Category: Politics and Government

Police Resignations

Scott came across a video where some cop in Florida rips into this lady who drive for about a mile after he put his lights on — along a dark, uninhabited road — to stop at what looked like a petrol station. It was odd because I had an uncle who worked in law enforcement and I distinctly remember him saying to get somewhere well lit and around people before pulling over. Put on your hazard lights, drive slower … but get somewhere in public. And visibility helps the cop too — they can see that the blob in your hand is just your purse.

The video had some text at the bottom that said the deputy involved had resigned … but that could mean he resigned before the department was able to investigate the incident, got a job elsewhere, and is out there right now hassling some other person who simply made the prudent decision to stop their car in a safer spot.

Which made me think about some of the Township meeting — when someone from the fire department or police department resigns? They don’t just say “hey, I’m not gonna be working after Friday” and that’s it. They submit a resignation. The resignation is then submitted at the Trustee meeting — and the Trustees vote to accept the resignation. It seems like we could better unsure officers are held accountable for their actions by not accepting resignations if there is any outstanding complaint against the individual tendering their resignation. Wait for the complaint to be resolved — maybe it was nothing and they can resign. Maybe it bears an investigation. But there’s no leaving to avoid accountability.

Arguing with the science

A week or so ago, I came across an article referencing a book about how climate impact will be inequitable — and, while reading the article, I rather disagreed with some of their assumptions. I later encountered an online discussion about the article — which included, among a few other dissenters, an admonishment not to “argue with the science”. Problem, there, is arguing with the science is the whole point of the scientific method. The point of peer-review publications. And, really, modeling socio-economic impact of climate change (or even modeling climate change itself) isn’t a science like modeling gravity or radioactive decay. These kind of models usually involve a lot of possible outcomes with associated probabilities. And ‘argue with the science’ I will!

Certainly, some of the rich will move out first. You can air condition your house and car into being habitable. Companies can set up valet services for everything. But your chosen location is becoming very limiting – no outdoor concerts, no outdoor sports games. You can make it habitable, but you could also spend some money, live elsewhere, and have oh so many more options. Most likely you’d see an increase in second homes – Arizona for the winter and a place up north for summers. Which might not show up as ‘migration’ depending on which they use as their ‘permanent’ address.

People with fewer resources, though, face obstacles to moving. Just changing jobs is challenging. It’s one thing to transfer offices in a large company or be a remote employee who can live anywhere. But can a cashier at Walmart ask their manager to get transferred from Phoenix to Boston? What about employees of smaller businesses that don’t have a more northern location? Going a few weeks without pay on top of moving expense (that rental deposit is a huge one – I’ve known many people stuck in a crappy apartment because they have to save the deposit to move. Sure you get your previous deposit back, but that takes weeks)? Really makes me question the reality of mass migration of poor people.

OHM v/s Survey Results – Word Clouds

I was extremely suspect when the term ‘bucolic’ made it to the tag cloud presented by OHM — it’s a great word, sure. But with a thousand responses … I highly doubt a significant number of people used the term (five did, based on the raw survey results). So I generated a few word clouds of my own for comparison. This is the image presented in the Township meeting — now the idea of a word cloud is that the size of the word increases related to the frequency in which the word occurs.

Compared to the tag cloud generated by separating responses on commas — not great because some people space-delimited their three words.

And separating on word boundaries — also not great because some people’s “words” were actually phrases, but it gets those who space delimited their three words.

And separating on word boundaries and aligning similar-meaning words (e.g. farm, farms, farmland => farm) which becomes a little subjective — does “wooded” and “trees” mean the same thing? Maybe and maybe not. Same with ‘country’ and ‘countryside’ … or even the difference between ‘farm’ and ‘agriculture’.

Barr, Trump, and Defense Strategy

Watching the recordings of Barr’s testimony to the January 6th Select Committee I couldn’t help but think “Barr is an attorney” — I’d encountered him as the General Counsel of the company when I worked at GTE. I knew him as our attorney that led an effort to deregulate the telephone industry — but a bit of research let me to understand he was also an attorney who has been involved in a major political deal-e-o before (the Iran-Contras affair).

