On Peter Thiel, Apoplexy, and the Definition of a Loophole

There's a common phenomenon in that people with a political axe to grind try to stretch the definitions of commonly used words to suit their purpose. The most well-known example is Bill Clinton attempting to incorporate ambiguity into the definition of is. A more current example is Democrats trying to expand the commonly-applied definition of infrastructure.

Now an author at Slate (an internet publication that mixes liberal opinions and thought with an extremely generous portion of politically charged and emotion-provoking language) wants to describe what Peter Thiel did with his taxes as taking advantage of a loophole. 

In this piece, there's no indication of anything close to a loophole. My definition of a loophole would be when someone, through investigating alternatives and the fine print, finds a maneuver in which she can do something in an indirect manner that is ostensibly forbidden. An example is the back-door Roth IRA. While it's legal, it takes additional knowledge and research, and several more steps to get around the intended and articulated income restriction for a Roth contribution. Another example is delaying the Sheliak from eradicating a colony by calling for a contractually agreed upon arbitration by a race that is currently in hibernation.

While that's how I, and I would venture the average person thinks of a loophole, my takeaway is that the author believes a loophole to be "a result different from what was intended or is typical." What Thiel did was to, when he was middle-income, before he was wealthy beyond imagination, put an amount of money, which was below the maximum contribution at the time, into his Roth IRA. The same as many millions of similarly-situated Americans. He did nothing they couldn't have done. Where his experience diverged, however, was that he used that money to buy an investment not available to them. (This detail was not included in the Slate article).

In essence, he used the Roth IRA to get around taxes for an investment, which is what it was designed to do. I strain to think of a way in which this can be described as taking advantage of a loophole. What exactly is the loophole that he found? To be a loophole, his action must run afoul of the intent of the law. 

While he may have eventually used it in ways not anticipated, there is no single action Thiel took that I'd describe as taking advantage of a loophole. The aspect that comes closest is that he used his money to purchase stock not available to the public. But this is common enough, especially among professional investors, that I don't see it as taking advantage of a loophole. Imagine, you have a Roth IRA, and you also have a regular account. You want to purchase non-public shares; which account do you purchase them for? Doesn't it stand to reason that you choose the one that will have the lowest total costs? People make this decision every day, and it's not considered taking advantage of a loophole. If a regular Joe or Jill invested money from their Roth IRA in a company that exploded, or a crypto currency, or an IPO and became fabulously wealthy, would you say they took advantage of a loophole? Why should Thiel be described differently?

In this case, my conclusion is that certain people want to call this a loophole because of the parties involved and the amounts eventually involved.

None of the above is to say that I wouldn't be in favor of changes to the Roth IRA to prevent some of this. I would probably support a size limit on a Roth and other potential changes to prevent such massive accumulations. Another limitation I might support would be restricting purchases to investments available to the public.

As an aside, I don't know how much of it is to appeal to readers' sense of outrage in order to get clicks or that rich people and Republicans and especially rich Republicans drive certain people into a frenzy, but we should not encourage screeds that claim that legal and not even tricky financial decisions "induce apoplexy" or describing a rich Republican as a "comic book villain." 

The author also claims without evidence that Thiel "generally seems to view taxes as theft." He links to nothing here, and I can find nothing to corroborate this opinion. In this interview, Thiel talks about taxes in terms of international competitiveness. Taxes should be simplified, lower marginal rates, consumption over savings. He also states that the lower effective rate on rich people raises legitimate questions.

As a second aside, it's also interesting to observe the magnitude to which certain elements warp people's judgment, obscuring to them the truth and causing them to see evil where none exists. In this case, the immensity of the wealth, coupled with the fact that it's Peter Thiel, and also that the wealth is going untaxed make for a trifecta of apoplexy-inducing factors.

The original ProPublica piece has much more detail and information in it. 

Open Your Eyes to Your Tribe's Failings

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse recently tweeted the following image. 

The message is clear: Democrats want to build bridges and Republicans want to burn them down. Because Senator Whitehouse is a politician, this declaration of moral superiority shouldn't be taken too seriously. Yes, it would be great if politicians were good people whose currency was facts, didn't disparage those who disagreed with them, and didn't exaggerate differences, but that's not the world we live in.

