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freemcflurry
21m ago
Evidence is a fuzzy thing. Toyota got mugged for millions because some old people stepped on the wrong peddle. Juries love people with dead relatives and they hate big corporations.
You, uh, missed a spot. And it's not like these things are the only examples -- if I hadn't hit trans stuff separately, I'd be pointing out the entire circuit where the ADA now covers gender identity disorders, despite the explicit text of the ADA excluding that by name!
Pregnant Worker's Fairness Act It should also be noted that the EEOC still has to follow the APA when it comes to procedural matters in promulgation (like notice and comment), so this lack of authority doesn't exactly make it easy for them to run wild.
By which you mean they issued a NPR, and then changed basically zip in response to significant public comment.
Saying outright that the law didn't apply to abortion would have created a situation where the EEOC guidance was directly at-odds with any reasonable canon of legislative interpretation; I don't think any textualist could argue with a straight face that abortions aren't pregnancy-related.
The statute, for whatever it matters, does not cover all pregnancy-related matters: it covers "pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions." It's... actually not that hard to notice the difference between a medical procedure and a medical pr. There's perfectly good fairness or policy reasons that it should, and perhaps in a world where the text was about pregnancy-related anythings and conservatives had eaten the administrative agencies, I'd be making arguments that they're betrayed trust in an important compromise. And yet we're here.
But that's all irrelevant because it's unlikely that this rule (or lack thereof) would ever result in litigation... I've personally never had an employer ask about the nature of any medical procedure I've taken time off to get, or had them ask me which doctor I was going to, and if a doctor's excuse is required, I doubt many employers are going to do internet research to determine if this is a doctor who exclusively performs abortions.
Yet rather than the answer to "It's no big deal" being "fine, then let me win" instead, we find that everyone insists it is both necessary and obvious, no matter how much they have to play with statute's language to get the job done. Indeed, even were there some central case that were vital or some symbolic victory that should be a big deal to the progressive movement and a trivial one to conservatives, the religious freedom concerns that the EEOC itself claims never happen still can't get a "fine, then let me win". While "The Commission also received tens of thousands of comments asserting that giving certain accommodations for pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, such as providing leave for abortion, infertility treatments, or contraception, would infringe upon the employer's religious freedom", the final rule gloss over any serious management or standard of those concerns, leaving such questions open to "defenses using a case-by-case analysis" and motioning to a statutory defense that only protects religious organization's ability to hire people of that religion.
((Spoiler: because there's few cases only because everyone paying attention knows defending against a suit is high-risk and staggeringly expensive, and there's absolutely no guarantee that the vague religious freedom exceptions might apply until very late in appeals, so the EEOC can get 99.9% of the impact just by noisily threatening enforcement and then shrugging that their political opponents leave the entire topic like a landmine.))
FFLs When the entire point of specific statutory language is to expand a definition, you can't complain too loudly when that definition gets expanded. If you had sole rulemaking authority with regards to this, how would you expand the definition to conform with the new law without simply restating the old definition? I'm sure you can think of a dozen ways that this could be done, but that's beside the point.
Not only could I, eighteen thousand people did, as Halbrook points out in his link, but you're right to say that, too, is besides the point. The ATF and APA do not care about the little people. But it does make this rhetorical question more than a little obnoxious.
But there's a third category of people we've talked about before who the government really doesn't like — people who want to sell guns part-time or as a hobby. You mentioned in a previous post how the ATF no longer will issue FFLs for hobbyists. You can disagree with that stance all you want, but it seems to me that Congress agrees with that and that was the specific intent behind the change in language.
But Congress did not write a law saying that you can not sell firearms as a hobbyist; it wrote that you needed an FFL to sell firearms to "predominantly earn a profit", and the ATF decided that included firearms sales that included a profit at all, or even if they didn't have a profit but might be motivated by the money. Congress has not even modified the statutory requirements for provisioning an FFL in decades! And I'll point again to the ATF happily ignoring the strict text of the statute whenever it decides that it knows best.
When you write that the government really doesn't like them, that's true in the sense that 'the government' means progressives, operating under a presumption that compromise means progressive interests get a large portion of what they demand, and conservative interests get fucked, and not in the fun way.
