ControlsFreak
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User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
One example. Fundamentally, the claim is that Purdue/FDA believed that, with non-abusive use, extended release was less likely to result in addiction. This is probably true for some value of true (interesting discussion to be had about RCTs, selection effects, ideal/typical use/abuse, with connections to things like obesity/alcoholism/etc.), which then led to physicians being much more nonchalant about prescribing them. Thus, the pipeline was born, and there have been plenty of profiles of 'kingpins' running straw patient networks to siphon as many pills as they could into the streets. (The Sacklers didn't need to personally set up networks of doctors/patients.) This entire chain worked together to accomplish the important final outcome: more pills on the streets.
Given the beliefs about this pipeline, its mechanism of operation, and its final outcome, one can pretty much take the entire proposition to be, "This is a way to get pharma-quality opioids onto the streets." It's a work-around, yes. But any utilitarian consequentialist, who also believes the preliminaries about making pharma-quality opioids, should think that this work-around is an absolute utilitarian Good (TM). They could agree to quibbles on many edges, but they should absolutely endorse the project as a whole.
But really, we can divorce ourselves from any specifics. Let's just assume a hypothetical world, and it's purely questions about the pipeline that are in play. It's like the Underground Railroad, but for pharmaceutical opioids. Sure, it's not the abolitionists' ideal world; it's a kludgy work-around, but it gets more pharmaceutical opioids into the streets (gets more slaves away from slavery). Different abolitionists might quibble with different details, but at least somebody would be willing to stand up and say, "Getting slaves out of slavery is a Good, and if we could get more slaves out of slavery via the Underground Railroad, it would be Better." Similarly, somebody should be willing to say, "Getting pharmaceutical opioids into the streets is Good, and if we could get more pharmaceutical opioids into the streets, it would be Better." Would you agree with that?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
The Sacklers were not trying to flood the streets with pharmaceutical drugs; they were trying to sell more drugs through already-legal channels.
Where is the daylight between these things? If they sell more and more drugs through already-legal channels, especially if they can use doctors who will look the other way and straw patients who will then put them on the streets, then the latter helps accomplish the former.
Insisting on misrepresenting the Sackler's actions as somehow the ideal of what drug legalizers would want
Nope. I don't think at all that it is the "ideal" of what drug legalizers would want. But it sure as hell helps the world, helps the situation, helps the opioid crisis, under the commonly-stated model of how the world works. It's a completely beneficial work-around, rather than the ideal, but isn't it absolutely a work-around that has positive impact? Shouldn't someone at least remark on this wonderful positive impact, that it's one of the very few ways that people are helping, rather than hurting?
You want me to ban drugs outright? You need a better reason than "people might get addicted", because some people choose that, some people can actually make it work, and if people who can't want to fuck themselves over that's their problem.
I mean, I haven't actually taken a position on what the policy specific should be, nor a rationale underlying them. But let's see if we can think of some rationales for some specifics. Oh hey! Look at this:
Carfentanyl, okay, I can get behind "no having a kilogram of carfentanyl without a good reason"; the stuff's a viable chemical weapon and I'd rather not make the next Aum Shinrikyo's job easy. Methamphetamine, I'm mostly convinced; meth is strongly associated with murders and that's an externality - a harm to someone not agreeing to be harmed. Opiates (in forms/quantities not usable as weapons), I'm torn on, if mostly because of the issue with people committing random thefts and robberies to get the money for more; I'm open to being convinced either way.Carfentanyl, okay, I can get behind "no having a kilogram of carfentanyl without a good reason"; the stuff's a viable chemical weapon and I'd rather not make the next Aum Shinrikyo's job easy. Methamphetamine, I'm mostly convinced; meth is strongly associated with murders and that's an externality - a harm to someone not agreeing to be harmed. Opiates (in forms/quantities not usable as weapons), I'm torn on, if mostly because of the issue with people committing random thefts and robberies to get the money for more; I'm open to being convinced either way.
