Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
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Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
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Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
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Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
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Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
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Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

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Monday, August 17. 2015

Monday morning links

How to Make Time Slow Down - Open your mind and take some risks.


10 Extinct Giants That Once Roamed North America


Here’s an idea: Try listening to police during stops


It's No Laughing Matter: Campuses Have Become Intolerant


Greedy Big Education:  They Want More


World poverty: Memo to Vox: You Know How This Prosperity Was Achieved? We Let it Happen.


EPA Fails to Acknowledge It Coerced Mine Owner to Grant Access


EPA’s Clean Power Plan Contains Antipoverty Transfer Programs - Measures are set to offset harm the plan does to the poor


Officer Beaten by a Convicted Felon Hesitated for Fear of Being Called Racist: Welcome to Post-Ferguson Policing


VDH: The Tragic and Complete Collapse of Racial Relations = Polls show that racial relations have gotten much worse under Barack Obama. Why has that happened?


Ben Carson is a messenger the GOP needs to hear


George Will: Purge Trump and His Supporters from GOP


Hillary Doesn’t Pay Her NYC Interns But At Least They Get Coffee…


If America really wanted to destroy Russia, it could do no better than tell it to keep doing exactly what it’s doing.


40 migrants die off Italy as EU faces 'worst crisis since WWII'

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 05:59 | Comments (30) | Trackbacks (0)

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"Hillary Doesn’t Pay Her NYC Interns But At Least They Get Coffee…"

Makes a great headline but I'm not sure I quite get what the fuss is all about.

If you decide to volunteer to work for free on someone's campaign, whether they're a candidate for town dog catcher or president, you volunteer to work for free. The candidate's wealth is immaterial. I'm sure The Donald has lots of unpaid volunteers (effectively, anyone who supports a candidate and is prepared to go door-to-door, pass out leaflets or show up for rallies is an unpaid volunteer).

I don't believe anyone is forced to be one of her interns. They all have the option of not volunteering.

That said, I for one might well volunteer to work on someone's campaign without remuneration if it was part-time - a couple of hours here and there every day or so. I would never, ever, volunteer to work full-time for free.

But, if I were wealthy enough myself that pay wasn't an issue and I felt strongly about the candidate...
#1 JJM on 2015-08-17 09:03 (Reply)
I agree.
However, I believe it's to point out the hypocrisy of politicians who advocate raising minimum wage or wage discretion (oh the poor poor, that are so exploited!) esp. for unskilled labor ... and then not paying their own workers.

See, if they really cared about the poor, they'd be falling all over themselves to put their volunteers on payroll, and worker's comp, and pay unemployment and health insurance, like the rest of us peons that exploit others to make a buck have to.
#1.1 fjord on 2015-08-17 09:27 (Reply)
Well, I think the hypocrisy of politicians in this regard - and the Clinton family in particular - is almost a given anyway.

Looking at your latest roster of Rep-Dem hopefuls, only Bernie Sanders, old unreconstructed socialist that he is, even appears to approach any semblance of solidarity with the putative Common Man and working stiff.
#1.1.1 JJM on 2015-08-17 10:24 (Reply)
eventually you'll learn what "volunteer" means, you might even learn that yelling "hypocrisy" is a worn out internet tactic that lets you evade issues by raising ad hom arguments.

the volunteers aren't expecting to be paid, they're trying to win an election for their candidate of choice. they take no money so the candidate can spend on things lie TV spots which actually do win elections. that's a personal choice of the intern.
#1.1.2 Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz on 2015-08-17 11:08 (Reply)
Or, say, you wanted to spy on the operation.
#1.2 Sam L. on 2015-08-17 11:58 (Reply)
EPA:

Transfer payments to poor:

Of course. To keep the peasants from revolting. That $2500 in savings are going to be not because there is a surplus of electricity, but because - at the butt of a gun- it is extracted from the productive. What's left of us.

