College application season is upon us. A tip from a brilliant young litigator with whom I recently worked (as a software expert witness, not in the law mines themselves!)… “Rankings of law schools look at undergraduate GPA and median LSAT score and, therefore, law school admissions look at the applicant’s GPA and LSAT score.” What’s his practical advice? “They don’t adjust the GPA for how rigorous your undergrad school was. You’re better off going to community college or majoring in ‘studies’ at Harvard than going through an undergrad program where you’d have some chance of getting a B.”
If the undergrad program is so undemanding that straight As are guaranteed, how should the prospective lawyer spend his/her/zir/their time? Cramming for the LSATs! Imagine working with those prep books and prep classes starting the summer before freshman year of undergraduate!
Despite the young lawyer’s mention of Harvard, it turns out to be only America’s #3 college for grade inflation. The school with the highest average GPA is Brown. (source) Of course, for either school the 18-year-old should be sure to pack a keffiyeh and Queers for Palestine banner (also useful once the scholar arrives at the elite law school; see the recent Instagram post by Berkeley Law students regarding the “Palestinian Genocide” (exacerbated by one of the world’s highest rates of population growth)).
The initiative would legalize recreational marijuana for adults 21 years old and older. Individuals would be allowed to possess up to three ounces of marijuana (about 85 grams), with up to five grams in the form of concentrate. Existing Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers would be authorized under the initiative to sell marijuana to adults for personal use. The Florida State Legislature could provide by state law for the licensure of entities other than existing Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers to cultivate and sell marijuana products.
Smart and Safe Florida is sponsoring the initiative. The campaign reported $61.28 million in contributions. Trulieve, a marijuana dispensary company that owns medical marijuana dispensaries in Florida, is the main contributor.
One weed shop had tens of millions of dollars of loose change to kick in, hoping to make a 10X return if the amendment passes? If the measure succeeds, cronies of the state government (the current approved dispensaries) will make huge profits partly due to the fact that it will still be illegal for a stoner to grow his/her/zir/their own dope. My comment on X:
That is beautiful logic. Marijuana is wholesome enough to be sold by the Miami Vice-style bale on every street corner, but the person found with a single plant must be imprisoned. Queers for Palestine is actually easier to understand.
I thought that unlimited calling was great because I would save 50 cents here and there on phone calls to friends. It didn’t occur to me that I would be getting 50 spam calls every day once the cost of making a call was cut to $0. Similarly, I was in favor of marijuana legalization in Massachusetts because I wanted tax dollars preserved for government functions other than enforcing marijuana laws. It didn’t occur to me that weed shops and their advertising would be omnipresent, thus changing the day-to-day experience of living in Boston or Cambridge (or looking at billboards on the various highways).
I hope that this fails! Does that make me anti-Weed? No. I would be in favor of a law that
eliminated medical marijuana (so that kids aren’t exposed to the idea that marijuana is healthful, which would have been risible to 1970s stoners)
allowed people to grow their own marijuana if they so desire, so long as the plants are inaccessible to minors
prevented marijuana businesses from advertising; people would have to find them via Google Maps and similar
required communities to establish zoning rules for where marijuana stores could be located (preferably not in strip malls where kids would be likely to go)
made it easy enough to get into the marijuana business that nobody could make tens of millions in profit simply by being a government crony
TD Bank will pay $3 billion to settle charges that it failed to properly monitor money laundering by drug cartels, regulators announced Thursday.
The fine includes a $1.3 billion penalty that will be paid to the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a record fine for a bank. TD also intends to pay $1.8 billion to the US Justice Department and plead guilty to resolve the US government’s investigation that the bank violated of the Bank Secrecy Act and allowed money laundering.
The US Department of Justice said in a statement that TD Bank had “long-term, pervasive, and systemic deficiencies” in its procedures of monitoring transactions. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news late Wednesday.
In one instance, TD Bank employees collected more than $57,000 worth of gift cards to process more than $470 million in cash deposits from a money laundering network to “ensure employees would continue to process their transactions” and not declare them in required reports, the DoJ said.
Aside from handling drug cartel money, what’s been management’s focus at TD Bank?
On Instagram they want to make sure that “every woman wins”:
On their Diversity and Inclusion web page, veterans are highlighted as a victimhood group in the same cluster as sacred Black female, and LGBTQ2+ (not 2SLGBTQQIA+? The “2” in LGBTQ2+ stands for two-spirt, I think, but somehow the Native American Queers end up last rather than first. White women in the L category displace the Native American victims as with most quota-based programs).
On YouTube, their executives are on a diversity, equity, and inclusion panel:
(They also sponsor a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Council in another YouTube video.)
Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday issued a warning to any potential home intruder: “If somebody breaks in my house, they’re getting shot.” The Democratic presidential candidate and gun owner made the seemingly unguarded comment in an interview with Oprah Winfrey before a live studio audience when the conversation turned to gun laws. “I probably should not have said that. But my staff will deal with that later,” Harris said, laughing.
(The intruder doesn’t have to be a “threat to democracy” for gun violence to be justified? Also, if she owns a gun and is planning to use it in a crowded domestic situation, what kind of recurrent training does she receive? I’ve never heard of our future president going to the range. Dirty Harry used his gun regularly to shoot perpetrators, but he also was shown going to the range in at least one documentary film.)
I decided to post this question to a vast panel of gun owners… i.e., a friend who owns a vast panel of guns, (Maskachusetts is officially gun-free, at least when it comes to peasants owning serious firepower, but it turns out that there are exceptions…).
[Massachusetts] has a duty to retreat in general but in a house you have some more leeway I think. In any case I don’t talk like that. I would never presume to shoot someone in my house. 90% chance I can just hold them for the police.
For those who say that it is unrealistic that an intruder might get through Kamala Harris’s Secret Service protection, let me remind readers that a criminal mastermind managed to get a rifle, ladder, rangefinder, ammo, etc. past the Secret Service in Pennsylvania recently.
Also in our chat group, the one Android user marveled at the devotion of the faithful:
Three of the guys i message with are at Apple stores now getting the 16. Apple users are hilarious.
Apple Inc. fans lined up at stores around the world for the new iPhone 16, shrugging off the fact that the device’s signature feature — a new suite of AI tools — won’t arrive until later.
During coronapanic I decided to save our beloved planet by paying $71,533 for a Tesla Solar Roof to sit on top of our house in Maskachusetts and provide backup power for the week or so per year that we would typically lose power. About six months later, Tesla told me that the price would be changed to $84,137 (see Tesla Solar Roof (the price is not the price)) and about six months after that they offered to install the roof for $71,533 as originally contemplated (by which point we had sold the house and escaped to the Florida Free State).
In retrospect, considering the raging changes in price that were happening in 2021 (not to be confused with “inflation”, which is a figment of conservatives’ imaginations), I’m surprised that the price bump was so small.
Apparently, there was a class action lawsuit around this debacle. Without having taken any action or signing up for anything, just this month I received a check for $100 for my role in the small drama. What did the lawyers get? $1.5 million.
I actually wish that Tesla would make a Spanish barrel tile version of its roof and then we could re-roof in Florida with their product. I’m not sure that it would be worth paying for their batteries, though, given that we lose power only for a few minutes per year. Maybe the batteries would be great during a once-every-20-years major hurricane, but $20,000 for batteries could buy a lot of hotel nights in Orlando.
(Solar gear on top of a Florida roof is an idea that frightens roofing professionals.)
Spend the $100 on a trip to Titusville, Florida to watch a SpaceX rocket launch? Or how about one of these EMF-blocking hats so that I can stop lining my own hats with aluminum foil (not a “tin foil” hat liner because those are for the paranoid)? Facebook’s AI correctly discerned that I would be a likely customer for this product, named after pioneering Scientist Michelle Faraday (maybe a “no brain fog” hat should actually be named “the Dr. Jill Biden, Ed. D. hat”?):
It seems that Julian Assange, who was never a political prisoner (only Russia and China hold political prisoners), is finally free after 14 years of prosecution by various nations (Wikipedia). During these 14 years, I’ve lost the thread. What did he do that was bad/illegal? I found this summary of Judaism in a Belmonte, Portugal museum:
It would be good to have something of about the same length explaining the Julian Assange situation.
I remember that he published a lot of stuff that the U.S. government did not want published. That’s not supposed to be a crime, though, right? Various American newspapers have done that. The government employee who leaks the information is a criminal, but the Washington Post and New York Times aren’t criminals even if the information could be considered helpful to one of our enemies.
Then I’ve heard that Assange encouraged (or helped?) a U.S. Government employee to obtain information that was later published. That would have been a criminal act if he’d been in the U.S. when he did it, but he wasn’t in the U.S. so what law did he break? CNN says “pleading guilty to conspiring unlawfully to obtain and disseminate classified information over his alleged role in one of the largest breaches of classified material in US military history.” But I still can’t figure out how a conspiracy is against U.S. law if it doesn’t happen in the U.S. It’s against U.S. law to kidnap Americans and hold them hostage, but Joe Biden isn’t seeking to prosecute anyone in Gaza for having done these very things in Israel. In fact, Joe Biden has actually rewarded the Gazans who continue to hold Americans hostage by sending them all of the cash, food, water, etc. that they need to keep their war going.
