The Supreme Court Protects the President

"There has existed for many decades a spirit and determination on the part of the makers of penal codes and the courts to measure the criminality of acts not only by their objective but their subjective qualities as well and to assess punishment according to the true responsibility of the offender. There is now a growing social tendency, a humane and laudable tendency, toward the enactment of laws providing for individualization of the punishment to be meted out to the offender, having reference not alone to the objective and subjective nature and quality of his act, but also to the true nature of the individual, to his age, his past record and the possibility of his re­demption to social and moral worth." -- Federal judge Edward R. Meek (ND-TX), Should the Punishment Fit the Crime or the Criminal?, American Bar Association Journal Vol. 8, No. 4, pages 212-214, 1922

The Supreme Court just announced a ruling that allows New York state prosecutors to get access to the president's private and business financial records, including his tax returns. But in a defense of the president, the court also denied House democratic demands to see the same financial records, at least until after the election. Inexplicably, the decisions were 7-2, and all four liberal justices voted to protect the president from congressional scrutiny

The court reasoned that there are “significant separation of powers concerns implicated by congressional subpoenas for the President’s information.” Based on that bogus concern, the court sent the case back to the lower court for further consideration of whether congress has the power to seek a president's financial records. In essence, this move delays a final decision until after the election. Because of that, the court is directly interfering in the election by hiding information that would damage the president. In my opinion, the court is working for the president's re-election.

The operating assumption is based on a small leap of logic. Specifically, the president has fought so hard to keep all of his financial records secret, he therefore has something illegal to hide. This logic is the same that the president has used to criticize people he attacks. During the 2016 election, the president argued this regarding Hillary and some of her aides in relation to emailgate: “The mob takes the Fifth. If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment? .... She lied to Congress under oath, and her staff has taken the Fifth Amendment and got immunity deals. .... It's worse than Watergate; it's a bigger deal than Watergate.”

Abuse of power?

Some commentators are saying the decision to protect the president from congressional scrutiny for now is reasonable. The logic is that such power could be used by future hostile congresses against future presidents.

Does that logic make any sense whatever? So what if congress can scrutinize a president's financial records? Why isn't that a good thing? Is the court saying that since all presidents are crooks and liars, they all need to be protected from a hostile, politically-motivated congress? Why shouldn't the American people have the right to know what kid of person their president really is, especially one who is a chronic liar?

Over and over and over, there is a heavy bias in law enforcement and the courts to protect white collar criminals and liars. This pro-white collar criminal bias has existed for decades, but now the level of damage it can do is potentially catastrophic. The supreme court, including the four existing democratic justices are blind to this deadly threat. If those four democrats are not blind, but had to cut a deal to let the president off, it must have been one hell of a deal.

It looks to me that the "spirit and determination on the part of the makers of penal codes" is using this tradition to protect white collar crooks and liars, presumably because most of them are whites in the same class as the judges and often the same race. This looks a lot like a form of systemic reverse racism in favor of while collar crooks and liars due to their potential for redeemed social and moral worth.

Moral worth is not a concept that applies to our president. Neither is social worth. 

Regarding the SCOTUS decision on employee-paid birth control…

Personally, I think the SCOTUS made the right decision yesterday, July 8th.  Their ruling:

Employers who are morally against paying for birth control should not be obliged to do so, as previously mandated under the Affordable Care Act.

However, and philosophically related, I do think that bakers should NOT be allowed to discriminate against the LGBTQ community by refusing to sell their wedding cake products or other goods to them.  If they are IN THE BUSINESS of a product, they are obliged to sell it to whomever wishes to purchase it, regardless of sexual orientation.

These two scenarios are different (enough) to me.  One involves terminating what some people consider “life.”  The other is pure discrimination against a faction of the populace with whom they philosophically disagree, and use their product as a sort of “weapon.”

Argue with me. :)

And thanks for posting and recommending.

On the Anti-Science Bias

Context

Variations of this discussion have been posed here before, but in my opinion, the topic of flawed reasoning and anti-science bias has become critically important and urgent in view of the pandemic and the upcoming election.

