Henderson city councilman sued–again–over alleged illegal loans. [Nevada Current]
Any of you download SBN Go yet–the new app of the State Bar of Nevada?
Anyone have any updates out of Santa Fe? Where will it be next year?
The U.S. Supreme Court issued some pretty big decisions today. Feel free to discuss the legal merits of the opinions, just keep it professional. [SCOTUSblog]
No it doesn’t. Employees can take a PTO for the 2nd, the 3rd or the 5th (or all of those days). Employees are free to use their PTO as they see fit.
Guest
anonymous
June 28, 2024 10:47 am
There’s a couple of judges who I think have been unfair/less than impartial with me over the years. I hereby demand that they be kicked off all of my cases. Grow up, you crybabies.
If those judges have publicly commented that they are adverse to you, then follow the judicial canons.
Guest
Anonymous
June 28, 2024 10:53 am
For anyone celebrating the Chevron decision today, if you haven’t read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” it’s worth a read. Modern cities depend on the administrative state for basically every facet of life. I am counting my lucky stars that I’ve already relocated to a rural area surrounded by small organic farms and bereft of almost all heavy industry.
Don’t write ambiguous legislation. The decision tells legislators to write specific legislation as opposed to generic legislation. Regulatory agencies are supposed to regulate within the parameters of specific legislation, not write what agencies believe should be legislated.
Just write clearer laws, eh? You mean legislation written by lobbyists with unlimited money and a narrow set of short-term shareholder interests who are free to bribe a set of non-specialist legislators chronically at war with one another, whose only time horizon is equally set at the next two- or six-year election cycle, of which a not-insubstantial portion are nepo babies or have given way to senility? Whose staff members are dwarfed by those of industry lobbying groups in terms of both size and expertise?
Even assuming Congress can overcome those hurdles and fashion any law with the requisite agency expertise necessary to craft, ya know, long-term water purification standards to ensure that our grandchildren aren’t catching three-eyed fish from the local lake in half a century, passing the law is only half the battle. After that, each and every law will be filtered through a thousand separate federal district judges with lifetime appointments, none of whom has any public accountability at all, each of whom will now be free to pick from a different branch of the statutory-interpretation tree sufficient to fit their world-view, grant a nationwide injunction, and tie up any legislation without providing any material deference to Congress. Anyone who has clerked for a federal judge, like I have, knows that virtually no statute has to really mean what Congress says it means; and anyone who’s passed out of the bubble-world of a clerkship and blinked in the harsh sunlight of a technical practice area knows that neither the generalist judge juggling 500 active cases nor the 2-3, 20-something, freshly-graduated law clerks drafting opinions for those 500 cases are qualified to make those decisions without something like Chevron deference to guide them away from the most catastrophic consequences of their ignorance. And who’s sitting in a position to reconcile these thousand figurative typewriter monkeys? A Supreme Court set to quibble over which 18th-century dictionary definition applies to language governing artificial intelligence algorithm training protocols, or electronic credit reporting infrastructure, or low earth orbit satellite rocket stage booster alloy composition. I’m sure folks who wore wooden teeth 250 years ago thought that all through.
And that’s just the substance, without taking into account the effect of time. We usually wait six months to a year for decisions on motions to dismiss in D. Nev., and a year if not more for an appeal, then another year at least between reconsideration and en banc reconsideration even before a Supreme Court cert petition. In the meantime, any company violating the challenged law gets a free pass while law’s enforcement is stayed pending a decision. The Sacklers pulled eleven billion dollars out of Perdue Pharma just in the period after the first guilty pleas from the opioid crisis that killed a quarter million people was issued, and before the weight of numerous lawsuits forced Perdue into bankruptcy; that money is likely all sitting in offshore bank accounts and it’s never coming back. Federal litigation often makes time an ally of oligarchs and corporate unpersons at the expense of everyone else; and a rational economic actor operating in a competitive environment will adjust its risk profile to match changing market conditions. With less likelihood of meaningful regulatory change or oversight, and a longer shelf life before any compliance kicks in, a company’s time horizon for the consequences of failing to comply with whatever meager legislation survives this gauntlet will expand. That means companies will take more risks with fundamentally unsafe industrial practices, sell more toxic food and drugs to us, and let more planes fall out of the sky. Who is going to stop them, a handful of senate staffers and one-year-term judicial law clerks? Not me, and not anyone like me.