It kind of sounds like you're negotiating on price. It kind of sounds like perhaps there are reasons, other than a simplified strawman, to do something other than completely legalize all drugs. Look, I'm not going to say that there are easy answers here, especially with the wide variety of drugs that are possible and the social phenomenon that occur around their manufacture/sale/use. But what I am saying is that people mostly don't actually believe the naive, "If we just had pharmaceutical quality-controlled products abundantly available..." line. And I don't think that this is a strawman; I think it's pretty popular with a lot of folks. They just haven't taken it to its logical conclusion, because it really doesn't give them the things they want to imply that it gives them (without having to get into details).
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
They give no cite for that claim, so it's hard for me to evaluate what's going on. I can think of a few hypotheses, but can't really check.
In any event, are you saying that flooding the market with a drug, even one that is of pharmaceutical quality, that has some addictive potential (quantity unclear, in part because it's probably impossible and in part because we have no cite to that number) might actually cause some people to be addicted and might actually do things like "make the opioid crisis worse"?
Like, I feel like you're on my side here. It's the legalization folks who think that you can just flood the market with dangerous and addictive drugs, so long as they have the magic stamp of being 'pharmaceutical', and that nothing bad could possibly happen.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I mean, obviously, I was being flippant in a parenthetical. But yeah, there are people in this very thread who are saying that pharmaceutical drugs have nothing to do with overdose deaths, at least. I haven't gotten them down to the nitty gritty of other types of dangerous use, but most advocates of drug legalization generally don't want to talk about any type of dangerous use.
In any event, would you praise the Sackler family for at least trying to flood the market with pharmaceutical drugs (whether they succeeded in this endeavor or not, would you praise the endeavor)? Would you say that the only real problem is that they didn't manage to sell billions more pills through millions more doctors looking the other way to millions more straw purchasers? That if only they had flooded the market enough that the street price of pharmaceutical drugs dropped to rock bottom, then it would have positively helped the opioid crisis?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
The joke is that there is no such thing as a coefficient of addictiality. It's not possible to do such a thing, so if that's the line that they will actually hold, they'll be demanding something impossible.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
The Sacklers did not invent pharmaceutical-grade opiates, and they certainly were never the only producer.
Fair enough. They should be able to stand up and say, "We can debate how disclosure should work and whether the Sacklers screwed up there, but we absolutely cannot blame them for the opioid crisis, because they're some of the extremely few people who are doing the very thing that we want to happen in order to help the opioid crisis."
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I'm also not on the train that Oxy in particular broke everything, FYI. I'm just wanting to find someone who is willing to go the step further, using the axioms of the drug legalization movement, to come out and say that it doesn't actually matter whether the pharma companies parrot the line that they're just trying to solve patients' pain issues. That it's nice, but also unimportant that overdose deaths aren't correlated with prescription rates. What's important is that they get pharmaceutical drugs into the streets, as many as possible. Because that allows users to carefully and scrupulously use drugs in the way that they prefer, knowing exactly what they'll get, and which is definitely not dangerous to their life or their lifestyle (and like, probably won't increase usage or something).
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
This is close, thanks. He's just missing the real important step. He's mostly focused on showing that perhaps they didn't actually get enough pills into the market to really have been much of a major driver in the increase in usage. What he's lacking is the, "...and it would absolutely be an affirmative good if they had churned out billions more pills and pumped them into the market via even more doctors looking the other way and correspondingly more straw patients." There's gotta be someone out there endorsing this as a project for good, rather than simply saying that they didn't actually manage to sell enough pills to make a difference. There's gotta be someone finishing that sentence at least with, "...they didn't actually manage to sell enough pills to make the clearly and obviously positive difference that they would have made had they sold more pills."
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Last time you made this claim, someone DID bring up the point that the overdoses vastly accelerated with the crackdown on Oxycontin, more than its introduction.
Sneering isn't much of an argument either. Many of the legalize-all-drugs people would object to a drugmaker claiming an addictive drug is non-addictive.
