On this day in 1789, Fletcher Christian led a mutiny on HMS Bounty against its captain William Bligh in the South Pacific.
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
New education numbers are out and we’re going to have to change our jokes about the Deep South because of how much Mississippi has advanced!
Here’s fourth grade math according to Nation’s Report Card:
Mississippi is two above the National Public and California is four below. That’s right, Mississippi beats California at 4th grade math.
8th grade math?
The advancements haven’t made their way through the snake yet but Mississippi and California are tied.
Reading has similar numbers. 4th grade reading has Mississippi four points above the national numbers and California 3 points below (but California is 2 numbers below the national numbers and Mississippi is 3).
But Mississippi is really turning things around and we should probably take what they’re doing and see if it can be made to work in other places.Report
Mississippi is playing statistical gameszReport
Goodness! That’s quite a claim!Report
One of the “keys to success” is holding back kids in third grade who aren’t judged “ready” to take the four grade tests this “improvement” is based on. So only the kids who are going to do well get promoted. Call me nuts – I know a lot of folks here do – but all that means is you are willing to game the system not actually teach your kidsReport
I made my kid repeat 2nd grade. Even in hindsight it was a great parenting decision. Calling it a “key to success” is accurate.
If the kid isn’t ready to be promoted then they shouldn’t be promoted. At some point they shift from learning to read to reading to learn, if you promote them without that skill then they’re screwed.Report
Wait, you’re describing a program where students who haven’t earned the right to advance don’t advance until they have the required skills to advance.
Except you’re describing it as bad.Report
Yes I am. Because in many cases it’s not a failure to learn to read or comprehend – it’s a failure to regurgitate on specific tests in a specific way. Which then gets neglected as the child ages and becomes a barrier to future successful learning.Report
it’s a failure to regurgitate on specific tests in a specific way.
What do you suggest as an alternative?Report
That we let teachers teach. Pay them well. Give students the additional support. Stop trying to meet production quotas and quantitative rubrics.Report
Stop trying to meet production quotas and quantitative rubrics.
So we don’t test and just promote everyone? Won’t we end up promoting kids that can’t read?Report
Good teachers – left to their own to use the skills they sought to become teachers – generally know who needs help and who doesn’t. They also know which way their students learn and which way is best to test their knowledge. There is no one size fits all test. Never will be never has been. Measuring educational success based on a single annual or every other year or every three year test only works if everyone learns and tests the same way.
It’s a red herring.Report
I’m pretty sure that the problem schools aren’t the ones with the good teachers.
I went to very good schools and had very good teachers.
When people complain about the school districts that have 39% of students at proficiency (OR LOWER!!!), they’re probably not thinking of the schools with the good teachers.Report
I’ve seen research, which I can’t locate now (most of my library is currently in storage), suggesting that teaching ability is surprisingly randomly distributed among good and bad schools. If you go by Freddie DeB’s theories about why schools get the results they get, this wouldn’t be all that surprising.Report
Measuring educational success based on a single annual or every other year or every three year test only works if everyone learns and tests the same way.
You’re right… but I’m not sure that should drive this. I also doubt we should reduce the amount of information available to parents.
I was disappointed at the school pushback I got in making my kid repeat 2nd grade.
My kid’s “failure” wasn’t the school’s fault, but they were still punished by me pulling her from the school.
Her “failure” was she was too young for her age. The school was “punished” by losing the money that follows her when I transferred her. It was in her best interests but not the school’s.
These tests have their own problems, but they cut through self interested adult spin.
Everyone hates accountability and/or performance reviews, especially when they are being measured over things they don’t control.Report
It’s a failure to regurgitate on specific tests in a specific way?
It seems to me that that particular criticism indicates that 39% is too high.Report
I’m not sure we should be crowing about any state in this union given performance is less than 50% on a 0-500 scale.Report
Play with the knobs on the website!
“At or above basic” and “At or above proficient” are both on there.
When it comes to Grade 4 match, at or above proficient for the national number is 39%. (Insert “that’s practically half!” joke here.)Report
I think my point stands. Nuts!Report
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/27/politics/approval-rating-trump-100-days/index.html
Trump’s poll numbers are cratering to below 41 percent and this is before the bad stuff on tariffs really hits. Unfortunately, we have a stupid and decayed Constitutional system which will make us suffer at least until January 2027, probably longer of the insanity and rages of the deranged king and his ideological crank mountebanks.
*From what I’ve read, May should be the month in which the lack of shipping containers from Asia really spreads.Report
I think it’s helpful that Trump’s approval is catering. Hopefully it gets even worse and will embolden other politicians and institutions in taking stands against him where they can.
However Yglesias had some cold water this morning, appears to be unpaywalled.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/whats-the-plan-to-win-the-senate
To the extent Trump can be checked by thermostatic forces and repeated unforced errors I’ll of course take it but there is still a huge strategic task of competing for Senate seats that no one seems to be preparing for.Report
There is no bench depth in the red states and that’s where a lot of the senate elections next year are. Mississippi’s democrats will likely run the same black guy who got 42% against Wicker last year. And while he’s a solid moderate Democrat he’s goi g to need 9% more white people to get elected against Hyde-Smith.