The problem as I see it doesn't stem so much from the law itself or ATF's interpretation of it but that there is a group of people for whom any further restrictions on gun sales is bad and needs to be stopped.
I can separately argue that the law was badly intended, but I don't think there's anything insightful to point out that people want to ban guns entirely and make being an FFL as difficult as possible and impossible for many. Yes, duh, I predicted that literally before Biden was sworn in as President, I can't pretend to be surprised today. Props to you for at least admitting that the whole point is make onerous rules that drive hobbyists and part-timers from the field, but it isn't exactly some deep cover.
No, the problem as I'm trying to highlight is that there is a group of people who claimed at length that this was -- as held in the name -- a Bipartisan compromise that would include both further restrictions and clarifications protecting gunnies, and this didn't happen at all. The statute still explicitly recognizes private sales, but the ATF doesn't actually recognize any way to clearly comply with it in this rule-making.
In many ways, they would have been better served by flipping anyone who offered claimed concessions the bird. It matters, that for many, that is increasingly clear.
FACE Act It's telling that this law has only become controversial in recent years, after the Biden Administration used it aggressively in the wake of Dobbs. For the first 30 or so years of its existence, the fact that it was never used in cases of church vandalism was never an issue.
It... actually was a pretty big controversy back in the 2008-2012 timeframe, as activists had begun disrupting church services, while both feds and state officials left the matter to civil litigation. The ADF actually brought suit with some limited success in that case, though both the org and the individuals were basically judgement proof.
At least not enough of an issue for 2 Republican presidents to invoke it in 12 years, one of whom was devoutly religious and the other of whom was devoutly into culture warring.
At the same 2008-2012 timeframe, the DoJ was highlighting increased use from the pre-Obama framework where it was largely perceived as targeting bad actors on the scale of arson or bombings. If you want to rest your argument on the masterful control of the DoJ Trump demonstrated, I hope you have fun, but I'm gonna have a hard time taking it seriously.
But it doesn't compare to the Houck case, at least if you actually look at the procedural posture. The information in the Nota case was filed the day before the plea was entered. This itself was several months after the incident. What this suggests was that this was already a done deal by the time it was even on the court's docket; for all we know, the prosecutor could have threatened to throw the book at Nota before offering a misdemeanor charge and a sentencing recommendation as a lifeline.
The information that we can't see or find or read, even presuming it actually exists, does not actually do a good job of protecting trust, especially given the extent this glosses over a wide variety of other stuff in the reporting (Nota spraypainting an employee's face and threw a rock at them, and also spray-painted a police car). The lack of SWAT, I am sure, has a similarly plausible and similarly unprovable charitable explanation.
Indeed, yes, the guy who didn't destroy property or spraypaint anyone in the face could have gotten a plea bargain. Of course, Houck was found not-guilty, while Nota was caught spraypaint-handed. Interestingly, we do happen to have another example I linked where the people were actually guilty of a FACE Act violation against abortion clinics, and one of the protestors plead guilty, turned government witness, and got 10 months in prison for her plea deal.
Yes, I'm sure there's some post-hoc way that This One Is Different. There might even be ways to argue it that doesn't look hilariously biased (Davis conspired to block a hallway! something something sentencing guidelines! two counts, because Nota didn't do two illegal things at once!), though I'm not optimistic. But the readiness that people defending these disparities can discover that it is impossible to evaluate the merits or compare in any statistically meaningful way are starting to echo.
Skibboleth
32m ago
I'm being a little glib. As a pejorative it's tended to have pro-free market connotations, though when right-wingers adopt the term they tend to emphasize the globalist aspect of that rather than the anti-regulation/anti-public sector implication of left-wing usage. In either case, it tends to suffer from lumping together a wide range of people who may not be part of the same political coalition as each other or hold the views imputed to them.
Not only is the idea of students leaving for lunch unheard of, but using devices was strictly limited until I got to high school. It was a revelation actually being able to use my iPod at lunchtime when I entered high school. Maybe it's different now.
And once you were old enough to drive, you could technically schedule your classes with free periods at least in my area and leave during those, although it's strongly discouraged to leave gaps in the schedule. In my senior year of high school I had a free period in the morning and got to sleep in part of the week, which was heaven for a night owl like me.
