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I am not sure why some on both sides are trying to use courts. Courts are there to resolve disputes. We have Congress to write laws. If society agrees on something, it will become a law or even an amendment. If there is an meregency, we have Presidents, Governors, Mayors …
If you push important decisions on judges, you take away pressure from elected representatives, who are now free to play games with OPM (other people’s money) instead of resolving serious problems.
you can as well say that Jews are historically Tories, at least the first modern politician was. It looks like lots of Yakkies were Republican supporters during Lincoln times. Then, of course, Eastern European Jews came and supported socialists (Eugene Debs 38%) and also Democrats. I wonder what percentage of Orthodox Jews arriving iup to 1920s were left or not wing, as lots of socialists were aggressively anti-religious. Maybe this political differences between religious and secular Jews started already then? At this point, there are 2 Jewish groups that are pro R- : Orthodox and Russians. This seems to correspond to other US clusters – more religious are more R- and those who came from Cuba, Venezuala. So, it is either fears of prosecution by liberals or actual experience.
GH >> . Masks and social distancing are the ONLY real options
I am thinking at this point that we are neglecting another public health tool – tracing and early warning.
COVID propagation is “clustered” – it is one day here, another day there. Not just my words, three is research on that. That explains people who say – it is not in our community any more, and then a month later – it is.If this is true in general, it happens even more in Jewish community: there are multiple connections within and weak connections to outside. This may explain (ltzad zhut) why so many Jews behave as if there is no virus – because there is none. Right now. And then it comes next day and propagates very quickly.
So, in addition to pressing people to be more careful, we probably need our own tracing and warning system, same way we have Hatzolah. We can’t wait until government tracers figure out who is a husid and who is a misnagid. WSJ recently had an article about Syrians between Brooklyn, Deal, etc who have a whatsup group between doctors who serve different locations of the same connected community. Anyone has such tracing/warning system in your community?
(1), just start your own social media. FB and GOOG started by 3 young Jews. Come up with a startup idea and go pitch them, maybe they’ll listen to your arguments and correct their views.
only Republicans on the 3rd, Democrats on the 4th
(literally, when the late mail comes)
ujm >> Better to give up a percent of economic growth
I respect your position. If it is 2% growth (and who can predict that?) v total immorality, I am with you. I am thinking more of turning economics into stagnation, aggressive “you did not build that” attitude that destroys the “westward expansion” spirit that, I hope, still exists in this country.
That is, economics is also morals. Torah v Derech Eretz
GH >> write-in the name of someone who was niftar 30 years ago
Nixon?!
He is plainly wrong. Yiftach BeDoro KiShmuel BeDoro.
@Reb Elizer, you are on a roll with good stories. Thanks, we need them.
I recall story of r Meltzer: he was asked to write a recommendation letter. He wrote it, thought about it, and then tore it up. He explained that he wanted to make sure that he is not refusing out of laziness.
CTLAWYER, regardless of how one feels re:court packing, it is a valid legal option. What do you think about Biden’s obvious evasion? Yes, it may be in his interest, but I feel uncomfortable how little we know about Biden’s positions. So, he is making no promises and can do whatever he decides.
He already broke the promise he made at the last week townhall. He conceded that voters should know his position on packing and he will announce his position “depending how the confirmation process goes”. Now, he is referring to a commission.
In good old times, we were watching Soviet news to see who is standing closer to Brezhnev today and whether he looks sicker than usual. Now, we will be reading tea leaves again – is AOC or Joe Liberman heading the commission? If both, who is standing on the right?
@REb Eliezer, thanks for a good moshal.
Found interesting information for those who ask – why can’t we roam the streets while others are doing protests.
Statistical analysis of protests in May showed no increase in COVID cases in the cities with protests.
Main reason – people in these cities stayed home more and increased social distancing after the protests started. Overall effect on cases is slightly below zero, so presumably – some increase in those who protest and decrease in those who stayed home. Look for research by Joseph Sabia for more info.So, if you plan on protests, please make sure you block and scare away others from risky activities – subways, shopping centers, shuls, schools.
@doe. You are right, I am not support Mussolini. But note that Nazi stands for NSDAP – National Socialist German Worker’s party. Are you against the Nation? against the socium? or, has vehsolom, workers?
