Rov_Scam
1yr ago
In the early days of the War on Drugs, most police departments just arrested low-level dealers on the theory that that would be enough to curb the flow. Even the DEA, a group that now almost exclusively focus on the highest of the high-level drug dealers, spent most of the 1970s busting hippies for small amounts of weed. What you're doing here is pointing to things like corrupt election officials and other high-level forms of fraud and suggesting that a show of force against people whom you yourself agree aren't really guilty will somehow act as a deterrent.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
You think that in a liberal society it's the proper role of government to threaten legal consequences for exercise of free speech rights?
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
A blockade isn't as easy as it sounds on paper. Under international law, a blockade is considered an act of war, and China would be under immediate pressure to clarify whether it is indeed at war with Taiwan. If it says yes, then it implicitly recognizes the independence of Taiwan. If it says no, then other countries are free to ignore the blockade. But formalities aside, I would expect that the Chinese come up with some sophisticated rigamorole to dodge the issue, and that the US doesn't buy it. The US and its allies would try to resolve the situation diplomatically while moving the entire Pacific fleet into the area. If the issue isn't resolved, then the US would take a stance that the blockade is illegal and start escorting resupply convoys into Taiwan's harbors. This puts the Chinese in a real jam—if it allows the ships to pass then it it effectively capitulates and is exposed as a paper tiger; if it tries to enforce the blockade it risks starting World War III. And US involvement in Taiwan's defense is practically guaranteed since the opening shots were fired at a US vessel and not Taiwan itself. A blockade just gives the US time to build up a presence in the area and presents a risk that an actual shooting war will be against the US and not Taiwan. I'm not saying that this necessarily will happen, but the blockade strategy seems inherently more risky than just invading all at once while the US is preoccupied elsewhere and hope they don't get involved militarily.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
As an attorney whose practice includes bankruptcy (though not so much lately), while recessions can certainly cause bankruptcies, the bankruptcies themselves normally don't happen until the recession is over and recovery begins. The one caveat is that this is true of consumer bankruptcies; I can't speak for business bankruptcies since I don't handle them. But basically, a person doesn't immediately go bankrupt upon a recession happening. First, there's normally a lag between the recession hitting and job loss. Sales slowly decline, work dries up, people are gradually let go. Then they get unemployment for six months, which they may or may not be able to make ends meet with. Some people are already overextended and the job loss is a disaster. But either way it takes a while before the credit card charges start to add up. Then it gets to the point where even making minimum payments becomes a challenge. Then the recession ends and they get a job making comparable money to before but there's so much extra debt and various arrearages that it doesn't solve the problem. I would add that if we're still in the throes of recession and an unemployed client approaches me about bankruptcy, I'd probably advise against it for the simple reason that it won't do anything. Bankruptcy is only worth it if the debtor will be on sound financial footing afterwards. If debt is eliminated but the person is immediately forced into taking on more debt due to lack of income, they're quickly back in the same position but without bankruptcy as an option. On average, I'd say it usually takes about 9 months to a year after a recession hits before consumer bankruptcies start to pick up, and they don't really peak until 2 or 3 years afterward, for the simple reason that bankruptcy is the kind of thing people put of as long as possible, even if it isn't the best strategy.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Ethics rules typically prohibit non-lawyers from entering profit-sharing agreements for legal services. Arizona has loosened these restrictions in recent years to allow non-lawyers to be partners in law firms. The reasoning behind this move was that lawyers aren't necessarily the best business people so larger law firms could get an advantage by hiring experienced corporate managers.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I don't know that a Pearl Harbor style preemptive attack on a powerful country you aren't at war with is a great strategy. An ambivalence among the American public about entering a war to defend Taiwan is going to go out the window after missile attacks on US territory. It also opens the door to retaliatory strikes on the Chinese mainland; every Chinese naval base between Macau and Shanghai would be at risk. It also pretty much guarantees international sanctions against China, at a time when one of the most-traveled shipping lanes in the world is effectively shut down. It would be tough, but the rest of the world can afford to take that hit. The Chinese economy can't, given that it's almost entirely export-based. You're right to say that gaining air and naval superiority could take a while, but that's the problem, and given that blockades in general take a while to get results, it leads me to believe that China won't try this. I'm not saying that a blockade necessarily won't work, mind you, but simply that it's not the obvious slam dunk that some people on the internet make it out to be.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
The question of whether Disney is entitled to having a special district or whether such districts have a place is wholly irrelevant to the topic at hand because DeSantis's actions don't really address it. There are over 1800 such districts in Florida, some of them in favor of entities like NASCAR whose contribution to the public good, to the extent that one exists, is roughly on par with Disney's, and to my knowledge there's no movement from DeSantis or anyone else to do away with them. If DeSantis had made a principled argument that such public-private partnerships were antithetical to the spirit of liberal society and pushed legislation to do away with all of them, to the extent that it was feasible, then my opinion would be based more on practical concerns, i.e. whether the state was taking on an undue burden by assuming services that had previously been provided by private entities. But that isn't the case here; the action is wholly retaliatory. DeSantis himself certainly had no qualms about granting Disney special carve-outs in the past.
