domain:npr.org
gattsuru
15m ago
The Death of Trust in Bipartisan Lawmaking
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is a 2023 law, driven by nearly a decade of cross-party and cross-tribe interests, best summarized by the intro to this 2018 Atlantic piece:
Mattes honed in on one particular case from the Times story, in which a salesperson at the healthcare company Novartis, a single mother was told by her boss she should consider an abortion. “She didn’t, and after her maternity leave, she said they advised her not to pursue any more promotions due to her ‘unfortunate circumstances at home,’” Mattes said. Those weren’t unfortunate circumstances at home, Mattes said: “That is her son Anthony. Pregnancy isn’t a disease. Babies are a blessing.”
On this particular issue, the conservative Mattes had an unusual ally. A week earlier, several hundred miles away, New York’s Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo had ordered an investigation into New York companies accused of pregnancy discrimination...
While a 1978 amendment to Title VII established pregnancy as a protected characteristic, the PWFA's congressional support saw it as too limited in scope and in what accommodations it could require businesses to hold.
Another point, however, dropped in mid-April:
This isn't necessarily new, or a surprise: some courts had already held that the 1978 Title VII amendment protected abortion as a pregnancy-related medical condition, albeit with the more restricted scope. There are good pragmatic or philosophical arguments in favor or against, either in regards to abortion specifically or as a law in general, and some !!fun!! questions about a possible that the EEOC's rule-making treats as purely theoretical. There are some, if not exactly strong, arguments that the text of the law requires it.
Several Republican congresscritters who voted for and cosponsored the bill promptly blasted this interpretation, swearing that they were sure and assured it wouldn't happen. Social conservatives, on the other hand, prompted sang I told you so.
Mattes and his organization do still exist, but haven't commented on the new regulation. They're not, it can be fairly readily assumed, in a huge hurry to partner with the ACLU on statute-writing or sponsor-wrangling any time soon.
Okay, well that's not a policy I actually care about, so it's at least kinda funny, and .
FFLs and How To Get Your Dog Shot By The ATF
The 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act had many components, but one of many that gun rights advocates pointed out at length as a matter of concern, even well before the law's language was fully concrete, was the redefinition of gun dealers and engaging in the business of firearms sales, from "principal objective of livelihood and profit" to "predominantly earn a profit". The ATF released its final rule on this new statutory definition in early April, shortly after shooting someone in the head while all their agents forgot their cameras at home, explicitly citing the BSCA's new language as cause.
Three guesses on how that went, and the first two don't count:
The activities described in these presumptions are not an exclusive list of activities that may indicate that someone is ‘‘engaged in the business’’ or intends ‘‘to predominantly earn a profit.’’ These presumptions will provide clarification and guidance to persons who are potentially subject to the license requirement and will apply in administrative and civil proceedings.
The presumptions will be used, for example, to help a fact finder determine in civil asset forfeiture proceedings whether seized firearms should be forfeited to the Government and in administrative licensing proceedings to determine whether to deny or revoke a Federal firearms license. These presumptions do not apply in any criminal proceedings but may be useful to judges in such proceedings when, for example, they decide how to instruct juries regarding permissible inferences.
The only thing that the new rule explicitly does not consider to be "predominantly earn[ing] a profit" is if an individual is liquidating all or part of their owned firearms, without (ever?) purchasing new ones, and I wouldn't bet my pet's life on it. In some ways, it's kinda impressive: the final rule, as opposed to the original proposal, reacted to gunnie concerns about the underspecificity of one resale exception by explicitly removing firearms owned for personal protection from it. In some cases, it breaks from the text of the statute. Halbrook highlights a statutory exception that the ATF refines down to covers repair and customization.
I've written before about the same act smothering archery and hunter training programs at schools, and while this was eventually (and to my surprise) amended, that passed late enough to leave programs screwed over for last school year. We'll see how many schools are willing or able to bring them back.
All around me are familiar faces, Worn out places, worn out FACEs
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act is a 1994 statute from the old days before backronyms were popularized outside of the military, and consisted of three major prohibitions:
- blocking someone from trying to access or provide abortion services
- blocking someone exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship
- destroying or damaging a reproductive health care facility or a place of worship
It was considered the height of bipartisan compromise at a difficult time (and Bill Clinton's statescraft, in contrast to the then-expensive Assault Weapons Ban), and like many laws from that era, it reflects a draconian view of punishment. While a first nonviolent offense can 'only' result in a maximum of six months imprisonment and a 10k USD fine, these numbers scale rapidly for repeat offenses, and can be rapidly stacked, even in marginal cases, with other charges to boost the scope of a trial and the possible punishment.
Uh. Except you might notice a pattern in what direction both the successful and failed cases go, and what prongs of the FACE Act they cover. It's not that the feds never prosecute someone for clear violations of this law; they just do it by using an entirely different law that predated and does not scale, and accept plea bargains for the most minimal punishments. That disparity has been around for a while, even if it's only become more obvious with Jane's Revenge floating around.
