Rov_Scam
4hr ago
Sufjan Stevens was #35 on the reader list. Devendra wasn't on either list, an while I like his material, it's a pretty obvious imitation of Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex. And while I understand how one could find Dylan's voice or overall media personality grating, I don't understand how someone praising Devendra Banhart and Sufjan Stevens could take issue with his merits as a songwriter, especially considering that the careers of those two don't exist without Dylan.
Rov_Scam
18hr ago
I've done the long distance thing before and I'm disinclined to do it again, if it would even be an option. Eventually it gets to the point where a decision has to be made, and it's not a fun decision to make.
Rov_Scam
18hr ago
The issue with Martin is that it's well known in the industry that he makes songwriting credits a condition of his production contract whether he actually writes the songs or not, so there's some question of how much of those songs he actually contributed to.
Rov_Scam
22hr ago
it was still a chance to meet and talk with an interesting new person, not a bad way to spend a couple hours.
This is why if I'm talking to someone and the conversation has reached the point where I'd normally ask them out, I ask them out, even if I suspect that it's not going to work. I could think of worse ways to spend a couple hours than having drinks with an attractive woman, and I don't know that you can really learn too much without actually meeting someone, so even if I'm pessimistic I'll give them a chance in person. I should add that unless I'm really uninterested I will always try to keep the conversation going long enough to get to that point (which isn't that long), for the same reason; ie that it's always worth actually meeting someone. I don't know that anyone's time is really so precious that they can't spare it, and this comes from someone who typically doesn't leave the office before 7 pm. If I have legitimate commitments that make it difficult to schedule things I actually feel bad about it, though I'm not skipping something I've been looking forward to for a first date that isn't likely to go anywhere.
I can catalog exactly 4 times in my life that a Hinge date has cancelled on me. 2 of them were rescheduled right away and went off shortly thereafter. One went off a year later (long story), and one offered to immediately reschedule but I turned her down because I wasn't that interested. There was also one who agreed to a day but not a place before telling me she ended up deciding to move in a couple months and didn't want to waste my time. In retrospect I should have told her that since I already had the night open I was just going to go to this bar anyway and she could feel free to join me, because I think she might have taken me up on the offer.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Bacharach and Spector were disqualified on account of being dead. And while Spector had a few hits, he didn't write a whole lot, mostly outsourcing that job to professional songwriters like Carole King.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
The readers' list's inclusion of Lin Manuel Miranda made me realize that the critics may have had a blind spot when it came to people who wrote primarily for the theater. As for Menken, right off the bat I can't count the incidental music he wrote because scoring is not songwriting, and if we include composition in general we have to figure out where people like Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley fit into the list, and I don't think anyone intended to disturb that hornet's nest. Looking at the part of his career he is best known for, we have Little Shop of Horrors plus a half dozen Disney scores. Each of the Disney scores only includes 6 to 8 actual songs (compared with 12 to 18 for a full-fledged musical). One or two will be rerecorded as pop versions so they can be released to radio (at least after The Little Mermaid), one or two will be well-known for novelty value but won't get anywhere near the pop charts.
At this point his catalog is looking a little thin, but nothing is disqualifying yet. The problem comes when you look at who recorded those hits: Peabo Bryson, Celine Dion, Regina Belle, Vanessa Williams, Michael Bolton. All of those hit songs were Adult Contemporary pap that, had they not had any association with Disney movies, would have disappeared from the public consciousness as quickly as the rest of those artists' respective catalogs. This isn't to say he's a bad songwriter, but I wouldn't put him anywhere near the top 30, let alone call him the greatest living American songwriter.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
Considering that I went to great lengths to explain why relatively minor figures like Young Thug and Bad Bunny should be excluded, there's no way that I'd imply that he who was #1 on the reader list and is widely considered to be one of the greatest songwriters of all time merits dismissal without explanation. Of course he should be included. I'll add that of the 25,000 reader ballots that the Times received, in which readers could select up to ten songwriters, fully 1/3 of them contained Dylan, who finished in first place by nearly 2,000 votes.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
This is one of the rare instances where the edited version for television actually improves on the uncensored original. "Get out of my peaceful cab!" is infinitely funnier.
Representation and Stupid Lists
Over the weekend, Fivehour posted a brief missive that included his disappointment regarding the paucity of black songwriters at the top of the NYT recent list of the 100 greatest living American songwriters. It should be noted that there were actually two lists. The first was an unranked list of the top 30 that was compiled by critics. After that list generated the expected amount of controversy, the Times solicited list submissions from readers, which were then compiled into a ranked top 100. On the original list, 13 or 14 of the top 30 were black, depending on whether you count Mariah Carey. One thing I noticed about the critic's list is that it suffers from another kind of representation problem, the opposite of what Fivehour was talking about. In an apparent effort to avoid offending any constituency, the critics who made the selections cast as wide a net as possible. You can say what you want about the wisdom of the crowd and the biases of the NYT older, white, urban readership, but the reader list acts as somewhat of a correction. First, I'd like to go through each artist on the critic's list and evaluate their worthiness for inclusion.
