EPTTheir next step is to act like a minority party seeking coalition and either compromise with the people to the right of them (Gaetz etc.) or the left of them. Or, I guess, refuse to compromise regardless of the lack of votes and play the victim. And as I type this I think it’s clear which one they’ll choose because if there’s one thing conservatives love more than anything it’s playing the victim whenever they self sabotage. Really there was never any other option.
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KwarK
United States43968 Posts
Their next step is to act like a minority party seeking coalition and either compromise with the people to the right of them (Gaetz etc.) or the left of them. Or, I guess, refuse to compromise regardless of the lack of votes and play the victim. And as I type this I think it’s clear which one they’ll choose because if there’s one thing conservatives love more than anything it’s playing the victim whenever they self sabotage. Really there was never any other option. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22311 Posts
On October 05 2023 22:25 Simberto wrote: Welcome to the Republican party.I am confused. Republicans blew up their own speaker because they are too busy infighting to do any governing. And yet we are still somehow talking about democrats? | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15743 Posts
In order for democrats to vote for McCarthy, McCarthy would need to be a candidate with appealing plans/promises/character. In the absence of that, my daring take is that it is not appropriate to expect them to vote for him. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45776 Posts
On October 06 2023 01:20 Mohdoo wrote: Feels like I’m misunderstanding folks. I thought the current metagsme of politics is that votes need to be earned and that no one should expect sympathy votes for some kind of lesser evil dynamic? In order for democrats to vote for McCarthy, McCarthy would need to be a candidate with appealing plans/promises/character. In the absence of that, my daring take is that it is not appropriate to expect them to vote for him. Yes, and also: The lesser of two evils being applied to the presidency in our current two-party system is more sensible than applying it to Speaker of the House, because there aren't only two possible, known Speaker options. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22311 Posts
On October 06 2023 01:20 Mohdoo wrote: In this case its not that the Democrats didn't vote for him, but in fact actively voted against him. Since doing anything other then vote Yes (aka no or abstain) would have kept McCarthy as speaker.Feels like I’m misunderstanding folks. I thought the current metagsme of politics is that votes need to be earned and that no one should expect sympathy votes for some kind of lesser evil dynamic? In order for democrats to vote for McCarthy, McCarthy would need to be a candidate with appealing plans/promises/character. In the absence of that, my daring take is that it is not appropriate to expect them to vote for him. The vote was not "Should McCarthy be speaker" it was "Should McCarthy be removed" | ||
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KwarK
United States43968 Posts
On October 06 2023 01:27 Gorsameth wrote: In this case its not that the Democrats didn't vote for him, but in fact actively voted against him. Since doing anything other then vote Yes (aka no or abstain) would have kept McCarthy as speaker. The vote was not "Should McCarthy be speaker" it was "Should McCarthy be removed" They’re the same question. Should he be speaker and should he not be speaker are identical questions. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15743 Posts
On October 06 2023 01:27 Gorsameth wrote: In this case its not that the Democrats didn't vote for him, but in fact actively voted against him. Since doing anything other then vote Yes (aka no or abstain) would have kept McCarthy as speaker. The vote was not "Should McCarthy be speaker" it was "Should McCarthy be removed" Democrats don’t want McCarthy to be speaker. They should try to prevent him from being speaker. If McCarthy was speaker, he would do things that democrats don’t like. Democrats would vote for someone who would do things they like. If McCarthy wanted democrats to behave in a way that makes him the speaker, he should have advocated for policies and actions that would give democrats motivation to vote for him. Is it that you think McCarthy is the preferred speaker for democrats? McCarthy disagrees with essentially every component of what democrats advocate for. It’s not clear to me why you think democrats should be motivated to make him speaker. What am I missing? He wants stuff the democrats want the opposite of. Not a great option. | ||
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farvacola
United States18857 Posts
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KwarK
United States43968 Posts
