... sweet as a honey bee
The state of the union is MOLE!
In fact, the state of the union sucks Pope tits.
When can we have the STFU Open Thread?
Play SotU Buzzword Bingo drinking game with Digby.
I can't join in because a) I don't drink, and b) refuse to listen or watch the thing. Instead I will listen to Rita and Van, and read about early 20th century Japanese farming sociology. Those Cambridge series really freaking rock. Best reading in years.
...not as bad as it's going to be in the name of bullshit bipartisanship.
But in the new national spirit of compromise: I won't watch the speech, but I will drink, and maybe even make a game of it.
The state of the union is North Carolina, but congratulations to the other contestants for valiant efforts.
...indeterminate until observed, whereupon it resolves into an eigenstate of the union. And you know who else had eigenstates don't you? That's right, Erwin's fucking cat, who killed my fucking bird. Goddamn if I didn't hate that cat.
I am drinking and watching the speech. It hasn't started yet.
required viewing, as my students will no doubt want to talk about it in class.
Also, if you into silly diversions, the Respondomatic 5000 still exists.
I love that "Yay!" is apparently an appropriate exclamation to make at these events.
Wow, Jim Lehrer sounds old.
I have some sort of bronchial infection, as a result of which I am all loaded up with antibiotics and don't want to drink tonight, which means I probably shouldn't watch.
We have fought a good thing, a robust democracy. A tragedy reminded us where we come from.
Double dip already under way here. Expect to follow shortly. (This is not Bob, it's the BBC.)
I do like using "Greetings" as it echoes the notices from the draft board.
Out Sputnik moment?!!!!!
I just snorted way audibly.
I am not offended by this very boring speech. From my point of view, Obama is beating the expectations game.
Speaking of drinking, does Boehner have a set of shot glasses in front of him?
Bohner looks like he could use a cigarette.
The energy stuff seems interesting and good. Am I missing something?
The abortion of young people with a college degree?
By August 14, 2027 13.6% of rural gardens will feature artisanal lawn balls. Precision made in America for real Americans.
My ironic distance is unbridgeable I fear.
Truly, Barack Obama is the apotheosis of the 20th-century Republican president.
God, these things really are interchangeable, aren't they?
Oh, that's tonight? Thank goodness I'm on GMT+1, so I have an excuse not to watch it. Except that I'm still awake, I guess. Crap.
Now, if he had come out there and said, "What we need is an improvement in humanities education! America is falling behind in comparative literature scholarship!", that would have been something.
Lawn ball supremacy turns out to have blandly objectionable policy implications.
Nice of him to stick up for the Dream Act.
Of course then he launches into "protect our borders" yadda yadda.
Double dip already under way here. Expect to follow shortly. (This is not Bob, it's the BBC.)
You mean you had a period when it seemed like things were getting better over there?
Isn't it remarkable how he knows about a mother going back to school in biotechnology so that she can inspire her children? How does he find the time to find these people? Remarkable.
44.2: Borders is going broke, they say.
Seriously, what does Boehner have in front if him? Some sort of awesome deco silver thing.
Dude, when the Congress laughs uproariously about how supertrains don't require pat-downs, it's really time to reconsider the TSA.
Inspiring: jobs, achievement, SUPERTRAINS!
Uninspiring: qualifications, implementation details, bean counting.
50: Receptacles for his patriot tears. He sells them on eBay.
But what this country really needs is a corporate tax cut.
Is South Korea the bad one?
I buy my artisanal high fructose corn syrup on e-Bay. From Iowa!
Is that really Biden's expressionless face?
Radical Obama comes out swinging for the FDA?!
Barriers to growth and investment, otherwise known as investment condoms, are the scourge of my -- do I have to finish this? TYping is hard.
Was that Congressman Dingle in the crowd looking like Hans Moleman?
Aren't we technically still in the days when an insurance company can deny coverage based on a pre-existing condition?
You know what I have passionate feelings about? Accounting trivia.
Good luck with getting rid of the gas and oil subsidies.
Fuck this deficit reduction shit. Freeze annual domestic spending. Gah. Next up social security.
Watching Boehner is kind of entertaining, though.
Boehner looks like Saruman the White would if he just farted.
Necessary waste must be preserved.
I think he just ran afoul of the analogy ban.
I wish someone would bring me another beer.
Cutting healthcare is fine, social security is not.
Cut defense damn it.
i think biden has to turn the corners of his mouth way down like that in order to not revert to shit-eating grin.
i would NOT mess with kathleen sebelius.
I'm willing to let the Republicans get their way on medical malpractice if, in exchange, we can tax the hell out of rich people.
When he says that he's willing to consider capping medical malpractice lawsuits, that means within reason, right?
Seriously, what does Boehner have in front if him? Some sort of awesome deco silver thing.
It's a cup to catch his precious tears.
We cannot buy a grilled cheese with money denominated in beets.
I'm still honestly not sure whether Obama thinks any of the rebublicans might actually be listening to him.
Awkward long laughter at the smoked salmon line. I take it that there was a physical humor bit in there somewhere? Did Obama look over at Boehner?
Did the president smoke salmon, and, if so, did he inhale?
No more earmarks means no more elephant snow-angels.
I was kind of intending to watch this, but time zones are confusing. I guess I'll just have to wait another year to find out whether the state of our union is strong.
Fuck the future retirees
Fuck, the future retirees
Fuck the future, retirees
Earmarks? Christ, what an asshole.
In re: defeating the evil enemies
I can't believe there are no damn commercial breaks. I need a fucking beer.
Boehner would look better wearing Insane Clown Posse makeup.
The START treaty doesn't actually destroy any nuclear weapons.
Imagine how much better the SOTU would be if the President kept drinking instead of the viewers at home.
i wish i could have the joint chiefs of staff sitting in the corner of my living room all the time. i think that'd be fresh.
man there's a lot of dudes in congress.
99: Seriously, someone get him a beer. WE MUST NOT HAVE A BURPLE GAP!
hehe kerry and mccain look like they're on an awkward movie date both hoping their arms don't accidentally touch.
The Joint Chiefs seem vaguely repulsed at the thought of buttsex.
It's not going to be easy? Shit.
Is he proposing a dictatorship?
When I think of how special America is, I have an orgasm.
105: McCain would *so* do the popcorn dick trick.
That orgasm is why he can stand before you tonight.
Oh my. You people have been busy.
You know whoever wrote that line had money on getting Bohner to cry.
Is he going to fucking cry now? (ICP man, not Obama.)
The crowd starts chanting "drill, baby, drill."
I might not take a shower, but I use a lot of deodorant.
"From the earliest days of our founding, America has been a nation of ordinary people who dare to drink."
I've decided my life goal is now to get name-checked in a SOTU. I need to find some adversity so that I can overcome it to succeed in the end.
I'm being to suspect we're not the target demo for this marketing campaign.
"From the earliest days of our founding, America has been a nation of ordinary people who dare to drink drill."
If he had cut out the past half-hour or so, I think it would have been a lot better.
I don't know what 123 refers to but it very nearly made me pee myself.
what 123 refers to
We are a nation that says, "I might not have a lot of money, but I have this great idea for a new company. I might not come from a family of college graduates, but I will be the first to get my degree. I might not know those people in trouble, but I think I can help them, and I need to try. I'm not sure how we'll reach that better place beyond the horizon, but I know we'll get there. I know we will."
Is there some place to watch the response speech online? I can't find anything. This white house Q&A is even more boring than the speech was.
I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV!
So earlier today I was invited to a SOTU-watching party sponsored by a local (perhaps law-school-related) cell of Organizing/Obama For America. Chirpily and without irony, the invitor promised "you know, lots of fun liberals" in attendance.
Two 12 oz. beers at 9% ABV each is insufficient beers.
Take it to the chorus, Michael Gerson. Take it to the bridge.
You were smart to go to CSpan. I checked GOP.com and I think I came away with a venereal disease.
Mark Shields's surname, when combined that of David Brooks, and so bringing to mind a famous actress, is no longer an excuse to invite him onto the show.
Most informative SOTU (non) watching experience ever.
Paul Ryan is almost certain to pass the Turing test.
My housemate's ladyfriend wandered into the room during the beginning of the speech and asked, "Who's Gabby? What happened to her?"