So when I hear Barr saying Trump was ‘detached from reality’ and that his election conspiracy theory was “silly” and “nonsense” … I hear someone setting up a defense strategy for Trump: the Tucker Carlson defense — no reasonable person would have believed these statements to be true. “I didn’t know  wasn’t true” is not considered a valid defense when you’ve been told by dozens of well-informed people — willful ignorance doesn’t remove culpability. Now, I don’t know that Trump will open the door Barr constructed. Detached from reality isn’t a good slogan for campaigning. And going the Carlson route would mean admitting not only that he lost in a completely fair election but also that he continued to bilk his supporters for millions of dollars by promoting his claim to the contrary.

Making Statistics Work for You

The local newspaper had a poll (in a heavily Republican area) asking if readers support gun control — now they didn’t define “gun control”, so it’s possible some individuals said “no” because they envisioned something unreasonably restrictive or some said “yes” because they think ‘gun control’ includes arming teachers in classrooms or something. Based on the way they elected to bucket the data, there’s no clear “winner”.

But looking at it as just ‘yes’ or ‘no’ — almost 80% of the readers said “yes”

They could break it out by party affiliation and show that only 10% of self-identified Democrats said they don’t support gun control where 28% of self-identified independents and 24% of self-identified Republicans don’t support gun control.

But any of these charts clearly show that a significant majority supports some type of gun control.

Roe v Performance Art

Since the leaked draft overturning Roe v Wade was released, I’ve encountered a number of forums in which women are advocating we all delete any menstruation tracking apps. This seems, to me, like performance art meant as protest. Not an effective solution to the stated problem.

I get the point — people don’t want their data tracked in a place where the state can readily compel production of records. If they have reasonable suspicion that an abortion took place, they can get a warrant for your data. But deleting the app from your phone — that doesn’t actually delete the data on the cloud hosting provider’s side. Deleting the app has the same impact as ceasing to enter new data. Except you’ve inconvenienced yourself by losing access to your old data. Check if an account can be deleted — and learn what the details of ‘delete’ actually mean. In many cases, ‘delete’ means disable and then purge after some delta time elapses. What about backups? For how long would the company be able to produce data if they really needed to?

But before going to extremes to actually delete data, consider if the alternatives are actually any “safer” by your definition. If I were tracking my period on a little paper calendar in my purse or one pinned to the cork board in the rec room? They may get a warrant and seize my paper calendar too. And, really, you could continue to enter “periods” even if they’re not happening. There’s usually a field for ‘notes’ and you could put something in like ‘really painful cramping’ or ‘so many hot flashes’ whenever you actually mean “yeah, this one didn’t happen” — which would make the data the government is able to gather rather meaningless.

On Five Dollar Gas

This is the third or fourth time in the last decade that I’ve been seeing news reports about “5 dollar gas” or, more generally, astronomical rise in petroleum prices. How much it costs to fill a tank, how much a gallon costs, how this impacts family budgets.

Oddly, I’ve never seen any reporting discuss ways to minimize the impact that higher gasoline prices have. Any help at all, from the trivial (make sure your tires are well inflated, drive at less congested times to avoid idling in traffic, plan excursions so you’re not making a trip “into town” for different errands three days in a row) to the expensive (buy a more fuel efficient car). There’s nothing.

This is how the free market works — something becomes expensive, you need to consider other options. Buying an electric car isn’t cheap — expensive enough that it’s not an option for some people. But driving an electric car is a way to minimize the direct impact fuel prices have on you. At an enterprise level, electric trucks can reduce the indirect impact of fuel prices.

