[Gilithin]

kenberg, on 2021-November-18, 15:24, said:

All such joking aside, the long jury huddle is worrisome. Video should make it pretty clear what happened. I hope they have a clear understanding of what the law sees as acceptable for a plea of self-defense. And, as mentioned before, I hope this guides them to a verdict. The jury's assignment does not involve philosophy or picking sides. Their task is to decide what happened, understand what the law says, and apply the law to what happened.

Are you clear about what happened Ken? It seems to me that the case rests on the answers to a small number of subjective questions and it is not at all clear to me that the answers I would give are the right ones for a wider society. Would you find him guilty of the most serious charges, or the lesser charges, or none at all? Or are you split according on the specific encounter? Honestly, it's a complex case with multiple attacks and shootings to consider as well as incredibly long jury instructions. I would have been more worried if they had come back almost immediately. The time taken suggests quite strongly that they are taking the job seriously.

[Gilithin]

PassedOut, on 2021-November-18, 13:44, said:

The waitress asked my dad, "Do you want a roll with your coffee?"

"No," dad responded, "I'll just drink it."

"Are you offering?"

[kenberg]

Gilithin, on 2021-November-18, 19:42, said:

Are you clear about what happened Ken? It seems to me that the case rests on the answers to a small number of subjective questions and it is not at all clear to me that the answers I would give are the right ones for a wider society. Would you find him guilty of the most serious charges, or the lesser charges, or none at all? Or are you split according on the specific encounter? Honestly, it's a complex case with multiple attacks and shootings to consider as well as incredibly long jury instructions. I would have been more worried if they had come back almost immediately. The time taken suggests quite strongly that they are taking the job seriously.

No, I am definitely not sure of either of the two items I consider essential. I was not at the trial listening to the testimony and I am not on the jury. What happened and what does the Wisconsin law say about self-defense? As I put it before, a guy can't spit in another guy's face and then, when the other guy punches him, shoot him in self-defense. But that's just an oversimplified example.
I was given a shotgun when I was 12, It was for hunting and I used it for hunting. I never considered using it for anything else. And I stopped hunting in my early 20s. Also, I would never consider chasing after a guy who was carrying a gun. So the whole episode looks to me like a large pile of stupid choices. But two guys are dead so what to do? Look at what happened and apply the law. Maybe that's tougher than it seems like it should be. The jury spent several days hearing testimony and seeing videos and I hope they have access to the law. I know the judge explained the law, but if I were a juror I might well want to read the exact law myself. But then I would come to a conclusion.
The obvious question is "What the hell did you think would happen if you brought your AK-15 or whatever it was to this turmoil?" Doing so was brain-dead stupid. But we still have to follow the law. Reading the law would be a good start. There will be trouble no matter how the jury decides, but my hope is that at least it will be possible to reasonably say "The jury applied the law in coming to their conclusion". That is what they are charged to do.

You might well be right that it is complex and requires much care. I hope that's what is going on.

[Winstonm]

PassedOut, on 2021-November-18, 13:44, said:

The waitress asked my dad, "Do you want a roll with your coffee?"

“Got any hay?”

[pilowsky]

Time to bale out of this one?

[y66]

David Brooks at NYT said:

Joe Biden came to the White House at a pivotal moment in American history. We had become a country dividing into two nations, one highly educated and affluent and the other left behind. The economic gaps further inflamed cultural and social gaps, creating an atmosphere of intense polarization, cultural hostility, alienation, bitterness and resentment.

As president, Biden had mostly economic levers to try to bridge this cold civil war. He championed three gigantic pieces of legislation to create a more equal, more just and more united society: the Covid stimulus bill, the infrastructure bill and what became Build Back Better, to invest in human infrastructure.

All of these bills were written to funnel money to the parts of the country that were less educated, less affluent, left behind. Adam Hersh, a visiting economist at the Economic Policy Institute, projects that more than 80 percent of the new jobs created by the infrastructure plan will not require a college degree.

These gigantic proposals were bold endeavors. Some thought them too bold. Economist Larry Summers thought the stimulus package, for example, was too big. It could overstimulate the economy and lead to inflation.

Larry is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known and someone I really admire. If I were an economist, I might have agreed with him. But I’m a journalist with a sociological bent. For over a decade I have been covering a country that was economically, socially and morally coming apart. I figured one way to reverse that was to turbocharge the economy and create white-hot labor markets that would lift wages at the bottom. If inflation was a byproduct, so be it. The trade-off is worth it to prevent a national rupture.

