Probably what's going on is that someone on the board of trusties gets money from the political establishment in Florida and is worried that they'll lose it if the voting barriers are fixed and different leadership is elected.
This has similarities with the shenanigans pulled by Sinema and Manchin around the Build Back Better plan. Political horse trading to advance the agendas of special interests, at great expense to millions of people.
I wonder if the tech community could get involved to increase transparency around this stuff. Imagine if we had an open graph of the money flow so we could write a SQL query like (pseudo code) "select * from donors where payee in (select id from trustees)". Let people crowdsource the data and then maintain a page of declarative queries so that anyone can instantly see the web of money around public officials. It could be part of a build system that automatically creates a NASCAR jacket for each official so we could see who their donors are in AR.
Maybe such a thing already exists. It's traditionally been accomplished by investigative journalists and lawyers, but why couldn't it be public? It seems like it would be an effective way to end the bribe system.
The chair of the board is a GOP mega-donor & “adviser”. Search “Mori Hosseini” for plenty of examples of he and his company getting cozy with the Desantis administration.
The school receives most of their funding from the state, and the state gets to appoint half of their board. The school is concerned that the state could retaliate against them for allowing the professors to testify. Which is probably illegal, but probably wouldn't be addressed for months or years.
The easy way out of this is for the court to subpoena the professors. I wouldn't be surprised if U of F was taking this stance to force that to occur, and which point they can shrug, and say "we tried, but they were subpoenaed..."
> Probably what's going on is that someone on the board of trusties gets money from the political establishment in Florida and is worried that they'll lose it if the voting barriers are fixed and different leadership is elected.
That sounds like an overly biased, rosy fantasy.
Many of us that do not have an R or a D near our names are concerned about how easy it is to cheat the system with ballot harvesting, mail-in ballots, or, at will manipulation of voting laws by secretaries of state rather than legislative bodies, as the Constitution says.
I have a colleague who does environmental litigation. (Think Erin Brockovich.) They have a big civil case against a large energy company in a southern, “energy-friendly” state. They had an expert witness all lined up - a professor at the (public!) state university. Well this expert happened to be up for tenure and was (allegedly) told in no uncertain terms that, should they testify as an expert witness in this case, tenure was off the table.
It’s absolutely outrageous that we allow those in positions of power to manipulate the justice system in such a way.
(b)Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to—
(1)influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding;
(2)cause or induce any person to—
(A)withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding;
(B)alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal an object with intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an
official proceeding;
(C)evade legal process summoning that person to appear as a witness, or to produce a record, document, or other object, in an official proceeding; or
(D)be absent from an official proceeding to which such person has been summoned by legal process; or
Cannot prove it unless the victim was in a state that allows one party consent audio recording and was recording audio. Although Florida is the only southern state that requires all party consent for recording audio, and I presume the previous poster was talking about Texas.
Smartphones have solved the recording audio problem, so presumably it would have been possible.
Agree. With all the anti-democratic practices being rolled out across the states it’s pretty scary to imagine things even a year from now and a long time forward. Life threats against election officials and all the way up to Senators. Gerrymandering. Even the SCOTUS is biased. Seems civics in the US are about to be rigged for one party rule.
we’ve been oligarchic since at least the 90s, so it doesn’t really matter that there are two major parties. in fact, having two parties has been an effective shield against criticism and activism, keeping us distracted (see every comment on hn and beyond that mentions democrat/republican, liberal/conservative, etc.) from the real roots of our growing inequality and stagnation. consolidation of power, wealth and influence is the enemy of the people, as it’s been for all of human history. we keep failing at understanding this throughout that history to our continued collective misery.
we need to (continue to) decentralize governments and markets. we now have the technological means, so it’s largely a matter of popular will at this point.
Serious question, does anyone have any insight into how we got into this mess? It seems like the past few years has seen a whirlwind of anti-democratic rule at almost every level of government - state, local, and federal.
We already have one party rule by the super wealthy. The fights between Democrats and Republicans are just show business to distract from the real problems of the country.
With due respect, the media has worked Democrats up into a froth over nothing. These "anti-democratic practices" are literally just a partial rollback of unprecedented COVID-related loosing of voting rules. E.g. the Florida law at issue here requires voter ID and guarantees a week of early voting: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facts-on-floridas-election-...
> Seems civics in the US are about to be rigged for one party rule.
The good news is that it doesn't actually work that way. First past the post results in a two party system. Nobody can gerrymander that away.
Drawing the lines different affects what party platforms need to be in order to get half of the seats, but there will still be two parties and they will still each control the government half of the time.
Which isn't to say that it doesn't matter, but the thing it does is different than the thing you think it does. Even the party drawing the lines is reshaping what they'll need their own positions to be in order to win.
