“The b**** did it!” says Bankman-Fried

The New Neo Posted on by

What a guy:

The FTX owner told [interviewer] Piper that his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison’s company Alameda was responsible for gambling and losing his company’s money – to which he was “oblivious” until it was too late…

“And also thought Alameda had enough collateral to [reasonably] cover it.”

“It was never the intention,” he later added. “Sometimes life creeps up on you.”

He has a way with words, doesn’t he?

Is the following the sociopath part? – although maybe it’s all the sociopath part:

Bankman-Fried is now backtracking on his statement about unethical moves and calling it a “front.”

“Man all the dumb s*** I said,” Bankman-Fried told Piper on Tuesday. “It’s not true, not really… some of this decade’s greatest heroes will never be known, and some of its most beloved people are basically shams.”

Bankman-Fried then discussed ethics as if it was a game – to which Piper said: “You were really good at talking about ethics, for someone who kind of saw it all as a game with winners and losers.”

“Ya hehe – I had to be. It’s what reputations are made of, to some extent,” Bankman Fried wrote. “I feel bad for those who get f***** by it… by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths and so everyone likes us.”

He’s not wrong about the dumb game some “woke westerners play” where they mouth the necessary words to keep the Twitter mobs at bay. I guess he doesn’t see the need to continue to do it anymore.

It’s like Dana Carvey’s “Garth” character meets James Bond villain.

Here’s information about how the ex-girlfriend supposedly got the money:

Last week it was reported that Alameda was allegedly transferred $10 billion of FTX customer money in secret by Bankman-Fried as investors withdrew $6 billion from the crypto platform last week.

Around $2 billion of the $10 billion transferred to Alameda is reportedly still missing.

Just a little loose change.

Meanwhile, the bankruptcy liquidator is astounded at certain findings:

FTX’s new CEO and liquidator, John Ray III, who also oversaw the unwinding and liquidation of Enron, admits that “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”

FTX “did not maintain centralized control of its cash” and failed to keep an accurate list of bank accounts and account signatories, or pay sufficient attention to the creditworthiness of banking partners, according to Ray. Advisers don’t yet know how much cash FTX Group had when it filed for bankruptcy, but has found about $560 million attributable to various FTX entities so far.

Although restructuring advisers have been in control of FTX for less than a week, they’ve seen enough to depict the crypto company as a deeply flawed enterprise. Lasting records of decision making are hard to come by: Bankman-Fried often communicated through applications that auto-deleted in short order and asked employees to do the same, according to Ray.

Like the old invisible ink routine, or Mission Impossible. Furthermore:

Corporate funds were also used to buy homes and other personal items for employees and advisers, sometimes in their personal names…

Ray…also noted that the company didn’t have appropriate corporate governance and never held board meetings. There was no accurate list of bank accounts and account signatories, as well as insufficient attention paid to the creditworthiness of banking partners.

Where were the agencies that are supposed to oversee something like this? Hard not to think they were utterly compromised.

It seems to me that FTX is going to mount the “fool rather than knave” defense. I don’t think it would wash, but who knows? My cynicism tells me that this group might not ever have to pay the piper – or their investors.

Open thread 11/17/22

The New Neo Posted on by

A tiny glimpse of one of my favorite ballets of all time:

The female soloist is a dancer I’ve not seen before. But as soon as she began to move, I recognized that she’s a dancer of a type I like. Unlike many, she dances from a very strong central core in her torso rather than emphasizing the strength of her legs or feet or arms – although they’re plenty strong, too. She dances as a unified and harmonious whole.

What getting a majority in one branch of Congress actually means

The New Neo Posted on by

The GOP seems to have taken the House, at least according to reports like this (see also this). The MSM keeps saying it’s “on track” to take it or “on the cusp” of taking it, but it does seem to be imminent.

People also keep pointing out how incredibly narrow the majority will be, and that’s certainly the case even if the GOP gets a few more seats. They can’t afford any defections when they vote on something. Then again, passing legislation isn’t really the point in this Congress – stopping the passage of legislation by the Democrats is. The GOP wouldn’t have been able pass legislation in Congress even if the majority had been much bigger in the House, unless it also had a majority in the Senate. And not just a bare majority in the Senate, but a sizable one, sizable enough to to avoid a filibuster.

