They are Beyond Redemption

The Trump administration has decided to validate conversion "therapy" by forcing transgender inmates in federal prisons to participate.

First, the science shows that it does not work, and second, and more importantly, they are conducting involuntary medical experiments on prisoners.

Paging Dr. Mengele.

It's enough to make me rethink my position on capital punishment.

Last Thursday, the Trump administration released its new policy outlining how it will treat transgender people in Bureau of Prisons (BOP) custody. Under it, the approximately 2,200 trans people held in federal prisons will be denied access to medically necessary healthcare, subjected to constant misgendering by staff, and have all of their gender-affirming items—including binders, bras, and makeup—confiscated.

Instead, the policy will impose a treatment that targets “psychological distress/dysphoria” through “psychotherapy” (talk therapy) and “psychotropic medication” (like antidepressants) until the gender dysphoria diagnosis can be marked as “resolved.” Additionally, the new policy designates gender dysphoria as a “mental illness” that requires “routine mental health care.”

In other words, the Trump administration won’t just medically and socially detransition trans people en masse; it will actively try to ‘cure’ them of their gender dysphoria. And if this is beginning to sound like conversion therapy, that’s because it is. The BOP is giving trans people no other choice but to conform to their sex assigned at birth by forcing them into a societal role that they reject and ignoring clinical guidelines—all hallmarks of harmful and dangerous conversion practices recognized by the United Nations to be a form of torture.

This is quite literally lifted straight from the Nazi playbook in the 1930s.  (Also lifted from Florida policy today under Ron DeSantis, but I am repeating my self.)

These people need to be broken like the Nazis were, and the willing executioners among the bureaucracy need to be rooted out of government and public life completely. 

Wrong About Charlie Kirk

It seems that I break breaking news.

The person of interest I referenced last night was simply some random right wing long time nut-job who pissed off law enforcement in the aftermath and was briefly detained for, Contempt of Cop."  

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

I take it back https://t.co/gR1RLzZYFF

— Schlatt (@jschlatt) March 9, 2025

Major props here.

Most folks would just delete the tweet and pretend that it never existed.

D'oh!

Forgot to do yesterday's unemployment report.

A bit worse than forecast, and the Federal Government rat-f%$#ery has not yet affected the unemployment numbers.

 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

About F%$#ing Time

It looks like a Federal judge is looking at taking over the Rikers Island jail from the New York City Department of Corrections.

Given their general unwillingness to do anything to fix the problems there, and corrupt ex-cop Mayor Eric Adam's unwillingness to provide any amount of civilian oversight, this would be a good thing:

A Manhattan federal judge in a long-running lawsuit against the city’s beleaguered Department of Correction said Wednesday that a third-party receiver should be appointed to oversee use-of-force and safety issues in the city’s jails.

Laura Taylor Swain, chief district judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, cited nine years of failed promises by jail officials in her 65-page decision.

“The glacial pace of reform can be explained by an unfortunate cycle demonstrated by DOC leadership, which has changed materially a number of times over the life of the Court’s orders, wherein initiatives are created, changed in some material way or abandoned, and then restarted,” she wrote.

She ruled that fining the city or taking other measures to force reforms would not be enough.

“The Court is inclined to impose a receivership: namely, a remedy that will make the management of the use of force and safety aspects of the Rikers Island jails ultimately answerable directly to the court,” she said.

Mayor Eric Adams and his jail officials have strenuously opposed the push for a possible receivership takeover.

Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

………

Legal experts say a receiver can be granted extraordinary powers and would technically not be required to follow union contracts — meaning everything from job protections to work hours could be on the line across the correction department.

The push for a receiver is also supported by Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Damian Williams. The Nunez case, named after the defendant, was first filed by his office under predecessor Preet Bharara.

Just do it.

Then fire the bad actors, using the extraordinary powers. 

All you need to do is look at the complaints, and dismiss the worst 10%, which should keep the remaining 90% in line.  (Also fire the overtime abusers, a sleep deprived cop is as dangerous as one who is drunk on duty)

A Correction

Seems Appropriate

On July 3, 2016, a made a post including my recipes for Cornish (Devonian) pasties.

