Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Spoken like a truly clueless lawyer.

Life involves risk. It involves bad things, abuses, and people fighting back against abuses, and it's a constant push and pull.

Some shithead saying, "Let's pass a law..." is the autistic flag waver channeling traffic down that road to hell paved with good intentions.

You cannot effectively bar people from fucking via policy. All this does is put people in horrible situations. If a person in power is forcing himself on others, those others have avenues to make complaints. They can bring down the careers of such abusive people, as we're seeing every day (and get nice settlements in the process). Having some twit lawyer craft a zero tolerance rule precluding people from fucking it is both embarrassing and disheartening. And it did no favors for Katie Hill, who does not deserve to lose her job because her bitter spouse ratfucked her with revenge porn.

Every company I've ever worked for has had a policy against superiors and subordinates having a relationship. Why is this any different? The rule (and it's a rule, not a law) doesn't prevent such relationships (let alone preclude people from fucking), as everyone knows and this case shows, but it shifts the incentives to deter the subordinate from exploiting the work relationship in the personal relationship, which seems like a good thing. Just because there's a rule doesn't mean that Katie Hill was going to lose her seat,* and it seems to me much more likely that she quit because of the revenge porn, which the ethics rule had nothing to do with.

* I.e., to my understanding the rule doesn't impose any particularly penalty for violations.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Every company I've ever worked for has had a policy against superiors and subordinates having a relationship. Why is this any different?

Why is every company you've worked for an example of how things ought to be done?

The rule (and it's a rule, not a law) doesn't prevent such relationships (let alone preclude people from fucking), as everyone knows and this case shows, but it shifts the incentives to deter the subordinate from exploiting the work relationship in the personal relationship, which seems like a good thing.

Unless you're Katie Hill, in which case it becomes the authority on which "news" websites trafficking in revenge porn can claim there's been an ethics violation.

Just because there's a rule doesn't mean that Katie Hill was going to lose her seat,* and it seems to me much more likely that she quit because of the revenge porn, which the ethics rule had nothing to do with.

But for the ethics violation, the allegation against her would be that she engaged in a consensual relationship with two other people. It would seem to me that sort of thing is arguably... noncontroversial? No one's business?

Adults need no intervention on questions of who they may or may not fuck beyond the laws barring people from forcing it upon subordinates and allowing victims to sue for damages and lawyers' fees. This "ethics rule" is an example of the Death of Common Sense.

* I.e., to my understanding the rule doesn't impose any particularly penalty for violations.

Immaterial. It's the authority by which she's being forced out for nothing. (Well, except the tat, which is quite questionable.)

If Trump is an authoritarian driving us to fascism as the paranoids claim, chances are I'll be in the gulag quickly. But as I oddly do know a number of people near him, it's unlikely but also possible I could also find myself offering some policy prescriptions. And if that odd scenario were to occur, mine might by offered on a postcard (to return our little back and forth to your first comment):

Any man who argues "We should pass a rule..." in immediate response to an issue shall be exiled to Bouvet. Or shot. Em can choose.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Why is every company you've worked for an example of how things ought to be.

ty has been fired by entities in every walk, gov, Corp, big small. If we can take an accounting of all the places that have fired ty I think we can agree he can extrapolate rules across the board? I mean if we can discount dismissing his views due to the grounds for all the dismissals?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

ty has been fired by entities in every walk, gov, Corp, big small. If we can take an accounting of all the places that have fired ty I think we can agree he can extrapolate rules across the board? I mean if we can discount dismissing his views due to the grounds for all the dismissals?

I'd certainly not want to argue his review with him. "Oh, for fuck's sake already... Here's a blank check. Fill in your bonus. Just stop telling me why the review was wrong. You're also part-- no... managing partner!

...Now please excuse me while I open the window and dive onto that bus 30 stories below."

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Want some fun? Go on youtube and find Don Rickels and Ozzy on Letterman.

I can't find it. Link?

Rickles was a God. Cat had mad speed. One of the few who could still fire off edgy barbs into his dotage. Rodney also held onto it for a long time, but his last five or so years were pitiful. Rickles was tight to a year or two before he died.

Peaky Blinders is using old Sabbath tunes in the soundtrack. Perfect fit. Deep cuts, too - from the first record. If you're not watching that show, you need to do so.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You cannot effectively bar people from fucking via policy.

