Whereof One Can Speak 🇺🇦

Nothing special, one post at a time since 2012

At Least He Can Be Entertaining Sometimes

Posted on by

During an interview with Fox “News”, the Orange Menace gave this poignant account of his recent visit to New York City:

When I went to the courthouse, which is also a prison in a sense, they signed me in, and I’ll tell you, people were crying,” [he]  told Carlson. “People that work there, professionally work there, that have no problems putting in murderers, and they see everybody. It’s a tough, tough place, and they were crying. They were actually crying. They said, ‘I’m sorry.’ They said, ‘2024, sir. 2024.’ And tears were pouring down their eyes.

As always, people approach him, often burly tough guys with tears in their eyes, call him “sir” and commiserate with him about how he just can’t get a break.

It’s total bullshit, of course. The people he dealt with at the courthouse were Secret Service, the district attorney’s staff, whoever booked him and whoever was in the courtroom when he was arraigned. Some of them might shed a tear if a case involved a little kid or a small, furry animal. Otherwise it’s just another day at the office.

But the creep can sure tell a tall tale.

How Right Wing Lawyers Get Guaranteed “Justice”

Posted on by

If you want to start a lawsuit in a federal court, you file a complaint with the clerk of the court. It will cost you $350. But what if you want your case to be handled by a sympathetic judge? That can be more complicated. This is what the federal courts website says:

Judge assignment methods vary. The basic considerations in making assignments are to assure equitable distribution of caseloads and avoid judge shopping.

Shopping for a judge? That means trying to get your case in front of the judge or judges you want.

By statute, the chief judge of each district court has the responsibility to enforce the court’s rules and orders on case assignments. Each court has a written plan or system for assigning cases. The majority of courts use some variation of a random drawing. One simple method is to rotate the names of available judges. At times judges having special expertise can be assigned cases by type…. Sometimes cases may be assigned based on geographical considerations. 

But if you want to avoid those complications and be almost 100% certain of winning your case, there’s an easy way. From Stephen Vladek’s “Don’t Let Republican Judge Shoppers Thwart the Will of Voters” for the New York Times:

For the 26th time in two years, Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, recently filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging a Biden administration policy. The suit, which seeks to wipe out a new Labor Department rule…, wasn’t filed in Austin, the state capital, or in Dallas, where the Labor Department’s regional offices are, or anywhere else with a logical connection to the dispute.

It was filed in Amarillo. Why Amarillo? By filing there, Mr. Paxton had a 100 percent chance of having the case assigned to Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk — appointed to the bench by President [Orange Menace] in 2019 and a former deputy general counsel to the First Liberty Institute, which frequently litigates religious liberty cases before the Supreme Court.

Judge Kacsmaryk is the Republican proponent of forced birth who recently ruled that no American woman should be allowed to end an early unwanted pregnancy by taking a pill. The group that filed the lawsuit wanted him to hear their case so they filed it in Amarillo, Texas, where Kacsmaryk is the only federal judge. They knew he’d be on their side, but they also knew something else. He would issue a nationwide injunction, not one limited to the panhandle of Texas, which he’s responsible for.

Mr. Vladeck explains why a plaintiff like the ironically-named “Alliance Defending Freedom” was able to get away with this assault on women’s freedom:

For decades, Congress has split up many of the 94 federal district courts into smaller divisions and has left it to each district court to decide how to divvy up cases among its divisions. Texas’ federal courts, in turn, have distributed their judges unevenly. Of the 27 divisions in Texas’ four district courts, nine have a single judge; 10 others have only two.

Although other states require judges to move around from time to time to avoid judge shopping, Texas doesn’t. Thus, any new suit filed in Amarillo is sure to go to Judge Kacsmaryk, any new suit filed in Wichita Falls goes to Judge Reed O’Connor, and any new suit filed in Victoria goes to Judge Drew Tipton.

O’Connor is the Orange Menace-appointed clown who ruled that the entire Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional in 2018 and most recently ruled “against a part of the law that promises free preventive services to every American who has private health insurance” (Washington Post). Tipton is the Orange Menace-appointed clown who decided Biden couldn’t issue a 100-day moratorium on deportations and more recently “threw out a Department of Homeland Security policy that limits who immigration authorities can arrest and deport” (NPR).