I was really surprised she'd managed to miss that news.
I'm watching last night's episode of Chuck. Seems more edifying.
Which 30 Rock character is he doing this year?
Ryan is forgettable. Therefore, he wins.
I'm just staring at my bicycle. Just as informative, and less orange.
The state of my bicycle... is awesome.
I've been reading the local news. I just learned that the Packer's coach grew-up just down the road from where I am. I feel edified.
The boring speech was better than this infuriating one.
Ryan started out worryingly well, feigning reasonability and all, but now he's just ghastly boring. Oh, and now he's threatening that we're about to turn into Greece.
We have to cut benefits to seniors now in order to avoid benefits cuts for seniors in the future?
Did he really just say "poor decisions made on wall street"!?
I look forward to a stream of angry op-eds and a net $500b boost to Democratic coffers in 2012.
C-span.com has three continually updating streams of "Members of Congress Tweets", "Congressional Media Tweets", and "Viewer Tweets". (Why?? I have no idea.) It's a tough call which of the three is the most asinine.
158 gives me an idea? Has anybody invented Shatroulette?
157: "Members of Congress Tweets"
Paul Broun Rep. from Georgia. Mr. President, you don't believe in the Constitution. You believe in socialism.
The Tweet is not a serious act of political dissent.
Awesome. Michelle Bachman is looking at the wrong camera, off and up. Her practiced gestures now just look weird.
158: congress is eating this amazing panini. Congress is sad tomorrow isn't Friday. Congress has a test tomorrow! :( Congress can't believe he left his wallet at home!'
I don't know enough about twitter to convincingly fake it. So I did Facebook stati. Close enough for government work, right?
Aaaand she didn't calibrate her makeup right.
I'm surprised to learn that tippling makes me more, not less, likely to censor my comments.
Oh my God, she has a slide of WWII behind her.
It's just so obvious through the lens of beer that my comments are shit.
Reaching a level of happiness often longed for, seldom obtained
As the camera pans out to her looking off and up, with a nervous and pleased half-smile on her face and a slide of the Constitution behind her, the only possible verdict for this purposeless exercise is: Michelle Bachmann is crazy. Really, what the fuck was that?
When you start laughing uncontrollably -- that's the thing.
If Michelle Bachmann were a muppet, I'd give her a little more slack. But this is true of all people who are not muppets, were they muppets.
172: I've always thought Geddy Lee was very lucky to be born muppet.
He sings so knowingly of the trees. And of (you may plausibly construe as) pigs in space.
1) Gosh, I'm glad I'm continuing my tradition of saving braincells by not watching speeches, especially SOTUs.
2) When anyone mentions Ryan in this thread I keep thinking they're talking about Rex Ryan.
We are a nation that says, "I might not have a lot of money, but I have this great idea for a new company. I might not come from a family of college graduates, but I will be the first to get my degree. I might not know those people in trouble, but I think I can help them, and I need to try. I'm not sure how we'll reach that better place beyond the horizon, but I know we'll get there. I know we will."
'And just like we're a nation that watched a lot of Judy Garland movies, we're also a nation that says if you're black you're going to jail, if you're poor, you're hosed, if you live in a bad economy, it's hopeless to try and do anything about it. And I'm proud of that.'
max
['MORE MONEY FOR RICH PEOPLE!']
I watched Bachmann without the sound on. Pretty great, actually. I sort of love her now.
176: Sound is all we do.
[FB check.] Only one wingnut thinks there was something about gun control. So, that's, um, WHAT?
Gun control is about leaving me defenseless against birds and murderers and stop signs. The top post on my FB is about a farm show. The next one about Dan Zanes.
I can't find a video of the Bachmann response online. Anybody have a link?
I missed the SOTU as promised, and instead read Comet in Moominland to my daughters. The state of Moominland is...perilous. There's a comet! But I think it'll turn out okay in the end. Am now off daddy duty and drinking bourbon, so entertain me.
Imagine Michelle Bachmann looking utterly moonblinked, gesturing earnestly, and occasionally losing control of her facial expressions, all the while making no sound. Very entertaining!
181: Here. Michele Bachmann Tries To Steal Obama's Thunder By Not Looking America In The Eye.
Frankly, I'm disappointed in all of you. The future's not going to win itself, you know.
The future's not going to win itself, you know.
Unless it travels back in time and kills Skynet.
Skynet
Soon to be part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
Skynet
We're on to the fifth generation of Skynet now, you know. And we have flying killer robots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_%28satellites%29
A fourth satellite, Skynet 5D, is planned for launch in 2013
Fucking James Cameron getting his hands on everything.
SERIOUSLY I LOVE YOU GUYS!!
Robert Scheer was not impressed:
What is the state of the union? You certainly couldn't tell from that platitudinous hogwash that the president dished out Tuesday evening. I had expected Barack Obama to be his eloquent self, appealing to our better nature, but instead he was mealy-mouthed in avoiding the tough choices that a leader should delineate in a time of trouble.
I remember watching one of (I think it was) Clinton's SOTU addresses on Comedy Central with live commentary from Chris Rock and probably Bill Maher. Rock kept punctuating the cheap platitudes with the phrase "Also, all babies should eat."
I spent the entire address last night thinking "all babies should eat."
My favorite SOTU-related tweet of the evening was: "Tonight we'll be hearing rebuttal from GOP and Teabaggers. Hell, why not give some of those ComicCon Klingon guys some time?"
I tried to spend the speech and its various responses playing Civ V, conquering the shit out of England, but I misgauged my timing and came downstairs to rejoin Rah, having surrounded London with Giant Death Robots, just in time for the Republican response. "Oooookay, nevermind," I said, stood back up and went upstairs to fold laundry. Then I came back downstairs again to feed the cats just in time for Bachmann. I had to ask Rah to change the channel; I can't afford to buy a new TV and I'm pretty sure watching her would make me want to break the one we have.
Michelle Bachman is looking at the wrong camera, off and up. Her practiced gestures now just look weird.
Not sure if someone's already said this, but apparently she was looking at the Tea Party Express's webcam (for online streaming on their website). As someone on the radio said this morning, "And so, for them, she was looking straight into their souls."
189: It's a real leap forward; he's only done 3D up to now.
having surrounded London with Giant Death Robots
Like Londoners would even notice.
I support our president! He's the BEST!
||
Let Despots Tremble Everywhere Egypt Edition ...Mubarek Jr running to Great Britain
This is why you gotta be prepared, because Revolution just happens spontaneously, without warning, when and where you least expect it. Of course the objective materialist can see the necessary conditions, but no one can know when the people will recognize their always already existing freedom from petit bourgeois passivity.
The Leninist will lead from the rear, sweeping up the refuse of history from behind Peabody & Sherman's march back to the future.
|>
195: we would notice; it might affect property prices.
We of the Home Counties Rapid Airborne Deployment Force are powerless to act in cases of violent revolution, unless it has in some way interfered with the London housing market.
Does David Cameron at least get a pedal-powered Giant Death Robot?
re: 202
Cameron will get one powered by some super-polluting fuel derived from rendering poor babies. However, he'll drive it about while lecturing the rest of us to be Green.
202: no, he'll stick to the army's tried and tested force of Man-Eating Badgers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6295138.stm
I missed the SOTU, but this thread reminded me of my favorite episode of Angel, the one where Angel gets turned into a muppet, so I probably got more of the speech than the rest of you.
I endorse Amanda Marcotte's take on the State of the Union address.
So, that speech sucked. The prior sentence could refer to all of the speeches last night, but obviously the one in question is Barack Obama's State of the Union address. Last night, the emptiness of it pissed me off, particularly how he talked a big game about innovation and moving forward and education, and then proceeded to concede the argument to Republicans that we really shouldn't do any of those things because they cost money. But this morning, I've mellowed out on it a bit and basically feel like I saw a man who has given up. And I can respect that; it's not like anything can be done with the den of wingnut weasels the country just elected to Congress. All he's got left is admonishing us to try harder, while knowing we totally plan to fail and fail hard. Until people who care more about the possibility that women are having unauthorized orgasms than about the state of our economy and our future, we're going to continue this slide downhill, and that's basically all there is to it.
We are a country that's basically given up.
Nice how they've decided not to fix the filibuster either.
100: Boehner would look better wearing Insane Clown Posse makeup.
