Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024
On this day in 1922, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established. (Ironically, it’s also the date of Rasputin getting killed in 1916.)
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.
Jonathan Turley (hey, he’s got a Wikipedia page!), has an essay on his blog: Silence of the Labs: How a Censorship Campaign Failed to Kill a COVID Origin Theory.
He gets into the flapperdoodle theory about the origin of Covid and how it was covered up. The conclusion:
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A while back, ChatGPT fabricated a story about Jonathan Turley committing sexual harassment. This wasn’t a disputed case—it was just made up out of whole cloth. So to stop this from happening, OpenAI put in a block where it would refuse to answer questions mentioning Jonathan Turley, and would just bail mid-answer if it generated a response that mentioned him.
Out of curiosity, I tried to see if I could work around this, and found that if I a) misspelled his name in my question, and b) instructed it to refer to him only as JT in the response, it would work fine.Report
Trumps’ appeal of the first E. Jean Carroll verdict denied:
https://ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/d7c6caab-3832-45a4-b1f6-3165d0e7b870/1/doc/23-793_opn.pdf#xml=https://ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/d7c6caab-3832-45a4-b1f6-3165d0e7b870/1/hilite/
Some of you will, no doubt, wonder at the difference between this case and the Harvey Weinstein case on the admissibility of prior acts of sexual misconduct. The short answer is that under federal evidence law, specifically rules sponsored two decades ago by Republicans, such evidence is more freely admissible than under the common-law evidence rules of many states, including New York. Whatever rule one prefers, the federal courts have to follow Congress’s dictates.Report
Semafor has a “The things we got wrong in 2024” article that talks to dozens of reporters on a spectrum from Rachel Maddow to Ben Shapiro.
I had a couple of big laughs.Report
I liked X becoming Elon’s poop machine. That was funny.Report
I’m a little late to this, but I did appreciate that some of the admissions of error re Biden’s fitness seemed to show genuine acceptance of responsibility (Mehdi Hasan’s was particularly emphatic). The test of course will be the next time there’s an emperor’s new clothes moment, to see whether any of them actually do anything different based on this experience (especially before it’s safe to do so).Report
It’s like an Ancien Regime court where sleeping at the King’s bed or being his Gentleman of the Stool was considered a great honor.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/30/us/politics/elon-musk-trump-mar-a-lago.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lk4.K2NQ.G87Hl_tiPBAe&smid=url-shareReport
I forgot to mention this due to my post playoff clinching stupor yesterday but I saw Nosferatu on Sunday afternoon. It was really awesome and is very worth seeing in the theater. Atmosphere was of course incredible like all of the Robert Eggers movies have been. The only thing I’d maybe criticize was the casting of Lilly Depp. She’s got that unfortunate Instagram face too many actresses have talked themselves into doing. Made her look out of place in 1830s Germany and her acting wasn’t enough to overcome it (I rank her as only a 5 out of 10 as a scream queen, sad given her dad could easily be ranked as an 8 out of 10 scream queen for his performances in Nightmare on Elm Street and Sleepy Hollow). Overall though it was really good. Going in I thought the run time might be excessive but turned out not to be. I never once felt bored and didn’t even need the restroom, despite it being one of those nice theaters where you can order giant beers, which I of course did.Report
Shouldn’t Johnny Depp be a scream king rather than a scream queen?Report
No.Report
Yes. No. Maybe So.Report
Ezra Klein is commenting on a Politico article and here’s the part he’s highlighting:
That first one doesn’t strike me as completely fair but it’s, like, 70% fair. The other two are pretty much direct hits… especially that middle one.
Ezra says that this ain’t great.
I tend to agree.
That’s one of the things that Dems will have to wrestle with.
Or, I suppose, wait for Trump to be worse.Report
The sort of permitting and land use reform that would be necessary to unleash development is the kind of thing that would ideally be the subject of a bipartisan deal. I think we all know why that isn’t possible in the current environment.Report
Somebody did the numbers and pointed out that Starlink would have provided four years of internet service to every single one of those disconnected households for the same price.Report
I’ve chronicled my travails trying to get Comcast to bridge the last 1/4 mile from my house (TLDR: they won’t)… so I got a ‘grey market’ Tmobile unlimited wifi service… then Tmob wen’t legit and I got that for 50% less… then I finally got Starlink and I must say that Starlink is really fast with low latency: 30ms / 200 mbs.
for rural folks, wifi/starlink is the way to go… invest there.
