Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
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User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
If Trump paid back Cohen, then Cohen no longer made a campaign contribution since he was acting as Trump’s agent… it also isn’t close to clear that cohen made a campaign contribution
This is not how the FEC understands campaign contributions:
Similarly, when a person pays for goods or services on the committee’s behalf, the payment is an in-kind contribution. An expenditure made by any person in cooperation, consultation or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate’s campaign is also considered an in-kind contribution to the candidate.
Now, a campaign can transform an in-kind contribution into an operating expense by reimbursing the person making the in-kind contribution, but the Trump campaign never did that. Cohen was reimbursed by the Trump organization instead.
It seems really weird you are arguing Trump exposed himself to criminal liability to try to help Cohen…
I mean, it helped himself too. Otherwise Daniel (or Cohen) might have gone public much earlier to unknown effect.
Also you have zero evidence connecting Trump to this scheme except the partial testimony of Cohen (he doesn’t even testify to all needed elements) with no corroboration. So you are using the word of a serial perjurer to send someone potentially to jail.
This is not correct. Trump himself signed some of the reimbursement checks to Cohen.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
I mean, maybe there's an argument Michael Cohen could have made that his conduct was not criminal, that the statute criminalizing it was unconstitutional. I am skeptical any court is going to get into that matter separately.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
Why is paying Stormy Daniels a campaign contribution?
Because the purpose of the payment was to benefit the campaign. According to the FEC
Similarly, when a person pays for goods or services on the committee’s behalf, the payment is an in-kind contribution. An expenditure made by any person in cooperation, consultation or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate’s campaign is also considered an in-kind contribution to the candidate.
...
Why doed Cohen pleading guilty prove Trump committed a crime too?
Perhaps I have not followed the trial closely enough but it is not clear to me, from reading the actual NY law at issue, that the crime being covered up has to also have been committed by the person doing the covering up. If A enters false business records to cover up B's crime it seems to me that would be covered. It does not seem to be required that A's false business records cover up A's own crime, but I could be wrong about that.
Please note that campaign finance violations are the FEC's wheelhouse and they neglected to pursue charges because no crime occurred. Besides, this is circular reasoning: Trump committed a crime because Cohen committed a crime because Trump committed a crime. Under this logic, any politician who has ever paid to bury a story has committed a crime.
This is not correct. Cohen committed a crime (an illegal campaign contribution) and then Trump committed a crime (falsifying business records) to cover up Cohen's crime. As I note in my comment if Trump had paid Daniels himself it likely would not have been a crime, because candidates are allowed to spend as much as they want on their own campaigns.
Right, that's the thing: this is a totally normal thing that happens to powerful people all the time, only New York blew it up to try to make it a get Trump case. There is no case here.
I think that depends on what you mean by "this." I do not think it is that common that powerful people get their lawyers to commit bank fraud and FEC violations to help them get elected, then commit further crimes to try and cover it up. Heck, if Trump had paid Cohen back out of his own pocket (rather than his business) that probably wouldn't have been a crime either! Or at least it wouldn't have been this crime.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
Because Trump paid Cohen in 11 checks, in response to 11 invoices from Cohen, which generated 12 ledger entries in Trump's business. Each fraudulent record is a separate charge.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
I guess I don't really understand. This seems to me like one of the more straightforward cases against Trump, right up there with the classified documents.
1. In 2016 Michael Cohen committed several crimes to which he later pleaded guilty, including making an unlawful corporate contribution to the Trump campaign by paying Stormy Daniels.
2. Trump reimbursed Cohen for that payment to Stormy Daniels (in furtherance of Cohen's crime) from one of his businesses.
3. The payments to Cohen claimed to be pursuant to a retainer agreement that did not exist and pursuant to legal work that never occurred.
4. The reason for the description of the payments was to conceal Cohen's crime. Trump could hardly put "Reimbursement for unlawful campaign contribution" on the checks!