No one expects that you can. People will still fuck. This situation aside, it will largely only come up when there's a problem. The rule simplifies the response, defaulting to the less powerful person is the victim and the more powerful person could have made the choice to avoid the situation.

All this does is put people in horrible situations.

Nah. The horrible situation is when your congresscritter boss forced you to blow him but you can't tell anyone about it because he's a powerful committee chair who will not be held accountable. We have a long history of that happening. It's certainly happening right now.

That empathy thing gets you every time. You can imagine being wrongly accused but not being victimized.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Dude used to write for Gawker. He's upped his game for the Guardian:

When something has been done one way for many years, and when doing things that way has made a certain group of people fat and happy, it is natural that that group of people will want to continue doing things that way. It is also natural that the much larger group of people who have been hungry and neglected for all those years as a result of the way things have been done will want to do something different. Eventually, the larger group, full of righteous anger, will win. But the fat and happy class will cling tightly to what they have for as long as their swollen fingers can hold on. This is essentially what’s happening within the Democratic party right now. The weak grip of the old guard is being broken, one finger at a time.

. . .

Four decades of growing inequality and a class war by the rich that has been too successful for its own good have pushed Americans toward political positions that would have been considered fringe back in the carefree 1990s. The extremities have waded into the mainstream. You don’t need to be a genius to understand this basic fact...

. . .

People’s patience with the status quo has worn away. Americans themselves understand this instinctively. Political polls confirm it. Donald Trump revels in it. The only ones who don’t seem to grasp it are the wizened establishment figures of the Democratic party, who are making calculations based on a picture of the world that no longer exists.

The last thing that the centrist Democratic party establishment, a power structure still rooted in the triangulating ideas of the Clinton era, wants are policies suited to our current reality, because the radicalism of such policies would necessarily place the old guard in the trash, at last. And so the old guard must desperately pine for a savior. And we all must endure months of pathetic casting about for a nonexistent Centrist Jesus to rescue the Clinton wing of the party from its inevitable fate. It is like watching a fish fruitlessly trying to flop out of a bucket before it suffocates.

[T]here are the also-ran candidates at the back of the current pack, who are eyed like meat by wealthy donors musing over whether they can be effective Trojan horses for Goldman Sachs. Is Mayor Pete clean-cut enough? Can Klobuchar knife Warren while maintaining a sweet midwestern grin? The desire for some alternative to leftism is so powerful that even Michael Bennet, a man with no demonstrated constituency and the charisma of a cardboard box, is still lurching along, serving no purpose except to pipe up in off-hour cable interviews about how impractical Medicare for All is.

. . .

The core concern of those who consider themselves “moderate Democrats” is not really that Trump might win – it is that Warren or Sanders might win. This is a political faction that finds itself caught between its aesthetic distaste for Trump’s social policies and its distaste for wealth taxes, public healthcare, and other policies contrary to their ambition to afford that lake house.

For decades, the Democratic party has been effectively controlled by the sort of people who work at an investment bank but also support gay marriage (at least when the polls say that it’s safe to do so). These people are almost as responsible as Republicans for our current political predicament. Even if they didn’t start the war on terror or the war on the poor, they utterly failed to stop them. The time has come to pay up for those mistakes.

. . .

[T]hey can suck it up, make peace with the leftists, and pay more taxes, like responsible humans. Or they can take the mask off and vote for Trump. Either way, their disappointing time atop the Democratic party is over.

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...rist-candidate

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Why is every company you've worked for an example of how things ought to be done?

I didn't say they were, but since it's a pretty common practice, it suggests that Adder is not "clueless."

Unless you're Katie Hill, in which case it becomes the authority on which "news" websites trafficking in revenge porn can claim there's been an ethics violation.

There was an ethics violation. But did that really matter? In your world, are there a lot of people looking specifically for revenge porn involving ethics violations?

But for the ethics violation, the allegation against her would be that she engaged in a consensual relationship with two other people. It would seem to me that sort of thing is arguably... noncontroversial? No one's business?

Isn't the allegation that she abused her authority by sleeping with a subordinate? Or when you say "but for the ethics violation," do you mean "If we assume there's no problem when a manager gets involved with someone working for him or her"?

Adults need no intervention on questions of who they may or may not fuck beyond the laws barring people from forcing it upon subordinates and allowing victims to sue for damages and lawyers' fees. This "ethics rule" is an example of the Death of Common Sense.

Isn't this the "forcing it upon subordinates" thing?