After Enron and SOX the PCAOB was created to deal with this kind of scenario. It governs the practice of public accounting and requires public accounting firms to follow strict legal standards in terms of the engagements they offer to the public. I, like all CPAs, know a lot about this because I have to because you can't be a CPA and not know about it. It's like lawyers and client privilege or whatever. The engagement letters are boilerplate and they specify in absolute terms what services are being provided, what services are not being provided, and who is responsible for the accuracy of the financial information contained within. Spoiler, it's always the client. The public accounting firm is strictly prohibited from providing any assurances over their own work, you can't self review. There are four tiers of service. The highest is an audit. During an audit the firm will perform substantial testwork on the financials, meeting the industry standard for whatever kind of company they're auditing. They won't review every transaction but they'll perform data analytics, sampling, and extensive testwork of internal controls in order to be able to give an informed opinion on the accuracy. A well designed fraud could still get through an audit but it gives "limited assurance" that the financials weren't obviously wrong. The only scenarios in which an auditor might be responsible for misstatements is if they were themselves doing the accounting, which is strictly prohibited, they found a fraud and covered it up, or if the negligence was so great that they should reasonably have found it. For example the Wirecard fraud relied upon Wirecard asking the auditors to save time by relying on their photoshopped bank statements instead of sending a fax to the bank itself. A first year intern would have found the Wirecard fraud. Trump did not get an audit. The second highest tier is a review. A review does not perform any kind of testwork on the underlying transactions. Instead it reviews the overall accounting treatment (whether you're flagrantly breaking normal accounting policy) and whether the financials overall make sense. For example you'd expect payroll tax expense to be about 7.65% of payroll expense because if you're paying employees you have to pay the government too. If that was true for the first 3 quarters but it was 1% for the last quarter then that would, in theory, be caught by a review. Not because they saw the specific fabricated employee that the owner invented to steal money out of the company but because, in aggregate, it didn't make sense. A well designed and comprehensively put together fraud would pass a review and it is made very clear to the users of a review that it is not looking for that and would not catch it. We're talking along the lines of only telling your boss that you need a day off for your grandma's funeral twice, any more than that and they should be asking questions but for all the review knows they could still be alive. The auditor does not issue an opinion on the accuracy of the financials in a review because they didn't check them. They didn't note anything obvious but they didn't look especially hard. Trump did not get a review. The third tier is a compilation. This is basically Kinkos, a printing and binding service. The public accounting firm already has some sweet Excel templates, some of that fancy high gpm paper, and a binding machine. Also they've got some nerds that can use the autosum button in Excel. So you go to them and say "here's a shitload of emails, paper receipts, and Excel files, can you mash all of these together". It is not expected that they ask any questions of the client during a compilation, the financials are always the client's, all you're doing is providing formatting help. Getting their numbers in the right buckets, putting those double lines in the right place, and putting a fancy letterhead above the giant disclaimer where you make it extremely clear to the client and anyone he gives it to that this is not your work and that you haven't checked any part of this. Trump got a compilation. He's now insisting that if it was all made up then how come the compilation didn't catch it. He might as well demand to know why their printer didn't refuse to print his lies. This is the scandal that the PCAOB exists to kill before it starts. There is absolutely no chance of this defence working. None. He will have signed plenty of pieces of paper in which this is explained to him and he acknowledges that he is solely responsible for whatever numbers they print for him. He will have signed plenty of pieces of paper in which they explain that they did not look at his numbers, did not review his numbers, did not certify the accuracy of his numbers, that they weren't involved. The compilation itself will make this extremely clear to any users, there's a boilerplate cover sheet that explains what a compilation is and what it means. Typically you get a compilation if you either can't afford an audit but want something fancy to show people or if you can't pass an audit. For example I've done some for small businesses requesting a bank loan, they give us the notepad where they write down their contracts and how much money they made and you type it up for them so they have something cool to show the loan manager. Or, in Trump's case, I guess both. He both couldn't pass the audit and also is too cheap to pay for an audit. | ||
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micronesia
United States24771 Posts