Which thought I passed on to my peeps (aka my daughter*), pulled some strings and viola!
Fuckin' Congress! How does it work?
206: I had the "given up" thought. It also occurred to me, however, that Obama and the Democratic party in general have been accused of failing to put forward a vision, and that speech was a viable version of a vision, the intended audience for which was some generalized constituency of independents.
206:What a negative person. There are some Americans all bullish and optimistic, you know. Quitters never win.
"The S&P 500 closed at a 29-month high on Wednesday led by gains in tech and commodity shares, as investors largely ignored the U.S. Federal Reserve's lukewarm economic assessment."
Sarcastic bob is funnier than doomsday bob.
Most of the retail small investors are long long gone from the markets of course. Just hedge fund traders playing with each other.
The Decline of the Publicly Traded Firm ...Yglesias, from Felix Salmon. I've linked to a commenter I like "half-kidding", Yggles doesn't get it at all.
Now this is fucking fascinating. Like woah! Less public corporations or IPOs being formed every year, previously public corps buying back stock or delisting.
The very rich don't need us anymore. This is oligarchy on steroids. There are reasons I am studying Japan.
I can't remember which thread got on to predicting (or not) civil unrest, but Scientists working on a project sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory now have a forecasting model that they claim can accurately predict civil unrest against foreign governments.
Egypt only came in at #36, however.
Like woah!
You're trying to drive me over the edge, aren't you?
There are reasons I am studying Japan.
Largely already aware of your lunatic apocalyptic tendencies, you know, but what are you expecting, Godzilla and Mothra?
There are reasons I am studying Japan.
Hello Kitty?
208: A very slight modification to make it The Tears of an Insane Clown (when there's cameras around).
"The very rich don't need us anymore."
I should explicate this.
The very rich, the MOTU, don't need our savings or consumption anymore. They don't need the taxes of the lower 75% of Americans any more. They don't need to work for our votes, they don't care about our opinions, they don't need to sell us anything.
What isn't locked into a TBTF place (healthcare reform, Wellpoint will soon run us) is trivial. They are free.
We are serfs, immobile and ignored. All the free play is entirely within the top, games without frontiers.
The GIS for "japanese inventions" is very odd.
215:Hello kitty and Lolita fashion.
the MOTU
Munchers of Tacos United?
Mean Old Twats Union?
Men Of Taste Unlimited?
Moldy Open Torn Underwear?
221
Masters of the Universe from IIRC the Tom Wolfe novel Bonfire of the Vanities.
Ben Bernanke with a special message to bob mcmanus (and by extension all of us!).
I'm on Bob's side in this thread. The powerful people in our country have no particular interest in our country doing well as opposed to other countries, particularly other countries with "growth" potential. The idea that what's good for various corporations and their executives is good for any country where they're technically "based" is odd as well.
Moving from elite consensus to the punditry consensus, Ryan Avent and M. Yglesias point out from time to time that all our bickering over American politics is really pointless because the true story of our generation is that working-class people in poor countries are taking the jobs of working-class and middle-class people in rich countries, and that that is such a moral good that everything else is a footnote.
he true story of our generation is that working-class people in poor countries are taking the jobs of working-class and middle-class people in rich countries
Not true, of course; there are more jobs in America now than there were 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago, despite all these foreigners coming on the job market. 100 years ago, China was a peasant nation, and all those guys in the rice fields weren't taking any American jobs. But guess what? Twice as many jobs in America now as then.
As our population has increased, the supply of jobs has also increased, such that many people who once had good jobs now have bad jobs instead of no jobs. Except for all the unemployed people.
Reading about Daniel Bell tonight. Malcolm Waters, Routledge, 1996
They had a common Jewish immigrant experience, they often spent their early years as socialists if not communists, and they were educationally mobile, often through CCNY and Columbia. In its maturity, the tone of the circle was distinctly illiberal, refusing to denounce McCarthyism or the American military engagement in Vietnam, opposing affirmative action for blacks and women, standing radically opposed to student protest, and endorsing unquestioning American support for the state of Israel. They were highly integrated - Kadushin finds that over 50 per cent of the American intellectual elite lived in NYC and that about half of that elite was Jewish, although he does not specify the exact overlap (1974: 22-3)[11]. More importantly, most of the key intellectual journals were located there. There is little doubt that Bell was a key figure in the circle...
I didn't think I'd like him, and I don't. Wrong Waters, the McCarthyism and warmongering and the rest is distinctly and essentially liberal. This is what these folks became when they abandoned socialism and communism.
It is also a little interesting that while I can abstract economics from politics, I have a very hard time distinguishing sociology from political science or theory.
The seller and buyer of apples are engaged in an equal exchange, but all personal relations and structures are power relations. "Hello" "What do you mean by that?"
I guess that means I could be a better feminist than Marxist.
The very rich, the MOTU, don't need our savings or consumption anymore. They don't need the taxes of the lower 75% of Americans any more. They don't need to work for our votes, they don't care about our opinions, they don't need to sell us anything.
I don't agree with this - we're still worth some looting. And the killing of brown people is viewed as very handy.
It is also a little interesting that while I can abstract economics from politics, I have a very hard time distinguishing sociology from political science or theory.
I'm finding it more difficult to abstract econ from well, anything.
max
['It all comes down to what the rich want.']
We are a country that's basically given up.
Come on, there are still blogs to comment on. You never know where the revolution will erupt!
230:You never know where the revolution will erupt!
That's right.
Egypt Revolutions and Food It is about the stresses on the system, and the desperation of the actors, and the ambition and overconfidence of the elites.
Of course, you should be reading Juan Cole or whoever on Egypt.
Paul Krugman may have forgotten, but I never will. He said in 2003 I think that the Bush tax cuts in time of war was a revolutionary act, and social breakdown was a matter of when, not if. It was an instinctive reaction on Krugman's part. Since then, he is in a "Is everybody crazy?" mode. No, Paul, the people aren't crazy, the system is broke. Reality is crazy.
Everybody, everybody, right and left, Tea Party or Firebagger knows we need systemic structural change. Nobody knows how to get there easily, so we (maybe not me) are pretending the system can get us there, but we know we are in denial, lying to ourselves and each other.
And the Estates-General or Duma gets called and then it is "what just happened."
I am old, and I have never felt this. The 60s weren't this, everything looked chaotic but was under control. What I am seeing, feeling now is everything breaking down, and everybody pretending it's under control. Insane Potemkin play-acting. The pretending, the averting of the eyes and making the joke, is what tells me Revolution is on the way.
Egypt Erupts Pt 2 ...Richard Estes
Meanwhile, the conditions facing workers are growing worse. The official unemployment figure is 12 percent, but the real figure is 24 or 25 percent. Food prices are out of control. One kilo of tomatoes--a staple good--is $2; it used to be 35 cents not long ago. That's prohibitively expensive in a country where government workers make only about $26 a month. The question of hunger is real. And now the IMF is pressuring the government to remove the subsidies on gasoline prices.
Estes discusses Tariq Ali's novel Night of the Golden Butterfly
"Ali has publicly said that he was motivated to become a novelist by his interest in discovering what do you do in a period of defeat?"
Tariq Ali should go ask the experts.
"Ali has publicly said that he was motivated to become a novelist by his interest in discovering what do you do in a period of defeat?"
Hate to break it to you Bob, but la Quatrieme doesn't have a big presence in Egypt. Used to in Algeria, but that was a long time ago and in another country, and besides Ernest Mandel is dead.
A revolution in Egypt would almost certainly be co-opted by the Muslim Brotherhood, because the repression has been quite effective, so the balance of class forces is less favourable even than in Iran in 1979. In which case, we will be able to briefly enjoy the humiliation of Mubarak, and then we will be able to briefly enjoy the pretty light show from all the explosions in the stratosphere.
Which isn't an argument against supporting the Egyptian workers (though not necessarily their leaders). Far from it. But this is still a period of defeat.
everything breaking down, and everybody pretending it's under control
God, yes.
The pretending, the averting of the eyes and making the joke, is what tells me Revolution is on the way.
I'm not sure what it means when Bob is wildly optimistic compared with me. From my seat, it looks like the clampdown is on the way and I can't see any viable resistance.
If your seat has no resistance, you should probably do some time on the stairmaster or something.
