an officer”. The issue is whether he is the sort of officer who can be banned from an office.
Uhnmmm…. no. Or if you think it agrees, then the obvious conclusion is the president can be banned from office. Because
The president is an office of “honor”.
Oh well! “MikeM” tells me those at the Constitutal convention must be off his view…. because… wwell… nothing.
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It’s called “separation of powers”. Not “unthinkable”.
includes officers of “honor”, which clearly includes the the President.
MikeN,
“The Senate did not ban Hastings from an office of trust, and he has been in Congress for nearly 30 years.”
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A terrible error by the Senate. The guy was obviously guilty of bribery, but got off. Not as blatant a case as OJ Simpson, but pretty blatant. Just before leaving office, Clinton issued a pardon for Hasting’s partner in crime, who was sitting in prison, and who had steadfastly refused to testify. The only interesting thing about the Hastings case was that the SC refused to get involved when Hastings appealed his Senate conviction, claiming that he deserved a trial before the full Senate. The SC said the Senate controls its own rules for impeachments.
Interesting article from the Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-common-carrier-solution-to-social-media-censorship-11610732343?mod=djemalertNEWS
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Legal scholar Richard Epstein (New York University, and 3rd most cited legal author of the 21st century) argues that monopolies like Facebook and Twitter should be subjected to “common carrier” rules like airlines, bus companies, etc. and argues this has been a common response to effective monopolies for centuries. Interesting read.
MikeN,
I should add that Hastings was investigated by his fellow Federal judges, who referred his case to the House, recommending impeachment for multiple infractions of law and perjuries. The House voted with over 400 in favor of impeachment. This was not a politically motivated impeachment.
lucia,
You are merely guessing as to the meaning of phrases like “office of profit” and “office of honor” in late 18th century law. The article I cited does not give evidence for those interpretations since it is summarizing the conclusions of a detailed scholarly analysis by someone else. Maybe that analysis is right, maybe not. But it is clear that your interpretation, although plausible, is without any real foundation. I only claim that the interpretation is debatable.
So are you.
And william baude give nothing to suggest what “honor” means, nor does the person whose work he is reporting on. It’s a guess.
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You are also dramatically overinterpreting the author’s confidnec on this
First: he only “suggests”. And second, I would “suggest” that the specific missing words replaced by ‘…’ in the following as well as the anything between “every” and “office” are required to interpret what this would begin to “suggest” about how one interprets officers of various types.
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I note that other than suggesting the person looking at something is a “scholar” you are avoiding engaging what a “position of honor” might be. You also are avoiding actually engaging discussing the strength of any argument that elected officers aren’t the sort of officers that are impeached. You are just doing an appeal to authority. Worse you are doing it without actually liking to the authority. You link to Baude, not Tillman. Baude is only summarizing what someone else says.
It is worth noting that Tillman’s arguments have been engaged. This is one noteworthy one
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https://impeachableoffenses.net/2017/10/27/foreign-emoluments-the-president-professor-tillman/
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I’m not going to post all the criticisms here. (Tillman works in Ireland.) One discusses how weak the quote about Hamilton putting together a list is (which I discuss above.) Another is that Tillman interprets all statements as if our government positions are all similar to those in England. He does not give weight to American usage.
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Another one is this:
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In my opinion, any interpretation that eviscerates the notion of separation of powers is silly. Now I can understand how someone working in the UK might not see how that sort of interpretation is a big problem since it’s not at the core of their form of government. But it’s a biggie in the US constitution.
lucia,
The President has a salary. I think that make the Presidency an office of profit, not honor. I agree with you that a sitting President can’t also be a Senator or Representative. That would seem to require that the Presidency be an office.
A fine example of legislating from the bench.
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Appeals Court Vacates Trump Rules on Emissions at Power Plants
https://www.wsj.com/articles/appeals-court-vacates-federal-rules-on-greenhouse-gas-emissions-at-power-plants-11611073318
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“A 2-1 majority on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided to send the Affordable Clean Energy rule back to the Environmental Protection Agency.”
