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On January 17 2021 03:14 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote: You call it retribution. I call it justice. Who is right comes down to your own moral guidance. And if it wasn't the state that did it (as humanely as possible in most regards), then it would be the mobs.
My point is that saying "Hitler deserves to die but I don't want him dead." is an oxymoron. Either you want him dead or you don't. You can't split hairs. I also don't think saying "sdalksjd deserves death, but let's spend taxpayer money keeping him alive for decades because we're not barbarians." is also something that doesn't jive. If they are truly monsters and the evidence says so, execution not only brings a certain level of justice, it also saves money in the long term. Now, I will agree these cases are the minority and most people have nonviolent crimes keeping them in jail for ridiculous amounts of time. But if they are deserving, then give it to them.
I just want to repeat that according to all modern data we have, "keeping people alive for decades" is still cheaper than applying the death sentence. This argument needs to die. The death sentence does not save money. It costs money. That may not sound intuitive, but it is still true.
Whether or not the death penalty is ever justified is a much more difficult question than "is the death penalty justified in the US in its current form?". The latter is an unequivocal no. Our justice system is heavily biased against the poor, mentally ill, and african american defendants. We've wrongly executed people so many times that I don't think it's ever worth it.
The most recent defendant was executed in spite of IQ tests showing he was mentally disabled. Not only is that flat out wrong, it would have been cancelled within two weeksif the SC hadn't vacated a lower court's stay as Biden has said he won't use the death penalty in federal cases. I don't see how it's ever really justified to kill someone with significant evidence of mental incapacity, and on top of it this was a capricious, malicious decision by the SC.
Also, most places that do lethal injection have found that companies won't sell the drugs to them.
There were two recent NYT opinion pieces I read on the death penalty, it’s the latest two articles. She claims that even in the case of the man who committed the horrendous murder and rape of his daughter, there was actually no good evidence there was rape, nor that it was premeditated, nor that this man was free from low intelligence, bad impulse control, stress and so on.
I don’t get the point. Some people act like if you don’t kill these people then they won’t die and will live forever as demons. It’s funny to me that supposedly good Christians don’t allow these so-called “monsters” (in reality often people with stories that partially explain if not justify their sins), will not be given the chance to seek redemption.
I see no issues with saying that you personally believe someone deserves to die while also saying that you believe the state shouldn't execute individuals based on your personal belief. The state coming to you for a kill list would be problematic, even if you were pretty sure about the individuals you put on that kill list. I think "the state shouldn't have a list of people in its custody that its allowed to kill on purpose" is not incompatible with "but if such a list did exist I think the following people would be on it".
I think the death penalty is justified from a purely theoretical and moral standpoint. But I also think that the state can't be trusted to decide with an acceptable level of certainty that someone committed the crime that would justify the death penalty. You'll never make a system that you can trust won't kill people that don't deserve it over just leaving them locked up for life.
On January 16 2021 10:06 Zambrah wrote: To my understanding most of the inflated cost of tuition have gone to management types, according to what Ive heard from my professors when I was at school.
This is actually a good thing. I was a university admin and you don’t want the professors doing admin. They don’t know how and they’re paid far more than we were. University administrators lower costs.
I don't think people are thinking of doing away administrators. But there is a very clear ballooning of administration budgets in relation to everything else:
During the 1980-1981 school year, public and private institutions spent $20.7 billion in total on instruction, and $13 billion on academic support, student services and institutional support combined, according to data from the National Center for Educational Statistics. By the 2014-2015 school year, total instructional costs had climbed to $148 billion, while the same grouping of administrative expenses had risen to $122.3 billion.
Put another way, administrative spending comprised just 26% of total educational spending by American colleges in 1980-1981, while instructional spending comprised 41%. Three decades later, the two categories were almost even: administrative spending made up 24% of schools’ total expenditures, while instructional spending made up 29%.
“The interesting thing about the administrative bloat in higher education is, literally, nobody knows who all these people are or what they’re doing,” says Todd Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University and the author of “The Changing of the Guard: The Political Economy of Administrative Bloat in American Higher Education.” Administrative titles at schools, especially large research institutions, can be confusingly vague: Health Promotion Specialist, Student Success Manager and Senior Coordinator, Student Accountability are all positions currently available on higheredjobs.com.
