anti_dan
2d ago
Even if its 99.99% conclusion and only supported with threadbare facts, the MSJ would lose. A MSJ is where you win even when you accept the other side's facts.
anti_dan
2d ago
Pretty sure his friends are all the banks that got paid back because he did a normal business thing that they also do and NY state law is just stupid and as applied to this case would, if applied everywhere, would turn NY State into 2009 Greece.
anti_dan
2d ago
I very much doubt there is anything like an expert in unique property values.
anti_dan
2d ago
your position would require evaluating the deceased character traits.
Yes. And this is good.
anti_dan
2d ago
The banks (and other business partners) are the ones being defrauded. That's sort of the point.
None of them alleged that during the course of business. They all got paid. The numbers were arbitrary.
Second, if it were random speculation, his estimates would be under the true value as often as they were over the true value.
Random was the wrong word. The right word is, self serving normal stuff that businesses do and tax people have to go along with 99.99999999% of the time or the state's economy collapses.
anti_dan
4d ago
If any such statement was made in evidence a MSJ is improper because that creates a legitimate question of material fact. The judge is in a tails he loses heads trump wins situation if ever a nonbiased person reviews his order.
anti_dan
4d ago
Trump shouldnt have to. The state needs overwhelming evidence. Fraud where no bank lost money should lose as a matter of course.
anti_dan
4d ago
No it isn't. You are rarely obligated under the legal system to make yourself worse off voluntarily. Remaining silent is always an option except in civil cases, where you are still allowed to stay silent to preserve your rights in a criminal procedure.
anti_dan
4d ago
This isn't even close to fraud. It is just basically random speculation by him and banks. Everything is estimates made by people without even 12% knowledge of what reality is. These cases shouldn't be legal because they are treating art like a science. Its basically punishing a person extra above the bet they wagered just because. "Oh you put $500 on the Bills to beat the Redskins and Jim Kelly lost again on a fluke field goal, well actually we are taking another $2500 from you because reasons."
anti_dan
4d ago
I do think a strong point Kulak made in the debate was that, instead of policing drugs, you policed public intoxication/vagrancy with the punishment being a week in the stocks + caning the drug problem would solve itself fairly expediently, while preserving Scott Alexander's ability to use mushrooms for a mind expanding camping trip.
anti_dan
4d ago
What can the government do to make your "Neighbor" less of a dick?
They can stop intervening on his behalf. If he happens to end up getting beaten to death with a baseball bat after menacing my wife, they can just let the judgement of the natural order stand.
anti_dan
4d ago
How much of this actually happens? Criminals are actually quite vulnerable most of the time, if law abiding citizens have open season on them. There is the argument that if every offense is a capitol offense, criminals will just go right to murder, but non-criminals will almost always have more resources (whence the ability to establish police departments in the first place). There is a fairly serious underestimating, by the average person, how extensive secret service protocols are, for example.
anti_dan
4d ago
When it comes to felonies, though, we’re talking pretty much universally things that are really bad and really serious, and there are none, to my knowledge, which I would like to see made not-felonies.
Common law felonies, for sure, but we have lots of regulatory felonies in the US. Importing some foods is a felony. Its a felony to be a Pinkterton-style strikebreaker. Various laws relating to birds, such as possessing a bald eagle feather have felony escalators as an option. Hunting Canada geese without a permit.
If we’re talking about the laws that the J6 people are being charged with, those are completely valid and important laws, which are being (mostly) misapplied in this particular instance. It actually is really bad to attempt to violently overthrow the government, and to the extent that any group of people actually does do so, the government has every right and every reason to bring the full force of the state down upon such people.
I'd like to agree with this, but as we see anytime the Logan Act is brought up, the purpose of these laws is abuse. They are rarely, if ever, used appropriately.
anti_dan
4d ago
I think bounties would generally be issued by judges at some minimum level that private individuals would be able to augment. And victims would have priority claims to the deceased's estate (lol I know most will have little) and private property (criminals may have a surprising amount of jewelry and cars etc).
anti_dan
4d ago
Its already a job in our current system for far paltrier payouts and with bounty hunters having far more restrictions on their actions that make the job more dangerous than sniping from 100 feet with a .30 cal rifle.
anti_dan
4d ago
By being a pop science book that appealed to center-left sensibilities. For the past two decades almost all of his major claims have been shown to be either untrue, or simply unsupported. The GGS central hypothesis is almost certainly incorrect.
anti_dan
4d ago
Surely you'd put more on different criminals. Bin Laden took so long to get because of government protection.
anti_dan
4d ago
This is truer for some jurisdictions than others. This is another value of a PD/Attorney, they know which officers show up and how often.
anti_dan
5d ago
I feel like in the post Gun Germs and Steel world
In the world of an almost universally mocked book that has been shown to be a laughingstock over and over?
anti_dan
5d ago
The answer, to me, is obvious. Ukraine is a global hub for political corruption, influence peddling, and the like. As, one who is old enough would note, was also true of Russia for most of the Clinton and Bush II administrations. That means, that the well connected wet their beaks in Ukraine. Which is the party of the well connected? Yup Democrats. Dem support for Ukraine is very much top-down (lots of Democrat policy is like this now, although it wasn't always true), and Republican opposition is grassroots oriented (a party in flux where there is currently an elite-grassroots power struggle).
You might object and say, "Ukraine is peanuts, Arkansas has a bigger GDP." And that is probably true, its not worth even googling for this point. The point is that Alabama is orders of magnitude less corrupt than Ukraine, so it has no board positions for failsons, no $10 million consulting contracts for Paul Manafort types. Sure, a friendly politician can expect a spot at Wal Mart after they retire/are ousted, but that is both time delayed, and much less profitable than what is available in Ukraine and Ukraine-like countries.
anti_dan
5d ago
Bob Menendez being corrupt is of no moment. It was odd that Dems kept him in an important position up to this time, but I read that as this sort of corruption being normal (see Biden, Joe) just usually done with more subterfuge and less panache.
anti_dan
5d ago
If Democrats are so strong then why do they have some a lack of POTUS level candidates?
Causally related. Because every Democrat is treated to a friendly media environment they all have artificially boosted popularity, which erodes in a national campaign, because, 2020 excepted, you still have to actually campaign to become president. Basically, they all are running for office on easy mode, and for a presidential candidate, that can't be fully maintained. Sure, national media is still a D++ advantage nationally, but I seriously doubt they could win in Illinois without the media bias. At the state level its worth like 20 points in the polls.
anti_dan
5d ago
Anarcho tyranny is in full effect. Use a gun for a proper purpose, like defending yourself from a rioter, and you will end up in the clink. The rioter, not so much.
anti_dan
5d ago
One follow up question I'd add for the authoritarian (I think Hoffmeister?). Are you actually sticking to your position that there are no crimes on the books (generally) you wouldn't repeal? We have federal felonies for lots of paper crimes, crimes for lying to the FBI, the myriad of arcane laws the J6 defendants were charged under, and their state equivalents. Illinois has strict fireworks laws, as a local example. These are mostly petty, but can be upgraded to misdemeanors or felonies under certain conditions. Its also illegal to drive pickup trucks on certain roadways, even if they are just being used as a civilian vehicle. Fishing while wearing pajamas is also somewhat famously illegal.
This is why we have police, to stop the true state of nature from emerging. But if they intervene only when the state of nature is superior, as happens in the hobo-vs-normal person situation, the state is a net negative in said subset of interactions.
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