Wabash82

That would be a reasonable position to take IF you could show us that the fine here was not comparable to the sentence imposed in other cases involving similar facts. If the guy had no prior record, a no jail time punishment for a single punch that apparently caused no significant harm doesn’t strike me as necessarily out of the ordinary. I suspect your obvious dislike for the politics of the defendant is causing you to jump to a conclusion that the sentence here is not comparable to what would be imposed in any run of the mill case involving the same situation.

Is this fine out of line with the sentences imposed in other battery cases involving similar facts? There is nothing in the article that suggests that to be true, nor does it indicate even what the judge said (if anything) to explain the sentence. You are not suggesting that the defendant's political views (you characterize him as a social justice warrior) should have affected the court's sentence?

Yeah, that's what it says... if you are Younger Bear.

First, I just want to point out that Clark's argument that this new "hate" law is of concern because it criminalizes mere thought or attitude is at odds with his subsequent assertion that the law wasn't needed anyway, because existing Indiana law does the same thing. So is Clark saying that Indiana law currently allows judges to "criminalizes" mere thoughts, since (according to Clark) judges already have the discretion under Indiana law to use the defendant's discriminatory/bias-based motivation to give a sentence above the advisory sentence? Second, Yes, that statement by Clark is not completely accurate. It is accurate that Indiana statutory law since 2003 (or there abouts) provides that judges are not limited to applying only the specific enumerated aggravating circumstances listed in the statute (35-38-1-1.7), and may impose any sentence that falls within the statutory range for the crime (i.e., they are not bound to give the advisory sentence). But criminal sentences imposed by trial courts in Indiana are still subject to review for abuse of discretion and "appropriateness". And they are also subject to a Constitutional limitation (from SCOTUS 6th amendment decisions) that if the judge applies some aggravating factor associated with an aspect of the commission of that specific crime (for example, a firearm was used in the commission of the crime, or the crime was an act of violence committed in front of a minor, as distinguished from an aggravating factor such as the defendant has prior felony convictions), those factor must be based on facts actually found by the trier of fact or admitted by the defendant. So adding bias/discriminatory motivation based on race, gender, sexual identity, etc. as an express aggravating circumstance in the statute means prosecutors have solid legal grounds to present evidence at trial of facts that establish that factor, which the judge may then cite to support his decision to give a sentence beyond the advisory sentence.

The Pennsylvania law (or maybe Philadelphia city ordinance?) that was relied on in the case discussed in the letter to the editor clearly was not like the law enacted in Indiana, since the Indiana law does not create any new crimes (e.g., it wouldn't allow someone to be arrested for "ethnic intimidation"). Our "hate" law is a sentencing enhancement law, so there still must be proof (and conviction) of some underlying criminal offense that is already illegal under existing Indiana law. So that argument against the Indiana law -- that it has now criminalized mere thoughts or attitudes -- is a complete red herring. My concern about this new law is that, in our legislators great desire to avoid offending some of their constituents by including gender or gender identity as a protected category, while at the same time trying to avoid the bad national publicity (ala with the State RFRA law of a few years ago) of just coming out and saying that they did not intend to cover those categories in the new law, they wrote a law that is, arguably, unenforceably vague. I appreciate that former Justice Sullivan has offered his opinion that it is not, but the Indiana ACLU is apparently already preparing to bring a lawsuit contending that it is.

A hamburger elitist! Keep your pinkies in the air, Dante.

Cow fart methane capture.

Blah, blah, blah. Concerns about propaganda mmasquerading as journalism from The Daily Caller?! Priceless. "Oh, it just happened because people were upset because [Trump] is so terrible. Well, that in itself is a propaganda talking point for the Progressive political movement and Media Matters for America." Or, alternatively, Trump is terrible.

U.S. residential electricity costs have gone up by 64% since 2000. http://www.in2013dollars.com/Electricity/price-inflation So it sounds like we've paid just about as much as the Germans over approximately the same period, but have fallen far behind them in adopting the next gen technology. Not good.

This is one of those areas where relevant technologies are changing all the time, so the economics are changing all the time as well. Just as an example, the meme (which dates to atound 2008) talks about a 2 MW windmill, but 3 MWs are the current standard, with 4 MW rapidly replacing it. That's a two-fold increase in energy output per windmill over about 10 years. The fact that the wind is not always blowing at the "right" time (to coincide with demand) is like the "sun don't shine at night" problem for solar. But there is lots of good research going on now with energy capture technologies, so these are hardly insurmountable problems. Wind and solar are currently as cheap or cheaper forms of energy (without subsidies) compared to fossil fuels in many areas of the country. As the energy storage technologies mature, they will slowly take over from fossil fuels in most areas. Just as the new fracking technologies allowed the US to produce natural gas and oil that was formerly too costly to attempt to extract, pushing coal as a power source closer and closer to extinction in this country, the technologies will come, probably in our lifetimes still, for solar and wind to do the same to natural gas and oil.