The problem is that so many people, Democrats and Republicans alike, believe that their side is the side of honest, good-faith, pro-unity, compromising paragons. The people I tend to agree with recognize that neither party has a monopoly on virtue or vice, but on Twitter, which is mostly Democrats, frequently declare that Democrats are saintly while Republicans are malicious, completely ignoring the continuous caravan of counter examples.

There's no question that Republicans have not been angels (the Merrick Garland stunt, the unwillingness to compromise or even put forward ideas on innumerable policies, 85% of Trump's tweets), but to disabuse the left of their misperception, here is a list to reflect on.

Starting with the courts, recall the treatment of Robert Bork. Democrat Senator Alan Cranston "urged colleagues to form a 'solid phalanx' of opposition." Senator Ted Kennedy shouted that Bork would send women to "back-alleys" for abortions, resegregate America, ban the teaching of evolution, approve of unrestricted government censorship. Neither of these sound particularly bridge-building to me. Then Democrats tried to prevent any Republican-nominated minorities from getting to the Supreme Court. First, Clarence Thomas was accused of sexual harassment after he was nominated, then for the first time in history, a nomination was blocked by way of filibuster. Most who followed the controversy believe that Estrada was blocked solely because he was Latino, and Democrats didn't want the first Latino Supreme Court Justice to have been Republican-appointed. By 2005, Democrats had filibustered 10 judges, and Republicans were ready to junk the filibuster, but both sides backed down.

On Trump's three nominees, little needs to be said.

On Trump himself, Democrats' willingness to build bridges was clear. Their initial response was to resist everything Trump, holdover bureaucrats worked against their new boss, leaks were rampant. Democrats could have won a compromise on DACA, but Dick Durbin blew up any potential compromise. Democrats filibustered Covid relief to prevent Trump a political victory before the election.

Hillary Clinton called Trump voters a basket of deplorables. Obama denigrated those who disagreed with him by saying they cling to their guns and religion, then said they're being sold a swamp of crazy. These are the nominees for President for Democrats, exemplifying how their voters feel. These are not the quotes of people trying to build bridges.

Let the Market Build EV Stations

President Biden's recent Jobs Act proposal  includes $174 billion to "win the EV market." This money will go towards supporting domestic supply chains for EVs, updating factories, and building batteries and EVs, replace 50,000 diesel transit vehicles and electrify 20% of school buses. Interestingly, it will "establish grant and incentive programs...to build a national network of 500,000 EV charges by 2030."

First some facts. There are currently 1.8 million EVs on US roads, and 100,000 charging points at 41,000 public locations. This does not include the primary way EV owners charge their car, at home. 80% of car charging takes place at the driver's home. EVs make up less than 1% of the 276 million cars in US. 

Granted, EVs make up a larger percentage (3%) of annual, new car sales, and a percentage that is expected to grow. Some experts predict there will be 35 million EVs on the road by 2030.

There's no question that there will be a need for additional charging stations as the decade progresses, but there's a huge question as to why it's necessary for the federal government to spend money to build them. To begin with, there's no market failure here; the market can solve this problem and it's done so before. There's another type of vehicle that can transport 1-5 people across roads which requires periodic replenishments of a fuel source. Unlike an EV, though, the fuel source it runs is not available in everyone's home, but must be obtained at special stations that are designed to supply it. 

There are more than 100,000 gas stations in the United States. These gas stations were built by private companies across the country to satisfy the demand for gasoline. They were a natural evolution of market forces. As more people bought cars, more people needed gasoline, so more gasoline stations were built. The stations weren't distributed evenly across the 50 states, but were distributed according to demand for them so that the current network provides enough gasoline at just the right places so that drivers can drive as they please.

This was all done without a $174 billion dollar jobs plan providing incentives and grants. There is no reason one is needed for electricity charging stations. This is contrary to Noah Smith who claims that there's private companies cannot do on their own.

The only reason one may be needed is because the market won't solve this problem as fast as some people want. I would quibble with whether that is a need, but that at least is a rationale. In fact, one could make the case that it's a good idea to front money that we know will be spent anyway, but that's only under very narrow circumstances. The fronted money must be allocated in a way to ensure that it is merely accelerating what would have already happened and not direct funds wastefully.

From Business Insider:

EVgo's Levy, who has held positions at the Department of Energy and in the Obama White House, says there are risks to building too many charging stations too quickly. Charging infrastructure needs to stay just ahead of EV ownership and demand, not drastically outpace it, he says.

