domain:alexberenson.substack.com
ControlsFreak
13m ago
I mean, I feel like I'm not the one being confused. The hypo was specifically about Trump, and you said that you were amending your answer to there being no reporting requirement... in context of a hypo specifically about Trump. But this is why I asked, to make sure that you were saying what I thought you should be saying instead of what you actually said.
In any event, we can move on to seeing if your position seems to hold. There are a couple relevant portions of the code. You cited §30116(7)(B)(i), which is where there is the route to convert "expenditures" into "contributions". §30101(9) has the definition of "expenditure". The manual for federal prosecution of election offenses has this to say about the definition of "expenditures":
“expenditure” – in general, any purchase, payment, or anything else having pecuniary value that is made for the purpose of influencing the nomination or election of a federal candidate. § 30101(9). In the context of public communications, the definition has been judicially limited to disbursements for communications that contain “magic words of express advocacy,” such as “elect,” “defeat,” or “vote for,” or that otherwise clearly call for elective action for or against a clearly identified federal candidate. Fed. Election Comm’n v. Mass. Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U.S. 238, 247–249 (1986); Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 44 n.52 (1976).
Clearly, they are seeing that there are significant Constitutional limits placed on the very definition of an expenditure. These limits are prior to the question of whether an expenditure can be converted into a contribution, because they cut at the question of whether something is even an expenditure in the first place. They don't seem to be saying that there is some separate route for a candidate's personal spending to be an "expenditure" which could be converted into a "contribution". Why wouldn't such an attempt run squarely into the same considerations in Buckley? I don't believe Buckley said, "Expenditures are limited to express advocacy, unless it's a candidate's personal funds, in which case they're not so limited." They just said, "Expenditures are limited to express advocacy."
candidates face reporting requirements for these types of expenditures
Do you have any citation from any statute, FEC interpretation, or DOJ manual, that "these types of expenditures" actually meet the definition of "expenditure", as limited by the Supreme Court, and that they then trigger a reporting requirement (where it is a criminal offense to fail to report)?
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
24m ago
At the time I wrote my post, I hadn't seen anything Mr Smith had written.
I've since googled and read this article, though if there's a better piece by him that I should read for a more full explanation of his perspective, please point me to it. And I have to say, I'm very confused by Mr Smith's argument. Not because I think he's wrong. But because he seems to think he's disagreeing with Judge Merchan, while it seems to me like he's arguing for the exact same standard.
Merchan's jury instructions say:
Under federal law, a third party’s payment of a candidate’s expenses is deemed to be a contribution to the candidate unless the payment would have been made irrespective of the candidacy. If the payment would have been made even in the absence of the candidacy, the payment should not be treated as a contribution.
Brad Smith says:
FECA specifically prohibits the conversion of campaign funds to personal use, defined as any expenditure “used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.”
They seem to be saying the exact same thing. Cohen's payment to Stormy Daniels is a campaign expenditure if and only if Cohen would not have made that payment in a counterfactual world where Trump was not a candidate.
So I reiterate my statement. Every lawyer discussing this case appears to agree on what the legal standard is, including Mr Smith.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
28m ago
To be clear I am criticizing your comment, not the person who you are responding to (I agree they deserve a warning; although blocking someone and then insulting them is IMO cowardice). Yours comes from a mod position and —
[doesn’t] address the actual arguments being made [and] uncharitably projects motives onto them that they have not expressed.
You are implying that I am motivated by “Jew hatred”. But I am not. I have made comments criticizing Islam and mainstream Christianity. Off the top of my head, I think a few months ago I posted about danger of Islam in the West, and some time ago about how bad the “HeGetsUs” campaign was for Christianity. I think I have also made comments about the “religion-ness” of secular progressive America.
I don't recall anyone saying this explicitly
Then I will quote:
Not all people, not all civilizations, not all tribes, are equal. This is a core conservative conceit, it’s also inherent to ideas like HBD that you yourself agree with. Human progress has always involved the conquest of some peoples by others. Punching down’, in other words, may be more moral than ‘punching up’. The many settlers of the Americas did what they did and so, perhaps, will the Israelis.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by “explicit”. Not that the comment deserves to be dinged, but it is an example of how “Jew-hater” does not turn into “Palestinian-hater” when inverted. Even though that comment (clarified in the thread context) implies it is okay to take others’ land if they are less intelligent or developed.
As you do. Constantly.
I don’t think I make many top posts on the topic anymore. The “Jewish billionaire group chat” I felt was of legitimate political and cultural interest. I mostly stick to replying when someone else makes a thread on some issue.
jeroboam
32m ago
The contradictions really are ridiculous.
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You can be sued if the employees you hire don't match the demographics of your applicant pool
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You are forbidden from using race-based quotas to achieve this
So it's essentially impossible for a large corporation to follow employment law.