If you really want to fix it, replace first past the post with range voting. Good luck gerrymandering that. Might even solve polarization by getting rid of the poles.
It's because government power has creeped to a degree where it's no longer feasible to inflict any kind of punishment, so accountability is impossible. We basically have the options of complaining on the internet, complaining in person at a protest, or full on violent revolt.
They've removed all the options to revolt in a way that harms the government without you needing to be ready to die for the cause.
Something like 10% of people fought in the Revolutionary War. I couldn't find easy stats on what % of the population participated in pro-Civil Rights Movement protests, but I'm curious if anyone has them.
Both BLM and antivaxxers seem to have enough popular support that the government should be having difficulty controlling them. They don't seem to be having that difficulty, though. BLM is still around, but the change has been fairly slight. The government was able to largely ignore it. The antivaxxers remain to be seen, but I suspect all the restrictions will be effective in enforcing compliance.
Citizens no longer have a way to protest that the government really needs to care about.
You can't refuse to pay taxes. They'll just seize your accounts. And you can't just use cash, because I can't pay a lot of my bills in cash.
You can't refuse to comply, because they'll just cut your legs out from under you. No more job, no more driver's license, no more traveling, etc, etc.
I certainly wouldn't try the Boston Tea Party today. You'd be in jail before you could even tell anyone what you'd done.
I don't know what the solution is, but I don't think the government derives its power from the will of the people anymore. At some point, it very much feels like that flipped, and the people derive their power from the will of the government.
Nothing whatsoever has changed about the power imbalance between people and government. The only thing different between the tea party and now is that back then, a lot of people were willing to kill, be killed, and be jailed for their political beliefs. Almost no one at all is still willing to risk this.
I could write a whole thesis, and I'm sure someone has, about the decline of honor or idealism or whatever you want to call this spirit. Point is, the valuation of the self has never been so high in history before, nor the comforts. Who is going to risk death by cop today when they have such comfortable lives? And it's not just comforts, but a change in attitides; the tea party folk were quite comfortable, more than most today, and they were absolutely prepared for jail.
Doesn't matter if no one is held accountable. We don't have a "legal" problem in the US. We have an accountability problem, particularly amongst the "elites".
I'm not surprised. Our schools have become increasingly political institutions in left and right form. The question I have is, as an independent, how do you stave it off completely?
Make districts competitive. As long as the measure (votes in an election district) can be shaped such that winning the primary (initial election to determine the rep. for each party) basically promises a win in the general (an election where one rep from each party competes), polarization will go up and moderation will go down. Once districts are competitive, reps will face more pressure to the will of the people, as opposed to the people in just their party.
As a professor, I think the actions of The University of Florida are abhorrent. I would never want to work in an environment that kowtows to politics. There are enough political considerations within a University, but having to deal with state politics as well? Count me out.
At the same time, he doesn’t have tenure? So they are actually fully within their rights to do this, and really no one should be surprised.
But here is my question: the prosecutors couldn’t find any tenured professors to help them in their lawsuit? Because the University can’t say anything to them about it; a tenured (full, not typically associate) professor has the right to use the name of their institution without their permission. It seems to me to be an expert witness, one would desire the use of the UoF credentials.
> So they are actually fully within their rights to do this, and really no one should be surprised.
They have the power, nobody should be surprised that they flex it. Maybe. Do you feel that it's always ethical to perform every action that is within your legal rights? Is the legal system devoid of examples, where an act was legal until it was exercised in excess, and found to be unethical? "Surprised" doesn't describe my response to this abuse of power. That would be "outrage".
"So they are actually fully within their rights to do this"
Its not an offense again thr proffesor, it's an offense against the jistice system. Naivly, I hoped that doing something like this would have serious consequences.
I have never heard that tenured professors can use the name of their institution without permission. I don't think that's either permitted by any rules (to the extent that rules that apply to tenured professors vary and are only partially codified), or tacitly permitted by the universities and their press departments.
Obviously a subject matter expert in a trial is allowed to describe their credentials (education and employement) but that's not a right solely for tenured professors.
If you could point to written policies or analysis supporting this claim I would be very interested to see it.
Public education institutions are potentially the most politicized arenas in our nation today.
Especially K-12 education, where you have to somehow bridge a new chasm between insane ideologies while also keeping a classroom full children working "productively" towards pointless standardized testing objectives. All of this despite most of their dopamine loops being totally burned out from hours of smartphone use before they even get to school.
The whole education system is heading towards "totally fucked". This UF politics issue is just 1% of the puzzle behind why everything sucks so hard now. If you personally know any teachers working in K12, lend them your ear. You would be surprised how many people are internalizing the problems and don't even know who to talk to about it anymore. The rest have succumbed to apathy or new careers.
