- Echidne does a wonderful (and lengthy) job responding to Christina Hoff Sommers on the gender wage gap. I can’t wait till part 2.
- Feminism’s Toxic Twitter Wars | The Nation This is certainly the most talked-about article within online feminism this month.
- There were many, many responses to Michelle Goldberg’s “Toxic Twitter” articles, but my favorite was a three-post series on the blog Nuclear Unicorn (written by someone who was quoted in, but still critical of, Goldberg’s article): Words, Words, Words: On Toxicity and Abuse in Online Activism, followed by Beyond Niceness: Further Thoughts on Rage and then the longest and (for me, at least) most interesting one, The Chapel Perilous: On the Quiet Narratives in the Shadows./a>
- I also really liked this post by Verónica Bayetti Flores: On cynicism, calling out, and creating movements that don’t leave our people behind.
- She Was Harassed By A Games Reporter. Now She’s Speaking Out. Excellent article about harassment in tech/gaming industries – although frankly the lessons apply just as well to many other industries (comics comes to mind).
- Judge sentences woman for 300 days for talking back to him. Did the judge, watching Breakfast Club, think Paul Gleason’s character was supposed to be a role model?
- Confessions of a Former Lane Bryant Employee: What I Learned From Selling Clothes to Other Fat Women | xoJane
- Chart of the Day: Everyone Agrees That Iraq Was a Disaster | Mother Jones
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- Fox News: Boogeyman Of The Liberals. A right-wing writer thinks FOX has stopped mattering. I thought his point about how his kids haven’t learned to be okay with commercial breaks on TV is perhaps even more true of laugh tracks, which are now becoming unwatchable. Except then I realized that one of the few places you’ll still find laugh tracks is on Disney Channel sitcoms.
- What The Biggest Loser is Really About | Dances With Fat
- Freaked Out By Rachel Fredrickson’s Biggest Loser Win? Read This. — Body Love Wellness
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- In defense of the word “Creep,” with gifs
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- The Grand Jury Voting on One Case Every 52 Seconds – The Daily Beast Oddly, the author seems to be calling for doing away with the Grand Jury system, rather than reforming it so it can serve its intended function. (Via.)
- “Victim’s Rights” are only respected by prosecutors when the victim and his loved ones are pro-death penalty.
- “Privilege” doesn’t mean having it easy
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- Which Woody Allen movie is your favorite? Dylan Farrow’s story of being sexually abused by Woody Allen.
- “Certain primates, though, have evolved to see a third: red. It turns out that these primates—humans, chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, to name some—all have one thing in common: bare-skinned faces.”
- How Dianne Feinstein Exaggerates Global Terrorism – Conor Friedersdorf – The Atlantic
- In the same week it was announced that one of the actual Boston bombers will face the death penalty if convicted, ESPN has released a mini-documentary about Richard Jewell, a man who actually saved lives on that fateful day, and then had his life utterly ruined.
- EconoMonitor : Ed Dolan’s Econ Blog » Could We Afford a Universal Basic Income? (Part 2 of a Series)
- The Myth Of The Absent Black Father | ThinkProgress
- A Trove of History As 1970s Housewives Lived It – Conor Friedersdorf – The Atlantic
- Taxing Or Criticizing The Rich Is Just Like The Holocaust
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- Fleeing man shot to death for trespassing on someone’s lawn. Yay gun culture!
- Socialized Law : A Radical Solution for Inequality | New Republic
- The worst/best lawyer ad ever:
Barry’s BlueSky- Untitled May 2, 2024I love that Caterpillar boots were among the returned items, and in this photo an Amazon worker took, you can clearly see the "CAT" logo near the cat. Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away wapo.st/3JJ3vqT
- Untitled May 1, 2024A new cartoon for May Day! This has been an incredible year for unions in the USA - may next year be even better. Unions Have Always Done The Impossible! #PoliCartoon #Union #LaborDay2024 #MayDay2024 #May1st #UBI #LivingWage
- Untitled April 30, 2024People on reddit are fighting about a cartoon I did about why the US health care system sucks and I am enjoying this too too much. https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1ch0l0r/why_us_health_care_is_such_a_terrible_system/?sort=old
- Untitled April 30, 2024I just posted a new cartoon! It's patreon supporters only for now, but in a week or so I'll make it public. :-) https://www.patreon.com/posts/deus-ex-machina-103359912?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link
- Untitled April 30, 2024Nothing against Brian, who of course needs and should make a living. But I'm increasingly frustrated by the Substackization of blogging/news writing. To read Brian's work I have to subscribe, which at the lowest price level is $75 a year. [contains quote post or other embedded content]
- Untitled May 2, 2024
From Digby in #32
Earlier this week, jury selection began in the trial of Michael Dunn, a man on trial for murdering a black teenager in an argument over loud music. He is, of course, invoking ‘Stand your Ground’ protections.
Ta-Nehisi Coates has an interview with the victim’s mother, which is heart-wrenching.
—Myca
“fleeing his yard.” So, Claudius shot the 21-year-old as the 21-year-old was leaving Claudius’ yard?
So no – typical media editing, we really need to get some English majors working in the media – he had left Claudius’ yard. Claudius then followed him to a neighboring apartment complex, where, reportedly feeling threatened, Claudius shot him.
Apparently the author doesn’t understand what “castle doctrine” means. “Castle doctrine” means that if you’re in my house (at least) and present a threat to me or (IIRC, I may be wrong) my property I can use deadly force against you. It’s an ancient legal doctrine that predates the formation of the U.S. and is generally successfully used as a legal defense even in States where there is no formal law establishing it. I know here in Illinios it’s established as case law even though no law has been passed by the General Assembly establishing it. It’s nothing new, it’s been around for a long time. Castle doctrine has nothing to do with any increase in incidents such as this. And castle doctrine has nothing to do with this case, since the 21-year-old was not in Claudius’ house when he was shot and killed.
Again showing a misunderstanding of what castle doctrine is all about. The presumption is that if you are in your own home your options to retreat are limited. The author also apparently has not thought through the concept of what retreating means. If I’m confronted in my home and retreat I either turn my back on the invader and leave myself open to attack, or I back away from him and a) stumble and fall and/or b) leave my wife exposed to attack. “Retreat” is not a magic solution that guarantees no further risk.
Also – who’s “we”? The increasing prevalence of castle doctrine and stand your ground laws becoming formalized, plus the prevalence of their having been established for a very long time in case law in many juristictions indicates to me that “we” as a nation think that people don’t think there is a “duty to retreat”. I ask again – who’s this “we” he’s talking about?
The involvement of “Stand your ground” will have to be examined when this case goes to trial and testimony and evidence comes out as to what actually happened. It would certainly not be in Claudius’ favor that he was pursuing this guy to the point that he had to jump over a fence.
Myca, in the case you cite I think it’s dubious as to whether “stand your ground” laws actually caused it. It seems more likely that this guy flew off the handle with no thought to the law and shot someone for no good reason – which, God knows, happens often enough – and is now trying to use “stand your ground” as an after-the-fact last ditch effort to stay out of jail.
One more, and then I’ll get off for a bit:
#28 claims that the concept of the absent black father is a myth. In defense of this proposition it ran a survey measuring the percentage of white, black and Hispanic fathers who engaged with their children in certain particlar scenarios (e.g., “read to their chidren daily”). It split the answers out on the basis of whether or not the father lives with the children. According to the answers, it claims that they show that the involvement of black fathers with their children is similar to that of white and Hispanic fathers.
I think that the authors are misinterpreting what they saw in this survey. For one thing, the selection of the particular metrics is open to question as to whether they adequately measure what it is that’s important for a father to do in order to set the proper example to his children and support them. But the big thing is in the very first word of the phrase they’re testing; “absent black father”.