That's because overbuilding can crater the economics of the charging business, he said, leading to large numbers of stations that are underutilized and unprofitable to operate.

It's a mistake that's been made in the past — with significant consequences. As part of the 2009 Recovery Act, the Department of Energy allocated $100 million in grants to a company named Ecotality to construct more than 10,000 charging stations. Four years later, Ecotality filed for bankruptcy. An audit from that year found that demand for EVs hadn't grown as quickly as anticipated, and that the majority of the commercial charging stations Ecotality had built suffered from low usage.

No one can predict the future, especially ten years out. Perhaps there will be this much demand for electric cars, but it may be significantly lower or higher. Different areas of country will have different levels of take-up. Different areas will have different propensities for short-distance travel versus long-distance travel. The former can be accommodated through at-home charging. There are a thousand questions that must be answered to know how many charging points will be needed and where they will be most beneficial. The market answers those questions. Government cannot possibly simultaneously consider all of these factors and evolve as rapidly. This is why there must be a high bar for government involvement and someone needs to consider carefully whether the benefits will outweigh the costs.

To ensure alignment with demand and supply considerations, the best way to structure this money is in the form of loans, not grants. With loans, the borrowers have a much stronger incentive to choose carefully. As the above shows, even with loans, many companies went bankrupt. Does anyone believe that throwing money at companies will lead to better results than loans? Does anyone have confidence that the government has learned from its mistakes and that it won't let political considerations cloud investment decisions? 

$174 billion comes out to more than $500 for every American. If money had to be allocated by asking each American to put in $500 to achieve these goals, how many would vote yes? What lesson should we learn from the idea that Democrats want to pass something that a majority of Americans wouldn't pay for themselves if they had to? To be sure, Americans don't think the costs will come out of their pocket; they support the proposal because the benefits are $500 and the perceived costs to them are much lower.

Biased News - Dissection of an Article

I read the Wall Street Journal every day. In the past year, I've noticed gradual slippage of objectivity where a left-of-center viewpoint breaks through more and more. The best arguments from the left are included, while the worst arguments are excluded and not scrutinized and only weak arguments from the right-of-center are included. Because I read a lot of news, I know a lot of the right-of-center arguments and the left-of-center arguments and can tell when good and bad arguments are being used or omitted, but an article from today's Wall Street Journal is a great example.

The article is about the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. Democrats passed this in Congress with the support of 5 Republicans, but its future in the Senate looks rocky. By this fact alone, the reader (and the writers) should assume a certain strength of arguments from both sides.

The first two sentences are innocuous, "most significant change to labor law in decades", unions pressuring Biden, and the vote count. Then this:

"Backers say the legislation would be a major advancement in employer rights..." followed by "[Opponents] assailed the bill, saying it would trample on state laws and endanger the flexibility that ride-share and delivery and drivers enjoy."

Ask yourself, right now, with the little information you have, whom do you support at this point in the article? I'm obviously right of center, but the "assailers"' argument seems much narrower and weaker than the supporters--"major advancement in rights" vs. "trample on state laws" and "less flexibility" for an extremely narrow set of employers. Do these summaries of the two sides seem relatively balanced? Perhaps the writers did use the best summary for the opponents, though, let's continue.

The next paragraphs are inside baseball paragraphs and are fine. Then in the sixth paragraph, the article provides the first concrete piece from the bill: $50,000 penalties for employers who violate the National Labor Relations Act and a 10 day timeline for union-employer negotiations to commence. Since there's no context for the fine (what is the current fine, what would be the actual practical implications) and no implications of the second, my first reaction was that these actually sound reasonable and fairly innocuous.

Then the harmful impacts: makes it easier for gig workers and franchised workers to unionize. No specifics, unlike above, and no context. Plus, these are painted as positives: "easier to unionize." This would be a great time to talk about how California's legislators passed legislation that had unforeseen consequences, leading to many layoffs and then the voters overturned. Instead of saying this though, they spin it as Uber and Lyft spent $200M "allowing them to bypass a state law intended to provide...protections for drivers." 