It does not, as a matter of law, matter whether the FACEs is ever enforced against a specific political viewpoint. And from the view of the 'don't break the laws, fucko' or 'don't block access to public spaces' caucus, I've got little sympathy for protestors getting burned when they signed up for the frying pan. But if you sent a message back in time to the 1994 GOP and told them they were just repeating the 1988 18 USC 247, I doubt they'd have trumpeted it.
Joe Wilson and the Affordable Care Act
There's a number of famous controversies during the run-up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, along with some lesser-known ones. The extent trans-related healthcare would be covered and what expectations that invoked was a sleeper, while the question of "encouraged end-of-life" care rather famously got above the fold at length.
Joe Wilson is best-remembered, to the extent he's remembered at all, for one of the better-known ones. He shouted out "You lie" during the middle of a joint session of congress where then-President Obama disavowed that "our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants", a matter Republicans feared would be thrown.
Thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration’s actions, today’s final rule will remove the prohibition on DACA recipients’ eligibility for Affordable Care Act coverage for the first time, and is projected to help more than 100,000 young people gain health insurance. Starting in November, DACA recipients can apply for coverage through HealthCare.gov and state-based marketplaces, where they may qualify for financial assistance to help them purchase quality health insurance.
To be fair to President Obama, he's (officially) been out of office for the better part of a decade. To be less fair to Biden, there's no statute changed about any of this in that whole timeframe, and Obama was using the future tense. Whatever Obama thought he was proposing, this is what his proposal got, and it's not like he's complaining.
Wilson received a reprimand for his outburst. There'd be some irony in him living long enough to crow about it, though he hasn't done so yet. And even if he did, being right is cold comfort for anyone other than the politicians.
One of These Things Is Not Like The Others
The Affordable Care Act, unlike the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act or Pregnant Workers Fairness Act or Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, was more the result of long negotiation rather than long negotiation and compromise between the parties. There are no Republican cosponsors or even congressional votes for the law to be betrayed, because there were no Republican congressional votes for the ACA at all; at most, there were some (long-booted) Blue Dogs.
Quite a large number of moderates, of one stripe or another, drew that as a particular failure. They could, we were told, have gotten more serious concessions; they could, we were told, have achieved their own separate goals. How much they were moderates or 'moderates' often said how much 'they' in the previous passages stood for the GOP or for that particular person's particular goals. During the second half of the Obama years, many of the particular goals side painted the Republicans as the Party of No; after, this obstinate unwillingness to give up a slice of the cake was drawn as both cause and effect of various Republican maladies, from poll numbers among young professionals to failure to integrate into the administrative class to the price of tea in China.
The PWFA and BSCA rulemakings and FACEs prosecutions come as the punchlines to those particularly jokes. No one's come away from any statute feeling the GOP has a better finger on the interests of the public, or was able to represent its people's interests better than the What's The Matter With Kansas asshole. Perhaps these laws are all cherry-picked, and every other major bipartisan statute had everyone walk away smiling, or the GOP betrayed the Democratic Party. Nor, given the speed that even matters as simple as dictionaries have turned to political ends, is there any way to promise that the next time would be different, or that even laws and statutes that conservatives badly want would be resistant. Indeed, the longest delay was the case where they compromised in no amount at all!
You still don't get that many tries to break trust, and it's expensive to rebuild.
ControlsFreak
15m ago
Ok, so not a prediction about consumers' willingness-to-pay slightly more for slightly more secure products. That's fine. It would have been an easy thing to make a prediction on if your step function catastrophic model was correct, but I think we can conclude by this much longer-term, contingent prediction that your step function catastrophic model really really wasn't ever a serious attempt at a model in the first instance.
Does TheMotte have a RemindMe bot that can come back in 20 years?
Flying cars actually are pretty close to my area of expertise, so I'm betting that you probably have some misconceptions of the reality on the topic. What do you think is "the way we talk about flying cars today"? Let's see if it reflects reality.
YouEssAyyy
18m ago
I predict we will see more and more of this stuff. Red state governments & AGs are increasingly hostile to DEI and I think there is real legal risk of DEI hiring policies. I’m noticing the vibe shift occurring in corporate America. At my mega corp the most cringe of the DEI initiatives have gone away and sr leadership is no longer emphasizing it.
The wildcard is how a Trump victory might impact this. I could see a world where him winning galvanizes the DEI activists.
ControlsFreak
20m ago
You won't change it without breaking it such that it can't produce the new stuff any more.