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The timing here is, shall we say, suspect. Basically run out the clock on legal challenges, then send it back to the EPA under the new administration which will kill the entire effort on day 1, or just not challenge the ruling and let it die on the vine. The green lobby spends most of their money on lawyers and they seem to be very good at what they do. It sidesteps the entire legislative process.
lucia,
Where does Tillman claim that the President is not an “Office under the United States”? He does claim that the President is not an “Office or trust or profit under the United States”. And he claims that the differing terms used are intentional rather than sloppiness with the latter term being a subset of the former term.
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And why on earth is it relevant that Tillman is presently in Ireland? He was educated in the U.S., clerked for various judges in the U.S., and has taught law in the U.S.
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Looking at Tillman’s publications, he seems he does indeed claim that a Senator elected President can remain in the Senate. That is a major blow to taking the guy seriously.
I think I saw the same argument being used to say the President is not subject to the emoluments clause. I haven’t followed the case to see if the courts used this argument recently.
For Alcee Hastings, a federal judge agreed with him that he gets a trial before the full Senate, but waited on the Supreme Court to rule on a different judge who was impeached, Walter Nixon.
MikeM,
I was quoting the author here:
https://impeachableoffenses.net/2017/10/27/foreign-emoluments-the-president-professor-tillman/
You’d probably want to ask that question of that author who has lots of Tillman’s writings.
The criticism of Tillman’s article by Frank Bowman, who wrote the article linked above, is that Tillman is applying principles of legal construction from UK law to interpreting the US constitution rather than ones from the US. I pointed out — parenthetically– that Tillman teaches law in Ireland because it is not unnatural for someone who teaches in the UK immersed in UK law and have that affect their thinking and viewpoints. So, I think the parenthetical observation is useful when considering the criticism. The parenthetical observation is not meant to imply that teaching in Ireland forces someone to be wrong about US law.
Well.. yes. He seems a bit disconnected with most people’s views of separation of powers.
It appears that Tillman argues that “Office ofProfit or Trust under the United States” does not encompass any elected official here:
http://joshblackman.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Amicus-Brief-Blackman-Tillman.pdf
There is no particular sentence to quote mine, but that’s pretty much main basis for his argument about his views on whether the emolument clause applies to the president, who is, of course and elected official.
If you want your daily winner in the topper game of who can denounce the political opposition with the most vigor, here it is. You would be forgiven if you take a pass.
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What to Do With Trumpists
The proper response to these extremists isn’t counterterrorism. It is mental hygiene.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/trumpism-not-terrorism/617703/
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Trump is a terrorist, MAGA is worse than Al Qaeda because they are white and roam among us, ha ha. Oh brother. Note the complete lack of effort to separate nutty insurrectionists from a run of the mill voter.
SteveF (Comment #197108)
January 18th, 2021 at 5:33 pm
OK_Max,
“My grand daughter (2 years, 3 months) weighs about 12% as much as I do. Her exhaled air volume, potentially contaminated with viruses of all types, is comparably smaller than mine. I think that helps explain at least part of why small children rarely transmit covid to adults. Add to that the relative mildness of childhood covid infection, and presumably lower viron concentration, and the low rate of transmission from childern to adults seems to me not surprising at all. Most young kids, even if exposed, never show any symptoms….. based on the numbers I have seen, it looks like about 1 in 5 kids shows symptoms.”
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Late teens to early 20’s are a different story…. they do transmit the virus to adults.
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SteveF, thank you for the reply. I estimate you weigh about 250 pounds, based on you grand daughter’s weight, which I assume to be at least 30 pounds, and your estimate that she only weighs 12% as much as you. I hope you are very tall.
You may be right that infected children are less likely to spread Covid-19 than infected adults, and the reasons you give seem sound. Another reason could be children don’t get out as much as adults.
Nevertheless, an adult can get Covid-19 from a child. I keep distance from kids in my neighborhood when I’m out for daily walks. This isn’t always easy because the little ones don’t understand.
You might be interested in the following:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/08/looking-at-children-as-the-silent-spreaders-of-sars-cov-2/
OK_Max,
No, my grandaughter is pretty small… about 26-27 pounds; my estimate of 12% was wrong… it’s closer to 13%. I am nowhere near 250!