While I stand by my savory pasties, I just realized that I had left out sugar for my apple and blackberry sweet pasties.

I was looking the recipe up for baking an apple pie (multiply quantities by 3 for a 9 inch deep dish pie crust).

I apologize for my error.

Well, This is Revolting

In Alabama, jailed inmates are being forced to work at fast food franchises.

I do understand that the 13th amendment has a carve-out for, "Punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," but renting out prisoners to fast food joints, a purely private endeavor is truly awful.

It might be a good idea for federal authorities to do a complete audit of the finances and of the behavior of the Alabama Department of Corrections.

I can say with almost complete certainty that if they are doing this, then there is other shady sh%$ going on:

“Walk into a McDonald’s in Alabama, and the worker flipping your McDouble could be an incarcerated person,” warns a recent video from the digital news outlet More Perfect Union.

The idea that an inmate in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) might be working the kitchen at a fast-food restaurant is shocking, even to seasoned observers of the fast-food industry and the American prison system. Yet as two lawsuits filed in federal court in the last year attest, the practice is so pervasive that it’s become a reliable source of income for the state.

According to the first suit, filed by the legal nonprofit Justice Catalyst on behalf of inmates last September, ADOC transports dozens of incarcerated people per day to jobs at government agencies and private businesses around Alabama, including KFC, Wendy’s, and McDonald’s franchises. ADOC also delivers inmates to meatpacking plants run by companies like Koch Foods and Gemstone Foods. At each of their jobsites, inmates do the same work as any employee, sometimes for twelve hours or more per day. From 2018 until the suit was filed last September, one McDonald’s franchisee alone put an estimated 122 ADOC inmates to work in its restaurants.

………

As both suits allege, inmates who refuse to work on a given day can face consequences, including revocation of privileges (like time on the phone with family members), stints in solitary confinement, lengthening of sentences, or transfer to one of Alabama’s medium- or high-security prisons — some of the most violent prisons in the country. 

………

In their suits, CCR and Justice Catalyst cite a 2022 amendment in the Alabama constitution that prohibits slavery or involuntary servitude in all circumstances. This standard goes beyond the Thirteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, which permits slavery “as punishment for a crime.” An Alabama judge recently dismissed CCR’s suit on jurisdictional grounds, though Jessica Vosburgh, a Birmingham-based lawyer for the organization, told Jacobin it is currently weighing options for an appeal. The Justice Catalyst case is ongoing. In the meantime, Vosburgh says, ADOC continues to transport workers to private businesses around the state, including fast-food restaurants, just as before.

The FBI and the DoJ should be on the ADOC like white on rice, and when corruption is found, these guys need to be prosecuted to the fullest extant of the law, and then sent to those prisons that they used to run, the maximum security ones.

What an Asshat

Ursula von der Leyen, in response to a wolf killing a family pony, is pushing for the reversal of decades of environmental policy and gone on a jihad against wolves in Europe, claiming, among other things, that wolves constitute a threat to people.

Wolves do not constitute a threat to human beings.  There has never been a documented wolf attack in the wild in North America, and there has not been even a poorly documented attack in Europe for over 500 years.

The technical term for this is self-important narcissistic destructive bullshit.

Fuck Ursula von der Leyen, and the horse that she did not ride in on, because wolves ate it:

It was a mild, windless night, sometime before dawn on 1 September 2022, when a large grey wolf trotted out of the woods beside Beinhorn, a hamlet of old barns and graceful wooden houses in the German state of Lower Saxony. The keen nose of the male wolf almost certainly scented that Dolly, a pretty chestnut pony with a white patch on her face, was vulnerable. The 30-year-old pony, kept in a paddock close to stables and a farmhouse, was not protected by high-voltage electric fencing designed to deter wolves. It was an easy kill. In the morning, Dolly’s body was found in the long grass; her owners spoke of their “horrible distress”.

Unluckily for the wolf, and perhaps for the entire wolf population of western Europe, Dolly was a cherished family pet belonging to the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, one of the most powerful people in the EU. Last September, a year after Dolly’s death, von der Leyen announced plans that to some wolf-defenders looked like revenge: the commission wants to reduce the wolf’s legal protection.