Ok, let's not sneer. Let's be straight. There is no such thing as a coefficient of addictiveness. There is no such line in the parameter space of coefficients of addictiveness with which to draw a distinction between "addictive" and "non-addictive". It's entirely about them being all, "It's less addictive," other people not liking that, and the lawyers/courts doing what you always expect them to do: beat up on somebody that they don't like, based on extremely squishy, subjective shit, like what you always complain about constantly. Moreover, please find the pro-legalization folks who have some sort of plan for how their new world is going to manage this issue. How they're going to draw lines, require certain types of disclosures, and police squishy statements about various products. Oh, and how strict their regulatory regime (that I'm sure you'll love) will be when it comes to exhaustive testing of unfindable coefficients of addictiveness for every minor drug variant that any producer wants to put on the market.
No, that's all bullshit. The reality is that someone outside of the Overton Window, like we have plenty of here, should at least be able to stand up and say, "We can debate how disclosure should work and whether the Sacklers screwed up there, but we absolutely cannot blame them for the opioid crisis, because they're the only people who are doing the very thing that we want to happen in order to help the opioid crisis." The italicized part is important. Somebody, even one, should be up yelling that the fundamental project of the Sackler Family is Good (TM), and that we shouldn't lose sight of that, and that we definitely shouldn't be blaming them for the opioid crisis.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
The main reason not to defend the Sacklers is it's far, far, far outside the Overton Window
That's why I explicitly said that you could bring me the weirdest economist that you can dig out of the George Mason basement or the weirdest communist stoner with a cushy lefty sinecure. Give me literally anyone, even if they're outside of the Overton Window. Hell, we have shitloads of people here who make all sorts of arguments that are wildly outside of the Overton Window, and not even one?! Not even one!?
It's also possible the drug warriors are correct that the Sacklers lied about the addictive qualities of Oxycontin
Oh yes. The legalize all drugs folks are going to make sure that legal heroin makers have to publish a scientifically-proven coefficient of addictiality (with p-values!). That'll be the line they definitely hold.
Purdue Pharma, held by the Sackler family, made billions from sales of Oxycontin, and so was a major force behind the opioid epidemic.
I have yet to see a single proponent of drug legalization (with the underlying reasoning being that if drugs were legal and produced to pharmaceutical standards, then no one would ever use them dangerously) write a single piece, in any venue, arguing that this claim is simply not true. One would think that if they really believed in their professed position, they would be screaming from the rooftops that the Sackler family should be absolutely praised for flooding the market with carefully crafted, pharmaceutical quality drugs, because the only logical conclusion is that this action necessarily saved lives by giving consumers a choice to use a well-regulated product rather than possibly tainted cartel dope.
Can anyone link me to even one such argument? It can be from the weirdest economist that you can dig out of the George Mason basement; it can be the weirdest communist stoner with a cushy lefty sinecure; I don't care. I just want even one that actually embraces the premises of the legalization movement and actually applies them to the case of the Sackler family, concluding that everyone else has gotten it wrong, and that we must necessarily view their actions as an unalloyed good for the world.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I agree with most everything that you say. However, I think that the Democratic Party, itself, bills itself as having a democratic process for selecting its candidates. They may be misguided in wanting to have this feature in their process, and they may ultimately turn back from it. I think that there would be nothing objectively wrong with them making such a choice. But if the question is whether they are able to proceed in running the party in a way that is not terribly undemocratic, while also managing to change horses midstream, I'm still interested in whether there are options.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
This seems very undemocratic.
I'm very interested if anyone has any ideas for how this could be done in a way that doesn't feel awfully undemocratic. So far, the dominant position seems to be that the only mechanism would be if Joe willingly stepped back, said he'd refuse the nomination, and supported someone else. Josh Blackman suggests that maybe a deal could be made to give him some things he'd want in return. "Look Joe, we'll hook you up with two more SCOTUS nominees and _____. You have the ability to take an easy out by just saying that you've had a very recent health issue. No one will view you too negatively, and the history books will mostly forget about this."
