You (all) lie!

[PresentTense Pirate Penske]

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch

But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg -- isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!

Pearl Harbour?

[PresentTense Pirate Penske]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Isn't the accepted approach here to take responsibility with the client but can the associate's ass so they'll have the benefit of that "teachable moment"?

Sure, but you still have to bend over for the client, and usually without the benefit of a reach around.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by PresentTense Pirate Penske

Sure, but you still have to bend over for the client, and usually without the benefit of a reach around.

i used to think the client contact had to put up with that grief, but then Hillary didn't go to jail since she was "just the billing attorney" for Whitewater. I use that one ever since.

[PresentTense Pirate Penske]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

i used to think the client contact had to put up with that grief, but then Hillary didn't go to jail since she was "just the billing attorney" for Whitewater. I use that one ever since.

I support Hillary for the Supreme Court.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Hank:Ty::Krugman:Yglesias (last two paragraphs)

[LessinSF]

So, fuck me, I was talking tonight with some non-lawyers and trying to explain Stevens, and how it is not about whether depicting animal cruelty is good or bad. How the Court agreed - socalled liberals and convervatives eight to one - and how the MSM portrayal of these issues as being split down this made-up, artificial construct of a two-dimensional line is bullshit. And I failed. Most non-lawyers don't grasp the Constitutional issues - it is a legislative approach to them. Animal cruelty bad, possibility that government prosecutes bullfighting videos remote.

I was reminded of when I was on the Student Senate at U.C. Berkeley and voted against every bill that gave tuition fee money to student groups that espoused any political beliefs. I thought that a state school could not constitutionally use mandatory fees to fund a group that the payor of that fee disagreed with. I lost dozens of votes 28-1, 26-1, etc.

Six years later, the California Supreme Court agreed with me and ruled that, although they could charge the fee, anyone had to be given a refund who asked for it. Smith v. Regents of the University of California, 4 Cal.4th 843 (1993).

Then the lower court in Smith 2 on remand ruled that the educational value of the Student Senate outweighs the burden on free speech and that the Regents could continue to use mandatory fees to support the Senate without a refund or similar procedure. Smith v. Regents, 56 Cal.App.4th 979 (1997) (Smith II) (I am not sure at 2:00 a.m. how they could do this, and need to investigate.)

And the U.S. Supes resolved it in Board of Regents of Univ. of Wis. System v. Southworth, 529 U.S. 217 (2000), stating "[t]he University may sustain the extracurricular dimensions of its programs by using mandatory student fees with viewpoint neutrality as the operational principle."

Which is fine in the abstract, but at Cal in 1987 the Student Senate would fund an honoraria for Cesar Chavez, but not for [insert conservative here]. Same thing with student groups - La Raza funded, Federalist Society not. In other words, our Senate funding process was not viewpoint neutral.

So although I may not have won on all my points, I was found to be fundamentally correct in my objectiions by both the Cal Supes and the U.S. Supes, but not a single other Senator (of 30) agreed (or was willing to admit they agreed) with my absolutely fucking correct position. Nor would they defend the First Amendmentof theior constituents because they viewed everything through the prism of "doing the right thing." These people suck, cannot be trusted, and deserve no deference. Stevens today said that, without saying it.

Depictions of animal Rrghts, hate speech, restrictions on depictions of Mohammad, blasphemy, Nazis, teenagers on Facebook "bullying" others, etc. They are all slippery slopes, and don't let the fact that 29 out of 30 disagree change your opinion. Those 29 were assholes. I was the only righteous, correct elected Senator, and I ran as a joke candidate - "Calvin and Hobbes." I only wish I had all their e-mail addresses to ask them if they are embarrassed and chastised.

P.S. Go Liberal Democrats in May!

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

So, fuck me, I was talking tonight with some non-lawyers and trying to explain Stevens, and how it is not about whether depicting animal cruelty is good or bad. How the Court agreed - socalled liberals and convervatives eight to one - and how the MSM portrayal of these issues as being split down this made-up, artificial construct of a two-dimensional line is bullshit. And I failed. Most non-lawyers don't grasp the Constitutional issues - it is a legislative approach to them. Animal cruelty bad, possibility that government prosecutes bullfighting videos remote.

I was reminded of when I was on the Student Senate at U.C. Berkeley and voted against every bill that gave tuition fee money to student groups that espoused any political beliefs. I thought that a state school could not constitutionally use mandatory fees to fund a group that the payor of that fee disagreed with. I lost dozens of votes 28-1, 26-1, etc.

Six years later, the California Supreme Court agreed with me and ruled that, although they could charge the fee, anyone had to be given a refund who asked for it. Smith v. Regents of the University of California, 4 Cal.4th 843 (1993).

Then the lower court in Smith 2 on remand ruled that the educational value of the Student Senate outweighs the burden on free speech and that the Regents could continue to use mandatory fees to support the Senate without a refund or similar procedure. Smith v. Regents, 56 Cal.App.4th 979 (1997) (Smith II) (I am not sure at 2:00 a.m. how they could do this, and need to investigate.)