This is just hyperbolic catastrophism. Hilarious, really. I mean, honestly. You can't possibly have a real argument for this. Did you really think that this was an actual argument? Or do you have some weird twisted argument that literally any epsilon>0 of regulation instantly grinds innovation to a halt? I hate to break it to you, but no one else believes this, because it's just not true. Not even remotely true. Tons of industries that are infinitely more regulated than tech still have plenty of innovation. There may be a tradeoff on some margins, yes, but your step function model is not remotely serious.
"Technokings" is not a reasonable description of the people building them. The people building them exist, and are not people with the regulated-industry mindset, where there are a ton of boxes to be checked and rechecked every time something is built or a change is made.
What shall we call them, then? "Bored Pandas", the culture of folks too bored by things like making sure there's no default password on their devices?
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
23m ago
The game of insisting on some very tangible prediction for a perturbation to a complex system, and then if no such prediction is forthcoming insisting the person making less tangible claims is wrong is annoying and only works on Yudkowskiites. I'll make a less tangible claim, though: If regulation gets a foothold and continues to increase, in 20 years we'll be talking about the promise of automation of household tasks the way we talk about flying cars today.
ControlsFreak
25m ago
If the UK wants to make such regulations it will reap the same sort of benefits: no toxic chemical pollution or chinese crap botnets, but also no innovation in these respective sectors.
So, will you then make a prediction along the lines of what I asked for in the OP? Are you predicting that tech companies will pull out of the UK rather than either upgrayyyeding their security practices for the world market or going with a dual product (one version that doesn't make absurdly basic mistakes for the UK market and one that does make those mistakes for the world market)?
The debate is only on the magnitude of the effect.
And I claimed that being forced to not have default passwords will have an incredibly low magnitude effect on innovation. Do you actually disagree with this, or do we agree?
I don't buy chinese crap that spies on you, I tell people not to buy chinese crap that spies on you and I shame people who do so in my social circles.
I do the same, but clearly that is not changing much about the world. Have you succeeded in changing the world through your evangelism?
Hell, I've spent years of my life writing symbolic execution software used specifically to make edge devices secure.
Then I'm sure you will be pleased that this work won't be going to waste by someone shaving a few cents off of the cost of your product by putting a default password on it. Honestly, hearing this, I'm really not sure what your concern is. Is it that your company's "We're Actually Secure" marketing is going to be slightly less effective, now that the floor has been raised? Did you really think that such marketing was really of all that much value in the first place? @The_Nybbler thinks that it's completely a waste and that no one would spend one red cent more for your secure product. Do you think he's wrong?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
33m ago
MIT no longer requires diversity statements for faculty hires.
Allegedly. The only sources I’ve seen covering this are not exactly paragons of journalism, citing emails rather than anything public. MIT’s own website still describes the practice in glowing terms. I am curious whether the general population of MIT staff—the ones maintaining their websites—is in favor of this change, or if any of them were consulted.
Assuming this is credible, let’s make some predictions.
- social media backlash: guaranteed.
- news backlash, a la NYT: high. This is red meat for opinion columns, as evidenced by the fact that conservative outlets are already crowing about it. But maybe I’ve misjudged, and no one in the mainstream actually cares?
- policy reverted: low. I predict a whole lot of nothing. The people who most care about this are less likely to have leverage over MIT. If it does get rolled back, I predict it’ll be downstream of administrative drama within the school.
- policy spreads to other elite universities: medium? I have no idea which way the wind is blowing. Outlets are trumpeting their preferred conclusion. But I suspect this is going to be localized.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
34m ago
To some extent we do live in that world already: your $10 electronic device from Walmart probably already has a click wrap license that you have to accept to use the product. The validity of those is perhaps subject to question, but they aren't, to my knowledge in the US, categorically invalid.
freemcflurry
34m ago
Those are often paid for by state or federal grants.
https://apnews.com/article/synagogue-security-federal-funds-worship-c687e3e7c15842fc51103479235cbf45
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
36m ago
Maybe their little subculture will change. It is a Culture War, after all.
You won't change it without breaking it such that it can't produce the new stuff any more.
...wait, so those people aren't building them? Who is building them? People who aren't the artists and don't find following the regulation to be boring? Then we don't actually have any problem at all! I'm not sure what you've been complaining about this whole time.
"Technokings" is not a reasonable description of the people building them. The people building them exist, and are not people with the regulated-industry mindset, where there are a ton of boxes to be checked and rechecked every time something is built or a change is made.
But you know all this; you're unable or unwilling to truly conceal your glee at keeping the people (such as myself) that you hold in such disdain being stomped on by the English jackboot.
ZeroPipeline
37m ago
In at least some cases, those are being paid for by the federal government through the Nonprofit Security Grant Program.
That's too bad, because you already live in one.
I too hate that we don't distinguish strongly enough between computers bolted onto appliances and regular appliances. It's confusing. But when your fridge is actually a computer with a delivery service that happens to come with a free fridge, we have to deal with the complexities of the former, not the latter.
shale fracking revolution in the oil/gas industry
That is a fair one, but It's also a very good example of just what I'm saying. I was part of the few people on the quite unpopular side of the oil industry here in Europe in the 10s when it was banned, for the same reason I'm on this side of this issue now.