EPA Fails to Acknowledge It Coerced Mine Owner to Grant Access

Of course, It's all for the "environment".
#2 fjord on 2015-08-17 09:42 (Reply)
Oh sorry. I think I might have conflated

that $2500 in savings from the obamacare lie of the century not from energy savings. Or supposedly we are going to have $2500 in savings from health benefits. Or something.
#2.1 fjord on 2015-08-17 10:48 (Reply)
10 Extinct Giants That Once Roamed North America




"Could disease have spread like wildfire through the population? Or were human hunters to blame?" {for the extinction of species}

Obviously written by nerds who have never hunted, especially with rudimentary weapons like spears and bows and arrows. Sheesh. And of course, we have to go the "its those evil human's faults". I'm surprised they didn't blame the output of humans CO2 and garbage as the villain.

If an animal can't adapt to it's surroundings or changes in environment then it will probably go extinct. Huh, and admission that Climate change happened Pre-combustion engine.
#3 fjord on 2015-08-17 09:55 (Reply)
why the hostility? the article is neutral and summarizes a few of the currently debated reasons for these extinctions.

probably several factors, including warming following the end of the last ice age and changes in the ecology all combined to kill these animals. there's a clear correlation between human arrival and die offs, and mammoths were successfully hunted by humans (spear points found in mammoth fossils).
#3.1 Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz on 2015-08-17 10:55 (Reply)
Agree. Plus, there appears to have been a significant alteration of the solar system in the 12.5k-10kBC era that correlates with a pile of ancient writings, not least of which is the biblical flood. It even appears temperature findings based on ice core sampling, and the ancient Egyptians seem to have obsessed over it.
#3.1.1 Ten on 2015-08-17 11:04 (Reply)
Apparently not for the horses, which survived in Africa and Eurasia.
#3.1.2 Sam L. on 2015-08-17 17:30 (Reply)
re EPA Fails to Acknowledge It Coerced Mine Owner to Grant Access

This what happens when an unconstitutional law is passed and allowed to stand. No where does the constitution allow unelected officials to enact laws, even if they are disguised as "rules".

The trampling of our liberty by agencies like the EPA dwarf any incursions made by the King of England on the colonists.

One wonders what the framers of the Constitution would think?
#4 feeblemind on 2015-08-17 10:26 (Reply)
there you are wrong, again.

the power of congress to delegate its authority to administrative agencies to make rules to enforce statutory schemes has been challenged many times and inevitably upheld by the USSC.

I know, I know, you don't accept the authority of the USSC to interpret the Constitution, but... deal with it.
#4.1 Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz on 2015-08-17 11:01 (Reply)
I accept it is legal, but it is still wrong and runs totally against the intent of the founders.

The fact that it has been challenged many times shows I am not alone in my criticism.

I readily concede my point of view is in the minority.
#4.1.1 feeblemind on 2015-08-17 11:19 (Reply)
"I accept it is legal, but it is still wrong and runs totally against the intent of the founders."

Since it has been nearly 180 years since the last of your "Founding Fathers" died, how can any American know for sure what might run totally against their intent without, er, interpreting what that intent was?
#4.1.1.1 JJM on 2015-08-17 14:24 (Reply)
The text wasn't plain?
#4.1.1.1.1 Ten on 2015-08-17 15:30 (Reply)
If the text is plain, why do your First and Second Amendments create such a brouhaha?

It doesn't much matter how "plain" the text is (I happen to think your Founding Fathers did a pretty good job in that respect). It matters what you think they meant by it.

Therein lies the rub: there are no Founding Fathers around to tell you "Yes, you've got it!" or "No, that's not what we meant at all."

Hey, remember, you had a president who argued over what is meant. If someone can quibble over the third person singular present indicative form of the verb be, how much more quibbling can be done over the 7,600 or so words in your constitution?
#4.1.1.1.1.1 JJM on 2015-08-17 16:11 (Reply)
Because we have people who call themselves progressives and liberals who hate, Hate, HATE those two amendments and those who favor those amendments.
#4.1.1.1.1.1.1 Sam L. on 2015-08-17 17:34 (Reply)
Not sure exactly what your point is - or if you know yourself - but intentionalists get it wrong. The text is plain and its signifiers mean what they say. There's nothing to interpret any more than the stop sign at the end of your road has any legal controversy attached to it.

