ControlsFreak
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User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
I think @CloudHeadedTranshumanist would disagree. I hope that that identity (unmoored from any pronouns that could form a link to a body of any sort) will come clarify, but my interpretation is that the comment leans in to the meme. "YesChad.jpg, the only thing keeping you from being an attack helicopter is that we haven't made enough progress on the technology yet," I want to hear that identity say.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
I've been thinking that something like this is probably the way. But to fix the problem @null brings us, you need to also incorporate a piece of what I recall reading here that Hungary did recently: tie it directly to tax rates, too. IIRC, they basically said that women, after having some number of kids before some age or some such test, would not have to pay income taxes for the rest of their lives. However, that is imperfect for at least a couple reasons. First, the benefit really only comes so long as the woman is working again, which means she's rushing to get back to work and to work as much as possible, not pumping out more babies and raising them. Second, it's untethered from marriage, so she can just pump and dump random dude for baby batter (or even just swing by a sperm bank) to get her required allocation of children before going back to her now-tax-free life.
One of the things most people think we've lost in the last century is a strong incentive to stay married, even when the marriage isn't like, perfect perfect. The motivation for trying to get rid of that strong motivation is that if the motivation is too strong, then some people will end up staying in marriages that are not just not-perfect, but which are actively horrid. However, trad folks today think that we've gone too far and that we need more incentive for folks to stay together.
If the old tools to incentivize couples to stay married won't work anymore, and the best tool we can come up is tax policy, then we've got to use tax policy. Make a husband's income tax free for the rest of time, so long as two conditions are met: 1) Whatever conditions like what Hungary already has on a woman pumping out a sufficient number of babies before whatever age, and 2) The parents are still married and caring for their children.
The biggest problem is that (2) might be hard to police. That said, in the US, we already have a scheme for doing basically exactly this, so it's probably not completely impossible. We have conditional green cards for immigrants-by-marriage. You have to demonstrate (by means of tax/property/bank records, records of pattern-of-life together, testimony of family/friends, whatever) that you are still in a loving marriage, and that it's not just a sham for scoring immigration benefits. This system would have be massively scaled up (which will obviously cause plenty of problems on its own, most unforeseen), but it is in principle possible.
In any event, I meant to include somewhere in there that if it hits directly at a husband's tax rate rather than a fixed amount, it'll provide more incentive for higher-earners. Of course, there is no way this will be palatable for the left; they won't stomach what appears to be giving more money to rich people. Maybe there's a plausible middle-ground that doesn't skew the tax benefit quite as far as the tax burden itself has been skewed, but we're not really talking about political feasibility here; we're mostly just talking about the feasibility of the social engineering solution.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
School/education on its own seems relatively fine. It's just the particular way we go about it that ruins everything.
The standard meme in government economics is, "...best I can do is subsidize demand and restrict supply." We see this meme played out in at least three domains where there is high government involvement: education, medical care, and housing. Even just from that, there's not much surprise that prices rise higher and higher. But I think the standard bifecta is missing a third factor to make it a trifecta. What does the government do after subsidizing demand, restricting supply, and seeing prices go up? Why, they invariably come in and help the cartel they've set up price discriminate as perfectly as possible!
Every company wants to price discriminate. Companies/cartels with market power really want to price discriminate. The standard economics result is that if a monopolist is able to perfectly price discriminate (i.e., charge each individual customer exactly their willingness-to-pay), then they capture all of the gains from trade, leaving none of the surplus to the consumer. All consumers are still just barely willing to engage in the transactions, but none really feel like they've gotten a good "deal" out of the trade. These companies with market power are the bootleggers.