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FWIW, my grandaughter walks the neighborhood regularly with my wife, mostly to visit with dogs being walked by their owners…. as far as I can tell, nobody avoids her… certainly not the dogs.
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I thing that study of hospitalized childern is almost certainly distorted…. children are very rarely hospitalized with covid, so those that are probably represent a non-representative population of the ‘typical’ childhood case. Real-world experience at schools in many countries confirm that transmission from young children is relatively rare (but not so later teens). The swede never closed their schools for 15 and under, and never showed much spread in those schools. Most spread these days in within homes.
Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3:
Alan Dershowitz says that for the Senate to disqualify Trump from office would be a unconstitutional Bill of Attainder.
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Wikipedia says:
That supports Dershowitz’s contention. But other sources say that a Bill of Attainder only applies to capital punishment. It seems that the Supreme Court has upheld the broader meaning.
Mike M,
I read Dershowitz’s analysis… it is perfectly consistent with the clear intent of the framers. But I don’t think that will make any difference. This impeachment is an ugly combination of rage, vengeance, and trying to discredit the policies of political opponents, not a careful analysis of the constitution’s meaning and intent. It is a bit like the EPA’s use of the clean air act to restrict CO2 emissions, but even worse…. utterly disconnected from the intent of the legislation (constitution), but still embraced wholeheartedly by the crazies.
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So Dems will have their stupid “trial” of private citizen Trump at some point, and I am guessing he will not be allowed to offer a defense. It will be a show trial like all extremists are wont to have when they try to suppress opposition. It is unlikely to lead to conviction, and I suspect Dems will regret it ever after. Voters won’t forget such a sorry display of rage and stupidity.
SteveF (Comment #197157): “But I don’t think that will make any difference. This impeachment is an ugly combination of rage, vengeance, and trying to discredit the policies of political opponents, not a careful analysis of the constitution’s meaning and intent.”
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There is one way it might make a difference. SCOTUS has always steered clear of impeachment cases, on grounds of separation of powers. But Trump might have grounds to challenge the proceedings by claiming that they amount to a Bill of Attainder.
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He might not have standing unless the Senate applies a penalty, in which case he would have to wait until after proceedings have concluded. That could put the corporate Republicans in a no-win situation. They might be tempted to vote to convict Trump, expecting that would get rid of Trump although at the risk of splitting the party. But if they do so, they might not get rid of Trump if SCOTUS rules the penalty a Bill of Attainder. The worst of both worlds, at least for corporate Republicans.
MikeM
He can, and likely would claim whatever he likes. He’s pretty willing to put forward baseless challenges so we may well see one. But I’m pretty darn sure his challenge would fail. Just like all the challenges of “fraud” in state election results.
Mike M,
I very much doubt the SC will get involved, even if Trump is ‘convicted’ of whatever it is he is accused of (not playing nice? bitching about unlawful changes in voting rules?), and prohibited from running for president again. Bill of attainder or not, the SC is absolutely going to bail out on this one. They don’t want Joe Manchin to change his mind about packing the court, nuking the filibuster, admitting Washington DC and Puerto Rico as States, etc, etc.
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The strangest thing of all (to me) is that Trump is almost certainly not going to be in position to run again, due to a combination of financial problems and tax problems. So the whole “keep him from running again” meme strikes me as silly. At this point it is mainly about “See, Trump is really, really bad, so his policies are also automatically really, really bad.”
Mike M,
BTW, I don’t know your financial position, but Biden’s current tax proposals will take away all the tax reductions Trump and Congress passed, especially for small business owners, leading to an immediate a 20% jump in taxes for that group (surprisingly enough, Republicans)… but will also double down on that reversal, with Federal taxes reaching 51% marginal rates on high earned incomes, and near 100% wealth confiscation at death. Count on this passing within 2021 via ‘reconciliation’, with Karmala, of course, casting the tie-breaking vote.
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Only people with over $1,000,000 per year income would face any increase in capital gains tax rates… and the “carried interest” scam/loophole deduction for high dollar Democrat donors will remain sacred and never change…. too many millions in donations to Democrats to do that.