The Original 30
Nile Rodgers: He was the guitarist and principle songwriter for the disco group Chic, and since disco's critical rehabilitation, he has enjoyed an elevated status. Part of this is because his own contributions to disco—Chic's music and the songs he wrote for other artists, including Sister Sledge and Diana Ross—are among the finest examples of the genre, a world away from stuff by The Village People, KC & the Sunshine Band, and Lipps, Inc. that contributed to disco's demise. A bigger part is that after disbanding Chic he spent the next several decades working with artists as diverse as David Bowie, Madonna, INXS, Beyonce, and Daft Punk, which maintained his profile in the industry at a time when most former disco musicians were in the "Where are they now?" file. While his musical bona fides are unquestioned, most of them are due to his work as a producer, not as a songwriter. Chic only had a few pop hits, not many more R&B hits, and theirs is not a catalog where critics are pointing to a lot of hidden gems. He didn't write a ton of hit songs for other artists, either. His career as a hit songwriter was pretty much over by 1983, and he seemed disinclined to contribute material for records he was producing. The notable exception is "Get Lucky", for which he received a songwriting credit, along with everyone else who was in the studio that day. His inclusion on this list is suspicious and ultimately not okay.
Lucinda Williams: If you've spent any amount of time listening to your local public Adult Album Alternative radio station, you've heard Lucinda Williams. She's a critical darling and avatar for the urban hipster's idea of what "Americana" should be: Country-ish songs about gravel roads. As a cult artist, she isn't going to be judged based on how many hits she wrote, only the overall quality of her output, which is high. I have no problem with this inclusion, though I admit that I'm a member of her target demographic.
Stevie Wonder: If you want to nitpick, you can argue that he had a lot of help before Motown gave him full control in the early 1970s, and that the quality of his work fell off a cliff after the mid-80s, but let's be real here—he was a teenager in his early years and his peak lasted about as long as one can reasonably expect. And what a peak it was. Wonder's greatest strength was that he wasn't afraid to stretch the boundaries of what was harmonically possible in R&B. Like the Beatles, though, he was able go off the reservation and still remain massively popular. This one is a no-brainer.
Jay-Z: No rapper I would pick will ever end up on one of these lists, but if you have to choose someone mainstream, Jay-Z is about as good as you're going to get.
Paul Simon: With Simon & Garfunkel, he was able to take what should have been massive epics and shoehorn them into three minute pop songs. Solo, he was able to branch out stylistically, eventually landing a hit album based in South African pop music at a time when most artists of his generation were vainly attempting to conform with 80s trends. Another no-brainer.
Taylor Swift: You would think that someone as famous as Swift who has been around as long as she has would have tons of songs that would be familiar to the general public whether they liked it or not. I will admit that I can identify a song as being by Taylor Swift upon hearing it, whether I've heard it before or not. Aside from Love Story and Shake It Off, though, I wouldn't be able to tell you the title, or even tell you whether I had heard it before. Her music is so bland that it simply goes in one ear and out the other without the brain taking note of anything. Internet music guru Rick Beato pointed out to Lex Fridman a few months ago that for an artist as popular as she is, she has never once been at the forefront of any musical development. Her modus operandi, instead, is to put her finger in the wind and capitalize on the sounds that others have already popularized. Her actual songwriting skills are rather limited, as they involve basic melodies and paint-by-numbers chord progressions. Beato also noted that only two academic books have been published on the topic of Swift, one about her lyrics and one about her marketing sense. There is nothing to date analyzing her actual musical contribution. One cannot imagine the same being true of Stevie Wonder. She should not be within a mile of this list, though by excluding her the critics would have caused a riot. After all, any reviewer giving one of her albums less than five stars or pointing out any flaws whatsoever risks their own personal safety, so I'll give the NYT a pass on this one.
Brian and Eddie Holland: 2/3 of the famed Holland/Dozier/Holland songwriting team, who were responsible for more Motown hits than you can shake a stick out, including most of the hits by The Supremes and Temptations. You can claim that they shouldn't be included due to the passing of Lamont Dozier, but his being dead doesn't diminish them as songwriters. They shaped the sound of a generation made an indelible mark on the music of generations to come. Easy inclusion.
Missy Elliott: I'm going to put this in the Jay-Z category where I admit that I don't know enough to make a decision on this, though if I were compelled to include a female R&B songwriter from that generation Alicia Keys would be my first thought.
Lionel Richie: This is an interesting one. From 1974 to 1981 he was the mastermind behind the Commodores, and his contributions thereto would be enough to include him on my personal list. From 1982 to 1987 he was a popular solo musician whose material hasn't aged well and was, for many years, the but of jokes. Beginning in the mid-2000s he reinvented himself as a generalized music celebrity who people know had a career at one point but which career nobody seems interested in revisiting. Critics almost certainly included him solely on his Commodores material, using his unrelated contemporary popularity as a defense against people saying "Who?" The result is that his inclusion is both deserved and undeserved at the same time.
