• Not great music but it feels right after Z decided to FA and is now FO.

            

  • When I was in elementary school, the principal still had a paddle hanging on the wall behind him. The principal was the person that hired and fired teachers and all other staff at the school. They had significant power.

    To quote Stan Lee, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

    Most principals did use their power responsibly. They used the power of the paddle to control their schools. They used the power to hire and fire to control their staff. And they did not abuse that power.

    Unfortunately, when there are positions with great power, that power attracts people who are interested in power.

    There was abuse. There were principals that abused the power of the paddle, taking it over that line. There were principals that hired and fired at a whim. Being a teacher had no stability.

    The answer that was put into place was to remove the power of the paddle and the power to fire from principals.

    Today, teachers are one of the most protected professions in the country. In my state, it is illegal for anybody to speak negatively of a teacher at a board meeting. You cannot say that a teacher is a bad teacher.

    The only way that I could make that statement was to say my kids have Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Jones and Mr. Kilroy as teachers. Mr. Kilroy and Mrs. Smith do a fantastic job.

    I had to leave “but Mrs. Jones sucks as a teacher” out. To say anything negative was forbidden.

    Our president was given the job as chief executive. He was given the job of commander in chief. He is in charge of the executive branch.

    This is stated in our Constitution, under Article II.

    He delegates power to different people to oversee the executive branch.

    Unfortunately, like those principles of times past, the power to fire somebody at will was abused by some.

    To deal with that abuse, Congress stepped in and usurped the power and responsibility of the president. They did this by passing unconstitutional laws, which have not yet been struck down.

    The Special Counsel shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, for a term of 5 years. The Special Counsel may continue to serve beyond the expiration of the term until a successor is appointed and has qualified, except that the Special Counsel may not continue to serve for more than one year after the date on which the term of the Special Counsel would otherwise expire under this subsection. The Special Counsel shall be an attorney who, by demonstrated ability, background, training, or experience, is especially qualified to carry out the functions of the position. A Special Counsel appointed to fill a vacancy occurring before the end of a term of office of the Special Counsel’s predecessor serves for the remainder of the term. The Special Counsel may be removed by the President only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. The Special Counsel may not hold another office or position in the Government of the United States, except as otherwise provided by law or at the direction of the President.
    — 5 U.S.C. §1211(b)

    Our first highlight is almost constitutional. Where it fails is “for a term of 5 years”. Congress does not have the authority to set term limits for appointees. Appointees serve at the pleasure of the president.

    Prior to Trump, this was never an issue. All such appointees tendered their resignation when a new administration came into office. Nobody had to be fired.

    The Special Counsel may be removed by the President only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. is unconstitutional. Why? Because every person in the executive branch serves at the pleasure of the president.

    When congress put limits on when the Special Counsel could be fired, they overstepped their authority as granted by The People through Our Constitution.

    Simple.

    Challenges

    Dellinger was fired. He was fired because the president did not trust him. Or because the gentleman wore bow ties instead of real ties. It doesn’t matter. He serves at the pleasure of The President.

    When he was fired, he ran to the courts and asked the court to unfire him.

    The court granted an “Administrative Stay”, stopping the firing. Now administrative stay is in quotes in all the paperwork by the state (good guys) filed and here because it is a made up term.

    Courts can grant injunctions, temporary or otherwise. Superior courts can issue stays against inferior courts. Courts can issue administrative stays against themselves or inferior courts.

    The common example is when an inferior court grants an injunction or final judgment, and they know the decision will be appealed. Rather than give the parties whiplash, they put an administrative stay on their order go give the parties time to appeal.

    If the superior court does not issue a stay, then the administrative stay expires and the order or judgment goes into effect.

    In this case, the plaintiff (bad guy) claims that he was fired in violation of 5 U.S.C. §1211(b). The Administrative Procedures Act.

    He was. The state (good guys) did not offer any reason when the fired about Dellinger about “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” Thus, they did not meet the requirements of the APA regarding Dellinger.

    I do not believe that the state attempted to justify the firing under the APA. Instead, the state made a Constitutional Challenge.