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The moral “rot” among Democrats in Congress is total.
SteveF (Comment #197160): “I very much doubt the SC will get involved,”
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I tend to agree. But what if there is a 1% chance they will get involved? I don’t think the Republicans can risk it.
MikeM
Then they’ll tell Trump it’s not a Bill of Attainder. Among other things: it’s not a bill. Of course impeachment applies to one specific person, yet the power to impeach is given in the constitution. The possible penalties described– the impeached can’t for example be thrown in jail or fined.
Lucia, Mike M,
I say again, the SC will not get involved, no matter the merits of the argument. If Tump is ‘convicted’ of being, I guess, a really big a$$hole, then he will not be able to run for president again. But his chance of conviction is small, and his likelihood of running again also small. It is ugly politics, fore sure, but IMO much ado about nothing for the average voter. The destructive policies Biden/Kamala will impose in the next two years will be far more important and far worse than this ridiculous charade about Trump.
SteveF
The view of past SC’s is it’s pretty much up to the House and Senate. So I agree they will probably not be involved. I’m not quite as certain as you– but it’s really unlikely they will get involved.
Mitch McConnell made a parting statement blaming Trump for the Jan 6 riot. I wonder how many Republicans decided to wait until Jan 20 or later to go after Trump. I think he deserves to be convicted and it would set a precedent for future bad acting Presidents.
Trump pardoning the man who defrauded his base is fitting. What will tomorrow bring?
Convict and disqualify.
RB,
I note that Bannon was accused of fraud, claimed innocence, and was awaiting trial. Presumption of innocence is old fashioned I know, especially since guilt for all manner of horrible things is now presumed by many on the left based only on someone being born of white parents. I am guessing Orwell would be horrified and Stalin would chuckle. But still, it is more accurate to say Bannon was accused of fraud or indicted for fraud.
Kenneth,
I disagree. Convicting Trump for what the said to his supporters before the riot will set a destructive and dangerous precedent…. normalizing all manner of repressive behavior by those seeking complete political power. There are already many calls by Democrats to remove from office any member of the House or Senate who questioned the election results. Political retribution is unwise because it is divisive and destructive, not to mention an invitation to politics by other means.
A blizzard of damaging Federal policies begins today at noon. Hold on to your wallet.
“A blizzard of damaging Federal policies begins today at noon. Hold on to your wallet.”
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I do believe they are some poor policies, but executive orders fortunately don’t really amount to much – only congress can tax and spend.
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I am leery of Kerry being the climate czar inside the National Security Council, removed from public scrutiny.
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Fortunately, his jet company, yachting, and house at sea level will provide ample amusement.
Turbulent,
I won’t be amused by anything that moron does in the next several years… I can’t swallow the disgusting ‘restrictions for thee and thine, never for me and mine’ that he and most of the woke green left practices.
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Count on the most destructive reconciliation bills ever created routinely being passed, starting this year…. hold on to your wallet.
RB (Comment #197171): “Trump pardoning the man who defrauded his base is fitting.”
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Bannon? That always seemed iffy. Bannon was raising money to build the wall and was spending the money to build the wall. Some of the money (a small fraction, it seems) was used for the organization’s expenses. Perfectly reasonable. So far as I can tell, the charge is that Bannon said that 100% would be spent on the wall.
So it seems that a charity spending just 5% of funds raised on the cause is OK, but spending only 90% on the cause is a crime.
But I never found a decent description of the issue, so the above is from connecting some pretty sparse dots.
SteveF (Comment #197185)
January 20th, 2021 at 6:44 am
I think we are way too easy on our elected politicians generally and Trump presents a case that demands a reply and the setting of a precedent. Trump got away with a lot of inciting, lying and exaggerations because it was so much an everyday occurrence with him that many of his supporters got used to it and were able to ignore it. Trump had all the weaknesses and faults of common garden variety politicians – only in spades.