I think the snopes page indicated that the original article that this meme was taken from was published sometime prior to 2008, so maybe he was refering to an "old school" windmill. I'll ask my friend Quixote to investigate.

Yes, because principled conservatives/Republicans would never vote for any candidate or elected official who'd support those ideas or other lib notions like imposing high trade tariffs or running up huge federal budget deficits....

Another (sometimes rare) instance of SF and me being completely aligned in our views. Call it something else, man. The Whopper is sacred!

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wind-idiot-power/ The meme selectively paraphrases language from an article written by an economist. The actual quote is below. You can see how the meme intentionally misrepresents the author's point: "The concept of net energy must be applied to renewable sources of energy, such as windmills and photovoltaics. A two-megawatt windmill contains 260 tonnes of steel requiring 170 tonnes of coking coal and 300 tonnes of iron ore, all mined, transported and produced by hydrocarbons. The question is: how long must a windmill generate energy before it creates more energy than it took to build it? At a good wind site, the energy payback day could be in three years or less; in a poor location, energy payback may be never. That is, a windmill could spin until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as was invested in building it."

I personally feel that the "problem" of the anti-democratic potential of the Electoral College system is more a symptom than a cause, although treating the symptom may be the only option. It is a symptom of the fact that the Executive Branch, and specifically the President, has assumed so much of the power intended to be exercised by Congress. One of the good attributes of how Congress is set up in that, whenever the country is very evenly divided politically, Congress is usually also very evenly divided politically. As a result, partisan legislation, meaning legislative proposals that are based on policies that appeal strongly to one side of the divided electorate, but are anathema to the other side -- such as, for example, building a wall on the southern border -- cannot be passed. That gridlock is good because it avoids inflaming these political divisions, and whatever does get passed is usually "no brainer", good for everybody stuff. The Presidency, on the other hand, as a unitary office, is not "divided" politically when the nation is politically divided: it is a winner-takes-all position for whichever side of that roughly even political divide carried that the day in November. So when the President is able to unilaterally exercise power that is properly in the domain of the Congress, this bypasses the protection of the natural gridlock that occurs in Congress when the country is very evenly divided politically. And because a President contemplating re-election in such a political environment is dependent on maintaining the strong allegience of his/her "side" in the evenly divided country, he is very likely to use his power in a directly partisan manner. This is especially significant in the context of the discussion on the Electoral College because the anti-democratic aspects of our system of government, like the EC, were designed to act as bulwarks against the "tyranny of the majority." But because the Presidency has now assumed so much of the power the Founders intended to be held by Congress, the anti-democratic potential of the EC actually creates the opposite risk of a "tyranny of the minority". The best fix, obviously, would be for Congress to re-take the powers it has ceded to the Executive branch. But there are so many practical impediments to that ever happening (mainly arising from the deep desire of members of Congress to avoid ever making any hard or controversial decisions that could threaten their ability to get re-elected), doing away with the anti-democratic potential of the EC may be a more doable "solution" to the issue.

If you do not know the practical difference between the two statements, I am not sure I can help you. But let me try: a law prohibiting discrimination punishes a company if it refuses to hire any QUALIFIED applicants of a particular race or sex or religion or country of origin solely because of their race or sex or religion or country of origin. A law mandating diversity would punish companies for not hiring UNQUALIFIED applicants solely because they are of or have a particular race or sex or religion or country of origin. There are no federal laws ( or State ones that know of) that mandate diversity -- require that companies hire people based solely on their race, sex, religion, etc. -- for private businesses. (The U.S. government will favor businesses that have a diverse workforce when it awards contracts, but that is just an exercise of its market force.) If Bob lost the job to Bill because Bill was equally qualified and is also two inches taller than Bob, and the owner of the business felt that taller people come across better in meetings with his clients, there would be nothing that Bob could do to train or gain experience to make up for that height advantage Bill has over him. But no one would view that as anything more than Bob's bad luck that the employer for whatever reason viewed Bill's greater height as an added plus for his business. The employer in that situation is hiring the "more qualified" candidate in his opinion by hiring the taller Bill, who otherwise has the same training, experience, etc. as Bob. Many employers view diversity in their workforces as an added plus for their businesses as well -- and their reasons for doing so are logical and supported by research. Why that bothers you so much is odd.

