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dik

dik

Structural
Apr 13, 2001
25,842
I sent my first tweet this evening:

Dik Coates‏ @CoatesDik 14m14 minutes ago

@SenFeinstein Can you have Michael Avenatti cross examine Kavanaugh?

Dik


 
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@IRstuff - Every now and then I like to have a cigarette. In a building I worked at, one of the tenants was a very prominent NYC law firm. Smokers are a congenial bunch; we all get to know each other. One day while talking to a lawyer I asked him if lawyers are supposed to argue cases philosophically. Perhaps I didn't phrase the question in the right way, he said you follow the law; you have to look at precedent. To me natural law is not a judicial philosophy; rather it is something discerned through proper formation of the conscience.

The current issue of National Review has an article advocating for Originalism (haven't read it yet.) Judges are human beings. If we could clone King Solomon nine times decisions would also be radically different.
 
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"follow the law; you have to look at precedent"

That depends on which side you're on. You can't follow a law that you're arguing against. Prior laws included laws against miscegeny, no voting or ownership rights for women, etc. These are what SCOTUS is supposed to look at, and the overturning of various laws occurs because the justices realize that precedents were all "bad." The foundations of the Dred Scott decision were based on bad precedents
> Blacks were property and therefore not allowed any rights
> Blacks were not citizens and thus not allowed any Constitutional rights.

So, the point is that if the precedent is bad, then you have to reject the precedent. That automatically makes you not an originalist. If we accept that no human being (you have to accept that all races are human) should be subjected to slavery, then justice that claims to be an originalist is automatically suspect, because they're basically social Luddites, rejecting the notion that society and its values change over time, and that the Constitution needs to be applicable to the current state of society, and not some ancient society where owning slaves was acceptable, where Chinese were excluded from immigrating, where Japanese citizens were held in concentration camps without violating any laws, where women were slightly better than property and were not allowed to vote or own property, etc., etc., etc.

That's always been my main objection to Thomas.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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If the precedent was wrong you have to make the case that it violates the Constitution, which is the basis of our system of law. Bad precedent, bad law, that's why the Constitution has been amended 28 times. No offense but I think you're missing the bigger picture: the history of human development; certain view points/beliefs change over time as "mankind" progresses. Are we there yet? NO! Perhaps I'm wrong but to me you judge the past through the lens of the present; that's the wrong approach. To judge the past, we have to understand the context of events then judge it based upon universal truth, which isn't easy.

Case in point: Recently, Yale did away with a building named after John C. Calhoun because he supported slavery; OK, fine. In the not so distant past, students at Princeton demanded that Woodrow Wilson's name be removed from a building. However, there was an uproar from the Left. Wilson was a racist - among other things, he introduced segregation into the military and Federal employment - be he got a pass. The elitists said "yes but he was a man of his times".

Just for fun, a few more grievances: couldn't vote if you didn't own land; couldn't vote if you didn't belong to a certain church; no Irish need apply; no immigration from southern Europe (which is still partly true); handicapped children weren't entitled to a public school education; forced religious education in the public schools. When you mentioned Thomas, I thought about something my father told me. During the war he did basic training down south. He said the only people southerners treated worse than blacks were Catholics; poor Thomas he hit the daily double.
 
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Up until the Reagan era, Republicans never considered abortion or for that matter, the so-called 'right to life' agenda, as being something that they should be involved in since it was counter to their belief that the government should stay out of the lives of citizens. It was only when party officials were convinced that this would bring the Christian right into the party and help them win elections. At the time many traditional conservatives were skeptical but when they learned that they could get these religious groups to hand over large amounts of cash by merely saying that they WANTED to overturn 'Roe v Wade', even if their hearts weren't in it. Over time, like any 'narcotic', the party simply got hooked on the money. My humble opinion is that the last thing Republicans want is to ACTUALLY ban abortions, because doing so could cause the money stream to dry-up, and like any 'addict', they will do whatever's needed to keep the 'smack' coming in.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
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Hokie... I thought the Donald got his information from Fox...

Dik
 
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It's going to be a real interesting mid-term...

Dik
 
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@JB the Moral Majority aligned itself with the Republicans prior to Reagan getting elected, and probably, it had more to do with Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. They saw the way to a theocratic America was to subsume the Republican party and began a campaign promote Republicans and judges that were sympathetic to that viewpoint, which includes overturning Roe v. Wade.

Coincidentally, Kavanaugh was at the top of the list provided by the Heritage Foundation, which was started in 1973, just about a month after Roe v. Wade was decided.

What's ironic, of course, is that the conservative economic philosophy of the Republican party had been to promote free trade, which is what lead to possibility of outsourcing manufacturing and production to foreign countries, which led to loss of jobs, and the people that lost those jobs are Trump supporters. And, the ultimate goal of the most of these movements in the party is essentially to roll the government back to pre-New Deal, eliminating both Social Security and Medicare, and it will be interesting to see how Trump's base reacts to that, since a sizable portion of that base will be dependent on SS and Medicare.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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I think people really need to consider how many people are to their left and how many are to the right. If that percentage is higher than 75%, such that the party they're aligned with is mostly with the 75%, then they need to re-evaluate whether they're in the mainstream at all.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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Actually both parties got hooked on the money. Since when have the Democrats become the champions of the common man?
 
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zdas04,

zdas04 said:
Have you ever subjected a prospective engineer to 60 hours of interviews? 7 FBI background checks? Hate Filled crap spewed at him for hours at a time? Subjected to death threats against him and his wife and children?
Click to expand...

