zeke5123
2yr ago
I find calling Pence or Biden as the most qualified ever pretty funny in the context where Adams, Jefferson, Burr, GWHB, George Clinton, Calhoun, LBJ we’re all VPs.
But to your point, let’s look back to see someone as unqualified as Kamala.
Let’s see. Mike Pence? More qualified. Joe Biden? More qualified. Dick Cheney? More qualified. Manbearpig? More qualified. Quayle? It’s close. GWHB? Not by a country mile. Mondale? More qualified. Rockefeller? More qualified. Ford? More qualified.
So amongst the last ten VP Kamala appears tied for last in terms of qualification.
zeke5123
2yr ago
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Justice Jackson actually was pretty light on traditional qualifications (though so was ACB). Jackson was barely a circuit judge. Spent a lot of time as a public defender. There were certainly many more people with a more impressive CV.
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Her opinions have been regularly panned by conservatives. Such conservatives don’t that with Kagan so it isn’t the holding itself but how that holding develops.
zeke5123
2yr ago
This is the fundamental difference between haters and proponents of AA (I’m a hater fwiw). The former believes qualification is relative so that if you limit the pool for a feature that isn’t relative to qualification you are incredibly likely to end up with a worse candidate whereas the latter believes qualification is a line to cross and once crossed it doesn’t matter too much who is picked so tie should go to the minority.
I feel like the recent AA SCOTUS justices support my view but YMMV.
zeke5123
2yr ago
Yeah. It is kind of similar to mootness. If you suspect a repeated violation (followed by cessation to render the specific claim mootness) it is still appropriate for a court to rule notwithstanding the general rule.
zeke5123
2yr ago
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The first criticism was not criticism of the motte or discussion. It was a criticism that someone would get disappointed that someone preempted their post.
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With respect to your second point, scope (like quality) is orthogonal to length. What I think we want is insight; not length.
zeke5123
2yr ago
That isn’t really a response to the criticism. Pure ad hominem. I even understand your position but shouldn’t you hold yourself to a higher standard
zeke5123
2yr ago
But that’s the whole thing — a validation by an assessor isn’t a fmv assessment. It would be akin to the judge stating the value of the company is based off of net equity in a balance sheet.
zeke5123
2yr ago
You can feel that way. Kind of a weird thing to say given that I’ve noted there does seem to be potential fraud here (and have said I believe he is guilty on the documents case). But yeah I’m just a mindless Trump fan boy.
zeke5123
2yr ago
Citing a tax assessors valuation is going crazy because tax assessors aren’t really based on FMV
zeke5123
2yr ago
One I’m not sure there is a duty to disclose a publicly knowable fact. Second, was there an assessment report provided by Trump that stated the value or did Trump merely write a value? it isn’t clear from what you said but it sounds like the latter which means the judge is saying he doesn’t think the value was right because he doesn’t think it properly corrects for land use.
zeke5123
2yr ago
Because we can look at much smaller properties around it and see how much they are worth. So even if per acre / per sq Ft MAL is worth much less it would still be worth a bunch because the amount of acres and sq Ft is much more than normal for this area.
zeke5123
2yr ago
The tax assessment thing is very odd. I learned a lot about it when I bought my house and realized it’s insane.
But I’m not sure your assessment of Trump’s valuation is fraud is accurate. It seems — solely from the comments here — like the judge is making a factual conclusion about the value of MAL and therefore saying Trump didn’t account for the land use restrictions and is fraudulent. Perhaps the judge is simply wrong re value? Citing to the assessor makes me think the judge is just wrong.
Again I think Trump would only be fraudulent is if he told the lenders there was no land use restriction.
zeke5123
2yr ago
Is it your contention that Trump is violating the land use restrictions by living at MAL? If he is not, then it seems MAL has at least value to someone to live there. Given its size and location that means MAL is worth a sizeable chunk.
zeke5123
2yr ago
I know you aren’t from the states so you likely don’t have this local knowledge. Property tax values are untethered from actual FMV. The system isn’t designed to determine the real value of property. If you look at real estate, it is often sold well above the assessed property tax value. Indeed in many places even after a sale establishes fmv the property taxes don’t reset the valuation.