Not happening.Report
I’m planning on pulling the Blue lever this cycle, just as an effort to stop the current insanity. The GOP needs to own what their leader is doing.Report
Yea hard to imagine anywhere in the deep south being put into play any time soon but they have to find a way with some of the others.Report
There are lots of places where if you are white you vote Republican because Republicans are the white people party. It’s tribal voting. The Democratic problem is finding candidates that can win in those states, which aren’t super liberal or lefty, but can also work with the rest of the Democratic Party without going Steve Manchin or blue dog.Report
Yea I’m going to tell you there’s no way you can operate with that mentality and anyone who has it needs to abandon it post haste. Further I’d say any Democratic leader that thinks that way should be run out of his or her office.
I know it’s rude to say it but we’re about 15 minutes away from most ‘hispanic’ people being white (enough anyway). The way assimilation works in this country there will not be a time this century where the plurality of the electorate is not ‘white,’ even if today’s geriatrics would not necessarily see it as such. What you’re effectively talking about is pre-emptively conceding every jurisdiction that does not touch an ocean, plus several that do. If that’s where we are then we might as well wind down the party and start something new.Report
Manchin worked tolerably well with the Democratic Party, especially considering his replacement. I don’t see why we shouldn’t be okay to even thrilled about getting a bunch of Blue dog or Manchin like Senators if the alternative is Republican ones.Report
The big issue for me is not whether they are a moderate/centerist or liberal/progressive but whether they are fighters or shrinking violet. Schumer’s general policy preferences are fine. His big issue is that he is a deer in headlights and can’t bring himself to realize what the current situation is and he seems really pathetic when he goes on the Sunday shows and says “We sent the President a strongly-worded lecture.”
Slotkin is also to my right but she seems really upset that she has to defend democracy, due process, and civil liberty instead of being able to present narrowly-casted and tested to death “mom and pop kitchen sink” issues.
Conor Lamb is perfectly willing to be a fighter even though he is a moderate. Newsom is a much better governor than he gets credit for but he is simply wrong on a profound level when he doesn’t want to talk about Garcia and Trump’s evil immigration crackdown.
Pritzker is correct when he notes that Trump and the Republicans need to be challenged on everything, all the time.
And frankly, Manchin is a moralistic sourpuss who will twist his face like he sucked a thousand lemons at the idea that a Senator can be on the floor and not where a tie but will preen from his yacht and Maserati about how giving poor parents money is horrible because the parents will spend it on drugs, not their kids. He and to a lesser extent people like Slotkin are why we can never seem to do good things, bold things like ten dollar a day pre-school/day care like our neighbors up north. Slotkin probably is not a moral sourpuss like Manchin but she is timid and afraid to do anything that has not been tested to death.
I started commenting on this site when I was in my 20s I think. I am 44. I am middle-aged. I have a good job, a mortgage, a car payment, a family. Yet when I hear the Democratic Party talk about helping American families, I feel like they are not talking to people like me even though I vote for them. I have no idea who they are talking too. When Schumer talks about his Bailey’s, I think his mind is still stuck in the mid to late 1990s and the Bailey’s are in their 40s but were born in the 1950s, not the 1970s and 80s.Report
That’s all fine but you seem to be talking messaging and vibes more than anything. When we’re talking about nabbing purple or even red Senate seats we need Senators who’ll carry their elections and vote for Dem judges and generally support the Democratic Agenda or at least be willing to negotiate on the matter; not candidates who give blue state liberals like you and me a happy feeling down our legs.Report
I fully accept that Slotkin is going to need to be to my right and that MGP is going to be to my right on gun control for WA-5.
This does not mean MGP needs to vote for the SAVE act or Slotkin has to spend the time seething at Sanders/AOC in public.
Slotkin really seems to hate that AOC and Sanders are out there holding large rallies about Trump’s assault on democracy like it makes her job more difficult somehow.Report
I’m not particularly happy about those actions by them either but I also can’t get terribly exercised about them so long as they show up with their votes when they’re needed.
In all honesty I can’t muster any ill will towards Manchin generally; but I consider Sinema an utter mess and am profoundly glad she got drummed out of the party (and we kept her seat too!!)Report
What is wrong with what AOC and Sanders are doing? Trump really is trying to do an authoritarian take over of the United States the actions of DODG/Miller/Noem/Vought are deeply disturbing.
Last week, ICE deported several U.S. citizens to Honduras because they were under 18 and ICE would not give their mother anytime to make alternative arrangements. I have read several stories of children (some U.S. citizens/some not) being deported while undergoing treatment for cancer because their parents were undocumented.
Frankly, I deeply abhor anyone who thinks the immigration stuff is a distraction/trap. Trump’s polling on it has changed and is now underwater. And I think the zeal of their xenophobia goes against Truth, Justice, and the American Way to borrow from Superman.
This is vileness that can and should be stood up against.
But my sense of Slotkin is that she really seethes and resents at having to do this and she decides to blame the Democrats who are calling attention to the issue and that is wrong.Report
“Pragmatic argument.”
“HOW DARE YOU”
“Statement of the importance of achievable goals.”
“HOW DARE YOU”
lather, rinse, repeatReport
Eh I’m actually with Saul that I don’t see any issue with AOC and Bernie doing their things. I doubt it’s moving the needle in any significant way but someone has to be the furthest left person in the coalition and the electoral fortunes of the party aren’t going to rise or fail around what that person does.
The important difference isn’t the left flank, it’s the right flank. If the Democrats want to win the Senate, much less have 60 votes again, they need to be open to having members in good standing that think certain ideas and attitudes within the party are kind of bullsh*t. And I stress that they actually need to believe it as opposed to just saying it sometimes when it’s convenient.