So we have (1) business records that were (2) falsified for the purpose of (3) concealing another crime. The theory of the case seems pretty straightforward? According to the evidence some of the checks were signed by Trump himself. Seems hard to argue he didn't know it was happening or approve of it.
What strikes me in all this is how this all could have been avoided if Trump were less of a cheapskate. According to Cohen's testimony Trump kept trying to put off paying Daniels until after the election (presumably to stiff her) and she kept threatening to call off the agreement and go public. Eventually Trump tells Cohen and Weisselberg to figure it out. Weisselberg claims not to have the money so Cohen goes and gets a HELOC (lying to his bank in the process) to pay Daniels (the unlawful campaign contribution). I'm pretty sure if Trump had just cut Daniels a check everything would have been fine. Candidates are allowed to spend as much money as they want on their own campaigns. Instead Cohen commits several crimes to pay Daniels and then Trump commits several crimes to reimburse Cohen. There was a less criminal way to do this!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
That makes more sense. So this is only a problem when you call an election halfway through a term.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
Why not change the pension to be after three terms instead of six calendar years? That seems like clearly the intent and this is surely not the only time three terms will be less than six calendar years!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
Appreciate the correction, updated my post with the correct numbers.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
As a matter of simple mathematics, assuming the first chart with the > 50% fail rates is correct, this cannot be the whole story. In the Family Medicine category failure rates go from around 10% in 21-22 to around 50% in 22-23%. Even if no black students had been failing in 21-22 and every black student failed in 22-23 that would not be enough of a change to explain this difference, unless the fraction of students who are black also doubled.
Sure, it definitely seems like there's been an increase in failure rates, but why are the charts inconsistent about failure rates in the same year? It also seems weird to blame black doctors specifically. According to the chart on racial admission data in the article black enrollment over the 2019-2022 time period (the article doesn't have 2023 or 2024) was essentially flat (2212% to 2413%). Unless there is some huge un-shown spike in black enrollment in the last two years it seems hard to see how having a more-black student body is responsible for the increase in failure rates.
ETA:
After reading the article a bit more closely I realized I was interpreting the demographic change chart incorrectly in the context of the tests. Medical school takes four years and the shelf exam test scores in the charts are coming in the third of that four years. So the 22-23 class that has the horrible scores is actually the 2021 demographics and the 23-24 class with the improved scores is the 2022 demographics. We don't have test scores for the last two bars on the demographic chart because they haven't taken the tests in question yet. So the improved 23-24 test scores were achieved with a demographic makeup that is less Asian and more black than the worse 22-23 test scores.
ETA 2:
As Joyful points out below they removed a year of coursework, so this is happening in their second year, so the 2022 demographics are the 2023-2024 test year.
ETA 3:
Confusing numbers for percentages. Updated.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
I'm looking at the data in the linked article and having some difficulty squaring the two images with each other, and with the thesis more broadly. The second chart, which has data from 20-21, 21-22, and 22-23 does show a substantial rise in fail rates on various exams. However the first chart, which has 22-23 and 23-24 data seems to show an increase in pass rates, in some cases quite a large one (Pediatrics 1A block goes from a > 50% fail rate to around 20%). The data also seems inconsistent between the two charts for the one year (22-23) on which they overlap. For example, the Pediatrics Block 1A failure rate in the first chart seems to be in excess of 50%, but the Pediatrics 1A block in the second chart seems to be < 20%. Similarly the failure rate for Family Medicine block 1B is in excess of 50% for the 22-23 year in the first chart, but is less than 30% for the same year and block in the second chart. Which number is correct?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
If they are not free to leave? Or say no?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
I did not intend that to be about you, specifically, so let me apologize for that. As the to the specifics I admit considerable uncertainty. I know that what kinds of social behavior are considered shameful historically have been different than they are today but I have not made a study of them, it just seems to me this would be a norm worth changing.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
So how exactly are you going to enforce this rule?
The same way any other social norm is enforced? Shaming the people who violate it.
