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June 8th, 2022:

Is he Elon Musk’s lawyer now?

Jun 8th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

Someone please explain this to me.

Best mugshot ever

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Monday he is investigating Twitter over its reporting of how many accounts on the platform are from bots and fake users, saying the company may be misrepresenting the number to inflate its value and raise its revenue.

Twitter has claimed in its financial regulatory filings that less than 5% of its daily active users are spam accounts. But Paxton on Monday alleged that spam accounts could make up as much as 20% of users or more.

“Bot accounts can not only reduce the quality of users’ experience on the platform but may also inflate the value of the company and the costs of doing business with it, thus directly harming Texas consumers and businesses,” Paxton said.

False reporting of fake users could be considered “false, misleading, or deceptive” under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, he said. Paxton sent Twitter a civil investigative demand, requiring the social media company to turn over documents related to how it calculates and manages its user data.

Twitter could not be immediately reached for comment on the investigation.

The investigation comes as Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also raising questions about the number of fake accounts on Twitter. Musk, who is in negotiations to buy the social media company, threatened to walk away from the deal saying that Twitter has not provided data he has requested on spam accounts.

I mean, I guess this could be a matter of interest for the state of Texas under its Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Hard for me to believe that it’s of such urgency right now as to merit action from the Attorney General – the question of how many fake Twitter accounts there are is as old as Twitter is – and of course the fact that it coincides with Elon Musk’s performance art bid to buy Twitter, which if there’s any justice in the world will cause him serious financial pain, makes it even less credible. But hey, surely we can take Ken Paxton’s word for it, right?

I do want to call your attention to the fact that what Paxton has actually done is to send Twitter a “civil investigative demand” for this info. Do you know what that means? Well, I now do, thanks to some research I did when a previous lawsuit filed by Twitter against Paxton, who had been demanding information about their ban of The Former Guy, was dismissed by a California judge. Paxton has made a similar “civil investigative demand”, and the judge ruled that Twitter had no cause to sue over this because a “civil investigative demand” is what the legal folks call “self-executing”, which is a fancy way of saying “completely voluntary”. Twitter was free to ignore the CID by Paxton, who would have had to sue them in federal court to enforce it, with Twitter then having the opportunity to argue that he had no jurisdiction over them in this matter.

That all sure sounds familiar here. If that’s the case – and Paxton clearly knows this – then what we have here is just a bit of trolling, plus some sucking up to another rich dude that Paxton likes. If you want to make the argument that this is a thing the state’s top lawyer ought to be doing, you go right ahead. Reform Austin has more.

McConaughey opines for gun control

Jun 8th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
14 comments

Not bad.

I believe that responsible, law-abiding Americans have a Second Amendment right, enshrined by our founders, to bear arms. I also believe we have a cultural obligation to take steps toward slowing down the senseless killing of our children. The debate about gun control has delivered nothing but status quo. It’s time we talk about gun responsibility.

There is a difference between control and responsibility. The first is a mandate that can infringe on our right; the second is a duty that will preserve it. There is no constitutional barrier to gun responsibility. Keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous people is not only the responsible thing to do, it is the best way to protect the Second Amendment. We can do both.

Depraved acts of violence, with guns as the weapon of choice, are ripping apart families, tearing at people’s faith, and shredding the fabric of our society. We have an epidemic of indiscriminate mass shootings, of parents burying their children, of inaction, and buck-passing. Saving the unnecessary loss of lives is not a partisan issue.

The need for mental health care, school safety, the prevalence of sensationalized media coverage, and the decaying state of American values are all long-term societal factors that must be addressed, but right now, we don’t have the luxury of time. We need to focus on corrections and countermeasures that can also and immediately reduce the gun violence tragedies that have become too common in our country.

We need to make the lost lives matter. Our leaders must make bipartisan compromises on a few reasonable measures to restore responsible gun ownership in our country.