To be clear, I’m not trying to denigrate judges, senate staffers, legislators, or JLCs. I loved my time in public service, know how hard these folks work, and frankly how rational many legislators are once the cameras turn off. But none of these people are built for the task that’s just been handed to them. Jettisoning Chevron and effectively handing over the keys is just beyond ridiculous in a complex administrative state, and the idea that we can just write clearer laws or have exchanged one set of idiots for another is a recipe for social collapse. Maybe the impacts of this can be mitigated somewhat by prohibiting nationwide injunctions staying laws during the pendency of litigation. I doubt that will be anywhere near enough to mitigate the damage, but it’s something.
I worked at a big lobbying law firm and also practiced before administrative agencies. Two things you may not know:
(1) Industry lobbies agencies HARD. Like at least as hard as they lobby Congress. So your disdain for lobbyists is, if anything, a reason to scrutinize agencies harder. Not to give them a pass under Chevron.
(2) Agencies, in my experience, take far longer to rule than courts. For example, I had at least 4 cases pending before a certain agency within HHS for more than 5 years between the time of the hearing and the time the agency finally issued its ruling on the hearing. I have never had D. Nev. take even a small fraction of that time to rule on even the most complex motions.
I worked for the U.S. Senate as well as being a JLC. Obviously lobbyists work with agencies too. But the idea that lobbyists will have a harder time inserting poison pills into proposed legislation with the intent of astroturfing it into oblivion when it lands in the courts, as opposed to gumming up the administrative notice-and-comment process, is a conclusion I am simply unwilling to accept. We’re exchanging the evil of regulatory capture for legislative and judicial duck-duck-goose.
What you overlook in your analysis of “effectively handing over the keys. . . in a complex administrative state” is that they rolling back how this unnecessarily became a complex administrative state. Perhaps it need not have ever been or to remain a complex administrative state when clear laws should be written.
Why is it necessary to have a complex administrative state? Because we are a nation spanning half a continent with considerable biological and economic diversity, populated by over 350 million people from every corner of the world, which plays a central role in global trade markets, has a permanent seat on the United Nations security council, and whose domestic decisions have outsized geopolitical significance. Someone in a drone base in the Midwest presses a button and a drone strikes a vehicle in a desert half a world away and kills a dozen people, and no one else in the world can really stop that from happening. We’re arguably in effective control of half of the world, and we live in an era which has gone from indoor plumbing to artificial intelligence in a few generations.
Look at how a “clear” law like Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 has morphed in little over a generation. What started as a statutory nudge to promote growth in a new industry (one enacted shortly after Al Gore sold our then-public internet to the telecoms for a handful of campaign donations) has morphed into a grotesque. Not even the courts want to touch this “clear” law and put some commonsense guardrails on it. When called upon to do nothing more than hold that Section 230 didn’t cover Youtube profiting when its video-matching algorithm recommended ISIS videos to prospective terrorist recruits who ultimately joined the organization based on the video recommendations and carried out attacks that murdered innocent people, the U.S. Supreme Court was too timid to do anything other than sidestep the issue essentially on procedural grounds. What has Congress done in the several years since they received that implied referral from the High Court? Absolutely nothing.
Suggesting that the government just doesn’t have to be “complex” anymore and can be handled by a few thousand general-purpose legislators, judges, and staff members is socratic arrogance of the highest order, and proves exactly why those trained to think in a socratic fashion aren’t qualified to act as the high arbiters of the administrative state. If you want to live a simpler existence, move to Micronesia, live in a straw hut by the beach, and take your orders from a tribal elder. With great power comes great responsibility, including the responsibility to know when you’re in over your head.
You want clearer laws? Uncap the House. Give us 1 Rep for every 30-50,000 people. Hell, 1 for every 100,000 would make me happy. Allow people to actually interact with the body that is supposed to be nearest to the public. Eliminate, or sharply curtail, the absurd and outsize influence of the Senate on the Electoral college, giving us back a Presidency of the people, which is what Jefferson had in mind when the 12th was enacted. This will dampen the effect of money on politics, and make it more likely that compromise, not moneyed interests, will result in legislation.