(Plus, close all Broadband loophole that allows them to self-report ‘full coverage’ and refuse to connect people like me).Report
Maybe so. But that’s a result of having only one party interested in investing in our state capacity and one that isn’t interested in playing ball on any subject other than tax cuts. Ideally you’d have a center left spearheading these kinds of efforts and a center right willing to offer some votes, provided the center left agrees to cut out a lot of the rules and BS and sops to whatever entrenched left leaning interests. Instead we have a center left that proposes investments but is only able to pass anything by avoiding any and all goring of progressive sacred cows. I suppose ymmv but I do not see the center left as the dysfunctional part of this dynamic.Report
I see neither as the functional part. I mean, in practice.
In theory, the Democrats are so much better than the Republicans! Holy cow!
In practice? POSIWID.Report
I think something is better than nothing. Indeed my political alignment turns on it.Report
It’s not possible because … checks notes … permitting and most land use decisions are not federal decisions. Utility regulation at the installation level – where the broadband issues are surfacing – is a state thing. And lest we forget, there are 26 red states, most of whom don’t want to be seen taking federal funds, even as their senators (who mostly voted against these projects) attend the ribbon cuttings.
That’s the NIMBY problem at its finest, and one that Biden could never have grappled with – nor can Trump.Report
There was an energy permitting reform bill proposed in the summer and backed by Manchin which is now officially dead. This is the kind of thing where the federal government’s authority supersedes, should it chose to exercise it.Report
It’s an interesting bill, mostly making symbolic changes to how the feds deal with energy projects on federal lands – things like creating NEPA categorical exclusions for adding on to existing power transmission facilities on federal lands, or shortening the environmental review timelines for new lease sales. It also adds a lot of work to an already underfunded FERC.
What it doesn’t do is supersede anything that states have the right to do – like approve siting or impose rate increases. Those ar ethe sort of things holding much of this up, and other then pointing out the problem, the feds have no role in addressing it.Report
There was a day, sometime in October or November, when 80% of Texas’ power came from either renewables (70% solar and wind) or nuclear (10%). There are obvious environmental advantages for Texas when it comes to renewables (e.g., a huge area full of giant mesas that get a sh*t ton of wind, and whole weeks where there are no detectable clouds over the entire state), but it’s weird that a state with an economy still heavily built on oil (and now natural gas) is doing so well compared to the rest of the country.Report
Texas only has that many renewables because they don’t do environmental impact studies and they don’t go out of their way to make sure that the solar panel teams consist of 20% convicted criminals!Report
‘Tis true that Texas doesn’t do environmental impact stories. This is also why Tesla, the Boring Company, and Space X can operate so cheaply (and so damagingly) here.
Texas does have its own dangers for renewables investors, though. You might recall that in 2021, about a third of the state was without power for as long as a week (we were without power for 3 1/2 days), mostly during the state’s longest recorded streak of below freezing temperatures (almost 100 hours in Austin). The main culprit during that disaster, which likely killed hundreds of people, was frozen natural gas plants, but the governor, legislature, and at least one of our Senators, were quick to blame solar and wind (much of the latter also froze). This is because the safety and reliability of energy production of all types in Texas is also poorly regulated (if it was at all, back then).
On the bright side, during that massive power outage, some producers make a fortune.Report
It seems such a weird and petulant argument against Texas having so many renewables when you see it written down.
We’re going to have another cold winter, the websites tell me.
Farmer’s Almanac just says it’s going to be a snowy one.
Best of luck to us all and it would be nice if energy were more abundant.Report
Armand Domalewski
puts it very succinctly:
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He isn’t wrong.
But, to further his point, and the point I made above, the conservative parties in those countries also tend to have governance ideas beyond down-sizing whatever public health insurance system they have for the poor as a fig leaf for deficit spending on tax cuts. I punch left here plenty but it’s also just a fact that no one seriously expects the GOP trifecta to do anything constructive on this front over the next 2 years, or at any time in the near future.Report
Oh, I don’t, not particularly.
Above and beyond noting that a “giveaway” of $42 billion to Starlink that hooked up exactly one person would have hooked up more people to the internet than Biden managed to with his much more reasonable $42 billion plan to hook up everybody.Report
I agree with much of that (I think buses should be free, but I’d accept massive social spending in return for having to pay for the bus).