The baptists are in the government, seeing that high prices appear to harm poorer people, and they looooooove to help poorer people! So, what do you have to do when you want to go to college? Oh, just submit this federal form that tells the company gobs of data about your income/assets/etc..... oh, and for your family, too! That'll allow us nice people to help make college affordable price your personalized college experience as darn close to your individual willingness-to-pay as possible! Hospitals often tout (not sure if required by the government) programs that simply slash your bill, give you a personalized price, if only you give them a bunch of information about your finances. The government will even directly provide health insurance options for you... but, ya know, if you want a good individualized price, you better give us your financial data. I even saw this week that they're going to start adding fees to mortgages for homeowners with good credit (personalize their price) in order to subside those of homeowners with bad credit (personalize their price, too!).
All of this is wonderful, if you're part of the cartel that determines who can be a doctor, who can build a hospital, who can start a university (or even a program within a university), who can build what where (and have ease-of-permitting). Those are the people who will capture all the gains from trade. Everyone else? Whelp, be glad that you can just barely buy it, nevermind that you won't have much left over for any other aspects of A Good Life you might want.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
If there was supposed to be a buddy system
My guess is that there was not. Folks like Snowden were in facilities where SCIFs are busy. Likely multiple people there working together all day sort of thing. IIRC, that's why he had to go the route of sneaking them out via a writable CD that he labeled "Lady Gaga", thinking (correctly, apparently) that the people around him wouldn't be suspicious of it. Similarly, I believe lots of facilities that see significant use have a person whose sole job is just running the room. They schedule folks to use it, make sure the equipment is working, are around to help out if there are difficulties, and are just sort of there, so they could potentially see any mischievous behavior.
On the other hand, Massachusetts Air National Guard? Probably low volume usage. This dovetails with the questions like, "Why do they even have access anyway?" because I have to imagine it's not used that much. One of those, "Well, we have the terminal here, just so that when the occasional bloke does need something, he doesn't have to drive an hour down the road to another site." Obviously, choosing to maintain low volume terminals has risks like this. And I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have a buddy system.
Even with a buddy system, they have to choose some set of people to have the authority to open up the room in the first place, and I doubt there are technological controls to make sure that those guys take a buddy in at the time. If he was one of the few people who used it for legitimate purposes, I wouldn't be surprised if he was given that authority; he has the proper clearance, after all. If so, then what are the real technological controls that can be put in place to ensure that he takes a buddy in with him? Most likely, if he had authorization to open the SCIF, even if they had a buddy system, I imagine he pretty much just had to write down someone's name to claim that they were there. Obviously makes a record that could be discovered as fraudulent, but what are the chances of that? He could just go in at times when basically no one else is around, write down a fake buddy, and even just take his phone in with him to take pictures of stuff.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
Humanity does not know everything about metaphysics that there is to know, either. There's a lot out there to be less confident about, but some people are incorrigible about sticking to their irrational confidence, especially with regard to things that Hanson calls the 'sacred'.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
That two digits of unarmed people are killed per year by US police?
This one is a rounding error, and no rounding error can ever be solved without extreme, ridiculous measures.
That blacks have worse social outcomes than whites?
This one, however, may be plausible. Just by doing, uh, sort of the opposite of what they've been doing. Every 'explainer' about the disparity starts with schools, only they just get the facts completely wrong. They claim that schools in poor/black areas have less funding, but that hasn't been the case since the 80s. A great moment where they've noticed that there is a problem (schools), but just flatly ignore the data concerning the cause of said problem. Instead, if we break from the woke-crazy teachers unions and give parents the option to choose what schools are suitable for their children, the marketplace is likely to deliver better results.
Then, instead of
trying to decrease the number and funding of the militarized police
we ensure that there are plenty of police, plenty of surveillance, and plenty of places safe to live, study, and work free of crime (like many of the black people in that video actually want). They can go about living, studying, and working successfully in peace. Of course, after they've been able to build skills through education and work, they need to be able to clearly demonstrate, and have it clearly acknowledged, that they do, in fact, have those skills. Unfortunately, if we
try to enact DEI to give status and wealth to blacks regardless of meritocratic outcome
then, that chain of reasoning is severed. Instead of seeing their success in education and work and immediately being confident that such success is a product of skills and effort, people might see it as mere DEIBS. You can just give out wealth, to the extent that you can convince others to join you in your project to just give out wealth, but you can't just give out status. There's probably a significant post to be made about how the femininization of society, and the feminization of the woke movement in particular, has a different conception of status than masculine, testosterone-d biology does. But the latter simply rejects the idea that you can just declare high status for some individual/group without significant quantities of hard power backing it up. That level of hard power would require extreme, ridiculous measures, of that type you are concerned about.