The Biden $1.9 trillion stimulus package passed and has been tremendously successful. It heated the overall economy. The Conference Board projects that real G.D.P. growth will be about 5 percent this quarter. The unemployment rate is falling. Retail sales are surging. About two-thirds of Americans feel their household’s financial situation is good.

But the best part is that the benefits are flowing to those down the educational and income ladder. In just the first month of payments, the expanded Child Tax Credit piece of the stimulus bill kept three million American children out of poverty. Pay for hourly workers in the leisure and hospitality sector jumped 13 percent in August compared with the previous year. By June, there were more nonfarm job openings than there had been at any time in American history. Workers have tremendous power these days.

The infrastructure bill Biden just signed will boost American productivity for years to come. As Ellen Zentner of Morgan Stanley told The Economist recently, it’s a rule of thumb that an extra $100 billion in annual infrastructure spending could increase growth by roughly a tenth of a percentage point — which is significant in an economy the size of ours. Federal infrastructure spending will be almost as large a share of annual GDP as the average level during Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

But Summers was right. The stimulus — along with all the supply chain and labor shortage disruptions that are inevitable when coming out of a pandemic — has boosted inflation. In addition, Americans are exhausted by a pandemic that seems to never end.

And they are taking it out on Democrats. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll revealed that voters now prefer Republican congressional candidates in their own districts by 51 percent to 41 percent. That’s the largest G.O.P. lead since this poll started asking the question, 40 years ago.

If presidencies were judged by short-term popularity, the Biden effort would look pretty bad. But that’s a terrible measure. First-term presidents almost always see their party get hammered in the midterm after their inauguration. That’s especially true if the president achieved big things. Michigan State political scientist Matt Grossmann looked at House popular vote trends since 1953. Often when presidents succeeded in passing major legislation — Republicans as well as Democrats — voters swung against the president’s party. Look, just to take a recent example, at how Obamacare preceded a Democratic shellacking in 2010. People distrust change. Success mobilizes opposition. It’s often only in retrospect that these policies become popular and even sacred.

Presidents are judged by history, not the distraction and exhaustion of the moment. Did the person in the Oval Office address the core problem of the moment? The Biden administration passes that test. Sure, there have been failures — the shameful Afghanistan withdrawal, failing to renounce the excesses of the cultural left. But this administration will be judged by whether it reduced inequality, spread opportunity, created the material basis for greater national unity.

It is doing that.

My fear is not that Democrats lose the midterms — it will have totally been worth it. My fear is that Democrats in Congress will make fantastic policies like the expanded Child Tax Credit temporary to make budget numbers look good. If they do that the coming Republican majorities will simply let these policies expire.

If that happens then all this will have been in vain. The Democrats will have squandered what has truly been a set of historic accomplishments. Voters may judge Democrats harshly next November, but if they act with strength history will judge them well.

[y66]

Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said:

It is a feat of epic proportions to speak for four hours straight and not produce a single memorable phrase, original insight or even a joke. McCarthy thinks he is a wit but so far he has proved he is only half right.

[y66]

Heather Cox Richardson said:

November 18, 2021

This morning, on the podcast of Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows went after McCarthy, suggesting that Trump should replace him. Then, on Trump loyalist Steve Bannon’s podcast, Meadows suggested that if the Republicans win control of the House of Representatives in next year’s elections, Trump should become Speaker of the House, which would drive Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “crazy.” Bannon suggested he could hold the position for 100 days and “sort things out” before running for president in 2024.

While the Trump loyalists were putting the screws to McCarthy, the economic news continued to be good. A report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on Thursday showed that the United States is the only G7 country to surpass its pre-pandemic economic growth. That growth has been so strong it has buoyed other countries.

Meanwhile, the administration's work with ports and supply chains to handle the increase in demand for goods appears to be having an effect. Imports through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are up 16% from 2018, and in the first two weeks of November, those two ports cleared about a third of the containers sitting on their docks.

Then the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its score for the Democrats’ $1.85 trillion Build Back Better Act. The CBO is a nonpartisan agency within the legislative branch that provides budget and economic information to Congress. The CBO’s estimate of the costs of the Build Back Better Act will affect who will vote for it.

The CBO’s projection was good news for the Democrats; it was in line with what the Democrats had said the bill would cost. The CBO estimates that the bill will increase the deficit by $367 billion over ten years. But the CBO also estimates that the government will raise about $207 billion over those same ten years by enforcing tax rules on those currently cheating on them. These numbers were good in themselves—in comparison, the CBO said the 2017 Republican tax cuts would cost $1.4 trillion over ten years—but they might get even better. Many economists, including Larry Summers, who has been critical of the Biden administration, think that the CBO estimates badly underplay the benefits of the bill.