Action had already been taken against Dolly’s killer. DNA evidence harvested from the pony’s carcass revealed that the wolf was an individual known as GW950m. This mature male wolf, which heads a pack (a wolf family usually numbering eight to 10) living around the von der Leyen residence, appears to have developed a taste for livestock. DNA tests on other carcasses implicates him in the deaths of about 70 sheep, horses, cattle and goats. Experts believe younger pack members might have copied his hunting methods. Because GW950m was now classified as a “problem wolf”, a permit was issued to allow hunters to shoot him legally (wolves can only be killed under exceptional circumstances, according to EU law). It was the seventh such licence to be issued in Lower Saxony, a state the size of Denmark with a thriving population of at least 500 wolves – more than are found across the whole of Scandinavia.

Thankfully, for now at least, GW950m remains alive.

………

Wolves have adapted swiftly and surely to human-dominated landscapes. But people are struggling to adjust to the wolves. The concentration of packs, von der Leyen declared when announcing the commission’s review of wolf protection laws, “has become a real danger for livestock and potentially also for humans”. In December, the commission proposed to reduce the wolf’s status under the Bern Convention from “strictly protected” to “protected” in order to introduce “further flexibility” – potentially enabling wolves to be hunted and populations reduced across the EU. Many populist politicians across Europe hope that talking up the threat of the wolf – alongside tough measures to tackle it – will win support ahead of next summer’s elections to the European parliament. It’s a low-cost way of showing rural voters you’re on their side. “Wolves are a subject that might change elections,” says one German conservationist.

Ms. von der  Leyen is lying.  We are talking livestock losses in the 4000 range annually, and as I have noted before, neither people nor pet dogs (there has been issues between hunting dogs and wolves) are at any meaningful threat.

A few thousand generations of evolution has convinced wolves that humans are best avoided.

People have woven myths, stories and fears around wolves since human culture began. For wolf-lovers, the animal’s recovery after it was hunted to extinction in much of Europe is a vital sign of hope – that nature can be restored; that humans can peacefully coexist with fellow predators; that the environmental benefits of returning an apex predator will cascade through the landscape. The impact of wolves returning to Yellowstone national park in the US – reducing grazing herbivores and allowing diverse vegetation to flourish – has caught the popular imagination (a YouTube video, How Wolves Change Rivers, has been watched 44m times), although scientists point out that wolf impacts have been overstated. On the other side, wolf-haters claim that this ruthless carnivore’s return has been naively championed by the tofu-munching wokerati who know nothing of the countryside, elevate the welfare of animals above people, and inflict misery upon farmers, hunters and country folk.

………

When [Wolf expert Kenny] Kenner first began these walks, “there was this excitement about how horrible the wolf was”. People were scared to stroll in the forest with their dogs. But that’s changed over time, he says. “We shouldn’t feel threatened, but we should feel awed. Seeing them is an honour. But I wouldn’t want to cuddle them.”

Just a note for my reader(s), I don't care if it's something cute and cuddly, like a raccoon, or a lynx, or a wolverine, or a diamondback rattlesnake, or a great white shark, Don't Cuddle Wild Animals! Just don't.

………

The Kenners are dismayed by what they see as populist and right-wing politicians creating a culture war over the wolf. To conservationists, von der Leyen’s comments about risks to people are inflammatory. During the wolf’s 23-year recolonisation of Germany, there are no documented cases of one even growling at a person; boar pose a much more frequent threat. There are no incidents of wolves killing people in the west of Russia in modern times; historic fatalities are from a bygone era when lone children shepherded animals in the forests. “In our society, the danger to children is nearly zero,” says Kenner. In countries such as Finland, wolves sometimes attack trained hunting dogs in the forests, but pets are rarely victims. And wolves are wary of people. Kenner shows me clips from his camera traps. One detects him walking in front of the trap. A few hours later, a wolf arrives, sniffs his tracks and moves swiftly in the opposite direction. “The wolf is not shy,” says Kenner. “He’s careful. He’s a predator, he needs to take care, but he has to take risks, too – that’s why he won’t learn from being shot.”

