Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, September 16, 2023
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52 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Wa! I’m on vacation in a foreign country and still the first comment? Slow weekend?
On my Google feed this morning, there was a story about California deciding to bankrupt chain restaurant franchisees. Anyone know anything about that? The source of complaint was a group called the National Owners Association, so color me suspicious.
@just nutha: They are probably cracking down on child labor abuses. Either that or insisting they pay at least minimum wage. Or maybe the state OSHA has been giving snap inspections. Or health inspections. Or damn, just insisting they follow the laws.
Being so transparent he refuses to say what the allegations are, who is making them, and who is trying to corroborate the stories.
For now, I’ll hold off on speculating as to whether they are true or not and just say that nothing would surprise me.
The headline of the day- 1-Year-Old Boy Dies of Suspected Opioid Exposure at a Bronx Day Care
The Florida headline of the day- Florida death row inmate died of fentanyl overdose, report shows
I’ve been reading about the gag order on tfg and talk about potential violence by his supporters. I’m at the point where I say, bring it on. Make him shut up and if not, throw him in jail (never happen, I don’t think, at this point). And then his nutjob supporters go nuts, commit acts of violence – and we know they will, since they already have. And that cements and reinforces the obvious narrative of what an actual threat to democracy this POS really is and continues to be. Will it ever make a difference though.
Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis turns on ‘malignant narcissist’ ex-president
Rats, ships… A woman scorned… But,
Hooboy. These people ain’t right in the head. I wonder how long it will take her to realize her only chance at salvation is a good flip, and the sooner the better.
Things are getting interesting down in Coffee County. It would seem some folks aren’t too happy with “the digital information obtained is now in an unknown number of hands.” I wonder why that would upset people?
Somehow or other, I am not surprised.
@just nutha: @OzarkHillbilly:
It might be this:
http://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2022-09-07/restaurants-move-to-stop-new-california-fast-food-worker-law
This is over a year old.
@CSK: That would do it.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Meanwhile, after Trump gave a speech to Concerned Women of America yesterday, the CEO of the organization asked him if they could pray that he and his family be surrounded by “angel armies.”
Trump graciously gave his permission that they could do so.
@CSK: They would do well to spend a little more time with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and less with rightwing blowhards.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m contrasting the sentiments of the CWA CEO with those of Jenna Ellis and shaking my head.
@CSK: I hate to traffic in stereotypes but Ellis seems like a typical Conservative: she was unable to understand the harm from Trump until it affected her personally
@MarkedMan: She still has the Stockholm Syndrome pretty bad. I wonder what if anything will wake yer up.
@MarkedMan: @OzarkHillbilly:
Yes; Ellis still seems to be trying to justify her personal allegiance to Trump. I would say this is out of embarrassment from having previously slobbered over him, but I don’t know.
“He’s probably guilty, but it doesn’t matter.” — A Trump fan
http://www.rawstory.com/trump-voters-2024/
Notice the spelling of “your” on the sign and the missing “s” from “congratulation.”
@OzarkHillbilly: What will wake her up?
I’m sure Trump had made vague promises about paying her legal bills if anything happened, and she has realized what the word of a trump is worth.
Just read this excerpt from Inverse Cowboy by Alicia Roth Weigel published in Politico Magazine. Another reminder that human beings are far more genetically and developmentally complex than many want to pretend.
I Came Out as Intersex in Front of the Texas Legislature
Today’s is the day the Texas Senate votes to convict or exonerate AG Ken Paxton of his various offenses. There are 16 Articles of impeachment and is accused of misusing his office to help a friend and political donor.
Supposedly it starts at 1110 CDT. You can view it here: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/16/ken-paxton-impeachment-vote-deliberations/
I am always prepared to be disappointed when it comes to Texas politics.
Here’s some fun things I googled up. I have been reading that Deion Sanders is a self promoter that is unlike the pure sportsmanship that old line coaches promoted. Now, we all know that contemporary big program coaches make millions of dollars annually, but what about the good old days? Knute Rockne had an income of $75,000 in 1931 when median household income was about $2,000. Compared to today’s median household income Mr. Rockne was making close to $3,000,000 per year. The typical new car was $600 then; a Cadillac was $2,800.
I am not saying that the monetization of college sports is not insane; it’s just not purely a recent phenomenon.
@Slugger:
In most states, the highest paid public employee is a college head coach at the state public unversity.
Some tidbits from the link above:
— 31 of the 50 Highest-Paid State Employees are College Football Coaches.
— 80% of the Highest-Earning Public Employees are College Head Coaches.
–Top Ten Highest-Earning State Employees All College Coaches Earning Average of $9.8 Million.
–States’ Highest-Paid Employees Earn Over $5.5 Million More if They are College Head Coaches.
— Just 2 of the States’ Highest-Paid State Employees are Female.
–Top Ten Highest-Earning State Employees All College Coaches Earning Average of $9.8 Million
@Slugger: Won’t trouble my lazy self to look it all up, but Teddy Roosevelt was called on to clean up college sports.
@EddieInCA:
The salaries paid coaches are ridiculous, but most of the money comes from ticket sales, merchandise, etc., not from the state. Nick Saban’s base salary is $245,000. Still about 10 times what junior faculty make.
Jenna Ellis’s career has Colorado roots. She was a deputy district attorney in Weld County, one of the most conservative counties in the state and home to Congressman Ken Buck. She was fired because basically she was not competent. She became a faculty member at Colorado Christian University and then worked for the James Dobson Family Institute in Colorado Springs.
