Rov_Scam
1d ago
Calling Cliff Asness a "lifelong Democrat" is disingenuous at the very least. I used to keep CNBC on as background noise when I was in law school and his name rings a bell as the guy who was complaining that one or another of Obama's bailouts was too friendly to workers and not friendly enough to hedge fund billionaires such as himself. Some further internet research shows he was a Rubio supporter in 2016 and a Haley supporter more recently. I don't know what the details of his voter registration are, but he definitely comes across more as one of those never Trump conservatives who Republicans spent the last 8 years assuring us were electorally irrelevant.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
As a products liability lawyer, I can tell you that insurance coverage is a lot more complicated than that. Any hypothetical policy would base the premiums on the number of vehicles sold. If there's a defect that results in injury, only a small percentage of the affected vehicles are going to result in claims, and only a small percentage of the total claims are going to involve huge losses. Huge verdicts only result when the insurance companies are adamant that there is no liability and are looking to get out from under it. Once it's clear there's liability (and often not even then), they'll settle claims at standard rates. You may get a couple of eye popping verdicts but these won't become a normal thing. No Plaintiff's lawyer is going to spend 100k+ taking a contingency case to trial chasing a verdict that's likely to bankrupt the company and leave him and his client waiting 5 years in the unsecured creditor line in a Chapter 11 hoping they can recover a percentage of the original verdict. Better to take the cash now.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
I don't know that any of these are great examples. Let's approach them individually:
Pregnant Worker's Fairness Act
It's a bit academic, but it should be noted that the EEOC doesn't actually have Title VII rulemaking authority. The "rules" they promulgate are merely interpretive documents that inform businesses on how to comply and inform courts on the agency's interpretation. The courts themselves are only bound to follow EEOC guidance if it's "reasonable". Now, there are decisions out there that say that courts can't just wave these away and should give the agency deference, so there's a pretty big hurdle to overcome if you want to go against this guidance, and it gets pretty complicated here, but suffice it to say that courts aren't bound by these rules the same as they would if they were promulgated by an agency that actually had rulemaking authority. It should also be noted that the EEOC still has to follow the APA when it comes to procedural matters in promulgation (like notice and comment), so this lack of authority doesn't exactly make it easy for them to run wild.
As far as the actual rule is concerned, it's hard to say from a Republican perspective what the EEOC should have actually done. Saying outright that the law didn't apply to abortion would have created a situation where the EEOC guidance was directly at-odds with any reasonable canon of legislative interpretation; I don't think any textualist could argue with a straight face that abortions aren't pregnancy-related. Saying nothing about the matter isn't an option either. Since they're still bound by the APA, they have to address the comments they received, and they received plenty of comments about abortion. And even if they could have just omitted the abortion section, all that really does is kick the can down the road for when a court actually has to decide the matter, and it's unlikely that any but the staunchest anti-abortion judge would rule that abortions aren't related to pregnancy.
But that's all irrelevant because it's unlikely that this rule (or lack thereof) would ever result in litigation. The rules pretty clearly state that the effect of this guidance is that an employer is required to give a woman leave (paid or unpaid) to receive an abortion. While this seems like raw culture war bait, the reality is that, excepting for circumstances where someone is trying to rub it in an employer's face, no one is specifically asking for time off to get an abortion. I've personally never had an employer ask about the nature of any medical procedure I've taken time off to get, or had them ask me which doctor I was going to, and if a doctor's excuse is required, I doubt many employers are going to do internet research to determine if this is a doctor who exclusively performs abortions. Employers generally aren't allowed to ask employees about medical conditions that aren't work-related, except to verify leave, although as long as a doctor confirms that the absence is for a medical reason they can't really inquire further. And I doubt they would, since hunting for people who are getting abortions means, practically speaking, that they'd have to investigate every employee's medical leave, which I doubt any really want to do. There may be some unlikely confluence of factors where this could become a real issue, but I doubt it. Most women seeking abortions aren't going to tell their employers that they need time off specifically to get one.
If Republicans felt that strongly of this, they would have sought to get specific language into the bill. They didn't, and complaining about this is just them getting hoisted by their own petard given the electoral consequences involved.