Immaterial. It's the authority by which she's being forced out for nothing. (Well, except the tat, which is quite questionable.)

If Trump is an authoritarian driving us to fascism as the paranoids claim, chances are I'll be in the gulag quickly. But as I oddly do know a number of people near him, it's unlikely but also possible I could also find myself offering some policy prescriptions. And if that odd scenario were to occur, mine might by offered on a postcard (to return our little back and forth to your first comment):

Any man who argues "We should pass a rule..." in immediate response to an issue shall be exiled to Bouvet. Or shot. Em can choose.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Dude used to write for Gawker. He's upped his game for the Guardian:

When something has been done one way for many years, and when doing things that way has made a certain group of people fat and happy, it is natural that that group of people will want to continue doing things that way. It is also natural that the much larger group of people who have been hungry and neglected for all those years as a result of the way things have been done will want to do something different. Eventually, the larger group, full of righteous anger, will win. But the fat and happy class will cling tightly to what they have for as long as their swollen fingers can hold on. This is essentially what’s happening within the Democratic party right now. The weak grip of the old guard is being broken, one finger at a time.

. . .

Four decades of growing inequality and a class war by the rich that has been too successful for its own good have pushed Americans toward political positions that would have been considered fringe back in the carefree 1990s. The extremities have waded into the mainstream. You don’t need to be a genius to understand this basic fact...

. . .

People’s patience with the status quo has worn away. Americans themselves understand this instinctively. Political polls confirm it. Donald Trump revels in it. The only ones who don’t seem to grasp it are the wizened establishment figures of the Democratic party, who are making calculations based on a picture of the world that no longer exists.

The last thing that the centrist Democratic party establishment, a power structure still rooted in the triangulating ideas of the Clinton era, wants are policies suited to our current reality, because the radicalism of such policies would necessarily place the old guard in the trash, at last. And so the old guard must desperately pine for a savior. And we all must endure months of pathetic casting about for a nonexistent Centrist Jesus to rescue the Clinton wing of the party from its inevitable fate. It is like watching a fish fruitlessly trying to flop out of a bucket before it suffocates.

[T]here are the also-ran candidates at the back of the current pack, who are eyed like meat by wealthy donors musing over whether they can be effective Trojan horses for Goldman Sachs. Is Mayor Pete clean-cut enough? Can Klobuchar knife Warren while maintaining a sweet midwestern grin? The desire for some alternative to leftism is so powerful that even Michael Bennet, a man with no demonstrated constituency and the charisma of a cardboard box, is still lurching along, serving no purpose except to pipe up in off-hour cable interviews about how impractical Medicare for All is.

. . .

The core concern of those who consider themselves “moderate Democrats” is not really that Trump might win – it is that Warren or Sanders might win. This is a political faction that finds itself caught between its aesthetic distaste for Trump’s social policies and its distaste for wealth taxes, public healthcare, and other policies contrary to their ambition to afford that lake house.

For decades, the Democratic party has been effectively controlled by the sort of people who work at an investment bank but also support gay marriage (at least when the polls say that it’s safe to do so). These people are almost as responsible as Republicans for our current political predicament. Even if they didn’t start the war on terror or the war on the poor, they utterly failed to stop them. The time has come to pay up for those mistakes.

. . .

[T]hey can suck it up, make peace with the leftists, and pay more taxes, like responsible humans. Or they can take the mask off and vote for Trump. Either way, their disappointing time atop the Democratic party is over.

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...rist-candidate

God grant me the courage to go after the party that's not in power as fiercely as this dude does.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

I didn't say they were, but since it's a pretty common practice, it suggests that Adder is not "clueless."

Fair enough.

There was an ethics violation. But did that really matter? In your world, are there a lot of people looking specifically for revenge porn involving ethics violations?

In the actual world, if there's no ethics violation, Hill can argue, "This is my private life," and she'd get some sympathy. Smoking weed is not a crime in CA, and having a three person relationship is not a crime anywhere. But because there's a technical violation, a grotesque use of revenge porn (illegal in some states, btw) is now an ethics issue. A non-story, a wretched hit job by a psycho ex, is now elevated to a credible allegation of official impropriety.

Isn't the allegation that she abused her authority by sleeping with a subordinate? Or when you say "but for the ethics violation," do you mean "If we assume there's no problem when a manager gets involved with someone working for him or her"?

There is no allegation that she abused her authority. She clearly did not. The people in these relationships have not asserted that at all, even now, when they've been outed and have nothing to lose.