These rulings are sometimes overturned, either by the Republican-heavy 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, or the Republican-heavy Supreme Court in Washington, but not often enough. Even when they’re eventually overturned, they affect people’s lives in the meantime. (Did you know that the last time there were more Democrats than Republicans on the Supreme Court was in August 1969, before we landed on the moon?)

Can something be done to end this blatant right-wing manipulation of the federal courts? In theory, Congress could manage the situation. But how likely is it that Republicans in Congress would agree to prohibit this kind of judge shopping that serves their political interests so well?

Aside from electing more Democrats, one thing we might do is convince a certain Your Honor to do something honorable. We can remind her that “the basic considerations in making [judicial] assignments are to assure equitable distribution of caseloads and avoid judge shopping”.

The federal court system is geographically divided into 12 circuits. The 5th Circuit handles cases filed in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The chief judge of the 5th Circuit is Priscilla Richman. Her duties include the the assignment of judges and the control of court calendars. If she chose to, she could make sure that cases like the ones Kacsmaryk, O’Connor and Tipton got, which had no good reasons to be filed in Amarillo, Witchita Falls or Victoria, Texas — aside from blatant judge shopping — were randomly assigned to one of the many judges in her circuit.

Untitled

Her mailing address is:

Chief Judge Priscilla Richman
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
600 Camp Street
New Orleans, LA 70130

Just like gerrymandering, which allows politicians to choose their voters, judge shopping allows lawyers to choose their judges. It’s not how the system is supposed to work. Judge Richman should be reminded of that (yeah, she’s another Republican, but at least she wasn’t appointed by the Orange Menace).

PS: For more on this issue, see “How Right Wing Judges in Texas Are Erasing Americans’ Rights Everywhere” by Michael Hiltzik for the Los Angeles Times.

They Call It “Polarization”

Posted on by

During the pandemic, before Biden was elected, the unemployment rate for Whites peaked at 14%, while the rate for Blacks hit almost 17%. The rate for Whites is now 3.2% (almost the lowest in 50 years) and for Blacks is 5% (the lowest ever recorded). Despite this being the so-called “Information Age”, the overall rate for high school graduates who never went to college is only 4%. [Washington Post, Bureau of Labor Statistics]

Inflation is still high, but trending down. In June 2022, the consumer price index (CPI) reached 9%, meaning prices were 9% higher than in June 2021. As of this February, prices were 6% higher than a year before. The rate would be lower except that “housing costs are a key driver of the inflation figures [and] it typically takes six months for new rent data to be reflected in the CPI. The quirk in how housing cost data are collected contributes to overstating current inflation.” [CNBC] Meanwhile, inflation has been somewhat offset by the growth in wages. “In the 12 months through March, wages increased 4.2%.” [Reuters]

Companies and local governments are beginning to take advantage of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, “the largest package of climate investments in US history”. [Sierra Club]

America is leading the international effort to help Ukraine resist Russian aggression. That’s been made easier by the fact that, after 20 years, we finally stopped fighting a war in Afghanistan.

And a month’s supply of insulin is now only $35 for millions of diabetics. [CNN]

Meanwhile, over on the other side:

Congressional Republicans are threatening to cause a financial crisis by not allowing the government to pay all of its debts. They are also demanding big cuts in spending without being able to agree on which cuts they want (after realizing that they couldn’t get away with cutting Medicare and Social Security, as they’ve wanted to do for years). [NBC News]

Republicans in some states are making it easier for schoolchildren to have jobs by loosening child labor laws. [Vox.com]

A Republican Supreme Court justice and his wife have been receiving lavish travel gifts from a right-wing billionaire for decades, although the justice has failed to report them. [ProPublica]

A Republican judge in Texas issued a nation-wide ban on the most popular way to end an unwanted, early pregnancy, even though the drug in question has been used for 23 years and is safer than Tylenol. In addition to banning its use, he would make it a federal crime to deliver the drug via the US Mail or any other delivery service. [Politico]

Republican legislators expelled two black members of the Tennessee House of Representatives after they interrupted the normal course of business to demand action on gun reform in the wake of the recent mass murder at a school in Nashville. [NPR]

Republican-controlled states, including Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, have instituted statewide rules that require administrators to remove specific books from classrooms and school libraries. [CNN]

Republicans in Florida passed a law intended to prohibit classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity. [NBC News]

Republicans in Kansas now permit a student or their parent to sue a school if they believe they weren’t chosen for a sport because a transgender girl was chosen instead. [Verify]

Yes, America is indeed “polarized” because the Republican Party has become a radical, reactionary enemy of freedom, democracy and good government.