FFLs When the entire point of specific statutory language is to expand a definition, you can't complain too loudly when that definition gets expanded. If you had sole rulemaking authority with regards to this, how would you expand the definition to conform with the new law without simply restating the old definition? I'm sure you can think of a dozen ways that this could be done, but that's beside the point. The point is that someone has to come up with these definitions and they have to conform with the statutory language without being overbroad. But that's tricky. The problem here is that there are two basic categories that are uncontroversial. One is the people who are actually running gun stores who need FFLs for legitimate business purposes. The other is people who simply have a gun they don't want anymore and want to sell it. But there's a third category of people we've talked about before who the government really doesn't like — people who want to sell guns part-time or as a hobby. You mentioned in a previous post how the ATF no longer will issue FFLs for hobbyists. You can disagree with that stance all you want, but it seems to me that Congress agrees with that and that was the specific intent behind the change in language. Now it's up to the ATF to flesh out that definition to cover the myriad circumstances in which someone might be selling guns "for profit". And that's hard! The problem as I see it doesn't stem so much from the law itself or ATF's interpretation of it but that there is a group of people for whom any further restrictions on gun sales is bad and needs to be stopped. They simply aren't arguing that the law was a good idea but ATF bungled the implementation; they're arguing that the law was a bad idea to begin with and using the ATF's interpretation as proof. But those are two separate arguments.
FACE Act It's telling that this law has only become controversial in recent years, after the Biden Administration used it aggressively in the wake of Dobbs. For the first 30 or so years of its existence, the fact that it was never used in cases of church vandalism was never an issue. At least not enough of an issue for 2 Republican presidents to invoke it in 12 years, one of whom was devoutly religious and the other of whom was devoutly into culture warring. It's also telling that the act also allows for private enforcement via a civil cause of action that few parties seem bothered to sue under. That being said, anti-abortion protestors necessarily do most of their work when the place is open and in full view of the public. Most of the church vandalism was done at night by people who actually disguised themselves. One type of crime is much easier to investigate than the other.
Of course, that doesn't really apply to the Nota case, because the perpetrator was caught in the act. But it doesn't compare to the Houck case, at least if you actually look at the procedural posture. The information in the Nota case was filed the day before the plea was entered. This itself was several months after the incident. What this suggests was that this was already a done deal by the time it was even on the court's docket; for all we know, the prosecutor could have threatened to throw the book at Nota before offering a misdemeanor charge and a sentencing recommendation as a lifeline. Houck, on the other hand, was found not guilty by a jury. For all we know he could have been offered the same deal as Nota but turned it down; I'd be surprised to say the least, if there was no deal offered at all.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
I could say the same thing about any American, though. Believing the United States should restrict trade and immigration is a luxury belief for Americans, almost all of whom have jobs and live decent lives compared to people in say, Guatemala or Venezuela. We all have the luxury of being born in a country where a shitty job at a convenience store pays well above what most of the world is making.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
I think it's best that reorient ourselves to the initial topic of discussion. I apologize since my initial comment was a bit opaque and my replies were hastily written on mobile, so let me clarify the crux of my argument — There's an outward stereotype, mostly perpetrated, for lack of a better term, by the right, that agency is an inherently right-wing characteristic. The argument goes that if conservatives are more likely to blame one's failures on individual factors, most notably lack of effort, while liberals are more likely to point to external factors like structural inequities. I was trying to rebut this presumption by saying that right-wingers don't take this argument to the end of its ideological tether, since they temper their otherwise libertarian free-market principles with calls for restrictions on immigration and trade in the guise of protecting American workers. That's all I was saying. When pressed, @Walterodim made reference to J.D. Vance, who has, in the past, complained about the tendency of lower-class white conservatives to repeatedly make bad decisions and blame their misfortune on external factors, be it the economy, China, Obama, the government, immigrants, etc. My comment was intended to point out two things: First, that these sentiments aren't limited to lower-class conservatives but are prevalent among successful ones as well, and second, that Vance himself has echoed the same sentiments himself since he entered politics and had to cater to the class of people he criticized in his book. That's all I was saying. I wasn't making any particular argument about my own policy preferences or trying to criticize other people for theirs, just disagreeing with categorical statements about the belief in personal agency among liberals and conservatives that a lot of comments were making. I certainly didn't intend to go down this road. And while I place most of the blame on myself for this misunderstanding, I do think you made an assumption that I was following this thread more closely than I actually was, and your comment, as we lawyers like to say, "assumes facts not in evidence".