    Otherwise known as a Civil Rights case.

    This triggers a bunch of legal stuff I am not confident in my knowledge about. I.e. I don’t know what I don’t know.

    I do know that the challenge should be addressed via the Winter factors.

    The most important of which is the likelihood of success on the merits. Followed by irreparable harm, balance of equities, and public interest.

    The Supreme Court has ruled that any denial of a Constitutionally protected right is irreparable harm. They have also stated that violation of a Constitutionally protected right balances to the person harmed. And that the public has no interest in enforcing an unconstitutional law.

    In other words, if the challenger is likely to win on the merits, they win on all four Winter factors.

    The Order

    It is DECLARED that plaintiff Hampton Dellinger is the Special Counsel of the Office of Special Counsel, having been appointed by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate on February 27, 2024.

    It is further DECLARED that the February 7, 2025 email from the Assistant to the President, Director of Presidential Personnel Office, The White House, announcing plaintiff’s termination was an unlawful, ultra vires act in violation of 5 U.S.C. §1211(b). Therefore, it is null and void, and plaintiff is and shall be the Special Counsel of the Office of Special Counsel for the remainder of his five-year term unless and until he is removed in accordance with 5 U.S.C. §1211(b).

    (“ultra vires” means “beyond legal power or authority”)

    This is the judge saying that the President broke the law when he fired Dellinger.

    The judge reasoned:

    The Court finds that the statute is not unconstitutional. And it finds that the elimination of the restrictions on plaintiff’s removal would be fatal to the defining and essential feature of the Office of Special Counsel as it was conceived by Congress and signed into law by the President: its independence. The Court concludes that they must stand.

    My interpretation of the judge’s reason is: Since Congress created this position in the executive branch, they get to decide the limits on what the President can do regarding this position, regardless of what the Constitution says.

    Conclusion

    Social media is all a fuss about Trump losing. This isn’t over. This case took 3 weeks to go from filed to final judgment. It has already been appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court.

    This is being done on an expedited basis. If the Circuit court does not issue a stay on this, the state (good guys) will appeal to the Supreme Court for a stay pending the appeal.

    It is my belief that a stay will be granted by the D.C. Circuit court or by the Supreme Court. This will stop the delay tactics that the left loves to use. If they want this done, they will have to push to get it done as quickly as possible.

            

  • When I started writing, regularly, for Miguel, I took it upon myself to cover legal cases. Since that time, I’ve learned more than I really wanted to about our justice system.

    As my mentor used to say, “The justice system is just a system.” As a systems’ person, that allowed me to look at cases through the lens of my experience analyzing large systems.

    One of the first things I noticed was that most people reporting on cases didn’t provide enough information for us to look up what was actually written or said.

    CourtListener.com has come to my rescue for most legal filings in the federal system. If you know the court and the docket number you can find that case on CourtListener.

    Once you have the docket located, you can start reading the filings. These are stored as PDFs. Most of my PDF tools allow me to copy and paste directly from the PDF.

    What isn’t available on CourtListener is Supreme Court dockets. I’ve talked to Mike and others, the issue seems to be something about scrapping the Supreme Court website as well as other stuff. I’m not sure exactly what.

    I want to be able to keep up on all the current cases in the Supreme Court, what their status currently is, what has been filed. They entirety of the case. I’m not concerned about most of the cases, but often it is easier to get all than a selected portion.

    To this end, I have code that uses patterns to pull cases from the Supreme Court docket without have a listing of cases.

    This tool will have search capabilities and other tools shortly, for now, it works well enough.

    I am using the PySide6, which is a python implementation of the Qt framework. For the most part, I’m happy with this framework. There are parts I don’t like, which I work around.

    My most recent success was figuring out how to allow me to click on hyperlinks in text to bring up my PDF viewer. This was not as simple as I wanted it to be, but it is working.

    The other night, I wanted to write about a current case. I had the case docket in my tool. I pulled up the docket, clicked on the link, and John Roberts’ order popped up in my viewer, exactly as it should.

    I started writing. Went to pull the quote and nothing.