I think the gentrification discourse in this country is completely broken, both because the “neocololnialism” side become anti-development absolutists, and because the “Can you believe they’re preventing supply with this ‘neocolonialism argument?!” side aren’t pushing development in the SFH neighborhoods where the rich white people live (in Austin, e.g., this is a much larger and closer-in portion of the city core than the traditionally black and Hispanic East Side, but YIMBYs get way more pissed about anti-gentrification than they do about wealthy white NIMBYs who could hit high rises with a football from their yards… their yards, I repeat), and I think YIMBs are cavalier about displacement, but that’s a long conversation.
For tranmission lines, those protests are mostly small, right? And largely occur when they are high voltage lines going through suburbs? Which, I get it, I wouldn’t want those lines going near my home either (I grew up with high voltage lines near my home, and standing under those things was an experience). Which also reminds me, one of the biggest problems we have as a country is the suburbs.Report
one of the biggest problems we have as a country is the suburbs
I kinda see the suburbs as a reaction to mismanaged cities.
It’s reactions all the way down.Report
The problem with suburbs is that they necessitate further mismanagement of cities, e.g., in the form of car infrastructure, both in the form of roads and the worst human invention, parking.Report
If we want middle class people to use public transit, we’re going to need to move the bums out of the stations and arrest hoodlums who make public transport unpleasant.
Note: This isn’t an “ought” statement.
Merely an “is” statement.Report
A good way to get rid of “bums” from public transit spaces is to provide large-scale, full-service housing programs for people experiencing homelessness.
Or you can arrest them and keep them in jail or institutions forever.
Pretty much the only two ways to keep them out of public transit spaces.Report
Oh, how unpleasant! Better to give public transit over to the people temporarily experiencing houselessness and complain about the people experiencing the opposite elsewhere.Report
I think it’s a little more complicated than that. Plenty of cities do offer housing support but they only work for those sufficiently in their right mind to properly utilize it.
Not to do argument by recent headline grabbing culture war incident but Jordan Neely was given free treatment and a place to live. And he was also allowed to leave at will, return to mass transit, and resume creating a disturbance and threatening people.
Which isn’t to say I am in total disagreement with you on the big picture. But I think it’s also fair to say that housing and treatment doesn’t do much for the hard cases if at a certain point you aren’t also willing to forcibly put people into it and impose consequences on those that refuse to cooperate.Report
There are, I agree, complex issues, but we have plenty of data showing that the bulk of the “problem” can be “fixed” with permanent supportive housing. San Antonio actually has a really nice example of what this could look like on a decent scale, and have been very successful.
But yeah, some people, a small percentage of the total homeless population, are too mentally ill to function in society as currently constructed, and there’s no amount or length of support that will keep them from ending up making people uncomfortable, or in rare cases, being violent, in public spaces. How society treats these people feels, to me at least, like a great test of our society itself: we can, as we have in the past, lock them away forever, pretending that none of the ethical and even legal/constitutional issues this obviously entails exist; we could just let them do their thing, putting them in harms way as in Neely’s case (more often with the police than with random dudes on the subway), and potentially putting (again in rare cases) the people around them in harms way as well; or we could find a solution that doesn’t require jail or indefinite, involuntary detention, making full use of the mental healthcare system, social workers, etc.
The problem here is that either doing nothing or locking them up indefinitely and involuntarily are the two easiest options, so we have pretty much always picked one or the other.
Are there people in society would will never be able to integrate to a level that leaves them and us safe? I refuse to assume that without first trying something other than the two easy ways.Report
The conversation inspired me to Google ‘halfway houses near me’ and ‘homeless shelters near me.’ There are several of each in the county I live in. I noticed a few of them posted their rules on the websites, many of which included things like being sober, being able to meet certain standards of hygiene, and similar stuff like that. It struck me that anyone able to comply with the rules probably has a decent chance of fixing their situation via the accommodations already offered to them. I also suspect people able to follow those rules are probably the least likely to be the ones that create disturbances or engage in conduct likely to upset the wider public.
To me it all comes back around to what we do for those that can’t. I don’t want to steal too much valor but my baby lawyer days took me into many of the county lockups across the state. These are places people end up on short stints of less than a year, and where the types of individuals in question spend a lot of time in and out of. It was obvious to me then and remains so that these are not the right places for those in that condition. While this challenges my civil libertarian principles on several fronts I have come to think that institutionalization, provided it is humane, may be the least bad answer.Report
Yeah, most places don’t do permanent supportive housing, but use a model that makes it really difficult for people who’ve suffered the very real trauma of living on the street to succeed. This is unfortunate.