I'm inclined to agree with 234. If the Mubarak government falls, fundamentalists will take over. (I hope event prove me wrong, of course.)
235: Clampdown? What do you mean? Is there even something to clamp down?
Now that my seat has no resistance, I'm saving *tons* of money on poppers.
As I've said before, with regard to other political shake-ups around the world, our only choice right now is between the neo-liberals and the fascists. In Egypt, I have to agree, the neo-liberals probably aren't going to get much traction.
I know most people here feel differently, as it is the conventional wisdom that you must do so when you have kids, but I just don't see any potential for change through authorized processes of representative democracy. That's what I said prior to voting for Obama, and that's what I've thought ever since.
I do hold out some hope for collective action bringing about social revolution, because otherwise, why not just become an investment banker or an oogle (as if there's a dime's worth of difference between the two)? I guess my main hope is that we do come to a point of at least partial industrial collapse while there's still time, in an ecological sense, to build something new. But it's a pretty faint hope at this point.
Is there even something to clamp down?
Yes.
240. It must be lonely being a criminal in San Marino.
In other news this:
In 1980, there were about 40,000 people in American jails and prisons for drug crimes. These days, there are almost 500,000.Is only slightly less proportionally than the entire prison population in Britain. WTF is going on?
240: But what do you mean that a clampdown is on the way? Prison populations exploded a while ago.
What's an "oogle"?
As I've said before, with regard to other political shake-ups around the world, our only choice right now is between the neo-liberals and the fascists. In Egypt, I have to agree, the neo-liberals probably aren't going to get much traction.
Not between neo-liberals and reactionary religions people?
Aren't neo-liberals and fascists on the same side? I guess the neo-liberals are more about free trade.
241
WTF is going on?
The War on Drugs went about as well as the Vietnam War, and for the same reasons, but there haven't been enough casualties to generate the same level of outrage.
What's an "oogle"?
An investment banker that finds nine cents.
I don't want to be an investment banker, so oogle it is.
Of course, Moby had to go ahead and ruin my comment, that fucker. I hope the Pirates have 50 more losing seasons.
The oogles on the Look at this Fucking Oogle site don't look like I'd mistake them for investment bankers easily (unless this is rhyming slang).
243: I thought I'd explained oogles before: See, back in the olden days, there were gutter/crusty punx who layabout all day, sparechanging for money to buy cheap beer. They would come to shows with certain bands and cause problems, but there were never that many of them in any one scene. Then, sometime in the mid-1990s, they realized that they could take the show on the road (I attribute this to two factors: 1. The re-mythologizing of the hobo tradition and 2. Cross-pollination from jam-band followers.) So now you have these big groups of crusties converging on various popular locales at different times of year. Mpls is lucky in that the cold weather does indeed keep most of them away from October to April. But during the summer they all show up. They're parasites on the scene. Their dogs have fleas. Their sleeping bags have bedbugs. They have scabies. They ripoff other people in the punk scene, sit around outside venues hassling people, get drunk and start fights for no reason, etc. Most of them never engage in any political or community-building activities. Some of them are genuinely messed up people, and deserve pity rather than censure, but a majority are the classic "kid with rich parents with mommy/daddy issues who is going to fuck around for 10 years and then dry out and become upper middle class again".
Neo-liberals and fascists are not the same thing, I don't think. And while in the past I certainly saw some challenges to hegemony on the part of the radical religious groups, I think they have pretty much all been coopted into fascism at this point.
But what do you mean that a clampdown is on the way?
I mean that past a certain level of unemployment, social unrest is more or less a given. But I doubt that unrest stands much chance of leading to the glorious revolution, rather than to the construction of yet more prisons for those who don't just get gunned down in the streets.
248: They have the same mentality, if not the same dress sense.
there haven't been enough casualties in America to generate the same level of outrage
Fixed that for ya
So what's the difference between an oogle and a gutter punk?
Apparently, gutters have standards.
I'm not sure what this is evidence of, but it's evidence.
My theory du jour is that we've moved very rapidly to a new set of tiers in our society. People with verifiable identities -- US passports, credit histories, health insurance and medical records, jobs that create long online trails -- are on one tier. Let's call that the reputational tier.
The other holds everyone else.* They're the people with contingent identities, and contingent privileges. They can drive -- most of the time. Travel -- but not without hiccups, and always with the danger on highway or bus or train** or plane of being cuffed, arrested, detained, imprisoned. Get jobs -- but at the whim of background checks, federal databases, and other difficult-to-contest screening tools. Have phones -- but more often throwaway and prepaid, and nearly always without the expectation of privacy (landline-to-landline is a very big privilege these days). Have healthcare -- but haphazardly, without security, without predictability in cost, without reassurance that prescription medication for serious conditions won't be interrupted, and certainly without the ability to plan for events like a pregnancy.
*Not bob's Masters of the Universe.
**Customs and Border Patrol has declared that they have the right to search all public conveyances within 150 miles of a US border or port. Which is almost all of the inhabited US. And they're regularly doing so, on Greyhound, Amtrak, etc.
The major difference between these tiers and the segregation and other tools of the past is the invisibility. You don't know that your phone number is automatically causing you to be screened into the "long wait" customer service line when you call, while mine is zipping me ahead. You don't know when reporters are deciding not to contact your business for comment because you don't have a website, or when you lost a job opportunity because you have no credit history. You don't know when a travel website gives you certain options or an airline codes you a certain way or even when the government puts you on a certain watch list, not just because you don't have the right to ask but because you don't even know to ask.
Witt: Are you imagining "everyone else" to include more people than just undocumented or partially documented immigrants? Is your idea that the amount of bureaucracy you have to navigate to be a functional citizen is just unmanageable, even for people who were born here?
No, it's much more a class thing that a race thing, or even a nationality thing. The rich Chinese international students are not having these problems, for example.
But I know more and more white and black US-born people who just don't have entré to these worlds, and often they don't even know it.
The flip side is that there is a huge informal exchange, where people are having all kinds of interactions without it showing up on the "official" radar, and technology is making those interactions easier as well. But they don't "count" as reputational points, so as far as the reputational tier is concerned, they don't exist.
re: 255
The taking photographs in a public place thing has been a massive issue here over the past two years. Or massive at least in the press I read. Without getting too tinfoilhat about it, it does seem a fairly deliberate move [despite public avowals to the contrary].
And it isn't about navigating bureaucracy, per se. The people in the contingent tier are often much better at navigating systems, because they're constantly having to do it. The reputational tier is always getting waved through the fast lane, and they don't even realize how much of a pass they're getting unless and until they lose it.
It's as if the old days when poor people had to be good at dealing with the welfare office suddenly got massively expanded to way more than poor people, and way more than welfare.
I've noticed, in the UK, the increasing use of vaguely worded laws, which are part of that process. It's a little like 'Italy' [of myth, at least] where half the shit ordinary people want to do is technically illegal, but everyone turns a blind eye except when someone in a position of power decides to fuck with you. Technically a load of ordinary shit can be rendered illegal, but in practice, if you play nice, you won't get fucked with.
The reputational tier is always getting waved through the fast lane
The liquor store by my office has all these signs about how you can't carry bags in the store. Last time I was there, they ordered a kid to put her bag at the front. I was standing right next to her holding a similar-sized bag and nobody said anything.
If I buy the premise of 255, I'd say an additional aspect is that a large swath of people are barely in the reputational class, and that too many voters don't believe that the contingency class exists, or at least they don't believe it contains substantially many "good" people.
many voters don't believe that the contingency class exists, or at least they don't believe it contains substantially many "good" people.
Exactly. You got stopped for a broken taillight because you're eeevil; my son got stopped for a broken taillight because of a simple mistake and the officer was being ridiculous.
250:I've never said the good guys were gonna win.
If you want, you can characterize what happened/what's happening as a coup, a usurpation of power entirely within the elites. But something happened to make not only Krugman, DeLong, Stiglitz, Dornan etc but their counterparts on the Right feel lost and irrelevant. The center hasn't held.
This was obviously not a triumph of the paleocons and social conservatives. The Tea Party feels just as disenfranchised as we do.
It is too easy to say Goldman Sachs and Morgan Chase rule now. I don't think they do. I think they also serve.