Finally, what did Assange publish that actually was harmful to the U.S.?
The jury verdict was broken down into $65 million meant to punish Trump, $11 million to help Carroll rebuild her reputation and another $7.3 million to compensate her for her pain and suffering.
The plaintiff won $5 million in a previous lawsuit against the hated Trump. She’s 80 years old, 13 years beyond Social Security full retirement age. Has she lost out on job opportunities because Trump said that she was a liar? I hadn’t ever heard of her until she put herself into the public eye as a New York department store rape victim (the first jury actually did conclude that she was lying about having been raped).
Two election workers had reputations worth more $33 million., apparently, because they could lose $33 million in actual damages to those reputations. And then they suffered more emotional distress than if they’d been run over by a car and paralyzed or if they’d actually been killed.
Americans who had no public reputation will now be some of the richest people on Planet Earth due to compensation for damage to those non-existent reputations. This is a shocking resource allocation result in what is a mostly planned economy!
Here’s the church web site as of September 25, 2023:
Who can decode the symbols on the “Community Pride Worship” banner above?
I can’t find any post-imprisonment media stories about Adolfo Martinez. He has been erased, it seems. He was 30 years old when he was imprisoned and will be 46, almost ready to retire on SSDI, when he gets out.
Tara Tarawneh — a 2020 graduate of King’s Academy in Madaba, Jordan — was arrested Nov. 4 for allegedly stealing an Israeli flag from the front of a Campus Apartments house near the Ivy League campus, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported last week.
Tarawneh gave a hate-filled speech at a Philadelphia rally last month, with video of her addressing the pro-Palestinian crowd going viral, … “I remember feelings so empowered and happy, so confident that victory was near and so tangible,” she tells a crowd of the monstrous Oct. 7 attack. “I want all of you to hold that feeling in your hearts. Never let go of it. Channel it through every action you take. Bring it to the streets.”
Mx. Tarawneh could reasonably have expected an award for his/her/zir/their actions (the current gender ID of a college student today can never be assumed). A 2019 tale from NYU:
As soon as the [Israel Independence Day celebration] started, an anti-Zionist student rushed to the front of the protest line, held up the Israeli flag, lit it on fire, and threw it to the ground where it continued to burn. Adela [the Jewess] told her friends to ignore him, sing “Hatikvah” and move on.
Suddenly, a student protestor grabbed a microphone from a Jewish student, yelled “Free Palestine!” and waved his hands in the air. More protestors took the 10-foot Israeli flag, shredded it, and hung it from lamp posts and trees. Two protestors were arrested by NYPD and charged with assault, reckless endangerment, and property theft and damage.
Soon after, Adela, who was also a senator for the NYU student government, met with the administration to tell them that a line had been crossed and it was time to act.
What did NYU instead? They gave the anti-Israel hate group the President’s Service Award – the highest honor a student group can receive.
Related:
“Man gets 10 years for fatally stabbing Sioux City roommate” (Des Moines Register, also in the fall of 2019): 39-year-old Elmi Said was sentenced Friday. He’d been charged with second-degree murder for the Oct. 28, 2018, slaying of 40-year-old Guled Nur. … Said is also known as Abdiqadar Sharif.
“Iowa man in face-mask fight sentenced to 10 years in prison” (2021): Police and court records indicate Shane Michael, 42, went to the Vision 4 Less eyewear store on Merle Hay Road in Des Moines on Nov. 11 of last year. While there, Michael was wearing his face mask pulled down slightly, leaving his nose exposed.
“Driver sentenced to 2 years probation in April crash that killed East High School student” (2022): The driver involved in a crash that killed a 14-year-old East High School student has been sentenced to two years probation. Des Moines police said Terra Flipping struck 14-year-old Ema Cardenas with her car on April 28, 2022. She drove away following the crash before and was arrested that same day.
A friend in the Boston suburbs was recently sentenced to state court jury duty. He’s an immigrant, so he had some naïve questions, such as “What happens if you are stuck on in a long trial? Who pays your salary?” We had to explain to him that if you’re a government worker you get paid at 100 percent while you do no work, but if you’re a working-class day laborer you get nothing. The Maskachusetts law says that laptop class members will get money from their employers for at least the first three days of jury duty while the working class scrambles to find rent money.
Our self-employed friend would be getting $50 per day starting on Day 4 of his involuntary presence in the courthouse. Why is that interesting? Massachusetts minimum wage is $15 per hour (real money in pre-Biden terms!) and jury service may be 7 or more hours per day (i.e., minimum wage for this job would be over $100 per hour).
Why won’t the government abide by its own minimum wage law?