Dolly Parton: I was in Gatlinburg on vacation a few years ago and a friend of mine, who was taking his kids to Dollywood the following day, said at cocktail hour that he couldn't understand her popularity because the only songs of hers he could think of were "Jolene", "I Will Always Love You", and "Islands in the Stream", which she only gets half credit for. I added "9 to 5" to the list, and can personally name several more songs, but not ones he, or anyone else, would be familiar with. That being said, her work is critically acclaimed, and she probably has a ton of country hits that my friend wouldn't know about, but so does Conway Twitty. This is a Lionel Richie situation on steroids, and since I'm only inclined to include one such performer on the list and I like him better, I'm dumping her from mine.
Young Thug: Evidence of the critics' compulsion to include modern artists, including ones whose contributions are actively detrimental to the genre. Hard pass.
Diane Warren: Another interesting selection. Warren is the kind of hook-for-hire songwriter who you call when you need a readymade hit for a famous artist who is incapable of writing their own material. While she may have written some of the biggest hits of the 80s and 90s, they were clearly designed to move units, and nobody would call them their favorite songs. I get that the critics wanted to include a behind-the-scenes songwriter who didn't perform, but I doubt anyone things that the proliferation of generic power ballads was a good thing. Pass.
Josh Osborne, Brandy Clark, Shane McAnally: Simultaneously the most and least baffling conclusion. Least baffling because the critics clearly felt compelled to include someone writing contemporary country music. Most baffling because this isn't an actuall songwriting team but three people who occasionally collaborate with each other and always collaborate with someone. Another example of ham-fisted representation for a popular genre that sucks. Dump all of them from the list.
Fiona Apple: She gained prominence in the late-90s for being better artistically than one would expect a teenage girl to be, and has been mildly overrated ever since. It's clearly a critical darling inclusion, but I'm not going to complain about it too much, since her songs are at least tolerable, if not quite as good as advertised.
Babyface: Apart from the question of whether we need representation for 90s R&B, at least this is the most obvious pick. Then again, as many hits as this guy wrote, few people remember them today. Bland R&B balladry tends to disappear down the toilet of history pretty quickly. Pass.
Stephen Merritt: Another critical darling. I have listened to all 69 of the love songs he is known for, and maybe a half dozen merit a second listen. He hasn't done anything since, and his work from before ranges from mediocre to awful, and everything he does is excessively twee. I'll never understand the critical appeal. Hard pass.
Romeo Santos: Latin music exists almost wholly apart from the mainstream, and the critics accordingly had to select a big name that nobody had ever heard of. I have no idea how deserving this guy is, but Reuben Blades more or less invented salsa music and isn't on the list. Now, Mr. Blades was born in Panama, but since he spent the bulk of his career as a New York musician I won't hold that against him.
Carole King: As a younger woman, she stayed behind the scenes and wrote a healthy number of 60s pop hits along with her lyricist then-husband, Gerry Goffin. As a somewhat older woman she had solo success in the burgeoning singer-songwriter movement of the 1970s. Easy inclusion.
Outkast: An odd choice but not one worth complaining about.
Mariah Carey: Her music was the soundtrack of my childhood. Particularly the shitty parts of my childhood, like standing in a store for three hours while my mother looked at clothes, or sitting in the back of a hot 1986 Pontiac between two car seats with no way to change the radio. She, too, would be relegated to "Where are they now?" file if a Christmas song that she wrote hadn't become popular 20 years after its original release. Like everything else Carey wrote that was even remotely good, it was ruined by being played to death. Hard pass.
Willie Nelson: Another multi-stage musician. In the 60s he wrote hits for other artists like Patsy Cline while his own career foundered. In the 70s he came into his own as a progenitor of outlaw country and made a name for himself with a series of critically acclaimed hit albums. In the 80s he capitalized on his success with a bunch of pop hits that were halfway decent if not great. In between all of this he expanded his boundaries by releasing albums that explored genres he had no business exploring. Easy inclusion.
Kendrick Lamar: For years, the top-rated album on online review site RateYourMusic was Radiohead's OK Computer, which made sense because it appealed to music snobs but was mainstream enough that the general public would have heard of it. It was such a perfect selection for #1 that it was surprising when To Pimp a Butterfly overtook it a few years back. I'm not the biggest fan of Lamar, but he's a much better selection for this list than Young Thug, and I'll voice my approval just to show I'm not entirely out of touch.
*Valerie Simpson: Another Motown songwriter, best known for her work with her late husband Nick Ashford. But aside from Ain't No Mountain High Enough and the other songs they wrote for the Marvin Gaye/Tami Terrell collaboration, their work is pretty thin. Does a single iconic song make up for an otherwise underwhelming career? Maybe.
Bob Dylan: I'm not even going to address this.
Lana Del Ray: She started off as a pop musician but came into her own as a legitimate singer-songwriter. If you want to include someone with pop credentials who can actually write music, she's a much better option than Taylor Swift. No problem with this selection.
The-Dream: The 2000s equivalent of Babyface, and a stand-in for Beyonce. The merit of his inclusion is likewise dependent on whether you think his material is any good. I don't, so I'll pass on this guy.