Also, land use certainly affects valuation. If Trump tried to sell MAL what do you think he’d get?
zeke5123
2yr ago
To me, that is the fraud and not the estimates. The issue is since the judge went all crazy on the valuations I don’t know if the rest of the factual record is accurate and don’t really have the inclination to review the record. I’ll just wait for the appeals and see what happens.
zeke5123
2yr ago
Maybe the land is much less valuable but it would still be worth an order of magnitude more than the assessed value.
zeke5123
2yr ago
Agreed that would be fraud if true. But that’s consistent with my position. Lying about say sq footage is different from your opinion about the value per sq footage.
zeke5123
2yr ago
This is just ridiculous. No one knows what a the threshold is because nuclear weapons have only been used twice. But of course that’s the problem when dealing with extreme tail risk. You can’t really rely on history and getting it wrong is terrible. You seem to believe there is a knowable threshold and we need to just figure out what it is. My point is we have zero clue what the threshold is and therefore caution is prudent with respect to Ukraine. You keep saying I’m not responding to your argument but that’s because your argument is absurd — you are asking for me to prove what a threshold is BUT I’m saying that’s the completely wrong question to ask. We have a known unknown and need to make decisions in that context. Sure escalating may not result in nuclear war but it may. It isn’t handwaving to say “we don’t know;” it is the entire argument.
You don’t seem to get that. Instead you seemingly claim “we can look to the Cold War and the current situation of the war to ascertain what the threshold is.” But the problem is pretty much all of your analogs are so easily distinguished as to be beyond the point. That is, we are in sui generis situation meaning we are in known unknown land.
zeke5123
2yr ago
The question is whether a self assessed value is fraud. I could tell a bank “in my judgement my house is worth a billion dollars so loan me 500m” If I give the bank access to my house etc and they loan on that basis, it seems hard for them to argue “he overstated the value of his property.” They could review for reasonableness my belief and seemed to believe it reasonable.
zeke5123
2yr ago
Agreed. The one question is what duty of care did Trump have to the lenders? Could he say “I think land X is worth a billion dollars” and then if he provided all of the correct specs, cash flow, etc. it seems to me buyer beware (ie lender can use their own judgement to decide). If he said C&W said the land was worth 525m when they said 200m then that is fraud.
It seems like Trump may have fraudulent provided a sq foot number. That would fit the bill for fraud.
zeke5123
2yr ago
Well valuations are kind of made up and differ significantly. It is an art not a science. My point is that using the assessor as if it was gospel unless proved otherwise is silly. The assessed value for local property tax is almost entirely irrelevant to the value of the land. The only real questions are “what was the value” and “was Trump’s value within the realm of possibility.” The assessor’s value (which isn’t based on a FMV standard) is irrelevant to those questions (outside of taxes affecting the value of the property).
zeke5123
2yr ago
Dude. I don’t know what to say.
The basic point I was an am making is that the Cold War is no guide contra to what you said. You haven’t provided any evidence it is.
Now, you could try to argue that a starting premise is wrong- that we don't know Russian thresholds- but that would undermine the argument that we shouldn't send weapons because it would cross nuclear thresholds. The argument presumes an understanding of thresholds. If you don't, then there's no basis to the claim. If you do, then it's just discussing where the threshold is- and so far you've retreated from examples of non-threshold advanced weapon use.
Seems like you are trying to use some weird “debate trick” as opposed to address the substance of the argument. I’m not making the claim that “we shouldn’t send weapons because it would cross nuclear thresholds.”
I’m saying that sending weapons may cross that threshold (likely depending on Ukraine success) and therefore I don’t judge it to be worth the risk.
As for everything else, again it seems to be a weird debate trick as opposed to substance. For example:
You don't provide a causal relationship dynamic to explain how Crimea substantially differ from other areas Russia claimed are categorically the same but didn't nuke over and which thus demonstrate that control loss alone is not a threshold.
I don’t need to. Losing territory that was small and not part of Russia prior to the invasion is different from losing Crimea which has been Russian for most of the last hundred years, is of key strategic value, and has been de facto Russian since 2014. They are of different categories so I would make a reasonable assumption that Russia would react differently. This seems obvious and happy to try to explain the assumptions but it doesn’t feel like a conversation.
Indeed, most of your argument comes down to “your argument relies on assumptions and judgements.” Yes. So does the argument for providing weapons. The question is which one is reasonable. Trying to play this weird gotcha game isn’t really all that interesting.
The claim “I didn’t realize a fire alarm would set off an alarm” is pretty weak.
Of course, I have a strong prior that Bowman is an ass so I’m predisposed to disbelieve him. But…who has ever seen a red box clearly labeled fire alarm and thought “I should pull this to open a door” before even trying to open a door? No, the excuse is so lame that I believe at a “beyond a reasonable doubt” Bowman did it to interfere with Congress. At minimum, he should be expelled because even if his defense is correct then he is too stupid to be a congressmen.
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