@ujm. >> Morality is more important than better economics.
It is not always moral to have bad economics, especially in an important country like US. If US wouldn’t have supplied allies during WW2, lots of nations would be speaking German. If US would not have won Cold War economically, they would be speaking Russian.
It is also not moral to have bad economics internally, as you will have more poverty.
Now, if you want to frame it – higher growth rates v. more protection for vulnerable groups, that would be a valid debate.
@Decency,
the fact is, and always was, that people see Jews as a group. How “few” are “few”? You can count yourself by number of people here who protest masks; by number of announcements of levayas and requests for tehilim; by statistics coming of Israeli towns.Those responsible are wrong even if the whole world will be doing the same thing.
Maybe those without masks should use Rambam’s advice – if you are really into an aveira, go far away, and do it there. He does recommend dressing up in despicable black, but maybe at least take the hats off.
I don’t know people talking to the governor, so I don’t know whether their super-polite manner is appropriate. But you can also here that the speakers do not have a command of language, are not able to make a full sentence, make list of “first” and “second” that has several “first”s, and probably did not prepare for five minutes to make a list of points they plan to discuss. Other posters noticed that too. I don’t know whether these short extracts are representative of representatives of the communities involved.
flowers – I am suggesting to invert the question: instead of asking “Do I need to keep children home”, ask “Do I need to send them to school”? I don’t know your personal circumstances. The answer might as well be yes, but you uoght to consider it.
As to asking Hashem, there is an idea of asking Hashem to help you make a wise decision first, rather than first come up with a decision on your own, and then ask Hashem to give it to you.
se2015 – yeridat hadorot? The smiling Arkansas governor had an alternative both times – 2 WW2 veterans with long productive career , and one innovative CEO; they were all judged dull or eccentric compared with the cheerful and pretty smart governor. Now the alternative is a guy who spent 50 years in non-executive public service whose Brahmin co-runner accused him of throwing her under a bus because she is black.
There is a lot of discussion here about style, but what about substance?!
how do you feel about that notorious “Biden law” and how it affected all of us?!Decency, it is ok to be concerned, but please start by telling the Jews around you who misbehave to stop it. And test those who might be sick in order to stop transmission instead of purposely testing healthy people to run up the numbers. If this testing is subsidized, this is also geneivah in addition to retziha,
Edited
interestingly, despite all the vitriol from both sides, social differences in the society decreased according to polls, which I think is healthy:
white subgroups – women, elderly, and non-college educated support Trump less than in 2016both blacks and Hispanics support Biden less than Hillary in 2016, including all subgroups – men, women, young, old, with and without education. same for white college educated.flowers. Repeating: you are concerned with forms and testing you are getting from school. You are also concerned about relationship between schools and government. I am suggesting a solution – take your kids from this toxic environment, where either or both school and government are doing something wrong and may hurt your kids. Keep them at home until situation resolves.
Gadol, previous election showed how much in the stock market is driven by personalities of traders and their very human failures. 80/20 prediction was no excuse not to plan for the 20%. To answer your next question – stock market reaction after 2016 election that was later confirmed by economy for next several years seems like a pretty strong almost-controlled experiment in intervention. To analyze further, don’t look at currently floated explanations, but review history of predictions. Just from memory, economy and market consistently outperform predictions from experts both partisan (Prof. Krugman) and non-partisan after elections. Same thing post-covid. Would appreciate if someone with opposite bias goes thru the exercise of checking a time series of such predictions, I would not trust myself here. So, it is at least a reasonable hypothesis that Trump’s economic policies are beneficial for the country.
I agree that market seems to be ok with both candidates. It may be Biden’s reputation for centrism. I am not sure what we can use as a predictor of his policies. He has opinions expressed and sometimes updated over time, but no record of actions, whether positive or negative. Joe Liberman confirms that Biden is a true centrist, while liking Trump’s foreign policy… Robert Gates says Biden was consistently wrong on foreign policy, while not liking Trump’s. Go figure. I presume he’ll appoint centrists into key positions and make everyone come down. Chinese and Russians will not do anything drastic, but will continue pushing everywhere where we don’t stand up to them.