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis: They came to prominence in the mid-80s as Janet Jackson's producers and the architects of the sound that defined the era. Like Nile Rodgers, their primary contribution is more through production than songwriting. Besides Jackson and boy band New Edition, their credits are pretty thin. The sound also aged poorly and, unlike disco, hasn't had a contemporary revival. The 80s aesthetic that is popular nowadays relies more on synth-pop than what they were doing. Pass on these guys.
Bad Bunny: Maybe he merits inclusion due to his mainstreaming of Latin music. Maybe in ten years he'll be remembered as well as Marc Anthony. A little to early to start putting him on these kinds of lists, but if you need to include a contemporary Latin artist, I don't know who else you'd pick. Pass for me.
Bruce Springsteen: I always felt that Bruce was overrated and I find his working man schtick tiring. Even as a musician, the guy never worked a day in his life; his first album was a hit and in a few years he was the hottest thing going. If they wanted to include a heartland rocker, Bob Seger has him beat in the authenticity department, as he struggled for years before he finally broke through outside of Michigan, and his songwriting catalog can go toe to toe with Springsteen's. I'm in the minority with this, though, so I can't complain.
Smokey Robinson: Another architect of the Motown sound and an obvious choice.
In all, I can endorse about half of these selections. Now let's look at the people who made the top 30 of the reader's poll who weren't on the original list:
**5. Billy Joel: He's had more hits than you can shake a stick at, and has been continuously popular despite not releasing anything new since 1993. In the age of punk, though, his music was seen as lightweight, and he had a similar popular perception until relatively recently, when younger people started to admit that he was actually pretty good. The stigma was slow to disappear among rock critics, and it seems nobody wants to give him too many accolades. His exclusion from the list was criminal.
9. James Taylor; 11. Jackson Browne; 14. Randy Newman: In the 1970s, there was an entire singer-songwriter movement where musicians who would in a previous era would have stayed in the shadows and written material for more obvious pop stars were encouraged perform and record albums. The result is that there's an overabundance of these types, and any list that seeks to be representative has to include a few representative examples. Carole King and Paul Simon were the lucky ones here, as their careers predated the movement and were thus the most qualified on paper. Is Jackson Browne a better songwriter than Diane Warren? Would you rather listen to The Pretender or Aerosmith's 90s material? I don't even think this is a legitimate question. Especially with regards to Newman, who also wrote a lot of songs that are better known through cover versions.
12. Tom Waits: It says something that a guy who is effectively a cult musician and a critical darling made it this high on a reader's poll. That doesn't happen unless there's something transcendent about the quality of the work.
15. David Byrne: For as much as the list tried to be representative, the critics seem to have forgotten about the punk/new wave era entirely, possibly because it was largely a British phenomenon. But it's still odd, because these guys, and Talking Heads in particular, are usually critical darlings. I'd definitely include him.
16. Stevie Nicks: The compilers of the reader's poll admitted that this was a hard one to score, as some people just wrote "Fleetwood Mac", which had three principle songwriters, Nicks, Chritine McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham. Complicating matters further is the fact that McVie is British and thus ineligible. Buckingham was the more prominent songwriter (and never went through an addict phase), but isn't as famous. I have no problem including Nicks, but I understand why the critics would avoid this hornet's nest.
19. Jason Isbell, 20. Jeff Tweedy, 21. Brandi Carlisle: See Lucinda Williams and the NPR crowd's obsession with Americana musicians. If this is purely a question of songwriting quality without regard to popularity, then you can make the case for either of them, but since we already have Williams as the Americana stand-in, there was no reason to include them. If I'm only naming 30 people I'm not putting any on my list.
22. Donald Fagen: Steely Dan is one of my favorite bands, so I obviously would put him on the list. His songs are also unlike anything else in music, so you don't have the subgenre overrepresentation issue. The problem is that everyone thinks of Steely Dan and not of him as a songwriter.
23. Neil Diamond: See Billy Joel. Massively famous, massively talented, and massively uncool. The youngs might belt Sweet Caroline in bars to the point where it becomes irritating, but there's no contemporary appreciation for I Am, I Said, or Play Me. As an unapologetic Neil Diamond fan, I would include him on this list, but I'm sympathetic to the arguments against, namely that much of his material is crap, to a greater degree than Billy Joel.
24. John Fogerty: It seems like the critics must have just forgot that people in bands can also write songs. This guy was Americana before Americana even existed, and even if you want the list to be representative, he's more deserving than Lucinda Williams.
25. REM: Almost certainly this high in the reader poll because of their cult material from the 80s and not their hits from the 90s. Six months ago I would have passed on these guys, but I saw Paul Shannon perform their non-hits back in March and the concert was so good that I'm no longer sure. Then again, I'd place them ahead of anyone I crossed off the critic's list, with the possible exception of Nile Rodgers.
26. Patti Smith: She was both punk and singer-songwriter. She was also a poet. She's also massively overrated, with most of her "songs" consisting of her rambling on stage while people like Bob Quine wail on guitars in the background. And the song she's best known for (Because the Night) was written by Bruce Springsteen. Pass.
27. Don Henley: One line in one movie made an entire generation hate these guys, not that there was much to love about them before. That being said, see my above comments about people being in bands not getting nearly enough respect as songwriters. I don't know if he makes my top 30, though.