Is this objective and informative? The reader has no idea, from the story, that the California law was problematic, and the fact that a majority of Californians, after seeing some of the effects decided to undo it was minimized by describing this as corporations winning "a victory" by spending money on a ballot measure. Can we describe the PRO Act itself as "Unions win victory after spending X million dollars electing Democrats"?

This is the most obvious example of shading news coverage according to political bias. No one should consider this description as objective and high quality journalism. I don't know how newspapers work behind the scenes, but I don't understand how editors allow this.

Next there's more inside baseball, mentioning the effect on filibuster, criticism of Biden from progressives, multiple paragraphs on unions effect on elections, and finally mention of the Reconciliation process.

There is no further discussion of the elements of the bill, and I am left thinking that either Republicans' opposition to this bill is disproportionate to the strength of their arguments or that this article is omitting a lot of details. Well, doing a search shows that it's the latter, which isn't surprising. While at this point, I don't have much trust that most news outlets will present the best right-of-center arguments, in this case NPR does describe the bill more than Wall Street Journal.

It describes five primary effects of the legislation: 1) Eradication of State Right to Work Laws 2) Outlawing company-sponsored meetings of employees to discuss unionization 3) Arbitration and mediation for first contracts 4) Outlawing the use of immigration status 5) monetary penalties.

#5 was the detail provided by Wall Street Journal's article. #1 and #2 primarily, and #3 to some degree explain why Republicans' opposition will be strong. Republicans obviously support states' rights and Right to Work laws, and the federal government coming in and nullifying laws passed in individual states would be a non-starter for Republicans. Outlawing company sponsored meetings would also be hugely problematic and calls for context in the story. Firstly, it seems like it may be a 1st amendment issue. Secondly, practically, banning employer-sponsored meetings and discussion of unionization seems a pretty radical and unnecessary way to prevent undue influence (which should be banned).

Neither of these were mentioned by the Wall Street Journal's article but are absolutely integral in understanding the opposition and the issue. They are also easily discoverable. Their absence from this story borders on negligence, but is clearly a sign of poor journalism, not just under-informing readers but attempting to bias them.

Is Raya and the Last Dragon about 2021 America?

***Mild Spoilers for Raya and the Last Dragon***

Raya and the Last Dragon, Disney's most recent animated feature film, offers a much needed lesson for today. Its theme and message are timeless and are sorely needed in the fractured world in which it finds itself. While the moral it espouses is not new, those who practice and preach it are as endangered in our world as the dragons are in its. 

In Raya, the story begins six years after society collapses, and centuries after a war that nearly destroyed the world. Five hundred years ago, creatures called Druuns, shapeless monsters that turn living things they envelop into stone, ravaged the world, petrifying humans and dragons alike. Humans had no defense against them, but dragons had the power to fight them. Despite their magic, even the dragons succumbed. When only a handful of dragons remained, the final dragons forged their powers into a gemstone which neutralized the Druuns permanently, allowing humans to flourish again. 

No longer threatened by the Druuns nor guided by the dragons, humans behaved as humans do, splitting into factions and becoming mistrustful of others. Their world, Kumandra, splits into five countries representing the body of a dragon - fangs, spine, heart, talon, and tail. For 500 years, the tribes enjoy an uneasy peace. While they don't trust each other and are always prepared for battle, power is roughly equal across the tribes and a multilateral cold war results.

Raya's father Benja leads Heart and protects the gemstone containing the dragons' power. The story begins when Benja decides that it's time to reunite all the tribes and invites the leaders from Fang, Talon, Spine, and Tail for a state dinner in hopes that reunification will eventually develop. Raya befriends the princess of Fang, Namaari, who gives Raya a dragon necklace as a token of friendship. In return, Raya takes Namaari to see the dragon gemstone. Namaari, however, attacks Raya and calls in Fang troops, as her plan had been to befriend Raya so that Fang could capture the gemstone.

Benja immediately comes to help Raya protect the gemstone, while the other tribes' leaders arrive shortly thereafter. Benja again pushes for peace and unity, but he is shot in the leg. Immediately after, all the tribes begin fighting for the gemstone, and it falls to the ground and breaks into five pieces. The Druuns immediately reappear and resume their war on humans. Each tribal leader grabs a piece of the stone and escapes. Raya helps Benja leave, but Benja throws her into the river to save her from the Druuns shortly before he turns to stone.