Or, of course, they could do what the Democrats tried so hard to do during the last two years and only failed to do because of two people, Manchin and Sinema: do away with the filibuster. I rather doubt even a majority GOP Senate could get a majority of votes to do that, and you’d suddenly see not a single Democrat voting for it.

And of course even then Biden would veto virtually everything any GOP Congress managed to pass in both houses, if it wasn’t favorable to the left. Legislation passed by the GOP could only get by if the Republicans had enough votes to override the veto, and that was virtually impossible. So of course there was never going to be any significant GOP legislation in the coming Congress even with a predicted red tsunami.

And yet taking over the House is still enormously important – taking it over by any margin – because it gives the GOP leader, who almost certainly will be McCarthy, power to set the agenda of the House.

I wonder how many voters even realize that. I’m not sure how many people don’t seem to comprehend why the roles of Speaker and Majority Leader are so important:

The speaker is responsible for ensuring that the House passes legislation supported by the majority party. In pursuing this goal, the speaker may use their power to determine when each bill reaches the floor. They also chair the majority party’s steering committee in the House…

On the other hand, when the speaker and the president belong to opposite parties, the public role and influence of the speaker tend to increase. As the highest-ranking member of the opposition party (and de facto leader of the opposition), the speaker is normally the chief public opponent of the president’s agenda. In this scenario, the speaker is known for undercutting the president’s agenda by blocking measures by the minority party or rejecting bills by the Senate…

The speaker’s powers and duties extend beyond presiding in the chamber. In particular, the speaker has great influence over the committee process. The speaker selects nine of the thirteen members of the powerful Committee on Rules, subject to the approval of the entire majority party. The leadership of the minority party chooses the remaining four members. Furthermore, the speaker appoints all members of select committees and conference committees. Moreover, when a bill is introduced, the speaker determines which committee will consider it.

It looks like McCarthy will become Speaker. I’d like to see someone more conservative in there, but as long as McCarthy blocks the left that’s still very important.

A danger for the GOP is the usual danger: ripping itself to shreds in battles between its two main wings. Another danger is inaction – or worse, capitulation to the Democrats. Having the majority by only the slimmest of margins increases the need for unity as well as the chances for crippling disunity, and having control of only half of one branch of government means they have no power to change anything. Their power, if they manage to exercise it successfully, will be to halt the most wretched excesses of the Democrats and to set the agenda. Setting the agenda should include shining the light of day into the dark corners of things like the COVID response, Russiagate, the persecution of January 6th defendents, and the corruption of the Bidens. And of course, the forces arrayed against them will be formidable and will include the MSM and some moderate Republican House members.

But gaining the majority is a victory that was necessary. Without it, and with a slightly larger majority in the Senate than before, the Democrats might have been more successful in realizing their dreams of ending the filibuster, institutionalizing the relaxation of voting security for the entire country by passing HR1, adding new Democrat-laden states such as DC and Puerto Rico, and increasing the total number of justices on the court in order to pack it with leftist judges to negate the current conservative majority.

Trump is running: can he Make Trump Great Again?

The New Neo Posted on by

In a move surprising no one, but elating many and disappointing many others, Trump officially announces his 2024 candidacy.

This will further divide the already-divided right, which in my opinion doesn’t bode well for the already-highly-challenged GOP in 2024. On the other hand, there has long been a segment of voters on the right who say they will vote for no one but Trump, and also a segment who would never vote for him in the first place or never vote for him again. Which segment is bigger? And how many Independent (or even nominally Democrat) voters does he attract, compared to how many he repels?

That has always been the question with Trump.

Also, can Trump win the nomination? And even if he doesn’t, will he run third-party as a spoiler? Will his running discourage or encourage others to enter the fray against him?

None of this fills me with joy, because I think that these divisions only benefit Biden any way you slice it. However, it’s still early. Can Trump reinvent himself once again? I don’t think so, but Trump is an unusual person and these are unusual times. His more sober “presidential” demeanor last night indicates he might want to give at least the impression of having toned it down.

One thing I have to say for Trump at this point, he has cojones.