Take something that seems like it shouldn’t be controversial, like subsidized daycare (I bring it up because Saul mentioned it). There are a lot of people who you would think would favor it but you find they don’t because in practice its upper middle class welfare, or it just doesn’t rate as a priority that outweighs other more pressing needs. That perspective has to be allowed.Report
I’ve mentioned Marie Gluesenkamp Perez before and I will most assuredly mention her again. She’s capable of holding down a blue seat in a red district in Warshington and she’s capable of speaking like she’s not online.
Check this out.
(She also absorbs an animal spirit from the forest early in the vid.)
The whole abundance/pragmatism thing that seems to be infecting parts of the Dems should be welcomed. This rejection of the perfect over the achievable is downright refreshing.Report
I strongly dispute that 10 dollar a day daycare is a UMC welfare issueReport
You don’t care about childcare? HOW DARE YOUReport
MGP is currently drawing ire because she voted for the SAVE Act. I fully get she will be to my right on guns but there is no reason to vote for Trump’s voter suppression billReport
You should primary her with someone who won’t win against the Republican.
That’ll show her.
It’ll be like the Harris/Palestine thing, only for Congress.Report
There is no reason why Trump and Co. should not be opposed on all fronts. Attack him on the economy, attack him on authoritarianism, attack him on immigration, etc
This is not rocket science. I don’t understand why some politicians refuse to get thisReport
As I said I don’t have a problem with them doing their thing. Like North I actually have a fondness for AOC, Bernie too.
I’m also not saying I’ve done the math on daycare, I’m saying it needs to be ok to say it isn’t worth it. Right now the tenuous position the Democrats have been trying to hold is no taxes on households making under ~400k. You can’t maintain the welfare state we have on that much less expand it. When you look at countries that have things like that they fund it with taxes way down the income ladder, plus VATs. Pivoting might mean understanding that if you ask households in the median if they’d give an extra few thousand dollars for subsidized daycare (or whatever), with high earners covering the majority of the cost, a lot of them might still say no, or not really care one way or the other, and not just among the usual suspects either.Report
How is subsidized or universal daycare, an upper middle class welfare thing? Lots of not very upper middle class families have two working parents and no grand parent to take care of the kids or you have working single parents.Report
I think the theory is this:
1. There is evidence that a lot of working class moms and maybe middle-class moms would rather stay at home than be a dual-income household;
2. There is also some evidence that the biggest non-politician advocates for subsidized daycare are In This House Moms aka liberals with college educations and careers, not jobs.
Hence, subsidized day care becomes welfare for people who are generally comfortable but not can pay 30K a year for pre-school comfortable. Or they can afford it and will even though the subsidy still helps.
Plus this is where dreaded means-testing comes in.Report
I am not worried about whether the moms in question are the ones with ‘in this house’ signs or the ones who pose with Instagram face and a shotgun.
But otherwise this is closer to the mark. It’s also not only about lifestyle choices but about trade offs. The high income family in the 90th percentile is going to pay $30k in taxes or a few grand less out of pocket to a private provider, no matter what. The 58th percentile family may take it or leave it even if the tax burden on them only ends up being $5k. That $5k in the pocket may be important enough to them they’d rather make do with ad hoc arrangements. Made up numbers but you see my point.
Additionally as you note you’ve got the means testing and other kinds of issues. I don’t think a lot of the people who wonder why the US can’t just be more like France understand that in France they’d pay at least 1.5 the taxes (or more) and depending on their circumstances might not actually get the daycare. The German version of this system took a hit a few years ago because it was overwhelmed and there was a daycare worker strike as a result. My brother’s wife worked for the state system but ultimately went back to school because she was sick of the issues with it.
None of this is to say that some form of state supported childcare is a bad idea. It may well math out, trade offs may be worth it. All I’m saying is that the case for it in the eyes of a working or middle middle class person may not be so self evident and it’s a mistake to assume it is.Report
From my job, I know that many working couples or single parents lower in the socio-economic scale, also engage in grey market day care. Lots of working class or lower middle class Asian parents would leave their kids with an older woman baby sitter. It wouldn’t surprise me if other communities did something similar.
College educated bougie parents are going to want something a lot more formal for their young kids. They aren’t going to want to just leave the kid with an older person in their apartment.Report
Pragmatically, I don’t think that publicly funded child care will work.
Specifically, it seems that we’ve got yet another iron triangle and people are saying something to the effect of “I want exactly what we have now, only cheaper”.
The high quality day care you get at the $300/week place? We want that, only for $100/week.
All of the joys of sitting in a circle singing “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts”, all of the costs of being given a seat on the couch and Cocomelon and Bluey marathons.Report
If Canada can do it, so can we.Report
I strongly dispute that 10 dollar a day daycare is a UMC welfare issueReport
This is like saying public school won’t work.Report
It’s one thing to say such a thing in North Colorado Springs.
Quite another to say it in some parts of Baltimore.
Where are we saying it?Report
If Health Care were cheaper the gov would have a lot more money to throw at these sorts of things.Report
Yes. This will be fixed by hiring more administrators with intangible goals and zero deliverables.Report
It’s funny how times change. My parents did the old lady down the street method for me and my brothers (cousins got in on it too), with some assistance from grandparents. My wife and I of course paid an arm and a leg for a high end center for my oldest and currently pay slightly less for a center run by our parish for our little guy. Many of my friends with kids have done ad hoc arrangements involving grandparents and in homes, all college educated people, though pretty sure my wife and I are on the higher end of the earnings spectrum of our social circle.