Instead of that (doomed to fail) route, just do the above suggestions, and then just stop. Stop imagining that low expectations will magically produce high status. Just see the incredible skills and achievement that people will have once you've gotten out of their way. Some of the most downtrodden people in the world have become some of our highest achievers.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
Mundane Scheduling Details - Trump Edition
For a while now, I've been wondering about very boring dates on calendars. Last summer, I wondered:
The most important thing is the timing of the charges and potential conviction. You probably want to prevent Trump from becoming the official nominee. If he's already the official nominee, it's going to be a harder political sell to strip one of the major parties of their candidate at the last minute. Think back to Comey and the investigation into Clinton emails. On June 6, 2016, the AP and NBC declared that Clinton had won enough delegates/superdelegates to ensure the nomination. On July 5, Comey publicly addressed the investigation, attempting to declare it closed. At the time, I wrote that it seemed more like a 50/50 that they could get a conviction than an 80/20 either way, and that it seemed completely reasonable for the refs to swallow the whistle on a 50/50 call in the third period of a playoff game. Enough had been settled that it would be incredibly destructive to the political process if they brought charges at that point; either the case would be hanging over the whole process, just waiting to get adjudicated until after the election... or they'd have to rush through a trial, and the resulting clusterf would be immense.
The first primaries are January 2024. You need enough time for blue states to go through an expedited process that evaluates the conviction and declares that their understanding is that it prevents Trump from being on their primary ballots... as well as enough time to physically print/distribute the new ballots and such. So, the ideal time for a conviction is maybe late fall, early winter 2023.
Now, the Trump campaign would have to go to the district courts in all these states in an attempt to get it changed back. The states will vehemently reject any ruling from a district in another state (or a circuit they are not part of), and they will lean on how some provision in their state law is different than that of the other state, so they are not a suitable target of an injunction, even if a district judge tries to implement a nationwide one. Blue districts/circuits will slow-play the cases as much as possible, so the Trump campaign will have to target the reddest district/circuit in a blue state that is brave enough to try to strip him off the ballot. Game theoretically, if every blue state in sufficiently red circuits refrain from stripping him off the ballot, that probably won't tip the primary in his direction, but it prevents a case from getting pushed through quickly. All they need to do is gum up the works for long enough that some number of primaries happen before SCOTUS steps in. And SCOTUS could be put in a terrible spot - maybe only days/weeks out from some primaries, are they really going to tell states, "You have to change all your ballot material again to put this guy back on"?
If a few states go through without Trump on the ballot, you have the best shot at establishment Republicans rallying around an alternate candidate, everyone declaring post-hoc, "Candidate X was obviously going to win anyway; Trump is a loser; none of that stuff really mattered," and trying to ignore it all as hard as possible. While Trump's base will continue to be up in arms, they would really lack any power to do anything about it.
So, what implications does this have for the timing of everything else that leads up to this? Well, ballpark a typical case that goes to trial as taking a year. If you bring charges only six months out, Trump can probably delay things long enough that a conviction happens too late to make changes to the primary; if you bring charges a year and a half out, Trump will 100% demand the speediest trial that ever did happen. Obviously, you can't predict the future perfectly, but shooting for a year out is probably the best EV move (would love to hear some actual lawyers' takes on this). That means you want to file charges in late fall, early winter 2022.
