I’m very busy working on Hereville 3 right now, hence the lack of posts lately, and the lack of links in this link farm. Have a page from my sketchbook instead, and please feel free to post anything in this thread. Self-linking is both delicious and nutritious, and your doctor wants you to do it at least three times a week.
Major Trump donors who complained of immigrant ‘invasion’ used Mexican workers illegally https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/20/uline-mexican-workers-trump
The problem is not the “echo chamber” phenomenon. It is the fact that reactionary information sources disseminate falsehoods about the…
Also I love the chicken fat on this one (and that the text of the chicken fat is big enough…
I don't think of myself as complaining about conservative echo chambers so much as I think political echo chamber like…
But in the current political moment, conservatives are complaining a lot about liberal “echo chambers,” which makes this the right…
While I was doing some research for a “we’re just an echo chamber here” response to Myca (heh), I found an interesting statistic in this BJS paper (see page 7.)
I know that people have often referenced the unwillingness of POC to report things to the police. And we’ve discussed that whites are way more willing to do so because they’re part of the establishment. I’ve said so as well, albeit based on a professional assumption and not personal experience.
It turns out that this is not true, unless I’m really misreading it. I was surprised by this. I might have to change my outlook.
VIOLENT CRIME REPORTING %ages (percent of crimes reported:)
White males are 44.1% and black males are at 50.4%. “Other races” is 36.8%. The average for males is 44.2 which suggests that the “other races” group is about as large as the “black male” group.
White females are at 47.9% and black females are at a whopping 68.5%. “Other races” are 46.7%. The average for females is 50.4%.
PROPERTY CRIME REPORTING
White males are at 42.1%; Black males are at 39.4%; “other races” at 36.8%; average is 41.6%.
White females are at 37.1%; black females are at 48.7%; “other races” at 33.7; average is 39.0%.
In the “today’s reason why it is a horribly stupid idea to allow colleges to use a preponderance standard”, another Title 9 discrimination case filed by a student who alleges a due process violation and biased “conviction,” this time at Vassar. Separate link, Here’s the complaint.
I was interested to find that Vassar “trains” their people who serve as hearing officers (akin to judges) on the sexual harassment panel. The training is secret, of course. (I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that the training is put together by a particular “side” and that it doesn’t include anyone on the defendant-rights scale. Anyone wanna take that bet?)
In that vein it might be relevant to know that Stanford’s training, for example, used to include materials that stated things like this:
“Everyone should be very, very cautious in accepting a man’s claim that he has been wrongly accused of abuse or violence. The great majority of allegations of abuse—though not all—are substantially accurate.”
or these “indicators of an abuser” which had their own section:
-Blame partner and minimize personal role.
-Feel victimized.
-Assertively claim to be a victim.
-Act persuasive and logical.
The degree to which “behavior of abuser” is similar to “behavior of innocent accused” is pretty startling sometimes.
G&W, as far as I can tell, there is only one side of the story available for the public to read in that case.
Maybe Vasser acted very badly. Or maybe, once both sides are known, it will turn out they acted reasonably. I wouldn’t assume that I know for sure based on having read only one party’s version of events.
In light of numerous discussions of American intellectual property laws here and opinions offered that they tend to be suppressive, I thought that you all would find The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish of interest.
Links, charts and further discussion at the link.
gin-and-whiskey:
Interesting statistic, GnW! And yes – we’re an awfully homogeneous echo chamber. Why, until recently we never had any arguments or disagreements here at all. :P
RonF:
I think that some of this has to be due to ‘orphaned work,’ where people know it’s in copyright, but they don’t know who the owner is, or maybe the owner died and it’s unclear who has control of the copyright – even to the people who might have control.
In cases like that, it’s just about impossible to do something useful with it because: 1) There’s nobody with a clear financial incentive to benefit from licensing it out, and 2) There may be any number of people with a clear financial incentive to benefit from suing the pants off someone who does benefit.
—Myca
Hooray! The Affordable Care Act *completely fucks over* Downs Syndrome kids by taxing the money their parents spend on their care! It’s another Victory for the People!
http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/01/obamacare-hurts-parents-of-special-needs-children/
1) The report comes from a partisan anti-government group. I’ll take it with a grain of salt until other analysts weigh in.
2) This sort of flaw in a law, IF it is true, could usually be fixed by passing “patch” legislation to fix it. The reason that, in all likelihood, no patch legislation can be passed to help Down Syndrome Kids is that Republicans would rather Obamacare fail than to work on making it better, and so will vote against any bill intended to fix problems that come up. This is true even though it would be easy to put a majority together in both the House and the Senate for a “help kids with Down Syndrome” law, if the GOP would allow them to come to a vote – but the GOP will not.
3) The CBO predicts about 30 million uninsured people will become insured because of Obamacare. Many of them will be people like me, with chronic but non-emergency health conditions that would make it impossible for them to ever afford health care on their own, but left untreated will cause us to die years earlier than we should.
I don’t see my life as more valuable than the life of a kid with down’s syndrome; but I also don’t see it as LESS valuable. I’d gladly support legislation to allow all Americans, including kids with Downs Syndrome, to have access to the health care they need. So would virtually the entire Democratic Party. The barrier here is a GOP that refuses to compromise or allow existing law to be refined and improved. And you vote for them.
So – assuming the report is accurate –
1. In status quo ante, nobody really heavily used the HSA system except Downs Syndromes parents, who found it provided a tax break for their kids’ need-based-care, which is what was intended along.
2. At the inception of the ACA, this was not particularly understood (we weren’t asking people what they were using the HSA money for) and a revenue stream was detected: people putting “too much” into their HSAs!
