Skip to content

Res Ipsa Loquitor

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

“Res Ipsa Loquitor” is one of those legal doctrines we learn about in law school, but never or, hardly ever, run into in the real world. This explanation from Wikipedia will do:

In the common law of torts, res ipsa loquitur (Latin for “the thing speaks for itself”) is a doctrine that infers negligence from the very nature of an accident or injury in the absence of direct evidence on how any defendant behaved. Although modern formulations differ by jurisdiction, common law originally stated that the accident must satisfy the necessary elements of negligence: duty, breach of duty, causation, and injury. In res ipsa loquitur, the elements of duty of care, breach and causation are inferred from an injury that does not ordinarily occur without negligence.

…

Elements

The injury is of the kind that does not ordinarily occur without negligence.

The injury is caused by an agency or instrumentality within the exclusive control of the defendant.

The injury-causing accident is not by any voluntary action or contribution on the part of the plaintiff.

The defendant’s non-negligent explanation does not completely explain plaintiff’s injury.

The doctrine isn’t necessarily applicable in cases of criminal corruption, but I think it’s somewhat translatable to the political world, in that if it’s core requirements are satisfied, we can assume corruption.

So, I submit that we can apply these principles and conclude that there is corruption at work here:

In the midst of the disaster in Puerto Rico, it appears that someone may have engaged in graft as large as the hurricane that hit the island. Like other electrical utilities, the state-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority has multiple mutual-aid agreements with other utilities. It can call on these agreements for help in repairing the power grid in an emergency. These are the same kind of arrangements that allowed utilities in Florida to get power there restored so quickly following the passage of Irma. But even though 79 percent of the island remains without power, PREPA isn’t calling on those agreements.

A constellation of companies, including those controlled by Tesla’s Elon Musk, have offered to work with Puerto Rico to transform the island into a model for the nation using a series of micro-grids, distributed solar, and local storage. The resulting system would be clean, flexible, and resistant to large-scale failure. But, so far at least, none of those companies have the nod to proceed.

Instead, PREPA has awarded $300 million to Whitefish Energy. If that name is unfamiliar, it’s for a good reason.

For the sprawling effort to restore Puerto Rico’s crippled electrical grid, the territory’s state-owned utility has turned to a two-year-old company from Montana that had just two full-time employees on the day Hurricane Maria made landfall.

A company with no equipment, no experience, and no employees landed the job of restoring an electrical grid for an island of three and a half million Americans because … honestly, no one knows the answer. But they’re looking:

The unusual decision to instead hire a tiny for-profit company is drawing scrutiny from Congress and comes amid concerns about bankrupt Puerto Rico’s spending as it seeks to provide relief to its 3.4 million residents, the great majority of whom remain without power a month after the storm.

So far there seems to be only one clue: The two-person firm is headquartered in Whitefish, Montana. Which happens to be the hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

The thing speaks for itself, doesn’t it? All the elements are satisfied, because the “defendant’s” non-corrupt explanation doesn’t hold water:

Whitefish officials have said that the company’s expertise in mountainous areas makes it well suited for the work and that it jumped at the chance when other firms were hesitating over concerns about payment. The company acknowledges it had only two full-time employees when Maria struck but says its business model calls for ramping up rapidly by hiring workers on short-term contracts.

But whatever “experience” Whitefish may have is entirely with the linemen that it’s been hiring at a rate of 10 to 20 per week since landing the contract. Whitefish Energy isn’t a utility firm, it’s just a hiring desk located over three thousand miles from the place where the workers are needed.

With Puerto Rico’s finances in tatters and the electrical grid shattered, why not call on the existing aid agreements? And why drop a mound of money on a firm that hasn’t responded to a hurricane, hasn’t worked in Puerto Rico, and actually has zero experience in repairing a failed electrical grid.

And then there’s this:

Before getting this contract, Whitefish’s largest contract was to install a single electrical line less than five miles long.

You can’t make this stuff up, because if you just made it up, it would be dismissed as too improbable for good fiction. Welcome to the kleptocracy. The people of Puerto Rico can at least take cold comfort from the fact that the next time a climate change enhanced hurricane hits the island, they won’t lose power, because they won’t have any to lose.