And the U.S. Supes resolved it in Board of Regents of Univ. of Wis. System v. Southworth, 529 U.S. 217 (2000), stating "[t]he University may sustain the extracurricular dimensions of its programs by using mandatory student fees with viewpoint neutrality as the operational principle."

Which is fine in the abstract, but at Cal in 1987 the Student Senate would fund an honoraria for Cesar Chavez, but not for [insert conservative here]. Same thing with student groups - La Raza funded, Federalist Society not. In other words, our Senate funding process was not viewpoint neutral.

So although I may not have won on all my points, I was found to be fundamentally correct in my objectiions by both the Cal Supes and the U.S. Supes, but not a single other Senator (of 30) agreed (or was willing to admit they agreed) with my absolutely fucking correct position. Nor would they defend the First Amendmentof theior constituents because they viewed everything through the prism of "doing the right thing." These people suck, cannot be trusted, and deserve no deference. Stevens today said that, without saying it.

Depictions of animal Rrghts, hate speech, restrictions on depictions of Mohammad, blasphemy, Nazis, teenagers on Facebook "bullying" others, etc. They are all slippery slopes, and don't let the fact that 29 out of 30 disagree change your opinion. Those 29 were assholes. I was the only righteous, correct elected Senator, and I ran as a joke candidate - "Calvin and Hobbes." I only wish I had all their e-mail addresses to ask them if they are embarrassed and chastised.

P.S. Go Liberal Democrats in May!

If only politics, even student politics, were about historical vindication.

The hottest area now is student bullying. No one understands the same issue.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

This is good. The obstRuctionists reap what they sow. The Court improves.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

That's what I was getting at. He said "all government everywhere" (paraphrase), but if he means "PA government," well, there isn't much for the rest of us who don't live there to discuss.

I don't know if I have space enough to list all the agencies and programs, State and Fed, I'd cut back or eliminate. A few:

- 3/7 of our Defense budget (massive Pentagon layoffs)
- 2/3 of the Dept of Argriculture (ADM and the rest of the corporate farms already own it... no need for redundancy in management there)
- 1/3 Dept of Education (kill the middlemen and give the $$$ to teachers)
- EEOC and its state components (Ever had it actually take, or even seriously investigate, a case? Do we need thousands of employees to punch out form "right to sue" letters every year? All the process does is hinder people with real claims from raising them in court, where they'll actually be decided.)
- The entire division of the EPA handling debarments (Offensive kangaroo court procedure that holds itself above res judicata [beat the EPA in court and you can still be debarred])
- 1/3 of the rest of the EPA (Leave the tort lawyers to bring the suits for environmental damage. They're more effective.)
- 1/3 HHS (do we need another bureaucracy involved in HC? Really? It doesn't have enough administrators in the mix already?)

I could go on forever with this. You get the point. If it isn't essential, I'd gut it and give the $$$ back to the private sector to do what it would with it. And yeah, every dept left would be run on a bonus system. The employees who deliver would be paid like their private sector counterparts. And firable as they are as well.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Hank:Ty::Krugman:Yglesias (last two paragraphs)

God, I hope they blast away at the banks. More stuff like the Goldman suit and regulatory threats creates a win/win scenario. The govt gets to look serious about regulation and the uncertainty it creates forces Bernanke to keep interest rates low. Some say the fear and volatility caused by stuff like the Goldman suit and the regulatory saber rattling ultimately damage the market. I say the market sees through it and prices that stuff in at a value far below that of a continued low interest rate environment. The rest of Wall Street gets a free ride on Goldman for a while (and oddly, when you bank the value of the continued low rates against the cost of this suit to Goldman, even they probably come out ahead).

Win/win.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

There are plenty of argument for not running govt like a business. Governments are not intended to be profit-driven entities. Would any business try to count every single person in America? Probably not -- most would recognize a point of diminishing return. Government does, has to, and should because that's core to our democracy. Would any business try to educate chronically violent and mentally disabled children? Most, I think, would cut the children loose and let them be someone else's problem (or "customer").

This is not -- and please don't pretend that it is -- an argument that government is perfectly efficent. There are plenty of inefficiencies. The best thing Al Gore ever did was his "reinventing government" program, which saved huge amounts of money that were being spent on bullshit. In many ways government is managed poorly, with ridiculous costs for the benefits. In other cases, it is managed quite well. But, while I agree that government can learn a lot from business, and while I hate the ways in which public employee unions and private contractors and lobbyists pervert government, I think we need to recognize that government does something very different than any business.

I don't expect a profit. I expect efficiency. There is no argument against the proposition that govt should be efficient. It should count everyone for the cheapest cost imaginable. And it should hire the best quality of worker it can find at the best price, with no other considerations. And if it hires badly, it should be able to fire them as quickly as you could fire someone in your employ. Is that too much to ask?