Another part of stock market calm may be that some of the positive changes introduced by Trump will be hard to reverse. Are we going back to see China again as benign partner? will we stop pressing Europeans from cooperation with Chinese (5G) and Russians (NordStream 2)? Stop fracking? Whenever Biden admitted to a policy, it was to continue Trump’s ones. I think taxes is where he claimed to want a lot, but many people are skeptical that he’ll be able to push that through.
You are inconsistent on SALT, I think: you reject Trump’s benefits for Israel, but you are OK with SALT for Jews in NY, even if SALT is a shameless give away both “to the rich” and to the state governments. I am sure it also discriminates against blacks, multi-gender, illegal immigrants, and whomever else Dems claim to support.
quality polls: we are talking here about prediction that matter – winning electoral college. Generic polls help clarify specific prediction elements. for example, there is consistent reporting these trends:
pro-Biden: that most people have fixed views (not like in 2016, when most undecided moved to Trump in last month, there is no significant 3rd party vote, elderly blame pandemic on Trump
pro-Trump: minimal enthusiasm among Biden voters, some Hispanic and even Black voters are for Trumpubiquitin.
So, we agree that politicians are playing their games to convince voters. It is part of the price we are paying for giving everyone a right to vote. There is certain wisdom in the community, but to a limit.As to “live” constitution, I like the “contract” argument. I do not see your reply to that. If we have a doubt, we can always go to voters and to the States and let them clarify. This may be a hard path during social emergencies – civil war, KKK, etc but it is a feasible process. US even has two amendments on drinking.
Gadol, I agree with your prediction. From the a different angle: If Hashem wanted Biden or Hillary or Trump to win, he could arrange a landslide. Maybe Hashem simply wants us to have competitive elections?
Why? Beyond the obvious effect on society, maybe he wants us to review our assumptions about society; to care about the whole country (like davening in the minyan v by yourself); learn to speak respectfully and truthfully instead of simply repeating propaganda; and above – to be humble as we can’t predict an outcome of an event in 2 weeks after probably 100K people were already asked and 95% of them are not changing their opinion ever.
flowers, I am giving you a sincere suggestion, not trying to mock. Would keeping kids at home help resolve your concerns? If not, what are the issues?
It worked for a lot of people this year, and did not worked for others. In some general areas, 30-50% of parents have positive experience with online learning. I would think, that Jewish parents will be even more keen on teaching their children. Again, not everyone is happy, but there is enough encouraging experience.
@Torah, LMGTFY. 82% Hilary on election day, 75% several days before. This year, bets were 50-50 on Sep 1, then Biden grew to 68% a week ago – sharply in 2 weeks up to Oct 11 (from 54 to 68) and is now sliding down erasing half that last gain at same speed.
I recall model projections were about 70-30 for Hillary. Overall, it seems that Trump has 1 out of 3 chances to get elected. The question is, did he already the 1 (out of 3) already :).
I was thinking about posting a forecast in a statistics discussion group that showed that variance of the forecast is higher than reported and, thus, anything can happen. I stopped myself because I did post such forecast in 2012 – and I was both right (variance was underestimated) and wrong (the error went the other way – Obama’s numbers were higher than expected).
Trying to recall stock reaction – futures went down overnight and then up next day or in a day. The later explanation was that traders did not consider Trump’s victory at all, so they withdrew funds and took some time to do analysis that they were supposed to do earlier. Thus, if you want to analyze Trump’s effect on stock market, you need to count from 2016 election day.
flowers, is it by any chance for you to daven together with your children? Do that in the morning. Then, open a sefer with them, then let them learn sefer by themselves, then put on ixl.com to practice math, while you work, then go for a walk with them. Then, do some more work when they are sleep. Vary with ages, of course. You will feel less stress, you don’t need to think what tests school will do to your children, or whether you will get virus from kissing them. Try this for a week and let us know.
@Decency, I have enough testimony both from this site, other sites, and from very reliable direct witnesses that there are a number of places that are not doing the right thing. you are right, compliance, as well as the virus, are very clustered. Obviously, people who are sitting at home are not visible. Maybe you should organize masked processions to both City Hall and yeshivos that do not comply.
other measures:
betting averages. currently Biden 60% Trump 40%
stock market – Biden predictor: green industries (Tesla) tax increase (consumer goods, communications, utilities to lose 10% of profit). One such fund quoted by WSJ Oct 3 shows same 60-40%, same as in 2016.akuperma >>Other statistics show that most infected people were wearing masks.