I also wonder how this will affect the left’s plans to indict him. Perhaps Netanyahu’s election success – winning when the trial against him is apparently still ongoing – encouraged Trump to run despite the legal threats against him. Not that he needed encouragement to run; I think he’s been planning this for a long long time. It may even be that his announced candidacy will discourage an indictment for the duration, because those making the decisions about whether to bring an indictment might think that letting Trump run unencumbered could be to their advantage. Perhaps they don’t want to stop him; perhaps they think that he’s already so wounded that he’ll be easy to beat even without it. Then again, I don’t think there’s any legal impediment to a presidential candidate running for office while under indictment or being tried.

You think things couldn’t get more bizarre, and then they do.

It’s roundup time. Again.

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) I often see statements like this one from authors and commenters on the right [emphasis mine]:

In the current system, ballots are gathered or harvested either, legally or illegally, and submitted…This disenfranchising process could not happen if one political party vehemently opposed it.

Statements like that don’t ever seem to be followed by an analysis of exactly how the GOP would have prevented it had it wanted to, in those states (mostly blue and some purple) that have enacted the rules that enable it. There is a possibility it might have been done in Arizona, but if one actually studies the process on a state-by-state basis, I believe the unavoidable conclusion is the one I came to in this previous post.

(2) More on the FTX mess and its implications here. An excerpt:

How many scam artists are using such “bluewashing” in order to cover for malfeasance — all the while colluding with government figures to redraw regulations that benefit them? That, after all, was SBF’s biggest scam: He was an advocate of particular types of regulation that benefitted him and used both familial and business connections in order to protect his corporatism.

And that’s the dog that didn’t bark here: Where were the regulators with whom SBF was close? Where were the supposed advocates of “ethical capitalism,” who posit social responsibility but whose friends seem to repeatedly be caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, dating all the way back to Bernie Madoff?…

Maybe the problem is with a cadre of supposed protectors of the public who aren’t out to protect the public at all, but to hobnob with other “change agents” from Bahamian estates while patting themselves on the back for all the good they’re doing.

(3) I’ve heard people pooh-pooh the idea of the slippery slope, especially when it’s someone on the right pointing out an example of the concept. If you know someone who is a mocker of the slippery slope, have that person read this piece about the history of Canada’s euthanasia program. It’s an excellent illustration of how slippery that slope can be. The ratchet seems to go in only one direction.

(4) I cannot possibly summarize this article entitled “Trans People Are Seeking Nonbinary Bottom Surgeries,” except to say that no, it’s not in the Babylon Bee and I’m going to assume that it describes a real but infrequent phenomenon, and to add that it’s astounding that any doctors would do this. On the other hand, it’s probably less mutilating than traditional (can we speak of a “tradition” here?) “bottom” surgery. It also seems to be exclusive to people born male, which makes me recall that Jordan Peterson has said that biological men who identify as trans women are sometimes autogynephilic. It occurs to me that this group wanting nonbinary surgery might qualify.

(5) Steve Scalise will be the new Majority Leader of the House. It remains to be seen whether McCarthy will become Speaker, but my guess is the answer is “Yes.” And here’s a look at what has gone down involving McConnell in the Senate.

Canada set to put into effect medically assisted suicide for the mentally ill

The New Neo Posted on by

Our peaceful and friendly neighbors to the north are planning on helping the mentally ill kill themselves:

Changes are being made to Medical Assitance in Dying (MAID) which will expand eligibility criteria to eliminate the “reasonable foreseeability of natural death” criterion. This means that it will no longer be required for a person’s death to be reasonably foreseeable to receive MAID services.

The government of Canada’s website says that those whose only medical condition is a mental illness will not be eligible for MAID until March 2023, meaning that it will be fully available for those with just a mental condition after that date.

There is a list of criteria there, but it seems as though it will be available to people as young as eighteen, as long as they supposedly are cognitively aware and non-coerced (although how the latter could be determined, I don’t know).

I guess the argument promoting this sort of thing is a combination of a libertarian/left outlook and supposed compassion for suffering. It seems outrageous and terrible to me, though, in particular the availability of this “solution” to people so young – but really the entire plan. But this is the direction in which our culture is going.

Here’s the government website explaining the new law.

All the voting fraud possibilities, categorized

The New Neo Posted on by

As I’ve written before, there is no way to know – and no way to prove, which is far more important – that there was enough fraud to have determined the outcome of this election. That doesn’t mean there can’t be very strong suspicions.