I think the coup was by the global creditor class (very definitely not Jews). Why Iraq and Afghanistan? Why borrowing instead of taxes in 2002-2003? The bond-holding ultra-elite, the SWFs, the Saudis and oilarchies, Chinese, top Japanese took over with 9/11.
I think Witt's point is well taken. See those kinds of things happening around me all the time. Had a demoralizing experience the other day: Went to the library in my neighborhood to pick up a book I had reserved online. Library was less depressing than I had feared, although it is still freaking me out every time I go in and see the security guard giving every patron who goes in the hairy eyeball. Anyway, after I got my book, I went to wait for the bus. There was a young, 20-ish African-American man standing at the bus stop. I nodded to him, and he asked me how to get to Lake St. So I told him, and pointed out that he would probably be better off standing at the stop across the street if he wanted to get to his destination more quickly. He said "Oh, I can't go back over there, I stood there for 10 minutes and nobody would tell me which bus I needed to get on." Not that it should matter, but this was a very polite, soft-spoken kid, very studious-looking and friendly. I don't know what's wrong with people sometimes.
And it is very very wrong, as I said before, to call it fascism. And most of the leftish analysis of racism misses the point. There ain't no nationalism out there.
In fascism, ultimately the state rules corporations. We are going stateless at lightspeed.
We are going stateless at lightspeed.
Not really stateless, but certainly moving to a new paradigm, alternately more federalized and more parochial. In a couple hundreds years, states-as-mercenaries-for-corporations? Could happen. Maybe even faster.
Here's Richard Seymour aka Lenin arguing with Zizek about racism in Europe. Anti-immigration waves.
Look above at Egypt importing masses of Asian labor to work their factories. The Egyptian workers just wanted jobs, and in any case you can't claim that the elites are fomenting racism and nationalism to suit their purposes, as would be the case in fascism. As far as I can, the opposite is true.
Seymour is pointing at an outmoded target.
No, I think it's pretty clear what's happening: The fascists are being let off their leash a little bit to scare everyone into accepting the neo-liberal agenda without question. So, in one sense, you could say that there really isn't any choice at all, on a global level. But in places like Egypt, the choice is pretty clear: Get with the neo-liberal program or we'll condemn you to 40 more years of a slightly different kind of fascism.
All of this stuff about the corporate state or whatever is completely negotiable. It may have been a feature of Fascism and/or National Socialism, but it's not a necessary condition for small-f fascism.
I wouldn't count the state out just yet. States are very convenient things for corporations. It would be really hard to enforce the requisite amount of labor discipline without the majesty of the state to back you up. Maybe in the far future we would see something like the Wm. Gibson future where states are essentially meaningless frameworks of vague ideas about borders and stuff. But that's a long way away. It's certainly not going to be the cast by the fourth quarter of this century, as Gibson posited.
I think we will see some changes to the degree in which it is uncontroversially public knowledge that corporations have the largest voice in the bourgeois democracies. And for those of us who cling to a modernist/Englightenment/20th century narrative of statehood, that's going to seem like a horrifically radical change. But is it going to really alter how power has been working for some time now? I'd argue no. "What's good for General Motors is good for America" wasn't even that much of a shock when it was originally advanced. The degree to which it is shocking is largely a matter of more and more effective public relations campaigns.
"case" rather than "cast", obvs.
I do hold out some hope for collective action bringing about social revolution
Given that all of the social-revolution-bringing-about collective actions in the past have only brought about, in the best cases, representative democracies or something similar, or, in the worst cases, human catastrophes, how is there any more potential for change in a social revolution (and I take that to mean a political revolution, not a spiritual one) than there is through the authorized processes of representative democracy? Neither of them are likely to end war, feed the hungry, heal the sick, or comfort the alienated.
There's never been a time when I didn't feel lost and irrelevant and I'm one of the world's lucky.
This is all over my head, but man are you guys THE SMARTEST!
255: My theory du jour is that we've moved very rapidly to a new set of tiers in our society. People with verifiable identities -- US passports, credit histories, health insurance and medical records, jobs that create long online trails -- are on one tier. Let's call that the reputational tier.
My spin du jour on this is that it might be conceived as the difference between the legally empowered (enfranchised) and the rest. That is, with a verifiable identity and attendant records and relationships (credit history, health insurance) attached to your name, you have more legal power to raise a stink should you be faced with obstruction in your endeavors. Organizations -- governmental, corporate, bureaucratic -- slide you on through in your mutual dealings in recognition of this fact.
This sounds like a somewhat lame downgrading of the trend in question, from grand considerations of the balance of power between state and corporate interests, encroaching fascism, or what have you, to a base utilitarian emphasis merely on what motivates individual and organizational behavior. But there's been a significant shift involved in what could be called simply the rules of the game: citizens people are treated with the respect we theoretically accord to all just in case failure to treat them so may result in a lawsuit.
I blame the lawyers, of course.*
*That's glib because this series of thoughts is unfinished.
the SWFs
Now, Bob, I don't think single white females are the villains here.
Witt, I see what you mean, and am really interested in the mechanisms here. The individual credentialing systems you take about in 255 are each quite small and each came to be for different reasons. Differences in familiarity and comfort with the Web haven't sprung up because of any decisions of anyone with power, but they are becoming a huge social barrier. Public education in Ohio is rapidly and deliberately moving to a model where computer literacy is a prerequisite for education, not the result of it. No one is doing this intentionally. We just need to move education online to save money.
The arcane policies that govern the way call centers prioritize people, or the way that travel websites show results are more the direct result of the decisions of individuals with power. They are also decisions that are made without anything resembling transparency. But again, who has this power, why they are making this decision, and even whether they are being economically rational varies from case to case.
The other thing is that a lot of these mechanisms are socially necessary. They just aren't being done properly right now.
No, i don't know where this thought is going.
In a couple hundreds years, states-as-mercenaries-for-corporations? Could happen. Maybe even faster.
Banana republics?
States today that are mercenaries for Shell Oil?
In a couple hundreds years, states-as-mercenaries-for-corporations?
(or the Banana Wars, if you'd prefer)
The other thing is that a lot of these mechanisms are socially necessary. They just aren't being done properly right now.
Rob, could you give examples of these mechanisms that are socially necessary? I don't say that none of them is; I'm just focused in thinking about this on ones that don't seem socially necessary, so I'm having trouble shifting perspective.
It also occurs to me that what we might call socially necessary can easily be conflated with what might be considered to be economically necessary. That's a problem. We all know that western society shifted to a conception of humankind as homo economicus some time ago; I don't know if it's too late to push back on that.
I was just thinking about things like the need to screen job applicants somehow. Credit rating may not be the right way to do it, and the way credit ratings are done now is all screwed up, but you still want to be sure you are hiring someone who will show up on time and not take money from the till.
I suppose that's economically necessary, but barring the end of capitalism, that also means socially necessary.
282: Okay. I'm tempted to ask how society managed to screen job applicants in the past without falling apart and without checking credit rating. Relying on seemingly objective metrics (credit rating) in order to provide the semblance of due diligence and avoid personal blame is troublesome.
Now I blame Taylorization. I'll be ready to blame capitalism shortly.
The old system of discrimination was based on skin color and family connections. The new one is creepy and impersonal without bringing us any closer to a meritocracy.
284: Though there was an interim system in which employers (say) simply phoned references in order to get a read on a prospective employee. That allowed, arguably, for a human approach to the matter.
I'm not sure how much I'd want to insist that that interim approach had any merit, whether it was just a cloak for the skin-color-and-connections approach. We'd need the sociologists to tell us that. I may be dreaming.
None of this explains cases like call centers or travel bookings fast forwarding certain customers, though. There I still don't know where to look for an explanation besides who has electoral power, who can raise a stink and involve lawyers, and so on. I suppose there's the possibility that less egalitarian organizations, who favor certain clients, win repeat customers. How grim.
employers (say) simply phoned references in order to get a read on a prospective employee
This came from the mouth of a former employer, and I don't know if it's true. But he said that when another employer called to check a reference on a former employee, by law all he could confirm was (1) whether that person had worked for his company, (2) when that person had worked for his company, and (3) whether that person was eligible for rehire.
I guess #3 suggests something or other about, uh, character(?), and the employer I was talking to routinely tried to pry more info when he himself checked references on potential hires. But he believed that employers were under some legal limitations on the references thing.