...in turn, that means that if you're taking a shot on what may or may not be a fishing expedition, hoping that you can bring charges at the optimal chance to keep Trump off of the ballot, you'd want that shot to be... summer 2022. You have a few months to thoroughly analyze everything you were able to acquire and game things out in more detail, with much more information.
No charges have appeared yet on the classified docs thing, and from this game plan, we're already sort of running late on the NY business records indictment. Most importantly, we have a calendar update! From Lawfare's account of the arraignment:
As the government intends to seek a trial date of Jan. 5, 2024 and there is intense public interest in “moving this case along as expeditiously as possible,” she says the government wants to produce these materials quickly to allow ample time for trial preparation before January.
Judge Merchan turns to Blanche [Trump's lawyer], who starts by emphasizing again that this has been a long investigation and the defense has not seen any discovery so far. Trump certainly wants this whole matter behind him, Blanche says, “But to sit here and say January of 2024 is good with us when we have not seen a piece of paper yet, is I think patently unfair for us given everything that I think we know about the case from the media and from witnesses talking.” The January 2024 date is “a little bit aggressive.” The spring of 2024 might be “a more realistic plan at this point.” But Blanche admits that he’s “speculating a bit because we have not seen anything yet.”
The court agrees that it’s difficult to anticipate being ready in January having not received any discovery yet. “The message I would like to deliver is we would like to move ahead as expeditiously as possible, without undue delay. Of course, you are entitled to the discovery. You are entitled to review the discovery and make determinations there.”
This definitely adds some real data to my estimates and gives something interesting to watch and consider. Even if they start next January as the gov't wants, the trial itself will take a little time. So, I think I was close with saying it would take about a year; this seems to indicate that it would be about ten months from indictment to verdict, minimum.
The Iowa caucuses are scheduled for January 22, 2024. NY may be thinking that if they push hard on the calendar, they can get a conviction in before this date, but with bringing the charges as late as they did, this may be a tough haul. At this point, I'm not confident I can predict either side's calendar strategy. For the rest of this, I'll mostly be assuming that Trump is not able to get the charges dismissed or removed to a federal venue via pre-trial motions; obviously, succeeding on either of those fronts would change everything. Does Trump want to push it further out, hoping that he can win a primary or two before the trial is supposed to start, adding pressure to not convict him on something ticky tack? At this point, if he is convicted, there's zero chance that he'll be able to fit a meaningful appeal in before the primaries, so probably a key question is his probability estimate of how likely it is that the NY court will convict him (whether or not he thinks it's bullshit or would be overturned on appeal); if he thinks it's above some threshold, he probably wants to delay and get a primary or two in first. If he thinks it's below some threshold, he could play a very risky strategy and hope for a huge "TRUMP EXONERATED" headline just before the primaries.
On the NY side, how much do they actually care about getting the official 'conviction' in before Iowa? Maybe they're perfectly happy with letting the trial date slip, so long as the case isn't dismissed; they can go into the primaries messaging, "Trump is an indicted criminal awaiting trial; you wouldn't want to vote for a criminal, would you?"
Either way, the potential schedule is in one sense unsurprising and in another sense suddenly sort of extremely real and threatening by how close it is to the electoral process. This may be how we're going to run this country, and I guess the writers of The Epic Tale of Trump and the US Political System have plenty of room for at least one more season that introduces another New Season Dominant Character and plenty of potential for extremely high drama individual episodes.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
I think someone who claimed a hooker payoff as a business expense on their taxes would be prosecuted for tax fraud
Interestingly, in the indictment, it says that they plus-up'ed the payment to Cohen in order to cover the additional taxes he'd have to pay on the "income". So, like, weirdly, taxes were paid, probably more than would have been otherwise (he ended up paying $420k for what I guess he could have directly paid for like $130k). And the indictment actually doesn't allege tax fraud stemming from the allegedly fraudulent business records.