    Copy and paste does not seem to be functional in my tool.

    Which takes me to the rant, which @#$)*&@$) coordinate system should I be using to get the right text!

    Qt is built around widgets. Every widget has its coordinate system. In addition, there is the global coordinate system.

    Each widget also has a paintEvent() which is when it paints itself.

    To start the process, I capture mousePress, mouseMove, and mouseRelease events. While the mouse button is down, I draw a rectangle from the place clicked to the current location of the mouse.

    I attempt to draw the rectangle and nothing shows up on the screen.

    Through debugging code, I finally figured out that I am not updating the right widget.

    The QPdfView widget properly renders the PDF document in a scrollable window. I have made a subclass of QPdfView so I am catching all paint events. But even though I’m telling the system that I have to redraw (update) my widget, there are no paint events being sent to my widget.

    Turns out that my widget only cares about update signals that require the framing content be redrawn. I.e. if the scroll bar changes, then I get a paint event. Once I figured this out, I was able to tell the viewport that it should update and things started working.

    So now I can draw a frame on the screen. But what I want is to get the text from within that frame.

    I asked the QPdfDocument for a new selection from point_start to point_end. It tells me nothing is selected.

    Where do I currently sit? I have my frame in my PDFViewer coordinate system. I have the PDF document in a different coordinate system. The PDF coordinate system is modified by the scroll bars or viewport. The scroll bars and scroll area modify the actual coordinate system of the viewport contents.

    Somehow, I need to figure out which of these coordinate systems is the right coordinate system to use to get the text highlighted by my mouse.

    I’m tired of this fight.

            

  • Actual filing in the case:

    Dear Judge Englemayer,

    Currently there is an Operation of DOGE, a highly questionable Agency of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, rummaging through US Government Financial, Treasury, CFPB, DOJ Files etc looking for Messy Dirty Scandalous Materials etc.

    Recent US history reveals MAMMOTH financial crimes and criminal networks at the heart of TRILLIONS of financial looting, laundering, and many other RACKETEERING ACTIVITIES. USDA, FHA, FHLB, FANNIE, FREDDIE, SALLIE, FDIC, FSLIC, USAID, Soc Sec, DOD, FERS, DOT, DOD Financial Accounts and many others have been robbed for enormous sums of money, assets and Real Property etc etc etc.

    See

    BING search link

    The enormous FISHING EXPEDITION and HUNT for SARS information and DIRT on Political Opposition is being directed by Donald Drumpft Trump who is an ACTIVE AGENT OF CIA and the SECRETIVE GROUP KNOWN AS “Trump January 6th MAGA Mobsters”.

    It gets worse from here.

            

  • I’m tired, I’m stealing this from Miguel.

    Old readers from the blog know that I view the conflict between Ukraine and Russia as a large version of a war between the Barzinis and the Corleones. For some reason, Ukraine went from being a cesspool of corruption and international crime to an innocent country bullied by Putin, basically they are the George Floyd of the international scene. And I won’t even go into Mr. Former KBG psychopath Putin The Great (in his mind anyway) and all the barbaric things he has done through the years.

    So I know I am going to catch shit from those who have emotional investment on Ukraine, but what Zelenskyy did in the Oval Office went beyond the pale. You are a guest, invited to the most important office in the world and icon of our country a decided to act like it was one of your cheap sketches when you were a comedian and throw a hissy fit.

    If you did not like what was going on or what Trump said, you’d simple courteously express disagreement, stand up, shake the President’s hand and leave without another word said. But what Zelenskyy did was the equivalent of the Liberal assholes that would go to the Family’s Thanksgiving and start a loud of drama about the plight of Muslims transsexuals in the Transvaal region just because you can.

    He was asked to leave the White House which shows the actual occupant has more restraint that I would have because sure as hell he would be tossed out by a couple of marines all the way to Pennsylvania Street.

    PS: We need to DOGE the hell out of the money sent to Ukraine just for shits and giggles.
    —Miguel Gonzalez, The Zelenskyy Drama, Miguel’s Substack (Feb. 28, 2025)

    Sorry Miggy.

