TaxProf Blog: Law Schools Should Be Teaching Bitcoin To Students
This goes back to my base theory that there are three types of law. 1. Law school law is useless and boring. 2. Bar law is expensive, frustrating, boring, and useless. 3. Real-world law. Why we allow the law schools and the bars to waste time on the first two is beyond me.
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Leftwing Losers
That does not leave much land untilled. By J.R. Dunn I admit I was worried last January. It really seemed as if the Left had taken it all and that nothing stood between them and their goals. The Supreme Court, Electoral College, HR-1, criminalization of firearms, rollback of immigration reforms, and all that just to start. I wasn’t alone in this. Submissions here at AT relentlessly beat the doom and damnation drum: it was all over. The Terror was about to begin. Prepare for the American Gulag. But all the time, something kept telling me: they’re leftists -- they will screw it up. What a difference six months makes. The race has not gone to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. At this point, the American Left is in complete disarray. Not one of their policies has been put into effect. One clear effort at reversing Donald Trump’s policies – opening up the border – has developed into a debacle that has humiliated the Zhou Biden administration. The Dems are even suffering dissidence from their own ranks – something unheard of in previous epochs, and that they don’t know how to deal with. Most telling, though, has been the fate of their elites, the people they were depending on to push forward their agenda. To turn scriptural once again: How are the mighty fallen! The first of these to go was America’s premier stealth leftist, Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania. Wolf stumbled into office largely due to the ineptness of his predecessor, Tom Corbett (no, they’re not really original with first names in PA), a GOPe nonentity that seems to be all that PA is capable of producing. Wolf was, amazingly, even more nondescript. Wolf was memorable only for his almost perfectly egg-shaped head. He knew he was undistinguished, and often joked about it in the media. A cookie-cutter leftist, he could have used this quality to pass anything he wanted. But, as is customary with PA governors, he did little of note right up until the outbreak of COVID. Then Tom Wolf seized his moment. Wolf quickly adapted the most extreme tactics of Gretchen Wilmer, Phil Murphy, and Andrew Cuomo. Businesses were shut down statewide, along with churches, clubs, and most everything else. Hospitals were paralyzed. As in New York and New Jersey, the sick were sent to nursing homes, with the same ghastly results. Nothing much was said about this – nothing at all in the media – but it penetrated anyway. Pennsylvanians may be stolid to the point of aggravation, but they do have their limits, and Wolf breached those. In last May’s elections, voters stripped Wolf of emergency powers, shifting them instead to the legislature. They voted to end lockdowns and mask mandates, reopen the schools, and put the state back into business once more. A spiteful Wolf responded by doubling down on the mandates two days later, but it didn’t matter – PA residents simply stopped paying attention. Lame-duck Wolf had been dealt as serious a rebuke as any governor in recent memory. On to Anthony Fauci. What can be said about St. Anthony of Wuhan that hasn’t been said so far? This is the man, who, working virtually singlehanded, turned the country’s pandemic response into a circus. If COVID had been anywhere near as deadly as was claimed, we’d have been knee-deep in corpses by Spring 2020. At the same time, the media went into overdrive in its attempt to deify a man whom coworkers called “Little Napoleon.” Fauci appeared on the cover of virtually every major magazine (Time portrayed him with a halo). His pronouncements featured relentlessly on all media online and off, though often his reversals were somehow overlooked. Children were treated to *comics, coloring books, and cartoons featuring their friend Tony. Then we discovered the explanation for all the confusion and contradiction. Plainly said, the fox had been given charge of the henhouse. In revelations that skirted the very limits of belief, it developed that Fauci had been directly responsible for the COVID outbreak. Along with others both inside and outside the government, Fauci had funded the creation of COVID-19 through “gain-of-function” research, in which disease pathogens are genetically modified to make them more deadly to humans. Since this was far too dangerous to be done in the U.S., arrangements were made with China, where the government cares no more for the health of the populace than it would an ant’s nest. What followed was as difficult to foresee as in Robert Heinlein’s dictum: “seeing two trains approaching each other on the same track and predicting a collision.”Was all the confusion an intentional effort to draw attention from Fauci’s