Public schools are incredibly liability-averse and letting kids loose just isn't in their vocabulary. The US values freedom, but is terrified about children's safety to the point of neurosis. To some extent this reflects the safety profile of the US being different than Europe, to some extent it reflects the lower density and car-dependence of the US, to some extent it reflects our tortious legal system, but to a great extent I think it just reflects the neurotic substrate within American society.
How do they even stop you or know what you're doing?
Once the school day starts, almost no one is allowed in or out except in specific circumstances and those who are allowed have to be screened. In that way, schools are kind of run like airports.
Why do they care where you eat lunch?
They care because between the hours of 7am and 3pm, they're responsible for your welfare and if they let you leave and something happens to you, there might be civil or criminal liability. Parents would also be pissed, because the primary function of public schooling isn't education but daycare.
There's also the fact that if they let you out they'd also have to let you back in, and that opens a whole can of worms about random people strolling into the school or setting up a huge infrastructure to screen students returning from lunch.
Butlerian
Not robot-ist just don't like 'em
39m ago
That wouldn’t even be a correct interpretation of MMT
Having a correct interpretation of MMT does not in my experience seem to be a necessary precondition of being an MMTer.
pigeonburger
46m ago
We always had computers as far back as my very first memories. We had a NES in the very early 90s. Then I was mostly a PC gamer, until my brother got a Dreamcast. Finally I got me a Gamecube as a late teen. After that I was an adult so it doesn't really count.
But I've played emulators when that became possible, played console games at friends places, etc...
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
51m ago
I didn't have any consoles growing up, my parents were very against them. I only had old PC games. My first console (eventually) was a PS2 my sophomore year of college.
sliders1234
1hr ago
Ok fair enough. Average human low liability but big corporate gets $30 million a life.
Though I guess solutions can be found when it’s necessary.
IGI-111
1hr ago
I guess I just meant cheaper than a century ago, but I hadn't heard about the US reserves finally being fully sold this year. I guess I should come to the Motte more often for more helium trading news.
But yeah probably no zeppelins anytime soon. Winged aircraft wins again.
sliders1234
1hr ago
That wouldn’t even be a correct interpretation of MMT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_monetary_theory
I think some butchered downstream version got all deficits are fake thing perhaps from the 2010’s where inflation was low so plausibly in their theory it was fake when inflation was below 2% and we had excess unemployment.
Hyperion
1hr ago
Your dates don't really line up though. Withholding isn't until 1943. You see higher income taxes earlier, after Roosevelt becomes president. You then see an even steeper rise in taxes in general as the USA becomes more and more involved in the war. Finally in 1943 you see withholding implemented, but this is after a decade of higher and higher taxes spurred on by the depression and war. After WW2 you see lower, but still high income taxes and finally income taxes come down after the neo-liberal revolution in the 80s. Withholding doesn't seem important in this picture.
drmanhattan16
1hr ago
The appropriate analogy would be "don't tell a trans person you don't think they're the gender they claim to be", not "don't tell people their evaluation of your sex doesn't match what you say it is".
SteveKirk
1hr ago
He might be an MMTer. That's gotten popular among the in crowd recently for obvious "we can print as much money as we want without worrying about inflation" reasons.
SteveKirk
1hr ago
The big downside of self-insuring for a company is probably political. If you've got a policy from Lloyd's any effort to bankrupt you through insurance payout lawfare is going to get a lot of very important people upset on your behalf.
If musk self-insured there's nothing stopping Some Judge In New York from ordering 70 billion dollar payouts every time a Tesla is involved in a fender-bender.
You need to smear the money around for self defense, and pay off enough of the Party that they at least can't unify in looting you.
SteveKirk
1hr ago
Helium's gotten cheaper? I thought there was a huge shortage after they finished selling off that absurdly massive strategic helium reserve.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1hr ago
Yes this is a trivial problem to solve. We already have a massive auto insurance industry. Everything looks like self-driving cars will be safer than human drivers.
The auto insurance industry works because there's a relatively low cap on liability per accident (after which they stop paying out and the driver is on the hook, but the driver is an individual who likely doesn't have much). Once the manufacturer is on the hook, that cap is irrelevant.
What consoles did everyone have growing up?
Showing my age here, but the N64 was the first and last I ever owned (and didn't buy many games after ocarina of time, not even goldeneye). My high school boyfriend had a gaystation 2, but in college the most common game was Mario Cart 64.