But while we're here, I might as well respond to your comment. I'm not conservative, but I am a liberal free-marketer who generally believes in what I call "welfare capitalism", which is mostly laissez-faire but allows for government interference in the case of market distortions and for some kind of welfare state. As such, I believe that a free market should be the default, and while interventions are permissible, they have to be justified. And this isn't just my default; it was the default throughout most of American history. The Constitution says nothing about immigration and very little about market regulation, and indeed the country didn't make any serious attempts at regulating either until well into the 20th Century. So when you ask me what I'd do about the passage of some particular law that was passed that threatened my livelihood, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that my opinion wouldn't be influenced by the fact that I'm directly affected. But whether I actually try to get the law overturned would depend on whether I think it's a good law. What I certainly wouldn't do is directly advocate for rent-seeking legislation, like having the state cap annual bar admissions to drive up the price of legal work. If there are stupid laws on the books that are having the effect of disadvantaging workers in the Rust Belt then I'm all in favor of getting rid of them, and I'd agree that the left advocates for plenty of stupid new laws that would have this effect. But opposition to them isn't what I'm talking about. What conservatives are advocating for is deviating not just from the default, but from the status quo, by passing additional immigration and trade restrictions for the express purpose of benefiting a favored class. And that's not exactly an expression of self-agency.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
I don't remember who it was, exactly, but what you posted wasn't the kind of thing I was referring to. I'm too lazy to research the specifics here, but there was some kind of law used in auditing that says certain numbers are evidence of fraud because of how the digits are distributed or something along those lines, and they were using that alone as evidence that vote totals from certain counties were fabricated.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
They didn't take the company away; they levied a fine. It's a large fine, but dissolving the company would have involved appointing a receiver and liquidating all of the company's assets.
Rov_Scam
6mo ago
There's a pretty big distinction between zealous representation and defamation. Participation in a matter of public importance doesn't give you license to make shit up out of whole cloth.
Rov_Scam
8mo ago
I'm more interested in what the policy prescriptions were that these people found so odious.
Rov_Scam
9mo ago
And what do they tell me? Do they just have the record locations memorized?
Rov_Scam
9mo ago
I'm not a CS guy so I don't know what that is. If I walk into the office and tell the clerk I want to search the archive for records indexed to Michael Price, how do I find them?
Rov_Scam
10mo ago
The distinction is that we're not talking about sex. Or cigarettes, or tattoos, or lottery tickets, or any of the other things that kids want to do that have laws preventing them from doing, with or without parental consent. We're talking about medical treatment that a large part of the medical establishment believes is necessary. When it comes to age of consent laws, the state's interest is that young people are susceptible to being abused by older people due to the inevitable power dynamic between children and adults, and even if we were to grant that there were some situations where a fourteen year old would be able to have a sexual relationship with a 35 year old that wouldn't be abusive, that wouldn't be the case in the vast majority of situations where that happens. So given that the high likelihood of abuse and the strong state interest in preventing child abuse, the laws can be justified.
The most prevalent argument I hear against allowing teenagers to transition before 18 is that such transitioning can lead to irreversible changes that will have a permanent effect on one's body, and that teenagers are notoriously emotional and fickle and may come to regret making such a drastic decision with regard to what may turn out to have been simply a phase, in the same sense that most adults wouldn't want the clothing and hairstyle decisions they made at that age to be permanent. I'm not unsympathetic to that argument. The problem is that, unlike most phases, this isn't something you can just wait out to see if it goes away; the consequences of not taking any action are similar. If going through puberty as the undesired sex or staying on puberty blockers too long also causes irreversible effects, then the decision to transition has to be weighed in consideration of these effects. If subsequent data shows that a large percentage (i.e. at least 50%) of those who transition as young teenagers go on to regret their decision or retransition as young adults, then the argument for state involvement becomes much stronger. But I'm not aware that any such data exists apart from anecdotal examples, and that's not enough for me to think that the state should be interfering with a personal medical decision.
Rov_Scam
11mo ago
I think DeSantis has more appeal for moderates than Trump, but I doubt it's enough to flip very many Biden votes. You say that you'd pick DeSantis over Trump yourself but unless you voted for Biden in 2020 your opinion doesn't really matter; it just means that DeSantis might do about as well as Trump did in 2020 while Trump himself would do worse. Last I checked that wasn't the goal of the candidacy.
Rov_Scam
11mo ago
Yes how could a candidate win without just getting softballs from the media. Wait, every single democrat successful presidential candidate from recent memory.
When conservatives talk about bias in the mainstream media, they're referring to any media that isn't specifically right-leaning. And the only kinds of people who regularly watch (and not hate-watch) specifically right-leaning media are people who aren't going to vote for a Democrat anyway, so there's no need to, though most Democratic candidates usually will throw a bone to mainstream right-leaning outlets like Fox. Republicans don't have that luxury. Yeah, you can dodge MSNBC but probably not regular NBC or CBS or even CNN. Fox news averages fewer than 2 million daily viewers while the big 3 networks combine for about 20 million for their evening news broadcasts. 60 Minutes alone averaged over 8 million viewers this past season, and that number would probably top 10 million if a major party candidate were interviewed. Their interviews with Trump and Biden ahead of the 2020 election drew around 17 million each. One simply can't get that kind of "earned" exposure by sticking with pliant conservative outlets, and these numbers obviously don't include the people who read articles summarizing the interviews. And does he plan on skipping the debates, too? A guy like Trump can get away with that since he has a comfortable lead, but DeSantis doesn't have that luxury. It's hard to make the case that Ron's a fighter if he isn't even willing to throw down with fucking Lesley Stahl.