Anyway, and to reiterate, my point isn’t that this is inherently a bad idea. My point is that working class people are not necessarily as easy to buy off with benefits as those of us in a higher rung on the ladder might think. I suspect things like cost of goods or ability to get a car note on decent terms are much more front of mind than trying to emulate the European (or even Canadian) welfare state. If I was in charge my priority on this front, particularly in this economic environment, would be improving the systems we have, primarily by making them less of a patchwork.Report
My parents did day care through the Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association. I think that day care was a lot less fancy and cheaper during the 1980s. This might mainly be because we were in an in between era from modern options for women and when women had limited working options. So you had larger number of women pre-school teachers you could pay cheap for.
I agree that working class and lower middle class people are not as easy to buy off with benefits as possible.Report
Where I get lost in this thread is the jumbled absence of the goal.
Is the goal re-distributive income so that people can fund different kinds of childcare?
Or is the goal to build a system of childcare centers that will employ (mostly) women who might also get a perq of discounted childcare?
And, when we build the centers do we implement regulations that make the local Jewish center ‘illegal’ to drop off your kids? Or an aggressive CPS that makes certain no old ladies or abuela’s are providing sub-standard care (according to regulations about water fountains)?
Saying that Public Schools should be proof that we can build this just gives us a map to how we’ll build it in Rich Zip Codes and how we’ll build it in Poor Zip Codes. It’ll ‘work’ for that definition of work.
Cutting to the chase, this is one of the reasons ‘The Left’ ™ isn’t as credible as it used to be on social programs… there’s a huge gap on delivering for UMC and disguising a (crappy) jobs program that doesn’t really serve anyone else.
Is the goal to build Goverment child care centers that will have an internal logic and reason for existence all it’s own? Or is it to provide support for child rearing in whatever format that wants to take?
That’s IMO the credibility gap AOC and Bernie and the further left has with normie working class folk. It’s not the rhetoric, it’s the 19th century public cleanliness programs that no-one believes in anymore.Report
Yeah, if we have day care work on a voucher/charter/private school model, it’ll work as well as the schools in North Colorado Springs.
“What about the schools in South Colorado Springs?”
“HOW DARE YOU”Report
Heh, you’ll have to spell out the North/South divide as that’s a little to parochial (pardon the pun) to figure out.Report
The North Side schools are the ones that have high proficiency rates and large numbers of students who go on to college/university.
The South Side schools are the ones more representative of the country as a whole.Report
Heh I mean my position currently is that we probably can’t afford it under current constraints and even if we could the politics of the concept aren’t so clear cut.
However I believe the point of comparison is Canada.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_care_in_Canada
A few minutes of googling suggests that the federal government transfers money to the provinces who then spend it on both subsidies to existing centers and creation of new centers. No idea what strings are attached re: enforcement or other issues but the mission at least does seem to be focused on childcare, not jobs or other things ($10 per day is the mantra).Report
Thanks, read the article before my 1:00 call… but in typical wikipedia fashion, I have no clear idea of what the point of anything they are trying mightily to explain might be.Report
Yea I see a lot of positive (and some negative) press but I’m struggling to find anything that lays out a summary of how it works.
Also important context might be that this discussion starter as being about tent widening for the Democrats not the merits of a particular policy, childcare or otherwise.Report
Fair point… my meta-critique for tent-widening is remains the same: people want a 21st century Govt. that juices things and oils wheels… not one that builds ponderous state run organizations and NGO’s to feed off them.
That’s not a libertarian critique… it’s a velocity of Govt. funding to problem critique.
It’s writ large on all the projects: Housing, Schooling, Electrifying, Manufacturing, Childing, etc.Report
I mostly agree, with the maybe quibble that people would get mad about losing certain pieces of legacy infrastructure, even where they harbor some pretty serious gripes about it.
To bring us full circle my whole point about tent widening was that the tent needs to be big enough to allow people to say things like what you just did without immediately being run off.Report
Americans want first world service on third world levels of taxation. They get angry about why it is so hard to build anything new or various problems or why existing infrastructure is degrading. They don’t want to pay for maintenance or do the hard work in getting superior services.Report
We have enough taxes to make this work if we’d make HC a lot more efficient.
Similarly our infrastructure creation is extremely inefficient.
Fixing these things are political issues. The cost of not fixing them is not having money for other things.Report
California should lead the way with their HSR and show those hillbillies how to do it right!
California has approved *FOUR* rebuilding permits following the Palisade fires! Let’s see Texas get out permits *HALF* that quickly!Report
I have no beef with Uncle Bern and AOC’s gatherings- I apologize if that wasn’t clear. I’m unenthused by Slotkin and MGP’s behavior but also not raging in outrage at it. For Bernie and AOC- I have no particular beef towards their actions. In all honesty I think rather highly of AOC. I don’t agree with her on many things but I think she’s a fantastic Congresswoman and I’m delighted she’s in the party.Report
Ah. got it! ThanksReport
He voted to confirm all D judicial nominees and ultimately was a yes on the big pieces of legislation. Not sure what else we’re supposed to ask.Report
See aboveReport
The Senate is tough in 2026. Maine and North Carolina are potential pick ups and possibly the only ones. Meaning the mid-terms of 2026, produce a Democratic House and less Republican Senate but still a Republican Senate.
