Month: January 2024

Disney has lost a round in its fight with Ron DeSantis:

In a legal victory for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a federal judge in Tallahassee dismissed on Wednesday a lawsuit filed by the Walt Disney Co. over the state’s dismantling of the entertainment giant’s special taxing district.

....Judge Allen Winsor of the U.S. District Court for Northern Florida ruled that Disney “lacks standing to sue the governor” and that the law it was suing over was constitutional.

And what do we know about Judge Winsor? He was, no surprise, nominated by Donald Trump. He is, naturally, a longtime member of the Federalist Society. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights doesn't think much of him:

Mr. Winsor is a young, conservative ideologue who has attempted to restrict voting rights, LGBT equality, reproductive freedom, environmental protection, criminal defendants’ rights, and gun safety. He does not possess the neutrality and fair-mindedness necessary to serve in a lifetime position as a federal judge.

In other words, Winsor is just your basic modern conservative judge, and that's about all you need to know. Of course he ruled in favor of DeSantis.

POSTSCRIPT: For what it's worth, Winsor agrees that Disney has suffered a general injury by no longer having a tax board it controls. His ruling denying standing to sue DeSantis is twofold. First, DeSantis's actions to stack the board with his lackeys is in the past. Nothing can be done about it now. Second, maybe DeSantis effectively controls the board, maybe he doesn't. But the board hasn't done anything bad yet, so who cares?

This strikes me as a bit of "heads I win tails you lose." Disney can't sue over past action, and future action is just speculative. But if that's the case, what would give Disney standing?

Winsor also inexplicably says that the law creating a new tax district is OK because it doesn't single out "a specific group." IANAL, but the record sure seems to show that, in fact, it does single out Disney and it was retaliatory. I'm not sure how much more explicit a law could be on those grounds.

Bum bum bum bum....

(Nah, it's just a dolphin.)

This morning, the illustrious Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing in which they got to chew out the heads of all the leading social media companies. I'm sure it was very cathartic. Here is Sen. Tom Cotton questioning the CEO of TikTok:

I recommend this entire Tweetstorm even though it's 166 posts long. I don't really know anything about Ari Cohn aside from the fact that he's a First Amendment lawyer, but he strikes me as having the properly cynical attitude toward today's spectacle.

If Cohn's summary is accurate, today's hearing was about three things:

• Generating soundbites for campaign ads.
• Accusing social media CEOs of actively promoting child porn and sex slavery.
• Insisting that social media has ruined America's children.

For what it's worth, I'll echo Cohn's remark that, in fact, research really doesn't support the notion that social media is harmful to teenagers. It seems to have both negative and positive effects, but they're small and the positive effects overwhelm the negative ones.

I admit this is hard to swallow. My own instincts yell at me that of course social media is harmful! And yet, if it's really so obvious it should show up easily in the literature, and it just doesn't.

Social media does produce habits in teenagers that are foreign to Baby Boomers like me, but that says more about me than it does about social media. It's also true that changes in teen depression seem to have started around the same time that social media became widespread. It's hard to accept that as a coincidence. And yet, the timing isn't actually quite right, and research hasn't been able to show any serious causal connection.

We should all keep an open mind about this. It's possible that it will eventually turn out that social media really is bad for teens. It wouldn't surprise me. But we have a long history of thinking that whatever teens are doing these days must be harmful to them. This is why different generations turn out differently. But generally not better or worse.

Pew Research has released its latest numbers on social media use, but as usual they leave out NextDoor, one of the most fascinating social media platforms out there. I have updated Pew's chart to include them:

The 33% number for NextDoor is based on their own claims, not survey data, so take it with a grain of salt. But it's probably in the right ballpark, putting them squarely in the company of Pinterest, TikTok, and LinkedIn.¹

Anyone who's signed up for NextDoor and been bombarded by their email updates—which are deliberately hard to get rid of—knows that certain subjects are evergreen. Lost pets. Does anyone know a good handyman/gardener/plumber? There's a suspicious looking guy nearby.

It's the last one, of course, that's most striking. Without, admittedly, any real evidence, I partly blame NextDoor for the recent surge in people who are frightened of crime even though crime rates are historically low. It's hard not to think crime is rampant when you see these kinds of messages at least daily and often two or three times a day. And that's just my experience in Irvine, which is literally the safest community in the entire country.