As for anti-wokeness, I think it does play well with independents and probably most Democrats. I'm a Democrat who wishes this shit would just end, and a lot of my friends who are otherwise a lot more liberal than I am feel the same way. Ron's problem is twofold. First is that his solutions are more heavy-handed than a lot of people are comfortable with. If his "war on wokism" or whatever were limited to making arguments about how intellectually bankrupt and incoherent it is and refusal to play games in the name of whatever, then I think it would be palatable to independents. If it means enacting legislation to do things like curb private speech (e.g. restricting corporate DEI initiatives) then it's a totally different ballgame. The second problem is that even though a lot of people are annoyed by wokeness it's not necessarily something that's high on the priority list. Most people have no personal experience with the more egregious examples floated in the media, and even those who claim specific knowledge that isn't widely reported have, in my experience, mostly heard it second and third-hand. Like the guy at the bar who was claiming CRT material was being distributed in a nearby school district to where we live—he doesn't have kids or grandkids in school and is relying on reports from his cousin's son's friend or whatever. For most people the most they see is the occasional pronoun in an email signature, and while that's irritating it probably isn't something you're going to change your vote over. One thing the most recent two midterms taught us is that bread and butter issues win elections. The Democrats who flipped seats in 2018 did so on the backs of Republican threats to healthcare, and the Republicans who flipped seats last year were milquetoast moderates. The culture warriors did miserably. That's what it's going to take to flip D votes R, and I don't know that DeSantis really offers that kind of thing. I'd say his chances were better if he ran culture war to boost his chances in the primary but backed it up with solid moderate stances on mainstream issues, but I haven't seen that from him yet, and I think it's too late for him to change tracks now, especially since, at least so far, he's making Trump seem like the moderate option.
Rov_Scam
11mo ago
He's not the media golden boy in the sense that they like him, necessarily, but in the sense that, up until relatively recently, they acted like he was the future of the Republican Party. They've backed off this pronouncement in recent months as Trump's enduring popularity has made it clear that this isn't true, but that's just because all available evidence suggests that it isn't.
Rov_Scam
11mo ago
But is DeSantis more popular with the general electorate? There was a time when this would have seemed plausible, but the headlines he's generated since he became the media's golden boy have all been related to whatever culture war bullshit he's promoting in his state. He painted himself into a corner and now he finds himself running to the right of Trump. Had he focused his campaign on administrative competence that vaguely hinted at effective implementation of MAGA-adjacent principles, I'd say he has a good chance of winning the general election. But the hasn't done that. He's publicly waged an all-out war against wokism and LGBT stuff, not to mention his quixotic war against Disney and the stunt where he sent immigrants from Texas up north. If he'd done these things quietly it may have provoked some kind of backlash but not nearly as much as centering his entire public persona around them. Plus, he seems unwilling to give interviews to anyone who will do anything other than lob softballs at him. It's nice work if you can get it, but he can't do this all the way through a fucking presidential election and expect to win. Remember, he needs to convince people in swing states who voted for Biden that he's the more reasonable candidate than Trump, and those states have all either stood pat when it was expected they may shift right a bit (Nevada, Arizona) or decisively shifted left (Pennsylvania, Michigan).
Trump was able to win in 2016 largely because he was a totally unknown entity running against a lousy Democtratic candidate. Once people knew what to expect, he lost. DeSantis doesn't have that advantage, and simply being a Trump who can wage the culture war better provided he has a compliant legislature isn't going to convince moderates and independents that he's much of an improvement.
