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Also because prior administrations were successful with diplomacy and/or nonviolent sabotage.

> Not to mention pressure to weaken oil sanctions.

The Trump administration instantly folded under that pressure and has already removed some sanctions: https://xcancel.com/SecScottBessent/status/20297142537252622...



Thanks for the links. Strangely I cannot get past the arhive.is "I am not a robot" wall. I click it, then it refreshes, I click it again, and then it asks me to find Traffic Lights, and then "I am not a robot," repeat.

Maybe I need a bot to do this for me...


I don't know what changed, but in recent months it has become impossible to pass. Not a single success, whereas earlier it wasn't failing ever. Firefox on Android. Maybe I look like a bot now, for whatever reason.


Are you behind finnish IP? The site owner decided to ban all Finnish IPs due to a dispute with Finnish person who doesn't even seem to be living there. Also they DDoSed their blog leading to archive.is being banned from wikipedia


I've had the same problem for the last few days, just repeated CAPTCHAs.


Archive link took me right in; always has. Could be because I use NoScript.


This person is not articulating it well but I think they are complaining that the person identified as the driver is random. Presumably the camera can impartially identify a car running a light, but not necessarily who is driving.

"I've been ticketed here twice, and it's ridiculous because they - it's just not fair. The person that - [let me start over] - the determination when you ran the light [of who is responsible], it's just a random whoever they want to pick ... [they] pick you to say, okay, you're gonna pay the ticket."

Obviously it's not actually random, it just defaults to the vehicle's owner, but with a generous reading I think you can interpret the quote this way based on the context of the article.

I think it's kind of irresponsible and lazy for the publication to use a verbatim verbal quote like this, when it isn't from someone notable who really needs to be quoted. If you don't understand what they're saying then don't put it in the article, and if you do understand then put in a sentence explaining what they're saying.


Everywhere I've been, the owner of the car gets the ticket, and it's up to them to figure out if they were driving, or if not them, collect from whomever they loaned the car to.

No camera I've ever seen tries to figure out who the driver is.

The logic is, it's your car, you're responsible for loaning it/owning it, so you get the fine. Don't like that? Don't loan your car out.

The trade off is no points are deducted from a driver's license. It's a pure fine, because they can't prove you were driving.

So the person just seems to be speaking gibberish to me.

edit:

More context...

The same logic applies for parking tickets. No one cares who parked the car, the car's owner gets the ticket... not the person who parked it. While I dislike red light cameras, the logic holds.


> … the owner of the car gets the ticket, and it's up to them to figure out if they were driving, …

That's exactly what makes it unconstitutional here in the US. The Constitution specifically requires that they have evidence of who committed the crime _before_ charging someone with it. If you do it the other way around then you are making an assumption about who is guilty in advance of the evidence.


It's not a crime, it's a fine, and are you suggesting parking tickets don't exist in the US?


It is a crime in Florida, because if it goes unpaid it is converted into a real ticket for a moving violation written by a police officer. This results in criminal penalties, such as losing your license.

> are you suggesting parking tickets don't exist in the US?

No, but parking tickets don’t have the same problem because they are governed by a different law that was written better. Specifically, it states that the owner of the car is liable if the car is found to be parked illegally and must pay a fine. This makes it truly a civil matter.

Meanwhile the law against running red lights says that the _driver_ commits a misdemeanor if they pass through a signalized intersection while the light is red. See the difference? The tickets that result from the red–light camera are being assigned to the owner of the car, not the driver, but it’s the driver who committed the crime. The owner is then forced to prove their innocence, which makes it unconstitutional. Our constitution requires that the government must first prove using actual evidence who committed the crime and only then can they proceed to the step of writing a ticket or arresting someone.


I've never gotten an automated ticket so I don't know what is normal. It doesn't seem insane to give it to the vehicle owner, but I can certainly understand feeling indignant about getting a ticket for something you didn't do, especially if it's a new process.


Actually $25 million, and for him specifically (https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/brockman-openai-top-trum...). They didn't bother trying to pretend it was a non-political donation, who cares? Nobody can stop them.


