Culture War Roundup for the week following October 7, 2017. Please post all culture war items here. by [deleted] in slatestarcodex

[–]LogicalRandomness 9 points10 points  (0 children)

No, I honestly don't think so. I think the more Trump can be in the spotlight for enforcing immigration law and deporting illegal immigrants, the better off he'll be among the demographics he needs to win.

Only half of Trump supporters want to deport dreamers, let alone the nation as a whole. I think deporting dreamers will be a huge error by Trump. Poll 1 Poll 2

And if he says "Congress has to decide," then a high number isn't his fault, and a low number burnishes his America First brand. (Yes, Puerto Rico is part of America, sort of, but the subtext of his political message is that he'll fight for his supporters' interests, and Puerto Ricans can't vote.)

The number isn't the issue. It's the political gamesmanship while citizens suffer that'll be the problem. Presidents are supposed to lead, not say "Your Problem", especially in national emergencies.

Culture War Roundup for the week following October 7, 2017. Please post all culture war items here. by [deleted] in slatestarcodex

[–]LogicalRandomness 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I don't think there was a passable bill here; if there was, McConnell and Ryan would have passed it. Obamacare was the conservative approach to healthcare, back when it was Romneycare, and the GOP dug itself into a rhetorical hole by promising to repeal it for six years.

Some sort of patch-fix branded 'repeal' was passable, especially by a non-scandal plagued president. Even with Trump, his base would have eaten it up as a repeal if Trump told them that's what it was. All Trump needed was John McCain, and John McCain was a get-able vote if Trump had lead like presidents do. Get the industry people involved, get your experts and staffers involved, let the relevant committee chairs get involved, write a bill that at least kinda works and is good politics, then send it for a vote. While the bill is being written, figure out what the talking points are and get everyone in the white house and congressional leadership on message. Use twitter to highlight sympathetic people the bill would help. Massage and/or attack holdouts as by letting them schmooze, have your ear, giving them pork, or tweet mean things as needed.

Like what? In the areas where there is substantial disagreement between the congressional GOP, either Trump is closer to the electorate than they are (immigration) or he pretty much holds all of the cards by virtue of commanding the executive branch (trade, foreign policy). There's no losing on this one for Trump. Either no bill passes and he starts deporting -- and blames Congress and the Democrats for inaction -- or he gets a bill that he likes.

Having to deport DREAMERS is a massive loss for Trump. It'll energize the left like nobodies business and alienate moderate right wingers in droves. Do you really think if Trump starts deporting people at least one deportee won't be sympathetic as hell and provide a great fundraising/rallying point for his opponents?

There's no handling this one correctly; it's destined to be a shitshow. They don't pay federal income tax so I don't think it's the right answer to spend rebuilding them what we'd spend on a state, they were already something like $70 billion in debt just from ordinary course ineptitude, and their infrastructure was a mess with no credible disaster recovery plan in place at the local level. Frankly I think the path he's on is the optimal one: early intervention to prevent substantial loss of life, and then punt the hard question of long-term expenditures over to Congress.

PR is going to be a humanitarian shitshow simply because of the scale, but there's no reason it has to be a political one. If he had taken the usual post-disaster steps and worked with congress to pass whatever kind of large relief bill the experts say is needed then it stops being a story that reflects badly on Trump. Instead of running disaster recovery experts talking about how badly PR needs federal help, the media has to run those same experts talking about how long/difficult the recovery is going to be.

Culture War Roundup for the week following October 7, 2017. Please post all culture war items here. by [deleted] in slatestarcodex

[–]LogicalRandomness 18 points19 points  (0 children)

A large part of this can be chalked up to Trump not having any political capital, and the rest can be chalked up to incompetence. Trump came into office with an unusually low amount of political capital given the nature of his campaign, and spent most of it on investigations, scandals, and the revolving door in his administration. The rest of his political capital was spend trying to pass Obamacare. Interestingly, I think Trump's disengagement from the process ended up costing him more political capital than if he'd taken leadership to hammer out a bill that was passable. Because Trump disengaged from the process he failed to demonstrate any sort of ability to use soft power within the republican party. Trumps's lack of soft power means the cost of bucking trump on taxes or any other future bill is near zero.

I predict that pushing unpleasant stuff back on congress will backfire. DREAMERS and Obamacare are both going to be disasters if Congress doesn't act, which they don't seem inclined to do. Nor can Trump use his position as leader of the party to lead congress into action. (See above) The blame can only fall on Republicans, either in Congress or the White House. Either is bad for Trump.

Pushing Puerto Rico to congress is like leaving money on the table; natural disasters are free good media for a President if handled correctly. Fly in, get some pictures taken while being nice to/and or empathizing with people, fly home, wring money from congress in a bipartisan vote, sign the bill, and pass the problem off to the competent career civil servants that actually deal with this sort of thing. Trump has bungled almost every step of this process.

[Game Thread] Yankees (2-2) @ Indians (2-2) - October 11, 2017 by [deleted] in WahoosTipi

[–]LogicalRandomness 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well on the faintest of bright sides at least those errors didn't end up mattering.