            

  • Planning out your garden beds is important, because where you put your plants matters. Some plants can’t go near one another. Others love to be close together and help one another. It’s a complex dance, and you need to learn a lot to do a good job at growing enough food to at least supplement your stores.

    Luckily, garden beds can be made out of anything. As I mentioned last week, I have beds made out of planks (sort of the standard, and one I actually would no longer suggest), buckets, bins, and tires. Some folks will tell you that tires leach chemicals that can get into your veg, but I have not seen any real evidence of that. Most of the leachable chemicals in the rubber are gone long before tires end up in landfill (which is where you can usually find them, often for free). All items used to grow stuff in should get a good wash before use, and anything small enough to allow it should get at least a rinse every year. I find using Dr. Bronner’s soaps (peppermint or tea tree) work best because they’re biodegradable, won’t harm your plants, and are concentrated so you don’t need a lot.

    My garden, circa 2015.

    In-Ground Garden

    If you have a very large, square (or rectangular) sized patch, you may want to just till it up and use it as-is. It would be a miniature farm field, basically. With no sides, it takes longer to warm up in the spring, but it allows you to rearrange your garden each year (which is good, as you don’t want to plant the same thing in the same space, year after year). When making a very large garden of this sort, you will need to put down rocks, stones, or planks of wood to walk along between rows. While you can just leave the ground as it is, you will find that weeds come up very quickly and will threaten to overtake the whole garden. Also, walking on the dirt compresses it in ways that can negatively affect your plants. Walking on boards or beams, or on a brick path, will keep the garden from being compressed so much, while also keeping weeds down.

    Generally, you want to make an in-ground garden into rows and/or blocks, depending on what you’re growing. Vegetables like peas, beans, and tomatoes are best planted in rows. Potatoes, squash, and corn do better in blocks. You can plan out the garden to keep companion plants together, and keep your veggie foes apart.

    Requirements for an in-ground garden are a large, regular shaped space with enough sun, and the ability to till the soil in some way. While tilling can be done by hand, it’s not easy. You can rent or purchase a rototiller at most hardware stores these days, and there are expensive ones and cheap ones.

    (more…)

            

  • This case started in the United States District Court (D.D.C.) This is the court that covers Washington, D.C.

    Two cases were brought AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition v. United States Department of State and Global Health Council v. Trump. Docket Number: 25-cv-400 and 25-cv-402.

    The two cases were filed in the same court at nearly the same time.

    After the district court issued their TRO, the Trump administration appealed to the D.C. Circuit court.

    Midday yesterday, a federal district court ordered the Executive Branch to pay nearly $2 billion by 11:59 p.m. tonight as an interim remedy in a putative Administrative Procedure Act (APA) suit brought by ten plaintiffs—eight nonprofits and businesses that receive federal foreign-assistance funding and two membership associations whose members do. The order directs the Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to pay “all invoices and letter of credit drawdown requests” for reimbursements on foreign-aid-related contracts and grants for “work completed prior to” February 13, 2025. App., infra, 86a. On that date, the district court entered its original temporary restraining order (TRO), which barred the government from relying on the President’s Executive Orders as grounds for blanket suspension or termination of foreign-aid funding. App., infra, 86a. And the government has, since then, complied with that order, instead relying on its discretionary authorities and individual reviews. Neither the original TRO nor the district court’s subsequent clarifications in any way suggested that the government must pay particular invoices on particular dates.
    — Motion for stay, 24A831

    The state’s motion is better than I expected. My expectation was that this was going to be a full throated attack based on Article II standing and authorizations.

    The state goes on to point out that the court’s order requires them to pay all invoices and drawn-down requests even if those payments are not due, have not had normal vetting done (was the work done), have not been checked against the statement of work, or that these bills are legitimate in any way.

    The state also points out that there is no court record (it is not in the record) of the bills that the plaintiffs (bad guys) want paid.

