Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
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User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2d ago
New SCOTUS opinion day and today we have the long awaited Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump. This is the case about Trump's sweeping tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, for those unfamiliar.
In a 6-3 decision the court rules that the IEEPA grants the President no authority to impose tariffs. I think crucially it's not just that they find these specific tariffs are not authorized by the statute, but that no tariffs are. That the phrasing of "regulate ... importation" in the statute is not inclusive of tariffs, as the administration argued.I think the breakdown of opinions is itself interesting.
Among the majority there is consensus that (1) the IEEPA does not grant the power to impose tariffs and (2) the administrations arguments otherwise fail but there is also a 3-3 split about why (1) is the case. The three conservatives in the majority (Roberts, Barrett, Gorsuch) invoke the major questions doctrine. Finding that the phrase "regulate ... importation" is not clear enough for the sweeping powers the administration claims it conveys. In other statutes where Congress has delegated the power to tariff they have done so clearly and if they want to give the President almost unilateral power to tariff, they need to be equally clear about that. The three liberals in the majority (Kagan, Sotomayor, Jackson), meanwhile, thing that ordinarily principles of statutory interpretation are sufficient to arrive at this result. Jackson also writes a concurrence that goes into the legislative history to argue that Congress didn't intend to grant the power to tariff.
On the dissent side, Kavanaugh writes the main dissent (with Alito and Thomas joining) arguing that the phrase "regulate ... importation", as a matter of history and tradition, clearly includes the power to impose tariffs. Thomas also writes a separate dissent discussing the non-delegation doctrine. The majority didn't rely on the doctrine at all but Plaintiffs did raise it below and it did come up in the District Court's opinion.
Apart from the merits of the case Gorsuch wrote a concurrence where he calls out a perceived hypocrisy on both sides of the decision. On the liberal side, there are many cases where they have argued in support of sweeping executive power and expansive interpretation, which is the opposite of the side they take here. On the conservative side, those same justices have often argued for narrow or limited meanings of statutory authorization but here take an expansive view of what powers are delegated.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4d ago
I don't think there is any set of necessary or sufficient political beliefs such that everyone who uses the term "conservative" would agree that an individual with such beliefs is properly classified as such. Especially if you intend this definition to stretch backwards into the past and possibly forwards into the future.
I think a prudent beginning to this line of inquiry is to ask: why care what "conservative" means? Did X call Y a conservative and one is unsure what X intended to convey thereby? Does one imagine one's self as possibly positioned in an intellectual tradition described as "conservative" (by whom?) but are unsure what that entails?
Once we understand what use we intend to put the term "conservative" the path to a meaning becomes clearer.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
9d ago
I'm looking at the linked court listener docket and I think your description is a little misleading. What you linked to is a motion by the United States as to why the documents shouldn't be covered by attorney client privilege but I don't actually see a ruling by the judge granting or rejecting the motion. So there has not yet been a decision in this case as to whether the documents are privileged, just an argument by the prosecution that they shouldn't be. Missed the minute order on 2/10.
That said, I think the prosecution is basically correct. Imagine rather than an AI you email a friend asking their non-attorney legal advice. Maybe you discuss statutes and case law or possible defenses. Would those emails be privileged? What if you fire up your search engine and start searching for statutes you may have violated. Relevant case law. Defenses. Is the existence or content of those searches privileged? My intuition is that they would not be. I don't see what is different about AI such that its use generates attorney-client privilege but the use of other legal research tools or avenues does not.
I suppose I think the obvious way to get AI input and also remain privileged would be to use a lawyer as a kind of middle-tier. User query -> lawyer -> AI. AI response -> lawyer -> user.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
9d ago
IME, the angle here is less about the content of the AI's responses than the user's questions. You sometimes see indictments that include, say, search terms a defendant entered around the time they committed their crimes as evidence for consciousness of guilt. They knew they were doing something that was (or could be) illegal.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
11d ago
I had a similar path. I was a 4channer (mostly /b/ and /pol/) in my late high school/early college years. I was already pretty libertarian (although, even then, more of the Matt Zwolinski/bleeding heart kind) and probably got pushed a bit further rightward. It was a gateway into a lot of MRA/MGTOW spaces. I was never too deep into redpill stuff (probably because I was in a relationship) and I never really fell down the youtube rabbit hole in this space. There were a few people whose early videos I enjoyed. Karen Straughan comes to mind (that's a name I haven't thought about in a long time!)