If #3, compilation, is so minimal, what could the yet lower #4 standard even cover? I don't see any reason to include doodles on a (likely soiled) paper napkin in a formal process, no matter how minimal.. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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KwarK
United States43968 Posts
On October 06 2023 04:51 micronesia wrote: Thanks for writing that up. If #3, compilation, is so minimal, what could the yet lower #4 standard even cover? I don't see any reason to include doodles on a (likely soiled) paper napkin in a formal process, no matter how minimal.. “Agreed upon procedures” is the 4th. Not generating financials at all. Just looking at whatever they’re asking you to look at. | ||
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Lmui
Canada6223 Posts
On October 06 2023 05:45 KwarK wrote: “Agreed upon procedures” is the 4th. Not generating financials at all. Just looking at whatever they’re asking you to look at. I learned something today that I wasn't expecting to, thank you. Good to know he's well and truly fucked from a fraud perspective, and it's just down to the degree to which the fraud catches up to him. If he goes from paper billionaire to pauper I'd be incredibly happy, there's very few people deserving of such a fate. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26762 Posts
On October 06 2023 01:50 Mohdoo wrote: Democrats don’t want McCarthy to be speaker. They should try to prevent him from being speaker. If McCarthy was speaker, he would do things that democrats don’t like. Democrats would vote for someone who would do things they like. If McCarthy wanted democrats to behave in a way that makes him the speaker, he should have advocated for policies and actions that would give democrats motivation to vote for him. Is it that you think McCarthy is the preferred speaker for democrats? McCarthy disagrees with essentially every component of what democrats advocate for. It’s not clear to me why you think democrats should be motivated to make him speaker. What am I missing? He wants stuff the democrats want the opposite of. Not a great option. Realistically how will that improve with a less vaguely occasionally token nod to occasional centrism, more hardline figure? Which is what we’re gonna get. The idea that it’s purely a referendum on McCarthy and not also laying the grounds to usherin on whatever comes next is ridiculous. I’d say the majority of posters here are better informed and smarter than I am, but fuck sake only myself and GH are seemingly the only ones concerned on this particular angle and that baffles me. | ||
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Blitzkrieg0
United States13132 Posts
On October 06 2023 09:39 WombaT wrote: Realistically how will that improve with a less vaguely occasionally token nod to occasional centrism, more hardline figure? Which is what we’re gonna get. The idea that it’s purely a referendum on McCarthy and not also laying the grounds to usherin on whatever comes next is ridiculous. I’d say the majority of posters here are better informed and smarter than I am, but fuck sake only myself and GH are seemingly the only ones concerned on this particular angle and that baffles me. Electing some loony doesn't mean the Republicans can pass anything they want. The Democrats still hold the senate and any legislation must pass both chambers. What do you foresee is worse about McCarthy's replacement? | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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riotjune
United States3394 Posts
I wish they taught government class better in schools. My high school government class was totally worthless and we ended up debating about stupid stuff, not even real issues. I think that was by design... Skimmed through all 222 pages of the Trump NY civil fraud lawsuit filing, and I agree with Kwark (not that I know that much about accounting laws anyway lol). Ngl, I'm glad I voted Letitia James twice for our AG now. She already ended Andrew Cuomo, and maybe she'll be the one to finally do something to Teflon Don for once. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22311 Posts
I fail to see how the next speaker could be much measurably worse. | ||
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Sadist
United States7328 Posts
On October 06 2023 17:54 Gorsameth wrote: McCarthy bent over backwards to try to appease the crazies parts of the GOP at seemingly every turn. I fail to see how the next speaker could be much measurably worse. But the crazys are pivotal to the next speaker getting in. This is the game the Republicans chose to play by courting the nutjobs. The dog caught the car. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22311 Posts
On October 06 2023 09:37 Lmui wrote: Trump is so fucked from a fraud perspective that the Judge already summarily rules that fraud happened before the trial even started, it was that blatant.I learned something today that I wasn't expecting to, thank you. Good to know he's well and truly fucked from a fraud perspective, and it's just down to the degree to which the fraud catches up to him. If he goes from paper billionaire to pauper I'd be incredibly happy, there's very few people deserving of such a fate. | ||
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