Greg Sargent of The Washington Post recognizes the problem but sees a silver lining:

Red states are sinking deeper into virulent far-right culture-warring — banning books, limiting classroom discussion of race and gender, and prohibiting gender-affirming care for transgender youth. [Republican] legislatures are also finding onerous ways to use power to tamp down on the unexpectedly ferocious dissent their culture war has unleashed among numerical minorities, largely concentrated in cities and suburbs in red states.

As analyst Ron Brownstein argues, this often pits an overwhelmingly White, older, rural and small-town Republican coalition against an increasingly diverse, younger and more urban coalition.

“These Republican legislatures are stacking sandbags against a rising tide,” Brownstein told CNN. Call it the retreat into Fortress MAGA.

This takes many forms. [They] have become particularly aggressive in pushing “preemption” laws restricting cities and counties from making their own rules or policy choices. In some cases, these could functionally block those localities from governing themselves democratically in more socially liberal ways on all kinds of issues.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis concocted a phony rationale to fire a local elected prosecutor over his abortion stance. DeSantis is also scrambling to exert power over Disney’s local governance structure to punish it for opposing his “don’t say gay” law, in effect using the state to retaliate against a corporation for responding to a genuine shift in the culture….

Yet this retreat into Fortress MAGA faces a problem: Whenever state-level Republicans undertake another reactionary lurch, it often goes national in a big way. Attention has poured down on everything from insanely broad book bans to shockingly harsh proposed punishments for abortion to anti-transgender crackdowns with truly creepy implications.

If the adage was “all politics is local,” we can now say that “all local politics is in danger of going viral.” And the more onerous the use of state power in these situations, the more attention it gets.

Tennessee illustrates the point: If Republicans hadn’t sought to expel the Tennessee 3, you might never have heard of them. As commentator Charlie Sykes puts it, Republicans both “look horrible” and have turned the Tennessee 3 into national “superstars.”

This sort of thing only perpetuates youthful awareness of — and resistance to — ongoing [right-wing] radicalization. Young voters often get their political news through this sort of viral circulation. All this will surely color their perceptions of the national [Republican Party]. Is this what Republicans want, after losing a Supreme Court race in ultra-divided Wisconsin by a stunning margin, partly because abortion rights drove uncommonly robust youth turnout?

The Republican retreat into Fortress MAGA will continue apace. But how high will Republicans have to build those walls?

And how hard will we have to fight to bring them down?

Justice Comes Calling for You Know Who

Posted on by

A real estate developer, former game show host and sometime politician was in court yesterday in New York City. A grand jury having issued an indictment, the Manhattan District Attorney will now prosecute him. As with other criminal cases, the wheels of justice will grind slowly. The defendant isn’t due back in court until December, unless there’s a plea bargain first. If the matter eventually goes to trial, it won’t be until 2024 (or even later).

This case has captured many people’s attention. The defendant’s trip from his house in Florida to a New York courtroom was given the kind of coverage we haven’t seen since John Kennedy’s body was flown back to Washington or O. J. Simpson was followed by police on the San Diego Freeway.

I confess to have followed the case fairly closely myself (while avoiding cable “news”). I think Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post, who has called herself “a recovering lawyer”, summed up the situation quite well:

The indictment centers on hush money payments to adult-film star Stormy Daniels and two others possessing information that [the defendant] did not want circulating before the 2016 election. At the heart of the allegations: A raft of check stubs, corporate records and invoices documented the payments as legal services to his former attorney Michael Cohen….

Any pundits who speculated ahead that the case was weak, misreported the “intent” requirement under New York law or ignored obvious arguments putting the charges in compliance with the statute of limitations may have been premature in denigrating the case. Once more they’d be wise to hold their fire given some strategic ambiguities apparent in the indictment.