Anti-science bias

In an article posted by Live Science, Humans are hardwired to dismiss (coronavirus) facts that don't fit their worldview, philosopher Adrian Bardon writes on comments by Anthony Fauci, expressing an ‘inconceiveable’ anti-science bias among Americans. Fauci sees ‘science as truth’ and thus cannot understand why many people reject knowledge. Bardon writes:

“It is Fauci's profession of amazement that amazes me. As well-versed as he is in the science of the coronavirus, he's overlooking the well-established science of
‘anti-science bias,’ or science denial. Americans increasingly exist in highly polarized, informationally insulated ideological communities occupying their own information universes. Within segments of the political blogosphere, global warming is dismissed as either a hoax or so uncertain as to be unworthy of response. Within other geographic or online communities, the science of vaccine safety, fluoridated drinking water and genetically modified foods is distorted or ignored.”  

Motivated reasoning

In the 1950's, the prominent psychologist Leon Festinger commented on the human condition, asserting: “A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.”

Festinger’s observation was prompted in part by how a cult responded after their predicted day of apocalypse. That day, December 21, 1954, came and went without the end of the Earth, or the saving of the cult members by aliens. The cult truly believed that would be the day the Earth ended. In preparation, some quit their jobs and prepared to go with the aliens in their space ship. 

They rationalized the failed apocalypse and turned it into a success. Instead of admitting that they were wrong, the cult responded by saying that the aliens told them their belief had shed light and saved the world. Festinger commented: “The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction.” 

That shows the awesome power of the human mind to defend strongly held beliefs. That kind of thinking is called motivated reasoning. The label makes sense.

An article in Mother Jones, The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science, commented on motivated reasoning:

“Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call “affect”). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we’re aware of it. That shouldn’t be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It’s a ‘basic human survival skill’, explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.

We’re not driven only by emotions, of course—we also reason, deliberate. But reasoning comes later, works slower—and even then, it doesn’t take place in an emotional vacuum. Rather, our quick-fire emotions can set us on a course of thinking that’s highly biased, especially on topics we care a great deal about.”

When people consciously think about something, they are thinking emotionally, logically, intuitively, morally and in biased ways all at the same time.[1] When we think we are reasoning about inconvenient truths, we are usually rationalizing a defense of prior beliefs, even if they are false beliefs. When someone hears about a new discovery that contradicts a strongly held belief, their mind usually instantly mounts a negative, defensive subconscious response. That response guides memories and associations in the conscious mind that are consistent with supporting the prior belief. That mental process tends to lead people to build an argument and challenge or reject the new knowledge.

Footnote:
1. Psychologist Johnathan Haidt commented on motivated reasoning and related biases, e.g., confirmation bias (acceptance of evidence we want to believe) and disconformation bias (skepticism of evidence we want to disbelieve):

“The reasoning process is more like a lawyer defending a client than a judge or scientist seeking truth. Kuhn (1991) found that most people have difficulty understanding what evidence is, and when pressed to give evidence in support of their theories they generally give anecdotes or illustrative examples instead. Furthermore, people show a strong tendency to search for anecdotes and other “evidence” exclusively on their preferred side of an issue, a pattern that has been called the “myside bias” (Baron, 1995; Perkins, Farady, & Bushey, 1991). Once people find supporting evidence, even a single piece of bad evidence, they often stop the search, since they have a “makes-sense epistemology” (Perkins, Allen, & Hafner, 1983) in which the goal of thinking is not to reach the most accurate conclusion; it is to find the first conclusion that hangs together well and that fits with one’s important prior beliefs.”

HOW TO RE-IMAGINE POLICING

WITH ALL the hyperbole surrounding defunding or even disbanding police, whether you are for or against the idea, here is an article that proves that policing CAN BE DONE differently:

This town of 170,000 replaced some cops with medics and mental health workers. It's worked for over 30 years

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/05/us/cahoots-replace-police-mental-health-trnd/index.html?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

A WORTHWHILE - BUT LONG - READ

HERE ARE SOME HIGHLIGHTS:

Around 30 years ago, a town in Oregon retrofitted an old van, staffed it with young medics and mental health counselors and sent them out to respond to the kinds of 911 calls that wouldn't necessarily require police intervention.

In the town of 172,000, they were the first responders for mental health crises, homelessness, substance abuse, threats of suicide -- the problems for which there are no easy fixes. The problems that, in the hands of police, have often turned violent.

Today, the program, called CAHOOTS, has three vans, more than double the number of staffers and the attention of a country in crisis.

It's centered around a holistic approach

It always paired one medic, usually a nurse or EMT, with a crisis responder trained in behavioral health. That holistic approach is core to its model.

