Sean Wesley Henry a.k.a. :Chief :Nanya-Shaabu: E[i]L:

[eric]

I didn't want to get into the non-nutcase reasons for Alberta separation. As Burnaby49 has mentioned, equalization payments are a major sticking point. Here are some figures that are often thrown around: Hydro Quebec in 2019 had total revenues of 14 B% and paid royalties to the province of 4.2 B$. Alberta oil and gas paid royalties of only 1.2 B$ from a total of approx 8 B$. Simply put, the oil and gas business has crashed, many of the counties are budgeting for a tax revenue shortfall of at least 30%. However, Hydro Quebec royalties are exempt income for equalization payments, while Alberta's oil and gas revenues aren't which means Alberta pays and Quebec takes. Not terribly fair. Similarly Alberta has much less political clout - total of 34 federal seats or one vote per 128,000 population. Tiny PEI is constitutionally guaranteed 4 seats, or one vote per 26,000.

That all being said, the Wexit movement has accumulated too many crazies. They're in the process of distancing themselves from the such as King and Downing but they need to gain the support of experienced political figures, solid economists and poly-sci types else they will remain nothing more than a fringe movement. Similarly they need to overcome the massive Conservative Party inertia in the rural areas. Out here the running joke is that you could paint a dead dog blue and put it forward as a candidate and it would win.

[wserra]

I read something in the news a few days ago that rang a sovrun bell. Perhaps you remember Sidney Powell, the Trump lawyer whose "Release the kraken!" grandiose nonsense first made her into a laughingstock and then resulted in her being sued (along with others, including 'way-past-senile Rudy Giuliani) for a couple of billion by a voting machine company that she had badmouthed. Well, she has moved to dismiss it. Among other things, she claims that what she said is such obvious bullshit that no reasonable person could take it seriously:

no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact. . . reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact

It is of course axiomatic that opinions are not actionable. Powell's problem is that she made her claims as facts, not just her opinion. Moreover, couching something as an opinion - which she did not - does not necessarily insulate it from defamation claims. "I think that you molest five-year-olds" is likely just as defamatory as "You molest five-year-olds". It also strikes me that it doesn't help a defendant in a defamation suit to argue that what she said was such obvious nonsense that no one could believe it, but maybe that's just me.

Anyway, I knew that I had written about a sov making the same desperate argument, but until today I could remember who. As I wrote above, it was Chief Shamu. The Fourth Circuit opinion characterizes his argument as follows: what he told the police "was so far-fetched that the police could not have reasonably believed he was from a nation having diplomatic relations with the United States". It didn't work.

So Sidney Powell, meet Sean Henry. May you enjoy equal courtroom success.

[notorial dissent]

Yeah, that, but isn't the Squidney kicker that she also filed her "not opinions" in actual court legal filings? And while I realize that those aren't legally actionable as far as the defamation suit is concerned, shouldn't that open her up to all sorts of ethics and legal ramifications as far as the courts are concerned? I know MI is trying to get her disbarred for a variety of reasons, and wouldn't these statements just add more fuel to the bonfire of her vanities? And come to it, wouldn't the fact that she made those filings be used as support to her lie in that she knowingly and willfully lied to the courts??? Kind of a case of she lied then or she is lying now, or is just flat out lying????

[Burnaby49]

An article I read about Sidney Powell's lawsuit didn't think much of her argument that what she said was so stupid nobody was expected to believe her. The article also brought up the same opinion/fact issue and said that her comments were clearly intended as factual.

[Philistine]

While risking sailing dangerously close to the political seas I think a few on the right are trying this tactic after a win by Fox news and Tucker Carlson:
"Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."
So wrote the judge in the case.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/91774712 ... ox-s-lawye

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/di ... 527808/39/

[Arthur Rubin]

There was a bankruptcy case I was involved with (as a tier 4B creditor) where the bankrupt tried to deny a claim by Wells Fargo Bank (the tier 4A creditor) that the statements made by the CFO could not be "fraud" as they could not be believed by any rational person. I don't know the result; I settled for 40% of a reduced claim which placed it in tier 3.

The debtor was a cluster of three businesses, Financial News Network, US News and World Report, and I forget the third.