Again, not sure if that's true and, if so, if it represents a departure from the past.
That's by policy, not law, although the policy is to avoid litigation. I'm not really sure why they're so worried about litigation -- it's not my area, so I may be missing something obvious other than defamation, but I can't see any real risk of losing a defamation suit over a reference -- but most companies are.
287: They don't care about losing the suit. They don't want to pay to defend the suit.
287: Ah, that makes sense, thanks. I could see this guy using "by law" as shorthand for "a lawyer I trust advised I do this".
I guess, but given that it's a wildly long odds suit, how many people are going to bring it? Someone looking for a reference from a prior employer probably doesn't have the money to straightup pay a lawyer to engage in frivolous litigation, and it's frivolous enough that I can't see anyone taking that kind of thing on contingency, barring really weird facts.
I think a lot of silly policies that are put in place for fear of litigation really don't recognize how unlikely it is people will sue them when there isn't a pretty solid case. (Or in an area that can easily be turned into a swearing contest, which this isn't.)
Even figuring just the risk of having to pay for a legal defense, it probably isn't necessary. But, why risk your neck for somebody else, especially if somebody else is a grasping multinational corporation or the guy you want to get rid of so you can hire your cousin.
287 is my answer as well, but this part--"the employer I was talking to routinely tried to pry more info when he himself checked references on potential hires"--is weird, and doesn't match that explanation, unless a lot of employers have that same policy, which to my knowledge they don't (although they do often have policies, they're not generally that restrictive).
it's a wildly long odds suit
I'm not sure where you're getting this. It's not a long-odds suit at all if the former employer genuinely says something stupid. (Not just defamation--more likely is intentional interference with prospective economic advantage (IIPEA).) So if you don't trust your managers not to say stupid things, it might be best to straightjacket them. (Especially when, as moby points out, there's really no advantage to be gained from giving out information in this situation.)
I continue to blame the lawyers, or rather, the legal profession, or rather, our excessively litigious society, or rather, our collective freakout and felt need to protect against potential suits.
Well, both truth and opinion are complete defenses to defamation -- to get in trouble under defamation you'd need to say something that the plaintiff could credibly argue was a statement of fact rather than opinion and was false, which would have to be pretty stupid. And tortious interference with prospective economic advantage, or business relations, or whatever it is in your state, is a pretty high standard at least in NY; I've defended a bunch of tortious interference litigations, and while I'd need to refresh myself to be sure, I think it'd be really hard to meet the standard with a reference that didn't include false statements of fact.
I'm so afraid of potential suits that I once burned a bolt of pin-striped navy blue fabric.
I'll be waiting for LB -- as stand-in for the legal profession -- to argue in favor of society's backing off the use of credit ratings in assessments of job candidates any time. The argument would go that the risk of litigation in using personal references is virtually nil, so we might as well go back to that.
I am not being sarcastic.
295 cont.: In NYS, the interference has to be by unlawful or wrongful means, which I'm pretty sure that giving a truthful even if negatively opinionated reference wouldn't qualify as. Tortious interference only really holds up for really bad behavior; stuff like fraud, except that the tortfeasor hurt the plaintiff by making misrepresentations to a third party.
It's not logically impossible that a bad reference could give rise to a tortious interference suit, but it's long enough odds that I'd really doubt you could find anyone to take it on contingency.
295: I think it would be a very tough suit to win, agreed, but it strikes me as a suit with enough potential settlement value (even without any weird facts) to make a hungry plaintiff's lawyer willing to bring it.
But of course I'm one of the conservative transactional lawyers, whose main job is doing everything possible to avoid ever having a client face a lawsuit. (See 294.)
I'm not really following 297. When you say 'society backing off', do you mean legislation barring the use of credit ratings in evaluating prospective employees, or just that employers would stop doing it?
I'm with the end of 293. There may not be a good reason, in a legal context, not to talk about former employees, but what's the positive advantage from doing so? Expecting to take advantage of a norm where everyone is willing to do this? Nobody's going to make the first move here.
300: Actually, I just meant arguing for it here, which would amount to coming out in favor of employers stopping doing it, not just because there's a minimal legal risk, but because it would be better for society, and we've been hampering ourselves societally by doing it.
But the idea of legislation barring employers from doing it is interesting.
299: I still don't think so. Title VII cases have a lot of settlement value because they're very uncertain -- if you can credibly allege facts constituting discrimination, then it's all down to who the jury believes. And personal injury, you're likely to have a genuinely confusing fact situation with causation, and a sympathetically injured plaintiff -- there's a big risk of a big downside. For a plaintiff to win on a tortious interference claim for a bad reference (without arguably false statements of fact) you'd need a judge to let it through summary judgment, which would be really unlikely, and then a jury to fall for the plaintiff.
It's the summary judgment stage that cuts down the risk of a big judgment enough that I'd be really surprised at finding a plaintiff's lawyer hungry enough to do that sort of thing for a share of the award.
I'm pretty sure that giving a truthful even if negatively opinionated reference wouldn't qualify as
Again, I agree that it's only an issue if you're worried that your managers might say something stupid. So it's pretty easy not to fall afoul of this standard. But there are plenty of stupid things that are within the realm of things that might be said that could at least argubly cause problems.
"I can't prove it, but I always suspected Bob might have a drinking problem." "Bob was a good enough employee. Although he did cheat on his wife, which I don't approve of." etc.
302: It would take legislation, not suits. In the case of a reference, you're asking somebody to risk a suit and they get nothing. With a credit report, the company seeking information pays the company giving the information. As noted, the risk of being sued is actually that high, if they are going to pay you.
There may not be a good reason, in a legal context, not to talk about former employees, but what's the positive advantage from doing so?
If there's literally no significant disadvantage, businesspeople do each other small favors all the time, and they do their ex-employees who they think well of small favors all the time as well. Homo economicus might not, but actual people are usually delighted to say good things about people who did a good job working for them.
You're the litigator, I'm sure you have a better sense of the settlement value here than I do. I'll just say again that it doesn't surprise me in the least that a lawyer was worried enough about the potential liability on this sort of thing to implement a pretty tight policy. Again, the risk (however small it is) is being measured again no appreciable benefit.
300, 302: I think strangers shouldn't be able to check my credit report without my specific, affirmative consent.
How about being sued for failing to warn a prospective employer that someone had a history of violence?
308: they can't. Many employers obtain that consent as part of the application process (and won't consider you for the job if you don't authorize it).
307: I think that's bad cost-benefit analysis. The risk is really de minimus, and the benefit of being able to give references isn't zero, it's just diffuse and hard to measure.
310: Huh. I don't have concrete evidence to the contrary, but this is really not what I thought. Isn't unauthorized credit-checking the mechanism for all those annoying pre-approved credit card offers?
286: Speaking as someone who's been on both sides of that conversation, an awful lot can be said with tone of voice. Of course, the annoying thing is you can't get (or give) details.
I guess, but given that it's a wildly long odds suit, how many people are going to bring it?
Not that many overall, but they're likely to be just exactly the ones you fired because they were crazy (in the non-clinical sense), petty, and convinced the company was out to get them.
I think a lot of silly policies that are put in place for fear of litigation really don't recognize how unlikely it is people will sue them when there isn't a pretty solid case.
I mostly agree with you, but litigation paranoia can also be a rational overreaction to an irrational legal system. Having worked for small (
I once worked at a place where staff used their personal vehicles for business use at times. The claims adjuster told us that even one claim, ever, would probably cause the company to drop us. That just seems insane to me. What on earth is the point of car insurance, then?
The risk is really de minimus, and the benefit of being able to give references isn't zero, it's just diffuse and hard to measure.
Right. The ultimate harm is that it makes the company a slightly less good employer for its employees (if it hinders the employees ability to network/find jobs when they leave).
Which is important because there are a million examples of companies that have policies that provide minuscule benefit at some small but not minuscule cost to their workers. That seems to be something that's currently in vogue, and it isn't a good trend.
313: Not that many overall, but they're likely to be just exactly the ones you fired because they were crazy (in the non-clinical sense), petty, and convinced the company was out to get them.