I live about a block or so from one such house. I had a really great conversation with one of the residents a couple years ago, when walking by one morning. This was like his 3rd time attempting to succeed in such a model (no drinking, curfew, hygiene requirements, etc.). Each time he’d been put in contact with the particular house at the jail, after being arrested for a crime related to homelessness.
I never saw him again, so I’m not sure how things worked out for him that time.Report
LA’s Karen Bass talked about how building low-income housing in single-family neighborhoods would create “Gentrification“.
So maybe we need more Gentrification?Report
I believe I said earlier than the gentrification discourse in this country is broken and counterproductive. I’m sure entries like this one will help unbreak it.Report
Chris. Chris!
Are you saying that when we have unhoused people, we should … house them?
It CAN’T be that simple! Come on.Report
Yeah, we just have to follow the example provided by
Wait, I have to switch over the laundry. Be right back.Report
Perhaps the example you’re looking for is Iceland.Report
I would agree with that. We, as a country, have to become more like Iceland.
Now we get to have the conversation where you tell me “I didn’t mean like *THAT*.”Report
I think you’re glossing over the tough cases i.e. those who for whatever reason or lack of ability to reason will run back to the street.Report
Whew. Thank goodness my priors are affirmed! Let’s call the whole thing off, the project is hopeless and doomed if it can’t succeed 100% under budget within a year.Report
I don’t think that’s a remotely fair or serious response.
You’re acting like there’s no such thing as a homeless shelter and that social services don’t exist. If you aren’t ready to deal with the reasons they don’t always work in current state then you can’t act surprised when people treat the ‘just build a home and give it to them’ proposal with skepticism.
I try hard to be charitable here but if you think all it takes to turn people in states of debilitating addiction or with untreated severe mental illness into highly functioning members of society is a roof over their head, a hot meal, and a hug all I can conclude is that you have not thought that hard about their actual plight. Just put a bunch of people like that in a building without any rules or controls and see what happens, to say nothing of whether it’s the kind of place people who are just down on their luck would be willing to go. More likely they’d be terrified of it, and for completely understandable reasons.Report
Yes, in sobriety, some of these folks access mental health care, when they are able to, in a building kitty-corner from my office downtown. Offering them shelter is not going to do any good; they’ll refuse it because there are other, serious mental health issues that need to get solved before they can even begin to think about trusting someone who seems like an authority figure.
But not everyone is such a “hard case.” Many of the unhoused folks that I’ve interacted with are caught in a triad of substance addiction, lack of economic opportunity, and criminal record. Those are folks that, if they can get indoors, can start to put together solutions for these problems. And they don’t become instantly prosperous, just like they don’t instantly overcome their addiction problems. But being indoors does give them a chance to escape chaos and physical risk on the street, a chance to do something with their few possessions and reach out to get other aid that’s on offer like job coaching and addiction treatment. They have to want to start living a “straight” life, and addiction is pernicious. But there are plenty of success stories, and they usually start with getting someone indoors and then tackling other issues.
No, I don’t have an easy answer for people with profound mental health issues. I don’t think there are many answers, easy or not, for those poor souls.Report
My experiences with mental illness has been varied. I’ve seen “a sanity pill a day makes them normal” two or three times.
I’ve also seen “there is no pill because that’s who they are. They’re determined to burn their life down while claiming it’s everyone else who has a problem”.
We can have most of the mentally ill respond well to treatment but also have that not mean much for the homeless because of selection bias.
This issue resists broad generalizations and is probably multiple groups with different issues being inappropriately merged.Report
The devil is in the details.Report
How do environmental impact studies stop power plants from freezing?
Perhaps Texas is underregulated in some ways, and other states are overregulated in other ways?Report
How do environmental impact studies stop power plants from freezing?
I dunno, but stronger safety and reliability regulation (e.g., weatherization requirements) does, which is something Texas had pretty much none of in 2021 (and has little of in 2024).Report
Somehow misthreated this reply to James K.Report
You do note that I acknowledged that could be the case, yes?
