KennethAlmquist
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User ID: 3642
KennethAlmquist
21hr ago
Thanks. I'll keep these in mind for the next time I post.
KennethAlmquist
21hr ago
In case it isn’t clear to anyone following along, we are talking about the 2023 poll of workers. About 10% of the workers were self employed or owned their own business. Another 8% worked for organizations with fewer than ten employees. 52% of the remainder, or about 43% of the total sample, said their company or organization had DEI training or meetings.
My impression is that DEI training is very common in the corporate world and pretty close to universal in government, so the numbers don’t seem implausible to me.
KennethAlmquist
23hr ago
My post was about the poll, which was conducted by YouGov. YouGov is a legitimate polling organization; FiveThirtyEigth gave them a B+ rating. It’s unclear who wrote the press release, which quotes Tatishe Nteta and three other professors.
KennethAlmquist
3d ago
There was a bipartisan group of Senators who tried to broker a deal: build the wall in exchange for writing DACA into law. Trump (or perhaps just Steven Miller, who was Trump’s negotiator) wanted to make some changes to legal immigration. He got changes to family reunification and the diversity lottery included in the proposed bill. He then insisted on reducing immigration quotas, Democrats refused, and negotiations ended in a deadlock. DACA remained in place and Trump didn’t get any of the changes he wanted to immigration law.
I don’t think Trump would have had to fight “tooth and nail” to get the wall built after he had just won an election where “Build the Wall” was one of his primary campaign promises. All he had to do was to sign off on a deal that was a clear win for him. Yes, he would have had to sign DACA into law, but he was never all that committed to deporting child arrivals anyway. His primary criticism of DACA was that it should have been done by Congress, and under the deal he rejected, it would have been.
KennethAlmquist
3d ago
There is a recent poll on DEI[1][2][3]. DEI seems to be viewed more favorably than not.
A majority reject the following:
- DEI discriminates against white people: 33% - 41%
- DEI is a threat to public safety: 29% - 47%
- DEI has made the U.S. military weaker: 34% - 45%
They agree that:
- DEI compensates for the discrimination faced by people of color and women: 36% - 31%
- DEI crease a more egalitarian society: 31% - 22%
- DEI promotes better decision making by enabling the exchange of diverse perspectives: 48% - 27%
There are a number of questions about whether people should receive DEI training; a majority is in favor of DEI training in all cases, most strongly in the case of police officers (69% - 31%) and least strongly for private sector employees (64% - 36%).
The document provides some comparable numbers which are claimed to come from October 2024, but that appears to be a mistake; the previous polling on DEI was done in January 2024[4].
A lot of the public doesn’t have strong views on DEI. 92% of respondents have heard the phrase “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (up from 72% in January 2024), but when given the option “neither agree of disagree,” many respondents chose it. For the DEI training questions, “neither agree of disagree” was not an option.
When asked what the top three priorities of the Trump Administration should be, 2% selected ending DEI programs as the top priority, and 10% included it in one of the top three. 19% of Republicans, 6% of independents, and 2% of Democrats included ending DEI in their top three priorities.
The poll didn’t ask about people’s own experience with DEI, but I found a Feb. 2023 poll that did[5], which presumably gets a more knowledgeable pool of respondents. People who worked at a place that had a staff member whose primary job was to promote DEI said that having such a person was:
- Very positive: 23%
- Somewhat positive: 37%
- Neither positive nor negative: 29%
- Somewhat negative: 7%
- Very negative: 4%
In the same poll, 56% of respondents said that “focusing on increasing diversity, equity and inclusion at work is mainly a good thing,” 16% said it is mainly a bad thing, and 28% said it is neither good nor bad.
So DEI seems to popular but controversial, with one third of the country and 65% of Republicans saying that DEI discriminates against white people.
Links:
[1] https://www.umass.edu/political-science/about/reports/2025-8
[4] https://www.umass.edu/political-science/about/reports/january-16-2024
KennethAlmquist
3d ago
The reporting is mostly based on court documents, which are worth reading yourself if you are interested enough in the case to read multiple news articles on it.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69940863/v-m-l-v-harper/
With regard to your first question, the sister-in-law has a Provisional Custody by Mandate document signed by the father, which allows her to exercise most of the parental rights of the father.
With regard to your other questions, the key key point is that their is nothing in the record saying whether the mother would prefer (1) her citizen daughter to come with her to Honduras, or (2) have her citizen daughter remain in the United States in the custody of the father. ICE doesn’t claim to have asked her that question. Petitioner claims that ICE refused to allow the father’s lawyer to talk to the mother (see Memorandum in Support of Emergency TRO, page 4). The judge says that when he tried to talk to the mother, ICE told him that the mother had already been released in Honduras (see Order docket number 8).
KennethAlmquist
6d ago
You missed the reference to Fisher, which is is described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_v._United_States That was the January 6 case where the Supreme Court placed limits on “obstructing an official proceeding.”
KennethAlmquist
10d ago
If Putin were willing to abandon the idea of eventually conquering all of Ukraine, there could be a compromise where Russia gets a chunk of Ukraine and Ukraine join NATO to provide a guarantee that Russia won’t take the rest of Ukraine in the future. I don’t think that Putin will go for that.
KennethAlmquist
12d ago
I assume you are referring to when Jon Favreau posted a tweet containing pictures of detained children with the accompanying text reading, “This is happening right now, and the only debate that matters is how we force our government to get these kids back to their families as fast as humanly possible.” It turned out that the pictures were of children separated from their families by the Trump Administration, but of unaccompanied minors being held by the Obama Administration. Oops.
The thing is that, while supporters of family separation may have won that round, they didn’t do it by making a case that separating children from their families was morally acceptable, or by making a valid case that the Obama administration also separated children from their families. So it makes complete sense that learning the origin of the pictures didn’t cause opponents of family separation to change their minds on that point or to condemn the Obama administration for allegedly doing the same thing.
KennethAlmquist
12d ago
The TracingWoodgrains essay offers PinkNews as an example of a news outlet given the status of a Reliable Source, suggesting it should not have been because:
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It published a false story about Joanna Cherry, “retracting only after Cherry pursued legal options against them.” The wording suggests that Cherry asked them for a correction and they refused, but the supplied link doesn’t support that.
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They attributed a quote to the wrong individual, and issued a correction when the error was pointed out to them.
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A tweet promoting an article about Bill O’Reilly allegedly misrepresented the contents of the article. This doesn’t indicate there was anything wrong with the article itself.
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“The site has a history of tabloid-esque sensationalism, clickbait, and photoshops about celebrities.” The supporting link says that one celebrity accused PinkNews of doing this. It doesn’t say whether the accusation is true.
Wikipedia editor Gerard said that PinkNews should be considered a reliable source because, “claims of journalistic malfeasance on their part didn't check out at all when we looked into them and discovered they'd actually handled them in an exemplary fashion.” As improbable as it may sound, if the worst that can be substantiated about PinkNews is that it got two stories wrong and issued corrections in both cases, it seems like it is indeed a reliable source.
KennethAlmquist
13d ago
The judge cannot (or at least isn’t supposed to) order anyone to disobey the law. Judges are supposed to say what the law is. So if the judge were to find that 908.105 is unconstitutional when applied to a U.S. citizen, or that the legislature didn’t intend section 908.105 to apply to U.S. citizens, the judge could order the U.S. citizen to be released.
I will tackle the tariff half of the question. I assume that you paired it with a question about corporate taxes to indicate that you are looking for arguments against tariffs that are specific to tariffs, as opposed to generic anti-tax arguments. I will also assume you are asking about tariffs under Trump as opposed to tariffs in the abstact.
1. Comparative advantage. The essential idea is that each country produces things it is good at and exchanges them for things it isn’t good at. If you reduce trade by creating tariffs, that makes everyone poorer. I won’t dwell on this because there are many good explanations of comparative advantage on the web.
2. Logistics. Canada exports most of their oil to the United States. The United States produces more oil than it consumes, so importing oil from Canda allows the United States to export a lot more oil. With U.S. tariffs on imported oil, it makes sense for Canada to export oil to countries that need it to avoid the tariffs, but that is going to cost Canada a fair amount of money to build the necessary infrastructure. The United States also loses because consumers in the American midwest have to pay more for gasoline and companies involved in oil export lose work.
This could be classified as an example of comparative advantage (the U.S. has an advantage in exporting oil), but I list it separately because it is not an obvious example.
3. Uncertainty. Trump has repeatedly announced tariffs and then changed his position. This makes it very hard for businesses to invest. A business can’t very well invest in a factory to make something covered by tariffs unless the factory would be profitable without the tariff, because no one knows what the tariffs will be a year from now. Similarly, a business can’t invest in a factory that would be profitable without the new tariffs, but relies on imports as inputs so tariffs could make it unprofitable.
4. Loss of trust. The tariffs imposed by Trump are generally in violation of international agreements that the U.S. has signed. For example, the tariffs on Canada violate the USMCA agreement that Trump negotiated during his first term.
I imagine that some countries will still negotiate deals with the United States because they feel that they have no choice. (One such country would be Israel, which preemptively eliminated all tariffs on U.S. goods before April 2.) But the European Union is strong enough that I don’t see them making a free trade agreement with an untrustworthy partner.
This loss of trust is across the board, not just in trade. For example, the United States cannot find itself in a position where it has no choice but to default on its debt (if the Treasury has trouble rolling over its debt, the Federal Reserve can function as the buyer of last resort), but it could decide to default. That's probably the rates on long term treasury bonds have been so high recently.
5. Corruption. Trump can say to both foreign leaders and U.S. companies, “I’m willing to consider lowering the tariff you are concerned about. I’d like you to do me a favor, though.”
KennethAlmquist
20d ago
Accountability based on outcomes can also encourage behavior that increases tail risks. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the popular metaphor for this was “picking up nickles in front of a steamroller.” It involves taking risks with a negative expected value, but where the downside is a costly but improbable occurrence. This can appear to work very well for a number of years, until the improbable happens.
I talked about two different surveys. The “DEI discriminated against white people” question was from a poll of the general public. The one on about whether workplace DEI trainings and/or meeting were helpful comes from a survey of workers. If you didn’t find DEI training/meetings helpful, that would place you in a minority. That could be a reflection of the DEI training you received; perhaps most people would rate that particular training as unhelpful.
If you wouldn’t have guessed that large numbers of people find DEI training/meetings helpful, that’s the point of conducting surveys: to learn what people are actually thinking, rather than generalizing from you own experience or the experience of a few people who happen to be in the same bubble as you.
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