But I’ve noticed in the comments here and elsewhere a number of people saying something like, “Oh, so you think this election was pure as the driven snow?”, as though that would be the only alternative way to look at it: fraudulent election or squeaky-clean election.

So I decided to write a post about the range of possibilities I see:

(1) No fraud, just a straight election helped by the Gramscian march and media lies, leading to a good showing by Democrats despite how poorly they’ve governed.

(2) No fraud, but the Democrats’ legally exploiting the more relaxed voting rules (ballot harvesting, for example) changing the results in their favor from what they would have been without those rules changes.

(3) Some fraud occurred in some places, but it didn’t affect any elections that wouldn’t have gone that way anyway.

(4) Some fraud occurred in some places, and it affected a few election results.

(5) Some fraud occurred in some places, and it affected many election results.

What point of view a person holds on this issue helps determine whether the person sees a solution, and if so then what the solution might be. However, I do believe in general that focusing on fraud depresses voter turnout on the right, amplifying the effect of whatever fraud has occurred. So it has a significant downside.

I also strongly believe that the voting rules must be tightened up anyway even if there was no fraud or not much fraud. I have said since 2020 that the perception of fraud is nearly as bad as fraud itself, although the two go somewhat hand in hand. Once the rules are relaxed, the perception of possible massive fraud is basically unavoidable. However, how they can be tightened up again is a difficult problem to solve unless a state is already red, as I wrote in this post from yesterday.

It’s a race between voting security and the Democrats’ argument about voting “suppression”. Note, by the way, that Europe comes down on the side of voting security; we are perhaps the only nation that votes in the bizarre fashion that now seems to have become law in so many states.

Commenter “Geoffrey Britain” has asked, “on what basis can we assume that they are not engaged in fraud to the maximum of which they are capable?” That’s a good question, I believe. I think the answer is that of course they might be engaged in that much fraud, and anyone is welcome to assume it. However, they might not be able to engage in as much outright fraud as one might think, even with the new rules. Remember back in 2020 how many allegations there were that GOP observers were ejected from their posts and that counting went on without them in many Democratic strongholds? Or that they were forced to “observe” from so far away that it was meaningless? In 2022, if there have been any such allegations, they have been few and far between. It also may be that the Democrats realized that maximally exploiting the loopholes in the newer rules regarding ballot harvesting and the like would be enough to give them victory. If they knew that would do the trick, why commit fraud and risk getting caught?

At any rate, we’ve also learned that once an election has taken place and winners announced, there is no going back even in the unlikely event the courts were to rule there was fraud. So this election will be over as soon as the final results are tallied. I believe it’s counterproductive to use assumptions about fraud as an excuse not to look at all the other problems that might be able to change things for the better if they were solved. That may be an insurmountable task as well, but that’s the way forward in my opinion.

An overview: “our democracy” is like a tram

The New Neo Posted on by

When a party goes leftist and captures all the cultural organs too, as has happened in the US with the Democrats, what results is a constant indoctrination session, plus voting rules that make a comeback from the other party well-nigh impossible. What is it that Erdogan of Turkey said? Ah, yes:

Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.

That’s the way tyrants use democracy – as a tool to hegemony. Democracy is a drawbridge across a moat, a bridge to enter a fortified castle (remember “fortifying” the election of 2020?). Then the left can pull the drawbridge up after themselves. All very legal. Out constitution has enormous safeguards to stop it from happening, but once all cultural organs are controlled by the left and the election mechanism is controlled too (that’s why they were so eager to pass HR1 to insitute their “election reforms” on a national level), then the tram has reached the end of the station and it’s time to get off.

Are we there yet? I think we’re perilously close, if not there.

Conservatives believe in democracy/republicanism as a process that is not just a means to an end but a good in and of itself. But that’s only true if both sides believe it and play by the rules. For much of its history, most of America (not every city or every state, but most) played by those rules and agreed on and respected those rules. That is no longer the case, I’m afraid.

Magical thinking on the right about fixing the voting rules

The New Neo Posted on by

First, I want to say something about voting fraud. I have the same opinion about voting fraud in the 2022 election that I had in the 2020 election. It goes more or less like this:

(1) The relaxed voting rules enable fraud. Therefore, whether or not fraud occurs in an election, they foster the strong perception that it has occurred. This is one of many reasons these rules are awful.