The CBO score also predicted that the savings from prescription drug reforms in the bill would come in $50 billion higher than the House had predicted.

As soon as the score was released, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would vote on the bill tonight, suggesting that she had the votes to pass the bill.

And then something interesting happened. Kevin McCarthy took to the House floor to slow down the passage of the Build Back Better Act, throwing the vote into the middle of the night. The minority leader put on a Trump-esque show of non-sequiturs, previewing the kind of speech he would make to rally Republicans behind him if the Republicans retake the House in 2022. The speech was angry, full of shouting, and made for right-wing media: it was full of all the buzz-words that play there. McCarthy spoke for more than three hours—as I write this, he is still speaking.

But the blows he was trying to deliver didn’t land. The Democrats made fun of him, catcalled, and eventually just walked out, while the Republicans lined up behind McCarthy looked increasingly bored, checked their phones, and appeared to doze off. When Axios reporter Andrew Solender asked a Republican aide for some analysis of the speech, the aide answered: “I’m watching the Great British Baking Show.”

[kenberg]

The David Brooks column was interesting, whatever "interesting" means. I have often thought of him as the least conservative Conservative around. So I looked him up on Wik:
https://en.wikipedia...ks_(commentator) :

Quote

Brooks has said that "if you define conservative by support for the Republican candidate or the belief that tax cuts are the correct answer to all problems, I guess I don't fit that agenda. But I do think that I'm part of a long-standing conservative tradition that has to do with Edmund Burke ... and Alexander Hamilton."^[45] In fact, Brooks read Burke's work while he was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago and "completely despised it", but "gradually over the next five to seven years ... came to agree with him". Brooks claims that "my visceral hatred was because he touched something I didn't like or know about myself."

I also read Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France when I was in college. . Very possibly that is the only aspect of our personal lives that David Brooks and I have in common, and really not that either since Brooks probably remembers what's in it. I find him an interesting guy. He describes his friend Larry [Summers] as one of the most intelligent people he has ever known and then "If I were an economist, I might have agreed with him." An interesting phrase. The piece is a mixture of optimism and pessimism and I need to think about it a bit. Definitely interesting.

[y66]

Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg said:

What disarray? Democrats are getting stuff done

The House of Representatives finally voted Friday morning to approve the “Build Back Better” bill — the Democratic omnibus containing money for family support, health care, climate and lots and lots of other stuff. Despite constant speculation about divisions within the party, the Democrats were remarkably united, with all but Representative Jared Golden of Maine supporting what turned out to be the party consensus.

The finish line is still weeks away; the Senate is expected to make significant changes, after which it will return to the House for what should be final passage. Still, the vote amounted to more vindication of the two-bill strategy the Democrats adopted, which has already produced an infrastructure bill signed into law with bipartisan support. It’s unlikely that either the most liberal or more moderate House Democrats would have voted for the bill on Friday without reasonable confidence that all 50 Democratic senators are willing to go along.

The item most likely to be reduced or stripped out in the Senate is the increased deduction for state and local taxes, something that several of the relatively moderate Democrats from New York and New Jersey want to vote for even if it doesn’t end up in the final bill. This way, they’ll be able to tell their constituents that they fought hard for it, even if the result turns out to be less than they wanted. Originally, it was those moderates who didn’t want a House vote until both chambers had signed off on identical legislation. Eventually, they settled for a negotiated public deal that didn’t have full details. It seems likely that including SALT at this stage basically turned the House vote from a negative to a positive.

As far as that two-bill strategy? It did take more trust among Democrats than some outside observers thought was there. But not much more. The most liberal Democrats had originally demanded that both bills pass at the same time, but they eventually decided to settle for a sufficiently public commitment from the moderates, crucially including Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Why? For one thing, it showed the advantages of negotiations within the party, where relationships appear for the most part to be fairly good and incentives align for teamwork. For another, the ideological split among Democrats is somewhat overrated. Yes, the House Progressive Caucus has serious policy differences with the moderate Democrats, but its members are also pragmatists who realize that Senator Bernie Sanders isn’t president and they don’t have the votes to get all their preferences enacted.

The moderates may not quite be mainstream Democrats, but we’re not talking about old-style conservative Democrats, either. All of them are more liberal than the most liberal Republicans in Congress, and it’s not particularly close. That’s a huge difference from the 1980s, and even a significant difference from the Congresses in 2007-2010 when Nancy Pelosi was speaker for the first time. Silly Republican claims about “socialism” aside, the Democrats are indeed passing a very liberal agenda.