The metrics for “father lives with the children” are very, very much higher than the metrics for the same tasks for “father does not live with the children”. For one thing, it would seem to me that the very definition of “absent” would be “does not live with the children”. But in any case, the survey does not give the metric for how many black fathers (vs. how many Hispanic fathers and how many white fathers) do not live with their children. If you recombined the data and showed the metrics for those tasks undivided, and if – as I very much suspect – there is a much higher percentage of black fathers who do not live with their children than white fathers (and I would expect Hispanic fathers to be somewhere in between), then the metrics would show that black fathers as a whole are far less likely to interact with their children on the basis of those metrics than white fathers are –
because to a much higher degree the black fathers are, in fact, absent.
RonF, allow my to say that I am impressed by the restraint you have used while talking about the methodology of ‘The Myth of the Absent Black Father’.
It’s one of those studies where it is perfectly clear that the author is either completely and utterly incompetent, or quite willing to deceive her audience to further her agenda. Knowing that Ampersand has demonstrated much better understanding of statistics than that, I wonder why he keeps linking to such drivel.
What the survey demonstrates is that Black fathers report more involvement with their kids than father of other racial groups, whether or not they live with their kids. It says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER AT ALL about whether Black are more likely to be absent in their kids lives or not.
How can anyone fail to understand that controlling for a variable means that you are trying to remove that variable’s influence from your data, and thus your data should not carry any information about that variable?!
Regarding #15, Rebecca Watson’s “defense” of the word creep…. That was a truly pathetic display on her part. Rather than address the question, Watson retreats into silly snark and insults. Honestly, aren’t feminist advocates embarrassed to have someone like Watson flying under the “Feminist” banner?
Copyleft, it seems to me that you can be against snark and insults. Or you can write things like “That was a truly pathetic display… Honestly, aren’t feminist advocates embarrassed to have someone like Watson flying under the “Feminist” banner?” But it’s self-contradictory to write them both, especially in the same comment.
And by the way, Copyleft, aren’t YOU embarrassed to join thousands of men on the internet who engage in over-the-top RW hatred, and who are seemingly unable to see her name pass without a sneer or a mean comment?
Plus, why are you shocked, shocked! to find a link labeled “with gifs” leads to a purposely silly post? (Maybe you’re unfamiliar with the “with gifs” convention?)
For those who don’t know:
Stand your ground is a GENERAL term, which contains a lot of variables. Some include
1) What are the standards for evaluating your duty to retreat? (This is very important. To offer two opposite extremes, you could have “you have no duty to retreat unless at the time you subjectively believed retreat to be perfectly safe” versus “you will be held liable for a failure to retreat unless it is more likely than not, judged in retrospect, that retreating would have caused severe injury or death.”
2) Who bears the requirement of proof, and how is that passed back and forth? (Sometimes one side will have to make an initial showing, but then the obligation passes to the other side to counter it, which may result in the first side having to prove even more…)
3) Who can you defend? Yourself, of course–but can you also defend family, third parties, strangers…?
4) Does it matter if you initiated the dispute, and/or if you were the first to brandish a deadly weapon?
5) Does it matter where you are? The “Castle” doctrine isn’t anything special; it’s just an extension of Stand Your Ground laws which basically says “there’s never a duty to retreat from a stranger, within the bounds of your own home.”
Ebony Burks was charged with domestic violence, she talked back to the judge, and then swore at him? If she was a man, I strongly doubt any feminists would be coming to her defense (and they’d be right).
If you’re stupid enough to talk back to a judge or a policeman, I have zero sympathy.
I also am pretty unimpressed with Echidne’s remarks about the gender wage gap. Women make back a good part of that wage disparity by serking relationships with higher status men, so it’s unclear to me why this is a pressing social problem that needs to be solved. if women choose to take time off to have kids, or to take lower status careers , and end up making less money, I don’t see a problem with that either. that’s simply nature.
The Ebony Burks case is even more egregious than that. She was excluded from her home as a bail condition after a domestic violence charge, and then showed contempt for the judges instructions. We don’t know the exact state of affairs and we can argue about the best legal response. But courts are going to come across some people who need to be kept away from their victims and who point blank refuse to do this – I don’t know what can be done except jail them.
I realize the danger of “What about the Menzz”, and I know this is not the right board for anything like that, but:
This is fairly routine with men. Picture a guy in the tank for domestic violence who gets aggressive with the judge (“you ain’t gonna tell me I can’t go home”) and then tells the judge to f#ck off. Do you think he’s going to be sent home to beat up his wife again?
I just don’t get the uproar when a woman is on the domestic violence track and acts like it. Frankly, she should behave herself and quit beating people up. And just because she is a woman doesn’t mean that she has to be treated with kid gloves. Nasty people get a nasty echo back, whether the judge is a hothead or not.
Well, considering that it’s the record for the longest contempt-of-court sentence, it’s not really routine for anyone.
It is no-where near the record. In the United States Chadwick is 14 years for civil contempt, Papadakis 5 years for criminal contempt.
To be fair, the alternative to contempt in these cases is just to refuse bail. Contempt has enormous problems with discretion and lack of process.
Oh, OK. One of the articles that I read said that it was a record, but I just read more carefully, and it was actually just the longest contempt sentence ever in this particular court.
Abbe:
Chadwick’s contempt charge was for hiding millions of dollars he’d been ordered to pay, Papadakis was for refusing a summons to testify before a grand jury. Either of those might well be unjust, but they’re not the same as 300 days for backtalking at a judge. And that – not the domestic violence – is what she was put in jail for.
(If she gets put in jail for the DV, that’s fine with me – as long as she gets a trial first and is found guilty. That hadn’t happened at the time she got the 300 days).
The judge in this case was also clearly baiting her and extending the encounter, which gave him a bunch more times to up her sentence. I don’t believe that’s routine behavior for a judge. But even if it were, that wouldn’t mean what happened in this case was just; it would mean that there’s a large systematic problem with our judges.
The alternative wasn’t to refuse bail; it was to give her a more reasonable amount of contempt. Like a day or a week. Not 300 days.
Tristan:
Please provide some proof for the claim that male prisoners are routinely given anything in the range of 300 days in jail for backtalking a judge.
Hector:
I certainly would. Also: this sort of knee-jerk, mindless accusation of hypocrisy is very boring.
Fair enough, Ampersand. You’re not a hypocrite. But I consider it even more disturbing that you think people should be able to disrespect judges and other authority figures without consequence. Society can’t function without some general guidelines of obedience and deference to authority.
I have no idea about what’s routine or not, but once, when I was contesting a ticket issued to my car after I had sold it, I saw someone get 30 days for ‘turning around theatrically and disrespectfully’ and say ‘Daayum’ after being told that he had to pay his ticket and fees in full, right after people had been let go off for a fraction of what they owed.
Another guy in courtroom got a very stern warning for reacting with ‘You have to be kidding me’ to the sentence.
You can bet I was very, very polite to that judge, and certainly did not tell him what I thought about needing two courthouse visits and having to pay three different fees (adding up to $115) for clearing something that was clearly a clerk’s mistake, and should have been dropped when I showed the ticket and the transfer of ownership and liability form.
I definitely agree that judges have too much power. For the life of me, I could not figure out what made that judge decides whether someone should pay his ticket and fees in full, or whether he has just going to just wave 90% of them.
It was not race or gender, and it did not seem that it had anything to do with the offense.
Hector:
It’s possible to be against judges who abuse their authority, while still believing that judges should have some authority. This punishment was disproportionate; a day or a week would have been more reasonable.