In my book political truths and proper political philosophies have nothing to do with the character of persons agreeing or opposing those principles and thus I can readily disassociate someone like Trump from these deeper issues even when I might agree with some of his political directions and be much more in disagreement with those of his opposition.
The main problem as I see it with Trump is that he has or at least made a valiant effort to lower the level of political discourse and from a level that I saw as being way too low already. In the political arena we already deal with too much mass emotionalism and even hysteria and no were near enough reasoning and presentation of well thought out ideas.
I don’t want to see Trump back in politics and it is better for the right if he disappears. I am 100% against the political establishment deciding who can and cannot run in future elections based on the political winds of the day. I am 100% for the voters getting to decide that. There are certain states that have super majorities in their legislatures and it is pretty easy to see how corrupt “Trumped up” charges could be used to eliminate the opposition.
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If Trump’s transgressions are so severe then it seems quite likely the voters would see it as well. They.just.did. But, but, but, “stop the steal”! Yes, and social media companies will only cancel the real Nazis when given censorship power and a precedent.
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Trump is guilty of many things, but I don’t think he is legally guilty of “inciting a riot” in the pure legal sense, and this distinction matters.
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The establishment getting together to cancel Trump is going to do nothing but agitate people who were originally drawn to the idea that the system is rigged against them by self serving elites (one doesn’t have to believe in the concept of elites to understand that others do, rightly or wrongly).
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The vindictiveness on display now is rather ugly from the usual suspects. Hopefully they will finish venting soon. I don’t want them and their proxies deciding who can and cannot run for office. If the disaffected Trumpers want to vote another bull into the elite China shop then that is their right. It is the job of others with a different agenda to convince them otherwise. They failed to do so in 2016, and this type of social retribution may be emotionally satisfying to some, but will leave a lasting impression on others.
Hell hath no fury like a Trump scorned? If the Republican establishment decides to excommunicate Trump in a public and humiliating way he can just run as an independent in 2024 and split the vote.
Kenneth,
“In the political arena we already deal with too much mass emotionalism and even hysteria and no were near enough reasoning and presentation of well thought out ideas.”
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On that we agree. But I don’t think Trump started that trend. Long before Trump, the MSM had descended to a level of dishonesty in their presentation of “facts” and their treatment of conservatives (and libertarians) that I would not have believed possible 35 or 40 years ago.
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Like Michael Anton has suggested, it seems to me that before Trump, anyone honestly opposed to the policies advanced by the left have been subjected to endless attacks and dishonest defamation. Every Republican presidential candidate since Reagan has been called a racist and worse by ‘progressives’ and by the MSM (a lot of overlap between those groups, of course). Trump, for all his flaws and faults (and the list is very long) was at least willing to fight unfair and dishonest accusations from the left. I think that is why he continues to have considerable support among voters. Trump is not and never was suitable material for the presidency, but consider the alternatives. We now have an obvious dementia patient as president, and he will be “guided” by a group determined to implement foolish policies which will do terrible damage to the economy and the nation’s social fabric.
Tom Scharf,
“If the Republican establishment decides to excommunicate Trump in a public and humiliating way he can just run as an independent in 2024 and split the vote.”
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Not if 17 senate republicans join the Democrats and bar him from holding any office.
Kenneth,
You seem to want rule by benevolent technocrats. This of course seems like a good idea. Assuming they are in fact benevolent and competent. Who wants high school dropouts designing nuclear power plants? There have to be guardrails however.
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Suppose instead the educated and those well trained in the finer points of society and debate were not immune to the base emotions of greed and intolerance they so easily see in others? Maybe these emotional characteristics are uncorrelated with education and high society. It’s possible the educated are much better at hiding and rationalizing these undesirable characteristics through their viewable behavior but cannot hide the biased outcomes of their preferred policy from their actions. Our best and brightest can be biased, either through ignorance or selfish intent.
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Perhaps they would construct a self serving society while ignoring the alleged grievances of those who do not share the views of their social peers. Maybe they would even demonize others as immoral and not grant them any standing in policy debate. How is that they get to choose who has standing and not the other way around?