The standard that you and Adder advocate - that a relationship between a boss and co-worker should be assumed coercive until proven otherwise - treats adults like infants. These people are all adults. We have laws on the books that allow subordinates to sue sue bosses when pressured for sex. We do not need a zero tolerance policy that turns a 24 year old staffer into a child, unable to think for herself. And that's exactly what this ethics rule does. It assumes an adult fucking her boss (and her boss's husband) is presumed to be doing so under pressure. How fucking patronizing is that?

When you're 24, you're long into adulthood. You're assumed to have made choices for yourself unless that's proven otherwise, not the other way around.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

God grant me the courage to go after the party that's not in power as fiercely as this dude does.

Are the "Democrats" discussed by Nolan in that article really Democrats? I'd say he's firecely attacking a group of people who are probably going to vote for Trump if Bernie or Warren gets the nomination. How Democratic is that?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

In the actual world, if there's no ethics violation, Hill can argue, "This is my private life," and she'd get some sympathy. Smoking weed is not a crime in CA, and having a three person relationship is not a crime anywhere. But because there's a technical violation, a grotesque use of revenge porn (illegal in some states, btw) is now an ethics issue. A non-story, a wretched hit job by a psycho ex, is now elevated to a credible allegation of official impropriety.

Again, so what? IMO, expressed multiple times now, she quit because there was no end in sight to the revenge porn, not because of the ethics issue.

There is no allegation that she abused her authority. She clearly did not. The people in these relationships have not asserted that at all, even now, when they've been outed and have nothing to lose.

The standard that you and Adder advocate - that a relationship between a boss and co-worker should be assumed coercive until proven otherwise - treats adults like infants. These people are all adults. We have laws on the books that allow subordinates to sue sue bosses when pressured for sex.

As a technical matter, I do not believe those laws apply to Congress, so all you have here is that ethics rule. I also believe that a relationship between a boss and a co-worker should be assumed coercive until proven otherwise, because it's usually at least somewhat true.

We do not need a zero tolerance policy that turns a 24 year old staffer into a child, unable to think for herself. And that's exactly what this ethics rule does. It assumes an adult fucking her boss (and her boss's husband) is presumed to be doing so under pressure. How fucking patronizing is that?

I don't think any of that is true. If there were no revenge porn, just an allegation by the malevolent ex that she had an affair with a staffer, that could have been investigated by the Ethics Committee which could have heard from the staffer and decided that there was no coercion or real problem. Hill quit before that happened.

When you're 24, you're long into adulthood. You're assumed to have made choices for yourself unless that's proven otherwise, not the other way around.

The ethics question is about Hill's choices, not the staffers.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Are the "Democrats" discussed by Nolan in that article really Democrats? I'd say he's firecely attacking a group of people who are probably going to vote for Trump if Bernie or Warren gets the nomination. How Democratic is that?

The people he's attacking essentially see things the way TM does, based on what he's said here about Biden. He doesn't love Biden, but fears that there are voters who will vote for Biden and not for someone more progressive like Warren or Sanders, and fears that those voters will be dispositive in key states.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Again, so what? IMO, expressed multiple times now, she quit because there was no end in sight to the revenge porn, not because of the ethics issue.

Lots of high profile people have been victims of revenge porn. The difference here is hers was married with an allegation that she violated some "ethics rule."

As a technical matter, I do not believe those laws apply to Congress, so all you have here is that ethics rule. I also believe that a relationship between a boss and a co-worker should be assumed coercive until proven otherwise, because it's usually at least somewhat true.

I was referring to the ethics rule.

I don't think any of that is true. If there were no revenge porn, just an allegation by the malevolent ex that she had an affair with a staffer, that could have been investigated by the Ethics Committee which could have heard from the staffer and decided that there was no coercion or real problem. Hill quit before that happened.

The ethics rule is a moronic zero tolerance policy (using moronic there seems redundant, but it seems some people actually think zero tolerance policies make sense). The only time an investigation should be triggered is when the staffer complains that she's been victimized.

The ethics question is about Hill's choices, not the staffers.

Not in a consensual relationship such as this one. Hill and the staffers she fucked both made the same choice there - to engage in a consensual relationship, as adults do.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Again, so what? IMO, expressed multiple times now, she quit because there was no end in sight to the revenge porn, not because of the ethics issue.

I saw a rumor that a GOP operative claimed to have 700 images.