Around 25% of people killed by police show signs of mental illness, according to one study

"I believe it's time for law enforcement to quit being a catch-base for everything our community and society needs. We need to get law enforcement professionals back to doing the core mission of protecting communities and enforcing the law, and then match resources with other services like behavioral health -- all those things we tend to lump on the plate of law enforcement."

Its staffers are unarmed

Staffers respond to substance addiction crises, psychotic episodes, homeless residents and threats of suicide. They make house calls to counsel depressed children at their parents' request, and they're contacted by public onlookers when someone isn't in a position to call CAHOOTS themselves.

Unlike police, CAHOOTS responders can't force anyone to accept their aid, and they can't arrest anyone. They're not armed, and their uniform usually consists of a White Bird T-shirt and jeans -- the goal is that the more "civilian-like" they look, the less threatened their clients will feel.

The demand for its services continues to grow

With more funding, reallocated from the police budget or another source, the program could respond to even more crises.

Other cities are trying to develop a similar model

The idea of a separate entity in charge of alternative care is more enticing than ever as cities mull over the efficacy of their police departments.

Another city's CAHOOTS may not be called CAHOOTS at all, though it'll probably use another cutesy acronym. It's not likely to satisfy advocates who want to defund the police entirely. But, if done right, it could change the lives of some of a city's most vulnerable people.

Coronavirus Update 11

Since my last update some weeks ago, a couple of things have popped up recently that merit a few comments.

It’s airborne! Maybe.

Several sources are reporting on a new study with evidence that SARS-CoV-2 can remain airborne indoors for a significant period of time and still infect a person. The WHO is resisting accepting the evidence as sufficiently conclusive because it operates by a rigid evidence standard that may be hard to meet. A growing number of experts are arguing that the WHO should be more pragmatic by accepting the increasing evidence as probably valid and requiring changes in its recommendations to deal with the SARS-CoV-2 indoors.

The New York Times writes:

“The coronavirus is finding new victims worldwide, in bars and restaurants, offices, markets and casinos, giving rise to frightening clusters of infection that increasingly confirm what many scientists have been saying for months: The virus lingers in the air indoors, infecting those nearby. 

If airborne transmission is a significant factor in the pandemic, especially in crowded spaces with poor ventilation, the consequences for containment will be significant. Masks may be needed indoors, even in socially-
distant settings.  

The World Health Organization has long held that the coronavirus is spread primarily by large respiratory droplets that, once expelled by infected people in coughs and sneezes, fall quickly to the floor.[1] 

But in an open letter to the W.H.O., 239 scientists in 32 countries have outlined the evidence showing that smaller particles can infect people, and are calling for the agency to revise its recommendations.”

Based on the new information about possible aerosol infections, the scientists suggest keeping a mask on indoors in public, even with social distancing. They also believe that places with better ventilation are safer than poorly ventilated places because ventilation tends to dilute aerosols out, making them less likely to cause an infection.

As usual, the situation is complicated and unfortunately, politics is relevant. The NYT reports that the WHO is constrained by a rigid view of scientific evidence, making it slow and risk-averse in changing its guidance in view of new evidence. Also, its operating procedures allow a few conservative voices to shout down dissent. One WHO consultant commented on the WHO’s rigidity: “They’ll die defending their view.”

Yeah, and some of us might also die from them defending their view.

This is a link to the 9 page accepted manuscript, which is scheduled to be published next week.

The US response failure

Although most people already know this, it is worth repeating in view of accumulating evidence. The US response to the pandemic has been a failure. Evidence is mounting that shows (1) how bad the US failure has been, (2) how badly needed competent, coordinated federal guidance was, and (3) how badly needed competent, coordinated federal guidance still is. In all of this, our president is simply clueless and completely out of his depth. His sociopathy makes him is incapable of even seeing the problem and its human, social and economic magnitude, much less having (i) any empathy about the suffering, or (ii) any recognition of his own responsibility and failures.

Evidence of the failure includes daily new infections in the US (population ~330 million) compared to the European Union (population ~446 million). In recent days, the number of new infections in one day in some states such as Arizona (population ~7.3 million) has been higher than the number of new infections in one day in the entire EU. Daily US vs EU infections differ by tens of thousands per day, with the US now hovering around 43,000 new infections/day.