“In 2017, Ellis became a writer for the Washington Examiner, where she falsely claimed to have a history of being a “professor of constitutional law”.[4] Colorado Christian University does not have a law school.[3][4]”
Ellis self-published a book, The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution: A Guide for Christians to Understand America’s Constitutional Crisis, in 2015.[4] She argued that the Constitution of the United States must only be interpreted according to the Bible.[4] Her view of the Supreme Court of the United States legalizing same-sex marriage, in Obergefell v. Hodges, was that it would lead to polygamy and pedophilia becoming accepted.[3] In 2016, Ellis described homosexuals as “sinners” whose “conduct is vile and abominable”.[4] Robert Cochran Jr., an expert in Christian law, described Ellis’ views as “further to the right” than most conservative Christian legal scholars.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenna_Ellis
Meant to italicize beginning with “In 2017
@Scott: Acquitted on the first 8 articles.
@Scott: I got a nice chuckle out of this:
@OzarkHillbilly: I know. Like so much of our politics today, facts and ethics and law don’t matter. Power matters. And Money=Power.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I enjoyed that, too. Alicia has a good sense of humor.
A couple days ago a friend of my wife’s sent her a video. It was a video of my wife talking about one of her books, straight to camera. 1) It was absolutely my wife. 2) I would swear in court it’s her voice. 3) And her French is flawless. Just one problem: my wife does not speak French.
The AI even moved her lips. The percussives line up. There are tiny computer artifacts, but you really have to look for them, and six months from now, hell a month from now, that will have been fixed. I wish I could share the link, maybe in a day or so, but it is fucking disturbing.
We are at a point already where video cannot be trusted at all, and the only thing able to reliably tell us whether we are looking at an AI product, is another AI. Yeah. That’s the new epistemology. Anything digital may be an AI lie, and the only way to know, will be by asking another AI. Anyone see a flaw in that system?
Heads up to @wr and @Eddie that the unions are right to fight AI, but it will be at best a holding action.
@Michael Reynolds:
Jesus, that’s frightening.
@Scott: Thanx for that Scott. I have a new hero.
@Scott: F’n cowards, one and all.
@Scott: Paxton acquitted on all Articles of Impeachment. No surprise. Money talks.
RF cracks me up.
@OzarkHillbilly:
If anything, Boobert’s even worse than Marjorie Trailer Queen.
@OzarkHillbilly: I see Boebert is being quoted as saying she didn’t live up to her values. Seems to me the incident pretty much epitomized her values.
@gVOR10:
Boobert makes Sarah Palin look like Abigail Adams.
@CSK:
Is that money taxed like ordinary business profits, or sheltered under the University’s public nonprofit status? If the latter, then yes the state is paying for it, at least in large part.
@DrDaveT:
This explains it:
http://www.gamedayculture.com/are-college-football-coaches-paid-with-tax-dollars-explained/
Unranked Missouri Tigers just kicked a 61 yard field goal as clock ran out to beat 15 Kansas State in Columbia MO. Apparently 1 yard short of a Tiger record 62 yard FG in the ’80s.
OMG, how have I not heard of The Warning before? Where’s @DeStijl?
@Michael Reynolds:
I don’t know why more bands don’t do things like this. One of the best ways I’ve found is I discover new music from djs is to check out YouTube or SoundCloud for their sets. It’s very common for djs to post whole sets from either festivals or clubs. It’s also great when they post something I was at. Sometimes it’s tough to remember exactly what was played. For, uh, reasons.
@EddieInCA: Being in Seoul at the moment, you post reminds me of the outrage in Korean society when someone pointed out that the greedy, rapacious chairmen of the three largest chaebol (conglomerates) had grabbed a total among the three of them of $12 million in compensation for the previous year. (Those greedy b@$tards!!)
And then, I reflect on the likelihood that top-tier college coaches are probably still in the bottom quartile of sports compensation–thus making them arguably under compensated.
@OzarkHillbilly: So I take it that all those formerly outraged Republicans who originally voted for the hearings have fallen back in line after all?
@Scott: And Republicans didn’t want to be accused of spiking an investigation into criminal behavior by an elected official. Now they can claim to have looked at the evidence and found it groundless.
@gVOR10:
Just to confirm, Laren Boebert giving hand jobs in a theater was definitely on my bingo card.
@dazedandconfused:
Better there than on your bucket list.
@dazedandconfused: Since I didn’t have Hunter’s Dick Picks being read into the Congressional record, OR Lauren Bobble Head giving a handjob in a theater while on camera on mine, I’m now adding Crossfit Marge on a trapeze doing something with a ?????…..Because we are in the craziest timeline, and ??? is a wildcard.
@CSK:
Well, sort of. If I’m reading it correctly, then public universities do not pay income tax on their tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars of merchandising and ticket revenues, but they might have to pay an excise tax on coach salaries above $1M. In which case the coach’s salary (including the excise tax payment) is entirely funded by the tax exemption — the public is paying for it by forgoing normal taxation of a for-profit business.
It seems a little weird to me that a mom and pop day care business operating out of a tax-exempt church has to pay income taxes, but a huge professional sports and merchandising business operating out of a university apparently does not.
@Michael Reynolds: Their Youtube channel basically documents their rise as musicians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1boUYB9LFJY