This woman isn’t going to serve 300 days for contempt, and I will take bets on it*.
This IS routine. It’s shock therapy. The game is that the judge names high numbers, and then a week or two later Ms. Big Mouth will apologize and be set free.
Until I become dictator of the world (soon, very soon) and institute peace and justice for all, there are going to be some strict judges out there, and maybe people should learn to behave. Imagine that YOU are a police officer or judge and you have to deal with people like that all the time.
*This statement is for rhetorical, dramatic purposes only
She actually served 88 days, and then was transferred to a residential treatment program (which is not the same as being “set free”). The residential program kicked her out for being uncooperative, after which she was supposed to turn herself in for the remaining 212 days of her sentence. She didn’t, and there’s currently a warrant for her arrest. Given how incapable she seems to be of making choices that serve her self-interest, my bet (for dramatic purposes only) is that she gets caught and serves the remainder of her sentence.
Because you type something doesn’t make it true. Searching recent news stories, I find no evidence to support your claim. This very similar case, for instance, resulted in 30 days. This juror – who actually hid essential facts from the judge (like that a major witness in the trial was the juror’s ex-wife), causing a mistrial, only got 90 days.
And those are the stories that make the news – which means they have much higher sentences than is typical! My impression is that most contempt charges are for much shorter timespans and are not newsworthy. I could be convinced that I’m mistaken about this – but you’d need to provide some evidence, not just your say-so.
Yes, it’s a hard job, and I respect good judges and cops very much. But just because it’s a hard job doesn’t make it okay when a judge or cop abuses authority. Quite the opposite – it’s essential that citizens object loudly when authority is abused. As the (very old) saying goes, who watches the watchmen?
Frankly, we’re not too far apart in opinions, Ampersand.
I read “Reason” magazine on-line (kind of a libertarian thing), and they constantly have stories about cops abusing their power. I also know personally that lots of judges are dicks, but I think that’s something that will never go away – you have to put up with egos. May as well just behave and advise your difficult clients to behave (which they may not follow).
Still – there has to be some semblance of law and order in society.
RonF:
The numbers for–well, how many children do not live with their fathers, which is a different quantity from how many fathers do not live with their children, can be found elsewhere easily. (It’s roughly: 2/3 of black children live in a separate home from their fathers, vs 1/3 of Latino children and 1/4 of white children.) But we can look at another metric given in that study:
So, in fact, we can estimate* that (1/3 living with + 2/3 living apart*2/3 see once per month) = 78% of black children see their fathers at least once per month, vs (3/4 living with + 1/4 living apart*2/5 seeing) = 85% of white children and (2/3 living with + 1/3 living apart*1/3 seeing) = 78% of Latino children. Once per month, admittedly, is a low bar at least if you live in the same area; but at the same time, I would hardly call that “absent.” (And of course, that’s “greater than or equal to once per month”, so even with a higher barrier many of those fathers are probably meeting it; and “seeing” once per month does not mean “interacting” once per month–phone calls, emails, social media…)
Using the same percentages*, ~38% of black fathers, ~53% of Latino fathers, and ~62% of white fathers play with their infant children daily. It’s disparate, certainly; I don’t think it’s as disparate as you seem to think it is. And I would say the point of the ThinkProgress headline is that black fathers seem to be as interested in being involved with their children as white and Latino fathers, although the practical barriers to their doing so, based on being in different households, are higher.
*this assumes that there’s no correlation between # of kids and likelihood of greater-than-monthly interaction–I don’t see a reason why there would be, but it’s possible. It also assumes that all of these numbers, unless specified, don’t vary with age, which I think is much less likely to be true.
This isn’t insulting a judge, it is showing contempt for bail conditions. That is very different, it is a direct threat to people the court has a responsibilty to protect. That is much more serious than an insult, or non co-operation, or disrupting the process, or not obeying a judgement. It threatens others, rather than merely the process of the court, I would expect a long sentence.
What are the courts supposed to do? Wait for them to violate the conditions and jail them? Give them a slapped wrist and let them stew in jail for a couple of days before letting them out to break the conditions? Even my earlier suggestion, of going back and revising bail conditions, would cause huge problems with due process and a fair trial. Isn’t the only certain option to jail them for contempt long enough to keep them behind bars until trial?
I agree that Rebecca Watson was definitely being a jerk here. If someone asks a stupid question that’s been asked and answered a zillion times before, it seems like the way to deal with it without being a jerk is to say something like “I consider that kind of comment off-topic” or “Short answer: No, it isn’t” and send them a link to one of those times where the question was answered. It’s probably not any harder than sending a snarky gif. I understand that it’s easy to get frustrated with idiots, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not being a jerk if you respond in a way that’s deliberately obtuse. If you’re acting on the assumption that the commenter is a troll, well, at least they’re being a *polite* troll and you probably don’t want to be the first one to start slinging mud – trolls are probably better at it than you anyway. :(
Watson’s one of feminism’s most prominent embarrassments, and she keeps making feminism look worse every time she comments; why shouldn’t that be worthy of notice? Where does the “over-the-top hatred” bit come from? Her behavior is childish and irrational, and it’s legitimate to point that out.
Also, the rejoinder of ‘hypocrisy’ is rather feeble when I wasn’t asked a question, whereas Watson was. Knee-jerk defensiveness of anyone calling themselves a ‘feminist’ is a bad habit to get into, Amp.
Harlequin:
The headline of the piece is “The Myth Of The Absent Black Father”. I would say the point of that is that the author of the piece thinks that the concept that black fathers tend to be absent from their families is a myth. I’d say that the numbers you give prove just the opposite; they show that black fathers tend to be absent far more than they are present.
Seriously? I sure would. And I would set a lot higher bar. My definition of “absent” is “doesn’t live in the same house with Mom and his children.” Come to one of my Troop meetings sometime and watch the kids. After a while you’ll be able to tell me quite closely (there are a few exceptions either way) which kids have a father resident in the home and which don’t. There’s just a huge difference between “comes by occasionally” or “sees the kids on alternate weekends” and “lives here”.
Likewise, there’s a huge difference between “sees the kids regularly” and “hasn’t seen the kids once in five years.”
There is already a term for what you’re talking about; you used it yourself. “Resident” vs “non-resident.” That’s an important distinction, but it’s not the only distinction.
Let me put it this way, Amp. To me “resident” is the opposite of “absent”. I don’t make a distinction between “non-resident” and “absent”.
Now, if you want to talk about resident or non-resident fathers who are attentive or inattentive to their children, then fine. Obviously a resident parent can be inattentive to their kids and a non-resident parent can be – somewhat – attentive to their kids. But “absent” != “inattentive”. “Absent” = “he’s not around”.
Again, it seems to me that the author completely misinterpreted the meaning of the survey results. Whether that’s out of sheer ignorance or because they’re looking to find a way to misuse survey results to support a particular viewpoint is unknown to me.
The fact remains, the study cited in the article says nothing about how mythical absent Black fathers are. Whether they are, why they are, and how their ‘mythicality’ compares to that of other races may be important, and may be deduced from other studies. But the article is drivel, and does not deserve to be linked: the author is either scarily ignorant or deliberately deceptive.
I believe that a bad argument against something untrue actually reinforces the falsehood. The falsehood here being that black fathers are likely to be absent from their kids’ lives because of the color of their skin.
Well, at least she went to a liberal arts college… and thus helps me reinforce my own stereotypes.
The thing Watson is best-known for, that I’m aware of, is “elevatorgate.” While I certainly haven’t read every word Watson has written or spoken, I don’t see anything embarrassing for feminism in that situation, or in Watson’s objecting to being propositioned in an inconsiderate manner.
Just because you say she’s an embarrassment doesn’t make it so.