"jumped on the opportunity" is possible, but per https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-whole-thing-was-scam it's plausible that OpenAI created this situation through straightforward bribery.


> OpenAI exec becomes top Trump donor with $25 million gift

> https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/brockman-openai-top-trum...


Maybe this is the first step towards the Big Beautiful Bailout when the AI bubble inevitably pops.


This is contradicted by Cantor Fitzgerald documents obtained by Wired which said "We’ve already put a trade through representing about ~$10 million of IEEPA Rights and anticipate that number will balloon in the coming weeks".

- https://www.wired.com/story/cantor-fitzgerald-trump-tariff-r...

So we don't really know, someone is lying. I'd prefer to let the congressional investigation play out, but if I had to guess right now I would believe Wired over Cantor Fitzgerald.


He presumably did not have access to the court's opinion before it was released, but he did have access to internal White House legal opinions before the tariffs were announced ("Mr. President this is illegal and very likely to be overturned by the courts"), and he obviously had access to the entire federal legal team during the court cases.

I can't prove that there was any White House advisory memo before the tariffs were announced, but hypothetically, would this not be considered material nonpublic information? It seems the same as a corporate insider dumping stock because a company lawyer privately told them "we're definitely going to lose this case".


>I can't prove that there was any White House advisory memo before the tariffs were announced, but hypothetically, would this not be considered material nonpublic information?

Was the hypothetical "White House advisory memo" produced using any proprietary information? If not, why should it be any different than if I hired a bunch of top lawyers to produce a private report for me?


Because this hypothetical memo was paid for by our tax dollars, not your own private money! That means it belongs to the American people, not individuals for their private gain. Using it for your own gain would be theft from the American public.

In this hypothetical case, of course. There is no evidence that such a memo exists. But if it did...


> That means it belongs to the American people, not individuals for their private gain.

This is a strong case that there ought not to be any such thing as a secret opinion or confidential advice from the White House OLC - and I agree with that opinion if that's what you're saying.

But it doesn't transform the information contained therein to nonpublic.

I'm not saying this whole thing wasn't a total scumbag move - it was - but it's not quite the same crime as insider trading.


> But it doesn't transform the information contained therein to nonpublic.

The legal opinion itself was non public? If they couldn't use that they would first have to put up the money to pay the legal fees to find out how likely their bet was to pay off.

And just to put this in writing too, I would be shocked if we don't find out later that a lot of the volatility was a way for a few people to make a lot of money. You can make a lot of money when there's more volatility. So all the flip flopping on tariffs yes/no might very well be manipulating markets...


Not saying you're wrong, but note that in general attorney-client privilege is kind of important as well.


A travesty, to be sure, but not insider trading.


Yes, because it was produced by the same people that are going to argue the case in court. You can hire the best lawyers in the world but they will still have to speculate on what arguments the government is going to make, and whether there are confidential communications showing evidence that there was some consistent rational justification for the tariffs and not just the president's public posts that leader X was mean to him on the phone so he imposed a tariff.


What a week argument - your still making excuses for this nonsense. Ridiculous.


So a Whitehouse insider is going to get a bunch of tarrif refund money?


Not just a Whitehouse insider, the guy actively doing the policy he was probably being advised was illegal and would be overturned.

And also probably one of the guys most pushing for this policy which was probably advised would likely be overturned.

Tariff policy is ultimately implemented by the Secretary of Commerce. This isn't some random other staffer in the Whitehouse that heard these policies wouldn't go, it was the guy actively doing it likely stands to make significant financial gains for his actions being found to be illegal.

The level of corruption on that is just absolutely mindblowing.


You’re piling speculation on speculation. First of all, there was no such memo saying the tariffs were “very likely to be overturned.” The Supreme Court decision was 7-3, with two Bush appointees voting to uphold the tariffs. The appellate court decision was 7-4, with two Obama appointees and two Bush appointees dissenting. Second of all, there is no evidence that this legal analysis was leaked to Cantor.


Who cares? The Treasury Secretary shouldn't have family profiting off fixing illegal policy the Treasury Secretary enacted. That should never happen. It is wrong, it doesn't explicitly spelled out.