When ostensible conservatives fall for the intentionalist ruse they lose the meaning of the document(s), which was and is plain enough to constitute the legal framework their authors intended them to convey. That's why they wrote them; to be taken on their face.

So they're not plain? Then the Court's role is to send them back, not turn them into pretzels.

Courts must not interpret these texts; they must apply them. Interpreting the plain text gives you Roe and the two Obamacare debacles and countless other trainwrecks - and it gives us Donnie conflating original text with latter mistakes and subsequently even with the endless loops in runaway stare decisis.

Sure, today there is no plain text as a consequence, but that's not a problem of the text, it's a problem of the application.

Remember, legislative intent was reinterpreted twice in order to make the ACA valid...not constitutionally but judicially

The text is plain. There's nothing to interpret. Or it wouldn't have been written in the first place.
#4.1.1.1.1.1.2 Ten on 2015-08-17 20:19 (Reply)
For more on this see Goldstein, linked in the sidebar. Note as you read that "intentionalist", "textualist", and "interpretation" can be applied differently, but the point, as I take it anyway, is that giving over language to anything other than the plain text - anything without indexicality to the author, the owner - is dangerous.

http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=57159
#4.1.1.1.1.1.3 Ten on 2015-08-17 20:32 (Reply)
welcome to the world of constitutional law. unstated, but even more important, is the intent of congress.
#4.1.1.1.2 Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz on 2015-08-17 16:04 (Reply)
So our government can morph (and in some ways already has) into a totalitarian system that is run by the SCOTUS? If the both the legislative and executive branches cede their power to the SCOTUS, that's ok? A quick perusal of the Constitution didn't find where a branch of government can give it's power over to another branch, but I might have missed it.

It is the inherent problem of self government that somebody in the government has to interpret the rules that everybody has to follow, but that doesn't mean they can't or don't twist those rules to suit their ideology or even their whim.

2+2=5 anyone?
#4.1.2 mudbug on 2015-08-17 11:36 (Reply)
If one remembers that law is just an opinion, it would give one hope that laws can be changed or repealed. However, for that to happen there would have to be a political party that wanted to effect the change.

Mark Steyn had a great line the other day.

"“When the left wins, they're in power; when the right wins, they're in office, and that's all. “

The rest of his column deals with the Trump phenomenon.

http://www.steynonline.com/section/13/steyn-on-america
#4.1.2.1 feeblemind on 2015-08-17 12:12 (Reply)
A quick perusal of the Constitution didn't find where a branch of government can give it's power over to another branch, but I might have missed it.

of course you missed it. the authority comes from a line of USSC cases starting in 1825 interpreting Article I Sec 1 and then the separation of powers doctrine as a whole.

I get that you're another who doesn't accept the authority of the USSC to interpret the Constitution, but disagreeing with me isn't going to change anything.

Chief Justice Marshall, in Wayman v. Southard. the 1825 case:

The line has not been exactly drawn which separates those important subjects, which must be entirely regulated by the legislature itself, from those of less interest, in which a general provision may be made, and power given to those who are to act under such general provisions, to fill up the details.
#4.1.2.2 Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz on 2015-08-17 13:11 (Reply)
You are mistaken. I do accept the authority of the SCOTUS to interpret the Constitution. Indeed, I said that we don't have a choice but to have someone someone to interpret the rules and that is the inherent problem of self government. My point is that those people are not infallible and not necessarily benign. They are subject to their own biases or ideologies that may or may not comport with the plain reading of the Constitution.

Are you saying the SCOTUS cannot be criticized?

Does the Constitution allow the legislative and executive branches ceded their power to the SCOTUS?

