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					joined 2022 September 05 12:51:13 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So what's the problem here? These people worked for the company for years at a certain salary with certain skills. You decide they need additional skills that the market is telling you loud and clear merit higher pay, but you evidently don't want to pay them. It's as simple as that. Say I'm a property manager and I oversee staff categorized as "general maintenance" who do things like cut grass, shovel snow, change light bulbs, and do small repairs. I decide they're useless because they can't do any serious electrical work so I train them all as electricians. How shocked can I be when they leave to take higher paying jobs with electrical contractors? When I took over these people were all maintenance men and were being paid like maintenance men. It would be ridiculous of me to expect to have a staff full of certified electricians making maintenance man salaries.


Edit: Reading these comments in tandem with the discussion from earlier in the week has really helped my crystalize my thoughts on the matter, which I didn't really pay attention to until recently. I had asked for some clarification of "abuse" and @SubstantialFrivolity provided me with an example, but now I'm seeing how this works in practice. It helps frame the divide more clearly: On the one had you have Trump, Musk, MTG, Vivek, and others, the common thread among them being that they have owned businesses and know firsthand how hard it can be to get employees. On the other hand, you have Laura Loomer, Steve Bannon, the MAGA base and the Fox News comment section, most of whom don't won businesses and aren't in senior management, who know how hard it can be to find a job.


The sentiments I see expressed among the MAGA faithful are that, if there is specialized work to be done, we should be providing education and training to Americans so that they can fill these desirable jobs rather than simply importing labor from elsewhere. The sentiments I'm seeing on the left are largely echoing that but with the added wrinkle where they suggest that the problem isn't so much a shortage but a shortage at the rates employers want to pay. Like OP's comment above, if an IT head doesn't like that his staff are moving on as soon as they have the training he wants for the job, rather than pay a market rate, he instead cries shortage and imports someone at a lower wage who is tied to the employer by virtue of his immigration status. He gets around the whole "prevailing wage" issue by taking advantage of the lack of granularity: The relevant job category is probably something like "IT person", not "IT person with special training on x, y and z".


I am, however, sensitive to there being actual shortages in certain occupations that we can't just wait 10 years until there are enough qualified people available. It seems that the solution here is eliminating (or greatly restricting) temporary visas and replacing them with more permanent visas. If we're talking about truly exceptional people, the sponsoring company should be willing to take on the risk that they'll jump ship. They should also be willing to pay a relatively high application fee. In other words, hiring foreign workers should be more expensive than hiring native workers. If bringing over a single foreign worker requires a $25,000 nonrefundable application fee, legal fees, and no guarantee that the sponsored immigrant won't jump ship to a company that offers him more money, you're not bringing him over unless there really is a shortage and you're confident you can keep him.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Except what happened isn't news. A fringe MAGA personality made comments critical of a figure influential within the Trump administration, particularly his stance on H-1B visas. The figure responded, and Trump took the side of the figure. A discussion about skilled immigration occurred as a side effect. But the whole thing was apropos of nothing. There's no bill pending before congress that proposes to restrict or expand the program; neither Trump nor anyone in Congress is even proposing such a bill. The story had a shelf life of about a week, and it isn't likely that this is going to bubble up into a huge policy issue once Trump takes office.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I guess you're not familiar with Phyllis Diller... or any number of others.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You can add all the additional requirements that you want, provided you understand that they aren't any less subject to gamification than whatever is currently in place. So add a debate requirement and you get Oxford Union debate clubs replacing whatever other extracurricular is the hot thing to get into a good school. Give bonus points for answering in Greek and Latin and you get a bunch of kids taking Greek and Latin not because they want to but because you get bonus points. I suspect a large part of the reason that so many Asian kids did poorly in Harvard's personality evaluation is because so many of them came out of a Tiger Mom culture where their dad played by Vivek Ramaswamy gave them a list of things they needed to do to get into Harvard and made damn sure they spent every available moment of their childhood ticking off the boxes. I mean, if you had two applicants to an engineering program with identical academic credentials, which one do you choose? The one who spends his spare time tinkering with radios and other electronic devices, or the one who can do integrals in his head but can't change a tire on his car? Who do you think actually wants to be an engineer and who is just doing it because it's a good job that will make his parents proud? You can't sort this out without a non-standardized personal interview.




I would also require a letter of approval from a sitting US senator, who (a) could have no financial relationship with anyone in the applicant’s immediate or extended family and (b) could nominate fewer than 50 students per year. This is also meritocratic in a way, since true meritocracy is familial rather than individual, and a well-connected family has enmeshed themselves in the fabric of American life well, which speaks to likely success in life.