The movie jumps six years into the future, as Raya tries to undo the damage from that night and bring back her father. The plot follows Raya as she seeks the last dragon who is said to have survived its battle and then to recover the pieces of the gemstone. The real challenge Raya must overcome, however, is her lack of trust. After seeing her father and his dream of unity die because he took a step towards peace and trusted others, and because she herself trusted someone who betrayed her, Raya lost any faith in people she had. Raya's arc hinges on this distrust, and she must overcome it to bring back her father and her people and unite Kumandra. 

The world today is a lot like Raya's Kumandra, especially politically. Over the past few decades, the country has become intensely tribal along political lines. Red states and blue states only begin to describe the level of animosity seen. On Twitter, on news sites' comment pages, on cable news networks, we call the other side names, ascribe to them malicious intent, attribute their motivations cynical self-interest. These forums, unfortunately, reward tribalism. The more someone calls the other side corrupt and the more extreme their language, the higher their tribe raises them. 

Another outcome of this is that even those people in the center, not wanting to fight, can't escape the frenzy. Tribalism not only strengthens the extreme elements, but it affects how we see the less extreme elements. If you're not "us" you're "them", and since you are good, "they" must be bad. Tribalism muddies our perception of people. Even though those who disagree with you may be better people than many of those who agree with you, you're pushed into thinking the opposite. We look for reasons not to trust one another.

On Twitter, I've had many disagreements with people on the other side of the political schism. I've tried immensely to keep things polite, and I've never made things personal or questioned anyone's motives or put someone down in even the mildest way. While my sparring partners have used mild personal attacks, they've never said anything egregiously insulting to me. Generally, when a personal attack is used against me (and they have all been relatively tame), I call attention to it. Half the time the reaction is to abandon it, the other half is to criticize me for being sensitive.

How Twitter reflects the conflict in Raya, though, is that it is extremely difficult to get someone on Twitter to either admit a good argument from the other side that hurts their own side, or even to admit somewhere they agree. These are obvious manifestations of tribalism, the inability to even slightly side with another tribe. Acknowledging either is a type of olive branch to the other side, an act of good-faith. To date, I have only once been the recipient, and it took multiple back and forth tweets and me digging up a quotation from a public figure which directly proved my own argument. But until I provided a direct quote, my opponent would not even acknowledge the possibility of a different interpretation. Tribalism prevented him from even entertaining the notion that there was any interpretation of an ambiguous quote other than the one he defended.

The moral of Raya, is that to be a strong, united people again, we must be able to trust others and they have to trust us. Until we are prepared to stop judging each other based on the worst actions of the worst elements and demonstrate we are worthy of trust by going out on a limb and exposing ourselves, we will continue to come apart.

The great irony is that the people who would most benefit from this lesson already believe themselves to be the paragons, to need no lessons in humanity. I'm sure you do, yourself, dear reader, so I urge you to ask yourself, and push others to ask themselves, which tribe are you in? When you're arguing with the other tribe, do you seek common ground? Do you seek to narrow the scope of disagreement or to expand it? When you disagree, do you immediately assume that the other person is ignorant, unintelligent, indoctrinated, or cruel? Do you interpret their arguments in the worst possible way or the best? Honestly answering these questions will enable you to determine how tribal you are. 

Whether you want a world where mistrust and hatred prevail and define us is a different question.

Double Standards Wrecking America

Once again, Democrats have done what they used to hyperventilate about Republicans potentially doing.

Yesterday, the NY Post published the accusation (from a whistleblower) that Governor Cuomo and his team hid data for political purposes. Ask yourself, how serious is this. 

Now compare this to the announcement over the summer that the HHS would take over data reporting from the CDC. If you don't remember, there was a ten-alarm outrage fire from the media about politicizing data collection and hiding data. All of which was worried speculation based on the belief that Trump is the most evil and cynical human being that has ever lived.

Anyone who was outraged by the possibility that Trump would hide data should be even more outraged by Cuomo actually doing it! But they're not. Are there calls from Democrats or the media for an investigation or just Republicans? Do you know any Democrats? Is their reaction proportional to the events?

Also, consider the reaction to and follow-up investigations of Chris Christie when someone on his staff closed a bridge.