That being said, thermostatic voting during a bad recession/depression produces strange resultsReport
Time traveling mob from 19th century Russia harasses 21st century woman on the streets of NYC.
https://apnews.com/article/itamar-bengvir-brooklyn-mob-woman-chased-090da170e8800307c54e2520320f6a2cReport
We should track down their schools and withhold federal funding.Report
Let teachers teach. Pay them well. Give students the additional support. Stop trying to meet production quotas and quantitative rubrics.Report
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/dear-democrats-stfu-about-woke-ports-empty-los-angeles-seattle
“Also late last week: The director of the Port of Los Angeles warned that in two weeks the number of inbound containers being processed at the busiest facility in America will drop by 35 percent. “Essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers have ceased,” he reported. “And cargo coming out of Southeast Asia locations is much softer than normal.”
You can see this wave of declines coming by watching container ship departures from Asia, which are moving toward pandemic levels.
This week only 17 vessels with 85,486 20-foot-equivalents (TEUs) of goods are scheduled to dock in LA, down 28.6 percent from last week. Next week, that number will drop to 16 vessels with 74,925 TEUs.
We are seeing this story repeated in Seattle and Long Beach.
What that means:
Jobs for dockworkers are in jeopardy.
Significantly less work for truckers.
Massive supply-chain disruptions for domestic industries.
Shortages of goods for consumers.
Higher prices.
If you are an elected Democrat spending a single second talking about “wokeness” instead of this state of affairs . . .”Report
Agreed. This gives Team Blue something useful to talk about.
I’ll add that it’s currently impossible for importers to follow the law. Ergo they’re not. Ergo when they have spot checks on whether they’re following the law, their only recourse is to have a personal relationship with the inspector. If this isn’t resolved real quick we’re going to be creating corruption.Report
It doesn’t matter if the Democrats don’t talk about it. The Republicans will.Report
And they will celebrate as the “pain” necessary to defeat China or some such claptrap. The suffering of Americans will be morphed into a grand cause.
Classic fascist playbook stuff.Report
I knew my editing was off. I mainly highlighted this to discuss the upcoming tariff disaster.Report
FWIW, JVL was also mainly going against Slotkin for lurching to the right on wokenessReport
Miller is being especially cruel and quadrupling down: https://www.rawstory.com/karoline-leavitt-2671858560/Report
Oh Canada!Report
There seems to be a complete collapse for NDP but Conservatives are doing better than expected and the Liberals lost a lot of youth voters because of housing (it is amazing how this issue tears center-left parties apart). Liberals will likely have a minority government again but perhaps without enough confidence and supply.Report
You guys need to do a better job of normalizing roommates.Report
Housing is a big challenge and it cuts against a lot of both intrinsic voter preferences and fashionably left wing notions. I remain optimistic that liberals are going to figure it out in time but they’ll doubtlessly squirm and buck against it because it is politically very difficult.Report
There has been a lot of propaganda in North America that “good” neighborhoods consists of single family homes with well manicured lawns and gardens and not in walking distance of non-residential real estate. Mixed use land use, apartment buildings, and even transit make something a bad neighborhood. That’s the problem with voter preferences. The problem with fashionable leftist notions is that the real solution is not very romantic and it means that the dreaded developer, a worse capitalist than an arms merchant, will get wealthy.Report
You’re right on every account.Report
The propaganda on what a good neighborhood even proceeds radio let alone television. When Manhattan got too populated for row houses and you started to need apartments, this was basically a decade after the Civil War, there were lots of people aghast because proper Anglo-Saxon Protestants live in a home and not an apartment buildings. Lots of cities in pre-car North America promoted themselves as cities of homes.Report
Good neighborhoods are the ones near the schools that have more than X% proficiency in math/reading.
It’s purely a coincidence that the lion’s share of these happen to be near single family homes with well manicured lawns and gardens and not in walking distance of non-residential real estate.Report
Well, they arrested the guy who stole Kristi Noem’s purse. It’s allegedly an undocumented visitor.
This, of course, has resulted in Truthers.Report
So apparently Amazon – like a lot of businesses – is going to add a line to its billing about how much the total price of an item has increased due to the tariffs. The White House responded about as well as you’d expect, calling it a political move by Amazon.
We really are in a post-truth world I guess.Report
Amazon did a 180 so fast when the Trump admin called them out that they’re probably too dizzy to deliver packages today.Report
The cool thing about line item fees tied to a politico/economic event is that we can still enjoy paying the fees (remember delivery/fuel surcharges? Still paying them surprisingly) on a bunch of services even after the politico/economic event is over.Report
“Amazon Haul”, actually, which is their in-house version of Alibaba — direct-from-the-factory Chinese-supplier purchasing.
So, sure, not not Amazon, but also not the “Amazon” that you’d shop on by going to Amazon Dot Com or getting things for your Kindle.Report
I’ve heard that Amazon Haul suffers from competing with Amazon itself. Amazon won’t allow Haul to steal too much of it’s profits so what it’s allowed to offer is very limited.Report
I haven’t really been following this scandal but the DNC has been rather angry with David Hogg for fighting for young politicians in positions of power in the party rather than the seniority system currently in play. A female Native American DNC member is going to challenge David Hogg’s victory as DNC Vice Chair by citing “fairness and diversity rules.” This is basically the liberal equivalent of Christians who use Muslim front people to file suits against pro-LGBT kid’s lit in schools. Nobody who isn’t already on their side is going to fall for it.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c029d5f6a28705d3d8f43655f5492ecf65b3a4aed0dc8fa00017d60157cf19c7.jpgReport
We talked about it a little bit last week.