There's already a college that requires this. Actually several colleges, though congressmen are also included and nominations are limited to ten apiece. They're the service academies, and they are extremely difficult to get into. Who gets these nominations has fuck all to do with how connected an applicant or his family is because you don't get them by knowing the Senator or whoever but by applying on their website, at which point someone from their office looks through the same paperwork admissions does. And what makes you think Senators even give a shit who gets into Harvard or wherever? Out of 100, 12 went there at all, and only 4 for undergrad. Anyway, this isn't England, and Senators don't give a shit about gatekeeping access to the "American elite". Do you really think John Fetterman is going to nominate the kind of prigs who can answer philosophical essay questions in ancient Greek?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Interesting. What's even more interesting is that her support stems from owning a construction company and understanding how hard it is to find employees, which suggests that she'd be willing to extend immigration beyond the H-1B level to find employees. If there's actually this much consensus on the issue then I'm optimistic we can reach some kind of deal where we make it easy enough for people with job prospects to get work permits, expand the numbers for those, crack down hard on illegal immigration, close the asylum loophole, and declare the whole problem solved so we can move on to other things. Democrats get increased immigration, Republicans get crackdowns and mass deportation. Everyone wins. Except people that don't like immigrants altogether, but Trump can always point to the "great big door" he talked about during his first campaign.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				NFL Weekly Thread: Week 18
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There's one crucial inaccuracy in your hypothetical. If Allen leaves the game midway through the first there's no way the Chiefs are only scoring 9 points after three quarters of Mitch Trubisky.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If the MAGA base tanks their support of Trump then a significant number of Republican politicians will follow suit. I do not see MTG, Boebert, etc. going against the base, considering they will get primaried if they do. This results in two possibilities. The first is that it becomes impossible for Trump to do anything and he ends up in the same position Bush was after 2005 where he's still the president but has no influence and no one pays attention to him. The second possibility is that the Democrats and non-MAGA Republicans support the Elon/Vivek position. Trump can get things done, but not without making concessions to the Democrats, which may or may not be worth it. Either way, I don't think Trump wants to end his time in office being pilloried by his own base as a fraud and sellout.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How is it being abused? I'm not aware that any significant number of applicants are being approved who aren't in compliance with the statutory language. To wit:




For purposes of the E-3 and H-1B programs (but not the H-1B1 program), specialty occupation means an occupation that requires theoretical and practical application of a body of specialized knowledge, and attainment of a bachelor's or higher degree (or its equivalent) in the specific specialty as a minimum for entry into the occupation in the United States.




I get the impression from some of the comments here that some may interpret this as being for the kinds of highly specialized work where you might not be able to find someone available to do in America and thus need to look abroad. Abuse, then, would be hiring H-1Bs for run-of-the-mill coding work for which American universities graduate thousands each year. The problem with this argument is there's nothing in the law supporting it. The way I'd interpret "specialized knowledge" as an attorney is as knowledge distinct from general knowledge, i.e., not the kind of knowledge the average person would have, even the average educated person. Knowing how to code may not be the rarest skill, but it's not so common that the average person can be hired to do it with no experience and be productive in a few weeks. If you're hiring someone with a bachelor's in computer science to do the job, then you've met the requirement.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm careful to say this since so many have said this before and been wrong that it's become a meme at this point, but this may be an indication of the breaking point between Trump and the traditional MAGA base. From his emergence in 2015 to roughly 2022, this was pretty much all he had. There were some moderates who voted for him in 2016 but turned away from him rather quickly. There were also traditional Republicans who opposed him up to the point that his nomination became inevitable and then backed him out of necessity, but in this case it was clear who was driving the car. Every once in a while he'd allow himself to be talked into doing something that was unpopular with his base but he had no qualms about throwing the responsible party under the bus when this became apparent (hence all the high-profile firings).


This seems different. Elon, Vivek, JD Vance, RFK, Joe Rogan, and the like aren't the MAGA base, and they don't represent the MAGA base. The pro Trump posters on The Motte don't represent the MAGA base. The left spent years trying to tar Trump as a racist, and while those smears weren't exactly fair, they tapped into an underlying truth that those charged with defending Trump couldn't admit: The MAGA base isn't exactly the most enlightened on racial issues. What I mean by this is that they don't bother trying to hide their opinions on things beyond the most basic kind of justifications. Here's a quote from the Pittsburgh NPR affiliate about a local community with a large Hatian population:




“I'm not racist,” she said. “But I came down Fallowfield [Avenue] a couple of months ago. There it was like on a Saturday or Sunday evening, real nice out. Everybody was on the streets walking. I probably counted 40 people walking from one end of Fallowfield to this end of Fallowfield. Not one white person.”