Filed in Corruption | | Comments (0)

2+2=5

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

According to the New York Times, the Republicans are fearful that they won’t be able to get the numbers to add up to avoid making the tax deform bill subject to the filibuster:

President Trump said on Monday that he would oppose any effort to reduce the amount of pretax income that American workers can save in 401(k) retirement accounts, effectively killing an idea that Republicans were mulling as a way to help pay for a $1.5 trillion tax cut.

The directive, issued via Twitter, underscored a growing fear among Republicans and business lobbyists that Mr. Trump’s bully-pulpit whims could undermine the party’s best chance to pass the most sweeping rewrite of the tax code in decades.

Overhauling the tax code was never going to be easy given that it requires targeting lucrative and politically popular tax breaks to mitigate the magnitude of cuts Republicans are envisioning. Lawmakers must mitigate the revenue loss from those tax cuts in order to avoid a Democratic filibuster and pass a bill along party lines.

I just confirmed (through intensive googling) my memory that in 1984 poor Winston Smith ultimately convinces himself that Big Brother is right, and 2+2=5. Provided they can round up all the Republicans to vote for whatever abomination they ultimately settle on, the Republicans will indeed declare that 2+2=5. Despite the fact that every impartial observer will tell you they’re lying, they will insist that their bill is within the guidelines necessary to avoid the filibuster and they will sweep all Democratic objections aside. They may do it simply by declaring that the revenue gains from increased economic activity will make up for revenue lost to the billionaires, even though everyone will know they are lying, or they may simply declare outright that since 2+2=5, it stands to reason that subtraction is really addition. Maybe they’ll get General Kelly to announce the new arithmetical rules, now that we know we’re not allowed to question a four star general’s lies. Fox viewers will have no trouble believing that 2+2=5. It’s hardly a challenge considering what they’ve swallowed in the past. The press, including the Times, will report that some say 2+2=4 and some say 2+2=5, and it’s not their job to take sides, but certainly the Democrats are being unreasonable in their partisan insistence that 2+2 always and everywhere equals 4.

Part of the new reality into which we have entered is the new rule that only Republicans can employ the filibuster. If we retake the Congress and Presidency in 2020 it will be interesting to see if the Democrats merely take the death of the filibuster as a fait accompli, or decide to show the world how noble they are by once again giving the Republicans carte blanche to obstruct.

Filed in Orwellian, Republicans | | Comments (0)

Nothing new under the sun

Sunday, October 22, 2017

I’m currently reading a book, Three Stones Make a Wall, by an archaeologist named Eric Cline. It’s basically a history of archaeology, and would otherwise be of no interest on a political blog, except that he passes on some information that shows that there’s nothing new under the sun, and that the Karl Rove’s of the world have been with us always.

He describes the findings in Pompeii, and writes:

There were also hundreds of campaign notices. Among the more interesting endorsements is one that says, “I ask you to elect Marcus Cerrinius Vatia to the aedelship. All the late-night drinkers support him.” Another, apparently for the same man, says, “The petty thieves support Vatia for the aedileship.” We’ll never know whether he won.

Cline is probably a good archeologist, but his grasp of politics is clearly wanting. Poor Vatia was probably not looking for endorsements from the late-night drinkers or the petty thieves. Query whether his opponent put these notices up, or some foreign country hacking the Facebook of its day. As likely as not, Vatia’s opponent was pledging to make Pompeii great again.

Filed in History | | Comments (0)

Liar in Chief

Sunday, October 22, 2017

One of the truly amazing things about Trump’s rise is not that he did it by lying, but he did it while being such a crappy liar. This one this morning is just amazing:

President Donald Trump on Sunday continued to deny Rep. Frederica Wilson’s (D-FL) account of his call to the widow of a U.S. soldier killed in Niger.

“I was so nice. Look, I’ve called many people. And I would think that every one of them appreciated it. I was very surprised to see this to be honest with you,” Trump said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.”

He claimed the call “was a very nice call.”

“And by the way, I spoke of the name of the young man, and I — it was a really — it’s a very tough call. Those are the toughest calls,” Trump said. “These are tougher than dealing with the heads of countries, believe me. These are very, very hard calls. They’re sad and sometimes, you know, the grieving is so incredible.”