    To be very clear, the government is committed to paying legitimate claims for work that was properly completed pursuant to intact obligations and supported by proper documentation. It is attempting to navigate the district court’s evolving orders—and the ensuing, resource-consuming contract-review process—as best it can. The government is undertaking significant efforts to ensure that it can make proper payments. Agency leadership reports, for example, that the Secretary of State “has directed that invoices identified by the [respondents]” in their submissions to the district court “be processed and expedited for payment without the ordinary vetting procedures,” and that approximately $4 million of such payments “are expected to be issued today.” App., infra, 146a. And the payment process is “being prioritized” by USAID. Ibid. The district court’s underlying orders are erroneous, but the government is doing what it reasonably can to comply in good faith.
    — id

    Of note, the state (the good guys), are pushing that this is a constitutional issue.

    When a case is appealed at the district level, it is appealed to the Circuit court. It is very unusual to skip directly to the Supreme Court. This was done.

    The state did appeal to the Circuit court. They were intending on dorking around to force the state to either pay the $2 billion or to directly violate the district court’s order. When the state filed with the Supreme Court, they informed the Circuit Court, which then issued their opinion.

    There is a guideline in the court system that says that TROs cannot be appealed. This does not stop the state (as bad guys) from appealing TROs that go against them. This happened in —Miguel Gonzalez, The Zelenskyy Drama, Miguel’s Substack (Feb. 28, 2025).

    The Circuit court was unwilling because the state (good guys) didn’t appeal the TRO when it was not as intrusive. The Circuit claims that this means the TRO can’t be appealed. They cited to Dellinger v. Bessent which is another case where the rogue inferior court decided that they could order the president around.

    Before the midnight deadline, Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay.

    I was surprised there was not more yelling about a single judge (Justice) doing this. But that could be because even the leftest understood that screaming about a single justice stopping a single judge might undermine their position.

    An administrative stay is issued before any briefings on the merits have taken place. They are issued when there is a possibility of a whip-lash situation. We saw this in the Duncan case out of California.

    The district court issued a final judgment saying that California’s ban on magazines was unconstitutional. This happened before Bruen. This led to what is known as “freedom week” when millions of magazines flooded into California. The state appealed to the Ninth Circus, which then put a stay on the judgment, stopping freedom week.

    When the same judge found that California’s magazine ban was still unconstitutional, post Bruen, he issued his final judgment and then put a 30-day administrative stay on his judgment.

    The state did appeal. The Ninth Circus did issue a stay. There was no Freedom Week II.

    The Chief Justice has ordered the parties to have all briefings in by noon today. The Supreme Court will then issue their order regarding vacating or staying the TRO. That will likely happen on Monday.

    Question of the week?

    Are you tired of winning yet? Is this what you voted for?

            

  • My mentor was a federal employee. He, and his team, worked odd hours. I would put in my 8 hours as a contractor and then go to his lab and work with him and his team until midnight or later.

    Somewhere along the way, people noticed that his team didn’t have set hours and raised a fuss. They complained to the IG that he and his team were mis-reporting their hours.

    This led to the IG sending people to investigate.

    Now, this was in a secured area. During normal hours, you could just walk in after you should your badge. After hours, you had to sign in and out.

    What this meant was that his team had security logs showing when they left for the night. And with a bit of work, they also had the time when people got to work.

    After a thorough investigation, they found that yes, the team was misreporting their hours.

    They were underreporting by 10 to 15 hours per week.

    For me, it didn’t make any difference. I was on salary to the contractor. The time I spent with my mentor, working on projects for the government, were not billable hours. I didn’t care. I learned astonishing things.

    Our system administrators were a pair of very sharp ladies. They arrived on time and they left on time. During their 8 hours, they worked constantly. I never felt like they gave less than 100%. When they needed to work late, they did.

    Others I worked with were the same way. They gave their 8 hours and left. We got what we were paying for.

    Some scientists over worked too.

    Then there were the “slackers”. They arrived at work exactly on time. They went to their desks, were seen, then went to the restroom for their morning dump. This lasted anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes.

    Subsequently, they went and did a bit of work before it was time for morning break. After the morning break, they had a pee smoke break. Then lunch, then a bit of work, then home, exactly on time.

    Total time working, maybe an hour and a half.