These people don't interact with Indians here on H-B1 visas for software companies; they interact with Indians who own convenience stores. they could care less about sophisticated arguments surrounding immigration because "they shouldn't be here". The only thing they offer as an argument besides dislike of foreigners is that they take American jobs. When someone like Vivek says that these H-1Bs are necessary because of "American mediocrity", the true MAGA folks don't nod in agreement. They blame Democrats; it's the liberal world where schools only teach Critical Race Theory and pronouns rather than The Three Rs, where coaches hand out participation trophies, where people don't smack their kids anymore. The solution to this problem isn't importing Asians or Asian culture but returning to traditional American culture. So if you're a Vivek Ramaswany or an Elon Musk and you can't find any Americans you want to employ then that's just too fucking bad. These jobs should be going to Americans, period.


I don't know much about Laura Loomer, but her criticisms are spot-on. The MAGA base didn't vote for Trump so they could hear horseshit excuses about how actually we really need to import people from India and give them high paying jobs. These are people who buy $70,000 trucks that get 15 mpg and then complain about the price of gas. They don't want to hear about how a multi-billionaire like Elon needs their tax dollars to subsidize his line of electric cars because he'll save us all from the global warming non-problem. The base, who has been there from the beginning, is right to question why a guy who seems hell bent on draining the swamp and dismantling the deep state is being unduly influenced by people who supported the opposition until recently.


There are two reasons I give this a better chance of causing a real split than previous controversies. First, immigration is a core issue. Trump has in the past taken positions contrary to the traditional conservative base on a number of issues, but he had the cover of not having taken positions on them. And he was able to split the baby on abortion. Here, he's made an unequivocal statement that runs contrary to his supporters' expectations on a core campaign issue. The second reason is that he's taking Elon Musk's side over that of his base. Elon gave Trump's PAC a lot of money and now expects, and is getting, influence in return. The fact that a non-American billionaire who supported Biden and Clinton can get that kind of influence just from writing a check, and use the influence to get Trump to waver on immigration, can't possibly sit well. And then there's the fact that Trump clearly came down on the side of Musk when he could have just stayed out of the whole thing. I could be wrong. This whole thing could blow over (H-1B visas are unlikely to become a major policy point), Trump could have an unrelated falling out with Musk, etc. But this seems to give greater odds of Trump's MAGA downfall than anything we've seen thus far.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Biden pumped some money in toward the beginning of his administration but a lot of the 2020 stimulus money was still beginning to make its way into the economy when inflation started taking off. Republicans like to blame Biden but, to the extent that inflation involved COVID stimulus money, there's plenty of blame to go around. Anyway, you can talk about COVID money pumping and supply chain disruption and this was all definitely part of it, but the low-end labor shortage and resulting wage hikes were obvious to anyone who wasn't still hunkering at home in 2021 or 2022. You couldn't walk into a restaurant or convenience store or retail establishment without seeing a help wanted sign in the window promising a signing bonus and a starting wage that was at least 50% higher than anything imaginable in 2019. Activists had been pressing for a $15 minimum wage for years, but, in the absence of any legislation, places that were paying like $9/hour were now proudly advertising $14. That this was necessary was evident in the fact that these places were all operating for fewer hours than before the pandemic and were obviously short-staffed when they were in business. It wasn't uncommon to go into a McDonalds at the height of the lunch rush and find a single cashier working the register. Even now Wal-Mart, which used to be open 24 hours almost universally, closes at 11 pm. All-night restaurants are a thing of the past. US Steel used to have a year-long waiting list for basic laborer positions and now offers 85k/year with bonuses and no overtime and still can't get people to stay more than a few weeks. I don't know how much this contributes to inflation, but I don't think it helps.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				NFL Weekly Thread: Week 18
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Don't do this. It's better to just admit that you know nothing than to show some tidbit of knowledge that gives people the wrong impression. When I was younger I followed NASCAR reasonably closely (and my dad follows it closely to this day), but my interest waned over the years. Then my dad scored free tickets to the fall Charlotte race and we stayed with friends who lived near the track, and we ended up as part of their contingent that went every year. So on the ride in I find myself sharing the back seat of a car with a friend of a friend of a friend who drove down from Hickory and I try to make small talk about the race. I knew enough to make this kind of small talk, but the fact that I initiated the conversation gave this poor guy the wrong impression and he immediately started asking me in-depth questions about my opinions on things I was in no position to have an opinion about. At this point, I couldn't even claim that I didn't follow it that closely, so I was forced to fake it to keep up, and this guy was entirely too nice for me to disappoint by admitting that I had no clue what I was talking about.


It's better to just act like a babe in the woods and admit you don't know anything from the get-go. Then you can ask questions that people into the team will be more than happy to answer. People generally like discussing their interests with curious outsiders.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				NFL Weekly Thread: Week 18
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it's because everyone simply agrees that Mahomes is the best QB in the league and his success is therefore deserved. It's hard to remember this, but the Patriots weren't supposed to have a dynasty. Even after winning three Super Bowls, Brady wasn't considered the best QB in the league. That honor went to Peyton Manning. It was supposed to be the Colts who had all that success, they just choked in the playoffs every year.