I’m not sure how this will work out, but I have witnessed how the administrative state protects assholes and idiots with big egos and fails to reward people willing to be innovative. And while we like to think of agencies as a bunch of geniuses in lab coats, in my experience they’re closer to DMV workers that protect their own pet projects, often of questionable validity.
602 homeless in Grants Pass. Zero emergency beds. 138 beds that require 40 hours of working (thus not available to the disabled). Sleeping on private land is a crime. The Court has no problem with criminalizing the act of sleeping on public land. Perhaps the Court should revisit the facts of the well-known seminal case of City of Hope vs Rambo for a refresher on what may occur when cities criminalize and punish the mere fact of existing within city limits without a home.
I’m clearly ignorant of these things, but how can someone be physically disabled and homeless when they could apply for social security disability, get Section 8 housing, and possibly have Medicaid pay for a caregiver if they’re really far gone physically? Unless of course they choose that life?
The waiting list for housing vouchers is years long. Then individuals are lower down the line than families. Then you are disqualified if you have any recent criminal history (5-10 years), or forever based upon certain criteria. If you have an eviction in the last three years you may not qualify. In S. Nevada, the availablity of housing vouchers is limited to just over 12k. There is a wait list, which is only periodically open. The last time they opened was 2023, and got 27,000 applications. Plus landlords dont have to accept section 8. Then you have the admin hassles. Lets say you get kicked out of your home. How do you get an ID? No car. no bank account, no money. So lets say you surmount these. You need a birth certificate. Maybe you can get this, maybe its in another state. Lets say you get this. How long is the waiting list for benefits? How do you pay for food while you are waiting these weeks? Where do you stay in the interim? This doesn’t touch those who are mentally ill. Certainly there are probably some small portion of those without housing who choose not to work and to live the life of riley. But I would venture that it isn’t most people.
The reality is that this is all pushed by the private prison industry. When cities start criminalizing conditions that people cannot remedy, jails and prisons will fill up. The 1% has its tax cuts locked in. We’ll pay to house these folks one way or another. We’re collectively too stupid to recognize it’s not a homeless issue but rather a massive corporate welfare program built on the literal bodies of our weakest members. The republic is doomed.
Make no mistake.
The bureaucracies know as the various state DOCs and the Federal BOP are JUST as much behind it in trying to solidify their stranglehold on budget dollars.
Guest
Anonymous
June 28, 2024 11:33 am
Curious if anyone is following the Karen Read trial out of Massachusetts. Does Nevada have a version of the Allen jury instruction? Seems questionable to tell the jury that everyone has put a lot of time and money into this so they need to keep deliberating.
I’m trying! No one on the gossip blog is gossiping! It’s all news and hate for bar counsel these days. Not like the good ole’ days . . . when is the last time we had a salary or bonus round-up?
Any other info from the past year that you want to share?
Guest
Anonymous
June 28, 2024 12:19 pm
We just not going to talk about what happened last night? That was wild.
No. One can’t tell the truth and one stutters. One can’t walk a golf course and one regularly rides bikes with the secret service. They’re both old and indicative of dysfunctional political parties. It’s fine to criticize, but at least have SOME honesty about the situation.
Are you kidding me? Biden couldn’t open his mouth without lying his ass off.
You should try some honesty. The fact checks from CNN alone today are fucking priceless.
Characterizing it as a stutter is not honest. An honest characterization is an inability to form a coherent sentence. Also, you fail to take into account the blank face on his face the entirety of the night – he truly looked like he had no idea what was happening. Also, not sure if you saw, but his wife had to escort him off the stage.
His cognitive decline is much more severe than just a stutter.
FOIST
Take MON-WED off next week and you get 9 off days for the price of 3. Happy July!
No holiday pay though. So its actually the price of 5.
9 days? We are not giving the 5th off.
Glad I don’t work for you! That is super lame and limits what your employees can do with their fourth. Shame on you.
No it doesn’t. Employees can take a PTO for the 2nd, the 3rd or the 5th (or all of those days). Employees are free to use their PTO as they see fit.
There’s a couple of judges who I think have been unfair/less than impartial with me over the years. I hereby demand that they be kicked off all of my cases. Grow up, you crybabies.