And if the state is going to allow such districts and partnerships and special privileges to exist, then no, those privileges shouldn't be preconditioned upon the holder of them to conform to the political whim of those in power. Should a bar owner lose his liquor license for putting a Trump sign in the window? Should government employees be required to work on their bosses' campaigns as part of their jobs? Should government contracts be awarded based on who said the nicest things about the elected officials responsible for granting them? The worst part of all of this is that it's antithetical to the standard line conservatives have been giving about corporate speech for the past ten years (and a line that I personally agree with). Should Citizens United be overturned? Should bakeries be compelled to bake cakes with messages they disagree with? Should Catholic employers be forced to pay for their employees' abortions? Conservatives have insisted for decades that companies are entitled to the same First Amendment rights as individuals are, and courts have largely agreed with them, but when they find the speech in question disagreeable all that goes out the window.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Deterrence of what? If the problem in San Francisco wasn't shoplifting but truck hijacking, do you think cracking down on shoplifting by busting a few people who weren't shoplifting but didn't have proper receipts would have any effect on truck hijacking?
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
As most people here know, I'm a lawyer and I mostly work in the oil and gas industry doing titles, and while I've only done a few real estate titles in my career, O&G titles cover all of the same ground and then some, so I consider myself especially qualified to respond to this given that I spend all day looking at property records. This is a completely unworkable proposition.
First, there are interests other than outright ownership of the entire property that would affect the validity of title. Mortgage holders, holders of easements for utilities, oil and gas lessees, etc. The way it works now is that the property owner executes an instrument conveying the interest and it's the responsibility of the person receiving the interest to record it with the county. So who has the authority to edit the NFT? That's sort of a trick question because NFTs can't be edited, though the metadata can. The problem there is that if I can edit NFT metadata I can also edit away any pesky title defects and the whole issue is moot; I can't just mosey down to the local recorder's office and tell them to delete my mortgage from their records because I don't feel like paying for it. And it really would have to be editable by anybody because there are a lot of instruments relating to your property that are totally one-way transactions that you'd prefer not get on there. Like judgment liens, mechanic's liens, tax liens, condemnations, lis pedens, etc. And all this metadata would have to be viewable by the general public because there are a surprising number of people out there who need to know what is going on with property.
But these are all just technical problems; suppose you could create a publicly-viewable NFT system that can only be edited one-way that anyone can theoretically add to. Well, now you've just gotten us to the level of security of a title opinion and not title insurance. Because the real risk isn't what's out there but what isn't. I'll use an example to illustrate my second point:
Suppose an old man owns a piece of property and dies seized of it. He leaves no will, and has four surviving children. One of the children is appointed administrator of the estate and, along with the three remaining children, he executes a deed conveying the property to a third party. Except the old man actually had five children, one of whom moved across the country decades ago and has been dead for years. He had two children who aren't close to the rest of the family by virtue of distance and were minors at the time of the old man's death. The administrator didn't hire an attorney and no one in the family is particularly sophisticated when it comes to probate law. Years later the grandchildren find out about the property that had been sold out from under them and to which they were entitled to a share of the proceeds. The third party has since sold the property to you, and the grandchildren are now suing you to quiet title. Regardless of the outcome of the case, you're now stuck paying to litigate this, and this isn't the kind of thing that a diligent title search would uncover and isn't the kind of thing that could be entered into the blockchain, since no one knew about it until well after the transaction was already completed. In other words, this is exactly the kind of situation title insurance is supposed to deal with.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Yeah, that's part of it, but it wasn't the particular point I was trying to make. The bigger point I am trying to make is that land titles aren't simple A --> B transactions; they're really complicated. Various interests in a piece of property can be divided and subdivided and sold and reconstituted with the parent tract and each one of these interests would need a separate NFT created for it and yeah, maybe you could theoretically do this but at best you'd just end up with a more complicated version of the existing system. And then you add the complicating factor that a lot of things that affect title aren't filed with the recorder, but with the civil court, or with the probate court, or the tax assessor, and now you essentially have to put every shred of paper in the county government on the blockchain somehow in order to make sure everything is covered.