For what it’s worth, I think that the DNC Chair has it right. If David Hogg wants to work for people who are aspirants instead of actuals, he should do that from his PAC rather than from his official capacity as Vice-Chair.
Though it *IS* funny that they’re hitting him on the cis-het white male front. Didn’t he go to Harvard? He should check his privilege!Report
The DNC needs to get over itself. The JD Pritzkers of the world don’t actually need them to get elected and he’s about the most senior person agewiae the DNC should support. If all the DNC does is keep sclerotic geriatric has been a in office nothing g will change and we will have witnessed a total collapse into authoritarian rule in a year. If they want to be a functional opposition Hogg is showing them the way.Report
Here you go.Report
Lawyer types! A question! America First Legal (whomever they are) has filed a bar complaint against NY Attorney General Letitia James following a DOJ criminal referral.
What is a “bar complaint”?
Have you ever had a bar complaint filed against you? What did it entail?Report
America First Legal is a nonprofit “legal entity,” not quite a law firm, founded and apparently still run by Stephen Miller (who is not a lawyer). (Yes, THAT Stephen Miller.) And a couple of former Trump I DOJ officials. It is a conservative/MAGA provocateur, and a direct descendant of a project started back in the early Clinton Administration by David Horowitz, Stephen Miller’s very-recently-deceased mentor. The permissible involvement of a non-lawyer at the helm of what otherwise would be a law firm is a wrinkle in law that, to my understanding, is unique to the District of Columbia.
A “bar complaint” is an ethics grievance. I don’t know how the other lawyers around here feel, but I would be VERY insulted if one were filed against me, even one lacking in legal or actual merit. The response to one varies based on a number of factors, including the seriousness of the ethics violation alleged, the factual accuracy of the allegations, the subject attorney’s history (if any) of prior bar discipline, and in this case, the overall politics of the situation (here, heavily-laden).Report
How difficult is it to set it up? Do you just show up at the place and plop down $80 and fill out a form? Do you actually have to get it past a board of some sort?
If someone filed one against you, what would that mean that you have to do?Report
In Maryland they are very easy to file. You can download a form and put it in the mail.
They go to the grievance commission, which then decides whether to take any action. That could include a petition for disbarment or some other sanction.
The commission is made up of, you guessed it… lawyers! So there is kind of a self audit aspect, not dissimilar to a physician malpractice committee made up of doctors.
In my experience you have to have done something pretty bad for it to go anywhere, usually in a way that is harming the public (think misuse of client funds, criminal activity involving your practice, that kind of thing). No idea how this is done in NY but sounds more like a dumb stunt unlikely to result in anything.Report
I’m down with it being a stunt.
If the accusations in the complaint are true, does it meet the requirements for a bar complaint?
How bad do you have to be to get one of these things through the snake? Do you have to be Stephen Glass level or are we talking just a little bit worse than Richard “Racehorse” Haynes?Report
I’m not readily familiar with NY State ethics rules. The basic allegations is lying on a mortgage loan application, which from the bar’s perspective would be not nearly as bad as the classic Big Three reasons for serious bar discipline (stealing from your clients, sleeping with a client, lying to the court). Very few lawyers are disbarred ever, and most of the ones that are did one of those three things. But following up on InMD’s point, there is a degree of public harm from even private mortgage fraud, and it’s fair to say an Attorney General should be held to a high ethical standard, so this might get sharper review than it would if it were the likes of private solo practici9ner Burt Likko, who does not hold the public trust the same way NYAG James does. That it comes from an obvious proxy for Donald Trump also means it will get more attention than a private complaint. This absolutely is a stunt, it is absolutely the sort of thing that David Horowitz would have done, and it’s transparent enough that we may be confident the bar will respond to it with eyes wide open to its status as a political stunt.Report
How much overlap is there between the accusations against her and the charges she brought against Trump?
Everybody on the right seems to be arguing that they’re the same dang offenses.Report
I had a longer reply that I somehow lost. I’d say it’s consistent with the standard for a complaint in the sense that there is no standard for comaints. Otherwise I’d just cosign on what Burt said. Can’t ever totally rule anything out but my money is on a troll unlikely to go anywhere.Report
“unlikely to go anywhere”
Cool, I’ll keep an eye open and update when this either fizzles out or catches fire.Report
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” -Jean Paul Sartre.
It is amazing how many people refuse to learn that a lot of what Trump and Co do is nothing but bad-faith trollingReport
“America First Legal”
The name tells you everything you need to know about this bad-faith right-wing organization. \
But if you stopped at that, you wouldn’t be able to do your JAQing so….Report
I can’t say I care about “America First Legal”. I *DO* care about what “bar complaints” are.
Have you ever had one filed against you? How often are they filed against anybody? When you go down to the lawyer bar and complain about your week, how often does someone there mention a bar complaint?Report
1. No.
2. Don’t know and don’t care to look it up. I do know that most of them don’t go anywhere.
3. I have to think it has happened once or twice in 40-odd years, but I don’t remember any gripes about it.Report
1. No.
2. They get filed a lot and most go nowhere because it is more of an airing of grievances than actual misconduct.
3. NeverReport
I don’t pretend to speak for all lawyers in this regard, but you may have noticed that in my responses above, I did not address the question of my personal experiences with ethics complaints. Nor will I. I choose to disclose that I have never received any form of professional discipline in my now more than thirty-year-long career as an attorney. To my knowledge, almost no lawyers ever do. Professional discipline is rare. Within the universe of professional discipline that does get imposed, disbarrment is uncommon and almost never imposed for a first ethical offense.