If those judges have publicly commented that they are adverse to you, then follow the judicial canons.
For anyone celebrating the Chevron decision today, if you haven’t read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” it’s worth a read. Modern cities depend on the administrative state for basically every facet of life. I am counting my lucky stars that I’ve already relocated to a rural area surrounded by small organic farms and bereft of almost all heavy industry.
Don’t write ambiguous legislation. The decision tells legislators to write specific legislation as opposed to generic legislation. Regulatory agencies are supposed to regulate within the parameters of specific legislation, not write what agencies believe should be legislated.
Uh, have you not been paying attention to the obvious IQ deficits of legislators?
Sure. Exceeded by the obvious IQ deficits of bureaucrats and regulators. We are choosing our idiots and process of how our rules get made.
Just write clearer laws, eh? You mean legislation written by lobbyists with unlimited money and a narrow set of short-term shareholder interests who are free to bribe a set of non-specialist legislators chronically at war with one another, whose only time horizon is equally set at the next two- or six-year election cycle, of which a not-insubstantial portion are nepo babies or have given way to senility? Whose staff members are dwarfed by those of industry lobbying groups in terms of both size and expertise?
Even assuming Congress can overcome those hurdles and fashion any law with the requisite agency expertise necessary to craft, ya know, long-term water purification standards to ensure that our grandchildren aren’t catching three-eyed fish from the local lake in half a century, passing the law is only half the battle. After that, each and every law will be filtered through a thousand separate federal district judges with lifetime appointments, none of whom has any public accountability at all, each of whom will now be free to pick from a different branch of the statutory-interpretation tree sufficient to fit their world-view, grant a nationwide injunction, and tie up any legislation without providing any material deference to Congress. Anyone who has clerked for a federal judge, like I have, knows that virtually no statute has to really mean what Congress says it means; and anyone who’s passed out of the bubble-world of a clerkship and blinked in the harsh sunlight of a technical practice area knows that neither the generalist judge juggling 500 active cases nor the 2-3, 20-something, freshly-graduated law clerks drafting opinions for those 500 cases are qualified to make those decisions without something like Chevron deference to guide them away from the most catastrophic consequences of their ignorance. And who’s sitting in a position to reconcile these thousand figurative typewriter monkeys? A Supreme Court set to quibble over which 18th-century dictionary definition applies to language governing artificial intelligence algorithm training protocols, or electronic credit reporting infrastructure, or low earth orbit satellite rocket stage booster alloy composition. I’m sure folks who wore wooden teeth 250 years ago thought that all through.
And that’s just the substance, without taking into account the effect of time. We usually wait six months to a year for decisions on motions to dismiss in D. Nev., and a year if not more for an appeal, then another year at least between reconsideration and en banc reconsideration even before a Supreme Court cert petition. In the meantime, any company violating the challenged law gets a free pass while law’s enforcement is stayed pending a decision. The Sacklers pulled eleven billion dollars out of Perdue Pharma just in the period after the first guilty pleas from the opioid crisis that killed a quarter million people was issued, and before the weight of numerous lawsuits forced Perdue into bankruptcy; that money is likely all sitting in offshore bank accounts and it’s never coming back. Federal litigation often makes time an ally of oligarchs and corporate unpersons at the expense of everyone else; and a rational economic actor operating in a competitive environment will adjust its risk profile to match changing market conditions. With less likelihood of meaningful regulatory change or oversight, and a longer shelf life before any compliance kicks in, a company’s time horizon for the consequences of failing to comply with whatever meager legislation survives this gauntlet will expand. That means companies will take more risks with fundamentally unsafe industrial practices, sell more toxic food and drugs to us, and let more planes fall out of the sky. Who is going to stop them, a handful of senate staffers and one-year-term judicial law clerks? Not me, and not anyone like me.
To be clear, I’m not trying to denigrate judges, senate staffers, legislators, or JLCs. I loved my time in public service, know how hard these folks work, and frankly how rational many legislators are once the cameras turn off. But none of these people are built for the task that’s just been handed to them. Jettisoning Chevron and effectively handing over the keys is just beyond ridiculous in a complex administrative state, and the idea that we can just write clearer laws or have exchanged one set of idiots for another is a recipe for social collapse. Maybe the impacts of this can be mitigated somewhat by prohibiting nationwide injunctions staying laws during the pendency of litigation. I doubt that will be anywhere near enough to mitigate the damage, but it’s something.