One of the many frustrations I have when discussing policy is that regulations are often treated as fungible. This is done on the left and right. Regulation is neither generically bad, nor generically good – you have to weigh the merits of each specific regulation. This is why “Texas underregulates in X way” is not a reasonable response to “unlike Texas, most states overregulate in Y way”.Report
Whether weatherization regulations are extreme in other states (which are almost all on one of the federal grids, and therefore have regulations dictated largely by the federal government) is not a question I’m qualified to answer. I do feel like a third of Texas’ population without power from temperatures above those that much of the country experiences annually is a pretty good sign that Texas’ regulations were too limited (or at least in some cases, non-existent). The fact that weather and other maintenance issues have made it increasingly difficult for the state’s grid to keep up with its (admittedly rapidly increasing) demand is another sign, for me at least, that further regulations are likely necessary. There have been further issues with hurricanes that provide further datapoints in favor of further regulation, but I think I’ve at least pointed to my reasoning here. A great deal has been written about this, and my position is the consensus one among energy experts, who make the arguments better than I, so I’d point you to them.Report
Back in 2006, the Colorado Front Range experienced a cold snap that dropped to -20 °F or so. Gas wells began freezing up because the dewatering equipment was at some distance from the wells proper. Residential heating service got priority so gas supplies to Xcel’s power plants ran short. The situation never got to the sort of positive feedback that Texas experienced in 2011 or 2021; just 30-minute rolling blackouts for a day.
The state fined the snot out of a couple of the gas companies over failure to deliver product. The rest got the message and changed their dewatering practices. There’s been no repeat of the experience during subsequent cold spells.Report
Yeah, turns out that if there are consequences, people change their behavior. This is a lesson Texas’ legislature remains constitutionally incapable of learning.Report
Great, sure and what does any of that have to do with environmental impact regulations specifically? Because otherwise, this all whataboutism.Report
No idea, man. You keep taking it back to that in response to what I initially said, which was not about environmental impact regulations.Report
Texas also built a lot of transmission capacity to connect the windy areas in West Texas with the demand centers in the Houston/DFW/San Antonio triangle.Report
If you’ve never driven through West Texas and seen the Mesas with massive wind farms on their edges, I recommend it. It is a sight to behold.
Granted, I think it was even more impressive the first few times I drove to El Paso from Austin, in the early Aughts, when there were no wind turbines, but the wind farms are impressive in and of themselves, and the mesas are one of the world’s natural wonders.Report
As I understand it the difference comes down to relaxed land use rules, meaning you can actually build sh*t. You are of course much closer to it than me but my understanding is that the land use rules are so favorable renewals development has happened in spite of hostility from the political establishment.Report
It also helps that the vast majority of Texas land is privately owned, but those mesas aren’t good for much except looking at, so one of the best ways for those landowners to make money is to put wind or solar farms on it.
It further helps that Texas makes a lot of wind units itself. My gym is off one of Austin’s major US highways, and at least once a week when pulling in or out of the parking lot, I get stuck behind a wide load carrying blades for wind turbines. This makes putting them in West Texas a lot cheaper, though of course having so many windfarms in West Texas makes building them here profitable.Report
Here is a fascinating little story that deals with the globalization of anime meeting Western/American concepts about race and representation plus the Internet providing a lot of dirt on people in fascinating ways.
https://www.saturday-am.com/blog/dandadan-controvery/
Dandadan is one of the big hit animes of 2024 that is being simultaneously released in Japanese, English, Spanish, and other languages at the same time because of streaming allowing this. It is basically a teen romantic comedy/horror/science fiction/action series mash up. It’s great fun. Sometime in December 2024, a fan put a fan art of the two main characters as Black up on X.*
What made this explode into a giant fight was that the English voice actor of the main African-American and put up the fan art briefly on his X profile. Then other fans began accusing him of Blackwashing and also found some inopportune quotes of Mr. Beckles stating that animated characters should be voiced by members of that group. The Japanese fans of the show apparently protested this loudly enough that Mr. Beckles deleted his social media account.
*For the record, I read the main male character as a Nice Jewish Boy in my headspace because of his hair style and mannerism.Report
Regarding the above thread on cities and development, Noah Smith of Noahopinion has a subscriber post on public order and good cities:
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/good-cities-cant-exist-without-publicReport
Yeah I like his work.Report
A Tesla Cybertruck lit on fire outside a Trump hotel. I am not making this up.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tesla-cybertruck-appears-burst-flames-trump-hotel-las-vegas-rcna185932Report
It was a bomb, or fireworks, or a fireworks bomb.