Von der Leyen, argues Kenner, is using her position “to start a campaign in favour of shooting wolves because of her personal ideas and experiences”. “This is a misuse of power. But it’s not just Ursula von der Leyen. In Lower Saxony, there are a lot of other politicians saying, ‘This is a catastrophe,’ and a lot of fact-free inducement to change policy.”

Von der Leyen is not, "Using her position," to launch a jihad against wolves, she is ABusing her position to launch a jihad against wolves.

I'm not surprised that Ursula von der Leyen is doing this.  Her entire life is a case study for failing up that would make Dick Cheney jealous.

I'm Wondering What his Tox Screen shows

After, all, Derek Chauvin is a convicted murderer serving a life sentence who was involved in a prison fight where he was stabbed.  He could have been hopped up on meth.

Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murdering George Floyd during a 2020 arrest that set off a wave of protests, was stabbed at a federal prison in Tucson, Ariz., on Friday, according to the office of Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that an inmate at the Tucson prison was stabbed at 12:30 p.m., though the agency’s statement did not identify Mr. Chauvin, 47, by name. No other inmates or prison staff were injured, and the situation was quickly contained, according to the people familiar with the situation.

This is, of course, snark, but he put in huge amounts of overtime, and spend even more hours moonlighting as a security guard, so if he wasn't tweaking (Meth) he was even more impaired than if he were tweaking.

A Correction

Our Airbnb is on the banks of the Chicopee river, a tributary of the Connecticut river.

Here are some pictures:

Nice view. ,

What Part Of, "No Religious Test," Don’t You Get?

West Virginia has been requiring that inmates participate in a religion based substance abuse treatment program to qualify for parole for years.

Not any more.

The West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (WVDCR) has changed its parole requirements after a judge ruled in favor of an atheist inmate who claimed that he was denied parole because he did not want to participate in a religious program.

Andrew Miller, who was incarcerated at Saint Marys Correctional Center for breaking and entering, filed a lawsuit against the WVDCR in April in the U.S. District Court of Southern West Virginia saying that the state would not accommodate his request for a non-religious substance abuse program. Although Miller was not in prison on a substance-related charge, Miller was enrolled in the program because he is in recovery from addiction and the program was a condition of his parole; the lawsuit said that Miller was denied parole multiple times because of his refusal to do the program.

In a release on Wednesday, the American Atheists, which represented Miller in the case alongside Mountain State Justice, said that it won the lawsuit and that the WVDCR removed its “requirement that participants attend religious 12-step meetings,” and the “religious components from its federally funded Residential Substance Abuse Treatment Program (RSAT) handbook.” The release also said the WVDCR agreed to pay $80,000 in legal fees.

I'd like to see some criminal prosecutions of the folks who refused to do the right thing, but I'm not holding my breath.

A Correction and an Apology

In the links I cited Military Watch Magazine regarding Russian deliveries of S-400 systems to India.

The publication is not credible.  It tends toward the war pr0n/fanboi persuasion.

Youtube and Ecch keep serving them up to me, which probably says something about me, but I ain't going there.

The basic news about S-400 deliveries, has been confirmed by both Reuters and The Hindu.

Again, my apologies.  I did not do proper due diligence, by which I mean a f%$#ing Google search, on a source. (2nd and 4th link right now, for a start)

I put them in the category of, "Confirm with a 3rd party before use," now.

Took Them Long Enough

After decades of dysfunction and brutal management, Andre Damian Williams Jr, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York has finally officially called for a federal takeover of the notorious Rikers Island Jail.

This place has been a hell hole since I first heard the name "Rikers".

Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor is calling for an outside authority to take control of New York City’s troubled jails, a major shift that could help persuade a judge to strip Mayor Eric Adams of his power over Rikers Island.

The federal prosecutor, Damian Williams, said in a statement on Monday that Rikers has been in a crisis for years — “a collective failure with deep roots, spanning multiple mayoral administrations” and correction commissioners.

“But after eight years of trying every tool in the tool kit,” Mr. Williams said, “we cannot wait any longer for substantial progress to materialize. That is why my office will seek a court-appointed receiver to address the conditions on Rikers Island.”

Though lawyers for people held in city jails have consistently called for an outside authority — known as a receiver — to take over, Mr. Williams’s statement could provide a powerful push toward making the move a reality.