If these are the statistics we care about (and presumably they are, or why would we be offered them) then why are we talking about administrative bloat when it is the number that has changed the least?
You're pulling the numbers out of context; read the rest of the article, it's a pretty clear and well-explained issue.
The ratio between administrators and faculty continues to shrink. According to a 2014 Delta Cost Project report, the number of faculty and staff per administrator declined roughly 40% at most types of colleges and universities between 1990 and 2012, now averaging around 2.5 faculty per administrator.
At public research institutions specifically, there has been a particularly marked rise in the number administrators. In 1990, there were approximately twice as many full-time faculty at public research institutions as administrators. In 2012, the two groups were nearly equal.
Generally speaking, as a university grows in size / number of students, the admin:instructor ratio should shift towards instructors, especially in research universities -- not the other way around. The reason it isn't, is because universities in the US are focusing more and more on superficial bullshit to present themselves as the more attractive option since the superficial bullshit is easy to quantify and put on a shiny prospectus.
I think one of the big but rarely talked about issues here is that universities are essentially seen as this little world in itself, where you can basically disconnect from the rest of the world and only interact with your campus; and thus the more 'stuff' your campus has, the more interesting and eventful your life will be. In reality, there's no reason whatsoever for universities to have a budget for something like sports teams and facilities -- it would be far better if that money was instead allocated to the local government structures and made truly public instead. Like, if students wanted to have a football team, the university could easily work out the scheduling with the said local government to let the students use it as necessary, and then the rest of the people in the area could actually benefit from it as well instead of having this walled off garden only for the chosen. Same goes for basically every on-campus facility except for actual classrooms / laboratories and dormitories; hell, even classrooms could actually be public lecture halls where education facilities have priority booking but are available for use by the local people in the 'off' hours without having to bargain with the university bosses.
Yeah this really isn’t spoken of too much, there’s a huge duplication of services that really doesn’t have to be that way.
Don’t get me wrong colleges should have a duty of care, especially for young people who are shelling out quite a bit of money and should be looked after.
On the other hand both of my local colleges have their own internal mental health and various support services, at a period even preceding the pandemic when accessing general public support in these domains can be quite difficult.
I agree that colleges should have a duty of care for young people -- but just as much and likely more can be accomplished by referring people to the right places and pooling resources together to benefit the entire community around them instead of trying to build their own little island utopia. It's ridiculously inefficient and wasteful, and does nothing other than promote class segregation. The idea that 'good' colleges should be these super special and exclusive communities of their own belongs in the dumpster bin of history, together with every other dumb attempt to separate the 'specials' from the plebs.
It’s rather perverse, I certainly agree with you on that. Actually a large part of why I went back to college after pretty severe mental health problems I found it too daunting to rebuild and get my life moving again so I was in a station that didn’t cause me perpetual stress and depression. Certainly in an ideal world my decision would not largely be guided by those particular motivations.
I mean it’s not just colleges, it’s innumerable charities all competing for eyeballs with each other for resources to their particular cause, or often the exact same cause vs other resources.
Having properly run centralised resources for all sorts of issues benefits everyone really.
On January 17 2021 02:24 Nevuk wrote: On PBS's new firing line (with Margaret Hoover. Yes, she's a direct descendant of THAT Hoover), Joe Manchin (!!!) said that the senate should give serious consideration to expelling Cruz and Hawley for violating the 14th amendment which prohibits insurrections by lawmakers and gives explicit instructions on how to expel them from congress (2/3 vote). He clarifies that he directly believes they violated that amendment.
That's pretty damning - Manchin was the last senator I thought we'd see calling for this. I was pretty sure we'd see him be quiet on the issue until a bunch of republicans had come out either for or against. It's not enough to get them expelled in and of itself, but it is enough to have the senate launch investigations into doing so after the 20th (with a dem majority).