But it goes deeper than that. Even when they were good, the Pats were mostly an afterthought in the Boston sports landscape. The 1985 and 1996 teams made the Super Bowl, but even their own fans viewed them as frauds and weren't surprised when they got blown out. My uncle has always lived in Pittsburgh but has at various times had jobs that were technically in other cities and required him to travel a lot; in 2001, his job was based out of Boston. Throughout that entire season, he never got any heat from his coworkers. Even on the Friday before the Steelers played the Patriots in the AFC Championship game, there was no heckling, no one wearing Patriots gear, no one even said "boo". He returned to Boston the following week and found his coworkers had decorated his office with Patriots gear and spent the day jawing at him for the Steelers losing.


Now, my uncle has a tendency to think that everyone from every city he's ever had the displeasure of working out of is either a weirdo or a moron, but he holds the people of Boston in special disregard. They can't even do fairweather fandom right. If you're going to be cocky about your team winning, at least root for them all the way during a good season; don't wait until after they've already one and start acting like you were a lifelong fan. The Pats were always the No. 4 team in Boston and while the others had legends like Larry Bird, Bill Russell, Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Ted Williams, and Carl Yaztremski, they had, uh, Tony Eason? To see already obnoxious fans acting like their first Super Bowl victory was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream when they couldn't name five players on the team a few weeks before was revolting for most sports fans. And it's not like Boston is Phoenix where nobody cares about sports; they had no problem rooting for the Red Sox through decades of futility, but they can't muster any enthusiasm for the Patriots until after they actually win. Most people might not have known this history, but it was pretty easy to pick up the vibes at the time.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
One part of the old user experience you seem to be forgetting is the part where you plunk down the equivalent of between $250 and $450 in today's money every few years just to have an updated system. And pay $100 for web browsing software. And pay, pay, pay for every little thing that didn't come preinstalled on your $5,000 computer. The days when giving away something for free was enough to prompt an antitrust lawsuit.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
May I ask how the hell you have to do basic algebra as a lawyer? My first year contracts professor, when explaining a damage calculation, said you could ask law students to add or subtract but not multiply or divide. Now I only have to do basic arithmetic when calculating damage estimates, but even when I was in oil and gas and was doing more math it never got more complicated than the dreaded adding of fractions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Except this isn't about Biden; it's about Trump. Biden's reputation as a politician isn't going to improve regardless of what he does. He could have signed death warrants for everyone on the list and it wouldn't matter. So whether or not Biden is willing to commute the sentences of baby killers isn't the issue here. If he had excluded one more name from the list the Fox News comment section wouldn't be full of people trying to discern some kind of general principle, and had he commuted all the sentences they wouldn't be talking about how good of a Catholic he is. the fact that there's an incongruity on a list of pardons isn't something anyone is going to care about for more than a few days. As far as Biden is concerned, his political career is over anyway, so whatever he does now is ultimately irrelevant. And it's not like Democrats are still trying to prop him up as one of the party greats.


Signing an order commuting the sentences of three of the country's most notorious criminals and timing the press release so it hits just before Trump is about to take the oath of office is just a giant middle finger, nothing more. It would piss Trump off to no end to have his parade rained on like that, and provide a distraction from his time in the spotlight. It's not 3D chess as much as it is being petty, but Biden can afford to be petty at this point.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To be fair, Biden still has a month left in office, and he could very well commute the other three sentences at a later date. It would actually make political sense to do it this way, assuming the following is true:


    

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    Republicans wouldn't have given him credit for ideological consistency if he had indeed commuted the other three sentences.
    

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    Bowers, Tsarnaev, and Roof are the only three people on this list the average American has ever heard of.
    

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    Accordingly, the commutation of any of these three sentences would, on its own, be bigger news than the commutation of all of the others.
    

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    Biden's critics will revel in pointing out the lack of consistency.
    

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    Commuting the three biggest names on their own, at a later date, will generate bigger headlines than if they were part of a blanket commutation.
    

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So, commute the death sentences of 37 people no one has ever heard of and see what the fallout is. Then wait a few weeks and commute the remaining three on the eve of the inauguration. If the story gets lost in the shuffle then it's proof that nobody really cares much and that the political fallout from the other 37 commutations will be minimal, and that they were only really a story due to a lack of other news in the run-up to Christmas. On the other hand, if the story becomes a big deal, it will take some of the wind out of Trump's sails at a time when his inauguration would otherwise be dominating the headlines. Especially since he'd theoretically be responding to Republican criticism about his own lack of consistency, and this probably wasn't the kind of consistency that they had in mind. Not saying this will actually happen, just idle speculation on how Biden could play this to his advantage.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Just Finished The Instigator: How Gary Bettman Changed the NHL and Remade the Game Forever. It's significantly better than The NHL, if only because the scope is sufficiently narrowed; it's not a comprehensive history of the league under Bettman but a series of case studies demonstrating why Bettman's reputation among hockey fans is misplaced. It manages to go into significantly more detail on certain things like Winnipeg's relocation to Arizona in 1996, and while it leaves out Hartford's relocation to North Carolina the following year, this doesn't seem like a critical omission. My biggest complaint is that author Jonathan Gatehouse is a writer for Canadian magazine Maclean's, and it shows. He uses the present tense and presents the interviews he conducted as such rather than just using the information they provided or quotes the way a regular author would, which gives some of the chapters the feeling of being extended magazine articles rather than parts of a book.