It was bad enough when local news stations started dedicating their first ten minutes almost exclusively to crime. A man in Burbank was accosted and robbed tonight, police say. Really? That's the top news story? Yes it is, as long as there's video—and these days there is.

But now we also have NextDoor to scare us on a daily basis. No wonder we're all jumping out of our skins.

¹NextDoor almost certainly has a considerably lower engagement level than its more traditional competitors, but its basic usage rate is still pretty high.

Here's the latest from James Comer, lunatic chairman of the House Oversight Committee:

Biden family associate Eric Schwerin told Congress that he interacted with VP Joe Biden often and provided him free services. Once again, Joe Biden’s claim that there was an "absolute wall" between his official government duties and his family’s business dealings is a lie.

This was, of course, after a closed-door hearing, which means Comer can say anything he wants. And he does. But the New Republic got hold of Schwerin's opening statement:

Schwerin worked as a financial adviser for Joe Biden from 2009 until 2017, during which time he was able to see transactions in and out of the then vice president’s bank accounts.

“Based on that insight, I am not aware of any financial transactions or compensation that Vice President Biden received related to business conducted by any of his family members or their associates nor any involvement by him in their businesses,” Schwerin said in a prepared opening statement obtained by The New Republic.

....In his statement Tuesday, Schwerin said Biden had not been involved, either as a public official or a private citizen, in Hunter’s business dealings, nor had he ever been asked to take action on Hunter’s behalf. Schwerin said that in his role as Hunter’s business partner, he never asked Biden to get involved with their work. He and Hunter never suggested to or promised their clients or associates that Biden would get involved, either.

“In my discussions with the Vice President concerning his personal finances, he was always crystal clear that he wanted to take the most transparent and ethical approach consistent with both the spirit and the letter of the law,” Schwerin said. “Given my awareness of his finances and the explicit directions he gave to his financial advisers, the allegation that he would engage in any improper conduct to benefit himself or his family is preposterous to me.”

So, anyway, James Comer is a liar. Shocking, I know.

The Employment Cost Index represents the cost of employing an average person, and in some ways it's one of the most accurate measures of individual earnings. In Q4, after adjusting for inflation, it was up 0.9% from the previous quarter on an annualized basis:

The biggest winner last quarter was transportation. The smallest increase was for managers:

Here's a quick recap of what's going on lately with border security:

1. Republicans are opposing an immigration plan that tightens up the border considerably without much in return for Democrats.
2. The House is moving ahead with an impeachment vote against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for literally no particular reason and with no chance of success.
3. Texas is defying the federal government and cordoning off pieces of the border completely from the Border Patrol.
4. Republican Speaker Mike Johnson is saying that he won't accept any border proposal "that ALLOWS even one illegal crossing."

The purpose of these things is:

1. Making Joe Biden look like he's helpless to do anything about the border.
2. Giving Republicans a big stage to rehearse their border gripes on national TV.
3. Hoping that Biden will overreact, producing lots of video of federal officers tearing down border barriers.
4. Making it clear that nothing will happen as long as Biden is president.

It's all just a show to them. They could hardly make it any clearer.

COLLUSION! CORRUPTION! DEEP STATE COVERUP!

Nathan Wade, the guy who's prosecuting Donald Trump in Georgia, has settled his divorce. That means he won't have to testify tomorrow about his (rumored) affair with Fani Willis, the Atlanta DA who's in overall charge of the Trump prosecution.

Now, it's never been clear to me why it matters even if they did have an affair. It's a little tawdry, maybe, but it doesn't affect the charges against Trump in any way. Besides, no one else wanted the prosecutor job. They were all afraid of the personal attacks they'd inevitably attract from Trump and his MAGA mob. Like, um, allegations of an affair, for example.

So, good call, everyone else! You were right to avoid this cesspool. You've avoided swatting, congressional hearings, Truth Social rants, attacks from the Georgia legislature, and social media bomb throwing. Congratulations.

The number of women with BAs who are working full time has nearly caught up with the number of men:

Women with advanced degrees overtook men in the workforce in 2017. However, among those with only a high school diploma, men outnumber women by more than 60%.

Silverton, Colorado, in a panorama shot.