Could the whole thing still fall apart? Sure. The House shouldn’t be a problem; after having voted yes on Friday (and in preliminary votes even earlier) there’s little incentive to kill the bill when it returns. But all it takes is a single Democratic senator to bring everything down. Still, it does seem unlikely that events would have reached this stage without some confidence that Manchin and Sinema would be on board, and one would imagine that those senators would have given more of an indication long before now if they intended to oppose final passage. Which gets back to the point about shared incentives: Even as both Manchin and Sinema have strong electoral incentives to establish themselves as clearly more moderate than the party, they also have incentives for the party to thrive overall.

So it sure looks likely that some version of Build Back Better, modified by the Senate, will wind up passing. And if that happens, this will have been (for better or worse) one of the most productive Congresses in a long time. With one year remaining to do more.

[Winstonm]

I am not as well-versed or as well-educated as most on the WC so others may correct me but it seems to me that history suggests that the passage of large government programs - at least here in the U.S. - has stimulated the overall economy to a much greater effect that anyone could even imagine at the time of passage.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones; so just let it be, Kevin!

[Winstonm]

pilowsky, on 2021-November-10, 19:14, said:

Are there any lawyers here?
I just watched a bit of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. Day 7, Part 2.
Interesting exchange at 1:02:38
The prosecutor is about to show some drone footage and points out that the operator uses the "pinch and zoom" capability on the Ipad.

All hell breaks loose because the defence attorney states that (~1:04:48).



The Judge agrees that this is a valid proposition and that the prosecution needs to find an expert to testify that the zoom feature simply enlarges the original image without affecting what was already there.

Well, the verdict is in: Not Guilty on all counts. I wasn't there. I didn't watch the trial on tv. I don't know Wisconsin state law. I cannot second-guess the verdict - but it feels so wrong.


Will there be any federal charges or is Yippee Ki-yay the new normal?

[y66]

Adam Tooze said:

Struggling with the Rittenhouse verdict? Read this by Eric Levitz in New York Magazine.

[pilowsky]

Winstonm, on 2021-November-19, 15:19, said:

Well, the verdict is in: Not Guilty on all counts. I wasn't there. I didn't watch the trial on tv. I don't know Wisconsin state law. I cannot second-guess the verdict - but it feels so wrong.


Will there be any federal charges or is Yippee Ki-yay the new normal?

I watched quite a bit of the trial.
And the moment when the verdict was announced.

The defence appeared to argue that because a person carrying an AR-15 is being attacked by someone else with a skateboard then the person with the AR-15 is acting in a reasonable manner if they fend off skateboard man by shooting him.

Ian Hislop said:

If that's justice then I'm a banana.

[Winstonm]

pilowsky, on 2021-November-19, 18:38, said:

I watched quite a bit of the trial.
And the moment when the verdict was announced.

The defence appeared to argue that because a person carrying an AR-15 is being attacked by someone else with a skateboard then the person with the AR-15 is acting in a reasonable manner if they fend off skateboard man by shooting him.

Paraphrasing Billy Budd: what does banana have to do with the law?

[Chas_P]

Winstonm, on 2021-November-19, 15:19, said:

I cannot second-guess the verdict - but it feels so wrong.

What about it do you feel "wrong"? Please expound.

[kenberg]

I have been thinking a little more. Fundamentally, the whole thing should not have happened. Repeating myself, going to an out of control demonstration, or riot or anything like it, is really stupid. Chasing someone who is armed with a rifle is really stupid. But even stupider is that it would be legal to d that not happening so. Probably it was not completely legal. He purchased the gun illegally for one thing. There is a reason that it's illegal for a 17 year old to buy such a weapon. But there were police there. He needed to be told to take his gun and go home. There is something really crazy about just letting it all play out.

He wanted to help? No doubt there could have been ways to volunteer assistance in a safe and supervised environment. But of course that wouldn't suit him.

The verdict was probably legally correct. I was watching PBS Newshour tonight and Jonathan Capehart was talking. JC is Black, if that matters, and he is at least somewhat on the liberal end of things. He said he had watched a lot of the films and read the Wisconsin law and believed the shooting was legally justified. "Legally justified" means in accordance with the law. That's what the jurors were to act on, and I gather that they did.

Police should have handled the problems Kenosha was having. If not that, then the National Guard. Not some 17 year old with a rifle driving up from Illinois.