For the uninitiated, Gary Bettman, the NHL commissioner since 1993, is widely despised among hockey fans and is regularly booed during his annual presentation of the Stanley Cup to the winning team. Canadian hockey fans are especially critical. The following reasons are usually put forth:


    

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    He was commissioner during three lockouts, one of which wiped out a whole season.
    

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    He allowed teams in Quebec, Winnipeg, and Hartford to relocate non-traditional hockey markets during his tenure.
    

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    He presided over an expansion that put more emphasis on growing the game in Sun Belt markets where hockey is a tough sell than on giving traditional hockey fans (i.e. Canadians) more teams that would always sell out.
    

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    Following the lockout, he signed a deal with the obscure Outdoor Life Network (which at the time mostly aired hunting and fishing programs, plus the Tour de France) rather than resigning with ESPN.
    

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    More recently, fans looking to watch all of their team's games often find them blacked out on their preferred platforms.
    

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*He's not a "hockey guy", he's a New York lawyer who spent the '80s and early '90s working for David Stern in the NBA, and has no experience with the game beyond being a spectator.


*Since Montreal won the Stanley Cup a few months into his tenure, no Canadian team has won it.


Most of these arguments are seriously flawed. The most common defense of him is that he works for the owners, so nothing he does can be attributed to him other than to the extent that he's doing the bidding of the owners. But this is just a cop out. To take them individually:


    

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    The 1994–95 lockout was largely a consequence of the prior labor dispute, a 10 day strike in 1992 that was only resolved with a bargaining agreement that lasted one year and was renewed for another year. While the players were willing to begin play in the fall of 1994 while negotiations were underway, Major League Baseball players had struck in August, and at the time the lockout was announced the World Series had been cancelled. The league was well aware that, if negotiations were unsuccessful, something similar would happen, and they locked out the players to ensure that a resolution would occur earlier rather than later. There was no confidence that NHLPA president Bob Goodenow would negotiate in good faith while he had that kind of leverage. The NHLPA was successful in preventing a salary cap that year, which caused team finances to spiral out of control. By 2004 it was clear to the owners that something had to be done, and Goodenow was unwilling to negotiate. The owners were united and while missing a season was an unfortunate consequence, it was ultimately necessary. I'll grant that the 2012–2013 lockout could have been avoided.
    

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    The Canadian teams other than Toronto and Montreal had serious problems that weren't made any better by the paltry exchange rate. Bettman takes the blame for allowing Winnipeg and Quebec to relocate, but he doesn't get any credit for saving Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, and even Vancouver, simply because no one realizes how close to the brink these teams were and is unfamiliar with the behind the scenes work he did to save them. Hartford was in a bad market and wasn't viable long-term.
    

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    There was no chance that the league would be able to make any significant revenue growth without expanding to untapped markets. Putting teams in small Canadian cities may sell out a building, but something like 40% of gate revenues come from sales of luxury suites, and these don't sell in cities without a large corporate presence. The NHL would be resigned to the regional sport it was with teams in Canada, the Northeast, and Upper Midwest and would never achieve true major league status. I don't know why hockey fans wouldn't want their sport to be more popular.
    

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    The deal ESPN offered was so bad it wasn't really an offer at all. The NHL had made bad TV deals before chasing immediate cash over exposure, but ESPN in 2005 wasn't even offering much exposure. The money was low, it only called for a limited selection of games airing on ESPN2, and there was no addition of any studio analysis show. There was no reason ESPN would do much to promote it. OLN soon rebranded as Versus and later NBC Sports, and revamped its programming to be more of a general sports channel with an emphasis on covering things ESPN ignored, like Premiere League soccer and F1 racing. With the NHL as its flagship product and Comcast money behind it, the league would get serious promotion.
    

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    The blackouts are due to a complicated array of contractual obligations and aren't in Bettman's control. It should be noted that being able to watch all of your team's games on television is a relatively recent phenomenon. The gist is that if you pay for a streaming service some televised games are going to be blacked out because the networks paying the big bucks want exclusive rights.
    

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    Bettman was hired specifically because he wasn't a hockey guy. The league had been run by hockey guys up to that point who ran it like a bush league and had no business sense. When Gretzky and Mario were exploding in the '80s the league didn't even have a US network TV deal and didn't even seem to be trying to negotiate one. Prior president John Zeigler left the league in such a mess he was forced out. His predecessor, the venerable Clarence Campbell, left even more of a mess that Zeigler had to clean up.
    