If he had, in fact, spoken “of the name of the young man”, he would no doubt have repeated his name in the course of this statement. If he was a good liar, he would have prepared for this lie by learning the name of the young man, or at least having a cheat sheet with him so he could look at it while he lied. (Maybe he doesn’t use cheat sheets because he can’t read.) The odd thing is, the “young man” of whom he “spoke of the name” has a last name of Johnson. That’s not such a hard name to remember. Of course you have to remember his rank, but surely even Trump can remember two factoids for the amount of time it takes to lie to someone pitching softballs at him.

Filed in The Donald | | Comments (0)

An unspeakably bad idea

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

If Camilo Casas is elected to city council in Boulder, Colorado, this November, he doesn’t plan to make any decisions himself. If he wins, Casas will instead give up his vote to Parti.Vote, a “liquid democracy” app he built to change how government functions.

This is how it will work: If more than 50 percent of people in his community vote “yes” on an issue through the app, Casas will vote the same way they do. Only in the event of a tie would he be forced to make a decision based on his own beliefs.

via Motherboard

First, let me thank Camilo Casas for giving me something to write about other than Donald Trump. It almost feels liberating.

That being said, I sincerely hope the man is a Republican, because this is one of the stupidest ideas I have ever heard from a politician, and this is the United State of America in 2017, so that’s saying something.

We all know that Winston Churchill said that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”, and if you didn’t know it, you know it now. But Winston was talking about representative democracy. Our founding parents, including my personal hero, Tom Paine, were well aware that there was a fundamental difference between representative democracy and the popular democracy that was tried and failed in Athens. If each and every voter that gave a thumbs up or down on Casas’s app actually went to the trouble to educate him or herself on the issues on which they voted, they just might make rational decisions, but to state that requirement is to refute the possibility.

In a representative democracy, at least in theory, we vote for people of proven character to whom we delegate the responsibility to inform themselves on the nuts and bolts of issues and to vote in our best interests. How is even a reasonably informed person with a full time job supposed to keep themselves informed on the arcana of budget issues, for instance? I mean, most of us (myself included) throw up our hands at the effort needed to pick the best phone plan. Sure we could do it, but we have a life to lead. Casas idea is a recipe for governance by the engaged nutjobs.

I won’t belabor the theory (a full discussion would exceed any responsible length blog post), except to point out that Casas’s proposal speaks to the failure of our educational system to educate the electorate, and in particular the Camilo Casases of the world. No reasonably rational political philosopher would argue that a popular democracy is anything other than a recipe for disaster, particularly in this internet age.

I won’t deny that representative democracy isn’t exactly covering itself with glory these days, judging by the quality of the people we’ve elected to the legislative branch of the United States government. But if Fox and the other right wing propagandists have done a good job of getting people to vote for representatives who vote against the interests of the represented, imagine the job they could do getting people to vote on specific issues that the voters know next to nothing about. As Krugman pointed out in his most recent column, the Republican argument for all its policies is based on lies, and they are damned good at getting people to believe them. In the end though, if things go wrong, we know who to blame and we can vote them out. How can you vote the bastards out, when the bastards are us?

Filed in Politics | | Comments (0)

A common disease of the right

Monday, October 16, 2017

Every once in a while I read something that makes me feel good, because I can honestly say I got there first, and when I see such a thing I feel I owe it to me reader or readers to point this out.

Case in point, these observations from Josh Marshall regarding Trump:

Going on two years ago I read something formative to my understanding of Donald Trump. It was a by then-Times business columnist Joe Nocera. The column was about a particular swindle with a golf resort. Standard Trump. But the part that mattered was Nocera’s observation about Trump’s fundamental way of doing business and interacting with other people, one he knew from years of covering Trump.

What was taking place in Jupiter was an essential part of Trump’s modus operandi. In every deal, he has to win and you have to lose. He is notorious for refusing to pay full price to contractors and vendors after they’ve completed work for him. And he basically dares the people he has stiffed to sue him, knowing that his deep pockets and bevy of lawyers give him a big advantage over those who

In every deal, he has to win and you have to lose. It actually goes a bit deeper. He doesn’t know he’s won until you lose.

Marshall goes on to observe that Trump’s approach to life, while well suited to his former life as a grifter, is not well suited to the post to which he was elected.