The jury was given an awful situation. A bunch of guys looking for trouble found trouble and now two of them are dead and the jurors are given the thankless, and perhaps dangerous, task of evaluating guilt. They applied the law. Capehart, mentioned above, was part of a discussion with Gary Abernathy. GA is much more conservative. He mentioned that there are celebrations and he observed "There is nothing to celebrate, the whole thing was a tragedy". Yep.

I won't repeat all the details of a story I have told before but when I was 9 or so my mother used my father's shotgun to convince a drunk who demanded to come in the house to see his ex-wife (she was staying with us) that he would not be coming into the house. That's different. She had not gotten my father's shotgun and then gone out seeking somewhere to use it.

So yeah, I think the jury got it right but it's all a bit sickening.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2021-November-19, 20:49, said:

I have been thinking a little more. Fundamentally, the whole thing should not have happened. Repeating myself, going to an out of control demonstration, or riot or anything like it, is really stupid. Chasing someone who is armed with a rifle is really stupid. But even stupider is that it would be legal to d that not happening so. Probably it was not completely legal. He purchased the gun illegally for one thing. There is a reason that it's illegal for a 17 year old to buy such a weapon. But there were police there. He needed to be told to take his gun and go home. There is something really crazy about just letting it all play out.

He wanted to help? No doubt there could have been ways to volunteer assistance in a safe and supervised environment. But of course that wouldn't suit him.

The verdict was probably legally correct. I was watching PBS Newshour tonight and Jonathan Capehart was talking. JC is Black, if that matters, and he is at least somewhat on the liberal end of things. He said he had watched a lot of the films and read the Wisconsin law and believed the shooting was legally justified. "Legally justified" means in accordance with the law. That's what the jurors were to act on, and I gather that they did.

Police should have handled the problems Kenosha was having. If not that, then the National Guard. Not some 17 year old with a rifle driving up from Illinois.

The jury was given an awful situation. A bunch of guys looking for trouble found trouble and now two of them are dead and the jurors are given the thankless, and perhaps dangerous, task of evaluating guilt. They applied the law. Capehart, mentioned above, was part of a discussion with Gary Abernathy. GA is much more conservative. He mentioned that there are celebrations and he observed "There is nothing to celebrate, the whole thing was a tragedy". Yep.

I won't repeat all the details of a story I have told before but when I was 9 or so my mother used my father's shotgun to convince a drunk who demanded to come in the house to see his ex-wife (she was staying with us) that he would not be coming into the house. That's different. She had not gotten my father's shotgun and then gone out seeking somewhere to use it.

So yeah, I think the jury got it right but it's all a bit sickening.

The problem is not the verdict but the law...or lack thereof. Yippee-Ki-yay.

[awm]

The disturbing thing is that the US has seen many incidents where someone shows up to a large gathering of people with a military-style weapon and starts shooting, killing multiple people. The NRA (and Republican Party) answer to this is that the way to stop it is "a good guy with a gun" and that people should be more proactive (and more armed) and physically stop the shooter.

Okay, you're in a large group of people (say at a protest), and someone shows up with a military-style weapon that he's waving around, pointing at people, while he's arguing loudly with members of the crowd. Are you feeling threatened? Like you might be a mass-shooting casualty? Maybe you want to try to disarm this person, or even pull your own gun on him?

Even if you initially show restraint, suppose this person now actually shoots and kills the person he was arguing with. You could be next! Do you want to disarm this person now? Pull your own gun on this person now? Isn't it time to be "a good guy with a gun" (or perhaps "a good guy with a skateboard") and try to prevent the next mass-casualty event?

Well, according to this ruling (and apparently Wisconsin law), the bozo with the military-style weapon is actually within his rights to shoot anyone that's trying to stop him -- if he shoots you when you're trying to disarm him (or shoot him, or skateboard-ize him, or otherwise stop him from killing dozens of people) then it's self defense.

And if you want to go on a violent killing spree, all you have to do is show up somewhere, wave your gun around, scream and act angry, and then wait for someone to try to confront you before you start firing.

As Winston would say, Yippee-Ki-yay.

[Cyberyeti]

Chas_P, on 2021-November-19, 19:22, said:

What about it do you feel "wrong"? Please expound.

You don't turn up in another state at a demonstration like that with an assault rifle unless you're looking for trouble. It looks like he was looking for an excuse to use it and plead self defence.

Also the selection of a Trump supporting judge and rejection of pretty much every black juror gives the sense that this was not a fair trial.

Do you really think if Rittenhouse was poor and black in otherwise identical circumstances he'd have got the same outcome ? He'd probably have been shot by police on the day, but otherwise have definitely been convicted.