involvement? That’s an obvious conclusion and one worthy of serious investigation, and Rand Paul is taking steps in this direction. But these revelations, along with Fauci’s outright lies and denials, have served to knock him off his pedestal. Though he continues to predict woe and damnation from various COVID mutations while insisting that we all wear masks until the return of the glaciers or the Second Coming, whichever happens first, nobody is paying attention. I pity whoever purchased the film rights. Our third example is Kamala Harris, risen from incompetent attorney general to incompetent vice-president. That decision, like so much else in 2021, remains unexplained. Harris dropped out of the presidential race early, gaining the interest and enthusiasm of no one, including her father and California political powerhouse Willie Brown, her ex sugar daddy. Though she ticked off the “female” and “minority” boxes, she did so inadequately, being of Caribbean and Hindu descent. So while little was expected of her, she managed to disappoint even those hopes. In her first foreign affairs effort, she managed to embarrass both herself and the United States before the assembled heads of the Central American nations, generally not a difficult bunch to impress. In Mexico, President Andres Lopez-Obrador referred to her as “Kabala,” confusing her either with Jewish mystics or a sporting goods chain. Harris’ downfall was completed by her entanglement in the “border crisis.” In a move that in anyone else would have been Machiavellian, Biden named her “border czar,” with the mission of solving the crisis that Biden himself had triggered days after entering office. Harris proceeded to dawdle for several months, taking no action though under heavy pressure from within the Beltway and, interestingly enough, the media. At last, she was booted into action by none other than Donald J. Trump, whom the administration desperately wants people to forget about. The Orange Cthulhu appeared at the actual crisis pointnear McAllen, made a number of loud and completely sensible pronouncements, applauded Governor Greg Abbott’s program to complete the border wall using state resources, and heaped abject humiliation on the Asterisk administration. Harris made a pale jab a few days later, appearing for a couple of hours at El Paso – several hundred miles from the center of action – letting out a cackle or two and racing back to D.C. If the Democrat scheme involving Harris was to 25th Amendment Biden out of office and replace him with Kamala, they’ll need to think again. As for our final example… well, there are plenty of choices. We have Merrick Garland, whom we were assured not too long ago was Supreme Court caliber, the living equivalent of Marshall or Holmes, but who turns out to be the kind of mutt you hire to run a witch-hunt. We have Lori Lightfoot, who offers undeniable proof that a lesbian can be as incompetent a mayor as anybody, and to make things bipartisan, we have Brad Raffensperger, whose cries get louder as he sinks deeper into the morass of November 3rd election fraud. (It was just revealed that at least 10,500 and as many as 35,000 fraudulent votes have been identified in Georgia. Raffensperger had ‘em tossed into the kitty.) Then we have Gavin Newsom, High Lord Autocrat of California, the Great White Democratic hope, and future Democratic presidential material. Any California governor could make his political career and vault onto the national stage with a few simple, bold moves. Wildfires out of control? Order the brush cut. The worst crime rate in the country? Get the cops out on the street. Power outages? Vow to build power plants and build ‘em big. Newsom, a standard Left Coast Democrat, did none of these things. Instead, he doubled down on the old left-wing policies. While lieutenant governor he promoted Prop. 47, which decriminalized a range of felonies, and Prop. 64, which legalized pot. On taking office as governor in 2019, he put a moratorium on capital punishment as the product of “a racist system.” Over the next year, he produced two executive orders, a transgender order that legalized the entire transexual agenda, and an order phasing out all internal combustion cars by 2035. He also shut down fracking, tried to shunt the homelessness problem onto individual municipalities by suing them for not provided low-cost housing, and in a truly Kafkaesque decision, cancelled both ends of the disastrous high-speed rail project while continuing work on the middle section. By the second year of his term, California was in free fall – effectively broke, brownouts occurring throughout the southern half of the state, homeless taking over entire neighborhoods, crime skyrocketing, and women’s prisons and jails collapsing into chaos as putative “transwomen” went on rape sprees. Then came COVID. Newsom responded with an authoritarianism matched only by Wolf and Whitmer. He commandeered hotels and hospitals, made masks mandatory, closed bars and restaurants, and went so far as to issue a “stay-at-home” order commanding