TrickstaPriest

Fox Corp. reported $3B in revenue for the 3rd quarter of 2022, but that's the entire corporation.  The breakdown shows about $1.4B from cable network programming.  
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fox-reports-first-quarter-fiscal-2023-revenues-of-3-19-billion-301664540.html
 
We're only estimating, so, let's assume annual is 4x that.  About 5.7B.  That means the settlement is 15% of gross revenue for the year.
 
They won't ignore that.  
 
Oh, and this does not cover the Smartmatic suit.  They're asking for $2.7B.  

Really enjoying this dystopian reality where we're all scrambling around like mice trying not to get stepped on by ultra-wealthy kaiju as they have city-destroying fights with each other.

And given the aforementioned function of business, he should be fired. The shareholders ought to be absolutely livid, that is gross incompetence.

Considering that there was a security marking on EVERY page of every classified document I handled, back when I was involved in that...that should be...well...kinda hard to forget....
 
Besides...I only had a Secret clearance, and we got *inundated* with security reminders.  TS is significantly harder to get, and I suspect has a much higher burden of updates, briefings, etc.  
 
NPR is reporting, too, that he was worried that making transcriptions at work would get him in trouble.  Well, DUDE...if that would, then how can discussing it on social media be OK???
 
<sigh>  It's beginning to look like there's no malice per se, just abject stupidity or complete lack of judgment.  Even if the kid gets out of prison reasonably young, it feels rather unlikely he'll get a job much better than a janitor.  

The Reagan Revolution occurred during my teenage years and I bought in whole-heartedly. I believed less government was better, people should look not to government to solve their problems but to themselves, and that lower taxes on the wealthy and less regulation on businesses would make us all wealthier.
 
So when it came time for college, of course I chose Business Administration. And that's where I learned how things really worked. You can't administer a modern business without understanding this stuff, so how things work were stated plainly and in positive terms. Things like transfer pricing to minimize taxes, regulatory capture to blunt regulation, and public relations to manage perceptions were just items on the syllabus.
 
That sort of stuff nudged me a little to the left, but one of the things that drew me over the line was learning the history of business in the US. One of the key lessons was antitrust, because it intersects with so many outrageous abuses by monied interests.
 
But of course, by the time I was in college, antitrust had already been undermined by the neoliberal view that all that mattered when it came to antitrust was "consumer harm." That led to 40 years of weak antitrust enforcement that's allowed some of the abuses of the past to come back -- as long as a figleaf claim of no "consumer harm" could be made, industries across the economy were allowed to combine and grow more powerful with little pushback. Who cares if all the buyers of a given farm commodity combine and farmers are forced to sell to the one remaining buyer in their area at ruinous rates, as long as consumers aren't affected? And if that one buyer slowly but steadily raises prices on consumers as well, then no one's going to be able to show "consumer harm."
 
So one of the few bright spots recently has been the Biden administration's antitrust stance. Finally we have an FTC that is at least making noises about doing its actual job. Along with Chairwoman Lina Khan and Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya is making waves. Bedoya's recent speech made plain the early history of antitrust in this country, how judicial activism worked before FDR brought the courts to heel for a while, and how much suffering the system tolerated even as laws changed and decades passed.
 
The speech is fully footnoted and is a good read for anyone interested in the intersection of antitrust, the courts, the legislature, and labor.
 
Here's a link to the PDF if anyone's interested:
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/bedoya-aiming-dollars-not-men.pdf
 

Author Maggie Tokuda-Hall on how Scholastic offered to publish her book — all she had to do was remove all mention of racism
 

Perun's latest defense economics blog post steps back from the war in Ukraine to look at NATO and what the US gets from its military alliances that make them good deals both militarily and economically. A bunch of stuff that Donald Trump never understood and probably never could understand.
 
What caught my notice, though, was his mention that the oldest still-operative military alliance is the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, formerly adopted in 1386. Not only is it still legally on the books, it was invoked as recently as 1982 when British ships used Portuguese naval bases in the Falklands Crisis. Wikipedia, of course, has more:
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Portuguese_Alliance
 
Apart from being a nerdy-cool piece of trivia, it warms my heart to know that two countries *can* be true to their word to each other for six centuries and counting. History isn't always just vicious opportunism.
 
Dean Shomshak

Here's the Wikipedia article about the case, which summarizes the evidence:
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Garrett_Foster
 
IMO, while eyewitnesses are unreliable, this guy's Twitter statements are pretty damning evidence of a motive. The prosecutor made a point about the weapon being on safe and having an empty chamber, but that's totally irrelevant, since the affirmative defense was a weapon pointed at the shooter.
 
Here's a video of the incident. Looks like the car is slowly moving into the protest crowd, provoking them. I'd say his actions with the vehicle align with his earlier tweets. Looks like he was trying to provoke a response:
 
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/texas/video-2217414/Video-Video-shooting-protest-Austin-Texas.html
 
The conviction looks legit to me.