I worked at a big lobbying law firm and also practiced before administrative agencies. Two things you may not know:
(1) Industry lobbies agencies HARD. Like at least as hard as they lobby Congress. So your disdain for lobbyists is, if anything, a reason to scrutinize agencies harder. Not to give them a pass under Chevron.
(2) Agencies, in my experience, take far longer to rule than courts. For example, I had at least 4 cases pending before a certain agency within HHS for more than 5 years between the time of the hearing and the time the agency finally issued its ruling on the hearing. I have never had D. Nev. take even a small fraction of that time to rule on even the most complex motions.
I worked for the U.S. Senate as well as being a JLC. Obviously lobbyists work with agencies too. But the idea that lobbyists will have a harder time inserting poison pills into proposed legislation with the intent of astroturfing it into oblivion when it lands in the courts, as opposed to gumming up the administrative notice-and-comment process, is a conclusion I am simply unwilling to accept. We’re exchanging the evil of regulatory capture for legislative and judicial duck-duck-goose.
I am still waiting for a ruling from an agency. The admin trail was in 2015.
Bold of you to assume there will still be lakes in 50 years.
Well said.
What you overlook in your analysis of “effectively handing over the keys. . . in a complex administrative state” is that they rolling back how this unnecessarily became a complex administrative state. Perhaps it need not have ever been or to remain a complex administrative state when clear laws should be written.
Why is it necessary to have a complex administrative state? Because we are a nation spanning half a continent with considerable biological and economic diversity, populated by over 350 million people from every corner of the world, which plays a central role in global trade markets, has a permanent seat on the United Nations security council, and whose domestic decisions have outsized geopolitical significance. Someone in a drone base in the Midwest presses a button and a drone strikes a vehicle in a desert half a world away and kills a dozen people, and no one else in the world can really stop that from happening. We’re arguably in effective control of half of the world, and we live in an era which has gone from indoor plumbing to artificial intelligence in a few generations.
Look at how a “clear” law like Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 has morphed in little over a generation. What started as a statutory nudge to promote growth in a new industry (one enacted shortly after Al Gore sold our then-public internet to the telecoms for a handful of campaign donations) has morphed into a grotesque. Not even the courts want to touch this “clear” law and put some commonsense guardrails on it. When called upon to do nothing more than hold that Section 230 didn’t cover Youtube profiting when its video-matching algorithm recommended ISIS videos to prospective terrorist recruits who ultimately joined the organization based on the video recommendations and carried out attacks that murdered innocent people, the U.S. Supreme Court was too timid to do anything other than sidestep the issue essentially on procedural grounds. What has Congress done in the several years since they received that implied referral from the High Court? Absolutely nothing.
Suggesting that the government just doesn’t have to be “complex” anymore and can be handled by a few thousand general-purpose legislators, judges, and staff members is socratic arrogance of the highest order, and proves exactly why those trained to think in a socratic fashion aren’t qualified to act as the high arbiters of the administrative state. If you want to live a simpler existence, move to Micronesia, live in a straw hut by the beach, and take your orders from a tribal elder. With great power comes great responsibility, including the responsibility to know when you’re in over your head.
You want clearer laws? Uncap the House. Give us 1 Rep for every 30-50,000 people. Hell, 1 for every 100,000 would make me happy. Allow people to actually interact with the body that is supposed to be nearest to the public. Eliminate, or sharply curtail, the absurd and outsize influence of the Senate on the Electoral college, giving us back a Presidency of the people, which is what Jefferson had in mind when the 12th was enacted. This will dampen the effect of money on politics, and make it more likely that compromise, not moneyed interests, will result in legislation.
Hahaha – thanks for that! I needed it
More like tell the PAC’s eh.
How about the legislature just does its job? What a concept.
I’m not sure how this will work out, but I have witnessed how the administrative state protects assholes and idiots with big egos and fails to reward people willing to be innovative. And while we like to think of agencies as a bunch of geniuses in lab coats, in my experience they’re closer to DMV workers that protect their own pet projects, often of questionable validity.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/06/28/supreme-court-corrects-epa-opinion-after-gorsuch-confuses-laughing-gas-with-air-pollutant/
“Oops!”