I suppose I find it a little funny I ended up a woke-liberal-type today. There's definitely a kind of "there but for the grace of god go I" when I see people who were clearly radicalized in similar spaces.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
14d ago
This is the Grossman-Stiglitz paradox if people want more detail.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
17d ago
In general I think people can be aware that actions can have consequences without intending those consequences. To take one example, people who gamble are surely aware that they can lose money while gambling but I think it would be hard to argue they intend to lose money.
Or, to take a more violent example, punching someone can kill them, especially if it causes them to fall over, but how often do people who punch another person intend to kill that person?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
18d ago
Love me some specific vs general intent. Did Corner intend to hit the police sergeant with the sledgehammer (general)? Almost certainly. Did he intend to do grevious bodily harm or resist or prevent a lawful apprehension or detainer (specific)? The jury couldn't agree one way or the other apparently. I'm not that familiar with UK law but the link for GBH seems to indicate a variety of lesser offenses I suspect Corner would have been convicted of.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
20d ago
I think the geographic arbitrage you mention is pretty common. My mother and step-father were, at one point, considering moving to a pretty rural area of Kentucky since they could get a lot of land quite cheap. Additionally there's a size/quality arbitrage that occurs. When you're younger, have kids and a growing family, you probably want a larger house than when you're older and retired. So even if you stay in the same geographic area there's an arbitrage to a relatively less desirable house that may be better suited to your needs.
My impression is many homeowners also perceive their house and its equity as a retirement investment. In many (most?) places around the country your home is likely to be the most valuable asset you own. Even if one doesn't intend to cash out that asset themselves, it is something very valuable to leave to one's progeny. Either in the form of cash from a sale or as a place to live.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
23d ago
I feel like the situations are pretty different. Strzok was, as literally as possible, not-a-Fed when he sued the government. Part of his suit was alleging wrongful termination. He also was not the boss of the Attorney General, with authority to fire him if he didn't like the settlement terms. I am open to the possibility Trump has a viable claim but I am highly skeptical about how this process will play out, given he controls both sides of the litigation.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
23d ago
Connolly's case has nothing to do with the FACE Act? He was convicted under a state level ordinance...
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
23d ago
Yesterday in the Southern District of Florida Donald J. Trump, in his personal capacity, filed a lawsuit for $10 billion in damages related to the leak of his tax returns. The defendants? The Internal Revenue Service and the United States Department of the Treasury. I am not familiar enough with the relevant statutes to venture whether this claim is viable. Assuming it is, I am highly skeptical Trump and his co-plaintiffs could demonstrate $10 billion in actual damages (which is what the cited statutes allow them to recover plus costs and attorney fees). I also read both statutes as having a two year statute of limitations and the events giving rise to the liability occurred in 2019/2020 so it is not clear to me that the suit is viable on that basis.
The above may all be academic. My understanding of the relevant federal procedure is that judges are not going to raise issues like the statute of limitations or factual issues with alleged damages on their own initiative. Our system assumes the parties are adversarial, so the defendants would file a motion to dismiss citing the statute of limitations or contest any damage calculations they thought were incorrect. Of course, in this case, the plaintiff is also the boss of the defendant. With plenary power to fire them. Can Trump, as president, just order Scott Bessent (currently both the Secretary of the Treasury and Commissioner of the IRS) to settle the suit for the full amount? And fire him if he refuses? What is the precedent on presidents suing the government while they're president? Normally when one side of a lawsuit is not interested in pressing its case other entities that have a shared interest can intervene to do so, but it's not clear to me who is in that position here.
I guess (random layman thoughts) maybe there's an argument that federal courts don't have jurisdiction to hear this because the parties aren't actually in controversy as required by Article 3, since it's Trump suing himself? Just spitballing. Is there any legal mechanism, short of impeachment, to prevent Trump from gifting himself the full contents of the United States Treasury via lawsuit settlements?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
27d ago
That's fair. I think it's a hard problem that I don't have a strong opinion on. In the case the fed chose, there's the obvious potential for confusion due to a very dramatic change in the graph. Notwithstanding any kind of clarifying text on the page. On the other hand, if you create a new series it can be hard to discover that the old series exists, when it might be useful. FRED actually already has at least one discontinued M1 series, which was weekly data.
My perception is that, from FRED's perspective, they are still reporting the "same" thing (the sum of some field on a report bank's file with them). If they changed their underlying methodology I suspect they would discontinue the old series and create a new one (as with the weekly data) but in this case it's the reporting entities whose behavior changed.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
27d ago
My impression is that continuing to construct the previous series was not really practicable. The blog post talks about this a little bit. The change in the definition wasn't arbitrary. The fed changed a regulation that required "savings" accounts be permitted no more than 6 withdrawals a month, otherwise the account had to classified as a "transaction" account. Transaction accounts are included in M1 but savings accounts aren't. They also count differently for capitalization requirements. It sounds like when the fed changed the rules about limited withdrawals banks largely started reporting all their accounts as "transaction" accounts, and therefore contributing to M1. So the fed can't really construct the old M1 anymore because they relied on banks to make the relevant distinction between accounts and banks largely stopped making that distinction in reports to the fed once it no longer served a purpose.
There's actually a little blurb under the FRED chart noting this discontinuity in definition for the M1 and M2 measures.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
27d ago
In May 2020 FRED changed it's definition of M1 to include savings accounts, which is why there's a huge spike in specifically that month. If you switch the graph from billions of dollars to % change this is much clearer. Changes in M1 (percentage wise) seem to have been pretty similar before and after (perhaps even less volatile after), based on my eyeballing the graph. They have a blog post explaining it.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
27d ago
Grok is correct, at least to my understanding. The Insurrection Act merely permits the use of federal military forces for domestic law enforcement purposes. Such usage is otherwise forbidden by the Posse Comitatus Act. The escalation beyond this would probably require suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus. Although the Constitution (and Supreme Court precedent) limit this suspension to an Act of Congress. As a historical matter, the only time it was actually suspended was by Lincoln during the Civil War. Though the Supreme Court ruled Lincoln's suspension unconstitutional he ignored them. Not an encouraging precedent!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
27d ago
What set of actions you've described do you think are, or perhaps ought to be, crimes? What section of the United States Code do they violate? The closest one, in my mind, is the license plate one. Which could be a CFAA violation depending on how they are getting the information about plate owners. Although the Twitter thread you linked shows the database described as being crowd sourced, which would not be a crime. The one ICE usually cites to is 18 USC 111 but note that statute requires the use of force in impeding federal officials going about their duties.
At what point is this a conspiracy to undermine the laws of this country resulting in the deaths of two people ?
What section of the United States Code describes the crime of "undermin[ing] the laws of this country resulting in the deaths of two people"? What are its elements?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
I am making some assumptions about the procedure I suppose. I'm imagining they measure a gap of some size, 1" say, and that's what they record. Then, on subsequent inspections, if the gap measures less than 1-1/8" they just leave the measurement at 1". So not updating the measurement over months and years implies a net change less than 1/8". If they reset the baseline they are measuring the gap against on subsequent measurements then I agree that is a huge problem.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
I am not an expert on railway safety but presumably there is some tolerance for these gaps, below which changes are not concerning. I am not sure 1/8 of an inch is the correct number but there is some correct number. It makes sense to me that the process for inspection incorporates these tolerances. In this specific context Bell is contesting his being fired. In which case whether he was doing the thing he was trained to do is relevant. "I was following the procedure my employer trained me to do" is, to my mind, a pretty good defense against "this employee acted negligently in their role." Or, at least, it shifts any negligence off the employee to the employer.