Commerce* Secretary. Lutnick is the Secretary of Commerce which implements tariff policy. Bessent is the Treasury Secretary.


The two answers I'm hearing to my question so far are that either this decision was so obvious that anyone could have predicted it without insider information, or that this was a split decision that the administration could not have predicted ahead of time.

You're right that maybe there never was any internal memo, just thought this was funny.


Wait...how do we know there was no such memo?

We have no reason to believe that if such a memo exists it was used improperly, but I don't see how we could know there is no such memo.

BTW you've got an extra Justice on the Supreme Court. Should be 6-3, not 7-3.


> but I don't see how we could know there is no such memo.

There was no such memo because OLC isn’t full of dummies. Maybe the talking heads on CNN said the case against the tariffs was a slam dunk, but you don’t get split courts at multiple levels for cases that are slam dunks.


>but he did have access to internal White House legal opinions before the tariffs were announced

yes but the opinion that it was illegal was the received wisdom by everybody with any sort of legal expertise in the subject. It would have been completely insane if the white house staff didn't believe the same. So I guess I'm actually surprised at the white house staff believing what everybody else did?


> yes but the opinion that it was illegal was the received wisdom by everybody with any sort of legal expertise in the subject

That isn’t true and you should really question whatever news source told you that. Putting aside that it was 6-3 in the Supreme Court. It was a 7-4 decision in the en banc Federal Circuit, with two Obama appointees voting in favor of upholding the tariffs. The lower appellate court opinions amounted to 127 pages: https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/25-1812.OPINIO....

You don’t get cross-party splits like that on issues where “everybody with any sort of legal expertise in the subject” agrees. If anyone with legal expertise was telling you that this issue was simple, they’re probably not very good at their job.


White House legal opinions aren't any better than other legal opinions. Opinions are not "information".


I understand your position but I disagree. If I were trying to predict whether the government is going to win in court, I think reading what the government's own lawyers think about the case would be valuable. If it were possible to pay for this I think people would, that's why I think it is material. Some random person's opinion is not relevant information, but the opinion of people directly involved in a case is.


That's fine, to each their own on trying to make predictions. I did try to predict it, did it accurately (along with many others, this wasn't the hardest thing ever), and wouldn't have had any interest in any internal memo.

It's a public arena on things like this. I don't think even the justices themselves have "material inside information" until a little ways through the hearing, and people are trying to predict the outcome well before that. On the surface that might sound absurd, but it isn't.


Yes it absolutely is valuable to have access to expert opinions and people do pay money to acquire opinions from experts.

But expert advice, even if material, is not the same as insider information.


Well, I think context matters here a lot:

If you go to a random lawyer in Wyoming and ask them to write "expert opinion" then what you'll get would probably be something standard, written by a junior associate, or maybe even produced by ChatGPT.

If the White House orders "expert opinion" on potential Supreme Court ruling then the chances are that the expert asked to prepare it is someone who plays golf with some of the SCOTUS judges.

So those two "expert opinions" might not bear the same weight.


The quality of an opinion has no bearing as to whether that opinion is insider information.


Is a lawyer working on a case allowed to short the stock of his client?

Why not?

(Hint: it creates a perverse incentive to see your side lose the legal argument for your own personal gain.)

And in this case, it's the actual secretary doing it. Who has significant influence on the outcome of the case (largely in the negative - nothing he can do can make the government more likely to win it, but stuff he did has the capacity to make the government more likely to lose it.)


The non-publicly known strategy they intend to use in court is “information”


The Lebowski conjecture.


Prediction markets already had it as more likely than not that the court would rule against the tariffs


> As for getting externalities internalized: as a society, we call the procedure for updating rules "politics", and it's as open to you as to anyone else.

Ok so I do need to worry about energy so that I can identify these unaddressed externalities and work towards updating the rules. You can to care before you can get involved in this stuff. You can't tell me not to worry about it and then also say that it's basically my fault for not getting involved if the price is wrong.

> any such rebuttal must involve numbers, not emotional appeals

Who are you arguing with? You're commenting about a website that has strictly numbers and nothing else.


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