And even then you still wouldn't eliminate the need for title insurance, because title insurance largely protects against issues that occur outside the existing system. You can implement as many recording requirements as you want, but there will always be title issue which, by their very nature can't be determined simply by looking at records. I would add that blockchain for contracts may be a thing but deeds aren't contracts and title insurance isn't insurance against someone not following through on their end of the deal. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what your getting at here or what your understanding of the current recording system here in the US is, so I apologize if I'm misunderstanding you, but I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Yep. That could work. And then you've essentially replicated the existing system except with NFTs instead of instruments recorded with the county. Except without a team of clerks screening the instruments for basic legal requirements and making sure everything is indexed properly. So now it's like a recorder's office where there are signs and pamphlets telling you what to do but where everyone is left to their own devices jamming things into folders and creating their own index entries. And this is supposed to eliminate the need for title insurance?
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
It is a normal thing. The problem is that very little of note happens at most polling places on election day so these people spend most of their time drinking stale coffee and solving minor problems like helping people who came to the wrong polling place find the correct one. So if you're convinced there was MASSIVE FRAUD then these people are obviously inadequate because they aren't looking out for every little deviation from official protocol and raising objections because of it.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I don't know what you think the current system is like, but to a large degree it already is centralized, at least as centralized as it could possibly get using blockchain; what do you think a county recorder's office is for? Computerized records and uniform parcel identifiers have made things a lot easier, at least as far as instruments recorded in the past 20 years or so are concerned. Hell, I'm at a recorder's office right now and I can enter a parcel number into the computer and it will tell me every instrument cross-referenced to that parcel number that was recorded since they started doing these things. And the system is available remotely. If I want to record something in this system I have to follow specific guidelines set by the county to make sure that I actually identify the property correctly, include all the necessary notary stamps, etc. And they will take time to make sure that everything is appropriately indexed and cross-referenced. Switch over to a blockchain that anyone can theoretically edit and now you're going to have every Joe Schmo who has no idea what he's doing entering instruments that only cause more title defects and situations where things aren't appropriately indexed or cross-referenced. If you don't think this will happen, go to your local recorder and ask the clerk for some war stories about people who try to write their own deeds without the assistance from an attorney, or how many people ask about "getting someone's name on the deed", or off the deed. Or go to a recorder's office in rural parts of West Virginia and try to run a title and see how things were done there prior to the 1990s, when clerks would apparently record anything and everything that was presented to them. And this doesn't even get into all the specific oil and gas stuff where things really get wild and wacky.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
If your "blockade" requires lobbing missiles at your opponent just to get it off the ground, then I think you've already gotten to the hot war stage. And this isn't "trivially easy"; Taiwan has hundreds of missiles capable of hitting the Chinese mainland, and they're ramping up production as we speak. If Taiwan starts getting hit you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be retaliatory strikes against the Chinese mainland, regardless of whether the US intervenes or not. Even still, once China takes any action the effect on shipping isn't going to be limited to Taiwanese ports; all cargo in the area is going to become uninsurable. China will be hit with sanctions, but it probably won't matter since their biggest ports will be out of commission anyway.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
If China has designs on Taiwan, then it can't be feeling too good. It's tough to remember now, but back in February everyone was expecting the Russians to roll right over Ukraine and take over the government within weeks, if not days. It was assumed that the Russian army was better trained and better equipped than the ragtag Ukrainian forces which couldn't even retake the breakaway territories in the Donbas. It also wasn't clear whether pro-Russian sentiment in the East would stymie Ukraine's defenses with indifference; it's easy to lay down if you don't really care which side wins and just want to prevent your home from being destroyed. Nine months later, the Russians are completely exposed. Most commentators agree that Russia has little chance of winning this war the way things stand and talk is about desperation tactics like full mobilization or use of nuclear weapons. Even Putin's downfall, which most serious commentators brushed off at the beginning of the war as a pipe dream, is now being discussed earnestly. Taking over Taiwan would involve an amphibious assault in a short weather window and is thus a much riskier proposition. Given that a military that was assumed to be incompetent has been giving fits to one that was supposed to beat them handily, Chinese leaders may be exhibiting a greater unwillingness to put themselves in a similar situation.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
What do you mean the appeals court dismissed his case? Even if the court were going for some kind of speed record there's no way they could have rendered judgment already. And lower appeals courts can't "dismiss" appeals; you're entitled to one appeal as of right that must be heard on the merits. That being said, since the trial court ruling was a default judgment his avenues of appeal are limited.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