Some people also got a Wii senior year, but I had time to play it like twice.
(Edit: I had a PC, but never anything good enough to play modern games. My treasured CD was a pirate compilation of a whole bunch of 90s games, including homm2 and Raiden fighters.
Asking because a few friends were talking about video game nostalgia, and I was shocked at the number of different consoles they'd had access to.
75m is still way too much space for most people.
I mean if we're talking theoretical numbers, in STOL competitions the world record for shortest landing is a little over 9ft, in aircraft that look very much like WW1 fighers or WW2 recon planes: high lift extremely light tuboprops. That part of the problem isn't really that difficult, it's more of an engineering and architecture problem than anything else.
The safety thing is the real reason, but valuing that over flying cars is parochial to the modern societies we live in. It's a cultural rather than physical limitation.
if we're going this route, why not bring back zeppelins?
You might be joking but people keep saying that will happen since we solved most of the technical issues and helium isn't that expensive anymore.
The problem is that they're slow and their only advantage over planes is fuel efficiency and thus range. Making them only really suited for large scale transport where they don't have enough of an edge over boats or rail.
Is this the bitter voice of experience of someone who has worked on software for the financial industry?
Not financial, but the meetings and the acronyms (though not the specific paragraph numbers) are real.
In my experience, companies that operate in compliance-heavy industries that also have hard technical challenges frequently are able to retain talented developers who hate that kind of thing, either by outsourcing to Compliance-As-A-Service companies (Stripe, Avalara, Workday, DocuSign, etc) or by paying somewhat larger amounts of money to developers who are willing to do boring line-of-business stuff (hi).
This works when the regulations target parts of the product that can be isolated from the technical challenges, but not (as in e.g. aircraft) when they can't. But I can understand the bitter envy towards software people of someone who is in a field where a good year means finding that you can tweak the radius of the trailing edge of the winglet by 1mm and save an average of a pound of fuel in an Atlantic crossing and only have to go through an abbreviated aerodynamic design review.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2hr ago
Insurance helps individual drivers because they can pool their risk with all the other drivers. A self-driving car company selling a sufficient number cars may as well self-insure. And yes, the expected cost of liability would be baked into the cars in either case, but I expect if they got it right, self-driving cars would be prohibitively expensive. If they got it wrong they'd go bankrupt when they big verdict came up.
sliders1234
2hr ago
Yes this is a trivial problem to solve. We already have a massive auto insurance industry. Everything looks like self-driving cars will be safer than human drivers.
You either add it to the costs of the car as essentially pre-bought insurance for the purchaser (which should be cheaper than current policies) or work out some long-term payment plan on the buyer for yearly insurance (with some kind of termination in time after so many years etc).
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2hr ago
Do you think the cost of self-driving car insurance would be higher than human-driven car insurance?
Human-driven liability insurance doesn't cover everything. Losses are limited. If you start a chain-reaction collision and kill a whole bunch of people, your insurance company will pay our to your maximum, and you'll lose everything you have and have to declare bankruptcy. Maybe you'll go to jail or commit suicide, but either way your victims ain't getting anything more. If a self-driving car does the same, the losses are limited to the value of the self-driving car company, which is likely far greater than any individual. And the company has far more exposure. And the plaintiffs and juries know the self-driving car company has much deeper pockets than an insured driver, so I expect you'd see more lawsuits per incident and higher judgements.
sliders1234
2hr ago
I think his interview was taken out of context. Atleast I hope it was. The reason we borrow money instead of just printing all we need is it basically soaks up money that would end up elsewhere and cause inflation instead of being saved. And inflation reduction device.
He should be smart enough to know that so I have to assume he was just tired or wasn’t sure where they were going and didn’t feel like providing a better answer.
omfalos
2hr ago
What if NASA functioned like the ADA? Every company with more than 50 employees could be made legally liable for failure to launch probes into space to explore the Solar System. The law could be enforced by lawsuits against companies that have "workplaces hostile to space exploration" because they skimp on how many probes they launch.
Yeah. I think the more recent immigration bills also had to deal with the aftermath of the Gang of Eight attempt in 2013, which even contemporaneously was seen as Rubio getting punked by some embarrassingly useless compromises-in-name-only
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