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    The idea that Bettman has anything to do with which teams win is ridiculous, but there are still conspiracy theories about refs intentionally favoring teams. This is contradicted by the fact that, in most series, there's no obvious evidence of this (Bettman certainly wouldn't have picked Edmonton–Carolina to be the first Stanley Cup final after the lockout, and Sidney Crosby would have a few more cups).
    

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So if a tourist from the US does something similar next week should the EU ban all American tourists? There's more of us entering Europe every year than the entire Arab population of the continent.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's not apocryphal, it was just exaggerated by her biographer. Tubman was widely known in abolitionist circles in the 1850s and there is documentary evidence suggesting that she was involved in the Underground Railroad. That is beyond reasonable dispute. The scope and volume of her work is where the variance is between popular accounts and the accepted historical record. Tubman was interviewed for a Boston newspaper in 1863 and described nine rescue missions between 1850 and 1860 during which she helped about 70 people escape slavery. All of these trips were to the same part of Eastern Maryland where she was born, and all were family or other people she knew. Bradford later claimed 19 trips, and a magazine article estimated that she must have rescued at least 300, and thus we end up with 300 people over 19 trips, even if Tubman herself never made such a claim. Bradford did speak to Tubman, but she admits that Tubman had no recollection of some of the trips she (Bradford) was claiming and said that instead she got the information from unidentified "friends". Her activities during the war and afterward are well-documented.


You can choose not to believe Tubman, which is your prerogative, but keep in mind that the kind of first-hand account we get from her is par for the course in history. Having read her accounts, there's no reason to believe they are any more or less reliable than any other documentary evidence we have from the period. Certainly, corroboration of details would be desirable, but keep in mind that she was engaging in secret activity that had dire consequences if discovered. If we aren't willing to believe firsthand accounts without corroboration, then our evidence that the Underground Railroad existed at all is based on a rather shaky foundation. And this has implications for a lot of other things as well. We don't torch entire fields of history just because we're skeptical that people won't lie.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A big part of the issue with Tubman is that professional historians didn't really start taking African American History seriously until the 1970s, which was coincidentally around the same time that popular "revisionist" history started making inroads. Tubman is an interesting figure because her contributions to American history aren't unique, but her status is because she's identifiable. She's representative of a group of anonymous people who did similar things but didn't get the same profile. The upshot is that she didn't attract the same interest from historians looking to examine her life in detail. While social history, also of increased prominence since the 1970s, does look at people who aren't "great figures", it also consciously avoids trying to create them. For instance, a social history of the Underground Railroad would gather recollections from as many people as practicable and avoid placing emphasis on any one individual.


It wasn't until the early 1990s that the idea of examining the American mythos itself became the subject of serious discussion. Mystic Chords of Memory looked at how historical myth is created and how it changes over time. James Loewen isn't a historian and his work is controversial, but Lies My Teacher Told Me was a popular success and thus drew attention to the idea of heroification and raised general awareness that history isn't the pat story you got from high school textbooks. It still took another ten years before historians started looking at Tubman, and by then the process of making her into a heroic figure was complete, her life story filled with the kind of anecdotal detail that historians find suspect.


The consensus that emerged in the 2000s was basically that ther broad arc of her story is true but that some of the details have largely been either exaggerated or fabricated. She was a well-known and respected conductor on the Underground Railroad, but the number of people she helped escape was not in the hundreds but was more like 70. She did work as a nurse and spy during the Civil War. She had some kind of relationship with John Brown; she was prominent enough among the abolitionist community that she is mentioned in his writings. Bradford heavily relied on interviews with Tubman, but she also wrote to contemporary figures Tubman had mentioned for verification, and these letters survive.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


From a politics perspective, any Republicans who cross the aisle to vote for Jeffries are 100% getting primaried, so that won't happen.




It's unlikely, but getting primaried isn't as much of a concern as some make it out to be. Primary threats only work for safe seats. If the district is competitive, sure, the Republicans can try a primary challenge, but an extreme partisan is dead in the water in the general.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is this really a good thing for conservatives, though? For years I've heard them complain both about the length of bills and the power of the administrative state. The trouble is that if you insist on a shorter bill that does essentially the same thing as a longer one, what you're really doing is eliminating detail. If you're sticking to, say, Herman Cain's 9-page limit, what you're really doing is delegating to an agency with rulemaking authority.