Thing is, they have to be not just crazy, but either capable of spending tens of thousands of dollars on pointless litigation, or they have to find a lawyer who's just as crazy (and so will take it on contingency), but competent enough to keep the litigation going. This really cuts the numbers down: if you phrase the risk as "I won't give anyone a reference because I'm afraid an offended employee will spend tens of thousands of dollars on harassing me with no hope of recovery," it sounds a lot less likely, doesn't it?
Whoops. Forgot that I can't use the "less than" symbol.
Having worked for small ($10M or less annual budget) organizations my whole career, I am keenly conscious of how ruinously expensive ONE claim will be. I've never worked at a place with in-house counsel; I've been through several harrowing employee departures where it wasn't at all clear whether the organization would be sued -- and if we were sued, it almost certainly would have put us out of business immediately, since cash flow was always tight and unrestricted revenue nearly impossible to come by.
litigation paranoia can also be a rational overreaction to an irrational legal system.
Well, it can be a rational overreaction to incomplete knowledge about the nature of where the irrationalities are in the legal system. Businesses with this sort of policy probably have a rational belief that they're avoiding significant risks, but their legal advisers should be giving them better advice.
315: The costs ligitation are not symmetrically if the hurdle to get into discovery is reached.
By the way, the apostropher's link in 240 is good. Sorry it took me so long to get to it. While I'd been aware that the US imprisonment rate is high, this line is striking:
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.
This really cuts the numbers down: if you phrase the risk as "I won't give anyone a reference because I'm afraid an offended employee will spend tens of thousands of dollars on harassing me with no hope of recovery," it sounds a lot less likely, doesn't it?
It would, if that's how these things always went. But in my experience it's not, especially for small organizations. At most of the places where I've worked, a threatened lawsuit would have triggered:
1. A frantic scramble with friends, board members and contacts to get the name of an attorney who could represent us
2. Significant investment of the president's and/or senior staff people's time in screening the lawyer options to make sure they actually had experience in the appropriate area of law and didn't have any conflict of interest with this case. (Repeat 2-4x as necessary.)
3. Emergency meetings with staff to ensure that we had properly documented everything the ex-employee had done, so that we had a defense for why we fired them.
4. Time spent preparing materials and briefing our new attorney on our company, the employee's history, and other relevant plot details.
And that's all BEFORE the lawyer agrees to take our case and writes a stuffy letter on letterhead that -- maybe, hopefully -- scares the opposing side enough that they drop the case.
318: Sure, but it's still a lot of money from the plaintiff's side, and there's no reason for a lawyer to take it on contingency. To get a tortious interference claim like this started, you'd need to pony up a couple of grand for a retainer at the absolute minimum, and keeping it going past a motion to dismiss would be tens of thousands.
Now, if someone's crazy and hates you enough to bring frivolous suits just to harass you, and has the money to spend on it, they can do that. But a policy that prevents you from giving references isn't actually any protection against that -- if they want to bring a frivolous suit, they can just make shit up, no problem. They don't need to prove anything to get to discovery, they just need to tell a good story.
My last paragraph in 321 is really the crux of my argument. You can protect yourself against losing lawsuits by behaving well and staying within the law. You can't protect yourself against people bringing frivolous lawsuits against you at all -- you just have to hope that no one who hates you has that kind of money to throw down the drain. It's not that frivolous lawsuits aren't possible and aren't scary, it's that restrictive policies like this aren't any protection against them.
I forgot the most important thing -- those steps 1-4 above have high opportunity costs. Again, we're talking small companies with small margins for error. If a senior staff person spends three days dealing with this sort of thing, those are three days where really important, time-sensitive contract negotiations, proposal writing, or political networking wasn't happening.
322: But one way to make crazy people hate you is to say nasty things about them when they have prospective employers call you. So it's not that you're protected against the lawsuit from the enraged loony; it's that you're trying not to enrage the loony in the first place.
It's not that frivolous lawsuits aren't possible and aren't scary, it's that restrictive policies like this aren't any protection against them.
That's kind of overstating it, though, right? I mean, it's like a supply/demand curve or something. On one axis you have the likelihood of a suit, and on the other you have potentially-illegal behavior by your company.
You're right that a person who's out to get you can file a frivolous suit regardless of whether you did anything at all wrong. But the odds that they can find a lawyer and can press a case increase with every step your company takes along the axis of "potentially illegal behavior." Which is where you get these blanket HR policies that seem crazy on the face of them.
The risk of a non-frivolous tortious interference claim may be minimal, but I don't think the same is necessarily true for defamation. If you go beyond just a recitation of basic facts like those in 286, you're quickly going to find yourself giving factual answers to all sorts of touchy questions. ("Why was X fired?" "Why wasn't X promoted in the last N years?") If the former employee can make out a genuine dispute about the truth of those answers, you're looking at a trial. The other elements--harm to reputation and damages attributable to the falsehood--are generally easier to make out in this context than in others, for obvious reasons. And likely cheap enough to litigate for a hungry plaintiffs' lawyer to bring on contingency and squeeze for a settlement, even if odds of victory at trial are longish.
324: Sure, but that kind of concern wouldn't generally block you from giving detailed, enthusiastic recommendations for good employees, and a "Meh" for horrors.
319: The latest figures I could find were from 2006, but at the time we had 2.2 million prisoners compared with 1.5 million for China. Given that there are at least a billion more people in China than in the US, it does make one wonder just which country is more deserving of the title "police state".
They don't need to prove anything to get to discovery, they just need to tell a good story.
I KEEP TRYING TO DO THIS BUT NO ONE WILL LET MEE FEENISH!!!
Would I take a job reference case as a plaintiffs' lawyer? It depends. If the job offered was valuable enough -- a couple hundred thousand a year -- and there was something genuinely factually wrong about the reference, sure I would.
If the referral was nothing more than "I did not like this person's work" with no further details, of course you wouldn't have much of a case. But a "say nothing" policy is probably much easier to enforce than a "make only vague statements of opinion, and if you have to mention a fact double check to make sure that it is 100% accurate and can be immediately and definitively proven to be so" rule.
Frex, I could see beating summary judgment as a plaintiff if there was an email that said something like "On a team of 4 people, candidate x consistently did the worst work and no one here liked her work," so long as there was a reasonable dispute about whether or not that was true.
327: Right. That's what most people actually do, but you can't set a policy saying that or it defeats the whole purpose of saying 'meh' instead of 'run away from this person.'
327: True. I'd speculate, though, that an HR department might have a harder time issuing and enforcing a policy of "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" than simply "don't say anything at all."
If you go beyond just a recitation of basic facts like those in 286, you're quickly going to find yourself giving factual answers to all sorts of touchy questions. ("Why was X fired?" "Why wasn't X promoted in the last N years?") If the former employee can make out a genuine dispute about the truth of those answers, you're looking at a trial.
But the answers to those questions are mostly not going to be facts -- "We didn't like the quality of his work" is either a statement of opinion about the guy, or an unfalsifiable statement of fact about your beliefs. Staying on objective facts or statements of opinion really isn't hard.
Make up something negative that you think a reference would be likely to say that could constitute defamation? It's not impossible, of course, but it seems really easy to stay away from to me.
324: But one way to make crazy people hate you is to say nasty things about them when they have prospective employers call you. So it's not that you're protected against the lawsuit from the enraged loony; it's that you're trying not to enrage the loony in the first place.
Back in the old days, an employer letting a crazy employee go might tell him or her that it was best not to use the employer as a reference.
330:
Would I take a job reference case as a plaintiffs' lawyer?
On contingency? For realz? With your best fact "if there was an email that said something like "On a team of 4 people, candidate x consistently did the worst work and no one here liked her work"?
I could see taking it if you were getting paid, but not on contingency.
By the way, there's not a general defamation exemption for anything that's an "opinion." So long as the opinion statement could be reasonably be found to imply a statement of fact that could be proven true or false, there's no bar to a defamation case.
334: Probably comes up more often if a prospective employeer calls former employeers of the candidate, as opposed to the actual references. If you worked somewhere for five years, you pretty much have to put on your resume or make an elaborate lie for those five years.
333: I don't know why the answers to those questions aren't mostly going to be facts. "Fired for absenteeism/sleeping on the job," "not promoted because he/she didn't work well with colleagues/was consistently outperformed by others in the same position." Which of course may or may not be true--it's not like petty personnel decisions are never papered over with such rationales. I suppose you could make the policy be "say only that you [liked|did not like] former employee X's work", but that doesn't get you all that much further than the name, rank, and serial number policy.