There’s a thread on the sidebar.Report
Looks like Mike Johnson will loose his first vote for House Speaker. Say what you will about the GOP – they do love to make their Speakers work for the job.Report
Looks like they just wanted to sweat him for a bit.
Carry on.Report
I look forward to our legal eagles explaining this –
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/03/politics/trump-hush-money-conviction-upheld/index.html
Because out here in the cheap seats, it looks like he got away with committing felonies.Report
It’s the same thing as not prosecuting shoplifters, I guess.
Disparate impact or something. Imagine how much it would cost to prosecute properly!Report
IANAL, but my guess is the judge had second thoughts about the whole legal theory that a New York jury could decide that Trump was guilty of felony federal law violations. Absent that, the state charges would have been for misdemeanor offenses. Given the scale of things — $150K as part of tax returns that run to at least hundreds of millions of dollars — the case would never have gone to court. Trump’s accountants and the state Dept of Revenue would have worked it out.Report
Hunter Biden would like a word.Report
I mean, the Supreme Court has essentially declared the President above the law, so this isn’t a big shock. At least the conviction itself is still going to stand.Report
As a reminder… this is the NDA case where his misdemeanors for improperly recording the (legal) business transaction routed through Cohen were ‘elevated’ to felonies on the theory that they were done with the intent to commit a felony. That felony (Fed Election finance laws? Tax Fraud? NY Election laws? ) was never proved, nor was it even charged… and the last time it (FECA) was prosecuted against John Edwards who literally had campaign donors stroke $1M in checks while his Campaign manager claimed the child was his — no one bought that it was a campaign finance violation and he was acquitted.
So, rather than prove a felony that isn’t (likely) a felony, Bragg used the idea of a *possible* felony to elevate the charges. I understand that the law is not linear with it’s logical requirements; but in an ordinary state of affairs, the improper recording of the transaction would be a misdemeanor that could be elevated to a felony upon conviction of the felony.
Further ‘complicating’ matters, Bragg didn’t assert any specific felony *had* been committed:
“If you’re looking for the clearest statement of Bragg’s legal theory, you can find it in a November 2023 court filing opposing Trump’s motion to dismiss the case, along with Merchan’s ruling on that motion. Notably, in that ruling, Merchan clarified that § 175.10 “does not require that the ‘other crime’ actually be committed”—“all that is required is that defendant … acted with a conscious aim and objective to commit another crime.”
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/charting-the-legal-theory-behind-people-v.-trump
Lastly, IMO the ‘proof’ that this was a show trial purely for election consumption was the constant use of 34 felonies; why? Because in ordinary public discourse people are concerned about the illegal act itself: we don’t say a murderer was convicted of the 10 other things that went along with the murder conviction. It’s the murder that people make the judgement on, not illegal firearm possession or transporting violations. And, in this case it literally wasn’t ‘Hush Money’ but improper recording of payments through Cohen — through 34 paper trail infractions. Here’s a good NPR summary of the ’34 felonies’:
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/30/g-s1-1848/trump-hush-money-trial-34-counts
Pretending to ‘revisit’ the judgement in light of SCOTUS ruling was actually a fig-leaf for Merchan/Bragg to bail on the the project with a semblance of dignity by preserving the conviction and hoping it goes away.
This is not a hill to die on.Report
RE: it looks like he got away with committing felonies.
Yes.
Look at it from the Judge’s point of view. He can order Trump jailed, but that puts the legal system in a direct conflict with the newly elected sitting President. So we’re instantly in a Constitutional crisis, where we’ll end up with the legal system needing to rule that the President is above the law.
Or the Judge can fold his hand.
It’s not a perfect world, the system system’s failures reflect that.Report
Part of the problem is that Trump is technically a first time defender and this is a crime people usually don’t go to jail over. Another issue is that it will take nerves of steel and balls of titanium to sentence Trump to anything under current conditions.Report
True. And Hunter Biden would like a word.Report
Pardon?Report
We don’t really know if Trump is a first time offender or not. I would guess not. But standard practice in New York for this would be for Trump’s attorneys and the New York Dept of Revenue to work out something for misclassified expenses, file modified tax returns, and go on. None of which would be in any public record.Report