Nevertheless, and speaking only for myself, I find “Have you ever been ethically grieved to your bar association?” a rude question to ask, especially in a public forum. It feels to me a bit like “Have you ever been sexually assaulted? How did that work? What did it feel like when you were sexually assaulted? What’s involved in responding to being sexually assaulted?”
I would decline to answer such questions and I am sure you would understand why. Please understand that this line of inquiry conjures similar emotions in at least me, and take from that a warning signal that others amongst my sister and brother lawyers would have similar responses. It insulting to be thus accused, even if the accusation is completely fanciful.
I assume you’re inquiring in good faith to have a better understanding of the system, of what’s going on with this story. Nevertheless, I’d encourage you to not inquire further of the individuals here who are engaging with you, at least in this way.
You should assume that this inquiry regarding Ms. James is intended to elicit similar emotions from her. As I intimated earlier, this is how David Horowitz worked; it’s how he taught his apt pupil Stephen Miller. Publicly staining Ms. James’ honor, and causing her to experience emotional outrage, fear of invasion of her personal privacy, and vulnerability for her career, are very much the goals of the complainant here. Vindicating the merits of that complaint are secondary to the goals of making Ms. James pay a personal price for daring to accuse Donald Trump of doing something wrong, and thus deterring future legal attacks on Donald Trump (regardless of the merits of those attacks).
I suggest that you assume that America First Legal is acting in the absolute worst possible faith here.Report
Nevertheless, and speaking only for myself, I find “Have you ever been ethically grieved to your bar association?” a rude question to ask, especially in a public forum.
Okay, this answers nuances to the question I had. Like, having one of these filed is a big deal and while most of the lawyers on the board haven’t had one filed, it’s now something that Ms. James has to answer “yes” to, if under oath (for whatever reason) and, presumably, a lot more rare than, for example, getting written up at work.
I guess the comparison to what *I* do is “Have you ever been PIPed?”
Because *I* have been written up at work. I, personally, am responsible for multiple HR emails being sent out clarifying official company policies for everything from “the dress code” to “whether you should talk about politics at lunch”. So if someone asked me “have you ever been written up at work?”, my answer would be to laugh and tell the story about some of those emails.
“Have you ever been put on a Performance Improvement Plan?”
Now *THAT* is a personal question. (I mean, no I haven’t, but still.)
So I now know the parameters of about how bad a Bar Complaint is.
As for America First Legal is acting in bad faith, I’m sure that they are. That said, it’s possible to say something true in bad faith. That’s something that can do a lot of damage.
Anyway, thanks for answering. I didn’t mean to cause offense!Report
“I assume you’re inquiring in good faith”
Why?Report
It’s a question that I didn’t know the answer to. I assume that most of the non-lawyers on the board don’t know whether a “bar complaint” is a trivial thing that even the best lawyers attract every couple of months.
Like, if a guy in the military mentioned his squaddie got an LOC versus an LOR versus an LOA. One of those is one that everybody gets and they tell funny stories about. Other ones are mentioned only in hushed tones.
I mean, until this particular incident, I don’t think that I’d ever heard of a “bar complaint”.
Wait, was that what they got Clinton with after The Incident? So, I guess, maybe I had heard of one. Is this the same thing that Clinton got hit with?Report
An excuse to tell a story that I, at least, think is funny. I have been “sued” for my professional conduct. I put “sued” in quotation marks because the plaintiff served me with something that looks like a federal complaint, but she never filed it with any court. (I could have put “served” in quotation marks too, because it wasn’t proper service, but since the case wasn’t filed, who cares?)
The poor misguided plaintiff was, essentially, suing me for successfully defending a client in a sexual harassment lawsuit she had brought. It was, of course, my misconduct that caused her to lose rather than the weakness of her case. Or so at least she thought. The defendant was the plaintiff’s chemistry professor. As I always do when I represent a male alleged to have sexually harassed a woman (I’ve never represented a female harasser, but hope to do so before I retire.), I had what I like to call the “just between us guys” conversation. It’s designed to smoke out whether the client’s denials are on the level or whether he’s the type to do something like what he was accused of doing. Since I usually haven’t seen the plaintiff yet, I do a little nudge, nudge, wink, wink to get him to tell me, essentially, how hot he thinks the plaintiff is. (I know, I know, it’s about power, not lust. Except it’s about lust, too.) The response is usually quite revealing.
In this case, I was interviewing my client alongside the in-house counsel for the college. The client’s answers were unusually awkward. Finally, he told us that he was gay, but that he wasn’t out and would prefer to keep that out of the case. I told him I thought we could win the case without outing him, but if it began to look as if we’d need to drop that bomb I’d let him know and we could revisit the issue. After the client left, the in-house counsel told me how impressed he was at how that turned out. We never did need to use it, though it would have been fun.
When I took her deposition, I saw, for the first time, a dumpy, middle-aged bottle blonde. She described some fairly innocuous behavior and I asked whether she thought he was sexually attracted to her. When she said yes, I couldn’t help saying “Why?”Report
YES! EXACTLY! This is the exact sort of story that I was wondering would be on the same level as a “bar complaint”!