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How does one construct a political system to hand this type of corruption from the best and brightest their walking papers? Democracy is one way. How do you discriminate a populist exploiting this classist argument from a populist identifying real corruption that needs addressed? It may be both at the same time.
Tom Scharf (Comment #197201)
January 20th, 2021 at 12:34 pm
Tom, I have no problem with you presenting your side of this discussion, but when you say” Kenneth, you seem… “, I think you are using a straw man argument with regards to my words in this discussion.
I do not understand those who have some support for Trump’s politics but understand his character flaws and the negative effect it has on presenting any semblance of ideas and who continue to excuse his behavior. He is certainly not some revolutionary hero of the common and downtrodden man. He comes from what some of you might reference as an elite background and is an obvious con man who plays the game for himself and not for any principled ideas. My arguments against Trump have nothing to do with his group status, but rather are those I have against most politicians in general and the state of the national political conversation.
Impeachment and conviction are political actions and do not require acts that could be tried as criminal. Impeachment and conviction constitutionally have to stand above the acts of voters and the Electoral College in their actions taken at one point in time. There are plenty of national leaders who at one point in time either were democratically elected or could have been elected who turned out to put in place some of man’s worst intentions. I therefore do not have enduring faith in the masses choices at any given time.
I do not want to have to lose my argument by way of contradiction for handling a wayward politician in the future by ignoring the fact that Trump has been an anomaly as Presidents go and in a bad way. I see no charm or usefulness in his character flaws and bad behavior.
Oh, please, please please, Donnie, start a Patriot Party. Pleeeeez.
Tom Scharf,
“Maybe these emotional characteristics are uncorrelated with education and high society.”
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‘…..I had to go to Walmart; I could almost smell the Trump supporters.’
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Dishonesty, greed, class hatred, and generally obnoxious behavior are probably at least as prevalent among the privileged: case in point… the Varsity Blues scandal. William Buckley had it right: better to be governed by people pulled from the Boston phone directory than by the professors at Harvard. The most ‘noble’ among us usually make the absolute worst rulers… far too full of themselves.
Thomas,
Alexandria, please please, please start a Democratic Socialists party….. Pleeez.
Has Dem control of the Presidency, Senate, and House hurt the stock market as Republicans have warned? Well, not so far. The S&P 500 is up almost 12 percent since Nov.4, the day after Biden won. Even after the Democrats won control of the Senate in early January, the market continued to rise.
Regardless of who is in office, I’m afraid the market is due for a correction sometime in 2021 or will just remain flat for a long time, Rather than increase holdings in mutual funds for broad market groups such as the S&P 500, I may look for opportunities in some individual stocks instead, or do nothing and just keep the current stock/bond mix, knowing money in bonds may slowly erode if inflation picks up. This is not advice. I could be very wrong.
OK_Max
Well… they haven’t done anything yet!
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I’m worried about bonds over the next few years. Interest rates probably can’t stay low forever!
Lucia, Max,
Back in the late 1960’s my soon-to-be father-in-law held most of his investments in “safe” AAA corporate bonds. I could see that inflation was going to very soon destroy the value of those bonds, and urged (nearly begged) him to get out of bonds and into ANYTHING else. He didn’t listen, and lost a fortune.
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The situation is the same today: get the hell out of bonds, or you may lose your shirt!
SteveF,
It’s often very hard to get people to understand that the resale value of bonds drops when the interest rate rises. Yes, it’s true that if all you do is “clip coupons”, you get your interest rate chunk and eventually get the face value of the bond back. That’s ‘safe’…. sort of. If you are certain you won’t need to liquidate.
But really, you don’t want to hold a long term bond at a low interest rate and then see interest rates jump.
Lucia,
He was holding nearly half a million in bonds (when half a million was a lot of money) with with maturities out 20+ years. Once interest rates skyrocketed in the early 70’s, it didn’t really matter any more what he did. Even if he just held the bonds and clipped his coupons, inflation destroyed value by >50% in a handful of years. It was terrible for him; had he been more prudent, he could have retired a decade earlier than he did.
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Get the hell out of bonds! Chickens may be late in returning to roost, but return they do. The Fed has pumped so much money into the system that substantially increased inflation is almost certain.