Any politician who is saying that the US response has been anything other than a failure of government and political leadership is lying, ignorant or both. Any false statements about competence in the US response are likely to involve the psychological element of virtue signalling of the speaker’s misplaced loyalty to Trump and the Trump tribe. What this says, if anything, about the morality people who assert such falsehoods is open to debate.


Footnote:
1. Regarding aerosols vs droplets: Aerosols and droplets are the same thing except that they differ in size. Droplets that are smaller than five microns in diameter are called aerosols. For context, a red blood cell is about five microns in diameter and a human hair is about 50 microns wide. A micron is one millionth of a meter in length.

Trump’s 2020 Election Strategy: Intensify the Culture War

A component of the president’s 2020 re-election strategy that appears to be rising in prominence is intensifying the partisan polarization and distrust that has been tearing American society apart. The rhetoric he unleashed in last several days has been positively ferocious. The president truly is making a run dragging America into some form of an anti-democratic authoritarian plutocracy.

While speaking at Mount Rushmore on July 4, the president made these comments about his political opposition:

“One of their political weapons is “Cancel Culture” — driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America. This attack on our liberty, our magnificent liberty, must be stopped, and it will be stopped very quickly. We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nation’s children, end this radical assault, and preserve our beloved American way of life.  

In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished. It’s not going to happen to us.  

Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress. 

To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol, and memory of our national heritage.”

As usual, when the president accuses his opposition of various bad intentions and actions, he is talking about himself. The president’s trait of projecting is now quite consistent. The lies and exaggerations aside, what he has done or wants to do is what he falsely accuses the left of. The deadly dangerous thing here is that most of his supporters (~96% ?) believe essentially all of his false allegations.

He unleashed similar attacks from the White House on July 5:

“This great heritage belongs to citizens of every background and of every walk of life. No matter our race, color, religion, or creed, we are one America, and we put America first. We will not allow anyone to divide our citizens by race or background. We will not allow them to foment hate, discord, and distrust. We will hold fast and true to the sacred loyalties that link us all as neighbors, as Americans, and as patriots. 

In every age, there have always been those who seek to lie about the past in order to gain power in the present. Those that are lying about our history, those who want us to be ashamed of who we are, are not interested in justice or in healing. Their goal is demolition. Our goal is not to destroy the greatest structure on Earth, what we have built: The United States of America. To build a future where every family is safe, where every child is surrounded by love, where every community has equal opportunity, and every citizen enjoys great and everlasting dignity.

Let me also say a word to those in the media who falsely and consistently label their opponents as racists, who condemn patriotic citizens who offer a clear and truthful defense of American unity. That’s what our people are doing. We want a clear and faithful defense of American history and we want unity.

When you level these false charges, you not only slander me, you not only slander the American people, but you slander generations of heroes who gave their lives for America. You slander people much braver and much more principled than you. You are slandering the young men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima, and those who perished fighting for freedom in the Civil War. You slander them. You are dishonoring their great legacy and their memory by insisting that they fought for racism and they fought for oppression. They didn’t fight for those things; they fought for the exact opposite. We will not let the legacy of these heroes be tarnished by you. 

The more you lie, the more you slander, the more you try to demean and divide, the more we will work hard to tell the truth. And we will win. The more you lie and demean and collude, the more credibility you lose. We want to bring the country together, and a free and open media will make this task a very easy one. Our country will be united. After all, what do we want? We want a strong military, great education, housing, low taxes, law and order. We want safety, we want equal justice, we want religious liberty, we want faith and family, and living in a great communities and happy communities and safe communities. And we want great jobs and we want to be respected by the rest of the world; not taken advantage of by the rest of the world, which has gone on for decade after decade. We should all want the same thing. How can it be any different than those things?”

Taken together, the attack portions of those two speeches seem to lay out a strategy of vilifying political opposition and the mainstream media to the point of being evil, while reinforcing the false reality and divisive lies the president will rely on going forward. What is amazing in both speeches is (1) the almost complete lack of fact-based reality they convey, and (2) the belief in that false reality that millions of adult Americans see. The president rails against “a new far-left fascism,” while promoting what is in fact an intolerant far-right fascism.

The danger to democracy and the rule of law are quite clear. If the president is re-elected, this country could become an autocratic kleptocracy led by a chronic liar who is a mentally deranged demagogue and tyrant wannabe.