Can't a lawyer wishing to have these professors testify as expert witnesses merely motion for them to be subpoenaed?
As far as I know, then by law the expert witnesses must testify else risk contempt of court, thereby negating whatever "bar" that the university seems fit to impose.
> Can't a lawyer wishing to have these professors testify as expert witnesses merely motion for them to be subpoenaed?
That depends on the law of the jurisdiction in question; in the US federal system, for instance this is theoretically possible but its kind of a hail mary, rather than a slam dunk; getting an order for s non-retained expert is far from automatic, even when their testimony would be relevant:
Thanks for the link. For those curious, this seems to be the relevant section:
Differing Requirements for Expert and Non-Retained Witnesses
While non-retained witnesses require some disclosure, expert witnesses require far more. It may be challenging to compel an expert witness to testify, in part, because before an expert witness is deposed or testifies, the federal rules require the disclosure of a report. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 (a) (2) (B) calls for the disclosure of a report including:
* A complete statement of all the opinions a witness plans to express, as well as the basis for the opinions, and the reasons supporting the opinions
* The facts or data relied on or considered when forming the opinion
* Exhibits the expert will use to support or summarize their findings
* Their qualifications and the last 10 years of their publications
* All other cases the witness testified as an expert, whether in trial or deposition
* A statement of compensation the expert has been or will be paid for the study and testimony in the case at hand
Obviously, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain this information in a report from a non-compensated, unretained expert.
They're allowed to testify in court. They are just not allowed to get paid to do it, nor are they allowed to use their affiliation with the university as credentials when testifying because they are not speaking for the university.
I assume UF has a conflict of interest office for this reason and I can see UF's argument whether I agree with the outcome or not. So I would ask why these 3 professors? Are there not private Florida institutions (e.g. UMiami) or universities in other states that have voting rights experts?
Readit News
This has similarities with the shenanigans pulled by Sinema and Manchin around the Build Back Better plan. Political horse trading to advance the agendas of special interests, at great expense to millions of people.
I wonder if the tech community could get involved to increase transparency around this stuff. Imagine if we had an open graph of the money flow so we could write a SQL query like (pseudo code) "select * from donors where payee in (select id from trustees)". Let people crowdsource the data and then maintain a page of declarative queries so that anyone can instantly see the web of money around public officials. It could be part of a build system that automatically creates a NASCAR jacket for each official so we could see who their donors are in AR.
Maybe such a thing already exists. It's traditionally been accomplished by investigative journalists and lawyers, but why couldn't it be public? It seems like it would be an effective way to end the bribe system.
His company’s political contributions: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/ici-homes/summary?topnumcyc...
The easy way out of this is for the court to subpoena the professors. I wouldn't be surprised if U of F was taking this stance to force that to occur, and which point they can shrug, and say "we tried, but they were subpoenaed..."
That sounds like an overly biased, rosy fantasy.
Many of us that do not have an R or a D near our names are concerned about how easy it is to cheat the system with ballot harvesting, mail-in ballots, or, at will manipulation of voting laws by secretaries of state rather than legislative bodies, as the Constitution says.
https://ballotpedia.org/Absentee/mail-in_ballot_vote_fraud
One could scrape this into a graph database, https://dos.elections.myflorida.com/campaign-finance/contrib...
It’s absolutely outrageous that we allow those in positions of power to manipulate the justice system in such a way.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512
(b)Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to—
(1)influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding;
(2)cause or induce any person to—
(A)withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding;
(B)alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal an object with intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding;
(C)evade legal process summoning that person to appear as a witness, or to produce a record, document, or other object, in an official proceeding; or
(D)be absent from an official proceeding to which such person has been summoned by legal process; or
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
we need to (continue to) decentralize governments and markets. we now have the technological means, so it’s largely a matter of popular will at this point.
Canada also requires voter ID, and Canadian federal elections feature four days of early voting: https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=vote&d...
In many countries, like France, elections are still held (gasp!) entirely in person on election day.
The good news is that it doesn't actually work that way. First past the post results in a two party system. Nobody can gerrymander that away.
Drawing the lines different affects what party platforms need to be in order to get half of the seats, but there will still be two parties and they will still each control the government half of the time.
Which isn't to say that it doesn't matter, but the thing it does is different than the thing you think it does. Even the party drawing the lines is reshaping what they'll need their own positions to be in order to win.
If you really want to fix it, replace first past the post with range voting. Good luck gerrymandering that. Might even solve polarization by getting rid of the poles.
They've removed all the options to revolt in a way that harms the government without you needing to be ready to die for the cause.
Something like 10% of people fought in the Revolutionary War. I couldn't find easy stats on what % of the population participated in pro-Civil Rights Movement protests, but I'm curious if anyone has them.