I believe exactly nobody can predict where the markets will go. It is pretty surprising how fast the covid crash recovery was. There is almost no way to make money in bonds right now, except to be holding them during a big downtown in the stock market. One of the reasons stocks are doing so well is because bonds are of little future value.
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There is ALWAYS somebody predicting a stock crash, big inflation, etc. Read The Big Short for someone’s informed bet on the market that paid off big time. But for every one of those there are many more wrong guesses.
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Buy and hold. Mostly growth stocks for long term investing. Low fee index funds. As you close in on retirement and have met your goals one can go into less risk if that makes them sleep better at night. If you want to be super lazy, use a target date fund. Never panic during a downturn.
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I just rolled over my wife’s 401K to Vanguard and that saves over $500/year in fees alone from the company’s 401K funds.
OK_Max,
Stock market is up 87% since Nov 2016 (16.3% per year). I will be quite happy if “Biden†improves on that.
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Let’s not forget:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-night-2016/paul-krugman-the-economic-fallout
Tom
Well… relative to stocks. But it might be better to hold cash!
You can buy lower risk bond funds just like stock mutual funds, but everything is priced in one way or the other. There are zillions of investment vehicles out there ready to charge you fees. I don’t think people can time the market or pick single stocks with much prolonged success. If you do it for your own entertainment, then fine, better than Vegas.
Tom,
When people say “lower risk bonds”, they usually mean *default risk*. The asset value of all bonds changes when interest rates change. That’s a different risk. When interest rates rise, the value of a bond you are holding falls. This risk is larger for long term bonds relative to short term bonds.
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It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hold bonds. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy and hold. (We mostly do but rebalance.) But it is worth understanding the risk in bonds and thinking about that when rebalancing a portfolio.
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Like SteveF, I think one should be quite light on bonds right now. How light? Well…certainly lighter than the “classic” balance you’ll find in every book that discusses the right balance you should have “at all times” and which does not account for anything other than “long time average” returns. But how far off… that’s a judgement call.
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When exactly should you be out of bonds… also judgement calls. But right now, interest rates are low and the Feds have been spend-spend-spending….
SteveF (Comment #197224)
January 20th, 2021 at 4:43 pm
Investors can lose money in stocks or bonds if they have to liquidate or spend down their funds during a downturn. I have been through a number of downturns and have never had to liquidate or spend down or even had thoughts about it.
I have done quite well with bonds and including high yield over the years. I have changed my mix of stocks and bonds depending on what I knew the Federal Reserve was up to. Being lucky has also helped as has low Vanguard fees.
I will admit that I consider the current investing environment very new and different. The Federal Reserve has announced that they will be keeping interest rates low for a long time and do not rule out negative rates. They also have announced being less concerned with targeting a given inflation rate and are willing to let rates increase above levels that were historically a concern.
The Federal Reserve is almost obligated to attempt to keep interest rates low in order to keep the Federal government solvent. The huge federal debt with high interest rates would make bonds and stocks problematic. Most of Wall Street is in line with Keynesian economics and if interest rates increased significantly they would panic.
Wall Street is also very much in line with the Democrat party and their plans for a spending spree and I suspect that without some other major negative occurrence the stock market will continue to gain – until it hits the wall of reality. When it does It will not be pretty.
Part of the reason the stock market went up is because that’s where a lot of the stimulus and Quantitative Easing money went.
Japan has pioneered keeping interest rates low by having the central bank buy most or all of the government issued bonds. They’ve been doing it for decades now. QE by the Fed has done much the same thing and has included corporate as well as government issued debt. The European Central Bank is also buying everybody’s bonds. That will work until it doesn’t. Like bull markets, that can go on for much longer than you might think, see Tesla e.g.
You might want to buy some gold mining stocks or other investments that do well during inflationary periods as insurance, though. If interest rates go negative, put cash in a safe or safety deposit box. Home safes are a big seller in Japan.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #197268)
January 21st, 2021 at 1:45 pm
DeWitt, I am in essential agreement with your post and by the way the Japan Central Bank also buys corporate bonds.