3. So the ACA decided to cap what could go into HSAs, so as to capture the taxation on all the money that was going into HSAs.
4. The ACA passes with an overwhelmingly Democratic support, and with the Republican Party in the main caterwauling and opposing like it was the Hitler Was Swell Act.
5. Someone discovers that the ‘revenue stream’ consists mostly of Downs Syndrome kids’ parents, putting money for their kids aside and being ultra-responsible.
6. It occurs to ACA partisans that mugging Downs Syndromes kids could be “misinterpreted as an unfriendly act.” (Buckaroo Banzai moment, sorry.)
7. Solution: we didn’t need that revenue, we just passed that part of it for fun, the solution is a “patch”.
8. By “patch”, Democrats mean “restore this area of law to where it was before the ACA passed, back when we said that the status quo ante was WORSE THAN HITLER’S MOUSTACHE”.
9. “But MEAN REPUBLICANS won’t let us go back to the way things were just on this one area of the law, where we just can’t with a straight face defend defunding the little mentally handicapped children and so have to admit that status quo ante was better. No, they want us to admit that the whole thing is a flawed effort. But we can’t do that yet, even as we frantically try to get out of being affected by this mewling abortion of a fucked-up law.”
10. Therefore, Robert’s fault!
This isn’t about HSAs, it’s about FSAs.
Correction noted, but largely irrelevant.
“as we frantically try to get out of being affected by this mewling abortion of a fucked-up law.”
You think that for me to have federally-assisted affordable medical care that extends my life is “a mewling abortion of a fucked-up law.” I disagree.
You hold up one fraction of the whole and say “this is the law”.
You are leaving 99 parts out of 100 lying on the ground and pretending they can be fixed with patches.
We HAD “Federally-assisted affordable medical care”. It was called “Medicaid” and “Medicare”.
You WANTED federally-assisted affordable medical care that you qualified for, despite being too young and/or too rich. That was achievable with a one-page law laying out the changed prerequisites, and an N-page law laying out how it would be paid for.
If you want to pretend that describes the ACA, which instead goes through enormous – one might even say mewlingly abortion-like – hoops to avoid that simple act of legislative responsibility-taking, go ahead, but I’m not going to take you seriously.
I don’t think it was possible to pass a “Medicare for All” bill at the time. Do you?
I didn’t think the Congressional left was stupid enough to go for the Keep Insurance Companies The Center Of The Process Forever, You Dumb Fucks Act of 2010 either, but there we go.
That doesn’t make the tag-along costs of the ACA not count.
Kids with downs syndrome who lose out because of Obamacare are a tiny fraction of the whole. That doesn’t make their financial loss acceptable, but to hold them hostage unless all of Obamacare being revoked, rather than allowing patch legislation to be voted on, is ridiculous and irresponsible.
What I want, actually, was affordable medical care for all, not just for myself. I’m confident that I’d favor Obamacare (not as an ideal solution, but as the best solution that was legislatively viable at the time) even if I was in perfect health. I’d prefer Medicare for all to Obamacare – or, for that matter, a French-style law – but neither of those were plausible options given what Congress was like.
Also, your quote (“too young and/or too rich”) implies that you think Medicaid, prior to Obamacare, was generally available to all poor people. Actually, it was available to poor families with children, and poor people with certain disabilities, but poverty alone, no matter how dire, does not guarantee anyone access to Medicaid. (And still doesn’t, until January, when Obamacare kicks in.)
Approximately half of Obamacare (in terms of budget, and in terms of increased people insured) is a simple expansion of Medicaid to be available to more people. I haven’t noticed any congressional Republicans saying they’d support that half of Obamacare, nor do I recall any expressing support for it during the lengthy debate over Obamacare.
“What I want, actually, was affordable medical care for all, not just for myself. ”
The human species isn’t that rich yet, assuming that “all” is not limited to your conationals. So should we just ignore you in the meantime, or could maybe we get you to put some more thought into the transitional stage?
Before anyone else replies to me, I’m going to retire from “Alas” participation (other than moderating, if necessary) for the rest of the day, so I can concentrate on work better.
TTYL, everyone!
You BETTER run. ;)
Robert, are you saying you support a Medicare/caid For All (i.e. single payer) solution over either Obamacare or what existed prior?
No. I’m saying that people who support(ed) the ACA as it is cannot say “oh, but all I really wanted was X” in an attempt to disassociate themselves from what they actually passed. They didn’t work for X; they didn’t pass X. They worked for and passed the ACA. They own the whole thing, Downs-Syndrome-baby-muggings and all.
Robert – I am not familiar with the details of the ACA, so I’m not going to make any claims about this particular case. However, as a matter of general principle – just because I support a law, and it turned out that that law had an unforseen consequence (regardless of whether it was not forseen because it was not forseeable, or just because people didn’t bother checking), that means I must throw out the entire law I supported. Sure, if I support a law and that law has undesirable consequences I must take responsibility for them. But it’s not an all-or-nothing commitment; I can accept that there were problems while also still supporting the majority of what the law does. Fixing the problematic part while keeping everything else intact seems to me to be the most sensible course of action in such a case, not a preposterous one.
Or to put it another way, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with Democrats saying “the ACA was a good idea but mistakes were made in its implementation, let’s fix those mistakes without reverting the rest of the bill”.
Armament advice from Joe Biden, Sens. McCain and Rand debate the issues surrounding the uses of drones and O’Reilly and Kelley of Fox News discuss the NSA’s domestic spying program for your musical enjoyment here – and remember, chocolate is mandatory.
I forgot to include Snowden in the NSA discussion and Sen. Graham in the drone debate.
Autotune DOES have a legitimate use after all, it turns out.