The fact of the matter is that this attitude is one that is endemic in this nation, particularly among those on the right, even what is considered the respectable right. On many occasions I’ve made reference to a great line uttered by the corporate villain played by Robert Vaughan in Superman 3: “It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail!”. To my mind, the line perfectly encapsulates the mindset of so many on the right. Consider the ultra-respectable Pete Peterson, a billionaire who has dedicated his life to destroying social security so that while he enjoys his billions others will live the lives of poverty to which they should justifiably be consigned. And lets not even start on the Koch Brothers, who want to destroy every benefit the rest of us derive from our government, while they themselves ram their snouts into the public trough.

The difference between these establishment right wingers and Trump is that they are smart enough and self aware enough to pretend they have other motivations. The Koch Brothers don’t want to destroy unions in order to impoverish workers, you see, they want to destroy unions in order to preserve liberty. It’s merely a side effect that by so doing they are not only succeeding, but everyone else is failing. Pete Peterson doesn’t want to destroy social security in order to manufacture millions of losers, he just wants to balance the budget, which is an important objective except when it doesn’t mean a thing. Even in the movie, Vaughn’s character uttered the line outside of public hearing. Trump is too transparent to pull that sort of thing off, but it is only in that that he differs from scores of right wingers.

Filed in Republicans, The Donald | | Comments (0)

The DCCC is fully capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

Sunday, October 15, 2017

I wish I could say that the folks at Down with Tyranny are a bit over the top, since they are constantly railing against the Democratic Establishment. Unfortunately, they always seem to be right, particularly about the DCCC:

Following up on today’s long early morning post about how badly the GOP is screwing up 2018 for themselves, I want to warn that the DCCC can pull a rabbit out of the hat and lose enough districts so the GOP keeps control of the House True… it will be difficult but that is, after all, the only thing the DCCC is good at. They know how to screw up an election. Take FL-27, for example. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is retiring so the seat is empty. It should be the easiest district in America to win. And if the DCCC disappeared over night, it would be. In 2012 Obama beat Romney there 53.0-46.3% and last year Hillary beat Trump by an even wider margin: 58.5% to 38.9%, Trump’s worse performance in a Republican-held district. The PVI went from an R+2 in 2015 to a D+5 this year, an absolutely massive swing. The only reason the district didn’t go blue a decade ago is because Debbie Wasserman Schultz has worked tirelessly to undermine any and all opponents to her crony Ros-Lehtinen. Now Wassermann Schultz is so toxic that she no longer has any power at all. So how can the DCCC screw up FL-27 with her out of the equation? Looks at this graphic:


The NRCC sees that and says, “We have to run a Latino.” The DCCC see it and says, let’s be cool and run a non-Latino. The DCCC is pushing a The smartest Democratic operative in Florida was pessimistic about it today: “If the GOP nominates a Latino and the Democrats don’t, then the Democratic nominee will be crushed in the general election. That’s just the way it works here.” The district is 73% Latino. Is that so difficult to understand? I guess it is; the DCCC is trying to make sure the nominee is state Rep David Richardson, not one of the Latino candidates– or even one of the fake-Latinas with Hispanic last names.

This blog should be must reading for Democratic activists. We can’t hope to stop the DCCC from selling us out if we don’t know what they’re doing. And when they call for money, tell they “no” and tell them why.

Filed in Democrats | | Comments (0)

Truly unbelievable

Monday, October 9, 2017

This is the picture from an ad for Dove Soap. One would love to know the backstory of how this ever saw the light of day. One must also wonder if the models were aware of how these pictures would be used.

Filed in Dysfunction | | Comments (1)

Worse Than Both-siderism

Monday, October 9, 2017

A lot of left wing blogs vent about the media’s penchant for “both-siderism”; defined perhaps as the media’s reflexive need to assign blame to “both sides” for anything happening in our culture, even when there is no objective basis for so doing. Broadly speaking, the media feels the need to blame both sides for the fact that our politics have gone off the rails, when as a matter of historical fact, it is the Republican Party that has brought us to the brink of fascism.

But bemoaning “both siderism” misses something, and that is the fact that the media does not in fact assign blame to both sides equally; it goes out of its way to impose more stringent behavioral rules on Democrats. Case in point is the Harvey Weinstein imbroglio. The folks at Crooks and Liars point out that on AM Joy the panelists recognized the phenomena:

After reading through the list of women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, Reid continued.