Years back, I asked a couple of lawyer friends what they knew about candidates for WA Supreme Court. One, an activist with no judicial experience, said she wanted a place on the Court to "be an advocate for minorities and the poor." One of my friends put it this way: "She literally does not understand the job she's applying for. A judge isn't supposed to be an advocate; a judge is who you advocate to."
 
That now seems naive.
 
Dean Shomshak

NJ gov signs executive order protecting transgender youth health care

A welcome bit of good news: What Bangladesh is doing to adapt to climate change. (Though it remains aggravating that *acknowledging reality* should be political.)
 
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/03/26/1165779335/facing-floods-what-the-world-can-learn-from-bangladeshs-climate-solutions
 
Dean Shomshak

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/26/middleeast/israel-judicial-overhaul-legislation-intl/index.html
 
Yikes. What’s happening with the Israeli judiciary is really scary stuff. I don’t love all the aspects of our current Supreme Court, but giving congress the power to manage them in this way would eliminate one of the branches of government - essentially making it totally subordinate to the legislative branch.
 
 Very unpopular with the public too, apparently. Likely to go through anyway. Pretty alarming.

OK, I'm going to go on another meandering post here with my current thoughts re: gun laws. As before, I'm using a post as a jumping off point, but that isn't meant to single out Old Man. That'd be mean. We need to be nice to our elders.
 
 
The problem with features lists is human ingenuity. Someone will engineer something just as capable in short order. Here's a more effective features list:
 
1. Is a long gun(rifle or shotgun). That means it can be fired from four points of contact. A handgun, you get two hands, that's it. A long gun, you have a hand on each end, a shoulder and a cheek. That adds massive stability, and increases hit probability exponentially for an average shooter. No brace nonsense here, since they're all designed to allow four points of contact. (They seem to be out for now anyway.)
 
2. Fires calibers commonly used in long guns. So, none of those Shockwave** type non-shotguns, pistol-grip shotguns, or AR/AK pistols, braces or not.
 
That's it. Super easy to enforce feature list. But what to do with it?
 
Here's one way to look at it: I remember my very first introduction to the concept of "rights" in grade school. We were introduced to the concept that rights weren't absolute with the old saying, "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose." That's a fair standard. How can it be applied to a right to keep and bear arms?
 
Well, inside your house, and on your private property, you're a lot less likely to do collateral damage. So, have your long guns at home. They're actually great at repelling mutant zombie hordes. As a bone to the pro-gun crowd, get rid of the short barreled rifle and short barreled shotgun restrictions in the NFA. It won't matter in step 2.
 
When you step out into public, you are now at much higher risk of shooting someone who isn't you, or stuck living with you. You're now in the public space, and everyone around you has a right not to have your bullets lodged in their tender parts. But we have that pesky Second Amendment, with that pesky "bear" word. Still: No long guns outside. If you're going hunting or to train, fine. Transport them locked up and unloaded. (Most states have laws about transporting firearms in your vehicle along those lines already.) Do your activity. Pack up. Go home. Don't bring them to Starbucks or just haul them everywhere you go, "just in case." Walter Mitty is not invited into the public sphere, sorry. So, that leaves handguns.
 
Now, we aren't limiting handguns so much. For one, they were specifically called out in the Heller decision as the example of a weapon commonly in use, and thus held to a higher standard as far as restrictions go. And, frankly, they do a lot less collateral damage (though may be slightly more likely to cause it due to being more difficult to aim) than long guns. Around 80% of handgun shooting victims survive if given immediate aid and taken to a trauma center, due to the their wounding characteristics (poking holes rather than liquidating interior body parts with hydrostatic shock). Does that mean we allow just anyone to carry a handgun in public, any which way? Nah. Nobody likes having holes poked in them, or being in that other 20%.
 
Now, if you've got your firearm to protect your home and keep it at home, fine. No requirements aside from the normal background check. There are ample firearms safety resources available. My state (WA) incentivizes safe storage for firearms by removing the sales tax from safes. Something similar could be done for safety training, perhaps. But training requirements for exercising a fundamental right at the most basic level is probably a bit much. (Though there are lots of things to do to encourage both safe storage and general safety.)
 
But you want to take your weapon outside? You'd better be a) a damned good shot, b) inoculated to stress by fire/no fire training and testing, c) very thoroughly vetted by a background check, and d) very well-versed in self defense laws. School shootings aside, I'm also getting annoyed by just plain idiot shootings where people imagine themselves to have all kinds of non-extant rights, like the right to start an altercation then shoot the person when you get your ass kicked by said person, or the right to stand on your lawn and point your weapons at people who aren't on your curtilage. This carry permit should also be national, same as a driver's license. (It'd be a heck of a lot harder to get than a DL, too.)
 
So, now you have probable cause to stop folks with rifles or shotguns who are running amok. You allow anyone who wants to and who can qualify, to carry outside the home. Is it idiot proof? No. Does the simple definition necessarily prevent anyone from engineering around it? Eh. I came up with that on the fly, so maybe not, but the general idea of long guns stay at home, handguns can come out if they're in responsible and skilled hands should be easy enough to grasp.
 
None of this solves any root problems, because the tools used to commit the crimes do not cause the crimes. But it's more sensible than other toothless bans, while still allowing the exercise of the right mostly unimpeded.
 
Frankly, your brain is a better self-defense tool than a firearm. Not associating with idiots and following some basic situational awareness and crime prevention practices will do more to keep you safe than a gun. I still believe it should be an option on the table, but as the years pass, I see more and more that we just don't live in a society that's really mature enough for all of the responsibilities that come with our rights.
 
So, now I'm sitting at:
 
Raise gun ownership age to 25 Keep long guns at home, no additional restrictions to purchase or possess than normal background checks (but fix that system) Take the SBR and SBS off the NFA (because it won't matter so much at home) Carry outside the home only if highly qualified, but it's a national carry Red flag laws are problematic from a 4th amendment perspective, but appear to be needed (haven't gone into this lately) Red flag laws should have serious consequences for abusers whether it's false reporting or losing or damaging property (guns) Background checks for all transfers of firearms ownership National reporting requirements for law enforcement that are consistent for all crime reporting Provide enough funding for the ATF for it to enforce current laws*  
 
*I haven't gone into this, but this is to address the straw purchaser concerns. I keep seeing these numbers of suspected straw purchases being traced back to certain states or even certain dealers, and a lot of whining about what a big problem this is. Why? If you know the origin point of the weapons points to particular dealers, why haven't those dealers been shut down by ATF stings  yet??? Either someone is lying about these numbers or the ATF isn't being funded enough to do their jobs. I suspect the latter, though I've seen enough of the former to not take it off the table.
 
 
** Picture of a Shockwave under spoiler tag, for the curious. It's another of those engineering around a definition things:

 
 
 
 

Also in the news: Kenya and Uganda passing what's probably the most anti-LGBTQ+ legislation ever:
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/24/uganda-lgbtq-bill-united-states-republican-anti-gay-connection/
 
 

A friend in AZ can't get the treatments they need for chronic pain because insurance won't cover it.  These aren't trans meds, just things for their long and painful medical history that doctors refused to analyze and insurance refuses even now to cover.  because that requires analysis using expensive methods not covered by insurance.
 
The system already mistreats women by refusing coverage for all sorts of conditions and just expects them to suffer.

A friend in AZ can't get the treatments they need for chronic pain because insurance won't cover it.  These aren't trans meds, just things for their long and painful medical history that doctors refused to analyze and insurance refuses even now to cover.  because that requires analysis using expensive methods not covered by insurance.
 
The system already mistreats women by refusing coverage for all sorts of conditions and just expects them to suffer.

Newly released interviews show that Uvalde first responders were specifically too frightened by shooter's AR to engage, and instead chose to let 9-year-olds do the dying.
 
 
 

Whenever violence is used as an attempted tool of political change, the State should be prepared to meet it with all necessary force to ensure the rule of law. The exceptions to this, where no recourse is available through legal and political mechanisms, are not the case in this nation. Trump can have his day in court. His followers can seek redress for their concerns at the ballot box. Whether they are likely to be successful in that effort is beside the point, they have lawful options. The January 6th insurrection was unacceptably meek in terms of governmental response (intentionally so, given apparent refusals to deploy the National Guard and other information that has since come to light).
 
I have no sympathy for rioters, of any ilk. The followers of Donald Trump who espouse this are particularly odious because of other elements of their dogma, and in any case should be greeted with the full legal force of the government in the event they respond in an illegitimate manner.
 
There are, in fact, many resources to manage such an incident. It just depends on the will to take action, and willingness to live with the consequences of that decision. Hopefully, elected leadership is up to the task they signed up for. 

Al Capone didn't have millions of people willing to do whatever they can for him... 😕  I'm hoping Trump doesn't, either.

I'd rather see something about the Georgia calls, or something with more relevancy.  This is just martyr-making 😕  We'll see though.

The arrest warrant for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova (the head kidnapper/child trafficker for the Russians) is almost better.

I didn't hear about the employment change.  Congrats I hope?

Don't forget the mass abduction of thousands of small children, the deliberate efforts to suppress or destroy Ukrainian language and culture, and the officially sanctioned rape campaigns.

Yeah, I'm familiar.  I think this campaign could cause harm to lots of people for decades, however, if not even longer.  It really depends on how far and how long their politicians (and major supporters) are willing to go. 😕

Yes.  I appreciate both Pattern Ghost and Tom talking and sharing more on subjects I don't know about, and having the patience to do so.