everybody in the state to keep off the streets (though he didn’t threaten to arrest them, like they did in Ontario). It was all to no avail – COVID spread like wildfire. When vaccines became available, Cali had the most sluggish distribution of any major state. Even before that, voters decided they’d had enough. Several previous attempts to recall Newsom had foundered, but the recall effort of Autumn 2020 took off as if it had been built by Jeff Bezos. By April, the effort had achieved 1.5 million signatures, 300,000 of them Democrats. It was clear that Newsom’s greatest achievement would be to become the second California governor recalled in twenty years. There would never be a President Newsom, and he was nobody’s fair-haired boy anymore. Not that this will save California, which, after all, is the state that revealed Conan to be a wimp. What it comes down to, in the end, is that the American Left is crafty but not bright. They can cheat – and on the grandest scale. They can lie, and they do so every day. They can manipulate as effectively as any Bundy or Dahmer. But they don’t have the killer instinct. They truly do want a revolution, their “fundamental transformation” of the country and our way of life. But revolutions demand a particular type of personality – intelligent, heartless, ruthless, and decisive. The Lenins and the Stalins, the Castros and the Pol Pots. Amid Obama with his month-long vacations, Bernie with his artfully disarrayed hair, Hillary with her bottle, and Biden with his maimed brain, no such figure is visible among the Democrats. WHEN THE MUSIC STOPS
“How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises The reason for this is simple, people are evolutionarily antagonistic towards change because change represents the unknown which is more dangerous than the known. But the unknown also offers far more potential than the known. There is a small group of people who are comfortable with the unknown and a large group who are not. When change happens it takes a long time for a critical mass of those uncomfortable with the unknown to accept that the known is worse than the unknown but once that happens, the change happens suddenly. Are we there yet? The perennial backseat road trip question is unanswerable because in this process we can never know precisely how far along in the change any of these groups are. We can say about the current change that there are many more moving from the "safe known" position to the "all-in-on-the-unknown" position. Hoyt: "But the left, in lieu of real achievement and power has fallen into the habit of telling themselves self-soothing lies, and ignoring inconvenient facts. Which is why no one is talking about the massive and extreme movement of Americans all over the country, but generally from less free to more free. Just like they ignored the falling numbers of book printing after they take over that, they’re coming up with strange and bizarre excuses for what is in fact the herd putting its head up and sniffing the air. This won’t end well. Next time the music stops, or the next, the people playing musical chairs are going to get up and grab the chair. And then the music will be rough and awful. And final. All of which could be avoided, if the left didn’t think that resistance is an invitation to push harder, or that no really means yes, or that it’s foretold they win in the end. As it is though, not much even we goats can do, except get to a secure place until it’s said and done. Because even the gods can’t save fools from their folly." Electric Vehicles On Collision Course With Reality
What is happening is people, especially the young, are leaving the cities in droves. EVs make no sense outside of the cities; even in many suburbs, EVs make no sense economically. International Traffic Congestion Extinguished by Pandemic and Remote Work | Newgeography.com Freeways are like the opening scene of The Omega Man! At least here in Portlandia, the city is filled with trash; the streets are surprisingly empty, with an occasional zombie shambling about. The zombies are dangerous and criminal at night, but they are the simple slow zombies of The Night of the Living Dead during the day. Oh, and Portland no longer has a traffic enforcement, so the roads take on the flavor of a spirited Russian dashcam compilation. You think I jest? Of course even in the "Good ol' Days" things were pretty bad. The video below is a classical compilation of what happens in Portland when we get a few inches of snow. The city has steep hills and is about 85% progressives so critical thinking and logic are not the progressive drivers strong suits. They cannot drive in snow particularly on hills so what do they do, drive in the snow on the hills. What can I say? Portland! Millennials are a lot less progressive than you think | Opinion