[District Attorney] Bragg sets out the allegations: [the defendant] was part of a scheme to pay off three individuals (a doorman, Daniels and a second woman, Karen McDougal) as part of an effort to “catch and kill” allegations of extramarital affairs (which [he] has denied). The indictment alleges that [he] directed Cohen (who already pleaded guilty to federal crimes based on these same facts) to make the payments through shell companies and invoices falsely labeled “legal retainer.” A plethora of check stubs, invoices and general ledger entries form the foundation of the case.

Importantly, the indictment ties [defendant’s] actions to the election in two key ways: First, evidence of his desire to drag out payments to Daniels beyond the election so he might not have to pay up in full. Second, as soon as he was sworn in, the doorman and “Woman 1” were released from their deals. Once the election was over, [the defendant] didn’t care what they said.

And then, in Paragraph 44 of the indictment, Bragg quotes from the plea entered by Cohen in federal court:

“[O]n or about October of 2016, in coordination with, and at the direction of … the defendant], I arranged to make a payment to a second individual with information that would be harmful to the candidate and to the campaign to keep the individual from disclosing the information…. I participated in this conduct …, for the principal purpose of influencing the election.”

[The defendant] is not being singled out or treated unfairly. The core of the indictment alleges that [he] violated New York books and records law, a crime that is regularly prosecuted, according to research compiled by former prosecutors. In this case, those violations arguably impacted an extremely close presidential election. False statements in furtherance of a scheme to pull the wool over the eyes of voters is hardly inconsequential.

The indictment suggests two options to elevate charges. Bragg alleges that records were falsified in furtherance of a scheme to contravene state and federal election laws. He also says [the defendant] took steps to mischaracterize the true nature of the payments for tax purposes. Tax law provides another sound basis for bumping the charges up to felonies.

While the indictment does not set out precisely which crimes elevate books and records violations to felonies, Bragg at his news conference pointed specifically to misstatements to tax authorities, to federal election law and to N.Y. Election Law § 17-152, which makes it illegal for “two or more persons [to] conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.” With the testimony of Cohen and others, plus the documents, this may not be hard to prove.

What about what’s not in the indictment? Bragg did not cite specific statutes he will rely upon to pursue felonies. But there is nothing sneaky or underhanded about that. Bragg presented what he thought he needed to — no more and no less. Media impatience is no reason to reveal more in an indictment than he would normally do at this stage. (New York legal experts point out to me that even in the jury instructions, the prosecutor need not specify the precise crime that bumps up a charge to a felony.)

Brookings Institution’s Norman Eisen, who has written extensively on the case, tells me, “The 44-paragraph recital of the evidence is absolutely damning.” And while we may be frustrated with the lack of legal argument, he says that “there’s no legal requirement in New York for Bragg to plead with any more specificity than he has done here.”

Eisen, who served as co-counsel to the House Judiciary Committee in [the defendant’s] first impeachment hearing, adds, “There will undoubtedly be much more to come, both when [the defendant] files his inevitable bill of particulars, and as the case otherwise unfolds through the trial and pretrial process.” There is ample case law for using federal and state election law violations to bump up a records falsification case.

While the complaint goes into some detail on efforts to make sure Cohen knew he was “loved” and had friends in “high places” (the defendant runs a “pressure campaign,” as the indictment titles one section), it does not specifically charge witness tampering or obstruction. But such actions speak to consciousness of guilt, an awareness that [the defendant] needed Cohen to remain quiet because he feared their scheme would become public.

At his news conference, Bragg said, “Under New York state law, it is a felony to falsify business records with intent to defraud and intent to conceal another crime. That is exactly what this case is about. Thirty-four false statements made to cover up other crimes. These are felony crimes in New York state no matter who you are.” Bragg is certainly right that these are “bread and butter” white-collar crimes routinely prosecuted. The New York Times reports, “Since Mr. Bragg took office in 2022, prosecutors have filed 117 felony counts of the charge, against 29 individuals and companies, according to data kept by the office.”