OliveTapenade
38m ago
Eh, I'd argue that's not necessarily Red Tribe? To take a specific example - I think that, say, Patrick Deneen is from the Blue Tribe. He's a tradcath social conservative with loopy politics, but in terms of culture, background, education, and most importantly manner, he's Blue Tribe. He's not like, say, Jerry Falwell, who was I think clearly Red Tribe.
(One commenter on the original SSC post tried to define people like this as the 'Violet Tribe', giving people like Ross Douthat and Leah Libresco as examples. I think I would shrug and just say that Ross Douthat is Blue Tribe. He's a conservative Catholic Blue Triber.)
Being religious by itself doesn't make you Red Tribe. Heck, liking C. S. Lewis doesn't - as far as I can tell he's very popular among Christians of both colour tribes. So I'm wary of taking those things as definitive.
yofuckreddit
42m ago
I'm not an expert in this space by any means - I divested of crypto precisely because of the additional controls that landed on "easy" platforms, since someone not watching and taxing my transactions was a major part of the appeal.
I think it would depend a lot on where you live. I'd create a plan with multiple types of goods and the laws around selling your own personal property (imagine my eyes rolling here).
At the end of it, you may find the juice isn't worth the squeeze, and that's a valid answer. There's a reason why the people who are best at tax minimization strategies are generally dealing with 7+ figures. If it's a huge PITA to keep your own money, you may end up just choosing to cede it through taxes. After all, that's what these systems of punishment and enforcement are designed to do....
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
42m ago
And lasted longer than most modern governments.
NewCharlesInCharge
49m ago
The Qing dynasty also saw no need for disruptive innovations.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
54m ago
“This person’s comments are motivated by pure racial animus” is uncharitable. Were I to say that a Jewish poster who continually defends Israel is motivated by unadulterated racial hatred against Palestinians, and smeared him as an Arab-hater, clearly that would be rule-breaking and I would be banned.
This is not accurate, and you know it's not accurate. "I'd be banned if the shoe were on the other foot!" is the favorite complaint of people who are never actually saying the equivalent thing but something entirely different.
Unless you kept doing this after being warned, you would not be banned. You would be warned to address the actual arguments being made and not the person, and not to uncharitably project motives onto them that they have not expressed.
Yet there have actually been commenters who have cited the IQ of Jews as reason for why they deserve their illegal territorial conquest.
I don't recall anyone saying this explicitly (though I don't doubt you read it that way), but even if someone did say that, there is no rule against making such arguments. People are allowed to make outrageous, specious, or offensive arguments (as defined by the reader) - you are allowed to take issue with them.
“Jews” have been a steady culture war issue this year because of Israel and the protests. And because of their over-representation in influential American positions of power, organized Jewish groups have been worthy of discussion for previous years and for years into the future.
Yes, and you're allowed to talk about Jews. As you do. Constantly.
yofuckreddit
55m ago
- The scenario is interesting because it's a real problem we had to solve at the company early on. We haven't had to change it at all for around 5 years because it's such a high-quality signal (and interviewees rate it highly). We did have to modify the approach though - we finished iterating on it after around 1.5 years and probably 30 interviews.
- Once the question has been provided a day beforehand, being unable to come up with an adequate solution during the interview is a deal breaker. The good news is twofold: The answer has a correctness gradient, and the whole question is designed to be iterated on as a discusssion. Did you put together a maximally elegant and simple solution? Ok, now make it enterprise-grade. Did you bring your resume-driven development tendencies to the table? Now simplify.
Our entire interview suite uses those approaches, including our small take-home project, so we can easily cross-reference someone's performance with their salary requirements and stated YOE. The tech interview team explicitly defines the tiers of answer performance, and we all collaborate on them.
There have been some calls to introduce a new question to more closely represent the state of the art in modern development. After ~7 total years anything gets long in the tooth, and I'd be lying if I said I'm not a bit concerned about the performance of LLMs in the space. With excellent prompting, they can succeed in our interview if not blow us away. There's no substitute for seeing if someone can verbally describe how they'd solve or problem or change a solution.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
56m ago
John Roberts's court is not going to strike down disparate impact.
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Aside from Roe/Casey, he's not willing to strike down anything for real. The court will issue a decision, make it super-narrow or leave massive loopholes, and then consider the issue solved and refuse future cases, allowing the lower courts free reign.