Finally, I don’t buy the “it wasn’t a hypocritical thing to say because I wasn’t answering a question” framing. With all due respect, you’re trying to hold Watson to a standard that you obviously don’t hold yourself to.
(But Sydney, my 10-year-old housemate, is watching as I type this, and she thinks I’m being “just a bit too mean.” I hope you don’t take this as being mean. For what it’s worth, I think it’s fine for you to sometimes be snarky; but I think it’s also fine for Watson to sometimes be snarky.)
RonF:
Sebastian:
And you can define things that way, if you like. You can assume the author of the article is not very smart, and knows nothing about demographics, and used an inappropriate study to draw conclusions about something that the study had no bearing on; or you can assume that “absent” was used a synonym for “uninvolved” rather than a synonym for “nonresident.” The latter seems simpler and more plausible, especially as you’ve now had multiple people in this thread tell you that this is how we use the term.
If we eliminate the word “absent” from the discussion and substitute it with “uninvolved”, do you disagree with anything I’ve said or any of the article’s conclusions? (Apart from the already-discussed once-a-month statistic, which was kind of an uncertain point for me anyway–I’m not that willing to defend it.)
Harlequin:
But that’s the basis of the author’s deception. She is not talking about a concept that she developed. She is talking about a concept that is already extant in society. So if she wants to contradict or disprove the concept – she hasn’t established that it’s a “myth” – of the “absent black father”, she has to work with what that phrase actually means to people, not with what she would like it to mean so that she can use this study to disprove it.
If you ask people what the concept of “absent black father” means, what do you think you’re going to get told? Do you think they’re going to say “black fathers tend to sit on the sofa and watch football and ignore their kids more than white fathers”? Or are they going to say “black fathers tend to not live with their families as much as white fathers because they’re more likely to be dead, in jail, or not be married to them mother and to not give a damn and figure it’s the mom’s job to raise the kid.”? She is essentially proposing the former – and frankly I think that’s ridiculous.
Administration delays Obamacare mandate for midsize businesses
Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) had this to say about that:
Can someone help Atty. Gen. Holder on this matter? Because while Sen. Lee’s rhetoric may seem inflated, I don’t see anything erroneous about his Constitutional analysis. What authority does the President have to do this?
Now, if this newspaper had a competent editor, or if they had one without a political bias, that would read “Monday’s announcement is the latest delay to Obamacare. It comes amid enrollment in the law’s insurance exchanges that is lower than the Adminstration projected (but conforms to the projections of the law’s opponents).”
RonF,
That’s the least important thing the adminstration could possibly change about the ACA. The penalty is meaningless for any employer with a shred of human decency. I analyzed it for our company (approx 65 employees) last year. Paying the penalty is a tiny fraction of the cost of providing medical insurance for our employees. After seeing the plans available in Oregon and the associated costs, it makes sense (if Oregon ever gets their site working) to no longer offer coverage to our employees, pay the fine and use the difference between our current insurance costs and the fine to pay employees more so that they can cover their insurance costs on the exchange. It winds up costing our company the same or less than what it pays now and our employees get better coverage at about the same cost.
The employer penalty is only there to get the least humane large employers to contribute something to their employees health care. For any employer already offering insurance to their employees the penalty is either meaningless or a benefit to the company.
(continuing…)
I’m a lot more concerned about things like the NSA than I am details of ACA implementation. If we’re going to make an issue out of constitutionality, I’d prefer to concentrate on things that matter a lot more than something that provides a benefit to decent employers – whether that thing is in effect or not.
It just seems to me that there a so many more legitimate and more important things to criticize and oppose Obama on than implementation details of the ACA that don’t really matter to anybody but the Walmarts and their ilk.
Jake Squid,
Does it not seem ironic to you that the President has criticized the House for passing numerous bills that would repeal all or part of the ACA, but the President has repeatedly delayed parts of the ACA? This is his “signature legislation” and he has gone to great lengths not to implement it. It is almost as if he does not want it to go into effect, while still maintaining it is the law of the land and it is here to stay.
Stay? STAY? It has not even arrived, yet!
-Jut
The employer penalty will have no impact on the ACA one way or the other. It’s arguing over nothing. Delay is not repeal. A delay to a minor detail of the ACA seems to me to be trivial when compared to the Drone Assassination Program or the NSA’s activities.
Is criticism and pushback over the employer penalty of the ACA the thing you think will have the greatest effect on the USA, Obama or yourself? It’s not even close to as important as, say, recess appointments. Nor, I venture to say, anywhere close to as likely to be the downfall of the hated Obama as any of the things I’ve mentioned in this comment alone.
The outrage(!) over this delay is akin to tilting at dust specks. If it even rises to that level. I find it silly and petty and tiresome. I mean, yeah, I’m not likely to agree with you on most issues but, most of the time, I can see the point in the opposing view. Here? Not even the tiniest bit. Nail Obama on the NSA, on extra-judicial execution via drone strike or a myriad of other things that have an actual effect on people and/or things.
Jake Squid,
I can walk and chew gum at the same time and my capacity for anger and outrage can certainly encompass more than just the ACA fiasco.
But, even if this latest delay is just a speck, it is a speck on a whole host of other “specks.” The waivers, the failure to define high income employees, the “if you like your health care” lie, the attempted reversal of the cancelation of policies, the additional delay of the employer mandate from October, 2014 to November 2014 (I may have my mandates screwed up, but it is hard to keep track of all the delays).
Yes, the NSA problem is bad; the IRS scandal is pretty scary too, but the ACA is causing substantial problems with the economy and is causing incredible uncertainty throughout the country. The health care costs for my company were scheduled to shoot up in April, so I renewed my coverage early last fall for just a 10% bump. After all of the cancelations last fall, that only suggests that, this fall, my rates are either going to shoot up REALLY high, or my plan may be canceled, as well. Either way, my employees may be left without insurance. But, I can’t even tell because the law and its deadlines are apparently meaningless.
So, yes, the NSA and the drone attacks are bad (in my opinion, the drone attacks are less so, but, whatever), but the problems with the ACA are, perhaps, more significant for a very specific reason: the president appears to be disregarding the role of his office and the separation of powers in the three coequal branches of government.
-Jut
Citation?
Where were you when the whole Bush “Unitary Executive” fiasco was going? This is exactly the reason that the right should have been up in arms. Future Presidents never give up power taken by Presidents past and present. It’s always okay if your guy does shit like this but when it’s the other side’s guy, the sky is falling (both sides do this to their own – and everybody else’s – detriment). Pardon me if I don’t take this complaint too seriously.
Jake:
The right did oppose it. It was the GOP that was silent.
Your comment does not in fact answer my question. Do you think that he has the authority to do what he’s doing, or has he exceeded it?
I agree with you regarding the NSA, but I am not familiar enough with the legislation authorizing and regulating the NSA to know if Pres. Obama has ignored or changed it. While you may think that what he’s done here is less of a threat to the Republic, it may well be more clearly defined.
As far as I can tell, it does appear to be within the authority of the Treasury and the IRS to delay implementation of the play or pay penalty. I haven’t researched it very much and I’m no constitutional scholar so I’m open to arguments otherwise, although I really don’t care on this issue. It has no negative impact on anybody except the worst employers in the country and doesn’t appear to set any dangerous precedent.
The NSA, otoh, appears to me to be violating the 4th amendment with full support from the Executive. That can have serious consequences for large numbers of citizens.
Ah, yes. The Tea Party was organized and financed specifically to protest Bush’s claim of/attempt at a Unitary Executive. I remember it well, that tremendous amount of resources that the right put into their opposition to Bush on that issue.