This is just a single example from the past fortnight. Over and over again, we were warned that Trump doesn't believe experts and puts politics ahead of science. Yet, Biden does the exact same thing, dismisses the well-documented position of the director of the CDC as just a personal opinion and minimizing it because he didn't want to run afoul of the teachers' unions. That is absolutely his right, but the media should call him out on it. It should apply at least 50% of the scrutiny it applied to Trump.

Gina Carano was fired because "her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable." This was the post she shared:

“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views”

Do you think this statement is "abhorrent" or that it denigrates anyone, let alone denigrates them based on their cultural and religious identities? Some make the argument that any comparison of today to what happened to the Jews is itself abhorrent. Firstly, to be totally clear, this post does not say that what is happening today is the same as the violence against the Jews, the concentration camps, or the genocide itself. Read literally, it is comparing only the existence of neighbor on neighbor hate. But secondly, if any comparison is off-limits, then Pedro Pascal should also be fired.

There is a great chasm in the reactions from the media and left-leaning people. They may agree with everything in this post, but because of their political affiliations, their level of outrage is highly correlated with not the events themselves but the affiliations of the people involved. Their blood boils when it's the other side and when it's on their side, they nod and move on.

This leads to a huge disparity in consequences. Republicans get fired and ridiculed, and oftentimes Democrats skate on without punishment. For this country to continue to work, the consequences have to depend on the offense and not the offender. There cannot be different punishments depending on the political affiliation of the criminal. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is rampant, both in the media and in the public, and the only step towards solving it I can imagine is to continue to push people to look at themselves, consider whether they are part of this problem, and try to overcome it.

Update:

Yet another example: White House Press Secretary TJ Ducklo threatened a reporter writing a story about him. His threats included "I will destroy you" and that he would "ruin her reputation." Pre-Biden, any threats made by a White House official against a reporter would have been met with a day of stories and opinions about the end of democracy. In this case, there's no coverage on the main page of Google News; I had to search for Psaki to find the details. This gap in the level of caring by Democrats and the media will lead to disaster in the long-run.

How the Left Wins - Marjorie Taylor Greene Edition

The Marjorie Taylor Greene situation perfectly exemplifies how Democrats (and the media) do business to break all the rules and not look back.

For those who don't know, Marjorie Taylor Greene (or MGT for the twitterati) is a US Congresswoman from Georgia who has said some pretty outrageous things. I will not defend her sanity, her qualifications, her suitability for Congress, or her suitability to serve on committees other than to say that typically the media serially exaggerate, so she's probably not as crazy as they are projecting.

What I wish to debate is the narrower issue of whether or not the Democrats should strip her of her committee assignments. Every elected Congressperson is assigned committees to serve on in their respective legislative body by their party. The committee seats are allocated depending on the overall breakdown of the parties within their house. For example, if there were 50% Republicans and 50% Democrats, then the committees would each be 50/50, too. 

The Democrats, though, want to remove Congresswoman Greene from her assignments. This is unprecedented, and Republicans argue that the Republicans should be the ones making this decision, not the Democrats. More broadly, considering the larger implications, should the Democrats do this, they are breaking a precedent and setting a new one, one in which the majority party can decide who serves on committees for the minority party. This is the argument. Looking forward, it's very likely that even if Democrats have a good argument that Ms. Greene shouldn't be on committees, what's to prevent that standard to erode over time?

This is exactly why Republicans have lost and will always lose. They are much less willing to break precedents and erode these standards. In addition to that, the media are much less protective of standards and precedents when Democrats are breaking them. A legitimate and informative media would have focused on the bigger picture arguments instead of hyping up all of Ms. Greene's statements. But this way, what does the American public think about the situation - only that Ms. Greene has said some crazy things and should probably be punished somehow. Since the only punishment being floated is removal from committees, they assume that's the proper punishment and agree it's reasonable. 

In a nutshell, this is how Democrats and the media ceaselessly and successfully push the culture in their direction. First, they misinform the public by telling them one side of the story, the easy side, the provocative side. Not only that, but they build up the argument against by pointing to the most extreme elements that support their side. They completely ignore the legitimate arguments on the other side, and they break precedent. Finally, years from now, one of two things happens: 1) They do it all over again and move the ball farther forward towards their own goal or 2) When Republicans try it, they use all their tactics against the Republicans, and if Republicans say, 'yeah, but you didn't say anything before' then they dismiss that as 'whataboutism'.