………

Mr. Williams’s office said then that absent such a commitment to change, “we will be left with no other option but to seek more aggressive relief, which could involve seeking the appointment of a receiver with independent authority to implement sweeping reforms.”

………

The prosecutor’s statement on Monday comes amid continuing mayhem at the jails — where three people have died this month alone — as well as reports from a federal monitor who oversees them that accused city officials of hiding important information about troubling episodes of violence and neglect.

With Mr. Williams’s comments, every entity involved in deciding the future of the jails — lawyers for detainees, the federal monitor, Steve J. Martin, and now, the U.S. attorney’s office — save for the city itself has either called for an outside authority to take over, or simply expressed lack of faith in the ability of the administration to turn things around.

 ………

In 2014, the U.S. attorney’s office, then led by Preet Bharara, announced that, after a two-and-a-half-year investigation, it had found systematic civil rights violations of male teenagers by guards at Rikers. The prosecutor’s office eventually joined the pending class-action lawsuit.

In June 2015, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio reached a wide-ranging settlement in the lawsuit, committing to far-reaching reforms, including the appointment of a monitor, and new policies to restrict the use of force by guards against inmates.

Between corrupt prison guards, Eric Adams being vociferously supportive of increased incarceration and a political ally of the correction officer unions, and decades of wilful neglect, there is no fix that works if the City remains in charge.

The Feds need to take over the city jail system, and many, probably most, of the guards need to bwe fired, because even the best of them have likely been corrupted by the rest of them.

Yeah, about That Muzzle Prison Journalist Thing

After an outcry, The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has reversed a policy that would have largely prohibited releasing creative work to the outside.

Releasing anything would have required a months long review process, and they would be prohibited from getting any money for their work.

Clearly, the goal here was to prevent prison journalists from reporting on what goes on inside.

No one is concerned about someone releasing a novel, or a portrait of dogs playing poker, they just want to muzzle prisoners:

The New York state prison agency rescinded rules blocking incarcerated writers and artists from publishing their work Wednesday, a day after New York Focus exposed the policy.

A May 11 directive established a stringent, months-long approval process for people in New York state prisons to publish creative work — including books, art, music, poetry, film scripts, and other writing — outside prison walls. The policy gave prison superintendents the power to block publication of work that violated any of a number of broad rules — including portraying the prison department in a way that could “jeopardize safety or security.” It also prohibited incarcerated people from getting paid for their creative work.

The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision told New York Focus that it planned to apply the restrictions to journalism, which wasn’t mentioned in the directive. Incarcerated writers and watchdogs expressed concerns that the rules were meant to silence information-sharing and possibly violated the First Amendment. .

“The Constitution does not give prison officials a choice whether to respect the fundamental rights of incarcerated New Yorkers,” said Antony Gemmell, director of detention litigation for the New York Civil Liberties Union. “DOCCS should be embarrassed that this policy ever saw the light of day. We’re glad to hear that it’s being rescinded.”

DOCCS had not published the directive to its website until New York Focus reached out last week.

It really is remarkably just how aggressively law enforcement at every level tries to shut down even the most basic possibility of accountability for themselves.

Nice that they were forced to backtrack.

What a Surprise

The federal monitor of the Rikers' Island jail has reported that the man that Eric Adams appointed to head the New York City jail system is covering up wrongdoing.

This is not a surprise.  Eric Adams is arguably the most corrupt mayor of New York City in recent memory.  (Giuliani's corruption was largely post his time as mayor)

Adams has been appointing corrupt and incompetent cronies to positions of power, (at least when he is not appointing his relatives), and this was a foreseeable consequence of his becoming mayor:

A year and a half into Louis A. Molina’s tenure as New York City correction commissioner, the federal monitor overseeing the Rikers Island jail complex on Thursday took direct aim at his leadership, saying that the violence there remained unabated and that officials were hiding information about it.

“The commitment to effective collaboration, as evidenced by the department’s recent performance, has deteriorated,” the monitor, Steve J. Martin, wrote in a report filed in federal district court. “The department’s approach to reform has recently become characterized by inaccuracies and a lack of transparency.”

“These problems have grave consequences for the prospect of reform and eliminating the imminent risk of harm faced by incarcerated individuals and staff,” he added.