Boomers are the most venal generation in human history. They received a world freshly built and in good condition. Highways were new and in good repair; other infrastructure was just as new and in good repair. But the Boomers did not want to pay taxes, so they didn't and instead only paid about 70%-75% of the taxes necessary to fund the government largesse they demanded. The rest they placed on the shoulders of the Millennials via debt. They also failed to pay for infrastructure maintenance, repair, or refurbishment. The result is slowly crumbling infrastructure. The Boomers did this so they could play more, buy more, and generally be irresponsible. Half of the Boomers have no retirement savings, and they never took on the difficult job of reforming welfare, Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare. These programs are bankrupt thanks to the Boomers' lack of foresight and failures. The Boomers are now trying to stop the shift from the old economic and social model to the new. The reason? The old Boomers want power and control to tell everyone what to do and how to live. This is rich, the worst generation in human history wants to tell the rest how to behave? What is needed is a revolution. But then, the Boomers never trusted the Millennials, so they indoctrinated them instead of educating them. It seems to have worked. The Millennials work harder at their enslavement than the Boomers work at enslaving them. Booyah, or something. The lockdowns by the progressives, mostly Boomer progressives, were the final nails in the coffin. Good night Millennials. Portland mayor mocked for 'welcome back' festival after riots
Sorry, Ted, what you see is called agonal breathing; it is not life reinvigorating the city; it is only reflexive, people coming downtown to see the damage, the graffiti, the filth, the massive street garbage, the homeless zombie squalor. Portland is now filled with homeless zombies, drug zombies, criminals, and riff-raff. What does not fill Portland is the old usual of business people out looking for a lunch spot, tourists, shoppers, and the like. The tourists are coming downtown in a quest to see where the riots happened or where the last multi-person shooting or homicide occurred. Portland may not be as bad as Chicago, but it is trying really hard to become violent. You go, Ted. No, I mean go away, permanently. Ted is the problem. No solution lies through or with Ted. Woman,61, is bludgeoned with a kitchen pot on Harlem street
Leave the cities, stop voting for progressives; the policies they implement only hurt the poor and allow criminals free reign. Communicating About Climate Change: What’s Politics Got To Do With It? "The survey showed that liberals see climate science and climate change as certain and simple. They don’t think it’s very complicated to understand, and they also don’t think it’s going to be refuted in the future. Liberals also defer to scientific experts about climate change to such an extent that they reported that they would defer to what a scientist says about climate change even if it contradicts their own experience. “That’s a pretty bold thing to agree with,” says Suldovsky. “That was pretty shocking to me.” By contrast, conservatives saw climate science completely differently. “They see it as far less certain and far more complex, [the latter] is super interesting because in that way conservatives are more in line with climate scientists,” says Suldovsky. Conservatives also rely more on their own direct lived experience to give them knowledge about the world and knowledge about climate change." Climate is the most complex system on earth. We do not understand it and cannot effectively forecast climate/weather for more than a few days. We understand some of the processes but not most. Progressives are incredibly naive about scientific issues and are willing to rely on people they see as authorities even when those people have much to gain from the snake oil they are selling. Progressives are the rubes who in the past bought the snake oil and now need extensive laws to protect them from new and more advanced grifters. The progressive left is in the grasp of climate grifters; they are too naive to understand what has happened, and they are too uneducated to understand how to think their way out of this trap critically. The graph below shows the earth's temperature and CO2 for the past 600 million years. High CO2 levels are uneventful and common in earth's history. The greatest explosion of life occurred 550 million years ago when CO2 levels were 7,000 ppm compared to 420 ppm today. At 420 ppm, we are much too close to the drop-dead or life extinction number of between 150 and 180 ppm. The next graph shows just how close the earth has come to life extinction during recent ice age temperature depths. The number to note is 180 ppm atmospheric CO2. The deeply naive on the left have no clue about these issues; instead, they mindlessly parrot the words of grifters who have a multi-billion dollar stake in keeping the climate grift going for as long as possible. An atmospheric CO2 level of between 1,000 and 2,000 ppm will maximize plant growth, and stabilize the climate to the greatest extent possible. Let the grifters complain. |
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