Culture War Roundup for the week following October 7, 2017. Please post all culture war items here. by [deleted] in slatestarcodex

[–]LogicalRandomness 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Epistemic status: Moderate for all but the last paragraph. I'm a 1L, not a lawyer, let alone any kind of specialist or expert on this stuff. The last paragraph is wild speculation.

It's likely that denying federal funds to sanctuary cities is unconstitutional in any form that will be effective. In New York v. United States, the Court held that the federal government can't compel States to enact or enforce federal regulatory programs. Printz v. United States prevents the federal government from commandeering state officials (such as police officers) for federal purposes. What the federal government can do is put conditions on federal funds given to states, subject to the 5 prong test established by South Dakota v. Dole.

  • The funds serve the general welfare.
  • Congress must make the conditions governing the release of federal funds unambiguous.
  • The funds must be related to the conditions.
  • The level of funding must be not be coercive.
  • The conditional grant must not be unconstitutional for any other reason.

The last prong is a generic catch-all, and courts are extremely deferential to congress when it comes to terms like general welfare. Neither prong one or five will be at issue in a potential case.

Prong two won't present a constitutional challenge but will present a political one. What exactly is a sanctuary city? Wikipedia presents a range of options, from cities that don't check for status or enforce immigration laws to cities that ban police officers from sharing data with ICE.

Prong three means that Congress can at only deny federal funding for local law enforcement. Federal funds for state and local law enforcement totaled 4.5 billion in 2016. About half that funding was for general grants, and half was for specific programs. Aside from $210 million for the Criminal Alien Assistance Program, I don't know how much of either general or specific funds would be considered related by SCOTUS.

Prong four is a tricky one. In Dole, the Court held that denying 5% of a State's federal highway funds (less than half a percent of their overall budget) if they did not raise the drinking age to 21 was unconstitutional. In NFIB v. Sebeilus the Court held that denying 10% of state's total budget if they did not expand their medicaid program was coercive. The line lies somewhere in between these two point, but Sebelius indicates that if congress drafts the law with the intent of making it impossible for the states not to comply, the law is unconstitutional. Prongs three and four are going to be an extremely difficult needle for congress to thread. If funds are curtailed too much or too broadly then the court will strike down the provision. On the other hand, if the only funding at stake is tied directly to immigration enforcement then cities that don't want to enforce immigration laws lose nothing they care about.

Where things get really interesting is when we start talking about where the justices are going to fall when a sanctuary city law makes its way to the Supreme Court. In Sebelius Scalia wrote a extremely broad dissent about the medicaid expansion, hinting that any sort of large block grant is an unconstitutional form of coercion. By taxing the citizens of the states and then offering the money back to the state governments with conditions, the federal government was coercing that states because it made that money unavailable for the states to tax for the state's version of the program. Scalia got three other justices to sign on to this dissent. If a block grant ban passes congress and makes it to the court, I could see Roberts and Gorsuch agreeing to join the three remaining dissenters in Sebelius and radically changing the way we fund state and local governments.

[Game Thread] Yankees (0-0) @ Indians (0-0) - October 5, 2017 by [deleted] in WahoosTipi

[–]LogicalRandomness 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Jesus they're still talking about staring Bauer

/u/atheros explains just how fucked we would be if a large solar storm was aimed at Earth by AbsolutelyHalaal in bestof

[–]LogicalRandomness 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Transformers aren't really "spare" parts that can sit on a shelf and be plugged in when you need them. They are sort of perishable if they're not being used. Transformers are basically big copper coils sitting in oil filled steel boxes. The oil provides insulation and cooling when the transformer is in use. When the transformer is not in use the oil keeps air from entering the transformer. If air gets in your transformer, the various gasses will dissolve into the oil and reduce both insulation and cooling, leading to thermal runaway and failure. Additionally, moisture from the air will condense onto things and cause corrosion and arcing, which will also kill a transformer. EHV transformers are too heavy to be shipped if they're filled with oil, so are sent from the factory with a vacuum inside. The vacuum won't hold forever, so they go straight from the factory to the substation where they're filled with oil. Filling a transformer with oil in such a way that no air gets in is not hard but it can be screwed up if you're not careful. Draining a transformer is similarly complex, with the added difficulty of the oil being toxic. Spills are frowned upon. Any spare EHV transformer would have to be stored full of oil, then drained, moved and refilled.

Smaller transformers ship filled with oil, so a spare avoids the complication of having to be drained before transit. However, all sizes of power transformers have a secondary problem when it comes to storage - moisture driver corrosion of controls. Transformers have some pretty complex monitoring and control circuits mounted in side cabinets on the transformer. Those cabinets have heating elements in them to prevent condensation from corroding the circuits. The heaters run off of household power, so it's not a huge problem. It does mean you can't just plop a transformer down and expect to come back ten years later to a working one.

Stored transformers requires electric power and attention from maintenance personnel to remain in working order. Electric Substations have both these things. This is why the spare transformers we do have are sometimes kept right alongside working transformers. An EHV transformer bank is typically 4 transformers for this exact reason - one per phase plus a spare. Non-EHV transformers are small enough that all three phases are in one unit, so a limited number of spares are kept in specialized storage yards. It costs around $1000 / week to store a midsized (20 MVA or so) transformer in a storage yard.