………

Thursday’s monitoring report was issued as Mr. Molina was facing intense pressure to turn around one of the worst crises to grip Rikers Island in decades. Appointed by Mayor Eric Adams in January 2022, Mr. Molina inherited chronic absenteeism that had peaked during the coronavirus pandemic and soaring rates of violence and neglect at the jail complex.

More recently, he has had to battle calls for a federal takeover of Rikers Island, avoiding that fate last year in part by promising in federal court to follow a plan to enact reforms.

As scrutiny of his department has intensified, Mr. Molina has taken steps that limit the public release of potentially damaging information, revoking a jails oversight panel’s unrestricted access to video footage from Rikers Island and reversing his predecessor’s policy of notifying the public when deaths occur in custody.

………

The clawing back of information from the public and failure to report deaths and serious injuries have drawn criticism, including from the City Council speaker, Adrienne Adams, who said in a statement last week that the council was considering “legislative solutions to address this administration’s backtracking on transparency and undermining of oversight.”

In a news conference after touring the Rikers Island facilities on Wednesday, Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, and Brad Lander, the comptroller, said that they would formally call for a federal takeover of the complex.

Thursday’s monitoring report sounded an even more urgent alarm than the one issued in May, concluding that “the current state of affairs in the jails remains alarming, not just for the rampant violence and frequency with which force is used, but also because of regression in the department’s management.”

………

Still, citing the findings of the monitor’s recent reports, advocates for people detained at Rikers Island were renewing their calls for a federal judge to strip Mr. Molina of control over the Correction Department and appoint a receiver to oversee the jails.

They said that Mr. Molina has obstructed the jail’s oversight bodies’ ability to know what’s happening on the inside, inflaming tensions and causing concern that problems were being hidden.

“This administration has not only wrought horrific levels of violence in the jails, but is increasingly authoritarian in seeking to shield its abuses from judicial and public oversight,” Mary Lynne Werlwas, director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society, said in a statement on Thursday, adding that reforming the jails should be “placed in the hands of a trustworthy, independent entity that can do what the Department of Correction is unwilling or unable to do.”

"Increasingly authoritarian," is the brand that Eric Adams chose to win election.

This is why we are seeing brutality and coverups both in the NYPD and in the NYC correction system.

She’ll Be Out in Less than 18 Months

 

Elizabeth Holmes has finally reported to prison.

She is to serve an 11 year (135 month) sentence, and with changes in US incarceration policies, she could theoretically be out of Prison in 5-6 years.

My guess is that there will be lobbying from many people to get her some sort of clemency, because:

• Her actions are not materially different from those of most Silly Con Valley entrepreneurs, and they want the precedent reversed.
• She is very good at presenting herself as a sympathetic figure, witness Amy Chozick's so bad it should be a fireable offense fawning profile of Elizabeth Warren in the New York Times.
  
• Being in prison, she is already 60% of the way toward our national obsession about missing blond women.

I could be wrong about my estimate as to her actual time in prison, but I my pessimism is complete on this one.

The clamor for her early release will be like a telethon for overprivileged youth.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison on Tuesday to start her 11-year sentence for defrauding investors, marking a closing chapter in the downfall of one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent entrepreneurs after revelations about the company’s unreliable blood-testing technology.

A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons confirmed Holmes arrived at the Bryan facility Tuesday afternoon local time.

………

Since The Wall Street Journal began publishing its findings about Theranos in 2015, Holmes has been convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in federal court and settled separate civil securities-fraud charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. As part of the settlement, she paid a $500,000 fine and was banned from being an officer or director of any public company for 10 years.

A Correction

In yesterday's post lambasting the Presidential Campaign announcement by Desantis made in a meeting with the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™, I said that the Florida, "Resign to Run," bill would require him to leave office.

I was wrong.

First, it's not clear about the applicability of the law, and second, just hours before his disastrous campaign rollout, DeSantis signed s bill exempting Presidential and VP candidates from the bill:

In another incremental step in his bid for the White House, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday signed a bill clarifying that Florida elected officials can remain in office while running for president.