"You know, if these rails are always a little off, that's probably a bad thing, even if 1/8th of an inch isn't Big Bad on its own."
Is it a bad thing, though? How much are these gaps expected to change naturally? What is the inter-inspector accuracy? I do not have the domain knowledge to answer these questions but it seems plausible to me the mentioned 1/8 inch is a tolerance below which variation is not worth worrying about.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
China is the obvious one but, like, the EU is itself about the size of the US. A GDP almost as high and 50% more people. Sure, no individual country in Europe is a match for the US but collectively may be a different story.
The OP doesn't quote the section but there's a part in Carney's speech where he talks about middle powers like Canada making alliances on limited issues based on interest alignment. They'll work with China on issues where they're aligned with China. The EU on issues where they're aligned with the EU. The overarching point is that the era of "whatever the US says, goes" is over. Unless we intend to enforce that at the end of a gun.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
I do not think either we or our allies have conceived of our relationship as vassalage and attempts at converting our relationship to vassalage will be harmful to those relationships.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
It is not normal politics. It is bad for America's long term ability to negotiate agreements if other countries come to believe that every President is going to tear up every agreement of their predecessor. Why make any deal that will last longer than the current administration? The reason other presidents have honored agreements previous presidents made, even when they disagreed with them, is because there is value in being a country that honors it's agreements.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
I mean, some of them presumably do their jobs. If I go to a WMATA operated stop a bus or train will come. With an operator who is a WMATA employee.
Based on reading your two links I don't think this characterizes the situation accurately? According to the second link:
1. Not updating measurements when the new measurement was within 1/8 of an inch was standard practice going all the way back to the 1970's.
Yet the panel found Metro had never rooted out a practice begun as official policy when the system opened in the 1970s that had inspectors only update measurements on monthly switch inspection forms if the new measurements were at least 1/8 inch different. If not, the same numbers were simply carried over from month to month and year to year.
“It’s understood by everyone that that’s how we do things. Otherwise, we would have gotten accused of falsification prior to this,” Bell told the arbitration panel. “It was understood that each inspector’s eyes are different, and 1/8 of an inch is negligible.”
2. The issue that ultimately lead to the train derailment was flagged by inspectors and had been for years.
In Metro management’s initial response to the derailment, they noted 12-14 buttery ties that had allowed tracks to slip too far apart — right where the inspection reports had reported 15 defective ties month after month, year after year.
Bell’s termination letter acknowledged the problem had been reported over and over.
“The records reflect there was a recorded defect on the Defect Database that was at the ‘Point of Derailment’ and another entry that was allowed to remain on the database since 2012,” the letter said.
3. They did change their training and practices after the derailment to improve them.
After the summer 2016 derailment, Metro changed inspection procedures to no longer provide the previous measurements pre-typed in on switch inspection forms, and retrained track inspectors to record the actual measurements they took.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
Comparing this to UBI seems weird to me. My understanding is the point of UBI is that it's approximately unconditional. You get the money whatever your income or whether you have a job. By contrast, according to your budget link, the WMATA provided something like 268 million trips for its budget. Maybe you think the $19 or so per trip that works out to is not a good use of money, but it seems pretty far from the "nothing" the government gets in return for UBI! Maybe a better comparison would be some kind of guaranteed job program? No idea what the economic efficiency of programs like that work out to.
I feel like the only practicable way to do this is to pay refunds to the people who paid the tariffs to the government. In some sense increased costs to consumers were caused by the tariffs but good luck proving that to a court (absent some kind of contractual provision for the scenario).
In terms of decision authorship the general process is that:
1. If the Chief Justice is in the majority, they decide who authors the opinion of the court.
2. If the Chief Justice is not in the majority, the most senior justice in the majority decides.
I think the justices try to maintain roughly even ratios of opinion authorship so maybe Roberts authoring this one meant foregoing authoring some other one but ultimately he's the one in control over who authors an opinion he's in the majority of. I am skeptical there was any horse trading involved to get to 6 votes either. Gorsuch's concurrence has a length section where he disagrees with the dissent's analysis, which would be enough for 5.
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