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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38246 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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Care to elaborate on the proposed mechanisms for either of those outcomes?

We keep the President away from those levers, relatively speaking.

The Department of Justice has enormous power over how to interpret and enforce laws, and the President picks the top people in the Department of Justice. Prosecutors are far more important than judges or juries in the US justice system (outside of cases where one person sues another person) because most cases (over 90%) are settled outside of court. The President picks the top federal prosecutors.

Businesses really don't want to be sued by the federal government for civil rights violations. A DeSantis administration could sue if you have too much woke-stuff, and a Harris administration if you have too little. Antitrust laws are extremely vague. A DeSantis administration could tell Twitter/Facebook/Google that they will be sued for antitrust violations if they ban conservatives, and a Harris administration would tell big tech it gets accused of antitrust violations if it doesn't do a better job of banning hate speech. Financial institutions desperately need to keep in the good graces of the Federal government, and so the feds can coerce credit card companies and banks to financially deplatform selected targets.

Picking the top people isn’t the same as dictating policy for the rest. Case in point: the revolving door of Trump’s justice department. I’d expect just about any other executive to have a more stable department—and to still be unable to unilaterally shift culture.

Prosecution statistics aren’t a good example either. Look at the factors going into those 98% (!) of cases handled by plea bargain. How many of those reference the federal government?

Threatening lawsuits strikes me as more plausible, assuming there was standing. On the other hand, antitrust suits contingent on other behaviors is some banana republic bullshit. I hope to God we have protections against that rather than relying on decorum, but I’m not a lawyer. @ymeshkout, please tell me such a strategy would be nonviable!

When Microsoft first got big it had a policy of ignoring politics so politicians started threatening Microsoft with antitrust actions, which caused Microsoft to become a massive contributor to politicians.

The Biden administration did end the investigation of the self-proclaimed institutional racism at Yale that was initiated by Bob Barr.

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