If most people wear masks, then most infected people would wear masks. Possibly from interaction with people not wearing mask.
To get an idea whether being careful works , look at plots of Rt transmission. Rt shows how many people one person infects. If Rt is less than 1, then pandemic is dying out. If it is higher than 1, it increases.
Rt was _4_ in NY state on March 1. This is what happens when nobody takes precautions. It fell to 1 on March 25, when shelter started, went down to 0.7 (significant decrease) until end of May when reopening started, and went back to 0.9-1.1 range until now. So, you can see the possible range is between 0.7 and 4.
Right now, Rt in NY State is at 0.99 (maybe even 0.9999999?!). So, you can see that Rt can be above (increasing pandemic) or below 1 (decreasing) just maybe on your actions below. This illustrates the Rambam that says that one should imagine himself as tipping the scales of the world.
in March-April
akuperma:
>> wearing a mask reduces the chance of getting sick from Covid19,
Reducing chance of transmission in one person has dramatic increase on transmission over time. With say 5 day transmission, just 10% decrease in one person, will reduce transmission by 50% in one month.@Decency,
it is a reality for at least a couple of thousands of years that the world pays attention to what the Jews do. So, you need to behave accordingly. Start with doing minimally required by the government instead of pointing out that there is another place that does things wrong.huju >> Right wing unhappiness with the Supreme Court goes back to the school desegregation decision of 1954,
Maybe to at least, FDR’s bending Supreme Court to his will in 1930s? Probably even earlier in progressive era.
>> I personally hope we will pack the court. However as it would scare some people away, I dont want him to lose votes over it.
So, you are not above manipulating voters if needed, and you are not really outraged by R- senate, you just using it as a good talking point. I don’t think this is a great place to get extra votes for your candidate, I would prefer an intellectual discussion instead. So, to turn there, here are some thoughts. Not knowing much about the topic, I would appreciate corrections:
what is it about R- and D- judges? beyond political preferences, this seems to be an argument between “originalists” and “live constitution”. We have, l’havdil, similar attitudes. One seems to be, ironically, between teacher and student: R’ Eliezer saying that he only taught what he heard from his teachers, and R’ Akiva – the only one who ask R “Eliezer everything about magical cucumbers – who claimed that if he were in the time of death penalty, he found find all kind of excuses to exempt everyone.
Of course, this connection is not a proof of anything, as it matters what you are interpreting. Discussing why we should or should not expand on Hashem’s work is different from reasons to update a document written by a committee.
Back to the US. Originalists are treated currently as stubborn outliers who try to reach out back to outdated time, but of course they were there first, before the mahloket started. It seems that “living” idea corresponds to progressive era when it looked like new scientific methods can drastically improve society, even before population realizes “what is good for them”. This looks like a milder version of socialism that took over Eurasia. There is here somewhat primitive (from current point of view) idea that founders knew static science, like mechanics, and now we (progressives) learned wonderful new things like biology, evolution, etc and this analogy can be applied to social sphere.
I think Jews would more naturally agree with strict contractual view (we do often even interpret Brit with Hashem as a binding contract) – Constitution is a binding document that states signed, and you are welcome to update it via amendment process, allowing original signers, states, to exercise their rights as originally agreed upon. you are also welcome to change the whole process, again, via a new Constitution. With this line of thinking, it is unclear why we need “living” constitution. I am not treating fairly here (1) how expansive to treat certain terms and (2) what to do when there seems to be an intolerable injustice. Both of these issues need to be addressed, but I think they are overshadowed by liberal overreach, trying to pass anything they can through the courts when Courts were liberal.
Dip, you are right.
Shuls should also increase ventilation – keep windows open, have Merv-13 and higher filters, and high-risk individuals should stay home. Still, any reduced transmission likely reduces spread and severity of the illness in the case of outbreak.@Syag, not going to shul is a private matter. Endangering other people is different. You may have explanations, but mixing these things up is disingenuous. Note all the unfortunate news on the YWN front page: these are consequences of behaviors 2-3 weeks ago.
@מלאך המות
Can we look at the sources that support this position? There are religions that hold by fatalism, but I think religion of this website generally does not.