The HHGTTG Approach to Cloture

In 1975, the Senate adopted a rule change that makes me think of the beginning of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A chap’s house is scheduled for demolition for “progress” — a new motorway. He lays down in front of the bulldozer to prevent his house from being smashed to bits, but his neighbor wants to hop over to the pub. So they explain to the crew manager that the chap could spend the day laying in front of the bulldozer; and, as such, it should be taken that he is laying in front of the thing even if he’s not. In the book, the answer is immaterial since the entire planet is slated for destruction so an interstellar motorway can be put in … and the discussion is meant to be fascicle regardless.

A filibuster isn’t really a legal construct — debate in the Senate could continue until everyone has had their say. That’s a process intentionally designed to slow legislation — to prevent knee-jerk responses to immediate situations. Using your ability to keep “debating” the bill to stall (or table) a bill is known as filibustering. Since 1917, Senate Rule 22 defines a “shut up and let’s vote” process (cloture) that closes debate on a bill and moves it to vote. It takes more people to invoke cloture than it does to pass a bill — 67 votes in 1917, 60 votes since 1975 — meaning the minority party potentially could stall legislation until the majority party gives up on it. Unfortunately, another change adopted in 1975 — the HHGTTG one — seems to operate on the idea that … just because you could continue debating a bill for a month means that you are doing it. And, as such, you don’t really need to stand and talk. With the rule change, the minority party could require a 3/5 majority to pass any legislation by requiring a cloture vote.

Prolonging debate on a bill requires a lot of dedication — and one dude isn’t going to be particularly effective in doing so. How long can one person actually speak from the floor? Strom Thurman holds the record at just over 24 hours with a soliloquy in opposition of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But it wasn’t just Thurman — a whole group of Senators combined to prolong debate for sixty days. Eventually there were 67 votes to close debate (and the law passed).

Since 1975, the Senate’s approach to cloture (a.k.a. the filibuster) uses HHGTTG’s bulldozer reasoning — someone could stand on the Senate floor and talk for a long time. We should all assume they are talking on the Senate floor for an infinite period of time, thus a 3/5 majority is required to close debate and bring the bill to vote.

I think the Democrats today are making a massive tactical / branding mistake — instead of trying to “reform” or “eliminate” the filibuster, they should simply eliminate the HHGTTG component whilst pointing out how silly the idea is. If you want to marshal a group of Senators to keep talking for sixty days, have at it. But you’ve got to actually talk for sixty days. Sure, read every state’s voting laws. Read every state’s laws that might almost kinda be related to voting laws — ID is required, so lets read all about how to get a drivers or non-drivers ID in each state. Read research papers about voting rights. Read speculative information about how online voting could be implemented. Read the entirety of cases from states where courts have ruled on gerrymandered districts. But you cannot just say “I would prolong debate on this forever, so bring a cloture motion to stop me now” and be done with it.

While the Democrats had enough of a majority in 1975-1979 to close debate, Congress has been more evenly split in the subsequent decades. And the resulting public impression of Congress as virtual filibusters are used to prevent legislation from coming to vote is that nothing gets done. Blame which is assigned to the majority party — you’ve got enough votes to pass legislation, why aren’t you passing legislation?!? Having video of the minority party droning on to prevent the legislation from coming to a vote could create a vastly different perception of the obstruction.

Session Years Republicans Democrats Other
94 1975-1977 37 61 2
95 1977-1979 38 61 1
96 1979-1981 41 58 1
97 1981-1983 46 53 1
98 1983-1985 55 45 0
99 1985-1987 53 47 0
100 1987-1989 45 55 0
101 1989-1991 45 55 0
102 1991-1993 44 56 0
103 1993-1995 43 57 0
104 1995-1997 52 48 0
105 1997-1999 55 45 0
106 1999-2001 55 45 0
107 2001-2003 50 48 2
108 2003-2005 51 48 1
109 2005-2007 55 44 1
110 2007-2009 49 49 2
111 2009-2011 41 57 2
112 2011-2013 47 51 2
113 2013-2015 45 53 2
114 2015-2017 54 44 2
115 2017-2019 51 47 2
116 2019-2021 53 45 2
117 2021-2023 50 48 2