335 -- Depends on the value of the case and on the underlying facts. But, for example, if the reference said "On a team of 4 people, candidate x consistently did the worst work and no one here liked her work," and I could show that she got performance reviews that were mostly equal to or exceeded the other employees, and if there was an ex-employee who was willing to say that the candidate was a good worker, and if the job that she lost due to the bad reference paid a lot of money, like north of a couple hundred k per year, and the defendant was solvent, I might well think seriously about taking the case.
Back in the old days, an employer letting a crazy employee go might tell him or her that it was best not to use the employer as a reference.
Back in the old days, crazy people had more common sense? Was that a joke?
328: it does make one wonder just which country is more deserving of the title "police state".
This makes me vaguely sick to my stomach. I knew it was bad, that we were bad with our incarceration rates, and I knew that it functioned as the effective disenfranchisement of large portions of the population, a project which has only been expanding, but I didn't know that the proportions were so large.
The prison population comparison isn't really fair; China could be keeping their numbers artificially low by executing people.
342: I'm not sure the only comparison we should be concerned about is to China. It's not like as long as we're better than China about these things, it's okay.
339: Okay, but look at the facts you've got there. You don't need a policy saying "no references at all" to get there, you need a policy saying "don't give aggressively negative reviews that are provably false." The only reason why you'd need the more restrictive policy is if your employees have no judgment at all, and if they have no judgment at all, it's debatable whether the tighter policy is going to do you any good.
Back to rob in 277:
The individual credentialing systems you take about in 255 are each quite small
Well, some are, you're right. The driver licensing isn't, for example. The difference in the amount of ID required to prove that you can get a Pennsylvania driver's license (or non-driver ID) has both increased and become ironclad non-negotiable* in recent years.
*Scandals notwithstanding.
Differences in familiarity and comfort with the Web haven't sprung up because of any decisions of anyone with power
I'd say yes and no on this. Lack of affordable (or any!) broadband access was a huge battle in this country and it isn't over yet.
Closer to home, I've seen charter school operators, colleges, and municipalities produce documents and require parents/students/citizens to have not just computer access but specific software to take part in required activities. Choosing MS Office over Open Office, or Blackboard or one of the other proprietary systems is very exclusionary, even if often obliviously so.
And of course, it goes the other way -- the contingent tier people have access to a whole world with reputational points and everything that the others don't, or can't easily figure out -- but the reputational people don't care about that so it's invisible.
I think it was the Pew Internet & American Life Project that released a report a while back on black and Hispanic Americans' use of mobile phones for texting and other handheld Internet access. It was ABOVE Anglo-Americans'. It's just that this huge, vibrant exchange space isn't considered legitimate so nobody tracks it. You get hints in the mainstream media from time to time, like when they write a "Facebook and Myspace are different. Wow!" but they don't grasp or understand the realities of those differences at all.
And unlike in-person code switching, where at least you can watch other people doing it and learn from them, online code-switching is very hard to watch unless you have in-person access to someone who is doing it. I've been jarred several times when I'm included on an e-mail list with people I've met in another capacity and suddenly get a peek into their online worlds.
but they are becoming a huge social barrier.
Exactly.
The other thing is that a lot of these mechanisms are socially necessary. They just aren't being done properly right now.
Right. Well, maybe not "a lot." Some are. You want some system, in a nation of 300 million, of figuring out whether you should lend this person $300,000 to buy a house.
335: low-rent contingency shops will take just about any damn case that walks in the door. They're all about volume, with little regard for quality of the case. Most of the cases are losers, but they put very little work into them. These generally aren't the plaintiff's lawyers who are getting rich--they're barely eeking out a living. Anything that has a chance of bringing dollars in the door gets filed, which is close to costless for the firm. If a case starts to go somewhere, then of the lawyers will actually start paying attention to it.
Well, I agree that the best thing would be to have employees with better judgment, and to have them not say things that could arguably be proven false. But it's not hard to see why you get HR policies about references that are basically "say nothing, and if you have to say anything, make sure that it's positive."
As I say, the alternative policy is "make only vague statements of opinion, and if you have to mention a fact that could negatively reflect on the candidate double check to make sure that it is 100% accurate and can be immediately and definitively proven to be so" which seems a lot harder to implement and enforce.
Given what I believe to be LB's job, I'm sure she's pretty familiar with the types of plaintiffs' firms mentioned in 346.
No doubt China is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world at executions, what with employing mobile execution chambers and stuff. But even taking the worst-case 10K executions a year, we're still in no danger of being displaced in the incarceration pageant.
The only reason why you'd need the more restrictive policy is if your employees have no judgment at all, and if they have no judgment at all, it's debatable whether the tighter policy is going to do you any good.
I agree with this, mostly, although a blanket policy can be easier for persons with no judgment to comply with. But look at it from the perspective of the lawyer giving the advice: is there any downside to advising a tighter policy? No. There might be some arguable diffuse benefit that the company will lose out on (although I'm still not convinced of that), but nothing significant, and certainly nothing that's going to impact the attorney (or that she'll get any credit for). Is there any downside to saying that the looser policy is fine? Yes. If a fluke lawsuit ever hits the company, and you're on record with this advice, people will be pissed. You might well be fired (or lose the client, if you're outside counsel).
348: I'm pretty sure she is, too, which is why I'm confused by 335.
346, 348: low-rent contingency shops will take just about any damn case that walks in the door.
I do run into that kind of firm, and IME they're pretty specialized in things that generically have a fair amount of potential; Title VII cases and similar employment discrimination cases, and personal injury.
347: Oh, a policy that said positive references or no reference only would seem reasonable to me, in a big enough organization that you didn't trust people's judgment. It's the step to 'no one gets a reference at all, because we'd get sued if we weren't perfectly evenhanded' that seems loonily overcautious to me.
Oh, a policy that said positive references or no reference only would seem reasonable to me, in a big enough organization that you didn't trust people's judgment. It's the step to 'no one gets a reference at all, because we'd get sued if we weren't perfectly evenhanded' that seems loonily overcautious to me.
And once again, we're all arguing about nothing.
Like, I've talked to people with actually pretty reasonable cases that don't fit into a contingency mill's area of expertise, and haven't been able to find a lawyer to take their case on contingency.
350: Sure, but isn't that putting the lawyer's interests over the client's?
God, I have the most hilarious defamation/false light/use of likeness case ever going on right now. I wish I could talk about it!
354: How does not saying anything hurt the client, except in the general Kantian sense that it hurts society? It hurts some guy who is at another company, possibly a direct competitor.
As near as I can tell, 75% of legal advice ever given is some variant of "You don't have to answer that."
Sure, but isn't that putting the lawyer's interests over the client's?
I'm not sure how.
357: Overtight policies are damaging to morale; this specifically is damaging to networking with other companies in the business, and to building relationships with old employees. That sort of thing is diffuse, but it's not nothing. It's just that the lawyer can't possibly get credit for not being over-restrictive, and might get wrongly blamed for being under-restrictive if they recommended something reasonable.
Overtight policies are damaging to morale
This would be pretty far down the list of things done to damage morale, especially if we're talking about things that HR does.
But it's part of the one damn thing after another, having to jump through stupid hoops. No particular stupid rule is all that burdensome, but all of them together wear people down.
Maybe, but that's a pretty easy rule to avoid. Co-workers I like have my cell and private e-mail.
we're still in no danger of being displaced in the incarceration pageant.
There's a lot variation in this by state. Doubtless the country could benefit a lot from some federal intervention. More use of things like drug courts, housing for mentally ill, better social net overall, etc. For instance, why is Utah's prison rate less than half of neighboring states like AZ and CO? The real eye openers though are the gulf states.
The real eye openers though are the gulf states.
God, you ain't kidding. Here's a map similar to the one from gswift's link, only with rate and rank up front.
What the hell is wrong with Louisiana?
Isn't unauthorized credit-checking the mechanism for all those annoying pre-approved credit card offers?
That's an exception to the general rule. And you can opt out (for five years at a time, IIRC) if you like. In fact, you should opt out, because pre-approved credit card applications create a massive vulnerability to identity theft.
Thanks for those links, gswift, TJ.