Look, the left ain’t no great shakes at protesting stuff Obama does that they’d lose their shit over if it had been done by, say, President McCain. But claiming that the right ever made a noticeable protest against the Unitary Executive doesn’t jibe with my memory. If you’ve got some links for me to show me that I missed something obvious, I’m happy to read them.
It has no negative impact on anybody except the worst employers in the country
Well, there are those of us who might potentially be eligible to be classified as enough of an employee to be offered health insurance through our jobs, rather than having to go out on our own on the exchanges. Like, say, an adjunct who teaches 12 units of classes for a university, and thus might meet the “28 hours or more per week” threshold for receiving benefits under the ACA. And for us it kind of sucks that we were supposed to get classified in 2014, and then 2015, and now maybe 2016.
News flash – the right didn’t like Pres. Bush much. He was not viewed as a great president, he was viewed as the lesser of two evils. He expanded government programs and spending, he was in favor of changing immigration law to favor people here illegally (heck, Pres. Obama has deported more illegal aliens than Pres. Bush did), etc., etc. He started up a war and ran up the deficit rather than fund it. It was finally the bailout of the banks – started in Bush’s administration and expanded in Obama’s – that sparked off the Tea Party movement.
The NSA? Oh, yeah. A great evil. This administration has shown great enthusiasm for using the power of government to search out, identify and punish political opponents. It is a basic and brutal assault on the Constitution and thus the liberty of the American people. But that’s the problem with expanding the power of government. The temptation to liberals is the great good that people think can be done. The reality that the right always expects is that power corrupts, and it will always eventually be used more for evil. It is not possible to expand government power and direct it to serve good more than evil. Such is human nature. Galadriel was wise and a true prophet when she turned down Frodo’s free offer of the Ring.
From my experience, which is limited to Oregon and Washington, the exchange is a much better deal in terms of both coverage and cost than what we can afford to provide to employees via a group policy.
I also don’t see why an employer wouldn’t rather pay the penalty (less than $2k/year per employee (the penalty is the number of employees minus thirty times $2,000)). It’s much cheaper than offering insurance. If they’re a decent employer they then increase salary by the remainder of their budget and send employees to the exchange. The employer controls their health care costs, the employee has a much greater choice of coverage and, per Oregon & Washington exchanges, the employee shouldn’t be contributing a greater amount to their coverage under the exchange than they were to the group coverage they might have gotten from their employer.
If your employer doesn’t offer coverage now, what’s their incentive to offer it under ACA?
I’ve done the analysis for Oregon and Washington and it left little room for debate. I am open to being convinced that I’m seeing this wrong and that bad acting employers are dumber than I think they are. Are other states exchange costs that much more than those in the Pacific Northwest?
…
Which is to say, the right wingers I new during the Bush presidency liked Bush. The right wing sites I occasionally read liked Bush. If you have some links that show a concerted effort to criticize and oppose Bush policies, I’m open to that. What I am not open to is your unsupported assertions that fly in the face of my experience. I don’t doubt that some individuals on the right hated Bush. I do doubt that there was significant opposition to Bush from the right as a whole or even in significant part.
Jake Squid @42:
Okay, I resolved not to respond to your other questions until I could do so dispassionately, rationally, and civilly, but this deserves a resounding: Fuck you! (Sorry, Amp. I try to respect the forum I am in, and this may be over the line.)
I may be stuck in this dead-end legal job (but, it sure beats the dead-end philosophy job I might have had), and I may not pay my employees (or myself, for that matter) what we are worth, but I have prided myself on: 1) never missing a payroll for my employees (while my pay dropped 40%, below even what some of my employees made); and 2) paying 100% of their health insurance premiums (premia?).
The fact that the ACA may make it impossible for me to do one of the things that few employers do, but which I, as a small business owner can, really pisses me off! And, for you to suggest that I am one of the “worst employers” in the country, just confirms that your head is stuck somewhere that our insurance coverage still covers, at least until November. Be warned, Come, next year, the ACA won’t pay to look for it!
Okay, cooling down. I will try to respond more civilly to your other comments @40, time permitting.
-Jut
Ron:
Well, some say that that the first provision of Section 1502 of the ACA provides the authority for the Secretary (of the Treasury) to decide when companies have to turn in the tax forms required by the ACA (and without which the individual mandate cannot be enforced).
There’s also the belief that the Treasury has a longstanding general power (“an exercise of the Treasury Department’s longstanding administrative authority under section 7805(a) of the Internal Revenue Code”) to delay implementation of laws in order that they be phased in more effectively. This is what the Treasury’s J. Mark Iwry told Congress (pdf link here). It’s also what assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Mazur told Congress (pdf link here).
There’s definitely an argument that they do have the authority, both under the ACA specifically and under longstanding general rules about implementation authority. There are also arguments on the other side. Because it’s unlikely that anyone is ever going to be accepted by the Court system as having the standing to bring a law suit, in practice this isn’t a dispute that’s likely to be resolved by the Courts.
Here’s a few more links on the subject:
Does the administration have the legal authority to delay the employer mandate? And what if it doesn’t? | The Incidental Economist
Provider’s Suit Over ACA Employer Mandate Gets Chucked – Law360
Delaying Parts of Obamacare: ‘Blatantly Illegal’ or Routine Adjustment? – Simon Lazarus – The Atlantic
Constitution Check: Can the government legally delay the health care mandates?
My insurance is currently 100% paid for by the ACA. I haven’t experienced any “we don’t cover that” problems; on the contrary, it’s been a big improvement over what I had before.
There are some cost-containing measures. For instance, my primary care provider is a Nurse Practitioner. (Although I could insist on switching to a doctor, the default if I don’t insist on a doctor is a NP). Since I think using Nurse Practitioners as PCPs is a good way to save money without harming patients, I chose to stick with the person they assigned me (who is quite experienced and seems to know what he’s doing).
And, no offense, Jake Squid. Just venting.
-Jut
I’ve got a problem with the combination of the right 1) sabotaging the implementation of the ACA at every step and 2) Complaining that the implementation hasn’t gone as smoothly as they’d prefer.
It’s like slashing a guy’s tires, then calling him a deadbeat for not being able to pick his kid up at school.
—Myca
How does ACA make it impossible for you to cover 100% of your employees premiums?
I also meant to ask: Do you employ 50 or more people full time? I ask because the employer mandate will(eventually) only effect employers with 50 or more full time employees and, iirc, your firm is much smaller than that. So I’m unclear on how my opinion of who pay or play applies to has anything to do w/ you as an employer or person.
Jake – the university that employs me for most of my adjunct teaching would at least have to decide “let her buy into the insurance plan, or pay a fine?” in 2014 without these delays. With them, they can put the decision off and leave me to my own devices.
My main problem with the ACA plan I bought for myself is that a bunch of my doctors changed their mind sometime between December (when I was shopping for plans) and January (when I had some appointments scheduled) about accepting the Covered California plans. I suspect, as the nurse at my brand new GP’s office suggested, that many of them will come to regret this decision as they lose people from their practices, and then realize that the small decrease in negotiated rates was nothing compared to the overall loss of patients. But that didn’t do much for me when it came time for an appointment I’d waited for for two months (who says we don’t have health care rationing in the US?), only to have the practice turn me away.
Now I’m waiting for my GP’s nurse to help me find someone who is on my plan. (The list of docs online has already proven to be notoriously unreliable.)
While I sympathize with you, Elusis, I don’t have great hope that your employer hasn’t already made that decision. I know that we knew which way we’re going to go two years ago. The math is pretty simple.