REID: No one is asking that every single Republican who’s been defending Donald Trump go through an answer for that.

LOPEZ: And that’s the thing, Joy. It’s really interesting to see that a lot of the media that are right now claiming that people are defending Harvey Weinstein, when it would be hard to find anyone defending this, are the same people who are right now propping Bill O’Reilly up, allowing him to do a comeback tour and basically helping him rehabilitate his image.

The C&L post goes on to point out that prominent both-siderist Chris Cillizza assured his readers that Weinstein’s behavior simply must have been known to the Democrats to whom he donated, that assumption excusing him from providing a single fact to support his assertion.

My point is that calling this a “both-sides” position actually puts far too good a face on it. In fact, the media consistently demands more of Democrats than Republicans, as this incident, and so many others prove. Republicans were not taken to task for failing to repudiate Ailes or O’Reilly, or for that matter, Tim Murphy, the married congressional “pro-life” (a Republican term the media has happily adopted, despite the overall pro-death position of the party) hypocrite who just resigned when it leaked out that he urged his mistress to have an abortion in case her fear she was pregnant turned out to be true. There was no condemnation from Ryan or any other Republican, Ryan simply thanked him for his service. There was no outcry from Cillizza and his ilk, pointing out that they must have known about Murphy’s hypocrisy. There never is. The press gives a free pass to Republican hypocrisy and Republican racism, while expecting from Democrats virtues they’d never demand from Republicans. In the case of Weinstein, they actually reported that the Democrats are defending him, which is not the case.

So we need another label. More than that, we need what the Republicans did and continue to do. We need concerted pushback from Democrats accusing the media of the bias that “both siderism” masks.

Filed in Media | | Comments (0)

Trump plays half dimensional chess

Sunday, October 8, 2017

This is all over the internet I guess, but for my purposes this description, from the Palmer report, will do.

At around 10:00am eastern time, Trump posted a factually questionable three-part tweet about Corker: “Senator Bob Corker “begged” me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said “NO” and he dropped out (said he could not win without my endorsement). He also wanted to be Secretary of State, I said “NO THANKS.” He is also largely responsible for the horrendous Iran Deal! Hence, I would fully expect Corker to be a negative voice and stand in the way of our great agenda. Didn’t have the guts to run!” About an hour later, Corker decided to hit back.

Senator Corker tweeted “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.” (link). Although Trump has around three hundred times as many followers as Corker does, Corker’s tweet has already received far more likes and retweets than Trump’s got. This may mark a serious turning point in the inevitable downfall of Donald Trump, due to the unique situation Corker is in.

This is the sort of thing that makes you think that he needs really intense day care.

If Trump actually cared about accomplishing anything of substance, he would utter such a remark only if he was also so stupid that he was unable to even contemplate the consequences of his actions. I used to scorn people who insisted that Obama was playing three dimensional chess in his dealings with other politicians, but he was certainly able to look ahead more than a few moves. Trump is more like the guy who blunders so badly that he clears a path for his opponents pawn to become a queen, rather than take the pawn.

Corker is not running again, but he will be a senator for another year in an almost evenly divided Senate. That means that he and any other random Republican Senator can stop anything that Trump wants to do. Even if what Trump tweeted was true, and it clearly is not, it was an unbelievably stupid thing for him to do. For the rest of us, it’s good news and bad news. The good news being that Trump is less likely to wreak havoc legislatively, the bad news being that we are now more sure than ever that the man with his finger on the button is both mentally ill and …well, … a “dotard”.

Of course, Trump doesn’t really care about any of the policies he’s pushing. He could be selling the exact opposite of each, and be perfectly comfortable with it. He just wants to win, but it’s hard to see him winning when he goes out of his way to insult someone who has nothing to lose by opposing him.

By the way, I’ve written before that I’ve often had my doubts about the reporting in the Palmer Report, but I must admit it’s a guilty pleasure. So long as you reserve judgment, and take none of the factual assertions as gospel until confirmed elsewhere, it’s a fun read. My own take is the facts are usually right, but the conclusions drawn are sometimes suspect. If you keep your mind engaged it’s worth reading.

Filed in The Donald | | Comments (0)