At the same time, looking in from the outside, it will be hard to distinguish between positive, log-rolling like trades here (which I wouldn't view as too undemocratic) and negative, coercive ones ("Joe, if you don't step back, we're going to X,Y,Z to hurt you in whatever ways"). The latter feels more undemocratic to me, but again, it will be hard to distinguish from the outside.
All that said, has anyone seen any other credible ideas for how the DNC could pull off a switch without Joe's explicit agreement and without it seeming too terribly undemocratic?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
It's not a good look for US authorities to prosecute someone who as far as I know, other than online interactions, never set foot in the US, even though he worked American sources (who have themselves been prosecuted) and published what they consider to be US secrets. But, as far as I know, the actions weren't directly against the laws of the (Western!) countries he was in.
I don't know of any on-point cases for the Espionage Act, but extraterritoriality is an absolute mess in general. I recall that since the Obama administration, there has been a push to publish "name and shame" indictments against Russians/Chinese individuals who commit 'crimes'/'actions disliked by TPTB' over the internet, even though they have zero chance of ever bringing those folks into a US court. I think if they ever managed to nab one, it would be quite a blockbuster case on extraterritoriality, and we might get more info that could shed light on whether Assange could have been successful with this type of defense as well.
The general space is mostly ungoverned/ungovernable, and agreed that the State Department would look askance at Chinese law enforcement reaching overseas, but in international relations, it pretty much seems to always come down to, "What are you going to do about it?" Assange found himself in the country of a US ally, so he got caught in the muck. The ugliest of mucks, where you're really at the mercy of great power politics rather than what is absolutely Right and Just.
Unfortunately, not only do I think that there are no established acceptable rules; I think this is an area where it is extremely unlikely that we are going to develop established acceptable rules anytime soon, given the geopolitical situation. For the meantime, I think all we have is muck.
Julian Assange Walks Free
A long time ago in a political climate far far away, there was a confluence of movements rallying around concepts of peace, openness, and freedom. There was the anti-war movement, which has a long and storied history across many cultures at many times, which was in the midst of a high-water mark in the US, due to war fatigue (and war struggles) in both Iraq and Afghanistan. There was the free and open tech/software/internet movement, still riding the old 90s consensus that digital devices connecting people and places could only be a force for good in the world, believing that the only threats to tech's ability to bring peace, harmony, and utopia to the world would be if corporations killed freedom and openness with closed source control or if governments did anything at all to regulate tech. Finally, this all came together with the movement that "information wants to be free", that if only sunlight could be let in to disinfect all the places where government and shadowy cabals (but I repeat myself) were gathering to close things down and control stuff, then it can again, only be for the good of the world, cleaning up any questionable actions people might want to take in secret due to the threat of it being revealed. Of course, the tech/software/internet axis was the Anointed One that could deliver all information into the Promised Land of Freedom.
Julian Assange, Wikileaks, and The Forever Wars formed the peak of this confluence, and to many, he delivered precisely what they were hoping for. Troves of classified documents and videos streamed through the web, potentially from all sorts of sources, who could hopefully conceal their activities via the magic of internet technology. Some of those sources would ultimately be discovered and become household names: Manning, Snowden, and to a lesser extent in importance, but greater extent in nominative anti-determinism, Reality Winner. Leaking classified information is not new to the US (see also Pentagon Papers, etc.), nor is it solely a US phenomenon (who remembers the Panama Papers or a list of other et ceteras here, too?), but for a US-centered audience, these are some of the most well-known examples which contributed significantly to the general zeitgeist of the times.
Many leaks have been somewhat more-or-less routed through "traditional journalistic" outlets. This line has always been fuzzy, and it remains so today, with examples like Matt Levine's fascination with Hunterbrook, a newspaper that is also a hedge fund. But the inherent fuzziness of the boundaries here left the situation wide open to competing and clashing intuitions. Was Wikileaks a "journalistic outlet"? Was Assange a "journalist"? Was there just some quantity of editorial writing that they must produce to go along with their document dumping in order to clear the bar? Was there some other set of "journalistic duties" that they must uphold in deciding what to publish, or how? Some people thought that there could be distinctions to be made and harangued over what precisely they should be. Others just thought, "Information wants to be free; tech will get us that; utopia follows," and figured that the most expansive interpretations of First Amendment law were either just correct or at the very least a useful cudgel to drag more traditionalists into accepting the movement. Others yet, such as CIA Director Mike Pompeo, representing the forces of closedness and government control, called Wikileaks a "non-state hostile intelligence service", trying to sever any link from journalism or First Amendment protection.
Most of the story is well-known. Assange was arrested by US allies and kept in limbo under various political pressures. The US obviously pushed for extradition, so he could be prosecuted there. Other governments worried about such a fate and pushed back. The result of his precarious situation was that he was stuck hiding out in Ecuador's embassy in the UK for years until he was ultimately arrested and then imprisoned for years further. This week, an agreement was made - the US would drop a variety of charges they wanted to bring against him, he would plead guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act, and he would now walk free to return to his home country (Australia).
Assange's case followed the ebbs and flows of the general movement regarding openness/freedom of tech/internet/information being sunlight disinfectant. In the early 2010s, he was not charged for his role in the major Manning leaks; at that time, the Obama administration said that they could not distinguish his actions from that of a journalist. But then Trump happened. Assange was never charged for any role he played in Wikileaks' involvement in the Mueller-era Trump/Russia saga, but I don't think this event can be understated for how significantly it impacted the general movement. Suddenly, a huge number of folks had to figure out how they felt about a discordance between their love of the movement and their hatred of Trump, for it seems that the very principles espoused by the movement helped Trump in some way, which was the most verboten of cardinal sins. Losing many of these supporters was likely, from a practical standpoint, a major factor that enabled all of the subsequent developments in getting Assange charged, arrested, and ultimately, this plea deal "resolution".
In the aftermath, the core fuzziness and major tensions remain fuzzy and tense. The NYT describes it well:
The result is an ambiguous end to a legal saga that has jeopardized the ability of journalists to report on military, intelligence or diplomatic information that officials deem secret. Enshrined in the First Amendment, the role of a free press in bringing to light information beyond what those in power approve for release is a foundational principle of American self-government.
The agreement means that for the first time in American history, gathering and publishing information the government considers secret has been successfully treated as a crime. This new precedent will send a threatening message to national security journalists, who may be chilled in how aggressively they do their jobs because they will see a greater risk of prosecution.
But its reach is also limited, dodging a bigger threat. Because Mr. Assange agreed to a deal, he will not challenge the legitimacy of applying the Espionage Act to his actions. The outcome, then, averts the risk that the case might lead to a definitive Supreme Court ruling blessing prosecutors’ narrow interpretation of First Amendment press freedoms.
“He’s basically pleading guilty to things that journalists do all the time and need to do,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “It will cast a shadow over press freedom — but not the same kind of a shadow that would have been cast by a judicial opinion holding that this activity is criminal and unprotected by the First Amendment.”
They emphasize that the fuzzy, tense aftermath remains "ambiguous", with no clear resolution on how to draw specific lines. In essence, I would say that the article espouses a position that, if the First Amendment were actually held to its true meaning, then what Assange did was not actually a crime; it was just a normal, protected act of a normal, protected journalist. They worry that the ambiguity could have been resolved in the other direction, with courts deciding that such prosecution does not violate the First Amendment, which would be a result that they think is wrong as a matter of, I don't know how to put it, "True Law".
...which, of course, brings us back to where everything ultimately brings us back to - Donald Trump. I can't pass up incredible hypotheticals that cut to the crux of things and make all the partisans want to switch sides. Suppose Trump made what could have been argued to be a false business record in the state of New York with the intent to conceal something about Assange's actions related to this guilty plea. Would the NYT still think the true reality is that Assange actually pled guilty to a non-crime? Would they say that Trump could have an appeal to the courts of law, not the courts of fact, by saying, "No dawg, that's not a crime"? Or would they say that Assange's plea deal settles the matter, thoroughly establishing the fact that such actions absolutely are a crime, with no First Amendment defense?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Instead, most people were forced to assert factual claims prior to commenting on legal matters. You had to assert that an 'orientation' is a thing that is objective, on a known, fixed spectrum, that cannot change, because one is born that way, something something genes/brain structure, etc. If you displayed even the faintest of doubts about this bundle of factual claims, you got stared at like you were an alien. It was only after being forced to assert such factual claims that people were then asked, "...and would you really be okay with denying, say, your child, from having these various legal rights, if they happened to be factually born that way?" That's why proponents themselves say that it was critical to make people believe the factual claims in order to win the political victories.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Generally speaking, yes, you can challenge the constitutionality of the law under which you were convicted on appeal,
Ok, great.
That all being said, I'm not sure what your point is. Trump never raised any constitutional issues, and even if could still present them I doubt he has much of an argument that the relevant FECA provisions are unconstitutional.
I'll bracket off questions of what Trump actually preserved. My sense is that plenty of appeals have been formed from very minimal raising of a possible issue.
I think Trump has a plenty good argument that the relevant FECA provisions are unconstitutional, especially as applied to his case. Citizens United was pretty clear that the provisions in question do, in fact, impinge on the First Amendment generally, and the only legitimate purpose which can sustain them from constitutional pressure is to prevent quid pro quo situations, where money is exchanged for (at least the promise/hope of) official acts. Donald Trump paid for the expense out of his own money, just through an intermediary (I see almost no constitutionally-relevant difference between this and paying via a credit card, with banks as intermediaries). It makes no sense to claim that Donald Trump entered into a quid pro quo with Donald Trump where he exchanged his own money to himself for his own official acts.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
In your hypothetical it wouldn't be an appeal but a post-conviction habeas corpus petition that would be filed after the court declares the underlying offense unconstitutional.
Ok, so in Lawrence, itself, if the prosecution had a law WRT sodomy that is similar to the Catch A Predator laws, making it illegal to just have the intent to commit sodomy, and they only argued that Lawrence had the intent to commit sodomy, so no questions need to be asked about whether sodomy actually occurred (because perhaps, they actually 'caught the sodomy predator' before the act), and no questions can be asked about whether laws against sodomy are illegal, then they would have said, "Nothing wrong at all with this underlying question evading review"? Is that what you really think?
The business about having a "extra layer" statute in between is no problem whatsoever. They already had the one statute about sodomy, itself. All the state needed to do was pass a separate, Catch A Predator law, outlawing say, using a motor vehicle with the intent to go to a place to commit sodomy (they can sprinkle in a variety of other underlying offenses to make it a more 'general law'). They just always only prosecute the latter and never prosecute the former. There's an extra layer, so no defendant can challenge and say, "No, dawg, laws against sodomy are unconstitutional." Is this what you're really going with? Jonathan Mitchell is going to have a field day...
At the end of the day, even just explaining how this is supposed to work, as a technical matter, is just driving home the fact that this entire sham is a cleverly-designed procedural trick to prosecute a politician for something that very well may be constitutionally-protected behavior. You may even ultimately be right that this procedural trick will manage to evade review, but even if so, the public can rightly acknowledge that it's a bullshit procedural trick and believe that if the underlying conduct had been subject to serious constitutional scrutiny, it would have been determined that Trump didn't actually do anything wrong. The entire argument is concerning how we cleverly wordsmith things to evade review and just completely avoid even addressing the constitutional issues.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
You didn't actually engage with the hypo. Please engage with the hypo. Let's make it even more clear by changing it from statutory rape to sodomy. Suppose we're one month pre-Lawrence. Someone makes what is argued to be a false business record in order to cover up what he thinks is a criminal act of sodomy. No one (at this point) is arguing that it turns on whether or not the sodomy in question was actually committed. Instead, he sees Lawrence sitting on the court's docket and thinks, "Damn, if they say that sodomy is actually not a crime, I bet I can appeal this shit."