I hate, hate, hate having to wait months for an appointment. And I hate that a good number of medical practices have opted out of plans at the last minute. (Though I think that would have happened with anything that isn’t single payer and even then…)
I have no doubt that implementation has been very poorly done but I’m having trouble seeing the relationship between play or pay and exchange implementation, etc. Play or pay merely gets the worst actors to contribute a little bit towards their employee’s healthcare. It’s got nothing to do with ACA implementation or confusion over plan rules or doctors opting out of plans.
I’d at least like them to have to say to us essentially-full-time adjuncts “we’d rather pay a fine than let you buy in.” There’s a lot of talk about social justice in the programs where I work and I’ve been rattling some full-time faculty’s cages but that would be pretty hard to ignore.
And, I think you underestimate the number of employers who might be operating on a “lalalalalala fingers in ears” seat-of-the-pants mentality here. I know all the not-for-profit private schools around here are losing their shit trying to figure out how they can
continue to hire a million administrators and still keep their doors openleverage their strengths into a viable financial model in the new economy. Every minute they get to avoid paying for something is a minute they can put off facing reality.Meanwhile, I’m damn grateful that I can actually buy insurance on my own at all, something I would not have been able to do 12 months ago which is why I gutted it out on a year of COBRA waiting for the exchanges to drop.
You have to realize, though, that for us adjuncts, this is really a synechdoce for the larger question of when the universities are going to acknowledge how much they depend on us, and how many hours we actually work for them. Right now they can still play the “well you’re teaching 3 units, that means 3 hours” game, but the Dept. of Labor has made it clear that is NOT going to fly when it comes to classifying who counts as an “employee” for ACA purposes. So every time their forced choice gets postponed, our Schroedinger’s Job Classification lasts that much longer.
Fair enough, Elusis.
Harlequin:
or you can assume that “absent” was used a synonym for “uninvolved” rather than a synonym for “nonresident.”
But that’s the basis of the author’s deception. She is not talking about a concept that she developed. She is talking about a concept that is already extant in society. So if she wants to contradict or disprove the concept – she hasn’t established that it’s a “myth” – of the “absent black father”, she has to work with what that phrase actually means to people, not with what she would like it to mean so that she can use this study to disprove it.
If you ask people what the concept of “absent black father” means, what do you think you’re going to get told? Do you think they’re going to say “black fathers tend to sit on the sofa and watch football and ignore their kids more than white fathers”? Or are they going to say “black fathers tend to not live with their families as much as white fathers because they’re more likely to be dead, in jail, or not be married to them mother and to not give a damn and figure it’s the mom’s job to raise the kid.”? She is essentially proposing the former – and frankly I think that’s ridiculous.
Already a couple people have said that they have a different definition of “absent father” than you do, but you keep insisting that “what it means to people” = “what it means to RonF’, and that everyone knows that, and therefore defining it otherwise is not simply a different definition, it’s a deception.
I don’t think that “absent black fathers” to most people, means “[fathers who] sit on the sofa and watch football and ignore their kids more than white fathers”. I also don’t think it means, “fathers who don’t live the mother but whose kids live with them on weekends” or “fathers who visit their kids twice a week”. Like you said, I think it means men who are dead, in jail, or don’t give a damn about their kids or think they should be involved in raising them–in increasing order of prominence in people’s minds.
O.K. Maybe I was too strong there in using the word “deception”. But I will at least say that a) I still think I’m right about what most people think when they hear the term “absent black father”, b) the author, who apparently disagrees, should justify her definition of the same, and c) she’s playing ridiculous games with the statistics in any case.
Elusis:
They’ve been able to do it up to this point because federal guarantees made student loans market-insensitive, and an expanding economy absorbed all the graduates. The tie between the worth of a college degree and it’s cost was artificially broken. But the decades-long expansion of academic administrative bloat and school costs has finally reached the breaking point – kids can no longer afford to pay the loans back in any kind of reasonable time. Higher education’s status is further damaged because our society currently insists that everyone should get a college education, so there’s a whole bunch of kids going to college who are ill-prepared to do so and treat it more like high school with sex and drugs. Grade inflation and relaxation of academic standards sustains the illusion, but what employers are finding is that outside of the STEM disciplines the credentialing that a college degree confers no longer represents an education that can be correlated to the attainment of critical thinking and the ability to read, write and speak clearly about a useful body of knowledge.
Higher education is trying to maintain the status quo by abusing part-time serfs in order to support the aristocracy that enjoy status and privilege far beyond the value they add to the institutions and ignoring the fact that they are churning out credentialed but ill-educated graduates who flat out can’t pay off their bills. What can’t go on forever – won’t.
I have a question to the trans* posters and allies here. As you’re probably aware because the media is making a big deal out of it (at least here in the UK), Facebook just rolled out 50 or so new gender options, including quite a few classifications that make reference to being cis or trans. I’ve been having an internal debate as to whether I should change my gender to “cis male” or leave it “male”. My dilemma is as follows:
– If I mark myself as cis, I add to the impression that advertising one’s cis/trans status is the norm. I’m also making a point of advertising the fact that I belong to the privileged group.
– If I keep myself unmarked, then I am not participating in the attempt to make people aware that there are other types of being male than being a cis male.
My current inclination is not to mark the status – I’m no more or less male than a trans* male, and I don’t see a reason to not use the gender category that includes both sub-categories. But I’m wondering what the perspective of trans people is, as I am well aware I may be misguided.
Just a test comment. Ignore me. I won’t be hurt.
(Sob!)
taking advantage of the open thread:
I thought this article was really interesting, especially as a Canadian myself: The Israel Taboo: Money and sex aren’t the only things Canadians don’t talk about.
Eytan:
You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Welcome aboard.
Context is everything. If you are in a mainly trans space and you mark yourself cis, it could be an attempt to arrogate to yourself a superior status … or it could be an attempt at humility, at saying that you fully expect to generally defer to trans voices. If you are in a mainly cis space, you might be an ally seeking to spread terminological awareness, or a hipster hungry for credibility. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…
Pointing out your trans/cis status is inevitably a political act — even when it’s necessary to another purpose and politics is not your objective.
Many of the wonderful, welcoming women I came out to, in the run-up to my transition, responded by offering clothing, by buying me a welcome-aboard gift, by offering to refer me to their hairdressers. This latter I took up on her offer; even growing my hair out absolutely as far as I could and still be within regulation, my hair was very short by female standards, and I had no idea what I was going to do with it in the many months before it grew out, especially with my masculine face. Also, unusually for a trans woman, I had almost never gone out in public presenting as myself — that was safe, but it made me inexperienced in the dozens of small, reflexive ways that women mark ourselves, even down to handling a shawl or a purse without thinking about it. I figured that at the least I needed a professional trim so that it would look as good as it could, and at the same time it was going to be among the first times I set foot in public looking as much as I could like a woman, following decades of experience looking as much as I could like a man.
So I asked my friend if she could approach her hairdresser for me, and she did. She reported back that her hairdresser was game, and also said, “I’m not looking to get political.”
And I thought, “Well, hon, neither was I. But I think you just took us there.”
(And I went, and she gave me a pixie cut, which my wife thought was adorable and which I thought worked well enough. As for stepping out to my first public appointment as myself, as I described it to a friend of mine later, my inner demon told me I looked hideous and I told it to go fuck itself — and at least one of the stylists did not realize that I was trans, even in those first awkward steps. Mouahahaha, take THAT, inner demon!)
And, here’s the hell of it: now that you have options, and are considering them, whatever you choose to do will have Implications.
I hope this helps. Thank you for thinking on this, and making a thoughtful choice.
Grace
Grace – thank you for your thoughtful response. I really appreciate your perspective on this.
Eytan, you’re very welcome.
A conversation I had in another space put me in mind of this conversation, and I thought it might be worth adding, here, and then adding a bit of my own.
A friend of mine who is trans has heretofore simply checked “female”, in her Facebook account. Apparently when Facebook added all the options, three friends of hers passed the news along to her, in a way which gave her the impression that they would be more comfortable if she marked herself as a trans woman. (They were all gay men, which she found significant.)
She also mused that it was a bit like gender-neutral bathrooms: awesome that they’re available, but not-so-awesome if there is an expectation that all trans people belong in the gender-neutral bathrooms, and only the gender-neutral bathrooms.
I have a Facebook account, but I don’t use it. Back when I set it up, I’m sure I chose “female”. If I ever start using that account again, I might or might not change that designation. Clearly, there are times when it’s relevant that I am trans, and times when it’s not. Less clearly (particularly to many cis men) there are times when it’s safer and times when it’s less safe. Part of the calculus, for me, would be the moment-to-moment assessment: is identifying as trans, in this moment, worth putting that bullseye on my forehead?
In her book, Redefining Realness, Janet Mock says, while comparing her experience in Hawaii, where she was known as trans, to her experience in New York, where she was not known as trans, for several years, until she chose to come out:
Later, she says,
…and later…
So, this is some of the terrain that trans people, and more specifically trans women, inhabit as they make this Facebook decision.
As a cis man, you inhabit a different terrain. If you choose to identify specifically as such, as an act of solidarity, I have no doubt that you will remember that it’s a choice made in meaningfully different circumstances than those faced by trans people contemplating the same choice, so it’s not actually the same choice. Most others probably won’t appreciate that very keenly.
Grace
I was having the same sort of thoughts. I changed my facebook gender to “cis female,” but I’m not sure that I’ll keep it there. The new settings also give you three pronoun choices: she/her, he/him, and they/them. (One of my friends was very excited about that last choice — they’ve said that they don’t really care which pronouns people use about them, because all the options are equally wrong, but on a form with only a few choices, having something gender-neutral is better than having to choose between just he and she.)
Great question, Eytan. My thoughts when I heard about Facebook’s gender options change went something like, “Wow, awesome! Wait, there are how many options? Oh great, now I have to decide whether to say I’m a male or a trans male (or a trans man, trans* male, etc).”
I’m not on Facebook at the moment, but if/when I return, I will list myself simply as male. I don’t consider my trans status part of my gender identity, per se. Rather it’s a product of my society’s perception of that identity.
I would much prefer if Facebook would simply offer a write-in. Maybe the half dozen or so most popular terms could be listed as well. IMO these infinite permutations don’t make much sense.
Getting back to your actual question, I think it’s perfectly fine to list yourself as cis, or to omit the term cis. I wouldn’t interpret including “cis” as advertising privileged status, but simply as acknowledging it; I do think it would call some attention to the existence of trans people. I also don’t think you’re under any obligation to include it. Basically, I say do what feels comfortable.
Thanks for being so thoughtful about this.
Rimonim:
FWIW facebook gender works like this.
There are buttons for Male, Female, and Other.
If you choose “other” there is a text field you can fill in with anything you want, including multiple things. There are around 50 autocompleted items but you can also type your own.
You can also choose pronouns for yourself (he, she, or they).
yrs–
–Ben
Rimonim & Grace – thank you again for your thoughts on this. I have decided to keep my status as just “male”, for the reason I gave in my original post, and I’m glad to see this reasoning mirrored by RImonim.
Ben – that is incorrect, on two counts. First, the third option is “custom”, not “other”. Second, you cannot actually type what you want – it gives you the impression that you can, but if you type something that is not in the list of 50 or so approved genders, you’ll get an error message.
Eytan: Thanks. Sorry for the misinfo.
That is really weird.
Yeah, my friend wanted to record their gender as “awesome,” but got that error message. You can list several of the options, though — you’re not limited to just one.
Thanks for the info, Ben, Eytan and Ruchama. This post at The Dish offers an explanation of the likely economic motives behind the rather odd system:
It’s interesting that you can choose more than one. For some reason, a description like, “male, trans man” bothers me less.
Now that’s interesting, rimonim. I hadn’t thought at all about that angle. I’ll wager it’s probably the driving force for this change.
My friend who couldn’t be awesome-gendered is currently listed as “Other, Genderqueer, and Transgender.”
Today is “White House Equal Pay Day”. It’s the day that female White House staffers had to work through from 1/1/13 to earn as much as the male White House staffers did in calendar year 2013.
I think it would be a fine day for all the House and Senate members calling for a hike in the Federal minimum wage to start paying all their interns minimum wage instead of making them work for free.
I agree. The whole system of internships is pretty screwed up right now. These are supposed to be great ways to enter a field (and it’s iffy whether they even are, but that’s another discussion and probably different in different fields), but making them unpaid makes them completely unavailable to anyone who doesn’t have some other means of support (usually their parents.) The college kids who have to earn money during the summer to pay for their next year of school are pretty much shut out from all of those “work for free to get experience that’ll help you get a much better job later” jobs.
I did internships every summer I was at the Institute. In only one of them did the employer fail to pay me (it was a big software company) The two other internships were with California manufacturing companies, and in both, the owners found ways to pay me – as bonuses, as part of a team that completed the project, whatever.
Not that it was not a rude awakening when I learned that I had to pay taxes on that money, about nine months after it had been spent.
By the way, I was not the only person who had that kind of a deal. I know two other people who had internships with manufacturers – a material engineer (running experiments with Pro-Mechanica) and a civil engineer (redrawing construction plans to compliance). They were both getting paid, and not minimum wage, either, I bet. I certainly was not.
In any case, I went to one of those companies for my year of practical training, and it was one of the people there who helped me set up my own business, with cash and connections. Internships did help me, and they helped quite a few people I know. At least three people I know went later to work for the companies they had internships with, and in at least two of the cases, the companies helped paying for their MEngs.
I think it depends on the field. We do real work, and we get paid. The politicos’ interns study the craft of selling our interests to lobbyists, so don’t need to be paid. After all, it’s not as if their salaries are going to be their main source of income, once they enter their field for good.
Ruchama:
Well, yes – but then they don’t come from the right families or the right class, so they probably would never catch on in Washington anyway.
Quality snark, Sebastian. And too true. But the bottom line is that these people are hypocrites of the first order and anyone who’s more interested in supporting a principle rather than a political party should call them on it.
On February 16th, three students at the University of Mississippi allegedly placed a noose and a Confederate flag on the campus statue of James Meredith.
What do you think it’s appropriate for the University to do about this? I’d be interested to see your answer, and then your reaction to what the University and others are considering doing.
Personally, I think the university should expel them and alert the authorities. Checking the link – yup, that’s about right.
The issue is the noose, by the way, not the confederate flag. Death threats – whether meant as such or not – cross the line from being speech to a different domain.
If the students want to defend their actions, the correct place for them to do so is in court.
Yeah. I’m nearly positive that you’d be able to find a bunch of confederate flags (as t-shirts, backpack patches, bumper stickers, etc) on the University of Mississippi campus. The noose is an implicit threat.
Promptly make some sort of public statement decrying the action, ideally one which focuses on the claim that a few outliers taking offensive acts are not necessarily representative of the community. Offer a non-mandatory forum for people to prove the claim to be true, and hope it works. Discipline the students, after some sort of hearing. Keep the cops out of it.
Hey, are the gravatars new? (Not to brag, but my vomiting unicorn heart is clearly the best.)