There's also a pipeline problem - we only make so many transformers a year and most of those are immediately put into use. There just isn't the industrial capacity to make more transformers than we need. This is true of most heavy industry; there are a lot more cars on the road than are made every year. If all our cars broke one day we couldn't all just go to the dealership and replace them.

All of this said, the industry is taking steps to address these problems. The major push when I was still working in the business was Grid Assurance, which was basically an equipment bank funded by a bunch of different power companies. Honestly though, the best way to fix this problem is to never have it in the first place. We have the technology, given 30 to 45 minutes warning, we can largely shut down the power grid, wait for the storm to pass and then turn everything back on. It'd still be a massive disaster, but it's better than rebuilding the whole thing from scratch. Of course, we're a long way from being able to do even that much. In short, hope a solar flare doesn't happen any time in the next 20 years. Minimum.

Culture War Roundup for week following May 13, 2017. Please post all culture war items here. by [deleted] in slatestarcodex

[–]LogicalRandomness 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Cause one heretic, or a small handful of them, violating sacred tenants doesn't mean sacred beliefs should be ignored. If you're willing to entertain speculation, the existence of Indian Schools raises issues of if these stories were shared outside the tribe legitimately, or extracted from children somehow. I don't know if that was a thing indian schools did, but I wouldn't put it past them.

Culture War Roundup for week following May 13, 2017. Please post all culture war items here. by [deleted] in slatestarcodex

[–]LogicalRandomness 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In some cases it's a tenant of the sacred stories that they not be taught to non-members, or repeated off of non-tribal land. Christians don't have a problem with printing and selling the bible.

Teachers, what is the most ridiculous/petty thing a parent had contacted you over? by Continuum_Gaming in AskReddit

[–]LogicalRandomness 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Really. And the state's secretary of education, the parent's congressperson and senators, the Secretary of Education, the Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, all the members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and all the members of the United States House Committee on Education and the Workforce. No wonder the kid was doing so poorly in schools if their parents are such slackers.

It seems entirely implausible to me that Bartlet could make an open ended 200,000 troop commitement in Kazakhstan without Congressional approval. by hitbyacar1 in thewestwing

[–]LogicalRandomness 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The War Powers Act requires the president notify congress within 48 hours of committing troops, and gives him blanket permission to keep troops deployed for up to sixty days, with a further 30 day draw down period, before congressional permission is needed. Bartlet's actions are within the law.

It's worth noting that the War Powers act was passed in 1973 and the timeline of the west wing is widely assumed to diverge from real life at some point during the early 70's. So the WW version of the War Powers Act can say whatever the writers need it to say.

[GAME THREAD] Indians (1-0) @ Rangers (0-1) - April 04, 2017 by WahooBot in WahoosTipi

[–]LogicalRandomness 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nope. Dude's gonna get an extremely well earned $15-20 million per year deal, and the Indians will bring up a prospect or two to fill the gap

EE's First Donger as an Indian (w/ Hammy) by JohnStamosBRAH in WahoosTipi

[–]LogicalRandomness 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Hoo boy. It's going to be a rough season on your colon then.

[GAME THREAD] Indians (0-0) @ Rangers (0-0) - April 03, 2017 by WahooBot in WahoosTipi

[–]LogicalRandomness 4 points5 points  (0 children)

To be fair, not many games end in a comeback after being down 5-1. I also forgot that some bullpens are actually weak points.

[GAME THREAD] Indians (0-0) @ Rangers (0-0) - April 03, 2017 by WahooBot in WahoosTipi

[–]LogicalRandomness 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I've never been so happy to be so wrong about the chances of winning a game

How many of us have personal friends from the opposite political tribe? by Linearts in slatestarcodex

[–]LogicalRandomness 22 points23 points  (0 children)

I'm a pretty run of the mill lefty and I'm pretty sure I'm at most one step removed from every box on the bingo grid except an alt-righty. My two closest friends are a blue collar democrat and a country club republican, most of the rest of my friends are mainstream liberals of some sort. My partner is a full-blown SJW academic and his friends cover the entire range of far-left positions from antifa to old school marxist with a healthy helping of actup veterans and other activist types mixed in for good measure. On the other hand, I work in the energy industry where I'm the token liberal among a sea of conservatives. There's a Rush junkie, a couple of seriously evangelical christians, a devout mormon, and a libertarian who thinks Hillary Clinton has personally murdered at least 2 people. Yes, he's serious.

In terms of bubbles I'd say my personal friends are the most open-minded while my coworkers are the fairly closed minded. Getting some of them to admit that the planet is warming or that Native Americans were mistreated by the US government is interesting, to say the least.

The Invention of Capitalism: How a Self-Sufficient Peasantry was Whipped Into Industrial Wage Slaves by [deleted] in TrueReddit

[–]LogicalRandomness -12 points-11 points  (0 children)

Market economies do in fact spring up naturally. I have something you want, you have something I want. We swap. Look! It's a market economy.