I've not watched the new Firing Line, but the previous one was considered the intellectual highlight of the conservative movement in America for 30 years and was hosted by William F Buckley until 1999. (His debate with Chomsky on whether any use of foreign policy is benign from 1969 is a fun watch and up on youtube). Of course, he was a homophobe.
“They should look, absolutely. That should be a consideration,” Manchin responded when asked if the 14th Amendment should be triggered. “He understands that, Ted’s a very bright individual, and I get along fine with Ted. But what he did was totally outside of the realm of our responsibilities or our privileges.” [...] "I looked at Josh, and I said, 'Josh, you have a right to do what you’re doing, but think of what’s happening, what you’re seeing on the monitors. Think about, basically, our country,'" he said. "There wasn’t much conversation back and forth on that. He listened to me, and I could tell it was weighing on him, and I was hoping that we were able to maybe change his mind to go up there and stop his objections."
Full episode. It's actually a decent set of interviews with Manchin - one before the impeachment vote and one after (he clarifies that he wanted the impeachment vote to be delayed so more information could be gathered, which isn't unreasonable. I disagree, of course).
While it’s probably already apparent to denizens of this thread, I don’t exactly share Buckley’s politics. Still some of them are great watches, I believe the channel responsible uploaded them all to YouTube. Been a while since I dipped in but was interesting seeing Ayn Rand in the flesh, my beloved Hitch and was my first exposure to James Baldwin.
Shall have to check out this modern incarnation. Even in the current year there’s a (relative) lack of proper conversations with titans of the intellectual world, especially when they’re not politically aligned. Plenty of short form interviews, or long form ones when it’s almost the host acting as a facilitator for the guest to monologue, as well as car-crash ‘debates’.
Can some Yanks or more knowledgeable non-Yanks than me contextualise Manchin a bit? From Nevuk’s reaction to it being him saying this, I’m figuring that he’s not a particularly maverick politician and tends to bend the way the wind is blowing. Would that be accurate?
Manchin is a notorious "Blue Dog" type of Democrat, which basically means hes a conservative Democrat. Hes likely to be one of the key votes that prevents Democrats from having a functional Senate Majority in cases where they can't whip him to vote with them.
Manchin is a senator from West Virginia, one of the most republican-leaning states in the country. Although he doesn't vote with Democrat positions as often as everyone would like and aligns with trump quite a bit, he votes to the left of how his constituents would vote more often than almost everyone in the Senate, with like 2-3 exceptions (538 made some chart, I can't find it). The fact that he is part of the Democrats' 50 person senate group does make it hard for them to pass proposals without him, but in terms of how west virginia as a state would vote, he's the best we can hope for from them, as chilling as that is.
Another factor that's worth mentioning is that even if he is pretty right-wing, he still is "team Democrat" and there is some power in towing the party line. He will occasionally break rank, certainly, but if he does that more than occasionally then he's just unreliable and loses all the swing power he has.
So, how high we thinking are the chances of deaths at the inauguration, considering they just stopped someone with a loaded gun with high cap mag/drum (not specified what exactly), 500 rounds of ammunition and a fake inauguration ID, in a police checkpoint (not confirmed right wing yet, might be antifa /s)?
I haven't really watched an inauguration in forever, are they behind bulletproof glass?
No, there usually isnt a whole lot of non-human protection for presidents during the inauguration, nothing like a bullet proof glass structure or the like. Im curious to see if they'll set one up this time though, because it seems incredibly likely that SOMEONE will try SOMETHING.
Well i'd argue they might wanna consider something like that. It's not like there's no precedent of presidents getting shot by nutjobs, there probably never were more happily violent nutjobs in the US than now.
On one hand, many of these people are blatantly incompetent jackasses, so I could see them trying to keep everything the same and just have a tight security perimeter. On the other hand all it takes is that one competent bastard with a sniper rifle to down Biden, so I really think it'd be smart to do something like bullet proof glass, or some sort of anti-firearm equivalent.
However, I think Biden will strive to maintain norms as much as possible, I think its really likely we're going to see the tight security perimeter and that will be it. Biden is going to want to put the insurrection behind us for the sake of unity and going through his inauguration in a glass bubble is going to scream, "Im afraid the Republican's voters are going to kill me," and that likely wouldn't send the most UNITY! message.