So if I said to you, there is one open slot, we had two equally qualified candidates, and we chose Bill over Bob because we flipped a coin and Bill won, you'd say that was discrimination against Bob? There is no discrimination against your hypothetical white guy. He was one of two candidates for a job that only one person would get, and he had no better qualifications or other positive attributes to offer the employer compared to the other candidate. Your concept of discrimination seems to equate to "it somehow feels unfair for a black women who is just as qualified as a white guy to get the job instead of the white guy." And the government doesn't mandate diversity. It prohibits racial discrimination, the practical effect of which has been to increase diversity because qualified applicants who previously got passed over solely because of their race or gender are now at least getting looked at based on their merits. Smart businesses have discovered that diverse workforces bring certain advantages, such as bringing different perspectives to the table in how to solve issues facing the business. So they specifically encourage their hiring folks to look for diversity in the same way they encourage them to look for folks with string prior experience, good test score and grades, etc.

As I explained, the historical context explains why a black director making such a statement is not racist. And as I said, I can't think of a similar context that explains how a white director could say the same thing and not come across as racist, since there has not been any equivalent history of white actors being short changed in getting roles just because they were white. If you can give a context in which you would see it as non-racist for a white director to say he will only cast white actors in his movies, I am open to considering it. But otherwise, your refusal to acknowledge that context affects meaning leaves you arguing that apples are oranges.

They'd choose her. There is only one open slot, and two candidates, so one will get it and one won't. Per your hypothetical, she and the white guy have EQUAL qualifications. However, she additionally would bring more diversity to the employer's workforce, which you noted the employer views as a positive for its business. Seems like a no brainer for the employer to me, but maybe I am missing something. Does this have something to do with your sense of "fairness" or some other touchy-feely thing like that?

The law says you cannot discriminate on the basis of race in employment, which includes the job interview process. The law does not say, "This means you are legally required to interview non-qualified candidates solely because of their race", which is what you seem to be suggesting I said. What if does mean is that you cannot legally decide not to interview a candidate who otherwise meets all your criteria for the position only because that candidate is of a particular race (or religion or sex). The focus is on intent. In your hypothetical, all the candidates given interviews were selected based on non-racial criteria. The fact that only one of them turned out not to be non-white did not magically create some discriminatory intent when they selected the interview candidates (based on non-racially identifiable qualification). As for your anecdotal incident, this woman obviously had all the qualifications to fit the job -- as you explained, she already had that job at Bank A. So it sounds like she was saying that if her qualifications and those of the other candidate were equivalent, she had a leg up under the company's diversity in hiring policy. Hopefully, the person in her position at Bank B was not also equally qualified AND a black single-parent woman with a disability!

He wasn't specifically talk about white or black "roles." If you asked him if, given the chance to direct a movie about the life of Al Pacino, would he cast a black actor in the lead role, I imagine he'd give you a funny look. On the other hand, if you are talking about fictional characters created out of thin air for a movie, the race of the characters is very often irrelevant, so the race of the actor playing that character is also irrelevant. If the dude wants to address the historical short changing of black actors when it comes to getting such roles -- which he identified as his motivation -- by going the other way for awhile in casting his movies, what's wrong with that? It is difficult to perceive what sort of similar non-racist motivation would exist for a white director to declare he will only cast white people in all race-is-irrelevant roles in his\her movies.

Per your hypothetical, they selected the candidates to interview on a non-racially discriminatory basis. So I don't understand what you think is the "perceived racism". If the position was one for a software engineer, and the selection for interviews based on non-racially identifiable information on the resumes resulted in five Indian dudes and one Asian gal being in the pool, I also wouldn't see any reason to require them to go canvass the backwoods of Frankfort for white software engineers to round out the pool. Obviously, many companies appreciate the quantifiable business advantages that may come from having a diverse work force, and would choose to promote that by taking affirmative action to include some otherwise qualified white males from Indiana in the interview pool for a position in their software engineering department that currently includes workers predominately of Indian or Asian background.

Not sure who you mean by " the companies in question. " They article doesn't quote companies they targeted in the study. Or are just hypothesized that would be their response? It is not consistent with the fact that the resumes are identical except for the racially identifying information -- if the non-racially identifiable info on the resume was not sufficient, there should be no significant discrepancy in the rate of interview offers. As for whether it "should be illegal" to discriminate on the basis of race in employment, it already is. If you instead are just asking me if I agree with the laws that make it illegal to discriminate in employment based on race: yes, I do. It is readily apparent from U.S. history and from studies like this one from Harvard that neither "social pressure" nor "market forces" are sufficient to address the problem.

Why you decided to limit the conversation to government entities is unclear. The elimination of express de jure racism (e.g., actual laws establishing separate schools for white kids and black kids) doesn't mean de facto racism magically disappeared.

Yes, it is not racist to acknowledge that people of color are less privileged in our society. I know you want to try to twist that into a statement about the person's inherent worth or status, which it is not. It is a statement about how certain people are treated in our society based on something (skin color) that has zero to do with their inherent worth or status, but which nonetheless causes them to be less privileged (face disadvantages). The advantages you have as a white person in America are too numerous to list. But if you are honestly interested in learning, you can start with this example and go from there: https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes-get-more-interviews