    A former friend worked for the state government. He was proud of the fact that he got paid for 8 hours of work per day, but on a normal day, he only spent about 2 hours working. The rest of the time he was doing own time projects/stuff.

    Now, sometimes people look like they are cheating, but they aren’t really.

    We had a group of scientists that looked lazy. They would get to work and sit around talking, reading the paper, for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or two. Then they would get busy pouring over results for a couple of hours. Then they would have another long gab session.

    After that, they would spend a bit of time putzing with their program before telling the program to “run”.

    They would twiddle their thumbs doing nothing until quitting time.

    They were incredibly productive. They submitted a run before they left for the day. That would run overnight. If they had the parameters right, the run would complete shortly after they got to work. They would then analyze the results and submit the next run.

    On Fridays, they would submit jobs that would run all weekend long. That made Mondays look like they were goofing off for an extended time as they waited for the runs to complete.

    Their work was so important that it justified a major computer upgrade. The new computer was 4 times as fast. What used to take them 16 hours of run time now only took 4 hours. They should now be able to get two or three runs per day done.

    Nope. With the faster computer, they were able to get more detailed results in the same 16-hour run time. They adjusted to the increased speed by answering more of the question more accurately.

    All of this is to say, when I see former federal employees screaming about being fired, my heart gives a little thump of happiness. If they are good or needed, they will be rehired. In the meantime, learn to code. I hear COBOL is a good choice.

            

  • This image came across my Facebook page this morning. It had the following rant attached:

    Copy pasta:
    Signal boosting.. CN: mentions the actions mandated by Ohio law to be taken by a doctor on the body of a girl suspected of not being “female enough” to play sports on a girl’s team, which plausibly verge on sexual assault.
    ——–
    This is my daughter. She just turned 9. Here is why I would never allow her to play middle or high school sports if we lived in Ohio…

    A few days ago, the Ohio Republicans passed a change to state law that was snuck in at the last minute, under the guise of “protecting” girls sports.
    Am. Sub. H. B. No. 151 (various versions of it are here)

    This law allows ANYONE to dispute the sex of an athlete on a school team. There are no safeguards in place to ensure that this is not used maliciously. Girls who do not look feminine enough, girls of color, girls who are “too good” are likely to be the biggest targets. But any girl could be targeted. Maybe someone doesn’t like her parents or maybe someone wants to make sure the opposing team doesn’t have enough eligible players.

    So what does a girl have to do to prove she is a girl? First, the physician has to examine the girl’s external and internal reproductive anatomy. I have to emphasize that this will impact girls as young as 5th or 6th grade, ~10-11 years old. A year or two older than my daughter.

    Step one to proving your correct sex is female: A doctor will need to spread open your labia and examine the size of your clitoris. A clitoris that is “too large” could be a sign that you are intersex and not female enough for sports. Step two to proving your correct sex is female: A doctor will then insert one or two gloved fingers inside your vagina, while pressing against your abdomen with their other hand, so they can feel your uterus and ovaries. This will likely be quite painful for these young girls, and extremely traumatic. There is no medical reason to do a pelvic exam on girls this young, absent any signs of a problem. This is sexual assault and will traumatize these girls. That is by design. This part of the exam would probably be covered by insurance, depending on how it is billed. But these next two steps would likely not be covered for most people. Step three to proving your correct sex is female: Your blood will be drawn and your testosterone levels measured. How much testosterone is too much? Unclear.
    Does having “high T” give girls an advantage? No, not always. But this bill leaves no room for nuance. Step four to proving your correct sex is female: Your blood will also be tested to see if you are XX or XY. Except not everyone is XX or XY and there are XY women who have no advantage in sports because of the nuances of their genetics, but that won’t matter here 🤷🏻‍♀️

    This bill offers protection from retaliation for people who report an athlete they suspect is not truly female. There is no requirements that they make these reports in good faith. There is no protection for the athletes accused of lying about their sex. Any athlete who suspects they were “harmed” by an athlete who lied about their sex can sue that school district. If that athlete’s parents are unwilling to have their daughter sexually assaulted, or cannot afford the testing, the district will have to pay $$ to the accuser. So from an administrative standpoint, you basically have to require that all female athletes do this testing in order to play interscholastic sports. Otherwise your district is in danger of having to forfeit games and losing litigation if you don’t have this paperwork up front. Interscholastic sports in Ohio will only be accessible to girls whose parents are willing to subject them to sexual assault and very expensive and unnecessary bloodwork.