30. Jimmy Webb: See Valerie Simpson. The NYT must have the smartest, most astute readership in the world for him to rate so high. Webb wrote a few hits in the late 60s—MacArthur Park, Galveston, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Up, Up and Away—before trying to make it as a singer-songwriter and not having much success. He might have done better had he continued to write for other people, though the market for outside songwriters in the 70s wasn't good, and wouldn't pick up until schlockmasters like Warren came to prominence in the 80s. I make the comparison to Simpson because although he didn't write that many hits, he also wrote Wichita Linemen, which, like Ain't No Mountain High Enough, is in contention for the greatest song ever written.
So let's tie it all together by looking at who got booted from the critic's top 30:
- Nile Rodgers, #78
- Jay-Z, #38
- Missy Elliott, not on readers' list
- Young Thug, not on readers' list
- Diane Warren, #34
- Josh Osborne, etc., not on readers' list
- Fiona Apple, #32
- Babyface, #97
- Stephen Merritt, not on readers' list
- Romeo Santos, not on readers' list
- Outkast, #62
- Mariah Carey, #41
- Valerie Simpson, #73
- Lana Del Ray, #37
- The-Dream, not on readers' list
- Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, not on readers' list
- Bad Bunny, #54
From the original critic's list, readers chose to boot 8 of 13 (or 9 of 14 if you include Carey) black musicians out of the top 30, and 4 of them out of the top 100 entirely. While crowd-sourced lists are usually suspect, this list was compiled in response to comments about the original list, and thus the responders read the original article, were familiar with the justifications, and ultimately disagreed. It's easy to look at Swift's high ranking and label the readership as ignorant, but they also elevated Jimmy Webb to #30, despite him not being mentioned on the original list, and he should certainly be in the conversation despite not being a household name and not representing the Americana that the NYT readership has a hard-on for.
The point I'm trying to make here is that we can take a group of experts and have them put together a list that's supposed to be representative, and end up with a list that everyone agrees is terrible. It's not even clear that they succeeded in the first sense, since there aren't any country songwriters who were primarily active between circa 1990 and 2010 (unless you count Taylor Swift at the tail end of this period). It would be one thing if there simply weren't anyone prominent enough to merit inclusion, but that ignores the existence of Dwight Yoakam, who was both popular and the kind of guy whom critics slobber over. The list also ignores R&B from between Motown and disco. Why not include Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, who proctically invented the Philly Soul sound in the 70s and wrote for groups like The Intruders, The O'Jays, and the Stylistics? Is Fiona Apple really the best representative of alternative rock songwriting? Why is the list so thin on rock songwriters in general?
The reason is that you can't please anybody, and, despite my disagreements, the critics' list is as good as anything. Because attempts at being representative, as misguided as they often are, can be better than the alternative. What if the list were just a bunch of country songwriters, or a bunch of R&B songwriters, or pro songwriters that nobody had heard of? People would complain that the compilers were too myopic and were unqualified to compile such a list by virtue of their ignorance. In this sense, the NYT's format was sneakily good—release an unranked list of critics' selections, then invite the public to chime in. The got additional mileage when they evaluated the suggestions that the readers liked but that the critics had ignored. I honestly think that this format is better than putting out a critic's list that is overly curated to avoid controversy (like what VH1 used to do) or simply putting it out to the vote (which ends in Rolling Stone's best albums of the millennium list having Limp Bizkit at #2). The emphasis is less on the list itself than on the discussion, which is the way it should be, and I'm glad that this is the way they chose to do it now that it's technologically possible to have such a discussion.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
I don't understand the people who are claiming that McConnell is secretly dead, because hiding something like that wouldn't make sense. Bashear has no power to appoint a replacement, and one would think that the inconvenience of running an election for a guy to serve less than six months would be preferable for the seat being effectively vacant.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
The last time I went to a doctor's office there was a young, thin black guy alone at the front desk. It was not horseshoe shaped.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
When people ask me what kind of law I practice and I don't want to tell them I just say I mostly do Third Amendment stuff. Then they proceeded to tell me about whatever child custody or bogus medmal issue their brother in law is dealing with despite my repeated assertions that I know nothing about either of those things.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
The New Jersey law would strip the second lien, but it wouldn't absolve the debtor of the requirement to pay the note. The creditor could sue the debtor for nonpayment and get a recorded judgment, which would allow them to garnish wages, levy bank accounts, and, yes, attach a judgment lien to the debtor's property. While it sounds like they get their mortgage back, this is more of a consolation prize, because in any foreclosure action they would be junior to any real mortgages, including ones that were recorded after the judgment lien. They would also be junior to any mechanic's liens. Effectively, they're now at the bottom of the list. If the debtor receives a bankruptcy discharge at any point in this process, it would eliminate their obligation to pay anything. The only exception would be if the creditor obtained a judgment and recorded a judgment lien against the property before the creditor filed. Then the lien would remain, though the personal obligation would be extinguished and they couldn't continue any other collection activities.