He goes on to support enhanced background checks, raising the age for buying assault weapons to 21, national red flag laws, and a national waiting period for assault rifles, and he’s also now advocating for them in public. You could certainly go farther on a number of these, like all the way to an assault weapons ban like we once had, and he studiously refuses to name the reason why no gun control laws can be passed (it’s so much easier to make grand “both sides” pronouncements), but if we did manage to get these items it would be a step forward, and it can’t hurt to have someone like Matthew McConaughey make the case for them. So, two and a half cheers, B+ for the effort, and so on. Via Reform Austin.

Complaint #24 filed against Deshaun Watson

Jun 8th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Stop me if you’ve heard this before.

A 24th civil lawsuit was filed against former Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson on Monday, as Houston-based attorney Tony Buzbee referenced last week. The lawsuit details another woman’s account of Watson’s alleged predatory behavior during massage therapy sessions, which “mortified” the woman and resulted in her leaving her field.The woman chose to come forward after reading that Watson said he has no regrets and has done nothing wrong, the lawsuit says.

Watson, who was traded to the Cleveland Browns in March, has maintained his innocence and said during his initial press conference with his new team that he “never assaulted,” “never disrespected,” and “never harassed any woman in my life.”

The latest suit follows a 23rd that was filed Tuesday by a woman who also claimed Watson sexually assaulted her during three sessions in 2020 and claimed the owner of a Houston-area spa facilitated the massages for Watson, knew he was attempting to have sex with the therapists and that Watson paid the owner at least $5,000 for the work.

Watson’s attorney Rusty Hardin said that it was two of his lawyers who met with the woman, and they “vehemently deny there was any coercion or intimidation involved” in a meeting he described was “so congenial,” the woman joined the attorneys for dinner afterward.

Hardin also claimed that “happy endings” in massage therapy sessions are not a crime in a radio interview with Sports Radio 610 Friday, comments that were referenced in the most recent lawsuit.

[…]

Hardin told 610 hosts Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast that “doing something or saying something or being a way that makes you uncomfortable is not a crime, and so we’ve had two grand juries find that and nobody seems to want to listen.”

“I don’t know how many men are out there now that have had a massage that perhaps occasionally there was a happy ending,” Hardin said. “All right? Maybe there’s nobody in your listening audience that that never happened to. I do want to point out if it has happened, it’s not a crime. OK? Unless you are paying somebody extra or so to give you some type of sexual activity, it’s not a crime.”

Hardin issued a statement after the radio show appearance that clarified his defense that “Deshaun did not pay anyone for sex” and that he “was using the term hypothetically and not describing Deshaun’s case.”

“I have reiterated to others it’s not ok to do anything that a woman does not agree to do,” Hardin said in the statement. “These women have alleged assault in their pleadings. I was speaking in a hypothetical situation. If there is a consensual sexual encounter after a massage, that is not a crime nor the basis for a civil lawsuit. I was not talking about what Deshaun did or did not do or expected or did not expect.”

See here for the previous entry. Maybe ease up a bit on the media appearances, Rusty. As Sean Pendergast notes, those comments are part of this 24th suit against Watson. It’s impossible to read either of those stories and not just feel gross about the whole rancid situation. We’re still waiting to hear what action the NFL will take, by the way. I won’t be surprised if these latest complaints have given them some pause.

On a side note, this paywalled story in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel ran in the print edition of the Chron on Tuesday. It connects the Watson situation with the Brian Flores lawsuit against the NFL, for which the Texans are also named as defendants. Worth a read if you have access to either of those sources.

UPDATE: Just saw this big NYT piece about Watson and the many massage therapists. I’ll get to it tomorrow. And there’s more from Sean Pendergast that you need to read, too.

Early voting is underway in the HCC2 runoff

Jun 8th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Apparently, I missed the start of it, which was on Monday.

See here for the background. Early voting will run through next Tuesday, June 14, having started this Monday the 6th. You can find locations here and the map here. Polls are open every day from 7 to 7 except for Sunday, when they will be open from 12 to 7. According to the daily EV report I got yesterday, 264 in person ballots have been cast so far, 84 of which were at the Nassau Bay location. That report doesn’t show any mail ballots being returned, but I have to assume that’s an error of some kind. Regardless, as I suggested before, this will be a very low turnout affair. If you live in HCC district 2, your vote counts for a whole lot.