Separately, here are the livestream messages from our imprisoned friend:
the jury pool is 90% white; we watched a video where nearly everyone was a person of color and a woman; video mentioned diversity three times; the video told us how blacks and women couldn’t serve on juries
(responding to “what are prospective jurors talking about?”) just boring so far. we’re sitting quietly; everyone is on phones; or reading books if a geezer; i am the only one with a laptop
I asked about COVID-19 prevention. The virus was serious enough that some school systems in Maskachusetts were shut down for 18 months, 5-year-olds were ordered to get an experimental vaccine in order to be in public places, peasants were ordered to follow Fauci and wear their cloth masks, and it was illegal to work except in “essential” businesses such as marijuana stores. Our friend reported that the government crammed all of the potential jurors into a single room so that their respective respiratory viruses could be fully distributed. Only 2 out of about 60 jurors wore masks and nobody working for the court, including the judge, wore a mask.
After a 4-hour SARS-CoV-2 incubation session, which started at 8 am on a Wednesday, everyone was sent home. Not a single person out of the 60 present was needed. Cases were postponed or settled (#LoveWins?).
In one sense it isn’t surprisingly that an enterprise that pays nothing for labor would make no attempt to use labor efficiently. On the other hand, given that hardly any jury trial would get organized before 10:00 am (judges tend to hear motions at the beginning of the day), I’m surprised that the court makes people show up at 8:00 am. Why not at least let people sleep late and avoid rush hour? Or put people on a 1-hour standby list: potential jurors are not required to come in, but they must be available to show up within one hour of getting a call. I couldn’t find any court anywhere in the U.S. that does this, so presumably there is a flaw in the idea, but I can’t figure out what the flaw is.
I always wondered why Supreme Court Justices didn’t quit their $400,000ish/year (total compensation) jobs and become law firm partners making $5 million/year arguing cases. Why live like civil servants when they could easily be living the multimillionaire lifestyle? And why not retire prior to becoming 98% dead? Recently we’ve learned the answer: they’re living like billionaires just as long as they keep sitting on the Court. Examples: “I shot myself a deer,” Elena Kagan said of a recent big game hunting trip with the conservative justice [Scalia] in Wyoming.” (Atlantic) and “Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court” (ProPublica).
If ethics rules were changed so that Supreme Court Justices couldn’t spend weekends and vacations on Gulfstream G700s, I wonder if they’d retire at a more typical age and/or leave government at 60-65 to earn some big $$ in the private sector before hanging up their pens.
Here’s one of our heroes on a July 2008 trip to a $1,000/day fishing lodge in Alaska:
(i.e., right before the world was about to melt down for the peasants)
From the ProPublica article:
“If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” referring to the flight on the private jet.
If nothing else, I guess we can be sure that our legal system will remain friendly to the interests of billionaires!
In a stinging defeat for President Joe Biden, the Supreme Court blocked the administration’s student loan forgiveness plan Friday, rejecting a program aimed at delivering up to $20,000 of relief to millions of borrowers struggling with outstanding debt.
The decision was 6-3 with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the conservative supermajority.
Roberts said the government needed direct authorization from Congress.
“The question here is not whether something should be done; it is who has the authority to do it.”
The liberal dissenters said the majority is basically making political decisions.
“The Court acts as though it is an arbiter of political and policy disputes, rather than of cases and controversies,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote.
The end of this glorious scheme comes just as there are three guys working at our house. One is a plumber rebuilding the Watts 007M3 backflow preventer, a 20-year-old device that protects the public water supply from contaminants (SARS-CoV-2?) that could be introduced from our house’s irrigation system, which is entirely separate and fed by “reclaimed water” (maybe we don’t want to know the details?). There are two guys installing a new garage door that meets the latest code for impact resistance (shooting 2x4s at the door with a cannon) as well as wind resistance. I actually went up to W8 wind resistance, which is required down in Miami, on the theory that the New York Times might be correct about the appropriate level of climate panic. (Hurricanes may actually be getting less common; see “Declining tropical cyclone frequency under global warming” (2022) from Nature Magazine)
(The new garage door should pay for itself within a few years because it is insulated, unlike the other one, and it will give us a discount on homeowners insurance, a rare Florida problem that the New York-based media does not exaggerate!)
I wonder if these hard-working guys are experiencing personal sadness that, while they can still pay for the elites’ new Teslas, they can no longer fund elite kids’ college tuition and, indirectly, enrich anthropology professors and administrators.
Separately, it’s interesting that what is constitutional is now entirely predictable based on the political party of the Supreme Court Justice. A layperson might be excused for thinking that these sacred legal principles are entirely arbitrary!