Anyway, according to CNN as of 5 minutes ago, it looks like this new bill is dead. House conservatives balked at Trump's 2-year suspension of the debt ceiling, and there's nothing in it to entice Democrats. What we're seeing here is a repeat of the old divisions that made it impossible for the Republicans to elect a speaker last time around, and Massie has already said he's not voting for Johnson next year, so we might see a repeat of the McCarthy fiasco in the near future. Trump can take his victory lap, but it looks like the infighting that's dogged Republicans for a while isn't going anywhere. It's not inconceivable that the Democrats could tap one or two swing-district Republicans to vote for Jeffries in the name of ending the circus and getting down to business and deliver Trump an embarrassing defeat before he even takes office (it doesn't help that he raided the House for some of his appointments).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				NFL Weekly Thread: Week 16
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it's the portal more than NIL, at least for teams that don't have a ton of money available. You figure every 17 year-old kid who's being heavily recruited thinks he can just walk into Ohio State or LSU or Clemson and prove that he's worthy of being in the starting lineup and on the fast track to the NFL, and the recruiters do little to disabuse them of this notion ("Well, it's competitive but if you work hard..."). Instead, they find themselves buried on the depth chart behind two other guys, and when they think they'll get a chance at a promotion some other guy comes in to take their place. They only get playing time during blowouts, and the coaches aren't paying them much attention. Then they put their name in the portal and Iowa State or Georgia Tech or whoever comes calling and now they're suddenly in demand at a school that's not as big but big enough to get them national exposure if they're good. Or they're tearing it up at Kent State and have a chance of moving up in the world by transferring to Purdue. Schools that can't recruit as well can still compete by getting the big schools' castoffs and the small schools' surprises.


As NIL and soon, direct payments, become involved, I think this calculus changes. Pitt already saw Jordan Addison leave because USC simply offered him more money than any Pitt booster could match, especially in the early days of NIL payments. I was listening to a discussion on the radio yesterday about how colleges shouldn't even waste money on recruiting when you can just buy a team or get it through the transfer portal. The argument was that you can talk about the history and facilities and campus environment all you want, but they're always going to go to the school that can write the largest check. And if you can't afford to write that check, then sit back and wait for the inevitable transfer.


One thing I would add to my above comment is that while the article points out that the ruling isn't final, in reality I wouldn't expect the court to reverse it. One of the requirements for obtaining a preliminary injunction is demonstrating a high probability of success on the merits, and while the arguments probably weren't briefed as fully as the will be later, an appellate court granting an injunction is a strong indication on which way they're moving. This is in line with the general trend that has seen courts striking down any restrictions relating to NIL payment. One article I read suggested that the NCAA needed to settle all of the lawsuits before they were made completely powerless, but this only delays the inevitable. In a sport where there's no collective bargaining and athletes cycle through every few years, any settlement is only going to apply to a limited number of people.


There are some proposals out there by academic types who claim that the problem would be solved if only courts would rule that student athletes were employees, or if the NLRB would institute rules allowing them to collectively bargain. This is a pipe dream. First, the NLRB can make all the rules it wants, but there's currently no incentive for the student athletes to collectively bargain. Even if we limit the unions to single sports, we're talking about thousands of athletes, none of whom are staying more than a few years, so organization is a problem straight away. Classification as employees doesn't solve this problem but creates more, in that now they have to be paid minimum wage (which wouldn't be that expensive under the current system) and abide by all the other HR bullshit that workplaces have to abide by. Getting back to the incentive problem, though, even if you could bargain, why would you? Collective bargaining units are usually formed when employees have grievances with their employers that can only be addressed by power in numbers. What grievances do student athletes have? There were student athletes in the Northwestern case who wanted to form a union, but that was before the NIL ruling. We're in a situation now where athletes can sell their services to the highest bidder on an annual basis, and courts are hesitant to uphold any restrictions. When commentators say that the mess can be solved by collective bargaining, what they really mean is that it would be easier for the schools to impose restrictions if there were a union to negotiate with. But who is going to form a union for the purpose of allowing the boss to implement more restrictions?


The only way I can see this ever being addressed is if the NCAA were to eliminate the student athlete protections from its bylaws. The courts seem intent on eliminating anything else that isn't related to scheduling or rules or officials, so what do they have to lose? The first thing I would drop is the limits on practice time for football and basketball. They're currently limited to 20 hours per week in season and 8 in the offseason, but if they're getting paid like employees they can work like employees. Schools that want to win will start implementing more intense practice schedules, and the athletes won't be able to do anything about it. If they flunk all their classes, well, that's a fringe benefit; if you're here to get an education, you can pay tuition. Stop coddling them with tutors and lounges and multi-million dollar locker rooms (seriously, the difference between Pitt's locker room and the Steelers locker room in the same building is astounding).