Rov_Scam
11mo ago
Except there are no sides, at least not in the traditional sense. I live in Western PA and coal mining had a brief resurgence in the mid '00s as oil prices shot up and "clean coal technology" became the new buzzword. We were the "Saudi Arabia" of coal. Turns out we were also the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, and as soon as the shale boom happened coal mines were closing left and right, and coal power plants were either converted to gas or razed completely. A lot of people tried to blame Obama and stricter environmental regulations for the closures, but long-term the economics were against them. Had the shale boom not happened the coal operators would have simply paid the costs of compliance, and had Obama declined to increase regulation the mines would have closed a year or two later, since cost wasn't the only consideration when it came to power plants switching to gas. The only thing that could have realistically saved the coal industry was increased regulations on natural gas development, but it's not like political alignments are set up as pro-coal anti-gas v. pro-gas anti-coal. It's more like pro-fossil fuels vs. pro-renewables, and this made the laid-off miners in PA, OH, and WV get pissed off at Obama but not equally pissed off at their respective state governments for not putting the screws to the gas industry. Quite the contrary; most of these people were in favor lowering the tax burden on gas development and minimizing regulation.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
She isn't entitled to half of your assets, because when you're married there are no "your" assets, only "our" assets (excepting what you had before you got married). So before she leaves she drains the bank account and there's nothing you can do about it. In modern times it's considered fraud to take assets in contemplation of divorce, but since divorce doesn't exist in this scenario, what are you going to complain about? And forget estrangement, she's still entitled to live in the house, so what if she decides to stay and make your life a living hell? She could give her boyfriend blowjobs in your easy chair while you're home and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it, except surrender the territory and move out.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
I think I misunderstood you then; your concern isn't about ambiguity, because there is no ambiguity. It's illegal to buy guns with the purpose of transferring them to someone else without an FFL. The private sale exception only applies to guns that were legitimately bought for personal use inherited, gifted, etc. And you can't get an FFL unless you're actually running a full-time business that involves selling guns. There are a number of requirements that seem onerous but that's the point; if you're running a gun store the stuff you described isn't onerous at all. The fact that a part-timer can't get an FFL isn't an ambiguity but a specific policy prescription. The government doesn't want amateurs and hobbyists dabbling in highly regulated industries. Given that something like 70% of guns used in crimes are from straw purchases and another 10% or so are from direct sales, there's good reason to ensure that people in the business of selling guns are actually in the business of selling guns.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
The argument against foreigners having doe it is that it takes quite a bit of technical expertise to handle anthrax and avoid killing yourself in the process. The envelopes were postmarked domestically, and the idea that a foreign national would be able to either smuggle anthrax into the US without triggering an infection in the process or being able to obtain it domestically are slim.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
I'm saying that in the context of the Queen argument, saying that they are a top 300 band isn't saying much; they've always been considered a top 300 band. I remember a kid on Reddit asking a while back why Bob Dylan was considered a top artist, up there with The Beatles, Queen, and Led Zeppelin. It's the inclusion of Queen into this category that seems new to me. No one in that kid's position would ask the same question with reference to The Dells and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, who are also in the Hall of Fame. Yes, the Hall is exclusive when talking about the entire corpus of rock music. But it's not that exclusive when talking about bands that achieved a certain degree of commercial success.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
You're making my point for me. However you want to couch it, you can't use the fact that someone stands for the anthem, or the pledge, or whatever, as evidence of their patriotism, because it has been culturally ingrained to the point where not doing it becomes a conspicuous sign of disrespect among certain people. If church attendance and public religious displays ever reached the same level of ubiquity in our society, they would lose whatever virtue-signalling power they have now.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
What do you mean by "accept reality"? Above, you go on and on about how there's no evidence for religion and there is for science, etc., etc., but you've never told us what you're basing any of this on. Do you only accept scientific theories that you have confirmed through your own experiments? Or are you simply parroting "the truth" as you read it from people you trust, who probably also didn't conduct these experiments themselves but are merely relaying third-hand accounts via popular sources that you're simply trusting without verification.
So how do you know that trans people simply "won't accept reality"? What studies did you personally conduct on the subject? How many trans people have you actually spoken to? What PhD do you have to demonstrate that you have the kind of educational background that would allow you to even begin to understand all of this stuff? What empirical observations have you made that would allow you to contradict the various lefty doctors and psychologists who say that trans is totally a real thing and that we need to start transitioning kids at age ten? Or are you merely making assumptions about this based on pop-science combined with your own preexisting opinions?
The FARA allegations weren't anywhere near strong enough for the government to prosecute. Having business dealings with foreign interests isn't illegal; it's only when you take the next step of lobbying for these interests without disclosing it. This is where the theory fails, because the evidence of any actual lobbying is weak. The most I've seen from conservative outlets is that he made numerous trips to visit his father while he was involved in these foreign dealings, which, yeah, the guy visited his father. He probably would have visited him regardless of what business he was doing at the time. The defense attorney in that case is going to call every person on the White House visitor log who could have conceivably been in the room with Hunter and Joe on the days in question and they're all going to invariably deny that any lobbying on behalf of foreign interests took place; meanwhile, the prosecution won't be able to put forth a single witness who would be able to testify that it had. This isn't evidence, it's conjecture, and the prosecution would never be able to get this in front of a jury. I'm not familiar with any potential drug charges so maybe you could clue me in on those.
More options
Context Copy link