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Congress put disparate impact in statutes, the 14th amendment specifies that Congress can enforce it by appropriate legislation, the conservative court will defer to Congress on the point that forbidding disparate impact is OK.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
any condition in which the use of an artificial intelligence system results in an unlawful differential treatment or impact that disfavors an individual or group of individuals
That particular form of discrimination has already cleared its legal hurdles, as far as I know.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
1hr ago
I think you've gotten confused. I don't need to "amend my answer back", I've been consistent that candidates face reporting requirements for these types of expenditures. Read back our exchanges while bearing in mind the distinction between candidates and unconnected individuals and you'll see that (even though I did err initially in thinking there was no reporting burden on unconnected individuals rather than a lower burden).
So, yes. There's a reporting requirement, and he violates FECA if he doesn't report it.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
I'd argue, though, that men die because of the fall, rather than it being deeply natural.
The old habits of thought linger, and one of them is speaking as though the truth of God were indeterminate. Some of that is my own thinking, which centers on my lack of knowledge and frames belief in God as something like a bet I'm choosing to make.
gattsuru
1hr ago
I mean, I'd love to see TheNybbler's take, but I'll point to "Title VII Religious Freedom in California" here, or less recently, the Damore case under California law -- the very rules that prohibited the discrimination against these people instead were twisted to mandate it. It doesn't matter if there's explicit statutory protections, or SCOTUS caselaw: lower courts and the broader progressive branch will happily look at that obvious contradiction and massive onslaught of cases and happily invite them. The Reinhardt philosophy that SCOTUS can't catch them all is alive and well, and when the worst that happens to the rare losers is that they're temporarily embarrassed, why not roll the dice.
Cfe the recent ATC snafu. It's not just that there's no heads rolling at the top of the pyramid, or that the big civil case is look at "Reply to Motion for Summary Judgment due by 6/26/2025" and actual trial might happen in 2026 if we're lucky.
Shelton Snow's LinkedIn says he's still working as an FAA supervisor!
seeanything
1hr ago
Does this mean insurance companies are forbidden from discriminating by age and sex e.g. for car insurance?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
“This person’s comments are motivated by pure racial animus” is uncharitable. Were I to say that a Jewish poster who continually defends Israel is motivated by unadulterated racial hatred against Palestinians, and smeared him as an Arab-hater, clearly that would be rule-breaking and I would be banned. Yet there have actually been commenters who have cited the IQ of Jews as reason for why they deserve their illegal territorial conquest.
“Jews” have been a steady culture war issue this year because of Israel and the protests. And because of their over-representation in influential American positions of power, organized Jewish groups have been worthy of discussion for previous years and for years into the future. Since Twitter has become unmoderated it has been shown that normative American discourse includes discussion of the group power dynamics as well. So it is not even a dissident idea anymore.
ares
1hr ago
Nifty. I've been part of this forum since it was on /r/slatestarcodex, and this is my first AAQC. I guess I just needed to tell more sea stories.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
So... Anyone wants to sue Google for their search results, ads they serve, videos they recommend, etc?
FiveHourMarathon
The Gun Would Go Off
1hr ago
I listen to very little new music overall, so you're probably right: if I listened to more unfiltered Top-40 I would probably hate most of that much more than I hate a lot of modern country. Music essentially gets added to my library from the local college radio station, from my gym friends, from my wife. The only time I'm listening to unfiltered new music is when my father is listening to country radio while we drive somewhere.
FiveHourMarathon
The Gun Would Go Off
1hr ago
Martino goes into this extensively in the book. While a lot of other teams were engaged in sign-stealing using replay rooms that bordered on illegal, but concludes that none were as extensive or as team-supported as the Astros.
I do think the Astros were also disliked for hitting "betray" on Baseball culture in other ways. The Lastros era was the worst MLB example of open tanking, which is a disease on American sport which I truly hope teams adopt the obvious solutions to solve.
2rafa
1hr ago
Disparate Impact is going to be struck down. The GOP pressing the inclusion political party registration, veteran status and religion (Christian etc) in disparate impact laws is one of the smartest things they’ve done recently (not, admittedly, a long list) since it will accelerate their demise.
But in the long term they’re just not viable. They are pushed because explicit quotes were ruled illegal by SCOTUS, but the more they contradict each other (eg disparate impact against hiring Republicans Va disparate impact against hiring minorities) the more the courts are going to be overloaded with an endless series of these cases and SCOTUS is going to have to act. Even though companies may have legally sound defenses to why their new hires are 70% registered diverse Dems but retirees are, say, largely Christian Republicans (age and politics, changing racial demographics, whatever) the sheer onslaught of cases will become unmanageable.
Nybbler will undoubtedly have some kind of blackpilled spiel about why even this is doomed, but it seems to me that, uh, heightening the contradictions of disparate impact is the surest route to tearing it down.
Which is bizarre. If women paid higher rates it never would have stood up to challenge.
The law is saying you can't use all these actuarial ways to determine risk. In many states, you can't even use credit reports or arrest records.
Why is there this special carve out to discriminate against men?
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