If there's a fixed contingent of women that wants to be "conquered" in this fashion, the more men you persuade to follow your compact, the more advantageous will it be for the marginal man to defect, as there will be droves of women waiting for someone who is, in their eyes, still enough of a man to pursue them.
Yes, as I mention in several other replies I'm aware it is a complex coordination problem. Still I think it is a thing worth doing.
Even if you posit that this preference that some/many women have is purely acquired and can be untaught, there will at least be a transitional period where you need to exercise tremendous amounts of coercion - which will, from the outside, look a lot like the "I consent - I consent - I don't" image macro, with the "don't" being an unpopular and unsuccessful man while the first two are popular and well-adjusted men and women - to stop male defectors.
"Ahh but you see, your social movement is doomed for I have already drawn myself as the chad and you as the soy!"
The most likely outcome is that any attempt at enforcement will look exactly like our present reality, where you only get to pick off defectors at the most awkward and unsuccessful fringe, who at the end of their efforts can not present a woman witness that says that she actually liked it, both of them understood consent was actually implicitly given and outsiders should stop creepily insinuating themselves.
My point is that I don't think it matters, and it is no defense, that the woman liked it. It is (or ought to be) bad to ignore a woman's "no" even if she wants you to in a symmetrical way to how it is wrong to enslave people even if the enslaved people like it.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
I don't know. I think social norms around the treatment of women, LGBT people, people of different races and lots of other groups were much worse in the past, including in my lifetime. We got here from there somehow.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
Playing hard to get is a filtering mechanism for a man's ability to stick with an effort despite initial failure or hardship. It's as simple as that. Phrased differently, "if I make it easy for him to come (that's an unintentional double entendre! hahaha, nice), it will also be easy for him to go...Therefore, I have to make it a little hard up front to test out if he's going to see it through"
I guess it depends on how specific we get on "playing hard to get." "Woman sometimes turns down date with a guy she would actually like to date to see how persistent he'll be" seems less objectionable to me, although comes with the obvious problem lots of women who don't want to date a guy are going to continue being pestered. "Woman sometimes says so no sex even though she wants it" seems like a much worse norm. Surely we can develop better norms for women to filter men for a kind of stick-to-it-ive-ness than creating strategic ambiguity for rape.
We should, however, provide the social pressure to hold them accountable for crossing various milestones as well as general honesty with partners.
I am unclear on what it means to "hold them accountable for crossing various milestones." I agree that women should be more honest with partners, that was my whole point!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
I get it. I mentioned in another reply about the complexities of the coordination problem. That's why it's hard! The individual incentives are the other way!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
Are non-monogamous societies somehow less downstream of biology than monogamous societies? Observationally dating norms have been very different historically than they are today and can be quite different in different geographical locations even today. It thus seems hard, to me, to argue that some set of dating norms common in the anglosphere are some biological inevitability.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
I am skeptical that the particular facts of women playing hard to get are downwind of biology.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
On the one hand, I don't doubt it is individually sucky to break away from social norms like this. On the other hand, if we all decide to continue as if these are the rules then they remain the rules. Society does not spontaneously re-order due to nobody doing anything. It is a difficult collective action and coordination problem.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
Fair enough, that's certainly a possible outcome. I am skeptical that it is worse than the alternative. Especially since I think there's an equilibrium that's better for both.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
For sure. I definitely don't intend to place all the onus to change on men. It's a cultural change that includes changing behaviors by both sexes.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
Yes, women playing coy is definitely a problem. Maybe this is just me but I think the better option is just... not having sex with women who do that! They can either learn to ask for what they want or no one should have sex with them. Errors in the direction of "some people miss sex they could have had" seem much better than errors in the other direction.
My understanding is that the motivation for it was specifically the impact it could have on voters, especially so close to the election (the payment was in late October). Rather than some general concern about Trump's image. I believe this specific concern is memorialized in contemporaneous communication by Cohen, Packard, and others.
As I mention in my original comment the manner in which Trump went about it is probably the whole issue. If he had decided to pay off Daniels out of his own funds there is probably no crime.
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