I get your point and wouldn't pretend you were arguing the govt is efficient. I don't think we disagree on much here. There's a lot of room to cut costs and deliver for people better than the govt does now. And arguing that govt is unlike a business does not address my point. The middle ground is to create a govt that spends our money most effectively. That involves changing the culture to one where employees are rewarded for demonstrating talent through efficiency. There are no arguments against employing a structure like that except the one we never speak aloud:

"If we made the govt efficient, and we created a scenario where crony capitalists couldn't feed off it like a giant golden teat, we'd have 30% real unemplyment and catastrophic collapse in GDP."

That's another way of saying our govt is a giant cash redistribution machine, on one hand delivering for well-heeled corporate interests, on the other, providing a sort of "job welfare" for millions of inefficient workers. If that's the case, and it seems it is, suggestions we're following Old Rome's sled path are more than hysterical ravings.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

There is no argument against the proposition that govt should be efficient.

In general, no one disagrees. But when this means, e.g., closing a military base in Pennsylvania, you can be sure that Pennsylvania's Senators and Congressmen will do what they can to keep the spending in the state. If this weren't what Pennsylvanians want, they wouldn't do it.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I don't expect a profit. I expect efficiency. There is no argument against the proposition that govt should be efficient. It should count everyone for the cheapest cost imaginable. And it should hire the best quality of worker it can find at the best price, with no other considerations. And if it hires badly, it should be able to fire them as quickly as you could fire someone in your employ. Is that too much to ask?

It's no mystery why many forms of government employment involve both for-cause employment and unionization, because people want their government to be humane and fair even when private employers aren't. But it is a mystery to me at least how these things persist into the modern era, when every commenter at the bottom of every news article on the Internet suggests firing the public employee who is the subject of the article. In other words, I'm surprised that in the era of "that guy should be fired" the proponents of such firing lack the attention span to change the rules to even make it possible.

BTW, after six years in this job I've only once seen a complaint against an employee that DIDN'T put "he should be fired" in the section at the bottom saying "Proposed Solution" or whatever. And that's only because in that case the complainant was a decent human being and also a public employee, so her "proposed solution" was that the employee be counseled and instructed to discontinue the behavior to which she was objecting. I was so shocked I nearly dropped my government-issued mug of coffee.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch

my government-issued mug of coffee

Unclear why the government needs to issue you with mugs or coffee, when the private markets in such things work pretty well.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

So, fuck me, I was talking tonight with some non-lawyers and trying to explain Stevens, and how it is not about whether depicting animal cruelty is good or bad. How the Court agreed - socalled liberals and convervatives eight to one - and how the MSM portrayal of these issues as being split down this made-up, artificial construct of a two-dimensional line is bullshit. And I failed. Most non-lawyers don't grasp the Constitutional issues - it is a legislative approach to them. Animal cruelty bad, possibility that government prosecutes bullfighting videos remote.

I was reminded of when I was on the Student Senate at U.C. Berkeley and voted against every bill that gave tuition fee money to student groups that espoused any political beliefs. I thought that a state school could not constitutionally use mandatory fees to fund a group that the payor of that fee disagreed with. I lost dozens of votes 28-1, 26-1, etc.

Six years later, the California Supreme Court agreed with me and ruled that, although they could charge the fee, anyone had to be given a refund who asked for it. Smith v. Regents of the University of California, 4 Cal.4th 843 (1993).

Then the lower court in Smith 2 on remand ruled that the educational value of the Student Senate outweighs the burden on free speech and that the Regents could continue to use mandatory fees to support the Senate without a refund or similar procedure. Smith v. Regents, 56 Cal.App.4th 979 (1997) (Smith II) (I am not sure at 2:00 a.m. how they could do this, and need to investigate.)

And the U.S. Supes resolved it in Board of Regents of Univ. of Wis. System v. Southworth, 529 U.S. 217 (2000), stating "[t]he University may sustain the extracurricular dimensions of its programs by using mandatory student fees with viewpoint neutrality as the operational principle."

Which is fine in the abstract, but at Cal in 1987 the Student Senate would fund an honoraria for Cesar Chavez, but not for [insert conservative here]. Same thing with student groups - La Raza funded, Federalist Society not. In other words, our Senate funding process was not viewpoint neutral.

So although I may not have won on all my points, I was found to be fundamentally correct in my objectiions by both the Cal Supes and the U.S. Supes, but not a single other Senator (of 30) agreed (or was willing to admit they agreed) with my absolutely fucking correct position. Nor would they defend the First Amendmentof theior constituents because they viewed everything through the prism of "doing the right thing." These people suck, cannot be trusted, and deserve no deference. Stevens today said that, without saying it.

Depictions of animal Rrghts, hate speech, restrictions on depictions of Mohammad, blasphemy, Nazis, teenagers on Facebook "bullying" others, etc. They are all slippery slopes, and don't let the fact that 29 out of 30 disagree change your opinion. Those 29 were assholes. I was the only righteous, correct elected Senator, and I ran as a joke candidate - "Calvin and Hobbes." I only wish I had all their e-mail addresses to ask them if they are embarrassed and chastised.

P.S. Go Liberal Democrats in May!

Did you do Student Senate before or after you got into doing D&D tournaments?