Teams that were serious about winning would accordingly practice more, and with the money involved, some would want their teams at the practice facility the 10–12 hours per day that NFL teams expect. There will obviously be some kids who are dead serious about their careers and will want to spend as much time on the game as possible. But few 18-year-olds with no shot at the NFL want that kind of commitment, especially if they're still ostensibly there to get an education. Taking online classes in a cubicle adjacent to the locker room in between workouts probably wasn't what they had in mind. Not having a social life during the season because you have to get up at 6 am for practice every day except Sunday and Friday probably wasn't what they had in mind. The schedule of the average NFL player doesn't have much appeal to someone who isn't playing football for a living. But any program that adopts such practices will probably have an advantage, and in a market where more wins equals more money, few schools will be content to be left behind.


One possible counterargument to this theory is that some schools will adopt less demanding schedules and use that as a selling point to recruits. But I don't see it happening that way. Such a school would attract lazy players, and, combined with the built-in lesser amount of practice, would make it hard for these school to be competitive with the tougher ones. With so many schools looking for a piece of the pie, and so many roster spots to fill on college teams, it's now a race to the bottom to see who can work the kids to the point of diminishing returns. At this point, the only way out for the athletes is to make concessions about payments and transfer rules, and you need a bargaining unit for that. I doubt this would actually happen, but it's the only way I see collective bargaining entering college football.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				NFL Weekly Thread: Week 16
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm glad this is in the news again because it dovetails nicely with something semi-related: James Franklin's complaining about how the transfer portal closes in the middle of the playoffs, meaning his good backups are all out. There was some discussion of this on local sports talk radio where everyone seemed to be in agreement that it was ridiculous that the portal closed on December 28 and shouldn't even open until after the championship game. There was a brief mention that it might be some kind of transfer credit thing that keeps them from moving the dates back, but this was quickly dismissed since everyone seems to understand that the idea of these kids being students is a myth anyway.


But I don't think they really gave the issue proper treatment. The National Championship game is on January 20. The portal, as it is now, is open for almost 3 weeks, so if it opened on January 21 it wouldn't close until sometime around February 7. In the middle of the spring semester. If schools want to maintain the ever-fading illusion that these are student-athletes at all, they can't start accepting mid-semester transfers purely for athletic reasons. If they do, they open themselves up to further lawsuits challenging the entire idea of academic eligibility, or even that a player has to actually be enrolled in the school. After all, if you're regularly allowing athletes to drop out of classes a few weeks in before transferring just in time to be hopelessly behind any classes they can manage to get into (people out of college a while tend to forget how quickly classes fill up), it's going to be hard for the NCAA to make the argument that they even pretend to care about academics.


One possible solution is to delay the effective date of the transfer until the summer semester. This creates an additional problem, though, in that the player wouldn't be able to participate in spring practices, and any coach looking at transfers would like to know what he has as quickly as possible and get the new guy integrated with the team. It's hard to imagine that this policy would lead to any less bitching on the part of people like Franklin than the current system.


Here's where I think this all ties into Klosterman's point: None of this has affected fandom because most of the concerns are academic for the time being. We can bitch about players being paid or entering the transfer portal, but it hasn't really affected the on-field product that much. Middle and lower tier schools aren't able to pay big NIL money like the big schools, but they weren't able to recruit like the big schools, either, and the effect of the portal so far seems to be a wash. If nothing else, I don't see Colorado or Indiana or even Pitt (despite the massive choke job) having the seasons they've had without the recent rule changes. Coach Prime might be a doofus who gets criticized for his way of doing business, but that program was circling the drain before he came, and he single-handedly revived it.


The problems will start to creep in when the economics of the game start to have an adverse impact on the top schools. Take Penn State, for instance. In a normal year, if Drew Allar got injured and they lost a playoff game because of it, it would suck for them but be an accepted part of the game. If Allar gets injured this year and they're forced to start a freshman who has never played in an NCAA game, it will be a disaster. The consensus among Penn State fans will be that the normal backup would have at least given them a shot, while losing him on short notice completely wrecked their season. As a Pitt fan, I would absolutely love to see this happen if only for the number of central Pennsylvanian heads that would explode.


The starters aren't immune to this either. In recent years, there's been a trend of NFL-bound players sitting out bowl games to avoid injury. After Matt Corral got injured in his bowl game, it became common wisdom among commentators that sitting out is the smart move and it's just not worth it to play. How long before this logic starts creeping into the playoff? If you're going to the NFL the next season, the downside of playing greatly outweighs the upside, especially if you've already indicated that you're only chasing money. One or two games might not be a tough sell, but three or four? What happens when starters start hitting the portal before the playoffs when offered more money? Fans begged for a playoff for years and now they've got one. If the whole thing ends up determining not who has the better team but who has the most seniors not heading to the NFL, or the fewest guys entering the portal, or any number of ancillary factors, then it will turn into a farce that even hardcore fans will find hard to accept.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Can I ask how you put a 7 year old to bed when the sun is still up?




You tell him to go to bed, just as my dad told me to go to bed when I was seven and had to go to bed at 8:30 in the spring. I don't know when or why putting school age kids to bed became an hour-long ordeal for the parents.