What reports? Even so, ignoring the court and getting a default judgment puts him in a pretty precarious position. If he had lost the case on the merits he could make any discovery regularities part of his appeal. Now that's going to be much more difficult because the only avenue of appeal he has is whether judgment in default is inappropriate. While courts have vacated default judgments, the arguments usually revolve around whether the action in question is appropriate for the relief granted or when the default happened because the plaintiff didn't take appropiate due diligence to ensure notice. For example, in Ohio there are a good number of properties where the oil and gas rights have been severed from the surface. Some landowners whose property was subject to such severances attempted to get these rights back by filing quiet title actions against the owners of the orphaned OG interests and getting default judgments in their favor. The appeals court ruled that (if I remember correctly) the quiet title actions were inappropriate because the plaintiffs had no colorable claim to the oil and gas and that furthermore, they didn't make a diligent attempt to locate the current owners and provided notice by advertisement. The whole thing was obviously a "gotcha" to get rights they weren't entitled to, and the appeals court saw it for what it was. The Jones case is a fairly straightforward case of defamation and there's no real argument that Jones only didn't comply because his attorneys were unaware of what they were supposed to do.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
It wasn't denied Jones; he forfeited that right by refusing to participate in the case against him. That's what happens—you can't get out of a lawsuit by simply ignoring it. He had 2 years to comply with discovery requests and refused to do so despite repeated orders from the court. What was the judge supposed to do here? How many bites at the apple does the guy deserve? You can make the argument that the discovery requests were inappropriate, and though I haven't heard any specifics about that, it's beside the point. Even assuming the requests were inappropriate, it's not up to the parties to decide which orders they are going to comply with. If that were the case, you'd just be giving parties carte blanch to ignore any adverse rulings without consequence.
As for the exact procedural issues you bring up: Asking the court to vacate a judgment is not the same as appeal. For the court to vacate the default judgment, Jones would have to convince them that the entering of such judgment was inappropriate. The court obviously disagreed, and proceeded to a trial on damages. If Jones were to appeal the case, he'd be making the same arguments to the appeals court that he was to the trial court—that default judgment was inappropriate. Asking the trial court to vacate the judgment was a step for preserving the issue for appeal since appellate courts are loathe to consider matters that weren't before the trial court. As a practical matter, though, it's pretty meaningless, since the losing party will ask the trial judge to vacate the judgment in every case, and the trial judge will almost always say no.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I think it's the perfect exemplification on how muddled the rhetoric has become on First Amendment issues. Ten years ago most conservatives would have said that private entities were private entities and, except in extraordinary situations, the government should allow them to do what they want. This was exemplified by things such as the Citizens United decision and the various decisions about whether private companies have to provide birth control in accordance with Obamacare mandates. Even more recently is the debate on whether public accommodations laws can compel bakeries and such to write messages on cakes that would appear to endorse gay marriage. Again, we all know what side of the fence conservatives came down on.
Then when some companies started taking action against conservative viewpoints—and not just regular conservative viewpoints, but the more extreme end of the spectrum (and even then usually only if harassment or calls to violence were involved)—all of the sudden the state needed to intervene and force these companies to call off their dogs. Things got even more muddled with the net neutrality debate; one would expect that conservatives worries about cancel culture, etc. would have used the doctrine for their own purposes, but instead they all temporarily became principled advocates of corporate speech again. I don't mean to single out conservatives here, as progressives are just as bad for different reasons, but I see a lot more bad conservative takes here than bad progressive ones.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is an old and obvious one: Most people are only interested in principle to the extent that it effects their side. If the Twitter cancellations exclusively involved anti-corporate anarchists, and progressives were complaining, I doubt we'd here any of the arguments about Section 230 etc. from conservatives that we're hearing now. Instead, we'd hear the old line about how private companies have a right to do whatever they want with their platforms and it isn't the government's place to tell them otherwise.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
One of the interesting takeaways from the opinion is that the racial bias required for a new trial isn't limited to the party, but could be the party's attorney as well. I'm guessing this will result in a lot of work for minority trial lawyers from white clients.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I see a lot of people, here and elsewhere, calling for Section 230 protections to be conditional upon enacting certain speech policies. I glossed over the HN discussion but didn't read it in detail, but OP was asking about what people here thought about it, so I was referring to arguments I've seen here in the past.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
It's not just them. Most of the political ads I see are on more traditional channels (like local news) and there's a notable absence of pro-life ads there, too.
Given that the Reedy Creek matter isn't over yet I'm not sure that's an example you want to be giving. I'd be willing to bet a decent sum that come next July, it's still in existence.
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