–Rick Perry, 2011 Republican Presidential Primary Debate
602 homeless in Grants Pass. Zero emergency beds. 138 beds that require 40 hours of working (thus not available to the disabled). Sleeping on private land is a crime. The Court has no problem with criminalizing the act of sleeping on public land. Perhaps the Court should revisit the facts of the well-known seminal case of City of Hope vs Rambo for a refresher on what may occur when cities criminalize and punish the mere fact of existing within city limits without a home.
Also read (sp) le guins “those who walk away from omelas”
I’m clearly ignorant of these things, but how can someone be physically disabled and homeless when they could apply for social security disability, get Section 8 housing, and possibly have Medicaid pay for a caregiver if they’re really far gone physically? Unless of course they choose that life?
The waiting list for housing vouchers is years long. Then individuals are lower down the line than families. Then you are disqualified if you have any recent criminal history (5-10 years), or forever based upon certain criteria. If you have an eviction in the last three years you may not qualify. In S. Nevada, the availablity of housing vouchers is limited to just over 12k. There is a wait list, which is only periodically open. The last time they opened was 2023, and got 27,000 applications. Plus landlords dont have to accept section 8. Then you have the admin hassles. Lets say you get kicked out of your home. How do you get an ID? No car. no bank account, no money. So lets say you surmount these. You need a birth certificate. Maybe you can get this, maybe its in another state. Lets say you get this. How long is the waiting list for benefits? How do you pay for food while you are waiting these weeks? Where do you stay in the interim? This doesn’t touch those who are mentally ill. Certainly there are probably some small portion of those without housing who choose not to work and to live the life of riley. But I would venture that it isn’t most people.
My mom is 80 and lost her ID. I’m a lawyer and make fairly good money. Took us months and months and months to get a birth certificate.
The reality is that this is all pushed by the private prison industry. When cities start criminalizing conditions that people cannot remedy, jails and prisons will fill up. The 1% has its tax cuts locked in. We’ll pay to house these folks one way or another. We’re collectively too stupid to recognize it’s not a homeless issue but rather a massive corporate welfare program built on the literal bodies of our weakest members. The republic is doomed.
Make no mistake.
The bureaucracies know as the various state DOCs and the Federal BOP are JUST as much behind it in trying to solidify their stranglehold on budget dollars.
Curious if anyone is following the Karen Read trial out of Massachusetts. Does Nevada have a version of the Allen jury instruction? Seems questionable to tell the jury that everyone has put a lot of time and money into this so they need to keep deliberating.
When did Alverson Taylor implode?
Almost a year ago. Thank God that era is over.
Way to stay on top of the news 🙂
I’m trying! No one on the gossip blog is gossiping! It’s all news and hate for bar counsel these days. Not like the good ole’ days . . . when is the last time we had a salary or bonus round-up?
Any other info from the past year that you want to share?
We just not going to talk about what happened last night? That was wild.
Two old men reinforced to the world that they are, in fact, old.
Although one is MUCH more aged than the other.
No. One can’t tell the truth and one stutters. One can’t walk a golf course and one regularly rides bikes with the secret service. They’re both old and indicative of dysfunctional political parties. It’s fine to criticize, but at least have SOME honesty about the situation.
Are you kidding me? Biden couldn’t open his mouth without lying his ass off.
You should try some honesty. The fact checks from CNN alone today are fucking priceless.
Hahahaha trolling on a Friday afternoon are we?
Calling it like I see it. .. . . honestly.
This is levels of cope once thought unreachable.
Bravo!
This is not honest – no offense.
Characterizing it as a stutter is not honest. An honest characterization is an inability to form a coherent sentence. Also, you fail to take into account the blank face on his face the entirety of the night – he truly looked like he had no idea what was happening. Also, not sure if you saw, but his wife had to escort him off the stage.
His cognitive decline is much more severe than just a stutter.
Escort him off stage to shake hands with the moderators. . . .AFTER 45 exited stage left.
If the liberals are looking for someone more energetic, Jimmy Carter is still eligible for another term.
https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/what-to-know-about-the-17-new-nevada-laws-that-go-into-effect-july-1