The lawyer gets back from lunch and the receptionist says “you got two more bar complaints from Ms. Bottleblond.”
“Throw them in the circular file.”
“Already did.”
“Thank you, Gladys.”
Or if it’s something that it’s actually rude to ask about.
I now know that it’s something that’s actually rude to ask about.Report
I speak only for myself. I might be an outlier with respect to my sensitivity about this sort of thing.
You might insult my honor as a blogger, and that’d be one thing. I probably would laugh that off; the stakes of my blogworld reputation are quite low and the stakes of the integrity of blogging generally are such that I would not invest a lot of stress into that. But I take my honor as a lawyer as seriously as I would a heart attack.Report
I’m not as sensitive about it as it sounds like Burt is, I’ve just never to my knowledge had it happen to me.
To the extent I’ve personally interacted with attorneys who have CJ’s anecdote is representative. I don’t know what the official protocol is but I’m doubtful the commission in Maryland would even contact you about something like that, were it to be filed, but if someone raised enough ruckus who knows?
Which isn’t to say no complaints are ever merited. However I’m pretty confident we’ve already spent more time on this than it’s worth, maybe even more time than Letitia James will.Report
Looks like war between India and Pakistan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXGr_08t3ioReport
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” – Jean-Paul Sartre
The trolling and outrageous lies are the point.
Yesterday and Today:
1. Pam Bondi said Trump and Co took 22 million Fentanyl pills off the street and saved 119 million lives.
2. Trump went on ABC and apparently said something about Garcia having MS-13 tattooed on his fist.
3. Miller, a ghoul’s ghoul if there ever was one, put up signs on the White House lawn about deported “violent criminals”
To the extent these are not meant to troll the libz, they are designed for the most “sweet” and credulous small-town Grandma who decorates her house in kitsch like Thomas Kinkade and Precious Moment stuff.Report
Antimicrobial resistance.
Report
Thank the heavens that Pam Bondi’s Justice Department saved 35% of the American population from being killed by fentanyl pills so powerful one of then can kill an average of five people.
Math is hard.Report
The charitable reading is that she reversed her numbers. 22 million Americans popping pills from the street would still be very high though. Apparently she doubled down on the lie in front of Congress. I think these kind of lies serve two purposes:
1. They actually work on the most credulous of Trump supporters. Sorry for being uncharitable but think older ladies from small or smallish towns who think Bismark, North Dakota is a big city and have tastes which we would describe as kitsch.
2. They are meant to troll the libz because we are required to spend time correcting it. See quote above.Report
Yup, we’re up to 258 million Americans saved, and now I know it isn’t just a social media misprint because there’s video of her setting up that number as a punchline and taking a second to smugly glance around for the opportunity to mic drop.
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lo27p7wrls2d
I have to figure that she’s doing math on the poundage of the fentanyl seized, assuming that it’s all pure and uncut, and dividing it by the smallest estimate of the amount necessary to induce an overdose.
258 million is pretty close to three-quarters the total population of the country; at this rate each and every man, woman, child, and whatever else they might want to call themselves in the United States of America will personally owe their lives to Pam Bondi by about 7:30 p.m. on the 21st of May.Report
I unfortunately have to admit that their ability to lie with impunity is awe inspiring (in the original bad sense of the word)Report
I was watching a PBS documentary on the American Public Library last night on YouTube. It was made by a white woman who was the daughter of two public school teachers. Being PBS and about libraries it contained a lot of the standard orthodoxies of American liberalism. It contain something interesting though. When noting why so many women ended up as librarians, there was a brief comment about pioneer librarian Melvil Dewey, of the Dewey Decimal system, loving women and women loving him.
Wikipedia’s entry on Melvil Dewey presents Dewey’s love of women as something more like sexual harassment and not only that but it was so obvious that his male contemporaries believed he was very inappropriate in his behavior towards women:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvil_Dewey#Controversies
Everybody seems to be capable of ideological blindness when necessary.Report
Yup. It’s much harder to be critical of people in your own tribe than it is members of some other tribe. I like libraries, too.
I think about how we all just sort of overlooked how awful Bill Clinton’s behavior was with respect to his much-younger intern because at the time we thought of the extramarital affair as “consensual,” and either focused on “But he LIED ABOUT IT UNDER OATH!” or “It’s not great but it’s a PRIVATE MATTER THAT DOESN’T AFFECT HOW HE DOES HIS JOB!” I now think he was impeached for the wrong reasons and at the same time, having Al Gore serve out the rest of that term wouldn’t have been so awful.Report
Possibly. I think running away from Clinton hurt Gore more than it helped in the 2000 election.Report
Governor Whitmer decided to commit political suicide yesterday: https://apnews.com/article/whitmer-trump-hug-michigan-fd8652c2a515ed356be16d16e875d0ae
From time to time, Democratic politicians will need to appear at things with Trump but you don’t have to hug the man or appear at his rallies. He is underwater in Michigan and even more so nationally. Yeah she is term-limited but this is not going to help any hopes she had for the 2028 nomination for President. And I get that some Democrats think galaxy-brained bipartisanship is a thing but I think that is massively misreading the room.Report
If sane people refuse to talk to Trump then everything he hears will be from inside his bubble.
Whitmer should be telling him that his tariffs are going to crush Michigan’s auto industry.Report