On January 17 2021 07:08 LegalLord wrote: Another factor that's worth mentioning is that even if he is pretty right-wing, he still is "team Democrat" and there is some power in towing the party line. He will occasionally break rank, certainly, but if he does that more than occasionally then he's just unreliable and loses all the swing power he has.
Correct. His position here wasn't the party line, which is what made it remarkable. It is closer to AOC's position than it is to Chuck Schumer's.
He's probably the most valuable democrat in the Senate, as no other democrat could win in WV outside of a Jim Justice (who literally became a republican after being elected). The least valuable is Feinstein, I think, as she's far to the right of her constituents and no republican can take her seat. This is basically purely because he keeps Mitch McConnell out of power and is super left-wing for his state (the most republican leaning in the country, iirc).
(Of the two democratic moderates, Sinema and Manchin, Manchin is far outside the norms of his state, while Sinema is probably more conservative than her state on average).
Also, someone was arrested with a fake inauguration pass and 500 rounds of ammo today. So people are gonna try something.
On January 17 2021 07:37 m4ini wrote: So, how high we thinking are the chances of deaths at the inauguration, considering they just stopped someone with a loaded gun with high cap mag/drum (not specified what exactly), 500 rounds of ammunition and a fake inauguration ID, in a police checkpoint (not confirmed right wing yet, might be antifa /s)?
Zero. Unless you believe 22,000 National guard troops, razor wire fencing and road closures isn't enough? What more would it take.
On January 17 2021 07:37 m4ini wrote: So, how high we thinking are the chances of deaths at the inauguration, considering they just stopped someone with a loaded gun with high cap mag/drum (not specified what exactly), 500 rounds of ammunition and a fake inauguration ID, in a police checkpoint (not confirmed right wing yet, might be antifa /s)?
Zero. Unless you believe 22,000 National guard troops, razor wire fencing and road closures isn't enough? What more would it take.
I actually do believe so, yes. I'm not of the opinion that "people wouldn't do that" - i've come to expect nothing that requires a brain from right wing nutjobs.
Guards won't stop bullets. They might in fact become a target, much like the guards at the capitol.
On January 17 2021 07:58 Zambrah wrote: On one hand, many of these people are blatantly incompetent jackasses, so I could see them trying to keep everything the same and just have a tight security perimeter. On the other hand all it takes is that one competent bastard with a sniper rifle to down Biden, so I really think it'd be smart to do something like bullet proof glass, or some sort of anti-firearm equivalent.
However, I think Biden will strive to maintain norms as much as possible, I think its really likely we're going to see the tight security perimeter and that will be it. Biden is going to want to put the insurrection behind us for the sake of unity and going through his inauguration in a glass bubble is going to scream, "Im afraid the Republican's voters are going to kill me," and that likely wouldn't send the most UNITY! message.
Purely as a thought experiment - because I also think the chances of it actually happening are zero - what do you think would be the consequences if a Trumpeter actually did assassinate Biden at the inauguration?
On January 17 2021 07:58 Zambrah wrote: On one hand, many of these people are blatantly incompetent jackasses, so I could see them trying to keep everything the same and just have a tight security perimeter. On the other hand all it takes is that one competent bastard with a sniper rifle to down Biden, so I really think it'd be smart to do something like bullet proof glass, or some sort of anti-firearm equivalent.
However, I think Biden will strive to maintain norms as much as possible, I think its really likely we're going to see the tight security perimeter and that will be it. Biden is going to want to put the insurrection behind us for the sake of unity and going through his inauguration in a glass bubble is going to scream, "Im afraid the Republican's voters are going to kill me," and that likely wouldn't send the most UNITY! message.
Purely as a thought experiment - because I also think the chances of it actually happening are zero - what do you think would be the consequences if a Trumpeter actually did assassinate Biden at the inauguration?
I honestly dont think we'd see any serious consequences. We'd probably see the assassinate locked up for life, along with anyone in any sort of immediate gang, but I think that overall politics would continue on the track its on now, which reads to me a lot like, "we're going to try and move past this for business as usual."
EPT