When reading the indictment, I couldn't help but think about how dumb/incompetent the whole thing seemed to be. Like, it mentioned how Trump was trying to delay payment until after the election, because then he could just renege on the promise to pay at that point, thinking it wouldn't matter. Honestly, unless there's some other game being played that I'm not aware of (and which is not pointed out in the indictment), almost the only thing I can think of is that he was planning on stiffing Cohen after the election if he had lost. Which is pretty dumb/incompetent. On the one hand, I guess he was purchasing a possible option on saving a couple hundred thousand dollars... and I guess this could have been considered a pretty 'cheap' option, given how strained you have to read the law to try to work your way up to felony charges out of the matter. On the other hand, maybe he just misevaluated where the biggest cost threat was, thinking short term about the primary concern being the election itself rather than any threat of prosecution by overzealous prosecutors with "novel" theories who are so blinkered by Trump-has-to-pay-ism.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
African-Americans found themselves trapped in urban decay rather than a promise of continued economic prosperity.
If Trump's political life survives this prosecution into the next election, I really wonder how the whole thing will play with African-Americans and how he'll try to play it. He had already gone to great lengths in his prior campaigns and presidency, doing everything he could to give the appearance that he was working hard to embrace them as a constituency and draw their votes. Given that a regular concern of the African-American community is something along the lines of, "Vague police powers are abused to target us, suppress us, and keep us out of any sort of 'official' life," doesn't he immediately get to play that up even more? "I understand you; these people wield these laws and powers unjustly, targeting us unfairly just to keep us down, because they don't like us." Maybe it won't end up being effective in pushing numbers, and he'll have to balance it a little bit with the 'law and order' constituency that wants promises that he'll go after actual theft, murder, and rioting... but how does this not shoot up to being one of the top three-or-so issues of his campaign?
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
Yeah, I feel like I actually know approximately nothing about the guy. My impression has always been, "Well, he's made a bunch of money, and he leans left with that money, so that makes him a boogeyman to the right, but that could be consistent with a variety of pretty milquetoast actual behavior." The only thing that has sort of shocked me on the topic was reading a translation of Chinese-language publication that was presumably written for consumption by Chinese bureaucrat types, and it just very casually threw in something along the lines of, "...and of course, we have a clear example of financial warfare conducted by George Soros..." pretty much without justification, as though that perspective was just a commonly-held belief for, uh, Chinese bureaucrat types. I'd be pretty interested in a deep dive that actually looks at what he's done domestically and internationally and breaks down why people view him the way they do.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
The rule re providing goods and services for below-normal prices is not at issue here. It does not seem to be the theory being relied upon by the DA.
....so, for probably the fifth time... what is the theory? Every single time I've asked, you've simply gone back to, "They have to report, because it could be below market value." If that's all you've got, we can be done here.
Yes, for the ten-thousandth time, THERE IS NO REQUIREMENT THAT THERE BE AN ACTUAL QUID PRO QUO.
For the ten-thousandth time, THAT IS NOT WHAT I SAID. I said:
They have ruled that the Constitution only allows them to implement campaign finance laws for the purposes of reducing quid pro quos or the appearance thereof, where one of the quid or the quo is political favors, not just money.
If their rules actually have that purpose and are tailored appropriately for it, they're okay. If they're obscenely poorly tailored... like, for example, if their rules allow them to ban books... then it's not going to fly. They need to link their rules, and the purpose of those rules, to reducing quid pro quos or the appearance thereof. Before you again misread this and impute to me a claim that I think they must show an actual quid pro quo, that is NOT what I'm saying, and you're just lying if you impute it to me again.
Banning books is an obvious First Amendment violation. Requiring a campaign to report expenditures and receipts is not.
If those requirements actually touch literally every member of the campaign's grocery bills, I'm pretty sure we're getting close.
Again, the claim is not that Stormy Daniels provided goods and services at below-market values.
WHAT IS THE CLAIM?!?!?!
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
what is the money that he paid for?
? He paid for her silence. It is her silence that benefits him. That is the forbearance.
Right, and when Trump buys a diet coke, the money is to compensate for the seller forgoing the use of that diet coke. So far, your reasoning still applies to buying diet coke.
It is not how I am interpreting it. It is how the FEC interprets it, in their regulations
Right, and if they go to the Supreme Court and say that they can ban books prosecute people for not reporting their diet coke purchases, they're going to lose.
What Constitutional concern? Name one, with supporting authority, not one that you make up. Because when the Court says ""The Constitution does not prohibit legislatures from enacting stupid laws" but you say, "yes it does," I am going to think the Court is right, not you.
They have ruled that the Constitution only allows them to implement campaign finance laws for the purposes of reducing quid pro quos or the appearance thereof, where one of the quid or the quo is political favors, not just money.
I don't have to draw a line re banning books, because the Court can simply say that the law as applied to book bans, is invalid.
Similarly, the law as applied to simple transactions where money is exchanged for other things (at the normal market rate, as Trump apparently did), is invalid.
Re coke cans, that is easy: "A contribution includes sales of goods or services at below normal market value, where such sales from a single source total more than $1,000." No free cokes must be reported!
Then Trump is probably fine. He paid normal market value! This would be as a matter of legal fact, nothing to do with politics/political motivation/etc. Just a fact about the law.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
Oh, not at all. I definitely did not even imply "Trump did something that you or I would be prosecuted for". Instead, I explicitly pointed out that Hillary did something that you or I would be prosecuted for, contrasting that with what Trump did (which would fall in your first category).
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
The quo is political favors.
So, what is the money that he paid for? Like, when Trump buys a diet coke, it's entirely possible that the diet coke is the quid and political favors is the quo. But then, what's the money for?
IF forebearance is capable of being a quid, then it makes sense that is must be reported as a "contribution."
Exactly. IF a diet coke is capable of being a quid (which you surely have said that it is thusly capable), then it makes sense that it must be reported as a "contribution". Oh wait, that doesn't make any sense at all!
No one cares if someone gives a candidate a single can of coke, and even if that did count as something that has to be reported, so what? How does that render the law invalid, under any existing jurisprudence? "'The Constitution does not prohibit legislatures from enacting stupid laws.'
Because it's not just a stupid law. Again, let's go back to CU. The challenge is, "This law seems to allow you to ban books." "The Constitution does not prohibit legislatures from enacting stupid laws." Like, no, dude. That's not even in the right realm of response. This law obviously makes so little sense, at least given the way you're interpreting it, that it would pretty blatantly run up against major Constitutional concerns. If you can draw a line that avoids letting the gov't ban books/requiring every purchase of diet coke be reported, then maybe the Court will adopt your line. But simply digging in your heels and saying that you don't need no stinking lines and it doesn't matter if it's stupid, just let us do what we want to do and prosecute Orange Man on grounds that would never fly otherwise and would never be used in any other case... isn't going to get you anywhere.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
in regard to rejecting suggestions that it could save the law through a limiting instruction
Yeah, this is pretty important. Our interaction now is you standing at the Supreme Court, and they're giving you a chance to argue that there is some narrower grounds on which they can rule; that they can preserve something without allowing the gov't to ban books or talking to foreigners. If you fail to provide those grounds, they're going to conclude that it is simply not possible to rule more narrowly, and you're going to lose broadly.
I didn't bring it up. You did.
You said:
Certainly, forbearance of a legal claim against a candidate can be the quid.
But, the obvious thing here is that the quo is the money paid for such. So, similarly to how the Solicitor General didn't proffer, "Oh hey, we can totes ban books," instead it was Justice Alito who said, "Uh, doesn't your argument just imply that you can ban books?" You didn't start off saying it. I just pointed out that your position clearly implied it, and you've been trying to defend said position ever since.
Look, as a matter of law, either 1) Cohen's initial payment was a "contribution" that had to be reported, or it wasn't; or 2) Daniels's forebearance was a "contribution," or it wasn't.