(2) They also make it virtually impossible to prove or disprove that fraud has occurred. So you can rail all you want about fraud, but it sounds demented to those who don’t believe it occurred, and it’s intensely frustrating to everyone who does believe it occurred.

(3) It also fosters three things: backlash and contempt from those who think fraud didn’t occur, the right using accusations of fraud as an excuse for not fixing or focusing on other things that are also problems, and a sense of apathy in some voters on the right that can depress turnout (“Why bother? After all, we can’t vote our way out of this). This has the effect of creating a negative feedback loop.

(4) Therefore I think focusing on yelling “Fraud!” is counterproductive. This doesn’t mean fraud didn’t occur. It means that we can’t know and can’t prove it and therefore it’s not to our advantage to concentrate on whether or not it did occur.

(5) What IS to our advantage is to focus on (a) tightening up the rules wherever possible; and (b) where it’s not possible (that is, in blue states) making full use of the rules rather than telling voters on the right to pretend it’s the olden days and to vote only in person and on Election Day.

What do I see, though, around the blogosphere? Statement after statement to the effect of: the GOP could have changed these rules and they didn’t even try because they don’t want to win. This is said by bloggers, opinion writers in publications on the right, and commenters galore. But I believe it’s a case of magical thinking, for the most part.

Compared to the volume of comments like that, I see very little realism about just how that should be done in states that are either blue or purple. I’m not even sure most people understand the formidable obstacles in the way, and I see very little acknowledgement of the many efforts the GOP actually has made to change things. The following isn’t an exhaustive list, but it discusses some of them. And no, this isn’t to say the GOP is blameless; hardly so. But facts are facts and it’s important to understand them.

Please read this post of mine from 2020, as well as this one. It is very important to understand things such as the left’s clever practice of collusive lawsuits, for example. If you don’t understand some of these details, you’ll be unable to even think of possible solutions and you will not understand what’s been going on to tie the hands of those on the right who do want to change this.

Here’s a comment from “Kate,” describing how some of these practices were tried in North Carolina and the court managed to stop them. However, that can’t happen if the court is filled with judges from the left.

Here’s the sad story of what happened in Minnesota.

And do you remember this lawsuit by Texas? SCOTUS dismissed it for lack of standing, which you can read about here.

And federal court review is often not allowed: see this comment by “Bauxite”.

Here’s the depressing situation in New Mexico, a very blue state. I can’t even imagine how this could be changed by any remaining Republicans there.

Here’s some information about how voting works in Washington state. I challenge anyone to tell me how this could be changed by the GOP at this point.

I think some people seem to believe that the GOP could pass some kind of law to control all of this everywhere by setting the standards for voting, a kind of Republican reverse-HR1. But to do that Republicans would have to gain control of Congress and the presidency, plus SCOTUS would have to approve it. I don’t think the conservative justices would give it a green light, however, because except for a few very minimal requirements, voting rules are supposed to be set on a state-by-state level.

On the state level, ordinarily there are three or even four requirements that need to be in place before it can be done: control of the legislature, to pass laws; control of the governorship, so such laws aren’t vetoed; a majority of conservative judges on the state appeals court, so that the new restrictions won’t be ruled to be discriminatory or otherwise unacceptable, and even a GOP secretary of state to avoid the collusive lawsuit approach by Democrats. But if a state has all of those already, it’s very unlikely to have a voter fraud or voter rules problem in the first place. It’s a kind of Catch-22.

[NOTE: I think the most serious failures that really do seem to be the fault of the GOP are located in Arizona. It is a particularly bleak and important failure, because there the GOP didn’t seem to try much if at all and yet they did have quite a bit of power. I suggest you read this article with many details about what happened there. I also wrote this piece in 2018 about the problems in Arizona. And of course, this year Arizona has been a good example of what not to do.

I’d love to compose a state-by-state analysis of what was tried and what succeeded and what failed. But that would be a large book, and I’m not going to be writing it. Obviously, Florida was a major success, but that was in part because it had GOP leadership in DeSantis but also the other elements were in place, including a Republican-controlled legislature.]