I apologize because it's only now that I'm wrapping my head around what you guys were talking about; before I was just trying to give some general background on how bankruptcies work. Suppose the house is worth $400,000. Mortgage 1 is $200,000 and Mortgage 2 is $100,000. Under the NJ law, Mortgagor 1 initiates a foreclosure action with an upset price of $200,000. Per the law, the owner exercises his right of first refusal and buys the house at the upset price, stripping Mortgage 2. Mortgagor 2 now has a note worth $100,000 but no security interest in the property. Mortgagor 2 then sues the owner for nonpayment of the note, but the owner files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy before judgment is entered, staying the suit. There are no other liens on the property at this point, and the owner's only debt is the $100,000 he owes to Mortgagor 2. After applying the exemption, the trustee has $336,850 available to distribute to unsecured creditors, which easily covers the $100,000 owed to Mortgagor 2. The property is sold for $400,000, $100,000 of which goes to Mortgagor 2, $100,000 goes to the trustee's commission, and $200,000 of which goes back to the owner. Maybe this counts as "abusing the system" in a strict technical sense, but like most such abuses, you'd have to be really stupid to think you're getting one over on anyone.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
I think you have that backwards. I'll never understand why libertarians and others persist in the belief that the civil court system is a kind of frictionless plane. Granted, if you have an actual dispute to resolve, it's indispensable and better than a lot of alternatives I've heard proposed, but if you can pass regulations to cut lawsuits off at the pass, you should. Imagine you want to build a cement plant. You have two options:
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Build it and hope that nobody complains. You have nothing to go by ahead of time. If someone doesn't like what you're doing, or thinks it's too noisy, or complains about dust, you can pay your attorneys to spend several years litigating the definition of "reasonable" to a jury that is probably going to have more people sympathetic to noise and dust complaints than it does people who own industrial plants. Repeat this situation for every use that anyone could find remotely objectionable, which is any use you can think of. Be prepared to suspend your operations throughout the duration of the suit. Be prepared for the court to rule you have to shut down permanently, or pay ongoing damages in an amount that makes it economically unfeasible to continue.
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Look at the municipalities ordinances for zoning and noise and dust abatement. Make sure you comply with the ordinances and obtain formal exemptions if you can't. If nearby homeowners want to litigate, they can do so before you've spent any serious money, and they won't be suing you so much as they will the municipality that granted the exemption. If the use is allowed by right and you are complying with the regulations, it's going to be a tough row to hoe for the plaintiffs.
These days, almost every private nuisance action I've seen has been based on independent studies showing that the defendants violated a municipal regulation that the governing body has failed to enforce; the arguments boil down to whether or not a standard was violated. The system you'd prefer is a system where both parties have to argue their version of what the standards should be. Maybe ya jury is convinced that 90 dB at the property line is an unreasonable amount of noise. We know nothing about whether 85 is okay or not. Actually, we know nothing about whether 90 is okay in another case because a different jury might see things differently, or maybe the guy suing is a huge asshole and they all agree that he deserves to live next to a hog rendering facility.
Which brings me to my second point, which is that zoning regulations were not an outgrowth of common law nuisance, at least not as we'd recognize nuisance today. Traditional common law nuisance laws, i.e. things actionable under an Assize of Nuisance, almost exclusively related to water runoff and land support. The idea was that nuisance was a counterpart to trespass; where in trespass I damage your land by entering onto it, in nuisance I do something on my own land that causes your land to be damaged. The distinction between the two was always fuzzy and by the 19th century they were all trespasses and nuisance was practically a dead letter. The doctrine as we know it today to apply to noises, smells, and the like was part of a 20th century revival that went hand in hand with the development of zoning regulations. Courts and municipal governments were looking for way to mitigate the negative effects of development, and these were two of the things they came up with.
This is why I'm not sure what you're talking about when you act like nuisance has something to do with "rights" while rent control doesn't. All rent control legislation—which coincidentally arose around the same time as zoning legislation and the modern conception of nuisance—does is create a right of a tenant to not be charged rents in excess of a specified maximum. It's no different than any other right a tenant has, whether derived from statute or common law. And if you think that there's something about common law rights that make them superior to statutory rights, keep in mind that the right to sell your property was created by statute.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
Looping in @The_Nybbler since he's party to this discussion.
I did bankruptcy law fora couple years so I can outline how the process typically works. It's worth pointing out at the beginning the difference between unsecured and secured debts. Unsecured debts, like credit card debt or personal loans, are secured only by the borrower's promise to pay. If the borrower defaults, the lender can attempt to collect the debt, sue and obtain a judgment, and attempt to enforce that judgment through various mechanisms provided by the law. A secured debt includes an additional element where the borrower pledges specific property that the creditor can seize in the event of nonpayment. When a creditor initiates a court action to seize property for payment of debts, state law establishes who gets priority when it comes to payment. Generally speaking the earlier recorded interests get priority, but various policy considerations make this a bit more complicated (for example, taxes and HOA fees almost always get top priority regardless of when they were accrued). Chapter 7 bankruptcy extinguishes the personal obligation to pay, but it does not extinguish security interests. To that extent, the liquidation of the bankruptcy estate is only concerned with assets that can be liquidated to pay unsecured creditors. Additionally, one of the policy goals of bankruptcy is to give the debtor a fresh start, not to leave him destitute, so certain small amounts of assets can be exempted from liquidation as set forth by law.