And my response to essentially this way back up was:
Sure, so that kicks the question to, "What counts as a campaign contribution?"
So far, you've been defending the line that "buying a diet coke needs to be reported". If you want to repudiate that line, fine. If you want to intentionally not take a position on what counts as a campaign contribution, say it. If you want to intentionally not take a position on whether either (1) or (2) properly satisfies the definition, say it. Otherwise, actually say what you think the definition includes and why either (1) or (2) falls within that scope.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
"CU" = Citizens United? That is not at all what Citizen's United said.
I think you might not have read my link. The solicitor general legit told the court that the gov't could ban books with their interpretation of campaign finance law, and this is considered a pretty big turning point in the case.
Finally, I don't understand what any of this has to do with the Trump indictment. Again, AFAIK, no one is claiming that his campaign bought goods or services at less than the usual and normal charge therefor.
Why did you bring it up then? And why are you still trying to have it be the linchpin of your position? Like, your entire second paragraph is saying that everything is totally kosher specifically because of this. But if this is totally irrelevant, why are you even talking about it?
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
If you try to say that something is illegal based on a wildly overbroad theory of a vague statute, the Court is going to say that it is not illegal. That's what happened in CU. It's almost certainly what would happen if someone tried to actually bring a case that just talking to a foreigner about dirt was illegal. And it's probably going to happen to your position if it doesn't have a bit more justification than, "If a candidate buys a diet coke, he has to report it; if he doesn't, that's a felony, because the price could have been too low and formed a quid pro quo."
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
Obviously. I don't see your point. Please speak plainly.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
Because you are not a candidate. You're the Solicitor General of the United States, having been given time by the Supreme Court in oral arguments to present the federal view of election law.
If you say something like, 'Yeah, we can actually ban books from being published via this little campaign finance regulation,' things are not going to go well for you.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
Again, that's not what I asked for. I asked for a justification of the definition that is meaningfully linked to the acceptable purpose concerning the appearance or actualization of quid pro quo without being obscenely overbroad. (Before you protest this final condition entirely, surely there is some extent to which a possible definition could be so overbroad that it is no longer meaningfully linked to the acceptable purpose. Like, if the gov't required that candidates and everyone connected to their campaign to report literally every transaction they had... and, uh, also every conversation they had, lest someone tell them some dirt on someone else, resulting in the transfer of a "thing of value".)
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
Larger than what he actually paid. Up to some higher quantity that you think is the "usual and normal charge".
I mean, dis gon b gud to watch videos of the prosecutors trying to make the case to the jury, "So, here's how you make a valuation for a scandalous story involving a political candidate..." Like, how could you even possibly make that case?
Ok, on the question of legal validity, do you think that, supposing such a charge is legally valid given that Trump paid $Y for Item X, do you think that it would be legally invalid if he had paid a larger sum?
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
the Court is certainly aware that the defintion of contribution is broad
I don't think they conceived of it being this broad, at all. Let's try another route. Maybe you think Trump underpaid for X, and that's why it's an illegal campaign contribution. Is your position that if Trump had paid more for the item in question, everyone would agree, "Oh, well, nothing to see here, everything's normal," and we wouldn't have an indictment in the Southern District of New York?
(This is getting to be almost as good as all those people five years ago who said it was illegal to talk to a foreigner about dirt... unless you paid for it.)
This seems to water it down from the lofty heights of post-singularity musings. Instead, it sounds just like regular, boring old desires/wants. Those things could be said to be just in the brain; this is at least a philosophical position that is plenty defensible and plenty defended by many thinkers. But then we already have a long history of thinking on the concept of boring wants/desires and how they can be distinguished from identity, the "I" that is thinking in the classic cogito. In fact, classical thinkers have even considered a whole taxonomy of multiple orders of wants/desires, some of which could satisfy this condition while not being.. uh, identified.. as the "I" of identity.
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