If the UK wants to make such regulations it will reap the same sort of benefits: no toxic chemical pollution or chinese crap botnets, but also no innovation in these respective sectors.
It's a choice.
"Being forced to not have default passwords is not a significant barrier to innovation,"
You can not like that enforcing common sense rules to an industry through state mandates is a barrier to innovation all you want. It's not going to stop being true. The debate is only on the magnitude of the effect.
What are you going to do about your concern?
I don't buy chinese crap that spies on you, I tell people not to buy chinese crap that spies on you and I shame people who do so in my social circles.
Hell, I've spent years of my life writing symbolic execution software used specifically to make edge devices secure, some of which you may be using right now. What have you done?
Ponder
41m ago
This probably isn't the exact post that you were looking for, but I think you will find it interesting and related to what you asked about. It is about how people's views on X becomes distorted by taboos and shift when the taboo is lifted.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KpMNqA5BiCRozCwM3/social-dark-matter
[Social Dark Matter is] anything that people are strongly incentivized to hide from each other, and which therefore appears to be rare. And given that our society disapproves-of and disincentivizes a wide variety of things, there is a lot of it out there.
By the Law of Prevalence, any given type of social dark matter is going to be much more common than your evidence would suggest, and by the Law of Extremity, instances of that dark matter are going to tend to be much less extreme than you would naively guess.
AvocadoPanic
46m ago
May have been increased turnout from a specific demographic group that were supporting Obama.
PokerPirate
50m ago
Most of the issues raised by your hypothetical can be resolved by the content of the contract signed by the parties.
I do not want to live in a word where people buying a $10 device from walmart have to sign a contract.
ControlsFreak
50m ago
But those people can't do it, because they aren't the people building the devices. The people being required to do it are the people you (gleefully) admit it is painful for.
Maybe their little subculture will change. It is a Culture War, after all.
The reason IoT devices have been an absolute security shitshow for years is no one except you and some European regulators actually gives a shit.
I mean, plenty of people care, including lots of technology and security experts. E.g.
There are no technokings building them
...wait, so those people aren't building them? Who is building them? People who aren't the artists and don't find following the regulation to be boring? Then we don't actually have any problem at all! I'm not sure what you've been complaining about this whole time.
nobody's going to pay a red cent more for an internet-connected light bulb that's more secure than some other internet-connected light bulb.
Well, now, if all the internet-connected light bulbs that are available in the store are more secure and cost one red cent more, will they still fly off the shelf? You've resisted making any tangible prediction here. I think it's because you know that they will still sell just fine for a tiny amount of additional money.
SteveKirk
52m ago
A smuggie is worth ten thousand words. The classic ones strike right at the heart of the issues, it's incredible.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
57m ago
The difference is that it's easy to people who don't have a particular psychology or culture.
So you say. But those people can't do it, because they aren't the people building the devices. The people being required to do it are the people you (gleefully) admit it is painful for.
But hey, I think we're making progress. The reason why IoT devices have been an absolute security shitshow for years is just because a small culture of powerful technokings think that it's too boring for them to fix the obvious problems that everyone knows are obvious problems and which are objectively easy and simple to fix. We may have reached agreement!
I do not agree. The reason IoT devices have been an absolute security shitshow for years is no one except you and some European regulators actually gives a shit. There are no technokings building them, and nobody's going to pay a red cent more for an internet-connected light bulb that's more secure than some other internet-connected light bulb.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1hr ago
Compliance is a huge industry.
Weird. I hear about that from my friends in literally every other industry ever. They still seem capable of operating.
Sure, and Harrison Bergeron could walk with a junkyard's worth of scrap metal stuck to him. It's a handicap, not necessarily a fatal one (though sometimes it is).
SteveKirk
1hr ago
Maybe don't trust Gemini with that question
https://tnc.news/2024/02/12/a-map-of-every-church-burnt-or-vandalized-since-the-residential-school-announcements4/
ControlsFreak
1hr ago
The difference is that it's easy to people who don't have a particular psychology or culture. You're concluding that it's not easy to certain folks, which is perfectly compatible with it being objectively easy to most people. Maybe it's even tedious, or as the dictionary would recast that word, boring, to you. But hey, I think we're making progress. The reason why IoT devices have been an absolute security shitshow for years is just because a small culture of powerful technokings think that it's too boring for them to fix the obvious problems that everyone knows are obvious problems and which are objectively easy and simple to fix. We may have reached agreement!
you-get-an-upvote
Hyperbole is bad
1hr ago
I'm confused -- whose stance are you attacking?
Thanks a lot for the recs. Irontower indeed seems quite interesting.
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