    Congrats to everyone trying to “save” women’s sports from your trans athlete boogeymen. Is winning the most important part of high school sports? Because setting aside the incredible trauma and expense caused by this bill, at the end of the day, the message is that winning is what matters the most. That’s not the lesson I want my daughter to learn from sports.

    (more…)

            

  • People have a difficult time making hard choices.

    The Trolley Problem brings is one of the ways that we explore ethical choices. The general premises are that there are five people that will die if you do nothing. There is one person, who is currently safe, who can be sacrificed to save the five.

    Do you do nothing and let five people die, or do you throw the switch and kill the one?

    What if we change the problem statement a little, what if the one was a child? What if the one was a woman? What if the one was a “person of color”? What if it was your wife?

    Now take that same list of changes and insert it into the five. What if one of the five was a child, a woman, a person of color, your wife?

    Ok. How about if your daughter was the one and your son was one of the five?

    The problem hasn’t changed, but the emotional stress is greatly increased.

    Politicians know this. They use it to their advantage.

    The term is “Emotional Blackmail.”

    Consider the following dilemma, you can choose to pay more in taxes or the school system’s proposed budget is capped at a half million increase rather than the 3.5 million increase they were asking for.

    For me, that’s an easy choice. Cap at a 0.5 million increase. At which point the emotional blackmail begins.

    “If you don’t give use the extra three million dollars, we will have to fire teachers.”

    Is that really the only choice?

    That is the question I posed a teacher. What other things in the budget can be cut, before we have to fire teachers.

    Now, I’ve been told that I’m against teachers. That I oppose her. Why? Because I don’t want to cut teachers?

    For her, there are only two choices, pay or cut teachers. If I don’t want to pay more in taxes, I must hate teachers and want them fired.

    So I asked her about programs in the budget that could be cut instead. In our first iteration, there were no programs she was willing to cut.

    The problem she has is that every cut is equally bad. Every choice is equally bad. Since all the choices are bad, the only option is to get the 3 million dollars out of the stone of taxpayers.

    We had a similar issue at a family level years ago. We had a 16k windfall. We all agreed we would put that money into the homestead. The problem was that nobody could agree on what we should do.

    Should we get new siding for the house? Should we replace one of the vehicles? Should we pay off a loan?

    It wasn’t even that simple, there were about a dozen different projects or expenses we were considering.

    By default, humans will spiral rather than make a hard decision.

    I had to listen to people tell me that project A was more important than project B, but B was more important than C. And C was more important than A.

    It was a circle. Everything was more important than everything else.

    The first process was having everybody create an ordered list of by importance.

    They couldn’t do it. They all had situations where they had multiple things with equal importance. Or worse still, some couldn’t do it because they couldn’t choose.

    The method that did work was creating binary choices.

    We lay out a grid, in that grid we compare every item to every other item, asking if item row was more important than the item in the column.

    Once that grid is filled out, we can create an ordered list. Once we had ordered lists, we could present and come to an agreement as to what our priorities were.

    Roof Paint Gutters Truck Car Computer Foundation
    Siding Roof Siding Gutters Siding Siding Siding Foundation
    Roof Roof Roof Roof Roof Roof Roof
    Paint Gutters Paint Paint Paint Foundation
    Gutters Gutters Gutters Gutters Foundation
    New Truck Truck Truck Foundation
    New Car Car Foundation
    New Computer

    From this table, we can create an ordered list

    1. Roof
    2. Foundation
    3. Gutters
    4. Siding
    5. Paint
    6. Truck
    7. Car
    8. Computer

    The problem we have with our school budget is that every program is equally important. In the end, they will likely fire teachers and programs.