I can understand that someone could be destined for an outcome that he can’t change with his action at some point. Are you saying that all anti-maskers are, has vesholom, in this position? and furthermore, they perfectly know that they are? maybe they should try teshuva ASAP, “what do you have to lose” (TM)
I see one possible justification, if, again has veshalom, the whole world, or just some nations, are being punished. Maybe then we should focus on a larger aspects of teshuva instead of fighting the invisible virus. Is this your position?
Charlie >> not made available to the public because of privacy restrictions
Not picking a fight here, just an observation. US culture became so full of rules that we do not respond well to real time threats. With such an emergency, is the data still behind firewalls? There are ways to anonymize data, release some aggregated version, etc. I am not claiming that there is no sharing, maybe this is happening somewhere, but I see such attitude in other places where safety (of my job) is more important than the mission.
Again, hoping not to pick a fight, but current administration did a number of emergency steps breaking the rules – authorizing tele-medicine, emergency use, pro-active funding of vaccine manufacturing … I imagine there was a lot of resistance.
@maskup, do you want to try wearing a face shield? They are usually worn with the mask, but if you don’t plan to wear a mask, a face shiled would work for you?
from physics POV – it does not restrain oxygen; it unquestionably stops direct droplets, and probably reduces smaller aerosol as airflow goes from the bottom
sociologically – it shows people that you are not brazen and will reduce hillul Hashem and blood pressure for everyone. Also less ayn hara for you fro mbeing cursed by passerbys
psychologically – you’ll prove to yourself that you are not such a lazy bum, but can bother spending $5 on the pandemic
Syag, >> when you see people are lax in halacha and Torah laws as well
Can’t answer for GH, but I did point out to the kids that it is hillul Hashem when we saw Jewishly-dressed drivers driving dangerously and in disregard to other drivers. And at this point, when Rabbis from multiple groups paskening to be careful, I think such behavior is becoming CLEARLY against halakha [it was against halakha from day 1, but we can say that people were not warned].
Incidently (?), Eruvin daf yomi discusses how to consider a Jew who openly violates just one area of halakha. We currently consider most un-observant Jews stolen children, but maybe we are now seeing a new generation of apikoirsem emerging, who are fully versed in Shulhan Oruch.
@Decency, transmission is very clustered. A city or a country can be ok one day, and not OK another day.
I did not hear about any cases in the community for several months, but then one family visited relatives in NYC and sent multiple kids to several school next week. Everything closed down for a couple of weeks. How far transmission is going depends really on how close kids and parents were in contact with others.
So, if you are a member of similar community with not many cases and connections to general population, you can either be careful all the time, or establish an early warning system where people report cases and be ready with maybe 10-20 people getting sick and everyone else getting back to careless life in 2 weeks. Ask your Rav what is better,
akuperma. If yo get infected, you have considerable chance to be a cause of someone dying down the chain coming from you. Currently at about 80%. How do you feel about this?
@charliehall (quoting and criticizing me saying) “there seems to be a tendency”
of course, I though I qualified enough with “seems”, passive voice, and “tendency” 🙂
but we need to treat uncertainty appropriately: there is current estimate and, then, there is an estimate of a chance that this path can lead to success, that is E [P(X>t)] v E(X), pardon my French.
So, when allocating resources (and hopes), you need to look where success is possible.
Look up literature on multi-armed bandits.In this particular case, I see similar age-related pattern repeating in 3 cases, so it is worth investigating – and it does correspond to the rumors floating around. So, we should not reject “un-scientific” experiments, collected without controls, we just need to look for ways to validate them.
With this data, do you know if more detailed data is publicly available, it would much more productive to review it in more detail, say, separate by country, use train/test to generate hypotheses on one set, and test on the other.
I understand their position – Senate can hold hearings if they want to. I think this is your (C).
As they did not vote before 2016, the voters were free to object to that and elect (even) more Democrats. This is what Senate 6 year terms are for – they are subject to pressure, but not fully so.what is your view on the updated Biden’s position on packing – he will tell us some time before election. That is, he can’t say he will not to lose one group of voters, he cannot tell us he won’t not to lose another group and, well, he apparently cannot say nothing as he is losing a third group …
maybe we can find his positions on Hunter’s Mac?