Can the SCOTUS declare 2+2=5? If they did, what should be the response?
#4.1.2.2.1 mudbug on 2015-08-17 13:44 (Reply)
administrative Rules are interpreted by a administrative law judge looking to the congressional statute, administrative law decisions and the case law of the federal circuit they are in, reviewed by an administrative appeals board, and ultimately reviewable by an Article III court (in most instances).

2+2=5 for some values of 2. without further context I can't answer the question, I'm not even sure what you're asking.

ceding powers. you're asking a very technical question, but, yes, congress has delegated some power to the judiciary. it can delegate some judicial powers to the executive. the extent of the delegation is what administrative law arguments are usually about.

if you don't know how to criticize the USSC, you'll always be run over by someone who does. here this doesn't matter, but in the real world, you'd better know your stuff.
#4.1.2.2.1.1 Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz on 2015-08-17 15:17 (Reply)
You already know I'm not a lawyer and I'm smart enough not to get into a technical debate with a Constitutional lawyer, so I pretty much limit my arguments to forums such as these - thanks for the advice.

I readily admit that there are gray areas in the implementation of the Constitution that require legal interpretation, but at the same time, there are rulings that do not or would not make sense. One must first assume that the people who put together our government did not do it out of boredom. They had particular interests and aims in mind - eg. the preservation of liberty and justice. They articulated the mechanisms by which their aims were expected to be achieved - eg. enumeration of and separation of powers. Constitutionally allowing two branches of government to cede their powers to the third branch defeats the entire purpose of the Constitution. One branch ceding power to one of the other two is no different. That somebody "expanded" or "restricted" the meaning of a part of the Constitution sometimes serves only to highlight that the original intent was sacrificed to some new interpretation.

That is not to say that changes in the world don't sometimes require some contextual shifts, or that there aren't legitimate arguments where those shifts are, but would anybody try to argue that the freedom of the press means something that is printed on paper and not transmitted electronically (actually, it would not surprise me for somebody to try that).

There are a whole host of areas that are off limits to the Federal Government because the Constitution does not grant it authority in those areas - yet the Federal Government has insinuated itself in those areas anyway. In fact, this was predicted by the Founders who said that the natural order of governments was to increase their power - though they tried to write the Constitution to prevent that.

2+2=5 is from 1984, the idea being that if you could convince the people of a new and false reality, you controlled them. The penalty for not purchasing a particular healthcare insurance is not a tax by any definition - unless you are the Chief Justice of the SCOTUS.
#4.1.2.2.1.1.1 mudbug on 2015-08-17 16:10 (Reply)
let me ask you, why aren't you more concerned about state governments, which are governments of general powers, with only federal or state constitutional limits?

do you expect or want congress to write all of what's now the FAA regs that implement the Federal Aviation Act? the FCC regs that implement the Federal Communications Act? the SEC regs that implement the Federal Securities Act? that would bog down congress and jam every court in the nation.

imprecise language could result in 2 + 2 = 5. but not 2.0 + 2.0
#4.1.2.2.1.1.1.1 Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz on 2015-08-17 19:13 (Reply)
"EPA’s Clean Power Plan Contains Antipoverty Transfer Programs"
"At the federal level, the EPA is creating a program that gives twice as large a subsidy for renewable and efficiency projects that are built in inner-city neighborhoods and disadvantaged rural areas,”

Why do renewables need subsidies? The simple answer is that they are impractical and simply do not work. A commercial wind powered generator costs about $2-5 million apiece and in it's lifetime it "could" generate $100,000 worth of electricity. In fact it used more energy to build and maintain it then it can ever generate. So why do we have these money losers and why are they subsidized? Again there is a simple answer; the politicians get big donations from the companies that produce and maintain these energy consuming money losers. The politicians are directly benefiting from keeping this scam going. To do this they must steal, take, tax money from the productive in a never ending transfer of money to their cronies.
#5 GoneWithTheWind on 2015-08-17 10:33 (Reply)
Isn't this rather like siting dumps or polluting activities amongst the poor folks? Certainly seems that way.
#5.1 Sam L. on 2015-08-17 12:01 (Reply)

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