With that out of the way, let's look at a typical Chapter 7 scenario: Debtor owns a home worth $300,000, subject to a first mortgage with a balance of $200,000 and a HOLC with a balance of $50,000, leaving the debtor $50,000 in equity. The mortgages are current and the property is not in foreclosure. Debtor also has $50,000 in unsecured credit card debt, and no other assets worth mentioning. If the available exemption is $63,150, then it covers the debtor's $50,000 in equity. The trustee classifies the case as "no asset" and the credit card companies get nothing, and the debtor is not required to pay them. As for the mortgages, the debtor is no longer personally obligated to pay them, but they still secure the property, meaning that if the debtor doesn't continue to pay them after the discharge then the bank can foreclose. The practical effect of the discharge, however, means that foreclosure is the only remedy available to them; if the foreclosure sale does not cover the loan, they can't pursue the debtor individually.
When you talk about "triggering a sale", keep in mind that sales are never "triggered" in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy; sale of an asset is wholly within the discretion of the trustee. The more important thing to keep in mind—and I'm not sure if you were insinuating this but I want to make it clear just in case—is that secured creditors play little to no role in the bankruptcy process. The most obvious interaction I can think of is that mortgage payments will be rolled in with Chapter 13 payments, but they won't be reduced like other debts might be. The other one is that if there are any pending or potential foreclosure actions they will automatically be stayed upon filing. This is of little consequence in a Chapter 7 because the stay will be lifted upon discharge, which only takes a few months, and if the bank is impatient they will almost always get the stay lifted if they ask the court. The only consequential involvement of secured creditors in the bankruptcy process is when a debtor in mortgage arrears files Chapter 13, which allows him to repay the arrears under the payment plan.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Soule's accusations came in 2019, and Avellone's in 2020. The Johnny Depp allegations became public during his 2016 divorce but disappeared from the headlines for years and didn't become a major part of public discourse until the 2022 defamation trial. I bring these dates up because your post implied that MeToo petered out because of a raft of similar claims that people stopped taking seriously. MeToo took off with the Weinstein accusations in November 2017 and continued apace until the following summer, during which they slowly petered out, with the Asia Argento and Les Moonves allegations being the last major ones. The Ansari thing came out in January of 2018, and while it sort of fits the pattern you describe and was controversial at the time, even among ardent MeToo supporters, it didn't have much of an effect on the momentum of the movement as a whole.
Because the GOP is understood to be on the "man" side of gender politics, which allows for presumption of innocence (not just legally, but socially and professionally). If he was a Democrat, he would've been dropped like a hot potato.
There was always a sort of motte and bailey going on with the Kavanaugh case, at least insofar as it was discussed by Kavanaugh's defenders. There were also political considerations involved that swamped the whole thing, and I'll state for the record that neither side covered itself in glory throughout the affair. For some background, Ford privately reported what she remembered to Diane Feinstein, who was the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in July, amid speculation that Kavanaugh was on Trump's short list to replace Kennedy. Feinstein kept this information to herself until Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings were nearing conclusion in September, which required them to be extended for some time while the claims were investigated. The Republicans may be broadly described as on the "pro-man" side of the argument, but I don't think they defended Kavanaugh purely based on ideology but through political necessity. Had Feinstein quietly informed the White House and the rest of the committee of the potential scandal, there's a good chance that Kavanaugh isn't named, nobody asks any questions, and nobody has ever heard of Christine Blasey Ford. By timing the revelations when she did, Feinstein ensured that the administration couldn't pull the nomination without causing the Supreme Court to start the fall term short one conservative justice, which would have benefited Democrats.
To make matters worse, there wasn't really even time to adequately investigate the allegations. Which is why I also disagree with your characterization that their position was one of a presumption of innocence, as that implies merely a presumption, not a conclusion. The GOP and most conservative commentators did not take the position that the matter should be investigated and adjudicated, but that the accusations should be discounted on their face. "Believe all women" may not be a tenable policy, but neither is "assume all women are lying for personal or political gain". Whatever problems there were with Ford's story, it was difficult to conclude that they were fabricated out of whole cloth; she had made the accusations privately on several occasions beginning in 2012, and it would be ridiculous to assume that it was all part of some long-term setup as if she had a crystal ball and knew that he'd be nominated for the Supreme Court one day. In their hast to confirm Kavanaugh before the first Monday in October, the administration tried to limit the Senate investigation as much as possible, and when several senators said they would only vote for confirmation if Kavanaugh was cleared by an FBI investigation, the administration micromanaged the investigation in an attempt to limit its scope and conclude it quickly.
MeToo was an ambient enforcement of social pressure to listen and believe countless stories with varying levels of believability. We have to just accept that misconduct allegations could surface at any point and we should take every one of them very seriously, but never seriously ask critical questions.
