Rov_Scam
1d ago
Paging @ToaKraka, since you're the resident civil engineer/rules aficionado, I have a question about construction zone safety, and what I can do to combat the rash of confusing and/or nonsensical flagging situations that seem to have proliferated in the past year or two. Last night I was sitting at a 5-way intersection in the southbound center lane, intending to continue on the same road. There is also a left turning lane for those making one of two left-hand options, as well as a lane for those turning right. The lane I was traveling in, on the far side of the intersection (about 200' away), was blocked by construction vehicles, a sign saying "Road Work Ahead", and two flaggers, one with a flag and one with those light batons. The opposing lane of traffic had cars sitting at the light traveling northbound, and at some point one of the flaggers waved them through. The light was operating throughout this whole time so I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to follow the light or the flaggers, but when I had the first cycle of green there was nowhere for me to go so I just sat there watching the flaggers who, mind you, were 200' away from me.
At one point the guy with the light batons, who was standing near the trucks behind the guy with the flag, started doing some dance that I at first couldn't tell if it was because he was trying to direct traffic or because he was bored, but it soon became obvious that it was the latter. Then the guy with the flag started making a waving motion that was so vague I couldn't tell which cars he was waving through or where he wanted them to go, but given that I had been sitting there a while and the northbound lane was clear I interpreted to mean that that lane was available for southbound traffic. Of course, as soon as I start heading for the open lane the guy starts yelling "No" quite loudly, and I have to beat a retreat to making a right turn, which was only a minor detour but still irritating given that I knew as soon as I saw the construction that I wasn't going to be given any straightforward instructions.
To summarize: There were two guys controlling a road at an intersection with four approaches, two of which were too far away to see anything clearly, the other two with bad sight lines. One of the guys was treating his traffic control device like a toy. There was no signage indicating that the southbound lane was closed, or any posted detour. A simple sign indicating that the road was closed would have been sufficient, but instead they seemingly decided to create a situation that was intentionally confusing in the hope that people would just not bother. I was half tempted to pull up and roll down my window and demand to speak to who was in charge of this and see a safety plan, lie about being an engineer from PennDOT and make up a state law saying that the contractor had to have a copy of the safety plan on site that was available upon request.
If this were an isolated incident I wouldn't care that much, but something similar has happened about a half dozen times, all in the past year or two, once last summer at the exact same intersection. I don't recall it happening at all in the previous 20 years of driving, so either I'm getting dumber or people are getting more lax. I'm sure there's some way to lodge a formal complaint, but that's no fun. I want to know what the actual regulations and best practices are so I can go into full-blown dick mode the next time this happens and have some ammunition to back me up. I can understand if this was some kind of emergency repair but they repaved the entire road last summer and have been doing more work for the past week.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Except in a realpolitik way it doesn't make sense to release it. If I'm in the DNC and want the party to have success in the future, the best situation is to move on entirely from anything that had to do with Biden. There are plenty of younger politicians out there without any of the political baggage that comes with being tied to an unpopular president and losing bid. If they release it now it's news for a week, only political junkies pay attention to it, and a year from now when people start announcing their candidacies the whole thing is yesterday's news.