Or hell, do you think that it would currently, post-Lawrence, be allowed to prosecute someone for intending to cover up an act of sodomy, and your reasoning will be because the underlying act of sodomy doesn't have to have happened... they just have to have intended to cover up some not-a-crime sodomy?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
It is not a matter of fact like whether they're actually of legal age or not. It's whether the thing, itself, is actually a crime. Suppose the case is that they intended to show up and sleep with a person of age X, and sleeping with a person of age X is, by statute, considered a crime. Now, hypothetically, imagine that the defendant wants to raise a constitutional challenge to say that such a law, making it illegal to sleep with a person of age X, is not constitutional. Here, we're even removing the question of statutory interpretation (which may still be live). It's not about whether or not you did or didn't actually carry through with your intent to do the thing; it's challenging whether the underlying thing is even a crime in the first place.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
How about saying, "The thing they judged that I had intent to conceal is just not a crime", because there are constitutional/other reasons that that thing isn't a crime? That's a question of law, yes?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Cohen testified, nonetheless, to having committed all the elements of the violation he pleaded guilty to, which renders it a moot point.
Again, not if there is a statutory, agency interpretation, or constitutional defense which would imply that, even if all the claimed elements are true, it is nevertheless, not a crime.
It's kind of weird that you acknowledge on the one hand that there is a difference between Trump/Cohen ("while that may have been true with respect to Trump, it wasn't with respect to Cohen"), but then view Cohen's testimony as the final word for Trump. But that simply doesn't follow. Trump can still just say, for example, "Sure, Cohen's testimony may be completely true as to which actions were taken and that they satisfy the elements of the statute, but there is still a constitutional defense to reading the statute in a way that allows these facts to constitute a crime." So TBH, I'm really just not sure what you're trying to say, so I'm mostly just asking for clarification.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Cohen was investigated and pleaded guilty (though his plea couldn't be used as evidence in Trump's case), so there's nothing controversial about whether a FECA violation actually occurred, unless you want to talk theoretically, which is pointless since Cohen isn't going to appeal.
This is a non sequitur. Dumb people and people trying to get a good deal for other, real crimes, plead guilty to things that aren't actually crimes all the time. There is no logical way to bootstrap that to get to "nothing controversial about whether a FECA violation actually occurred". There may be all sorts of statutory, agency interpretation, and even constitutional defenses to the claim that a FECA violation actually occurred that Cohen simply did not pursue, but would nevertheless win the day in a court of appeals.
I don't know what you mean by this. I don't think this is a knob we can tune, even in our hypothetical model. In our hypothetical model, we can basically just turn up/down the quantity of pharmaceutical opioids that make it to the street. We can't really determine whether they displace low-quality opioids or add to them. The market would decide this, right? Unless you're saying that the project of pumping more pharmaceutical opioids into the streets is only Good if it's combined with some other form of crackdown on low-quality opioids?
I think the fundamental claim underlying a lot of positions is that if we just turned the knob of increasing pharmaceutical opioids on the street, then the market will totally, definitely, automatically treat them as a substitute, and they will displace low-quality opioids. This is like, the basic claim that allows people to continue on a chain of reasoning that legalization -> pharmaceutical opioids become widely available -> substitution of pharmaceutical opioids for low-quality opioids -> unmitigated win. I think if you're saying that this chain of reasoning just doesn't hold, because we just have no idea whether they'll substitute or add, then I would view that as being a pretty generic argument against the type of drug legalization reasoning that I've been saying all along doesn't go through. Like, it would appear that we actually agree?
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