He did so just hours after officially filing paperwork to join the 2024 presidential race, and about two hours ahead of an expected announcement of his presidential run on Twitter with Elon Musk.

The bill, SB 7050, makes a number of sweeping election changes. One clause is the much-watched exemption to the state’s resign-to-run law for presidential and vice presidential candidates, which lawmakers had hinted at last year with DeSantis’ political ambitions in mind.

 Also included in the bill were more voter suppression measures.

That is all.

Remember That Study That Claimed That Masks Don’t Work?

Not so much, it seems.

The publisher of the study, has stepped back from the study and repudiated the statements made by the study's lead:

The Cochrane Review has apologized for an evidence review that led many to conclude, inaccurately, that masks don’t work.

The idea that masks don’t help slow COVID is an “inaccurate and misleading interpretation” of the report they published in January, Karla Soares-Weiser, editor-in-chief of the Cochrane Library, wrote in an update posted to the their website on Friday. The international organization publishes summaries of evidence on various health topics, and are now blaming a poorly-worded summary of one report for the fact that many people came away with the idea that the face coverings don’t help.

Their analysis was based on a dozen studies that compared people wearing medical masks to their barefaced counterparts, couched inside a broader look at physical pandemic measures. Despite a line cautioning that the shakiness of the data “hampers drawing firm conclusions,” the authors concluded that masking in the community made “little to no difference.”

This is not surprising.  While meta-analysis such as this one, were multiple studies are aggregated can be valuable if done well, this was not.  They were grouping together studies of apples and studies of oranges.

Also, note that meta-analysis is not the best method in all cases.

Where you can actually understand the basic science behind a phenomenon, and model it, and construct models of it to conform performance, this is the best studies, and it has been conclusively shown that N95 type masks do reduce transmission, and there is also significant evidence that elsastomeric masks with replaceable N99 filters are even better.

It should also be noted that the lead author for the study, Tom Jefferson, writes for the Brownstone Institute, which is a wack-doodle anti-mask and anti-vaccine outfit that grew directly from the infamous "Great Barrington Declaration".

Today in Horrible Ideas

A bill in Massachusetts is proposing time off of prison sentences for donating organs.

I understand that there are often shortages of organ donors, but this proposal is not  a slippery slope thing, this is a fucking step off of a fucking cliff.

How could ANYONE propose this?

Massachusetts Democrats have a bold new proposal for prisoners: donate your organs or bone marrow, and get as little as a couple of months off of your sentence. The legislation, which has attracted five cosponsors in the state House, raises major bioethical concerns for the 6,000-plus people currently held in the Bay State’s prisons. In essence, the bill would ask prisoners which is more important to them: their freedom, or their organs and bone marrow.

The bill appears to go significantly beyond other organ-donation policies for prisoners. The Federal Bureau of Prisons says that prisoners may donate their organs while incarcerated, but only to immediate family members. In 2013, the state of Utah allowed organ donation from prisoners who died while being incarcerated. Most other states do not allow organ donations from prisoners at all.

The Ethics Committee of the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit that administers organ transplants in the United States, has panned proposals like the Massachusetts bill. “Any law or proposal that allows a person to trade an organ for a reduction in sentence… raises numerous issues,” the committee says in a position statement on their website.

The legislation, HD 3822, states, “The Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Program shall allow eligible incarcerated individuals to gain not less than 60 and not more than 365 day reduction in the length of their committed sentence in [prison], on the condition that the incarcerated individual has donated bone marrow or organ(s).”

This has dystopia written all over it.

I Screwed Up

I have been using the word, "Polity," a lot lately, and it appears that I am using it wrong.

I have been using it as a word to describe the consensus culture of a political establishment.

So, for example, if Democrats and Republicans agree on something, that senior officials should be exempt for their criminal acts, I used the term, "Polity,"  to describe the consensus political position.

In fact, polity means a government or some similar governmental or bureaucratic entity, not a social class, as I had been using it.

I could use the term, "Body Politic," but I would prefer something more pithy, if my reader(s) have any suggestions, it would be appreciated.

Of course I made a Princess Bride reference.  Trust me on this, any time that you fail to make a Princess Bride reference, you'll regret it.  Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. (Just so you know, the same applies to Casablanca, and Monty Python, of course.)