I’m a bit torn on the university’s reaction. Issue a statement decrying the action? Good idea. Have a symposium on racism? Sure. Suspend or expel the students? Questionable, but possibly defendable; remember that it’s a public university, not a private one. Get the FBI involved? Not so much. There’s been plenty of demonstrations where effigies of Presidents and such have been burned and violent acts against them proposed. There have been speakers who have been physically confronted while on stage and prevented from speaking. The bounds of free speech have been pushed a lot harder than this on campuses without getting the FBI involved – and, in my opinion, rightfully so. I’m a First Amendment absolutist.
I think it’s important to remember that this wasn’t a random statue – this was a statue of a man who is currently alive. There is at least a possibility that these students meant this to be an actual death threat directed at an actual person, not just a political statement.
I’m a First Amendment absolutist.
So credible death threats are OK in your book as long as they are not carried out or accompanied by imminent and likely harm? Cross-burning is always free speech? Vandalism should be legal, and if taggers spray-paint the Vietnam Veterans’ memorial that’s protected? Just checking on this “absolutist” thing.
Those symposiums on racism after stuff like this happens have become pretty pointless. I remember several of them when I was an undergrad, and none of them ever accomplished a single thing. It pretty much just became an, “Oh, another one?” sort of thing. (Though, at my undergrad school, just about all of those meetings were prompted by things done by the same fraternity, so it might just have been a “Yeah, those KAs are being dumbass racists — so what else is new?”)
mythago, I don’t agree with your premise that this was a credible death threat. I did think about it. Eytan notes that it is a statue of a living person, and that bears some consideration. But it is a statue, not the person themselves. It seems to me that a death threat is more of a verbal or written threat directed to the person themselves. Again I note that you don’t see the Secret Service or the FBI investigating people who burn effigies of the President. I don’t see that there’s much distinction between an effigy and a bronze statue.
Has anyone ever been prosecuted for a death threat for destroying or hanging or shooting an effigy, statue, image or other representation of a living person?
If it’s done on your own front yard and no one has to worry about anything else catching fire, it’s free speech. Trespass on private property or damage public property and it’s not.
Was this vandalism? I know the article used that term in the headline and the author used it in the body of the article, but I didn’t see any law enforcement authority quoted as using that term. Absent any mention of such I presume the statue was undamaged. Putting paint on something is certainly considered vandalism in any definition of the word I’ve been able to find – but that’s not what happened here.
If this meets the legal standard of vandalism then by all means prosecute them – I’m all for enforcing the law. But the legal standard for vandalism that would be used to apply to putting a noose on a statue of Adolf Hitler should be the same one that is applied here. They should not be prosecuted on the basis of vandalism just because people treasure the image and life of James Meredith more highly than that of someone else, nor should they be subjected to an unsustainable prosecution just to use the expense, effort and publicity of the prosecution process itself to punish them.
If the First Amendment does not protect unpopular or despicable speech then it is useless.
I originally felt sure this was a joke. Now I’m not so sure. Are you seriously treating this as a possibility worth discussing? Or is this just referring to a “possibility” in the way that “anything’s theoretically possible?”
I’m not an absolutist about anything, but I’m a strong supporter of the FA, and am far on the civil liberties side w/r/t many here. To suggest that the student can/should be disciplined by the college seems perfectly sensible to me. To suggest that this assholish action is somehow worthy of police action because seriously represents a credible death threat, is ludicrous.
Here’s a reasonable hypothetical: we all probably would concede that they’d be perfectly fine (legally, not morally) if they decided to put on KKK suits and stand in the middle of the courtyard on a soapbox, on MLK day, while the Unity March was going on, shouting “all n___s should burn!” and waving nooses around. In fact, if a group of them marched up to the Meredith statue and did just this (nose & flag) that would probably be fine, too. They wouldn’t (shouldn’t, anyway) be arrested for that sort of dreck. This is basically a similar thing, but even more attenuated. Most of the people are upset because they HEARD about it, not because they SAW it. Criminal charges are ludicrous.
G&W – I meant “possibility” in the sense of it’s a possibility worth discussing. Not the only possibility, not necessarily the most likely one, but a real one. At the very least, it’s a credible enough possibility to be worth investigating rather than dismissing outright.
Calling the FBI in is not the same as disregarding the first amendment. The FBI’s role is to investigate, not prosecute. If they do their job right, they’ll determine whether this was the case of despicable, but allowable, speech, or whether it was a genuine threat. They will then determine what to do based on the evidence.
You seem to have decided which one it is. I’m curious whether you can explain on what basis you believe that the death threat implicit in the noose is not credible.
Right. Because of course there is no potential for serious harm or incredible chilling effect when the FBI comes sniffing around. If there’s nothing to hide then have no fear of the men with guns and badges, right? Any discomfort is only temporary…
I assume you support this generally, and that you would happily support FBI investigations where the potential law breakers are liberals using violent language, or occupying classrooms, or marching without permits, or, say, reporting on terrorism? Taking what you need is theft; encouraging illegal immigration is what it sounds like; speaking in open favor of Palestinian bombings is, what, enough to get you jailed?
Or not. Rather, I think you just hate these assholes. As do I, FWIW. But the point of the protections, is as Ron put it, most relevant when it comes to protecting people and things that we despise, because we don’t need anyone to tell us to be nice to our friends.
Come on.
What I find chilling is how much people living in a democracy are afraid of their own government.
Depends. If it’s directed at specific individuals, yes I would happily support FBI investigations when the law breakers are liberals.
In these cases, there’s probably no need for an investigation, because it is clear a law has been broken. I would support prosecution. Of course, if it can be shown that those were the only measures available to the people in question (because permits were refused, etc.) that might very well affect the verdict.
No, because that seems to be a clear case of speech.
Not sure what you’re talking about here
It sounds like protected speech to me – encouraging law breaking isn’t the same as law breaking (and threatening non-violent behaviour is not the same as threatening violent behaviour).
No, speaking in favour of violence is not threatening violence.
I’d feel exactly the same if someone put a noose on the neck of a statue of Vladimir Putin, or Nick Griffin, of Fred Phelps. This isn’t about the views held by these people. It’s about the actions they took. If someone who shares my political views took similar actions, I’d advocate the same response.
So… Speaking of free speech absolutism…
Massachusetts court says ‘upskirt’ photos are legal
It sounds like the judge probably made the correct decision given the way that the law is currently written, but I was surprised at the amount of pushback I got on changing the law to make upskirt photos illegal when I linked the story on FaceBook. Comments like, “this one would be difficult to enforce without opening attacks on other public filming.”
I think laws such as the one in Indiana are both clear and limited in scope.
I don’t quite understand why they didn’t prosecute it under the federal 2004 Voyeurism law. I guess it would be harder to get a Federal prosecutor to take interest in this case?
Anyway, MA has now passed a law banning upskirt photos.
Eytan:
What I find chilling is how much people in the U.S. have damn good reason to be afraid of their own government! The Federal government has massive stores of information about the time and content of our phone calls and Internet usage. The IRS is used to harass opponents of the Administration’s policies. This country was founded on the philosophy that government is to be the people’s servant, not it’s master, and that it’s power needs to be limited or else that relationship will become reversed. Those limits are being eroded – and an Adminstration that claimed they would be the most open and honest one in this country’s history has proved to be the opposite when it comes to reversing what has been going on for some time.
The justification for the Federal government’s existence – in fact, for any government in America – is that it’s purpose is to secure our rights. What we increasingly find instead is that those rights are regarded by it as things to be constrained or restricted. When the FBI is called in to investigate a couple of college students because they put a noose around a statue’s neck it has a tremendously chilling effect on free speech.
On cultural appropriation — and white belly dancers:
Huh. So we shouldn’t be doing things that other cultures do? And when we do a thing that another culture does that our own culture doesn’t it’s racism? That seems like a very strange idea to me but maybe I just don’t understand the whole concept.