If you really think that Harris candidacy is a threat to the party, then you tell her not to run with the implicit threat that if she does then it may get leaked at an inopportune time. If she doesn't announce then it never sees the light of day. If she does, then she isn't a team player and they won't mind throwing her under the bus. If it's leaked and she wins the nomination anyway, then she's a stronger candidate than anyone thought and she deserves to have it.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
I think that if Trump had been assassinated in Butler it would have been "successful" insofar as it would have influenced the upcoming election. the GOP convention was scheduled to begin the following week, and while it probably would have gone forward as an opportunity to eulogize Trump, it wouldn't have actually selected a nominee. While there was some controversy over Biden's passing the baton to Harris, it was nothing compared to the all-out war that would have happened in the Republican Party if their nominee had been killed on the eve of the convention. J.D. Vance, Nikki Haley, and Ron DeSantis all had claims to the nomination that were equal parts credible and ludicrous. Haley had won the second most primary votes, but those all came from people specifically voting against Trump. DeSantis probably would have been the nominee if Trump hadn't run, but he got even fewer votes in the primary than Haley, had a frosty relationship with Trump, and there's no way of proving what would have happened besides taking the word of Ron and other people who want him to be the nominee. J.D. Vance was the named heir apparent, but that wasn't public at the time, and anyone claiming that he was Trump's pick would just be accused of being self-serving, similar to people fighting over a will based on "what dad really wanted". And that leaves out opportunists who would throw their hat into the ring as "compromise candidates", and people who would throw their hat into the ring as full on Trump stans who would claim that none of the candidates represent the true MAGA spirit.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
it seems you've shifted the goalposts -- creating an entirely new argument for why the indictment falls flat
Courts don't operate like a Harvard debate club, and I don't argue here like I'd argue in court. I try to do my homework but I don't have the time or inclination to fully research my position as I would if it were for an actual client. When I read the statute I didn't get the impression from the language used that it would apply to opening a checking account, so I stopped right there and didn't bother to analyze the case further. You helpfully pointed to a case that demonstrated that such an interpretation would work, and I owed it to you to continue with the analysis.
Anyway, to answer you questions, the statement was colloquially false, but whether it was literally false depends on how you define "conducting business". They were, in fact, accepting money from one party and giving it to another. Maybe this doesn't fit your personal definition, but I can assure you that it's not an uncommon arrangement. In fact, several companies I represent only exist to do exactly that. Basically, they exist to get sued. The insurance companies pay them, and the money is used to pay settlements. The reasons for this are complicated and I'm not going to bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that these companies have no offices, no employees, and don't do anything that would conventionally be described as business. There are thousands of similar shell corporations that exist in the country, and I've never heard of any suggestion that if one of their officers signed a form with a bank that had language about "conducting business" it would subject him to criminal prosecution for lying to a bank. We can argue about this all day long if you want to, but it's ultimately irrelevant, because the indictment alleges that they lied by concealing the ownership of the companies, not because they lied about whether or not they were conducting business.
Do you agree that at the time that statement was made, the individual was acting on behalf of the SPLC?
Yes, but like I said, there's nothing in the indictment that suggests the individual in question ever made a statement to the bank that this was not the case. The document with the alleged false statement is simply confirming that the individual had the legal authority to open the account in the company's name, and the government hasn't presented any evidence to the contrary. The only person with the authority to open those accounts was the person whose name was registered as the dba.
If (1) an organization states on its website that it opposes a particular event; (2) it actually donates money to help organize and support that event; but (3) it doesn't explicitly say that it won't donate money to support the event, then there's no fraud?
I'm not going to get into all the elements right now, but at minimum the government would need to identify a particular person that saw the representation, relied on the representation, and that the organization made money off of that reliance. The indictment doesn't indicate that. That doesn't even begin to touch the prevailing theory that the SPLC was manufacturing racist incidents to increase donation numbers which, again, isn't alleged in the indictment, and would be difficult to prove without a witness within the SPLC willing to testify to it. Again, at the very minimum they would need to identify at least one incident that the SPLC caused to happen.
It wasn't that long ago that you were arguing how it was similarly clear that Letitia James totally committed mortgage fraud, a couple weeks before multiple grand juries failed to indict her. This case is similarly going nowhere,
Whether the problem is with the design of the plan or the implementation is not my concern; a plan is useless if you don't follow it. The flagger was not in the middle of the intersection but directly in front of the construction equipment, where he was a distance a way from me and at such an angle that he would have not been visible to the other three legs. I talked to my PennDOT engineer friend again and he said that I should call District 11 on Monday and explain what happened because if nobody complains then nothing will get done. He also told me about how he sort of impersonated a PennDOT engineer years ago (he was working for them but was in a different district) when he came across a construction zone that was set up incorrectly. He said he was from PennDOT and told them what they needed to do to rectify the situation, and they told him that he needed to call their supervisor. He said that if he made any call it would be to the police to shut the job down, and they apparently made the changes he requested. He said that whether or not the police would do anything about it depends on the department, but calling the district office is always a safe bet because few enough people call about tuff like this that they can take all of the citizen complaints seriously.
More options
Context Copy link