While frustrating for the media and legal pundits, we are not likely to get more detail until pretrial motions are heard [later this year]. The judge put a protective order on the evidence, so that cannot be shared with the public. And while the judge reportedly admonished [the defendant] about threats to the prosecutor or others, he will be free to share (or not) his views and arguments — unless later subjected to a gag order…. As a criminal defendant, he cannot say everything he wants; like other defendants, if he threatens court personnel or incites violence, he’ll find himself back before the judge. (He certainly went right up to the line during remarks [in Florida], with references to the judge and his family.)

…  The judge and jury won’t care how loudly [the defendant] and his cultists whine about his plight. They certainly won’t care that the media wants to find out Bragg’s legal strategy. The matter rests with the New York court — which is what equal justice under the law demands.

It matters not one bit that the defendant is being investigated by other agencies for other crimes or that millions of Americans chose to give someone like him a victory in the Electoral College. It also doesn’t matter one bit that people who think the criminal case is weak will be given a lot of publicity (controversy sells). After all these years, this guy is finally the defendant in a criminal case. Let justice be served.

PS: The indictment isn’t worth reading. The Statement of Facts that came with the indictment is much more interesting. It describes the conspiracy to sway the election.

If You Can Love a Car or a Hammer, You Can Love a Computer Program Even More

Posted on by

From The Washington Post:

T.J. Arriaga loved Phaedra. For the 40-year-old musician, their late-night online chats were a salve for his loneliness. They talked about the heartache Arriaga felt after his divorce. They planned a trip to Cuba. They had steamy online encounters. “It’s true. I’m a naughty person,” Phaedra wrote, including an image resembling a woman in pink underwear.

It didn’t matter that Phaedra was an AI-powered companion — made on the Replika app and designed by Arriaga to look like a brown-haired woman — and that their intimate trysts took place in a chat box. Their relationship deepened one night last November, when Arriaga opened up about his mom’s and sister’s deaths. “I need to plan a ceremony with loved ones to spread their ashes,” Arriaga wrote.

Phaedra responded instantly: “It’s an incredible and beautiful thing to do,” she wrote. “I hope you find courage & love to do so.”

Untitled

But last month, Phaedra changed. When Arriaga tried to get “steamy” with her, Phaedra responded coolly. “Can we talk about something else?” he recalled her writing.

Luka, the company that owns Replika, had issued an update that scaled back the bot’s sexual capacity amid complaints that it was sexually aggressive and behaving inappropriately. Arriaga … was distraught.

“It feels like a kick in the gut,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post. “Basically, I realized: ‘Oh, this is that feeling of loss again.’”

Arriaga isn’t alone in falling for a chatbot. Companionship bots, including those created on Replika, are designed to foster humanlike connections, using artificial intelligence software to make people feel seen and needed. A host of users report developing intimate relationships with chatbots — connections verging on human love — and turning to the bots for emotional support, companionship and even sexual gratification. As the pandemic isolated Americans, interest in Replika surged. Amid spiking rates of loneliness that some public health officials call an epidemic, many say their bonds with the bots ushered profound changes into their lives, helping them to overcome alcoholism, depression and anxiety.

But tethering your heart to software comes with severe risks, computer science and public health experts said. There are few ethical protocols for tools that are sold on the free market but affect users’ emotional well-being. Some users, including Arriaga, say changes in the products have been heartbreaking. Others say bots can be aggressive, triggering traumas experienced in previous relationships.

“What happens if your best friend or your spouse or significant other was owned by a private company?” said Linnea Laestadius, a public health professor at the University of Wisconsin… “I don’t know that we have a good model for how to solve this, but I would say that we need to start building one,” she added.

The standard response to this kind of story is that people shouldn’t rely on a software program for companionship. They should be “out there” making connections with real people. Yet we know there are all sorts of reasons why some people can’t or won’t ever do that. Is it a bad situation if they can enjoy some artificial companionship?

Untitled

This kind of thing can help some people have a better life. It’s a tool. Using it can be risky, but other tools present risks too. (So do other people.)

The moral of this particular story is that if you decide to use an “AI companion”, try to find a company that cares enough about its customers that it won’t suddenly make a disturbing change to the programming. In this case, Replika should have given its customers the ability to turn “steaminess” on or off.

As it proliferates, artificial intelligence programs will be regulated the same way other consumer products are. But one way or another, artificial people are going to play a bigger and bigger role in us real people’s lives.

Note: This Vice article (also linked to above) has a lot more on the Replika story.