Of course we have to take them seriously. The entire movement was based on the idea that, despite awareness campaigns and legal protections dating from at least the 1980s, this kind of behavior was still disturbingly common and still not taken seriously. None of the big names that came out of MeToo—Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Kevin Spacey, Mario Battali, etc.—have been exonerated, and I haven't heard any suggestion that the accusations against them were fabricated. There simply isn't any evidence that a lot of people were getting railroaded or that nobody was asking serious questions. To the extent that most of this was controversial, it was cases like Ansari's where there was no factual dispute over what happened, just whether it was appropriate. This is why I don't understand the blowback from it, which largely suggests that none of these claims are credible and that we should just ignore them, because even subjecting the accused to an investigation would be too much of a punishment. What basically happened in the end was that women came out and said that something was true, that this kind of behavior wasn't being taken seriously enough, and conservative opponents came out and told them that they had no desire to take it seriously. That's what it all boils down to.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
You're confusing MeToo with the campus rape allegations. I'm not aware of single MeToo incident that involved a single individual making accusations about an isolated instance of sexual misconduct that happened decades ago. The closest was Brett Kavanaugh, but even that isn't a great instance because it was a presumed attempted rape and it didn't prevent his Supreme Court confirmation. The New York Times did a postmortem in the fall of 2018 documenting over 200 incidents, the overwhelming majority of which involved some kind of workplace harassment. The perpetrators often admitted the accusations or at least to some kind of vague wrongdoing "I apologize for any inappropriate behavior...", and most of the cases involved multiple accusers, witnesses, or some other kind of corroboration.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
Your first paragraph certainly describe how is should pan out, or at least how the Maine Democratic Party should try to play it if they have any semblance of competence, even if the list of potential replacements looks more like the waiver wire than a murderer's row. As for whether the replacement can beat Collins, it's a tall order, but Polymarket certainly regards it as a possibility, as the odds were never in Collins's favor. I tend to reserve judgment on these things though. As to whether the candidate will be forgotten after a loss, I don't know why you think anyone would bring it up again, since most losing candidates are relegated to the toilet of history once the concession speech is over. For the same reason, I don't understand the obsession that erupted over the whole DNC 2024 postmortem. The people criticizing the DNC over this aren't doing because they have a genuine desire to see Democratic candidates perform better in the future, but because they want to see the party officially berate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. This might have its uses as a piece of political theater, but the idea that any lessons learned would apply to future elections is absurd.
Generally speaking, when it comes to party politics, people seem to have a notion that it's like a hockey team, where the coaches and GM all get together and look at the draft board and the free agent market and pick players to slot in on their team. What's happening in Maine now and what happened nationally in 2024 is similar to that, but it's a rare exception to the normal course of business. Donald Trump does not have the power he currently has because the RNC brain trust was looking to change direction. Joe Crowley didn't get bounced from his House seat because the New York Democratic Committee felt that a young Latina socialist would be a better fit for the Bronx.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
She was the CEO of a homeless nonprofit before she was in Congress, so I don't know if that job can be considered a sinecure. It also pays less than she made in Congress, and Low Angeles isn't exactly a low cost of living area. If she were at a think tank or doing speaking tours I could see your point, but not this.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
It's hard to call it a hookup after they've been dating for a while. There's also really complicated feelings when it comes to people you know and trusted up to the point where they did something terrible. Women stay in abusive relationships all the time, and people regularly allow themselves to be taken advantage of by family members. If she knew the guy for two years and he hadn't done anything similar prior to that time, it's probably easier for her to view him as a decent guy who had a bad night as opposed to someone who should go to jail. It's not that different than having a brother who stole $10,000 from you to feed his gambling habit. You may disown him and never want to talk to him again, but that doesn't mean you're going to report him to the police and participate in a criminal investigation.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
Carroll may have won a civil verdict, but it didn't seem to have much effect on Trump politically. It's only a good comparison if Platner gets elected and his accuser gets a payout.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
Fetterman also wasn't running for Senate as a political newcomer. He was more prominent as the mayor of Braddock than he had any right to be, and the biggest skeleton in his closet, the incident where he chased a guy with a shotgun, happened after he was already in the public eye. It was on the news at the time, but didn't affect any of his subsequent runs for mayor, or his failed 2016 Senate campaign, or his 2018 election for Lieutenant Governor. Platner's entire life prior to 2025 was a mystery as far as the public was concerned, and there were red flags from the very beginning that he might have a checkered past.
I never really got the point of complaining about Hinge, or of these apps in general. There are probably improvements that could be made, and there's definitely a gamification aspect of it, but in the end all any app can really do is put you in a position to meet people you wouldn't otherwise meet, in a situation where it's clear that you're both single and looking. People compare it unfavorably to the old dating sites from 15 years ago where you'd get to build a profile with a lot of information and a ton of pictures and get to really dig deep to see if you wanted to talk to someone, but that had its downsides, too. I never used one of those sites, but a friend of mine who did said that the profile effectively became the person, and that it took several dates just to get to the point where you felt like you weren't dating the profile (and vice versa). Hinge profiles seem to provide the right amount of information to make a decision about whether you want to start talking to someone, but leave plenty of unexplored territory for conversation. If you're getting dates but aren't finding them enjoyable, my only thought is that you're not being selective enough.
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