Of course not, and, please, no kool-aid for me.

I saw about as much of all the proceedings as I see most prospective interviewees, 1-3 hours. I saw what I saw, not what you wanted me to see. It was enough for me to want to pass on this one.

Good luck,
Latexman

To a ChE, the glass is always full - 1/2 air and 1/2 water.
 
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IRStuff,
The GOP did align themselves with the Moral Majority (hmmmmm two lies for the price of one) at about the same time the Democrats aligned themselves with the radical environmental movement. Neither fringe group actually represents a significant portion of the electorate, but both groups dominate the major party platforms.

"Free Trade" did not lead to outsourcing and offshoring. That was high taxes, crony capitalism, and temporary disconnects between the value of labor and the price of labor. In an actual "free trade" environment, manufacturing will tend to be co-located with raw materials and appropriate transportation infrastructure will develop to move the goods to market. We don't have that. We have high corporate taxes that encourage companies to relocated. We have back room deals where Mexico City, or Seattle, or Miami, or Mumbai use taxpayer money to "incentivize" companies to come to their region. These backroom deals distort the manufacturing economics to the point that none of it ever makes sense.

The current group of "representatives" (really since Reconstruction) has defined "free trade" as "If you donate enough money to my re-election campaign, I will block imported competition for your product". All of the trade deals since the end of the Civil War have had little tweaks to protect steel, agri, pharma, energy, textiles, jobs in coal, or some other sweetheart arrangement that left tariffs on some things and took them off others. NAFTA was just full of these Tweaks. The end result is that it is OK for Canada to put high tariffs on imported dairy products (and subsidies on domestic milk production), but it is wrong for the U.S. to put tariffs on Canadian wheat. The Trans-Pacific Partnership was basically a dog pile on the U.S. Everyone could subsidize all of their export industries and put tariffs to protect their domestic industries--everyone, that is, except the U.S. I read the final draft (that was supposed to be signed by President Trump, but he refused) and was so very happy that the President refused.

Actual "free trade" is what the current administration is fighting for. And I think it is what we will end up closer to--a system where government basically stays the hell out of trade between companies and individuals. The "anti competitive" tariffs currently being enacted are simply a signal to our trading partners that their crony capitalism and our crony capitalism have all gone way too far and government needs to back out of the game. As other countries begin backing off subsidies and tariffs, we will follow suit. Just watch.

As to Social Security and Medicare, the federal government created an absolutely unsustainable structure that has been horribly managed (anyone surprised?) Both programs were patently Unconstitutional when enacted, but they are there now and have to be fixed. The original expectation was that a person would draw these benefits for 3-5 years between retirement and death, and the program would be self sustaining. And then life expediencies started to ratchet up. My full retirement age is 67, my life expectancy is something like 85, so I could draw SS for 18 years. My mother in law is 94 so she is in her 30th year on SS. I think they were on the right track when my retirement age went from 65 to 67, but it should have gone from 65 to 75--once again Congress lacked the will to do what was necessary. In the long run, both of these programs need to move to the states. That is the only sustainable answer, but the transition needs to be over 40-50 years and we absolutely lack the attention span to work with that sort of time horizon, so it is very unlikely to be fixed. Ever.

[bold]David Simpson, PE[/bold]
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist
 
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"both of these programs need to move to the states."

Right, because all state governments are so much more efficient and corruption free. And, every state will be able to offer the same benefits, so that people moving from one state to another can do so seamlessly.



TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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@zdas04 a star for the last post[starofdavid].

Another - and major- flaw with Social Security is that Congress assumed the population would continue to grow at the current (1930's) rate. I don't think the states can take it over; in my opinion it wouldn't work.
 
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Of course stopping, or at least severely curtailing, immigration, as is being promoted by the likes of Stephen Miller, isn't going to help with respect to getting a younger population that would be paying taxes, including Social Security and Medicare, for a much longer period of time. If we have to depend solely on the birthrate of existing Americans to replace our dwindling population, many programs, and not just so-called entitlements, will be hurting big time when there's no longer a working class of people paying income and payroll taxes. God forbid that corporations and the rich might have to start picking up the slack.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
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I don't know how a Social Security program administered by the states would work. Maybe something like "you paid into the New Mexico program and you draw from the New Mexico program wherever you live." If you only live in New Mexico for 3 years of a 30 year work life then you get 3/30ths of your full New Mexico retirement. If you then live in New York for 5 years you get 5/30th's of your full New York retirement (in addition to the New Mexico Retirement). And so forth. Every plan has hair on it. A state plan has less hair than a federal plan (in my opinion) because the numbers are so much smaller and the quality of the thieves is lower.

[bold]David Simpson, PE[/bold]
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist
 
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au contraire, smaller funds means less leverage and less scrutiny, particularly in the poorer states. There would also be 50 different and redundant bureaucracies involved. Moreover, most states already have untenably funded pension plans to deal, and funding SS on top of all of that would literally break the bank. I don't know why anyone would imagine that state control is better than federal, since the state budgets and finances are so much more politically manipulated than at the federal level.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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It is called social security insurance. Insurance companies can easily handle this function, except for the part mandating every one and their employers must participate.
 
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"Insurance companies can easily handle this function"

Until they go out of business. SS is the largest single program and does not require a profit margin, unlike insurance companies. The SS expense ratio is 0.7%, which is very low. SS, as it currently exists, is uniform across all states and transportable to all states.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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Here's a link to a story about contributions to the Democrats by a group of billionaires.

Link
 
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