Both BLM and antivaxxers seem to have enough popular support that the government should be having difficulty controlling them. They don't seem to be having that difficulty, though. BLM is still around, but the change has been fairly slight. The government was able to largely ignore it. The antivaxxers remain to be seen, but I suspect all the restrictions will be effective in enforcing compliance.
Citizens no longer have a way to protest that the government really needs to care about.
You can't refuse to pay taxes. They'll just seize your accounts. And you can't just use cash, because I can't pay a lot of my bills in cash.
You can't refuse to comply, because they'll just cut your legs out from under you. No more job, no more driver's license, no more traveling, etc, etc.
I certainly wouldn't try the Boston Tea Party today. You'd be in jail before you could even tell anyone what you'd done.
I don't know what the solution is, but I don't think the government derives its power from the will of the people anymore. At some point, it very much feels like that flipped, and the people derive their power from the will of the government.
I could write a whole thesis, and I'm sure someone has, about the decline of honor or idealism or whatever you want to call this spirit. Point is, the valuation of the self has never been so high in history before, nor the comforts. Who is going to risk death by cop today when they have such comfortable lives? And it's not just comforts, but a change in attitides; the tea party folk were quite comfortable, more than most today, and they were absolutely prepared for jail.
We should all be a little more skeptical. Nobody should be above scrutiny based on their job title or profession, their prior work, or anything else.
The American political system has become completely unprincipled, largely as a result of decades long attacks on moderates.
At the same time, he doesn’t have tenure? So they are actually fully within their rights to do this, and really no one should be surprised.
But here is my question: the prosecutors couldn’t find any tenured professors to help them in their lawsuit? Because the University can’t say anything to them about it; a tenured (full, not typically associate) professor has the right to use the name of their institution without their permission. It seems to me to be an expert witness, one would desire the use of the UoF credentials.
They have the power, nobody should be surprised that they flex it. Maybe. Do you feel that it's always ethical to perform every action that is within your legal rights? Is the legal system devoid of examples, where an act was legal until it was exercised in excess, and found to be unethical? "Surprised" doesn't describe my response to this abuse of power. That would be "outrage".
If it's a public institution the 1st amendment applies. Public institutions should not be applying any limits to employee speech.
Its not an offense again thr proffesor, it's an offense against the jistice system. Naivly, I hoped that doing something like this would have serious consequences.
Obviously a subject matter expert in a trial is allowed to describe their credentials (education and employement) but that's not a right solely for tenured professors.
If you could point to written policies or analysis supporting this claim I would be very interested to see it.
Deleted Comment
Especially K-12 education, where you have to somehow bridge a new chasm between insane ideologies while also keeping a classroom full children working "productively" towards pointless standardized testing objectives. All of this despite most of their dopamine loops being totally burned out from hours of smartphone use before they even get to school.
The whole education system is heading towards "totally fucked". This UF politics issue is just 1% of the puzzle behind why everything sucks so hard now. If you personally know any teachers working in K12, lend them your ear. You would be surprised how many people are internalizing the problems and don't even know who to talk to about it anymore. The rest have succumbed to apathy or new careers.
Can't a lawyer wishing to have these professors testify as expert witnesses merely motion for them to be subpoenaed?
As far as I know, then by law the expert witnesses must testify else risk contempt of court, thereby negating whatever "bar" that the university seems fit to impose.
That depends on the law of the jurisdiction in question; in the US federal system, for instance this is theoretically possible but its kind of a hail mary, rather than a slam dunk; getting an order for s non-retained expert is far from automatic, even when their testimony would be relevant:
https://www.expertinstitute.com/resources/insights/can-a-non...
Not sure about Florida particularly.
Differing Requirements for Expert and Non-Retained Witnesses While non-retained witnesses require some disclosure, expert witnesses require far more. It may be challenging to compel an expert witness to testify, in part, because before an expert witness is deposed or testifies, the federal rules require the disclosure of a report. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 (a) (2) (B) calls for the disclosure of a report including:
* A complete statement of all the opinions a witness plans to express, as well as the basis for the opinions, and the reasons supporting the opinions
* The facts or data relied on or considered when forming the opinion
* Exhibits the expert will use to support or summarize their findings
* Their qualifications and the last 10 years of their publications
* All other cases the witness testified as an expert, whether in trial or deposition
* A statement of compensation the expert has been or will be paid for the study and testimony in the case at hand
Obviously, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain this information in a report from a non-compensated, unretained expert.
If they were being subpoenaed - compelled to be a witness - I am sure the matter would be different.
They're allowed to testify in court. They are just not allowed to get paid to do it, nor are they allowed to use their affiliation with the university as credentials when testifying because they are not speaking for the university.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment