The US Supreme Court Thread

I subscribe to SciAm. What the article fails to mention is how a multinational managed to conduct "unprecedented climate research" yet the rest of us were just worried about the Population Bomb.
So before there was scientific consensus, they thought they knew something nobody else did, and responded in a way that protected the bottom line. I'm not surprised.
I read Dead Heat in the early 1990's and became really concerned and active on climate issues, and then nothing happened. So I decided to moderate my personal beliefs on the issue. Which is to essentially believe the irrefutable proof of man-made climate change, but to also be very skeptical of End of Days projections.

 

The idea that individual consumers bear the responsibility for the negative effects of corporations' actions (or for limiting those negative effects) is ludicrous. Consumers cannot be expected to have anywhere close to full information on the negative externalities involved in the production of everything they buy.

And even if it was possible for consumers to be have that degree of information (which will never be remotely the case), there would still be collective action/free rider problems preventing consumers from turning their desire for socially responsible production into meaningful outcomes.

Presumably you think that millions of children who had their mental function permanently damaged by leaded paint and leaded gas secretly wanted to have their brains crippled by neurotoxins. Otherwise, why would the noble corporations have fought to keep lead in paint and gas, and used their financial and political power to attack legitimate science about the effects of lead (and to promote slanted research in its place)?

Your rosy vision of corporations ignores basic economic realities shaping their incentives, and ignores real-world historical experience about their impacts. It's true that, as an essential part of a market economy, corporations attend to consumer demands, and drive welfare-enhancing efficiencies and innovations - these are very good things. Nonetheless, they also do lots of bad things, and use their financial resources to undermine democratically elected governments who attempt to limit those negative effects.

 

That's probably a good idea. I can think of a couple of writers and activists that have been like that since the sixties on this issue. Naturally, no one paid a lot of attention to them compared to the "by the year 2015, rain will melt skin on impact and Little Rock Arkansas will be on the Gulf of Mexico" people, which is unfortunate for many reasons.

 

Thank you for expressing my point way more eloquently than I could.

 

See also - sidesaddle gas tanks in GM pickups.

Brian Taft joined the C/K death list in November 2007. As he pulled out of a parking lot near midnight in Clifton Township, Pennsylvania, his pickup was broadsided by an SUV. Taft suffered broken ribs, but that's not what killed him, an autopsy found. Instead, it was the fireball that engulfed both vehicles when Taft's gas tank ruptured and the pickup exploded. Burned on 99 percent of his body, Taft left a wife and two young children. (The other driver survived.)

Taft, 36, was behind the wheel of a 1986 GM pickup, one of more than 9 million in the popular C/K line sold in the 1970s and '80s. For marketing reasons, the trucks had an unusual design feature. GM wanted to offer 40 gallons of fuel capacity, but there was no place to mount a tank that big. So it offered twin 20 gallon tanks, each nearly 5 feet long, two explosive containers hanging like saddle bags outside the truck's protective frame. Even after decades, that choice still resonates in the courts, in the lives of bereaved families and in the disfiguring scars of survivors.

Hundreds have been killed in fiery crashes of the side-saddle pickups, and many others suffered disfiguring burns. A review by FairWarning found that at least 100 people have perished by fire since federal authorities dropped an investigation that could have led to the trucks' recall.

Sixteen years ago, a probe (pdf) by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part of the Department of Transportation, found the risk of burning to death in side-impact crashes was much higher (pdf) in the GM trucks than in rival full-size pickups. But under intense pressure from GM and its congressional allies, transportation officials blinked, announcing a settlement in December 1994 that left millions of the trucks on the road. In exchange, GM agreed to pay $51.4 million for safety programs—things like buying child car seats for poor families—that transportation officials said would save many lives.

By that time, more than 600 people had burned to death in C/K post-collision fires. And the agreement did nothing about the remaining side-saddle pickups, described by consumer advocates and victims' lawyers as the most dangerous vehicles, from a fire risk standpoint, ever produced.

http://m.motherjones.com/environment/2010/03/gm-ck-exploding-pickup

 

But we aren't saying that all corporations are bad. We're saying strong regulations are good for the corporate world. Not everyone is as upstanding as you.

 

Yeah, I don't think many lefties are against corporations per se.

 

Most of us are just the Citizens United ruling and seeing them as people

 

Hear hear good sir. I agree with this statement and to add onto that, I noticed some of the laws/decisions I was involved in was an individual/group looking to legally circumvent a specific law, which is how you end up with over-regulation.

I will make this short and succinct before I bore everyone but before I left the regulatory side of NOAA last year, I was a subject matter expert involved in a decision on a nature watching issue. In short, 1 nature tour outfit in South Florida was cited for breaking the observational distance of endangered turtles, manatees and dolphins. The outfit could be cited from 1K to 9K depending on the severity and if the violation was considered harassment, which in many cases it can, their license would be revoked. (http://www.gc.noaa.gov/documents/gces/6-ESA/esa_1208.pdf) page 3. Now the loophole exists if an endangered species pursues you or you happen to cross paths, you are in the clear. For example, you are going in a straight line and a manatee crosses in front of you or swims up to you, you are good. Well, the nature tour company altered their course they could continue in a straight line BUT get a lot closer, especially with slower manatees and dolphin pods who roam their territory. This resulted in 2 manatee deaths and NOAA/USFWS having to revise that statute to not include alterations to a nature tour not to tack(turn) more than 90 degrees. Before that decision was even passed, tour companies were rumoured to have nature tours that were...let's say...meandering...and magically less than 90 degrees. When I left, that revision is now being revised.

tl;dr - Some jackholes always want to find a way around the rules and ruin it for everyone. This gears up more rules and over-regulation.

 

That's exactly it. Some bad actors ruining it for other good actors. This is why we have speed limits. Many of us could operate our vehicles safely at another 10-20 MPH, but because many others can't, we're forced to have a rule that standardizes it for everyone. This is why we drug test pilots. We don't presume that they all smoke crack, but at some point there was one pilot that did, and now we have to check the others.

I'm in the process of starting my own business. It's my first venture into entrepreneurship, so I'm learning a lot about licensing, taxes, state regulations, federal regulations etc ... It's definitely overwhelming. I understand when people say that it's a lot and it can feel oppressive if you have a negative attitude. I try to be positive about it though. I actually like rules that are clearly stated and are applied evenly to everyone including my competitors. I prefer that over what happens in other countries where you need to bribe people to run a business, and if your competitor pays more, maybe you don't pass your inspections.

Whenever this topic of regulations comes up, I always say that it's not the number of regulations, but the quality of the regulations. You can't approach this in general terms. Every law and every regulation is different. Some are good, some maybe not so good. You have to approach each one individually before forming an opinion, because otherwise you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

50 years of loving vs Virginia.

I do wonder how they count marriages between Latinos of different races, they perhaps get grouped into the non-white Hispanic category or in the other interracial.

Just looking at the chart below, it looks like the largest 2 groups are "other to other" and "white-Hispanics to whites".

It does bring up a question, are white Hispanic to whites actually interracial marriages? An Uruguayan of Italian origin marrying a New Yorker of Italian origin is interracial marriage? How about a Colombian of African origin marrying a Californian of African origin?



http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/06/daily-chart-7

 

This isn't Supreme Court related, but I thought I'd drop it in here. Here's some footage of a Judicial Committee hearing for a Trump nominee for a federal appeals court seat.



So yes. This guy is an admitted birtherist and fake news peddler. And the Trump administration sees him fit to be a federal judge.

Just imagine how many people like this could see their careers advance in government over the next 4-8 years. This is how fascism happens. It doesn't happen in an overnight coup. It's a gradual process that takes over one government position at a time.

Also, kudos to Al Franken who yet again is shining at these hearings. He always seems well prepared and is always asking the right questions. He was never my favorite senator, but he's slowly growing on me.

 

Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

 

And that racist asshole will be confirmed I am sure by the GOP.

 

@Mr. Warmth

Not good news.

Supreme Court sides with band the Slants and strikes down law banning offensive trademarks

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-court-slants-disparate-trademark-20170619-story.html

 

The Slants? Totally derivative.

 

We'll keep fighting. Resistance via Persistence

 

The bigger question to me is why does anyone care? Seriously, in what world does this matter at all?

 

I will make a prediction that SCOTUS reverses the circuit court on partisan gerrymandering.

I've been wrong so often, hopefully my prediction turns out false.

Also I predict Ossoff loses to Handel.

fingers crossed!

 

I do wonder what the implications will be where gerrymandering occurs due to everyone wanting a chunk of a wealthy area rather than power.

I don't see how Ossoff wins. It would take a whole bunch of people not showing up. The interesting thing is that it is even this close and that the Republican candidate has more money spent on her campaign even if she isn't directly getting the money. It's remarkable that a Republican district since integration with a 24-30% margin is even close.

 

It will matter in this world until people react to ethnicity as they do to hair color ... that is, not thinking twice about the subject, even they even remember it at all. In other words, it will matter in this world until long after we are gone.