Scott Boehmer

Category: Politics

  • We Need To Talk About ICE

    A video from Kat Abughazaleh about the government’s usage of ICE as an intimidation tool without regard for due process.

    We Need To Talk About ICE (Kat Abughazaleh – YouTube)

  • Email Servers and Signal

    I thought this was a good look at how Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal differs from the email server that Hillary Clinton used while Secretary of State. The video is notably before more recent news stories about how Hegseth was also sharing military information in other Signal chats including his family members.

    Signal War Plans v.s. Hillary’s Emails (LegalEagle – YouTube)

    Hegseth had a second Signal chat where he shared details of Yemen strike (AP)

  • 20 Lessons on Tyranny

    A video of John Lithgow reading the 20 lessons about tyranny from Timothy Snyder’s 2017 book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

    20 Lessons on Tyranny: by Timothy Snyder / read by John Lithgow (PoliticsGirl – YouTube)

  • Conservative Seniors & Survivorship Bias

    One of the abiding realities of our political era is a major generational split anchored on the right by disproportionately conservative seniors and on the left by disproportionately progressive millennials and post-millennials. This is often thought of as a perfectly natural, even inevitable, phenomenon: Young people are adventurous, open to new ways of thinking, and not terribly invested in the status quo, while old folks have time-tested views, assets they want to protect, and a growing fear of the unknown and unfamiliar.

    …

    But it is important to note that some generational disjunctions in political behavior are driven by demography. It’s well understood that millennials are significantly more diverse than prior generations. But there is something else driving the relative homogeneity of seniors: Poorer people are often hobbled by chronic illness, and succumb to premature death.

    Ed Kilgore

    Seniors Are More Conservative Because the Poor Don’t Survive to Become Seniors (New York Magazine)

  • Does Upzoning Destroy Property Values?

    There is a ton of confusion–and a fair amount of debate–over what happens to property values when you upzone. Does allowing more housing through upzoning drive prices down or does it drive up housing costs? It’s a question with some strong opinions on both sides. We dive into the latest research.

    Justine Underhill

    Does upzoning destroy property values? (YouTube – Justine Underhill)

  • Crypto Crime Is Legal

    A Monday night memo from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, citing Trump’s crypto executive orders, has dismantled the Department of Justice’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) and directed the agency’s Market Integrity and Major Frauds Unit to “cease cryptocurrency enforcement”. The memo also directs prosecutors to “not charge regulatory violations in cases involving digital assets including but not limited to unlicensed money transmitting…, violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, unregistered securities offering violations, unregistered broker-dealer violations, and other violations of registration requirements under the Commodity Exchange Act” unless they have specific knowledge that the defendant knowingly and willfully violated a specific requirement — erecting a major barrier to prosecuting such cases.

    Molly White

    Crypto crime is legal (Citation Needed)

  • Let’s Rewrite the Whole Thing

    I’ve worked as a software engineer for close to two decades. Re-implementing a complex system in a new programming language is a hard problem. Trying to make such a change rapidly rather than taking your time to isolate and convert it in small chunks is asking for trouble.

    The project is being organized by Elon Musk lieutenant Steve Davis, multiple sources who were not given permission to talk to the media tell WIRED, and aims to migrate all SSA systems off COBOL, one of the first common business-oriented programming languages, and onto a more modern replacement like Java within a scheduled tight timeframe of a few months.

    Under any circumstances, a migration of this size and scale would be a massive undertaking, experts tell WIRED, but the expedited deadline runs the risk of obstructing payments to the more than 65 million people in the US currently receiving Social Security benefits.

    Makena Kelly

    DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Code Base in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse (WIRED)

  • What Happens When He Ignores Court Orders?

    Our governmental system relies on each branch respecting the rule of law. Donald Trump’s administration clearly doesn’t, so what happens now?

    What Happens When He Ignores Court Orders? (YouTube – LegalEagle)

  • The Politics Behind FEC Reports

    Kat Abugazaleh, who recently announced that she is running for Congress, made a short explainer for why politicians flood your inboxes and text messages with fundraising messages about looming deadlines every three months.

    The Stupid Politics Behind FEC Reports (Kat Abughazaleh – YouTube)

  • Child Labor is a Bad Solution

    If you think having kids work overnight shifts or without meal breaks is a good idea, you should take a moment and think about how you got there.

    Florida has been working for years to crack down on employers that hire undocumented immigrants. But that presented a problem for businesses in the state that are desperate for workers to fill low-wage and often undesirable jobs.

    Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state legislature have a potential solution: children.

    Jordan Valinsky

    Florida debates lifting some child labor laws to fill jobs vacated by undocumented immigrants (CNN)